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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6634641" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 97: FUR, FEATHERS, AND A FISHERMANNPC Roster: Fang, pet dire wolf                     Felix, eagle animal companion                     Iggy, raven familiar                     Old Clem, human commoner/expert (fisherman)                     Toronaus, timber wolf animal companionThe relative quiet of the stables was broken only by the occasional nickering of the horses, until Old Clem started snoring in earnest.  He was sprawled out on a haystack - one of his favorite places of late, having seen nearly eighty summers by this time and sleep having risen higher and higher in priority as the years crawled by - and his snores nearly woke the animals sleeping near him.  Toronaus and Fang, two very different sizes of the lupine form, were both curled up at the elderly fisherman's feet; their ears twitched in irritation at Old Clem's raucous snoring, but it was only about ten bells on a lazy, summer morning and they were both deep in their own slumber.  Above them, perched on the wall of the first of the dozens of horse stalls in the Guild stable-house, Felix slept as well, his head tucked behind a wing to block out the light.Just down the wall from Felix, Iggy suddenly squawked in surprise, waking himself up in alarm.  He cocked his head and looked about but saw no danger there in the stable-house.  He spotted Old Clem sound asleep, but was certain that it hadn't been the old hireling's snoring that had awakened the raven.  Something was wrong, something was different...but what?With a start, Iggy realized what was wrong.  The constant buzz in the back of his head, the mental link he shared with his witch mistress, Delphyne, was gone.  Much in the way someone sound asleep might awaken at the sudden cessation of the background noise to which he'd fallen asleep, Iggy had been shaken out of his daytime slumber by the abrupt severing of the mental link he shared with Delphyne.Tentatively, he cast out with his mind, probing for any distant echo of the link, but there was nothing to detect.  Not wanting to admit it to himself, in his tiny little avian heart he feared Delphyne had just been slain.In a panic, he flew down to Old Clem and landed upon his shoulder.  "Old Clem!" he called.  "Wake up!""Huh?  What?"  The fisherman sat up, staring around in panic but seeing no immediate danger."Wake up!" repeated Iggy.  "Something's wrong!""Something's wrong, all right," groused Old Clem.  "I was having a nice nap, and you woke me up!""Something's wrong with Delphyne!" insisted Iggy.  "We have to go check on her!"  With desperate insistence, he landed on both Fang's and Toronaus's head in turn, waking them up and then flying out of reach of their jaws should they have been having carnivorous dreams.  He landed back up on the wall of the closest horse stall, waking up Felix with a slap of his wing.<Hmm?> asked Felix in the simple avian language shared by all birds.<Danger!  We look for Delphyne.  We look for Feron,> replied Iggy in kind.  The eagle stretched his wings and shook himself awake.  As an animal companion, he didn't have a mental link with his mistress Feron in the same manner as Iggy and Delphyne, but he was interested in his mistress's welfare."Old Clem!" demanded Iggy.  "Get up and open the door to the Headquarters building!""I'm coming, I'm coming," groused Old Clem, brushing loose bits of hay from his pants and walking over to the door.  Then, just in case there was actually some danger at hand, he returned back to his pile of hay and grabbed up his favorite weapon of choice: a wooden fishing rod.  "C'mon, you two!" he called to the wolves.  "It looks like the only way we're going to get any peace around here is to go check and make sure the witch is okay."  Fang and Toronaus, each having spent many adventures with Old Clem in the field, were both accustomed to his orders and they followed him as obediently as trained dogs, their tails wagging at the possibility of some excitement.Old Clem slowly opened the door leading into the Adventurers Guild building.  "Where to now?" he asked the raven perched upon his shoulder.  He knew the corridor to the left would take them to the combat arena, where the adventurers often performed various types of weapons training, while going to the right would take them to the Great Hall, right by the museum room."Left, to the Wing Three living quarters!" commanded Iggy.  "And hurry!""I'm going, I'm going," groused Old Clem.  "If you're in such a big hurry, you go on ahead and we'll catch up--oh, wait, I'm the only one with thumbs, aren't I?" he cackled, as if suddenly realizing the situation.  "I guess you'll need me to open the doors, huh, bird?""Just hurry!" demanded Iggy, ready to soil Old Clem's shoulder if he didn't get going.  But the fisherman ambled along, and as he got closer to the combat arena, he realized there were no sounds of fighting coming from up ahead.  It was late morning; there was almost always somebody or other training in there, either sparring with a partner or practicing target practice.  But Old Clem realized the Guild was absolutely quiet; the sounds of the wolves' claws clicking on the marble floor and the fisherman's own footsteps were the only things to be heard.  Weird, he thought to himself, instinctively grabbing a tighter hold on his fishing pole.Entering the combat arena only confirmed there was nobody there.  For a moment Old Clem considered grabbing up one of the practice weapons, but then thought better of it -- after all, he was no fighter and wasn't trained in their use, and would probably do himself more harm with any sword or axe he tried swinging around than to any hypothetical enemy stalking these empty halls.  Plus, he had two wolves to protect him.  Having thus mentally fortified himself, Old Clem took a deep breath and turned the handle on the door from the combat arena to the Great Hall, swinging it quietly open just enough to poke his head through.  Still perched on the old man's shoulder, Iggy turned his head to look down the hallway, and Toronaus poked his head through Old Clem's legs to get a peek in for himself.At the far end of the Great Hall was some sort of motion.  Old Clem's tired old eyes couldn't make out much more than what looked like some kids playing with a wagon or something; Iggy quietly corrected him: it was a handful of gnomes, stacking what looked like weapons on the floor by a wheeled food cart.  The gnomes had each come down a different stairway at the south end of the building, which the raven well knew were the stairs to the separate living quarters of Wings Five through Eight up on the second level.  After dropping their individual burdens, each gnome turned around and went back up the stairway from which he had just came.A sudden happy whistling alerted them to an approaching figure.  Rounding the corner from the short hallway leading to the Guild's front doors was another gnome, this one wearing a baker's hat.  He was in a jolly mood and not particularly paying attention to the doors at the far end of the Great Hall, ducking into the door by the museum room that Old Clem and the animals had opted not to use upon exiting the stables."He's headed for the stables," said Old Clem."Who cares?" replied Iggy.  "Now's our chance!" he leapt from Old Clem's shoulders and flew up the stairwell that led to Wing Three.  Old Clem held the door open to allow Felix, Toronaus, and Fang to pass through, then signaled for them to follow him as he in turn followed up the way Iggy had gone.  Straight up the first set of stairs led to the Wing Three living area; a shorter set of stairs that doubled back on the first set led up to the upper level, where the bathrooms and extradimensional bedrooms were located.  Iggy had flown upstairs to Delphyne's bedroom door and called to Old Clem to open it.  In the meantime, Felix flew over to the closed door that led to the dining room, having smelled the unmistakable scent of meat, even if it had been heated in fire the way the humans seemed to prefer.  Toronaus and Fang paced back and forth in the living room, each following the scent of his own master, which led them from one piece of furniture to another.<Slayer was here,> Fang announced to the much smaller timber wolf in their own lupine language, smelling the sofa.<And Chalkan here,> responded Toronaus, sniffing a chair.  <Food here?> asked Felix, irritated that of his little group only the raven could understand him, and he was more interested in having Old Clem open one of the doors upstairs, which definitely did not smell like cooked food, even though there was a door down here that did."It's locked," Old Clem said, turning Delphyne's doorknob with no luck.  "Miss?" he asked, knocking on the door.  There was no answer.  He tried the others, but they were locked, with the exceptions of Thunderwolf's and Cal's rooms, the former because he was habitually honest and saw no reason to lock his room in his Uncle Farthingale's Guild Headquarters, and the latter because he'd been steadily moving his belongings from his Guild bedroom to the small mansion on the other side of town he had inherited from his birth-father's father-in-law, Lord Partridge.  