DM Tales

When last we left my band of Monday Murder Hobos, the party’s paladin decided to wash himself off by walking into the harbor with his armor on. As he came out the armor began to lock up and screech as he walked, and the party had some conversation about why on earth he would do such a thing ¹. They determined that the paladin, Gamble Copperheart, needed to have his armor serviced and that they all needed a bath.

As they began to look for where their needs could be met they encountered a strange gnome they had met once before. This was Professor Cooly Nobody, a character from my novel. In their previous meeting Nobody had warned the party about the Copperhearts attempting to open the Cobalt Vault, which would destroy all of unreality. This time he was standing along the edge of the harbor with a machine that went, “ping.” The conversation went something like this.

“Oh, well hello. What a surprise meeting you here! Did you stop the Copperhearts, then?”

“No, we’re working on it.”

The machine went, “ping” as Nobody held it out toward the harbor. “Oh, well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. They’re quite anti social, you know. Now if I could only figure out why my reality mapping device was pinging when I held it out East. Oh, well, I’m sure it’ll come to me. Goodbye.”

With that, Nobody opened up a door in unreality and stepped through. The party shrugged and walked on.

Gamble was going to visit an armorer I already had in the key to the town, but the bath house was something I got to invent on the fly. I adore inventing things on the fly, and the bathhouse was a doozy. The NPC who popped into existence was named Zale, and he walked with a shuffling gait due to a broken bone which had not been set properly. He spoke with a lot of nasal energy, to the point of being almost squeaky, and he spoke incessantly. Those who encountered Zale met a force of nature. He assessed visitor’s needs in a moment and drug them off to a bathing room without ever asking what they wanted. To Zale what a customer wanted didn’t matter, they never knew what they needed. Gamble, who was already miffed about needing a bath in the first place, had no idea what to make of Zale during his administrations. And those are the NPCs I love to run.

Gamble’s encounter with the armorer was rather more tense, but no less fun ². The armorer’s name was Zekel, and when Gamble brought in his salt-water encrusted armor to be serviced the gruff human shouted, “Whathaveyoudonetothatarmoryoumaddwarf?!” After some negotiations the armor was serviced and Gamble was protected once more. Zekel never much liked Gamble after that.

While Gamble was getting sorted the party’s rogue, Biggs headed back to Chancie’s to pick up his outfit. When he came back he looked like the image below.

[biggs image]

Also during this time the party heard about some creatures which were terrorizing a nearby neighborhood during the evening hours and, assuming this had something to do with the Copperhearts, they decided to check it out. That evening they gathered to set up an ambush, but were ambushed themselves by some rather nasty things–the names of which I can’t remember for the life of me ³. What I do remember were people being on rooftops and a local neighborhood leader offering a reward if the party would head down into the sewers to root out the haunt of these creatures. The party was a tad cash poor, so they agreed.

And that’s we’re we’ll end part two!

1. The answer was, “Because Areth told me to.” ↩

2. For me, that is. ↩

3. It was a year and a half ago! ↩