All good stories begin from humble beginnings and so too does our heroes.

The town of Greenest is an idyllic one, Surrounded on all sides by farm and ranch land. Raising primarily wheat and barely, but every other produce grown from the ground or on a vine seems to be found in the fields as well; sheep, cows, and chickens are not uncommon sites on the way into the town either.

The town sports an old keep on a hill in the center of town while the rest of the city sprawls out from that point surrounding it on all sides. To the south a small way is a tributary river that feeds into the larger Chionthar river many miles down stream. The town has one bridge that crosses the smaller river and continues the town on the far side of it.

The market is situated to the north of the keep with the primary trade road running through it from east to west. The market is bustling with merchants of all kinds plying their wares, but mostly farmers.

Our heroes Sefira Irongut and Garrett had made their way to the Greenest market from Beregost on their travel from the city of Neverwinter; arriving in the town's market as the caravan made it's stop, for selling it's wares and resupplying for another journey. While our lovable vagabond Nashford was hard at work trying his luck with some caravaneers at a game of dice, and local dwarf Brock Fineanvil was busy picking up the new set of tools he had ordered from the arriving caravan. All while our last hero Gregar Gerundi sat at an open air bistro watching the hustle and bustle of life in the market while drinking his drink.

Suddenly the managed chaos that was the market was brought to a halt as a Halfling man named Jimmin Grazly came running down the street screaming for help at the top of his lungs. Once at the center of town the man shouted to the now gathered crowed that some of his prize produce had sprung to life and had begun ransacking his farm. He declared that he would pay 100 gold pieces to whoever could stop the rampaging produce.

Naturally every sell sword at the market made for his farm, along with our heroes, who soon found themselves face to face with animated watermelons and would be adventurers in mortal combat. And not ones to be left out soon joined the fray themselves; though they were no party of heroes just yet, merely opportunists looking for some money. No, their most heroic deeds were still to come, but this is where they first became a team.

After hours of man vs garden our heroes found themselves almost at the mercy of the perilous produce until at some point in the battle they realized that they made a pretty nice fighting force when working together, and soon began hedging out the other would be opportunists until finally at the end, all the produce had been slain and the farm was nothing more than a muddy watermelon graveyard; between our heroes and the others there wasn't a single watermelon left intact. Covered in bruises, watermelon nasty, and seeds, our heroes began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation until the farmer's blue ribbon thousand pound watermelon burst through the barn doors and began grabbing men and women with it's vine and throwing them around like rag-dolls and spitting seeds hard enough to draw blood.

The fight was as harrowing as it was absurd, when finally the beast lay slain and its vine lashed no more. The farmer ran out into the field screaming and pulling at his hair that his entire farm was ruined and now his prize winning watermelon was now destroyed. It was at this point he knew what had happened. All of this was the doing of a farm hand he had fired, a gnome druid named Oster Muddlebriggs. The farmer swore that if anyone was behind this it was him.

And so with little more to go on our heroes set out for Oster Muddlebriggs house, ready for anything wolves, swarms of insects, more produce... But when they arrived and confronted the gnome he quickly threw his hands up to surrender. He admitted freely it was his doing, and he never meant for anyone to get hurt, he just wanted his old boss, farmer Grazly, to pay for firing him when he go mad about Grazly snubbing him. Turns out at the last county fair Grazly took full credit for the growing of last year's prized watermelon, instead of giving shared credit to Muddlebriggs who was the one who did most of the work.

(Here is the first of the major points that you as players would decide how you handled. Did you bring the man to the town guard? let him go? Kill him? Something else?)

After the druid had been dealt with our heroes returned to farmer Grazly for their gold, where he gave each of them 20 gold apiece. When confronted about this he explained that he said he would award 100 gold to whoever saved his farm but since the farm was ruined and our heroes had worked as a group they would earn the money as an entity and not 100 gold each.

(Here is the second major choice you need to make. Did you press him for the money he promised or do you accept his reasoning of the situation?)

On the matter of Muddlebriggs:

Gregar nods, listening to the story the gnome told. “I would like to pray for your forgiveness, sir. I can sense your contrition, and while revenge is not an appropriate response to being wronged, it is understandable. Would you pray with me, sir, and ask for forgiveness in Ilmater’s name?” He sets out a candle, a block of incense, and his alms box, ready to pray with Muddlebriggs.

If the gnome is unwilling to pray with Gregar, the priest will suggest, “Perhaps your soul is more wicked than I had hoped. Punishment is often the price one must pay to encourage one to ask for forgiveness from a higher power. Perhaps we should take you to the authorities after all.”

On Grazly’s miserliness:

Gregar closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. “Then Ilmater said to them, ’Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.’ Do not store up for yourself treasures on Toril, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. I, for one, thank the broken one for my courage this day, and donate my tithe in his name. I encourage the same reverence from you, Grazly, for surely the gods protected the means of your livelihood this day, sending forth angels to defend you.” Gregar takes the 20 gold and drops it into his alms box, then holds it out in case Grazly feels the need to make an additional donation.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:28, Tue 05 May 2020.