Neither room looked to have been disturbed, and while neither was occupied, Thunderwolf's armor was safely on its rack and his various weapons proudly mounted on the walls."If those gnomes are looting the Guild, they haven't gotten this far," said Iggy."Maybe we'd better go pay those gnomes a visit," suggested Old Clem.  But first, to be sure, he checked both bathrooms (empty), the dining room (empty), and the kitchen (empty, although Felix found the piece of sausage he had smelled through the dining room door and devoured it).Leading the animals back down the stairs to the Great Hall, Old Clem peeked around the corner to look at the south end.  The whistling gnome with the chef's hat was walking back down the hall to the empty food cart, only he stopped to pick up a handful of weapons first.  Then, balancing them against his chest, he placed his hand on the cart and disappeared from view."What the--?" Old Clem said, puzzled.  Every now and again, one of the gnome luggers would come back down the stairs with a handful of goods - sometimes a weapon or a bunch of potion vials, sometimes a pouch of gems or coins - and dropped it on the floor by the cart, then returned back up the stairs.  After about a minute had passed, the baker gnome popped back into view, bent over to scoop up some more loot, placed his hand on the cart, and then vanished as quickly as he had appeared."Okay," decided Old Clem.  "Let's go!  Get the gnomes!  Eat gnomes!" he called to the wolves, who were only too happy to bound down the Great Hall, quickly outdistancing the elderly fisherman.  Likewise, Felix and even Iggy could fly faster than Old Clem could "run" (it was actually more of a fast shuffle), but the fisherman prepared his fishing rod as he raced down the Great Hall at his best speed.The next gnome lugger got quite a surprise when he came down the stairs.  Hearing what sounded like a series of clicks coming from the north end of the hall, he turned and saw Fang and Toronaus sprinting at him, looking ready to tear his throat out.  He bleated in terror and dropped his current load of loot, not seeing the eagle diving down from the ceiling height until Felix was upon him, ripping his throat open with his razor-sharp talons.  The gnome fell prone to the ground and didn't get up, blood from his shredded throat pooling onto the marble floor.  Fang was the next to reach the dead gnome, and he took a big chunk out his midsection just to be sure he wasn't faking.  (He wasn't.  But he was pretty good tasting, and Fang hadn't eaten yet this morning.)Across the Great Hall from the stairwell the dead gnome had come down was an identical stairwell, and from this one ambled down another gnome lugger under a heavy burden of loot.  Hardly able to see where he was going, he dropped it on the floor...and saw Toronaus staring at him from five feet away, his fangs bared and a growl building in his throat.  The gnome screamed in terror and tried to turn to run back up the stairs, but the timber wolf was on him in a heartbeat, dropping the frightened gnome and chewing his way through his arm.At that moment, over by the cart, Pogo Snuffmuffin popped back into view.  Still whistling a merry tune, his melody choked to nothingness in the back of his throat as took in the scene that greeted him.  A wolf was chewing through one of his henchmen's arms, while a much, much larger one - a dire wolf, to be sure - was gobbling up the remains of another one of the gnomes he had hired for this mission.  There was some old human hobbling towards him from down the Great Hall, nearly keeping pace with a raven or crow flying his way, and - worst of all - an eagle had just dropped down into his face and was clawing away at him!  The arcane trickster took a startled step backwards, casting a summoning spell as he did so.A vaguely lupine shape took form in the Great Hall, one equal in size to Fang but covered not in fur but rather in lengthy, fine-pointed quills.  It attacked the first thing in front of it, which happened to be Felix, but the nimble eagle avoided the howler's snatching jaws.As Iggy flew into the melee, he was able to see a small, brown card with a drawing of a door sitting on the metal food cart - in fact, that was all that the cart held.  But as Felix turned his attention from the gnome baker to the howler that was trying to get a bite in, Iggy opted to take his place.  He may only be a little raven, but he was a witch's familiar, and he was going to do whatever he could to avenge his fallen mistress!  (For by now Iggy had come to the inevitable conclusion that Delphyne would have to be dead for their mental link to have been severed in such a fashion.)Iggy wasn't much of a physical combatant - in fact, the very few times he had entered melee in the past, it was to release a spell Delphyne had imbued upon him for just that purpose - but he did his best, scratching a small wound down the evil gnome's face.  