Timothius finishes his meal and nods. "Sure." he then pays for the meal and leaves a tip for the waitress before heading out with the others. On the way through town, Timothius says, "I come from the neighboring city Raul. Born and raised there. Where are you bunch from?"

  Whichever Deity Eletor is following at the time is pleased with Timothius.

  "I'll just leave it at 'acid rain and zombies'.  So, this is the incredible mature and tactical terminology, but Not It for the face to face diplomacy attempts."

Mits leads the way out and chuckles at Joe's Not It comment.  "Lovely.  Well my hometown wasn't near as epic as all that.  Boringville, more like.  No exciting backstory here.  I just left home in search of adventure because that's what I always dreamt of doing."

Lucky smiles at the getting to know you direction this is going.  "I was raised on the road, mostly.  A nice group of merchants took me in.  But they've retired, so I'm traveling in hopes of finding a good woman to marry."

"Good luck with that one."

"Thanks!"

Timothius raises an eyebrow at Joe. "Acid.. rain? Wow... and zombies? Well... if we ever bump into those, I happen to be equipped to deal with them. But hearing from a veteran would be more than welcome."

Timothius then looks at Lucky, "I didn't expect to see other catfolk, much less one who also had wings. You mentioned being on the road and being taken in, suggesting you are an orphan, but... you wouldn't happen to know your parentage by any chance, would you?"

He isn't ignoring Mittens. She clearly has a normalish background like Timothius. He's just addressing the weird backgrounds first before moving on to other topics.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:46, Wed 09 Sept 2015.

  "Honestly, in this business running into your long lost brother by pure coincidence isn't much of a stretch."

  Still going with the static cling theory of catperson attraction to the same spot.  Yes he knows it's wrong, but it's a more entertaining theory.

"Ah, so you're a classic cleric, then.  Nice!  Me, I'm a sword wizard.  I grab the attention of lots of enemies by blowing them up with magical fire.  Lucky here's an assassin."

Lucky blushes and squirms.  "I'm sorry, no...  I don't know anything about my blood family.  It'd be nice to be related to you, though."

Timothius gets a shocked look on his face and says, "Assassin? ...didn't expect that."

He looks over at Joe. "Really? I guess that makes sense when you think about it. But honestly, my parents never mentioned a long lost sibling."

Timothius then looks at Mittens. "So you tend to get the bulk of the injuries?"

  "Relax Timothius, that just means he kills people with spooky shadows and stabbings instead of arrows through the skull." Great points!

  "I've seen it go either way, when it comes to frontlines.  Sometimes when the explosions start being sent your way, the toughest ones wonder why nobody else is shrugging them off."  Mittens don't suffer explosions, Mittens IS explosions!
This message was lightly edited by the player at 04:37, Wed 09 Sept 2015.

Lucky blushes and headshakes to Timothius.  "Like Joe said, that's just Mittens being overly dramatic about my combat style."

"Shadows, teleporting, stabbing, etc. etc.  Totally an assassin," Mits insists.

Lucky headshakes again.  "An assassin is someone who kills famous people for money.  That's just not me.  I defend the defenseless, nothing more."

"Whatever you wunna call it, the faster the badguys trying to kill me wind up defeated, the better.  And yes, I do tend to get injured a lot."

Timothius says, "....do you have to be so graphic, Joe? Which reminds me; please refrain from killing as much as you possibly can."

  "Honestly, you can file most killings for hire or cause under 'assassin'.  People just don't feel comfortable admitting it to themselves when they hire a bunch of heavily armed people to 'deal' with their problems."


  He looks over to Tim, "Graphic is somebody somehow leaving behind more femurs and ribcages than there should be when they die.  As for our targets, I'll try, but I'd rather your feelings get hurt than watch you die if it comes to it."

Mits laughs at Joe's fatality description.  "I'll have to remember that one.  I wonder if there's a spell for that..."

Lucky shrugs.  "I'm with Timothius.  Less killing is better."

"K fine.  My magical-sword splosions are just as effective at knocking enemies out as killing 'em.  Can't speak for the ranger's arrows, but I've heard an arrow to the knee can be pretty severe."

Timothius responds to Joe, "Good to know you value my life over that of our enemies."

By now, the group is outside of town and on the south path. Timothius comments, "Now all we have to do is find the goblins..."

  Joe at least makes a token effort of noticing any hints of short person travel, but it's so hard to tell apart goblins from halflings from gnomes some days.

  "Well, sadly the usual way is 'get ambushed' but nobody wants to admit that."

"Nobody?  I was just about to suggest..." Mits says.

"If they're destructive goblins, you can usually find them by the trail of destruction," Lucky points out.

Mits starts calling out loudly.  "I'm a defenseless traveler!  Totally unsuspecting!  I sure hope I don't get ambushed!"

Timothius says, "You realize that's only going to alert them and make them run off, ri-?"

