Untitled D&D Group Story, Part 3 (Patreon)

OK, so I think I might be getting too into writing the D&D part of the story, hahaha. The story about the GROUP should pick progress in Part 4 with the way I've got things planned.

As a reminder, I'll release all of the parts bundled together in a PDF/Epub at the end of the week.

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Chapter 6

“Well, I guess I should try and find whoever wanted to turn my face into a pincushion,” Rhia said. “Can I tell what direction I got shot at from?”

“Give me a perception check,” I said.

She rolled, winced at the number, and then checked her character sheet. “Seven,” she said.

“Not enough, sorry,” I said. “You aren’t sure which side of the road it came from, and there are trees all around you.”

“OK,” Rhia said. “Um, then I guess I’m going to try and help Renee with the knife-lady so we can get into cover. I’ll jump and try to tackle the bandit to the ground as I yell, ‘Get to cover, Renee!’”

“Cool. That’s a sort of grapple check, so it’ll be an opposed roll.” We both rolled and I checked the numbers. “Looks like you’re successful,” I said. “So we see Oliva of Parnasus leap to save her friend, barreling heroically into the bandit lady, when her name splashes across the comic panel. What’s your tagline?”

“Party Paladin,” Rhia said with a smirk.

I snorted and the girls chuckled. “OK. I probably should have asked this already, but what deity does your Order of Knights serve?”

“So, as far as I know, you haven’t had this one show up in your world yet,” Rhia said. “But I was thinking Revelry if that’s OK? She would be, like, the patron of Festivals and Parties and Celebrations.”

“Hmmm,” I nodded, thinking. The deities in my world of Firth were all based on Emotions. The core three, Joy, Sorrow and Anger, created all life and filled it with their children, which were more nuanced emotions. My players had explored all sorts of different minor deities over the years - Glee, Guilt, Rage, Grief, Melancholy, Lust. I’d definitely never had a Revelry though. “OK,” I said, deciding to lean into Yes, And. “So Olivia of Parnasus, Party Paladin of Revelry. Are you the defender of the Keg Stand?”

Rhia smirked and rolled her eyes. “No one does keg stands anymore, Shane,” she said.

“We stick vodka-soaked tampons up our butts. Gets us drunk way faster,” Elyse said.

They all started laughing at the look on my face.

“I’m joking!” Elyse guffawed.

“Good God,” I said, wiping a hand over my forehead. “You had me with that one.”

“Technically it would work,” Tori said. “None of us are that crazy though.”

“I heard that Rachel tried it once, and got her boyfriend to do it too,” Elyse said.

“Well, she’s pretty much an alcoholic,” Rhia said. “Did you hear that-”

“Anyways,” I said, cutting the drama talk. “We see Olivia’s name flash across the comic panel, and then she and the bandit woman crash to the ground. Anything else you want to do?”

“Can I stab her with my sword?” Rhia asked.

“Tackling her definitely took up your action. Got a bonus action?”

“Not at this level,” Rhia shook her head. “I’m done.”

“Alright,” I said. “Then you all hear a thwack from the right side of the road, the same thwack that happened right before the bolt hit Olivia’s back.” I rolled a die behind the screen. “It looks like the hidden bandit shot at Jade, and…” I rolled the hit. “Ooh, that’s a seventeen to hit.”

“Agh,” Tori said, scrunching up her nose. “Got me.”

“The bolt thuds into the back of your thigh painfully and you take… five points of damage.”

“Fuck!” Tori exclaimed, dramatically wincing again as if she’d gotten hit.

“Hah, you get shot in the butt,” Rhia snickered.

“It was my thigh, not my butt,” Tori said.

“Won’t stop us from saying it was your butt when you can’t sit down,” Elyse smirked.

“Can I side with the bandits?” Tori asked me.

“Might be a little late for that after you dropkicked one to death,” I pointed out.

“OK,” Tori sighed. “It’s my turn, right?”

We’d reached the end of the turn order and were starting a new round, so I told her to go ahead. Jade, limping but trying to hide her pain, tried to fight back against the bandit attacking her with the axe but apparently, her dice didn’t like the idea of her going to fisticuffs and she rolled low. Renee was next, however, and seeing that Jade was in trouble she followed Olivia’s orders and rushed into the brush on the left side of the road into cover from the crossbow shots, but put her back to a tree and summoned another fiery shadow bolt.

