Ambush at the Door

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We took a nap. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe we should have kept going. Everybody gets so tired around here when it’s dark all the time. Maybe we gave the new man too much time to think. At any rate, the next morning was bad.

When we got outside there were a bunch of people waiting for us. Some in robes and some in armor. They looked like the bad people from back in that one Caer where that lady ran away from us. Twitch seemed to know the middle robed guy. Called him Archie or something like that. Then they had a contest of who throw insults better. I think Twitch was winning. But Archie was really awful, and Eggy lost his temper and shot him.

Big old demons start showing up too, or were they devils? I don’t know, they hurt a lot, so Doc and I took them on while everyone else fought the people. Then Sammy showed up, too! He sent a funny do after Eggy and dropped him right into the snow, bleeding out. Saalym really didn’t like this, so she spent the rest of the battle ripping a collar of the demon rock off his neck and reminding him we’re his friends. She didn’t even smite a demon! Or devil? I dunno.

The new man who used to be a copy grabs Twitch’s boss though, and starts to take her away on a sled. Eggy made a big thorny wall in front of them. And people started running and shooting over there. They through the nice lady into the thorns! We killed him and his undead friend. Well, they did, Doc and I were still fighting the demon devils. Sammy even helped us kill them with his funny dogs.

When everything attacking us is finally dead, we get to actually talk to Sammy. The bad lady woke him up, I guess, and the big boss devil demon put the collar on him. They were his friends and helped him. But he still likes us, too. He looks different now, that’s why me showing people what he looked like didn’t work. I got his new face now. Won’t happen again.

Twitch didn’t actually kill Archie, and his boss lady asked him to take him back to Ten Towns for trials. But Twitch was supposed to take us to the city under the ice, why doesn’t She go if she wants him to do trials. Best Friends aren’t supposed to leave! Saalym said so when Sammy left. But Sammy’s back now, and he’ll go with us, but he’s friends with the bad people. Twitch says he’ll try to catch back up with us when we get to the city. I hope he just kills Archie and comes right back. He was awful to Twitch.

Upside Down Tower

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We wandered around on the snow for a few days. Eggy kept making lots of animals for me to play with. And summoning birds to fly around and look for the tower. At first they just found an owlbear. Then they found that same owlbear, but also some ice friends. We had a nice snowball fight, but they don’t know what towers are and can’t talk. But I gave them a wine cork and they gave me a branch with a purple berry on it. Twitch says it’s even better than the berries that Barry and Leshy give us in the morning.

We finally find the tower, but everyone wants to sleep before we go look at it. But it’s Right There! UGH! But we settle down with our bunch of fuzzy friends again. Eggy makes a dome to keep all our friend safe, and Eggy and Sandy so they don’t freeze. Some Bugbears decide to attack us in the night because they can’t see how many of us there are, I guess. Maybe they just wanted to eat the animals. I scold them, but they’re all dead before they can run away. Oh well.

The tower is really strange. There’s no door just a hole with an icy slide. Inside everything is upside down. It’s not supposed to be, though, cuz lots of stuff go broke when it turned over. There are lots of books just thrown about in the first room. Across the hall is a bunch of broken potions. But there’s a chest attached to the ceiling, and it has four not-broken potions in it. It’s a nice chest, too, so I get it all down with Saalym’s help. Guess she’s not mad anymore.

Gotta tie a rope off in the bookroom and go down through a hole in the floor/ceiling to the next floor. This room has two broken cages in it. One’s got a dead insect person like we saw on other ships. There’s another room with books down here, too. All the stairs are filled with rocks and dirt, but there’s also a skeleton with a pipe in one of them. Twitch likes smoking, so I give it to him. There’s a really quiet office room, too, but no magic thing doing that.

We go down the rope through another floor/ceiling. This is more broken things and tables and cupboards and things. And another stone filled stairs, but with no skeleton. Before we can do more, a door opens and the dead wizard murderer from back in East Haven walks in with a dead guy behind him. WHAT!?!

He says he didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed him. Says he’s a simi..simu… copy of that other guy. He doesn’t know anything about any murders. He’s here because that other guy found a room in the tower that can make illusions into real things, so he’s been studying that. Something about needing a spark of life, but that sounds like something you pull out of a body as you kill it, to me. He says he’ll show us.