Goblins come out from behind several trees, giggling and cackling. "Defenseless... unsuspecting... doesn't want to be ambushed..."

Timothius says, "Wha... what? How did that even work?"

  "It works because common sense is not very well named, for how frequent it applies."  Joe will worry as soon as someone gets hurt.  That isn't him or a catperson.

  "Well, here is your chance to try asking politely for them to stop being jerks. No pressure." Look, we may have dialed back his cynical knob down from 11 this time around but there is no escaping sass.

Lucky gives Timothius and Joe a hopeless shrug.  "Mits method is much less subtle than what I'm used to, so I don't have a clue."

Mits is proud her tried-and-true trick worked yet again.  (Only worked half as well that time she was hunting human bandits for some reason.  Go fig.)  She smiles and waves.

"Oooh!  Visitors!  And you look happy!  Hello!  My name is Mittens!  Nice to meet you!"

Timothius looks hopeful as Mittens greets the goblins so... friendly-like. He smiles and says, "My name is Timothius. And this is Joe."

The goblins stare at the trio slack-jawed. "....uhhhh... are you trying to be nice to us?"

Timothius says, "Well... yes."

If this were an anime, the goblins would fall over. But instead, one of them steps forward and says, "You expected us. What do you want with us?"

  Joe thinks of a dozen things to say...  Then realizes they'd likely progress things straight to violence.  Tim deserves at least 30 seconds before him or Mittens says something that causes the inevitable.

  Then they can get to asking them to stop singing about whips and ways because that just weirds people out (well, okay, a lot of Drow and Shadrakai love that song playing).

Mits waves some more.  "I'm Mittens!  And this is Lucky!  Why Timothius has a cool-sounding name instead of a cutesy pet name like the rest of us catfolk, I cannot say.  What would be my cool name?  Mittensius?  Mitenzior?  Mitenzion?  Pyron?  Inanycase, we don't know yet who you are for certain.  But what I want is to have fun with my magic.  But Timothius here thinks this is a diplomacy challenge and is looking to speak with the goblins rumored to be ambushing folks traveling this road."

Lucky sweatdrops.  "Seems pretty clear to me that these are the right goblins."

Timothius blushes some from the compliment about his name. "...thanks."

Timothius nods and says, "If you are the goblins who have been raiding, then I have come to ask you why and if there is something that can be worked out."

Again, the goblins look weirded out. They talk with each other in goblin. Joe kinda sorta makes out that they are talking maybe about how the "big bird" and "stupid head" and "but there's a human..." and "why so many cats?"

Mittens only hears "stupid head" since she knows insults in most any language.

The leader comes back to the bunch and says, "OK... we admit we are the bandits. What we want is food. We need food."

Timothius nods and says, "If I were to bring you food, would you be willing to look into a way to trade with Jutesville?"

The goblins are all surprised and the lead goblin says, "...suuuure?" and takes a guarded stance with a confused expression.

Timothius says, "OK then. How much food?"

The goblin says, "Enough to feed 8 goblins for 3 days."

Timothius nods. "I will meet you back here in an hour then."
This message was last edited by the player at 03:14, Tue 15 Sept 2015.

  "Well, snack runs are preferable to everyone stabbing and lighting eachother on fire usually."  Someone that WASN'T a bandit might get hurt in the process!

  "I don't suppose the travelers were lucky enough you only roughed them up instead of killing them up to now?" WIS Secondary Characters by Will, guess what their perc/Insight is (The answer is: probably higher than yours).

"Food?!" Lucky echoes with a gasp.  He begins digging through his backpack.

Mits grins and thumbs-ups at Timothius' thanks.  She snirks at the "Stupid Head" comment, assuming they must be talking about her.  She's guessing there would have been a bigger to-do over this quest had there been murder involved, but she'll let the goblins answer Joe themselves.

"Seems reasonable enough.  I take it then that you all are smart enough to prefer working off the debt for what's been taken so far over losing your chance at a risk-free food supply?"

Lucky offers rations to the goblins.  "My goodness!  Please, take some of mine if you're hungry!"

"Well that was nice of you," Mits says, sweatdropping, _{"Is the assassin offering poisoned food?  That would be really dark.  Probably not technically illegal considering they're bandits...  But healer face might not trust Mittens after this regardless of her disapproval....  What to do?"}

Lucky looks at her, shocked and hurt.  "What a terrible thing to say!"

"Uh...  Ooops?  Bad Mittens!  No treat for you!"

The goblin in charge answers Joe with, "We no kill anyone." of course, Joe will just have to take the goblin's word for it.

Timothius glances over at Mittens, looking confused. "..wha? What's wrong?"

The goblins cackle. They gladly take Lucky's offer, though. So clearly, they didn't overhear Mittens' mumbling.

Timothius turns to leave with the others. "Come on. We have food to get and authorities to talk to."

On the way, though, Timothius is sure to ask again what Mittens and Lucky were talking about.