After traveling out of the Troll Gates and up the coastal road a ways in the morning you came to the village of Greenfork. The damage from the Goblin attack was still evident in the burned buildings, damaged fences, and so on. The men of the village and some Waterdeep soldiers patrolled the streets and area around the village when you arrived. Since you were not small goblins they did not harass you, and since the Miller accompanied you back to his village they let you in.

The Mayor met with you briefly, thanking you for going to hunt the goblins and offering to pay a gold piece per goblin ear you brought back with you. He explained the men they had were just enough to defend the town from another attack and they didn't have enough people to mount a hunt themselves. He seemed skeptical of rescuing the Miller's daughter but didn't bash the idea in front of the man either.

The Miller himself showed you to where he knew the goblins had entered the greenwood, the thin but ancient forest that blanketed the hills up to the mountains. The troop of goblins had indeed made a trail that was easy to follow through the trees and brush. They were anything but subtle.

Birds flutter from branches as you pass and even the occasional deer or rabbit dashes off at your passage. It has been a couple hours now since you left the miller and the sun is reaching it's noon height.  Some game trails have begun to criss cross the goblins path though...

OOC: Make a Survival Skill check to stay on the right trail! You may also make either an Gather Information/Intelligence check or Diplomacy/Charisma check to have picked up more on the goblins from the people in the village or research the night before.

In reply to An Uncaring Universe (msg # 1):

"It's beautiful out here." Cody says, amazed. "Where are we going, again?" He waits for a response...

In reply to Cody Panther (msg # 2):

Cody has in fact become completely lost in the woods. In fact he thinks he has seen the same stump twice now despite the fact that the others don't seem to be worried about it.

In reply to An Uncaring Universe (msg # 3):

In an effort to placate Cody, Kayleigh draws out a piece of chalk and draws faces on the stump, one on each side.  That way, any direction they come from, if they cross it again, they'll know.  Further, she numbers them one through four as well, so if they come from a different direction, they'll be able to figure out the changes and possibly correct.  To continue and simplify, she also starts marking a tree each time they take a forked path to denote the direction they took.

Ged walks along, watching Kayleigh mark the trees, helping now and then. He also keeps an eye out for anything alchemically interesting. "Everything seems to be going great so far, since we have him to guide us." Ged says sarcastically

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 5):

Ged spots a leafy reddish blue shrub growing to around 6 feet tall next to the stump as Kayleigh moves to draw on it. It grows several small blue berries he recognizes as tasting overly sweet but providing some alchemical protection from extreme temperature.


Kayleigh meanwhile draws the faces on the stump...but discovers something odd as she does. There is a hinge at the top! This stump is a door!

In reply to An Uncaring Universe (msg # 6):

Kayleigh pauses mid-face to study the hinge for a moment.  "Uh, guys, I think I foundsomething," she exclaims happily, making the first discovery on the mission.  Perhaps they were near success already and would be getting back to civilization soon?!  "Is anyone able to search for traps?  I might have a spell for it, but if you can without magic?"  She looks to the alchemist, the only one she vaguely recalls having the roguish skills.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:49, Sun 18 July 2021.

"I can take a look, but I can't promise anything" Ged remarks.  He checks the door for traps.

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 8):

The door does not appear to be booby trapped after a thorough inspection by Ged. But he does find some debris around the edge stump that makes it seem like the entrance was frequented or possibly inhabited. Things that look like strange spherical cracked nut shells litter the grass as well a couple of polished sticks that looked like they were once part of something now broken.

In reply to An Uncaring Universe (msg # 9):

"Hm.  Even so, maybe we should be extra careful?  We can use these sticks to open it from a distance, right?  Better safe than sorry, especially as I'm not looking to bandage you too again so soon."  Said like a true mom-friend.  She grabs a stick, one of the polished ones, and passes it to Ged.  She takes one herself, pokes at the side of the stump ...lid? ... opposite the hinges, to see if she can open it a bit.

"Ah yes, the tried and true method of checking for traps, the good ol' "poke it with a stick" strategy" Ged says, making a sarcastic fencing stance. He joins Kayleigh in poking at the door, moving to the side of the door and poking at the opposite side from Kayleigh. "Now this is a genius strategy"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:14, Wed 08 Dec 2021.

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 11):

Oddly enough the poke it with a stick method does not result in a fireball of mushroom cloud proportions for your impertinence. It does result in music... spurts of lively tunes blast out of the crack every time the sticks manage to knock the hatch ajar. Multicolored lights also flicker gayly out of the gap in a rainbow aurora.

The only blast going on here is apparently some kind of party....in a stump...in the middle of nowhere...

"hmm, this is honestly a new one for me. who would've thought of an underground goblin rave, with a kidnapped girl inside?" Ged says matter-of-factly. <Green>Well I guess there's not much else to do, so here we go!<Green> Ged says, as he lines up with the door and pushes though, into the party.

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 13):

"Oh, I am absolutely going to regret this.  Come on, Cody. Let's go save Ged from himself."  With a sigh, Kayleigh also enters after the midget.