First though, we check out the rest of this floor. He’s got an office that’s really boring except for a noisy pendant, but Twitch says to leave it alone. And there’s a shrine in the other room to a magic god person. It’s boring, too, though. Until Twitch touches it and it makes a potion. He says it gave him an illusion spell to cast forever. I guess that makes sense with the illusion to real stuff room.

We go down the rope again into a dining room. There’s a couple big lizards with lots of legs in there. Eggy says to not let them look at you, but that doesn’t make sense, so we just kill them. They’re really tasty. The next room is the magic room, so we leave the magic people in there. Doc and I find a bedroom with a broken mirror in it down the hall. There’s also a skeleton, so I look to see if it has anything in its pockets, but a wisp flies out and shocks me, then disappears. So Doc blows his really loud horn, and it snuffs out. But it also makes dirt pour in the windows and a chest appear. So, we grab the chest and skeleton and get out. The door’s just wood, so Doc pulls a metal door off his robe and we put that to hold the dirt instead. The chest is warm and has a fancy book inside, but when I try to pick it up it falls apart.

When we get back to the others, there’s a big gooey mess on the floor and the copy guy is shimmering. He’s a real person now. I ask if he’s going to murder people because Saalym has been looking at him funny the whole time. He says he won’t and promises not to. We invite him to come with us to the city under the ice, but Twitch and his boss want to sleep here before we go onward.

Eleven Towns?

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The goblin friends are still in Bryn Shander, but they’re ready to go home. We pack up and head south to their mountain fortress. They built it themselves! Doc finds a couple dogs in his new pockets, so now Saalym and Leshy have new pets. He also gives Twitch a bunch of papers. I don’t even remember where the robe came from. Maybe one of the ships, I guess.

On our way, we find a hurt goblin. Says he was coming to look for our friends, but got attacked and everyone else dragged off. So Eggy starts tracking back to where it happened and then follows the tracks back to a camp. There’s a bunch of people there, families and everything. Doc and I sneak forward and can see goblins and a halfling all chained up. So, we call out to them. Tell them we just want our friends back. It looks like maybe they’re already cooking a goblin for dinner. They need food, so I ask Saalym to ask Leshy about the ground up elks.

Saalym and Eggy are getting really upset that these people are eating people. But they’re hungry. Leshy says we don’t have any more elk. Eggy starts shooting and Yogi comes charging in. These people don’t put up much of a fight, and the group slaughters a bunch of them. Twitch, Doc, and I go set the goblins and halfling free during the fighting. Their leaders finally come out, but they surrender, and we give them food and tell them to stop eating people. I guess Leshy lied and we did have a bunch of elk left. The halfling in named after the bees in Good Mead, and says she’ll come with us for safety until we can get her home.

The goblin fortress is pretty big, but our friends say that sometimes it shakes and they have to go outside so it doesn’t fall on them. Saalym and Leshy start trying to figure out how to make it more sturdy. Doc and I drink with the goblins until their chief is ready to see us. He’s got a really weird crate in his office. Says he’ll trade it for food. Something is weird about him though. He’s got a cool metal mask, but it’s not just that.

He’s a Gnome! He got attacked by these guys, but somehow got inside pretending to be a goblin. Then he took over to help the be better. He’s really scared they’ll find out he’s not a goblin and kill him. I think they’re really nice goblins, and might just throw him out. Doc thinks maybe they’d be okay with his real self. He’s helped them so much. But he says they get bored really easily and there’s lots of that right now, with all the snow. So, we make a plan to help him find stuff for them to do. Get materials for them to work on building. Start a mine somewhere for them to work in for trading. We’re going to give them all our extra weapons and armor, too. So they can be a real town and defend themselves.

That all seems boring to me, but he does give us the weird crate. It’s got a big egg in it, but not a real egg. It’s made out of sticky metal. Twitch says we can’t open it in town. Saalym starts teaching kids to follow her judgy god, so I start teaching them to think for themselves. She teaches them to defend themselves, and I give them my leftover daggers. We’re arming all the adults, the kids should get something, too! Twitch makes a bunch of bricks for them. Eggy finds good rocks and Doc teaches them out to break them out of the mountains.

Twitch finally says we can take the egg down the mountain to open it. It takes a bit of work because it’s magic, but we get it open. A big weird thing slimes out and bites me! Eggy shoots it until it stops biting. The egg is really big inside, but when Twitch goes in and comes out, he doesn’t know it’s been a little while. He seems really excited about trapping monsters in there.