“I’ve got you, Jade!” Renee called, releasing the bolt at the axe-swinging bandit and catching him squarely in the back. The bolt chewed through his leather coat like a hot knife through butter and sent him spinning to the ground and smoking.

“Thanks, babe!” Jade called back.

Meanwhile, the knife-wielding lady bandit was scrambling on the ground with Olivia and tried to shank the Paladin but couldn’t manage to get through her chainmail. That gave Olivia the chance to get her sword around and plunge it into the woman’s side, even rolling at disadvantage and needing to take the lower of two rolls since she was trying to use a sword while lying on the ground. Olivia thought about shoving the body off of her and standing up but realized she would still be stuck in the middle of the road so instead she grabbed the body and rolled slightly to put it between her and the crossbowman.

With all of the close-up bandits dead, that brought the turn order back to the crossbow. I rolled dice behind the screen as the girls all sat on edge, worried about who was going to get shot at next. Olivia and Renee had some cover, but Jade was standing in the open still and had already been shot once. Another one could be deadly.

“As the struggles of the dying diminish, the quiet of the forest descends on the King’s Way,” I said. “Jade, what would you like to do?”

“No one got shot?” Tori asked in confusion.

“Not that you can tell,” I said.

“Well, I guess I dive for the trees on the right side of the road and I’ll take cover from the deeper part of the forest,” she said.

I asked for perception rolls from all of them, and they all rolled mediocre. “After about half a minute, nothing has happened,” I said.

The girls, frustrated, took some time to try and hunt down the crossbow shooter, and after a good Survival roll from Jade, they found the spot where the person was probably shooting from. Other than a single footprint that was leading away into the forest they didn’t find any other sign of them.

“He ran away!?” Rhia exclaimed.

“Well, I mean, we killed three of his friends in, what, twelve seconds in-game?” Elyse asked. “That’s how long two rounds is, right?”

“About that,” I nodded.

The girls, especially Rhia, were still suspicious but decided there was no point in trying to run down a fleeing bandit who had a head start on them. Especially when Jade needed some healing. 

The good news was that Olivia, as a Paladin, was able to call upon her deity to do a small amount of healing. “Alright,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Hands and knees, Jade. I gotta put my hands on that booty if I’m going to heal it.”

“What?” Tori laughed. “Oh, lay on hands. Your ability. Right. But it’s not my butt, it’s just my thigh!”

They bickered a little, making me laugh as all three of the girls were falling into their characters, and in the end, Tori got up and walked around the table to mime how she refused to get down on her hands and knees, but only bent over slightly. Rhia rubbed her hands together again like she was warming them up, then pretended to spit on them before giving Tori a smack on the back of her thigh over her pants. The Indian girl jumped slightly, turning as she laughed and slapped Rhia’s hand away.

“Alright,” I chuckled at their antics. “With the bolt pulled from Tori’s thigh and the wound magically healed, the three of you are able to continue your walk to Tremulous Crook. Based on the last waystone you passed, you think you’re about an hour away.”

“Well, let’s get moving then,” Elyse said. “This is fun!”

“Wait, there’s one last thing we need to do here,” Rhia said.

“What’s that?” Elyse asked.

Tori smirked and looked at me. “We loot the bodies!”

I nodded, grinning, knowing that had been coming. “There’s not much on them - they don’t seem like they were particularly successful bandits so far. Between the three of them, you find seven copper coins, two tattered leather jerkins, three sets of worn boots, two hatchets, plus three hunting knives. You do, however, also find that they are each wearing a tin amulet hung on a string around their necks. The soft metal is in a circular shape, and pressed into it is the vague shape of a hound baying at the moon.”

“It must be, like, a bandit club or something,” Tori said, speaking as Jade.

“Or a whole gang, like in Westerns,” Elyse said.

I smiled to myself and scribbled a note in my notebook. The Risen Wolf Gang.

Chapter 7

The adventuring trio made it to the village without any more problems, but as the King’s Way led out of the forest they passed by a ring of farmsteads that looked like they had seen better days. Some were occupied, but the people working them didn’t call out greetings, only stopping what they were doing and staring at them until they had walked down the road. Others were clearly abandoned, the elements slowly wearing on the properties, even though they seemed to be in prime agricultural areas.