But then, in the midst of this all-too-infrequent combat, the raven saw something out of the corner of his eye that caught his attention.Two of the doors at the southern end of the Great Hall, where the administrative offices were located, were open.  Through these open doorways, Iggy spotted the familiar conference rooms beyond, each containing a bunch of chairs around the table in the middle and more against the walls.  Standing and sitting throughout the room were a great number of people, many of them known by sight to the raven familiar, including Delphyne.  However, they were all petrified, all having been turned to stone seemingly at once, for each face held an expression of surprise.  Some held glasses of wine or plates of half-eaten cake, the food and drinks having petrified along with the people.  And then, Iggy remembered what day this was: Delphyne had mentioned a few days ago that today was Guildmaster Farthingale's fiftieth birthday, and that a surprise party was to be held in his honor.  Judging from the results, somehow the devious gnome in the baker's hat had managed to turn the entire congregation of celebrants to stone, and was now busily stealing the magic weapons and other items of value from the Guild's members.Unable to resist, Iggy flew from the combat - in which he was a rather ineffectual participant, in any case - and flapped into the nearest conference room.  He dropped to Delphyne's petrified shoulder and his feathers dropped involuntarily.  "Oh, mistress," he said sadly.  But then he brightened up, for he knew that petrification like this was reversible; Iggy could already think of several ways to get his mistress back.Out in the Great Hall, Fang was chasing another screaming gnome lugger up the stairway from which he had emerged, while Toronaus and Felix snapped and scratched at the summoned howler, who in turn was doing his best to attack the eagle flapping his wings directly in front of him.  But try as he might, the eagle was a nimble combatant and always seemed to be inches away from the howler's snapping jaws.By this time, Old Clem had gotten as close to the combat as he wanted to, and let fly with his fishing line.  The hook went exactly where it had been directed by the expert fisherman's deft wrist-snap, and Old Clem started reeling in his prize: the food cart.  That baker gnome kept putting his hand on the cart right before he vanished, and the curious fisherman wanted to know what that was all about.  (He was also rather winded from his fast shuffle down the length of the Great Hall and didn't mind the cart making the rest of the trip for him.)However, by this same time, Pogo had realized enough was enough.  The whole point of his daring scheme - for who else would be daring enough to take on an entire Guild of professional adventurers? - was to avoid combat with his targets; he wasn't sure who the old man and his four pet animals were, or how they had gotten in here after he had just arcane locked the front doors and the back door leading to the stables, but they obviously meant trouble.  Snatching up the brown card with the door drawn on it as the cart was dragged past him on a fishing line, he cast another summoning spell, this time causing a trio of fiendish monstrous scorpions to manifest amid the combatants.  Then he cast a dimension door spell on himself and was gone.The first of the scorpions was by Old Clem; it wasted no time in snapping a set of pincers at the old man, who in turn wasted no time in hopping into the nearest conference room and slamming the door shut behind him.The second scorpion appeared by Toronaus and snapped at him, this one having much more success than the first.  The timber wolf was forced to divert his attention from the howler to this new menace, but that turned out okay since Felix managed to fly in and finish off the bloodied howler, whose body discorporated as it returned to whatever fiendish plane it called home.The third scorpion had appeared near the spot from where Pogo had departed with a pop of displaced air.  Fang had finished killing the third of the gnome luggers on the stairwell by this time and trotted back downstairs to see what other forms of entertainment might be at hand.  Seeing the readied scorpion, it chuffed in eagerness as it bounded to the attack.Holding the door closed behind him, Old Clem studied the statues he found cluttering the conference room.  Directly in front of him was the petrified form of Telgrane.  Unlike the others, he had dropped his plate of cake before becoming petrified; it lay broken on the floor in front of him.  