In reply to Kayleigh (msg # 14):

There was a ladder on the inside revealed when the door was flipped open the rest of the way. Music and dancing colored splashes of light come up out of the entrance to what ever this was.

As the trio climbs down into it they find themselves in some kind of bar? tavern? Ballroom? One thing was for sure, there were no goblins in here. Dwarves sat at a bar on stools drinking beer from pitchers and mugs. More dwarves danced to the music around some kind of automaton band playing strange looking guitars and drums. Lights flicked on and off, a globe of mirrors hung from the ceiling.

A few more dwarves played mechanical games that pinged and rang as they rattled control levers back and forth in a nook to the other side while still more dwarves were rolling smooth gemstones the size of human heads down wooden lanes at painted gnome statues with red pointy hats on. The balls shattering the statues which just reassembled them selves after each toss and points were marked down by the one's playing.

On the wall above the bowling alleys was a big magical sign in glowing neon..."Gnomemash-O-Rama Lanes"

No sooner had the group set foot off the ladder and been spotted than a wave of stillness passes through the patrons. They all stop talking and playing to turn and stare at the strangers...

"hmm, well this is awkward.. Ged says, motioning to the other two that it was safe. He walks over to the bar, gets the bartender's attention "Hey there big guy, can I get something to drink?" Ged asks.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 02:41, Tue 28 Dec 2021.

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 16):

Kayleigh looks at Ged as if he'd lost his ever-loving mind and grown a second head at the same time.  She isn't sure which is worse, two elves in a dwarven hold, or a gnome in a gnome-bash party... Oh God, that little man either has a death wish or some ungodly lack of survival instinct.

"Gentlemen," Kayleigh states, forcing a smile as she moves to join Ged, keeping Cody behind her.  More than anything, she wants to get to Ged so they can make a break for it.  For the first time in recent memory, she is smart enough to not start cleaning everything near her or move to immediately, if unintentionally, insult the dwarves.

In reply to Kayleigh (msg # 17):

Safe he says...

The big dwarf behind the counter with the shoes and kegs slams a fist on the surface making all the mugs and food hop an inch or so into the air. A nasty smile parts the dwarfs beard and mustache as he caws, "Look folks the new pin for lane five just arrived!" The crowd laughs and  the grin turns into a sneer as he points a back to the ladder you came down, "Get out. We don't serve your kinds here."

Even Kayleigh's attempt at being cordial goes a bit haywire as one dwarf at the game machines, completely indistinguishable from its male brethren except its beer belly sat higher maybe and its boots had bigger heels, does an Oh No She Didn't snap with head snake.

"And ladies ya point eared skinny ..." The last of that invective is lost in the growl as the ?female? dwarf pulls something from her belt and tries to spray Kay with it. Fortunately for her and unfortunately for Cody the attack is blocked by Cody's face. The spicy spray blinding him and burning his skin.

"Hmm, guys, I am getting the -slight- feeling that we might be unwanted here, and I would say this is one party we not need attend." Ged says, Cautiously. He gets up slowly as not to anger anymore of the bulky dwarves and motions for the group to leave. "We can heal him when we are in a lesshostile situation"

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 19):

"Agreed.  We're leaving.  No harm was intended."  She normally wouldn't have let Ged take rear with enemies behind them, but someone had to help Cody.  He doesn't look to be in all that good a place currently, so she urges him towards the ladder and encourages him up.

<orange>OOC:  I will try an identify roll when I get home to my sheet.

In reply to Kayleigh (msg # 20):

"Best ye go crawl into those goblin gutter caves to the north ya pansy's. At least there your reek would be masked by the burning sulfur and cesspits. This ain't no place for point ears and coneheads."

The bar keep snarled and pointed back out of the establishment. The crowd parted to let you go through but threw handfuls of popcorn at you as well as various rude gestures and slurs. Cody though only makes it a few steps while involuntarily crying from the spray. His face was glittery and tear streaked as he groaned and tried to keep it together.

He also seemed to be getting smaller with every step! Even as Ged went to help him, Cody shrank to the gnomes height, then even shorter...and started rapidly sprouting hair all over. Cody started to cry out in pain as his body polymorphed into a large pink sparkly guinea pig. The cry turned into high pitched angry rodent shrills.

In reply to An Uncaring Universe (msg # 21):

"What did you do to him?!  Fix it immediately!"  Kayleigh exclaims, picking Cody up, horrified.  She may not have wanted to spend time with the dwarves, but that doesn't mean they had any right to turn him into a rodent!

*Ged pops out of the log-door-thing, and stands up, dusting himself off, and waiting for the others to join him.*"Yeesh, tough crowd, eh? While we got some information we needed, Cody is not doing too well, and he seems to have gotten a makeover." *Ged says, then taking a look at Cody's face, getting some of the solution in a vial to analyze later.*

In reply to Ged Poomjer (msg # 23):

A whole bowling alley bar full of half drunk belligerent dwarves glares back at Kayleigh. The one that ended up spraying Cody waves the alchemical or magical weapon at Kay again but doesn't set it off yet, "He be fine in a day or so but got what was comin to ya, you want me to try again Pointy McTreelicker?"