The village of Tremulous Way was a collection of about three dozen homes and another dozen buildings that included minor trade shops and businesses, a small Inn, a granery and the Town Hall. The girls headed straight for the Town Hall, wanting to deliver their letter to the Headswoman there, who ended up being a friendly but tired woman in her late forties. They got a bit more of a rundown of the state of things - the Headswoman, Pelli Mason, was a widow whose three sons had all gone off to the war more than five years ago, having expected that they would return well before then. The town was struggling to meet the Duke’s Tax, and she broke down a little when she read the letter the girls had delivered and found out that the King had levied an additional War Tax on the entire realm to help combat the vermin tides of the Dark Tyrant.

The girls spent time trying to comfort her, and she invited them to stay in her home rather than at the Inn - it was the most profitable business in town, so they couldn’t shut it down, but the ne’er-do-wells who had been frequenting it recently were suspected to be the same men and women who were causing problems all over the countryside.

Of course, the girls immediately wanted to confront the first batch of miscreants they could find, but Pelli convinced them that doing so in town would only bring their anger down on the people of the town. If anything was to be done, it had to be outside of town and with a proper Writ of Law allowing them to act as Sheriffs of the Duchy.

That information, of course, led the girls to ask the obvious question.

“Well, how can we do that?”

I’d been DMing for a long time. I was still constantly surprised but what my players would do or say in any given situation, but I knew how to lay down tempting clues for the players to pick up.

“Well, our last Sheriff and his two deputies were conscripted by the Duke two years ago,” Pelli said. “As Headswoman, I have the ability to name a new interim Sheriff, but only if the Village Elders agree on who it is. No one has wanted the job since then other than a few strangers that we haven’t really trusted, so no one can agree or not. We might be able to convince them, though. We can’t send you against the bandits without the title and the writ, but there’s nothing that says you can’t help us out with a different problem.”

“That’s perfect,” Olivia said. “We’ll take care of this other problem, and then we’ll throw a celebration party and invite all the locals in the village.”

“Well, hold on,” Jade said. “What is this other problem? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and leap in without lookin’.”

Pelli told them that there had been strange things happening with the wolves out on the hinterlands to the west, closer to the mountains. There had always been wolves, and every year someone had a story about losing a couple of sheep, or a goat, or even a cow - but this year it wasn’t just one or two. Dozens of sheep from a single flock would get savaged in the night, their bodies dragged into the forests instead of eaten where they were killed. Three cows had been killed on one farm in a single night. Even several wolfhounds and sheepdogs had been killed. Farms, the ones that weren’t bound to fall into financial ruin from the losses, were being abandoned as farmers moved their livestock closer to town, but the wolves seemed to be following their source of food.

And, worst of all, three farmhands and two shepherds had gone missing in the last week, and rumours were going around that a thing had been sighted in the forest, with big golden eyes staring out and watching the farmers from the dark of the tree line. They claimed it was as big as a bull, but could move as fast as lightning and would disappear as soon as someone saw it and looked away.

“Alright, well, wolves we can take care of,” Jade said. “I don’t know about ‘big as a bull, fast as lightning’ monsters though.”

“Oh, that’s just a rumour,” Oliva assured her. “It’s probably just some sort of alpha wolf and is bigger than the rest, and has a taste for human flesh and isn’t scared of people.”

“Because that sounds so much better,” Renee said, rolling her eyes.

“We’ll hunt down the wolves, Headswoman,” Olivia promised. “Count on us.”

The girls then roleplayed through staying the night at Pelli’s, a few more cracks getting made at Jade’s expense about getting shot in the butt. Then, the next morning, they were ready to set out for the hills to the west.

I described the town a bit more as it was waking up for the morning, dropping hints about the various businesses they might make use of in the coming weeks depending on how the campaign went. I had just finished describing a particularly large apple tree that stood beside the Town Hall when I was interrupted by Rhia.

“Wait!” she said, slapping her hands down on the table in excitement. “Is that a Chun-Shi Tree?”

I was a little surprised that Rhia’s knowledge of Firth went back that far. “Actually, it is,” I said.

“OK, I grab Renee and Jade by the hands and I say, ‘Follow me, this is important,’ and drag them over to the tree,” Rhia said.

“Um, what’s so special about this tree?” Jade asked as Tori put her southern accent back on.

“Yeah, aren’t we trying to get out to the wolfy areas before it gets dark?” Renee asked.

