Part 6: Session 4 Part 2: Of Busywork and Fetch Questsk Obscura

“Hey, William. Glad to see you could make it.”

“Hey, Hal. Where is everyone?”

“Bob and Suzie are in their bedroom, doing…whatever, Paul went to the gas station for drinks, and Lewis hasn’t arrived yet.”

“So did I miss anything interesting?”

“Pfff, by your standards? You picked a good time to bail, because we basically ran from one end of the town to the other doing a ton of little quests. Here, lemmie borrow Paul’s notes.”


Let’s see, so the first thing is we got a bunch of quests from the Cuthbert temple. The High Priest guy said
Hey I lost an old holy symbol by the Rainbow Rock go find it for me please thanks

“Why does ‘Rainbow Rock’ sound familiar?”

Hmm. *flip* *flip* Oh, that’s right, that’s the reason we’re in this place to begin with, we got a tip that there’s some money under “The Rainbow Rock.”

“So did you find it, then?”


Nah, we’re probably gonna do that today, instead. Anyway, we found an old lady in the basement who told us
We’re a church damnit we shouldn’t have to pay for flour like everybody else go shake down the miller
So we just shrugged and said, “Sure, whatever.”


So we go see the miller and he’s all
Dude what the fuck I’m a druid
So we go see Jaroo again and he just says
Whatever you figure it out
So Paul gets the idea that the miller should just donate to both so it doesn’t look like he’s favoring anyone. The miller gets kind of pissed he has to give away so much, but he goes along with it anyway.
Oh, and the miller’s oddly old assistant wanted to convert to Cuthbert, but the miller didn’t want him to, so Paul just said
Balance in everything, so fuck it, bitch
And that’s all it took. Let’s see now…


Oh, right, the Scottish priest wanted us to shake someone down, too. One of the brewer’s assistants, forget his name.


Anyway, when we see him, he’s all
Come on I’m a brewer’s assistant how do I pay these dues
Bitch shoulda thought of that before you joined bitch now cough it up
I can get it next week I swear
So we go easy on him ‘cause it’s not like it’s our money. Oh, that’s right, the High Priest had a town quest, too. He told us to convert the leatherworker ‘cause that would look good or something.


So we go ask him and he just says
Oh yeah well make my brother not brain-dead and maybe I’ll consider it


So we have to run back to the temple to ask the priest but he says
Shit I ain’t that good


And we’re kind of stuck for a while but then Bob hints there may be some useful scrolls around, so Suzie steals them, plus a couple potions.

“Hints?”

Well, you know, more like blatantly pointing stuff out.


Anyway, after me and Paul ID the scrolls, we find a couple Heal spells and use the spare on the leatherworker’s brother. We use it and bam
Hooray I can think again!
Cuthbert’s a totally rad dude I’m totally gonna shack up with him now
And that was that. What next, what next…


Oh, right, there was this one farmhouse off to the side with an old dude and a raging bitch. The old dude was all
My daughter’s a crazy bitch help me get rid of her
Raahh I’m a crazy bitch on my period raahh
So we laughed at him and wandered off.


Oh, there was this other old dude who said
Grr adventurers all suck I used to be an adventurer and I sucked now I’m a sixty-year-old emo and adventurers are killing my goddamn sheep
But Suzie looked around and found some weeds just dropped in the pasture so the old dude said
What the shit
And when we brought it to the druid guy he said
That’s hemlock the fuck you doing with hemlock
So we told the old guy we’d look for anyone killing his sheep Socrates style.


And yeah, there was this kid dropping the stuff in the pasture after dark so we asked him
Why do you hate sixty-year-old emos
Aw shit they gonna kill my family if I don’t
But we scared him off and told his dad who said he’d get to the bottom of it although we haven’t heard back yet. We also told the old emo who shouted
I GONNA KILL THAT KID
But we talked him out of it.


Next there was the tailor who wanted to join the militia but couldn’t because
Waahh I’m too short they don’t like short people it’s totally discrimination
So we needed to find the militia captain and convince him that short people are people, too.

“I’m a gnome barbarian, though. I probably could have armwrestled the captain and won.”


Yeah, but you weren’t there and no one thought of it.
Instead, Paul fed him some bullshit about how Pelor was going to strike him down if he didn’t let the short guy on the team. You should’ve seen Bob’s face when he failed the Sense Motive check, it was great.


Hmm, this is just a note that says Jaroo has a chest Suzie couldn’t open. We should probably remember that for later.


Oh, right, then one of us made a Spot check and found a courier hiding in a stable. He said
Hey I’m waiting for a note from the general store owners oh shit you didn’t hear that from me wait never mind fuck it we needed a new mole anyway

“Wait, what was that? Did the guy really spill the beans then just run away? And who the hell needs a spy in a dinky little town?”

The Temple guys, I guess. I imagine they plan on taking over the world, but they’ll need to start out with the nearby villages, after all.


So we go to the general store and tell the fat owner about the courier and he’s all
Blrrr I’m not fat also I’m not a spy
Dude your courier sucks he told us everything
Blrrr here’s a +1 sword now shut up about it
So we say “Cool, thanks.”


Oh, we did find out who was stealing from the one farmer.

“Which farmer now?”

Oh you remember, the one crotchety guy who wouldn’t make up with his brother? Father to Meleny?

“Oh right, that.”

Yeah, I knew you’d remember that. So we spot this one neighboring farmer sneaking around the barn at night and he tells us
C’mon guys my family is starving here
Stealing’s a crime you go put that away and live on charity like a normal poor asshole
And we decide not to tell on him since he’s pretty hard-up already. No sense in grinding him all the way down, at least when no one in the party is Lawful.


So after all that, we finally met the town’s bigwigs, Bert and Ernie.

“Are those their real names? I forgot.”

Nah, it’s Rufus and Burne. Burne’s the wizard, obviously.

“Obviously.”

Burne was just hanging out selling spell scrolls—remind me of that later when I have some real spell levels—
But Rufus had some sort of problem with the new castle. Apparently, work was taking longer than it had to and he wanted to speed things up.

“So where are they living now?”

Some sort of keep. I guess it’s obsolete or too small or something; we didn’t bother asking.


Anyway, after the talk we went to the labor camp and talked with the cook who told us
Yeah there’s this one guy who’s been around forever I think he’s paying off the foreman to stick around and do hard fucking labor outdoors not that that’s suspicious or anything


So we visit the worksite and Paul says
Hey I’m a new laborer tell me all your secrets
Maybe if you paid me
I’LL PAY YOU IN A LACK OF BEATINGS FESS UP
Shit you caught me I work for the Temple via the traders now I’m getting out of here because this is some hard fucking labor out in the sun


So there was some question about whether we’d tell on the traders even though they paid us off with a magic sword, but since everyone was Chaotic or Neutral we decided that keeping our word for the sake of Evil wouldn’t be worth the extra 100 gold Rufus gave us for squealing.

“What was Bob’s reaction?”

Hilarious. He really shouldn’t have let us pick our own alignments again.

“And that’s pretty much what happened last session.”

“So I didn’t miss anything important. What’s next, more town quests?”

“Nah, this time we go someplace interesting!”