A New You, Tuesday, Period Two

[built_fjord_tough]

Today, students, you would enter the danger shop to find yourself and your merry band of fellows sitting on the outskirts of that same seaside community, near a particularly large but depressingly sparse-looking farmer's field.

"Congratulations," Fjord said jovially once it looked as though everybody had arrived. "Warden cut you a deal... you all get to clear your name together, innocent or otherwise, if you do the town this one particular favor. You see, apparently, there have been some kobolds stirring up hell on the outskirts of town. They tend to show up around the same time every night, digging up farms, ruining crops. Now... we can't have that. Yes, this town does also have a fairly active fishing industry and the hunting on the outskirts isn't half bad. The locals aren't necessarily going to go hungry, but winters are long this far north, and people need the grains and other such things in their diet, and a good deal of the town's economy comes from trading their harvest."

He didn't figure most of the class necessarily cared. He was still going to share what the Warden had said. Important backstory, and all.

"So, to clear your names, you'll need to find out what the kobolds want and deal with it, or just kill the little fuckers and get it over with. Up to you. Warden doesn't care how the job gets done, just so long as this gets put to a stop." He lifted his chin and smiled pleasantly at his little adventuring party. "So... what do you do?"

[OOC: Open!]

Comments

Sign In!

[built_fjord_tough]

What the hell's a kobold?

Re: Sign In!

[hashtag_chocobro]

Prompto Argentum Seros Glacium

Re: Sign In!

[goldfishontherocks]

Keyleth Yelden

Re: Sign In!

[crack_that_whip]

...Trevor.

Look, he's bad at this.

Lecture!

[built_fjord_tough]

Just be impressed the danger shop more or less looks like it was cooperating again today.

Re: Lecture!

[goldfishontherocks]

Guess who actually was taking very careful mental notes on all the information about the town, because regardless of whether her character would be doing the same she as the player was completely in earnest about trying to help them? (Anyway, she figured as a firbolg she’d still be tuned in enough to how the town relied on its natural environment.)

Seriously though, this class was going to turn out to be so useful in a few years, given the sheer staggering amount of time Vox Machina was going to spend bullshitting their way through situations instead of just being honest.

Adventure!

[built_fjord_tough]

With wee bitty subthreads mostly for my own enjoyment of getting things to go slightly collapsey. Neener.

Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[built_fjord_tough]

This is where you all begin, looking out over the farmer's field. There's a little house nearby, and the farmer is looking out at all of you hopefully. Or possibly suspiciously. The field itself is fenced in, and seems to have an assortment of crops growing in it, mostly root vegetables and some assorted gourds, though half of it also seems to have been dedicated to some manner of grain.

Here is where you all come up with your game plan. Set a trap, talk to the farmer to see if he has any clues, just hang around waiting for your mystery kobolds, what-have-you.

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[hashtag_chocobro]

Prompto Seros was looking around a little, glad for his hooded cloak as he lifted a hand to block out the sun, which he was ready to complain about at great length at the first opportunity, which he figured was a good way to get into his character, thinking about how best to mope and gripe about how it was just too bright out here, couldn't they find a nice dark and gloomy dungeon to go crawling through instead?

But he was there, and there were kobolds to deal with, and while Prompto would have likely leaned into a solution that was more like negotiation than anything else, Seros was supposed to be someone different, so he just shrugged and said what he felt was the opposite of what he'd usually say, with an almost bored and so over it murmur, "Can't we just go kill them all and be done with it?"

Soooooooo bored, you guys, uuuggghhh.

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[goldfishontherocks]

Keyleth Yelden cracked her knuckles. “Time to go crack some kobold skulls!”

It could’ve come out much more fierce, true. But she was trying here!

She was also scouting around the edges of the field, assessing its defenses (such as they were) and likely weak points for the kobolds to go after first; after a while, she nodded and lumbered over toward the house to knock on the farmer’s door.

Possibly a little too hard, because of course now would be when she tried to lean into her role some more.

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[built_fjord_tough]

There was a gasp, and then a kind of awkward scrabbling within the house before, finally, the door opened, and a fairly fit (if slightly frazzled) dwarf gentleman, approaching middle-aged and with a dark beard that fell to about mid-chest, peered up at Yelden.

And up.

And... up.

"Well," he commented, blinking. "Would you get a load of you?"

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[crack_that_whip]

"Can I do some sort... Paladin thing here?" He really should have gone ranger because he could track these creatures down in an instant. "Pray really hard maybe."