Once the town is ready to go, we take a peace totem from their chief back to Bryn Shander’s speaker. I show him what Sammy looks like, but he hasn’t seen him. Saalym gets mad and storms off again. I really don’t understand. How are people supposed to know who we’re looking for if I don’t show them? Weirdo. Twitch’s boss is ready to go to the city under the ice, and we’re going to look for the mage tower along the way. After we sober up in the morning, of course.

Sculptures and Symbols

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Twitch says it is time to head for the castle at the center of the island. Doc and Saalym seem distracted by the freezing cold and don’t say much, so we change directions. Which annoys our ice friend, but he takes us to a big wall with holes in it. Inside is some kind of statue garden. Except they look like people that got frozen. Leshy says they Are frozen folks and critters, and we see a couple trolls having dinner of a couple of them. Nasty trolls, just biting heads right off, without even cooking them. So we kill the trolls and take all the magic stuff off the frozen dead people. It’s not as much fun with Doc in a snowblind daze.

Twitch’s boss lady wants the troll hearts. She says they can make us really strong, and Twitch convinces her to let us have them. Says I should eat one so I can heal while I’m fighting. It was almost as good as the frozen wine-sicles. We give Sandy the other one, I’m not sure if he ate it or not.

Next we find a real ice sculpture garden, not just frozen people. This one even has an ice dragon. I climb up on top and look around, but there’s no one here. And nothing moving. Everything is really pretty, though.

Then we’re at a mountain in the center of the island. I try to ask the icy guy if there’s a way in, but he says we have to climb up. It’s not so hard once I get Doc to help me. I wonder why he’s so out of it. Hope he wakes up soon. Up at the top, we go around to the other side of the mountain to find a big staircase we could have used. We scold our ice friend for making us climb and he runs off. It goes right up into a big skull’s mouth. Twitch says it’s called Grim Skull. Or something like that.

The doors are really heavy, but Eggy and Yogi get them open. There’s no one to stop us, so we go right on in. The first door has an old giant behind us who just stares at us and asks who we are. Twitch shows him the winter goddess lady symbol and says we’re looking for the vault. He says it’s down the hall. That was easy.

We go down the hall, staying out of trouble and find a bunch more icy friends, but they don’t want to talk. So, we go downstairs to find the vault. We find another talking walrus first. He says it’s his job to protect this place from bad people. Twitch shows him the symbol and he says we must be okay. I tell him we’ll bring him fish next time we come, and he tells us were all the hallways go out of his room. A bunch of trials and the vault.

We decide to just go for the vault. The others aren’t ready to actually make a ruckus and Doc is still being quiet. We head for the vault, but Eggy can’t get the door open. It says “The way is shut unless you pass the trials of cruelty, isolation, endurance, and… something. Twitch holds up his symbol, though, and the door just opens.

The next room has big chunks of ice with the petty goddess lady’s rules on it. Cruelty, Isolation, Endurance, and Preservation. I think the Winter Queen might get along with this goddess lady, if she weren’t so silly as to just take over ten tiny terrible towns.

Twitch waves his symbol at the next door, too. It opens up and there’s a big book in here, on a stand. It’s the book we are looking for! Twitch picks it up before I touch it, and his symbol disappears. We try the next set of doors, but without the symbol, we can’t get in. Everyone wants to leave. I want to talk to the goddess lady. I shout out, because if she’s a goddess, she should be able to hear me, but she doesn’t answer. The walrus says she doesn’t come downstairs. So we just leave.

Back down the mountain and through all the statues again. The icy guy said there were two more shipwrecks. That should be fun before we head back home again. The first one is guarded by a bunch of fishmen that Twitch calls Merrow. I wonder if they’re related to minnows. There was a bunch of money and jewelry on that ship. The last ship just has a bunch of giant oysters on it, so we have a really good dinner before going back to the dock.

Our whale friend takes us back to land. Twitch tells us all about the magical things we found. He says the book has spells and a big poem in it. His boss wants to go back to Bryn Shander and study it some before we go to the city under the ice. That sounds boring, but we do have to get back to the goblin tribe and make sure they get home safe. I really want to meet their chief.

