🐗40. in mysterious ways

session 40 • 9/6/2022 • 1,287 words

🌞 DAY 10.3 • 📅 HARVESTIDE

📌 Honeypuddle Village

⏰ Entrance to the Faire, 7:00AM

The group does a mini-panic over the reset, again, before deciding to rush over to Grandpappy's stall to see if he's still there. Soren, however, asks the party to slow down and think about this: Mystra, mentioned in the conversation, is the goddess of magic; meaning that they are dealing with powerful archmages at best, or deities at worst. He asks to leave the village, citing that it's not a bad thing to be stuck in a cheerful festival forever.

Sildar and Will express that they want to help save the village from the endless timeloop. Will tries to recall information about Urdlen, and remembers that he's an evil gnome god of deep-dwelling creatures; that he was vanquished a while back.

Soren laments the fact that he's stuck with such do-gooders, but helps them draw up a timetable of events so far and logically reason about the loops and its outliers.

⏰ Cowslip Candies, 7:00AM

The group heads over to Grandpappy, and immediately drops the password on him without further elaboration--to his confusion. The group proceeds to infodump on him about the timeloop, and his confusion turns to anger when the name Urdlen is mentioned.

He tries to ascertain "what do y'all make of this whole thing", and when no one mentions sussying him for being a god, he grabs his stick and sets off to the woods.

Sildar and Will plead with him to let them help him, but he laughs off their concern and promises to be "extra careful" this time, adamantly refusing to let them follow. They ask him to at least protect Cameron from being kidnapped, and he agrees offhandedly.

⏰ Steak Shack, 7:30AM

The group arrives at Vanessa and Josies' parents' stall and stop them from wandering into the woods, which, as the group knows, leads to Vanessa's attack and Josie's stealing from Arabella.

Droop surprises them by calling them out by name, then immediately the children start hatching plans to unalive Sam and Tam, which Will frantically tries to put a stop to. Droop accuses Will of stifling his plans, and says essentially that Soren is the more fun uncle.

Droop and Hugh get steak. Soren throws up because Droop starts eating them raw and then shoving them into his face.

Droop starts distributing darts to the kids; Will stops them, much to Droop's further dismay. Will tries to reason that Sam and Tam's parents and friends will get sad; Droop asserts that bullies shouldn't have friends and that you should be allowed to hurt bullies back. Soren mutters that he agrees with Droop--that bullies should be punished.

Will druid-crafts some flowers for Josie and Vanessa, which, as always, immediately fascinates them.

⏰ Oiled Boar, 8:00AM

Hugh wanders off to the oiled boar competition and tries to oil himself, much to the bewilderment of the host. It's 5GP to enter, and a 50GP prize; along with the winner's choice of a figurine from the Companions of the Hall; Drizzt Do'Urden's party.

Soren quietly loses his entire mind about the Drizzt statuette, which Sildar notices because he knows this kid is whipped for Drizzt. Soren tries to enter, but Sildar convinces him otherwise (because this bitch has 3 levels of exhaustion still) and sits with him to watch the others compete.

Droop tries to eat the little boarling, Hugh is like no that's someone's pet!! Droop says he was once a pet LMFAO

Hugh, Droop, Josie, Vanessa and Will try to catch the boar, but they all fail LMAO. Soren gets up and enters the comptition under the guise of wanting to stretch his legs. Sildar does as well. As they try to wrangle this little boarling, it grows a little bit, though only the party seems to notice.

Eventually, Sildar manages to catch the pig (after WAYY TOO LONG GUYS, who will win, a CR 1/8 boarling or four level 4 adventurers??) but the boarling suddenly grows to become giant. Still, no one seems to see the problem, and the host congratulates Sildar on winning, as the giant boar starts trying to gore the other contestants.

Sildar grapples the pig while Soren tries to put it to sleep, and instead fucking knocks out half the ring of contestants. Oops! Hugh helps in the grappling and knocks it prone, while Will casts speak with animals.

This line of notes neatly summarizes the conversation between Will and the pig:

Will deigns to repeat the shit that comes out of the pig's mouth; but summarizes that it's been enlarged and enraged like Steevahn the snake was, the previous day. After keeping the pig wrangled for a few more seconds, it turns back, though it keeps screaming profanities at Will.

Sildar receives his 50gp prize money, and picks Drizzt; the host comments that the Drizzt toys are popular with children, Sildar is like LMAO yea it SURE is 👀

He gives the 50GP to Will, then goes and stands by Soren and holds his Drizzt statue and is like "ohh no, I wonder who this person is, I sure wish someone could EXPLAIN his HISTORY to MEEE" IM LOSING MY MIND LMAOO.

Soren is like "...who?? the traitor?? the stinky doodie man Drizzt himself? the enemy of all drow? yeah I might know a thing about him. I can explain. Later."

As they talk, a giant eagle swoops down and snatches the boarling. The host runs after the eagle, screaming. Kids are crying. The party takes their leave.

⏰ Pudding Plaza, 8:30AM

The party passes the plaza and sees that the mayor has been turned into a frog.

As they walk, someone tries to pickpocket Sildar; he fails to grab the hand, but notices and turns around to see a young halfling woman grinning unapologetically at him. He tries to ascertain if she's stealing out of necessity, but she only taunts him ("I steal because I can!") and then makes an offhand comment about how he won't remember her because "everyone will be reset tomorrow again, anyway".

Sildar tries to grab her, but she sommersaults out of reach gracefully and continues calling him names and taunting him. Her attitude seems to really get under Sildar's skin, who in turn starts insulting her.

She establishes that she was a master thief from Waterdeep who has been laying low for a little while. She believes that she is being punished by this timeloop for this, by the patron god of thieves, Brandobaris, stating that if she steals from enough people and burgles enough houses, maybe he'll forgive her.

Will tries to persuade her to work together with the party, which she seems amenable to, but Sildar insults her intelligence and denies the possibility that her patron god is involved, at which point she starts leaving. Sildar makes an offhand comment about her stealing the pudding; she seems genuinely interested in doing so, believing it to be her god's "challenge" to her. She takes her leave.

⏰ Archery Range, 9:30AM

The group saves the halfling stack and gets to the archery range, where they see a scuffle; it seems like one of the belts under the targets have stopped working, causing a little girl to lose the contest. The onlookers are blaming Old Man Gearclick, the host, for rigging the competition so his son can win.

Will investigates and finds that a mass of worms have burrowed under the belts, breaking it. The angry mob calms down, but in the resulting tiebreaker, the girl still loses and Gearclick's son wins.

The group, indignant that Gearclick's son seems to be smugly taunting the girl, collectively enters the competition to try and win.