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[built_fjord_tough]

Fjord considered that for a moment. Pulled out a book and flipped through it. Convenient that this particular tome was in the school's library.

"You have a few options that might help you learn what's going on," he noted. "What sort of effect were you hoping for?"

Your options were limited, little baby first-level pally. What was funny here was that it was a warlock who was going to be feeding those options to you, really.

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[unusual_sith]

Jatila looked around. She wasn't the type to want to talk to a farmer, but maybe a trap?

She went looking around the fence and the edges of the farm, to see if she could tell where they were coming through.

Re: Adventure - The Farm's Outskirts

[built_fjord_tough]

The fence was fairly straightforward, more a property marker meant to keep large wandering herbivores out than anything that would be difficult for a humanoid to cross. It could be climbed with little difficulty, most likely, and anything small enough ought to be able to squeeze through a few of the gaps between pickets, but that list included very little that was much larger than a rabbit or a fox.

A bit of poking around at those pickets will reveal one particular one, in the corner near the bulk of the digging, is missing several nails, and swings loosely enough on the one that's left to create what is essentially a doorway for any enterprising small humanoids who might want to come visit.

Adventure - Kobolds!

[built_fjord_tough]

You've got about ten minutes to prepare before, slinking through the darkness, seven small figures appear. They look reptilian in nature, like tiny coppery dragons without wings made to stand upright, and maybe come up to the knee of any one person here today.

Well. Any one of you who isn't too ridiculously tall, anyway.

They don't seem to be paying you any attention, and one of them, rather than holding the short swords and daggers that the rest are, is carrying a shovel.

What do you do?

Re: Adventure - Kobolds!

[crack_that_whip]

"Back, ye foul creatures," Trevor Chevy said, not at all changing the inflection to really sell that pompous paladin thing. Mostly because he was pretty sure this was going to end badly on all levels.

Just puttin' it out there.

Re: Adventure - Kobolds!

[goldfishontherocks]

“Hi there,” Keyleth Yelden spoke up, taking a step forward, because she might as well use her height to her advantage. She hadn’t unhooked her morningstar from her belt yet, but one hand was resting on the pommel; with the other, she was holding up a lit torch. “I just, uh, was hoping you could provide us with some clarification on what exactly this nighttime project of yours is? I’m very impressed with the precision, but it’s kind of negatively impacting this nice dwarf’s livelihood too, and maybe we could work out some kind of compromise?”

Yelden’s charisma wasn’t much better than Keyleth’s. This could go so poorly.

Re: Adventure - Kobolds!

[unusual_sith]

Jatila...was going to hide in the shadows and see what happened.

Adventure - Aftermath!

[built_fjord_tough]

Whatever goes here is going to be up to you guys! I'll add an NPC here as need be, should there be a need, for you to interact with!

Talk to Fjord!

[built_fjord_tough]

He's here and just hanging out beside the farmer's house, arms crossed over his chest, looking interested and faintly amused.

Re: Talk to Fjord!

[notallbluemonks]

Beau finally had a calm enough day to manage had gotten over her kneejerk aversion to being seen doing nerdy things enough to actually make it up to the school today!

She looked dubiously amused but also slightly weirded out as she made her way through the field over to where Fjord was standing, glancing around at both the surrounding farm setting and the various students doing their thing.

“This is kinda creepily like home, dude. I’m impressed. And maybe a little bit disturbed.”

Go figure, it probably wasn’t all that different from the small towns where they were going to end up starting their adventuring career, huh?

Re: Talk to Fjord!

[built_fjord_tough]

Go figure!

"Strange as hell when I can actually get this room to do what I tell it," Fjord agreed, turning to give a little nod and a pleasant grin to Beau. "I want a field, I get a field. I want a dwarf farmer, and I get one." He paused. "Had to do a little negotiating with it before class, though. It seemed to be under the impression that I wanted a dwarf rabbit."

And then there had been dozens of them, and...

Anyway.

"Good to see you made your way here, Beau. Was starting to wonder if you'd pay a visit."

Talk to the TA!

[built_fjord_tough]

Congratulations, Nina. You've been voluntold to be the class liaison between the other students and the big green guy, if need be. Or to help with whatever. TA stuff.

OOC!

[built_fjord_tough]

Koboooooolds.

You know, OrcPub was up for all of an hour over the weekend and I should have saved PDfs of people's sheets but do you think that's a thing I thought of until I saw it was down again this morning? Nah.

So, last week's comment with links is over here and if there's anything you nerds need, any questions to ask OOCly and whatnot, feel free to tap me here.