Treaties and Shipwrecks

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We stopped by Bryn Shander on our way north, and a good thing, too. There were a bunch of goblins at the gate trying to bring a treaty to the Speaker, but the guards wouldn’t let them in. I told the guards we’d take care of them, so they let us all pass. Took them right up to the townhall and went with them into the meeting. These goblins were all really nice, and they want us to come meet their leader. They say he’s partly made of metal. He brought them all out of their caves and they built their very own fortress. They were just about to start trading when Winter hit, and it’s been bad, so he’s trying to fix it with the treaty. The Speaker’s aide hears them out and says they are allowed to stay in town until the Speaker has time to respond. So, Doc and I take them to an inn and we all get drunk. In the morning, we pay for their room and give them food money. We’ll take them home when we get back, to make sure they’re safe.

Some potion buying, a quick stop to tell my Dad all about the dragon, and we’re back at the whale dock. There’s a half-orc there looking confused in robes and symbols of the stupid winter goddess lady. Only, he says he’s not allowed to go to her island, where the frost giants are. Oh cool! We’re going to her island maybe! We can fix everything! He says she was betrayed by the other gods and that’s when she starting throwing this winter fit. He agrees the Winter makes it hard for him to spread her word to the people. Saalym calls her evil, and I explain that means her god doesn’t like her. He says the goddess lady won’t let him help fix things, but that doesn’t stop him from helping us. He knows the book we want and gives Twitch a symbol to help us get into her vault. He says the last page is important. Then he goes away really fast like that bad lady in the basement of that one castle. Twitch says he was a lot more powerful than the bad lady, but it seemed the same to me. I think he’s just impressed with people stronger than him, like that lady who has come with us.

We ring for the nice whale to come, and he agrees to take us out to the island. We fish for him along the way. He even says he’ll stick around a couple days to give us a ride back when we’re done. Such a good whale friend.

Everything is really big here, because giants. I have to be Jinna so we can climb the steps easier, Jinx isn’t quite tall enough. But we get all the way up the cliff and find a flying icy guy who rumbles at us. Twitch has to do a really long spell to be able to understand him. He’s really friendly though and wants to show us a bunch of shipwrecks full of treasure!

I don’t really like the icy water, so I send Doc out to the first one with Twitch. He comes back after talking to some walruses though, and with a potion, too. He seems alright, so I go with them for the rest. The next one has a couple sharks in the hold. They’re really friendly and hungry. Doc gets the chest from the bottom of the boat and we give them some jerky to eat. Twitch doesn’t like them and hits them with a little bit of fire, but we take off before he can kill them. Poor sharks. The chest has lotsa rum n potions n coins. Rums really good. Warmssus rightup.

Next ship is full of creepy dead guys. They just keep coming and coming. It’s so much fun stabbing them until they fall down again! Saalym and Leshy even come to help. There’s some magic stuff in the bottom of this one that Twitch seems to think is important. The next ship is over the water, so we just all go look. There’s an even bigger chest in this one. It’s got lots of money and there’s a magic trident, Twitch calls it.

The next ship is really near the coast, so even Eggy comes out to see. This one has a frost giant skeleton that wakes up and we have to knock it back down. Doc takes his axe. The icy guy says the next one is the newest one, so we keep going.

But we find a dead person first. Frozen in the snow, and an unfriendly weasel, and a really grumpy orb. Twitch calls the orb Professor, and seems to know the dead person. He’s really happy she’s dead. Saalym and Leshy pull the dead lady out of the snow and start trying to help put her to rest, but I guess she doesn’t want to. Twitch starts yelling and firing off magic and there’s a ghost there! She just wants to go find the book, like we do. You gotta let ghosts finish what they started so they can go away. So, I let her get inside me so everyone will stop hurting her. Saalym and Twitch get really, really mad. Saalym screams at me and I stop walking, then Leshy explodes the ghost lady right out of me.

Twitch is still mad, so he wraps the orb up in a bag and takes it back to where his boss and Eggy have been waiting. Leshy says I should drink the nice shrine water because the ghost might have hurt me and it will make me feel better. It tastes really nice and I do feel a bit more relaxed as we head for the next shipwreck.

This one has a coven of sea hags inside it. They invite us down to eat, which is really nice of them. But then they say they want to eat me, and Doc gets really mad and attacks them. Almost everyone joins him in that, but I keep trying to fix things. We have plenty of food to share, and hospitality must be upheld. But they start throwing lightning around and the others kill all three of them. Twitch also didn’t join in the fight, maybe he understands after all. They had some money and a really nice coral figurine that I want to give my Dad. Everyone’s tired after that and we take a little break.