“This is a Chun-Shi tree,” Olivia said. “Legend says that Chun-Shi was a warrior who revered all life, and he and his compatriots battled Terror when a cult tried to summon the god in the flesh. At the end of the battle he gave up his enchanted quarterstaff that had pierced the living god’s body, and his ally Isil the White Witch turned it into an enormous tree that would lock the god’s form away for as long as the tree lived on. When Chun-Shi learned of the curse's condition, he dedicated the rest of his life to taking clippings from the tree and planting far and wide across the land. This tree is over four hundred years old, and some say you can commune with a Chun-Shi Tree to learn what it knows.”

It was a pretty good retelling of the end of the very first campaign I’d run for Dan and Melissa and our crew from college. Maybe a little more flowery than the initial way my players had worded things, but definitely a worthy legend and honestly a little touching to hear it told that way. I managed to keep the heart-warming nostalgia feelings for that campaign inside, and distracted myself as I remembered Aaron describing his monk character Chun-Shi as ‘pulling a Johnny Appleseed, because fuck that demon god and his chance at ever escaping.’

Renee blinked rapidly as she looked at Olivia. “OK, cool story,” she said. “But you want us to… talk to a tree?”

“I mean, it might be able to tell us if there’s any legendary monsters or something that used to live in the area,” Olivia said. “Or a curse on the land, or… I dunno, it might know something useful before we go fight a bull-sized wolf.”

“Pretty sure you said that was just a rumour,” Jade deadpanned.

“Hush, come commune with the tree,” Olivia said.

“Fine,” Renee and Jade both sighed.

I snorted and smiled softly. “Alright. If you girls want to try to commune with the tree, you would usually need a Talk with Plants spell or something even more powerful. But there’s always a chance you can pull this off - this is going to be what’s called a skill challenge, which usually means you need to get more successes before you get a certain amount of failures. This is a sort of long-shot binary question though, so in this case, I need either an Arcana or Religion role from each of you and each one needs to be a success for you to connect with the Chun-Shi tree.”

“I can do Religion,” Rhia said, looking over her character sheet quickly.

“This is what he means by Arcana, right?” Elyse asked Rhia, pointing to it on her skill sheet. Olivia nodded and Elyse nodded. “OK, I have a +5 for Arcana. I’ll do that.”

“Mmm,” Tori hummed unhappily as she looked at her sheet. “Can I maybe use Nature or Survival for this?”

“Nature could tell you stuff about the tree, but I don’t think it helps with divine communing,” I said. “Survival even less so.”

Tori blew out a breath. “I kinda suck at both Arcana and Religion,” she said.

“Just use the one that’s better. That’s probably religion?” Rhia asked.

“Yeah, it’s just a +1 though. OK, let’s try this. All at once, or one at a time?”

“Let’s go all at once,” I said. “The three of you each put a hand on the tree, trying to focus into a meditation-like state. Renee, you can feel just the slightest tug on your innate magical power, like a child is barely tugging at your sleeve. Olivia, you whisper a prayer to Revelry and feel the chaos of your deity start to form a gossamer strand between your soul and the tree. Jade, your mind goes back to the constant repetition and mental focus during your training in Foot Flurry Wuju. Go ahead and roll.”

All three of the girls rolled and quickly did the math.

“Seventeen on the die, so an eighteen!” Tori said excitedly.

“Nineteen total for me,” Rhia grinned happily.

“Um. Twenty-five,” Elyse said.

“Wait, really?” Rhia asked, looking over at the other girls dice roll. “Holy crap. Natural twenty!”

Tori cheered. “Nat twenty! Yes, Renee!”

Elyse looked happy but confused. “Is that good?”

“Yes!” Rhia, Tori and I all said together.

Chapter 8

“All at once, the three of you feel a rush of strange feelings. Your bodies feel expansive, huge compared to what you’re used to, but also buoyant like you could float away. The only thing that keeps you grounded is the feeling of the rough bark of the tree on your hands. Everything else has fallen away,” I said once we had gotten over the Nat 20 Elyse had rolled for the attempt to commune with the Chun-Shi tree.

“It’s quiet, until a voice speaks out of the misty void in your mind. ‘H-hello?’” I put on a variation of the voice I usually used for kids, quickly scribbling down an idea into my notes.

“Hi,” Olivia said. “Can you hear us?”

“I- I can,” I replied, still using the voice. “Wow, I can! Hi!”

“Howdy,” Jade said.

“Hey, uh, Mr Tree,” Renee said.