And his right hand was extended, as if he had just tossed a fish back into the water.  And there was something funny about the way Telgrane looked.  Something was missing....With a sudden realization, Old Clem identified what was nagging him about Telgrane's appearance: that metal box he always wore on his belt was missing.  Looking around, he discovered it on the floor underneath the conference room table.  Grumbling about having to get down on his knees (a process which took him nearly half a minute), Old Clem grabbed up the metal box and popped it open.  A stream of cinders arced out of the box, hit the floor, and exploded into the form of a nine-foot-tall woman of flames with curving, black horns."My Master!" Infernia cried.  "Something has happened to my Master!"  Like Iggy, she had immediately sensed the severing of the mental link with her Master, Telgrane, but had been inside her tinderbox in ember form and couldn't exit by herself.  Telgrane must have realized what was happening in the last few seconds of his life and tried to free her, but he had dropped the tinderbox instead of opening it."There's a scorpion on the other side of the door," said Old Clem without further explanation.  "And kill any gnomes you see -- they're the ones who turned everybody to statues!"  Infernia needed no further prompting.  Pulling the door open, she bashed the scorpion in front of her with her flaming fists, pounding it into a pulp in her rage.  Two other dead scorpions littered the Great Hall, having been slain by the animals they'd been fighting."Where are the gnomes who did this?" demanded Infernia.  Iggy flew out of the other conference room and filled her in as best he could, but had no idea where the gnome had gone to.  "I saw him cast the spell, though," the raven said.  "I recognized it: it was a dimension door, so he couldn't have gotten too far from here."The squeaking voice of a frightened gnome gave away their likely location.  "What the hell's going on down there?" it demanded.  "I thought you said this was going to be a piece of cake!"  Then, realizing what he had said, he took time from his panic to laugh at his own inadvertent pun.  "Heh: 'piece of cake.'"The voice had come from the stairwell across the way from the one on which Fang had chewed up his second gnome of the day.  Leading the charge, Infernia raced up the stairs, which led to the Wing Seven living quarters.  Turning the corner, she saw a trio of gnomes at the upper level: a frightened one in a leather vest and two others wearing chef's hats, one of which was using a lockpick to get his way through the lock on one of the extradimensional bedrooms.  The other baker gnome held a brown card in his hand.  He started to say something, but Infernia blasted him with the magical circlet her Master had given her.  A powerful blast of force energy hit the gnome, tearing his little frame to shreds.  He fell to the floor, the last words spilling from his lips: "Knock...Kn--" Felix had flown up the stairs and was attacking the gnome rogue who had been picking the lock; the other gnome, the lugger, had bleated in terror at the eagle's approach and dashed into the ladies' restroom, hiding in a stall while trying to suppress a whimper.Iggy landed on the ravaged corpse of Pogo Snuffmuffin.  "Did anyone catch what he was trying to say?" he asked.  Felix didn't respond; he was too busy clawing away at the gnome rogue, who fell crashing over the railing to the living room below in an attempt to escape the bird's wicked claws.  Toronaus bounded up to him and finished the job."Sounded like 'knocking' or something," Old Clem replied."I did not pay attention," admitted Infernia."'Knocking?'" echoed Iggy.  "Some kind of a command word, maybe?  Knocking around?  Knocking on the door?  Knock-knock?"Inadvertently, the raven had stumbled upon the command word for the card Pogo held in his dead hand.  And, since the raven's claw had been standing on the card when he had made his final guess, Iggy immediately disappeared from view.The raven gave a squawk of surprise at his new surroundings.  He was now in a luxurious manor house by the looks of it, complete with plush carpeting and elaborate wall hangings.  And there, piled haphazardly on the floor, was an odd assortment of potion vials, wands, boots, swords, axes, books, bags of coins and gems, and daggers.  "Well, I'll be darned!" he said to himself, then repeated the last thing he'd said before finding himself here.  "Knock-Knock!"Iggy reappeared in the Wing Seven upper hallway about a half minute after he'd vanished, showing up on top of the dead gnome baker.  "It's a Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion!" the raven crowed to the others; only Infernia and Old Clem bothered to listen.  "All of the loot the gnomes have taken is inside it!  I'll need you two to lug it all back out for me.""...'Cause we have thumbs," sighed Old Clem, looking in disdain at his weathered hands as if they had conspired to make more work for him."First I will kill the other gnome," vowed Infernia, storming into the bathroom where the last of the four luggers still cowered. - - - Cleanup after that took some time, but there wasn't much more in the way of any danger.  Wings Five, Six, and Eight each also had a gnome rogue dressed as a baker picking the locks of the bedrooms, some of whom noticed their lugger counterparts hadn't been back up to fetch the loot they'd unearthed in the bedrooms they'd managed to breach thus far, but whether the gnomes went looking for their partners or the wolves went looking for the gnomes, the result was inevitably the same.  Old Clem and Infernia managed to grab all of the purloined loot back out of the extradimensional space tied to the magic "door" card, and while old Clem's nearly eight decades of life had made reading small, printed letters a bit of a feat, Iggy had fine eyesight and was able to find, among the various stolen potions and unguents, a small vial labeled stone salve.  Old Clem applied it to Telgrane, whose stone body then reverted to flesh - much to the joy of Infernia.  Telgrane then used several break enchantment and limited wish spells to return a handful of the other Guild members back to life from their recent petrification.  The first of these was Delphyne, whose own spellcasting was put to good use freeing a bunch of the others.  All in all, it took over a week, for the spellcasters could only prepare so many of the higher-level spells needed each day, but in time the full complement of Guild members had been restored.Subsequent investigation, through divination spells, revealed how Pogo Snuffmuffin had nearly pulled off what would have been the heist of the century.  Hired to bake a cake for Farthingale's upcoming birthday, the scheming arcane trickster had seen an opportunity and gone for it.  In his baker's kitchen (which doubled as his alchemical lab), he had created a vast pot of elixir of petrification, then, the morning of Farthingale's birthday, used a little-known variant of the polymorph any object spell (one that could affect magic potions and elixirs) to transform the elixir into frosting and used it to frost the elaborate cake.  Exactly three hours later the frosting turned back into elixir of petrification, but by that time the damage had been done: the entire Guild had eaten a piece of cake (Galrich had eaten four!), and everyone found themselves having retroactively consumed something that turned them to stone.It had been a daring plan.  And Pogo Snuffmuffin would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for that meddling old fisherman and his four pets.... - - - This was admittedly a change of pace from our normal adventures, and it used a concept I'd been wanting to try for some time.  Knowing that the adventure after this one was the one where they'd be trying to find the Elemental Air Torus, I told everyone to decide which PCs they'd be running to go to the Elemental Plane of Air, had the spellcasters prepare all of their spells, and then once everyone was ready I told them to put their folders away because they wouldn't be needing them for this next adventure after all.  Then I passed out the one-page NPC sheets I'd prepared.  Dan was given Old Clem to run; Vicki ran Delphyne's raven familiar, Iggy; I had Logan run Felix, Feron Dru's eagle animal companion; Jacob got to run Galrich's pet dire wolf, Fang; and Joey ran Toronaus, Chalkan's timber wolf animal companion.  (Once Infernia had been freed, Logan ran her as well, but she was so much more powerful than the others I didn't want him starting off with her, so I had her "imprisoned" inside her tinderbox at the start of the adventure.)This went over really well, no doubt because it was so unlike anything we'd done before.  And I had my wife Mary bake us a cake the night before: chocolate cake with vanilla marshmallow frosting - yum!  It represented Farthingale's birthday cake in-game, and would have represented Dan's 50th birthday out-of-game if we had played it the day we had originally scheduled this session (which would have been less than a week before he turned 50), but it worked out okay anyway because when we played it yesterday, it was two days before Joey's 11th birthday.  (And to think he was 2 when we started this campaign!)</blockquote>

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