Ged meanwhile had already scampered away up the ladder as if he was the guinea pig instead of Cody. Up top the spray and glitter is easy enough to take a sample of, it seems to be getting everywhere anyways. Thankfully it also is not turning everything it touches into a small rodent.

In reply to An Uncaring Universe (msg # 24):

Kayleigh glares at the less-than-ladylike dwarf.  She is smart enough to realize she's outnumbered.  She hopes the woman - she uses the term loosely - is being honest.  She'd be back, though, eventually.  She'd be prepared then, too.

She puts Cody in the hood of her cloak so her hands are free to climb the ladder back up.  She waits until the stump is shut again to start cursing softly in Elven.  <green>"Definitely tough crowd.  We'll deal with that later, though.  We have to get away from here before they change their minds, though."</purple>  She pauses, watching Ged gather the various spray and glitter scrapings, etc.  "Are you wanting a makeover too, or..."

SQUEAK SQUEAK *CHOMP*

In reply to Cody Panther (msg # 26):

Unfortunately for Ged the curse of sparkly pseudo-gerbildom was still in flux. As Cody chomped down on his hand he had only a moment to half scream-squeak-squeal-chitter as he tried to fling the offending animal away from him. The magic flashed across the contact, unstable and infused with Cody's anger. Ged shrank upwards instead of down, in a poof of sparkles that would never wash out completely, and turned into not a guinea pig but a smaller Gerbil... and then fell onto his head from near the ceiling. He left a rainbow sheen of impact on the floor and lay still...

"Is he dead?" Cody Panther, a little too curious, pokes the gerbil with a nearby twig.

"Don't poke him!" Kayleigh orders... as if she hadn't been intending to do just that herself.  She kneels beside the gerbil uncertainly, trying to see if the creature is alive.  She pulls a handkerchief from a pocket and uses it to gently pick up the little creature in hopes of getting a better look and some signs of life.

Cody, back to his old self again, does manage to stop in time not to poke the hampster as Kayleigh called for him to.

Kayleigh meanwhile carefully gets the super glittery lump of rodent into a bandanna that will never stop sparkling a bit again. Lifting the body up for a closer look in the mottled sunlight under the forest canopy, she sees there is in fact still breath in the Itty bitty chest.

And then she sees a great flapping feathery shadow, gets smacked solidly about the head and shoulders by strong wings and then watches as a hawk flies off into the branches with a rainbow contrail.

For a second, Kayleigh froze in shock, assaulted by a gerbil-stealing hawk.  But then it clicked.  The hawk had kidnapped Ged!  Probably for dinner.

Oh heck no!

She cast Magic Missile, glad she'd had it prepared herself.

In reply to Kayleigh (msg # 31):

The hawk, soaring away into the canopy of the forest, gets hit by two bolts of force and turned into a puff of feathers and gore. Ged, the Sparkly Rainbow Hampster, who was now 40ft in the air proceeds to fall and hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down. The trail of glitter raining down in his wake marks were he disappears into a thorny bush as well as spots on all the branches that marked his painful decent.

"You had one job..." says Cody to Kayleigh with an annoyed look. Cody goes to search for Ged, worried about his friend.

In reply to Cody Panther (msg # 33):

"If you hadn't turned him into a gerbil, we wouldn't be in this situation," she retorted, even as she took off running in the direction of poor Ged.

"I didn't know he would be turned into a... hamster???" retorts Cody, trying to decide if Ged was turned into a Gerbil or a Hamster. "When was the last time you bit someone and they turned into a furry critter?"

"I have a general practice of not biting people, thank you very much."

Digging around the thorny shrubs that now sparkled prismatically from the dusting of magical glitter revealed no hampster corpses.

It also didn't reveal any living Ged either. Maybe he had just burst into a cloud if shiny rainbow powder?

"No.  No, this isn't happening.  He didn't, there's no... he's not... Are you finding anything?!  I don't see anything?!"  The usually calmer group mother is beginning to sound a little frantic.

"Oh well." says Cody, carelessly, "You win some, you lose some".

The loss of Ged was a surprisingly easy thing to get past. This is especially true when it is punctuated by the very earth beneath your feel quaking.

The trees of the forest swayed like grain fields in the wind but all that moved was the ground. It rolled and jumped for long Seconds then shivered several more times with decreasing intensity at seemingly irregular intervals for minutes more.

The mountain rising in the distance above the trees began smoking. The Peaks were not supposed to be volcanic but there it was.

The fact the goblins had been described as all having burn marks though comes to mind. Those foot hills could be reached by dark...and the Millers Daughter was still in their clutches!

"Well. Ain't that a thing!" says Cody, trying to understand what's going on.

In reply to Cody Panther (msg # 41):

"I can't find him, so maybe there's some hope there.  Nothing more we can do here."  Everything she'd been taught said to run away from danger, yet here the were, about to run towards it.  "But if we're lucky, maybe we can still rescue the girl if we hurry."  She points off towards the foothills to say that's where they were going before beginning the trek that direction, occasionally glancing back as if Ged would just appear out of nowhere, guilt and sorrow taking hold with each lack of appearance on his part.