“It’s so nice to talk to someone,” the tree said. “I used to have more trees around me, but now it’s all little peoples like you but they can’t talk proper.”

“Well, hopefully we can teach some more people to talk to you,” Olivia said. “Do you have a name?”

“Ummm, not really,” the tree said. “I’m usually just ‘the big tree’ to you little peoples. Sometimes they call me pretty though, and that’s nice.”

“Well, you are very pretty,” Jade said.

“Are you going to be my friends?” the tree asked. I was really laying it on thick.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Elyse said, then shook herself and tried to get back in character. “I think we can be good friends, Pretty.”

“That would be great,” the tree said.

“Pretty,” Olivia said. “Do you like having little peoples around you?”

“Oh, yes,” the tree said. “Well, most of the time, anyways. Sometimes they make little hurts on me, but so do the squiggles and the woodpeckers and it’s not so bad. Most of the time the little peoples are nice though. They like my apples, and they throw parties around me, and I like the music!”

“Isn’t party music just the best?” Olivia grinned.

“The best,” the tree agreed.

“I think we’ll have to have lots of parties, then,” Olivia said. “Right, girls?”

“Sure,” Jade agreed.

“Absolutely,” Renee nodded.

I had them hooked.

“Hey, Pretty,” Jade said. “Do you think you could answer some questions for us about what was here before the little peoples made their town?”

“Oh, um, I can try,” the tree said.

“Were there ever any big monsters around here?” Renee asked.

“Um… big monsters?” the tree considered. “None bigger than me. At least not that came near me - lots of seasons ago there was a bunch of big peoples flying through the sky.”

“The Dragonstorm,” Olivia guessed, referencing another of my old campaigns. Melissa and Dan really had told her the big plot points of all of them.

“I dunno, maybe,” the tree said.

“What about smaller than you, but bigger than us little peoples?” Jade asked. “Any big predator animals that used to be around here?”

“Um.. yeah, I think so,” the tree said. “For a while there was a big bear who liked to eat my apples. She got extra big because I liked feeding her, but then she didn’t come back one day. After that, there was a Howly that would scare off all the animals for a long time, and my apples just rotted into the ground instead of getting eaten up.”

“A Howly?” Olivia asked. “Do you know what it looked like?”

“Like a Howly,” the tree said.

The girls all glanced at each other, amused but a little frustrated.

“Did the Howly eat other big animals?” Jade asked.

“I dunno. Probably. That’s usually what scares them. And it would howl every night, and I could hear it even if it was very, very far away. That’s why I called it a Howly.”

“Wait, did the Howly talk to you?” Renee asked.

“One time,” the tree said. “It asked me a question, but I forgot it.”

“The Howly communed with the tree…” Olivia muttered, mostly to herself. “So it must have been intelligent enough to have divine or arcane power of some sort.”

“Maybe!” the tree said, not really helping.

“Pretty, thank you so much for your help,” Jade said. “We’ll try and come back soon, but we think there might be other Howlys out there that are scaring all the little peoples around here and we don’t want that, so we’re going to go try and scare the Howlys. When we come back for a party, is there anything we can bring you?”

“Um… Maybe a party bow?” the tree said. “I had a big party bow once when the little peoples had a big party in front of me. I looked extra pretty that day, all the little people said.”

“We’ll get a pretty bow for you for sure,” Renee said.

“Absolutely,” Olivia agreed. “Alright, I think we end the communing there.”

“Bye!” the tree said, and then I cleared my throat. “OK, so, anything else you’d like to do in town?”

“Well, now we know that the big thing in the woods might be more than just an alpha wolf,” Olivia said. “But I don’t know what else we can do to prepare unless we know more.”

In the end, the girls decided on a couple more tasks, which Tori came up with. Since they were planning on going out into the wild to track and hunt wolves, they wanted to hire someone who knew the area - and who better for that than a local trapper who could double as someone to manage the two pack donkeys they purchased, and who could skin the pelts of the wolves and whatever else they killed. They agreed on a flat rate payment, plus a cut of the proceeds from any pelts they brought back, and struck a deal with a grizzled old veteran woodsman named Fergus - I had intended for him to be a wily and wiry, somewhat elderly man, but somehow the girls finagled him around to being in his late fifties but more of a former lumberjack-turned-silver fox.

With their new paid comrade and a couple of donkeys with the supplies they might need, they set off for the wilds.