About Muddlebriggs

"On the one hand, glad you simply came out and told us what was going on. On the other hand, causing all this mess over it?" Brock shrugged. "I trust the authorities to come up with the right way to deal with this. I get it, you work with someone to make something special, you want credit for it. I think anyone who works with their hands and makes things sees that. But the farmer's livelihood has been turned into a wreck, there has to be some answer for it even if it is just working to get the fields back in order. Sure, we've all done something we wish we hadn't when we're hot headed, but there probably has to be more done than just saying I'm sorry."

About Grazly

"Always at least two sides to a fight. And you never know who exactly to believe but I'm starting to feel some sympathy for Muddlebriggs here. He helped you with that prize winning melon, and I remember seeing that thing. Bit of beauty in the world it was and you had a good day soaking up the credit for it. Reverse that and here we are on a day when you're needing to hand out credit and you can't quite do it the right way. Look, when someone contracts me for a job, there's no changing the payments once the job is done. Some of these folks, they're not from around here. But I am Grazly. You don't really want me to have bad things to tell folks about you, do you?"

OOC: Brock will chide him, take the 20 gold if that's going to be the way of it, and he'll be remembering how the good farmer treated the lot of them.

Muddlebriggs' Malevolence:

Sef seemed more obsessed with the giant, malicious watermelons and the possible benefits of the magical fruit than really caring that her fists were sticky with sentient plant goo.  She'd brought a piece of the rind from the final massive melon and had been turning it over in her hand as they'd traveled to the apparently cowardly druid's homestead.  Biting the rind lightly as the others spoke to him, tasting something or other, Sef muttered quietly to herself about the benefits of a double-thick rind for a watermelon pickle.  She seemed entirely contained in her thoughts as the others spoke but piped up as mention of the law from Brock brought her attention back to the situation at hand.  "Oh, uh, what they said?  Next time maybe just turn a couple of plants rotten or something?  I mean, some watermelon is better than no watermelon, right?  'Sides it's his farm right?  He's entitled to put his name on everything and anything it produces, no?"

Sef wasn't entirely sure if that's what it mean but it seemed likely.  When a man thanked the chef, he never asked for the sous chef's or prep's part in the matter, did he?  Made enough sense to Sef.  Still, as the others chided him, the young woman stepped and lightly whispered in his ear.  "Hey, if they lock you up...  Y'know, if.  Can I bring you some carrots, maybe a few turnips, and you can work some of this magic on it?  I'd love to see what kind of stew some tenderized produce could make!"  When she pulled away with a wink, she did her best to put on an angry frown for the others to see.  The holy man and the dwarf didn't seem particularly pleased with the druid after all.


Grazly's Greed:

Unlike with the gnome, Sef seemed to have a much stronger opinion about the halfling and his tight pocket book.  The others seemed civil, almost resigned to the man's greed.  Sef, however, saw it as theft in its simplest terms.  She'd grown up in a society where contracts, even verbal ones, were of the utmost importance and reneging on your word was a surefire way to forfeit your honor and credibility.  Tossing the rind aside that she'd still been toying with since returning from Muddlebriggs', Sef took her coins from the man but left the open palm out expectantly.  Sef's memory wasn't terrible, years of memorizing grocery lists for her master, so it wasn't hard to recall the halfling's previous calls for aid.  "Actually, I believe you offered one hundred gold pieces to anyone who would stop those melons.  We stopped those melons, right?  And I'm anyone.  Or at least someone!"  But that was it.  Sef didn't want to argue with the man nor did she want to be eighty gold shy of her previous mental calculations.  But his farm was destroyed.  Hopefully one of the others could do a bit of convincing and her coin pouch would be a bit heavier for it.  Yeah, that was a good option!  Sef did her best to give an angry frown again, one that wasn't suitable for her features in the least.  But a smile wasn't exactly intimidating either.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:48, Tue 05 May 2020.

OSTER MUDDLEBRIGGS

Garrett listened to gnome druid's story but then shook his head. "While I don't like what happened to you, I feel like you should pay for what you did as well. Being snubbed, being fired, these things don't give you the right to put others in harm's way, regardless of what your intentions were."

GRAZLY

He looked like he had expected no less from  Grazly, especially after hearing how they had treated the gnome druid Oster. He looked down at the coins and then looked back at Grazly. He shook his head and glanced at Sefira before he spoke up to Grazly. "So you're a cheapskate. I guess some o'what Oster said about you was probably true."

Then he smiled maliciously. "Next time y'need help, nobody'll come runnin'. Then you'll be in a fine pickle." He let out a small, evil laugh.

 Matter the first.
  Nash watches the others responses to the gnomes explanation intently before responding himself.
 "I very much like that we can sort out our issues without resorting to bloodshed. "  Nashford clears his throat melodramatically. ""Mr. Muddlebriggs , if you truly have the power to raise a fruit phalanx in as short a time as you did than you must be a powerful practitioner of your craft indeed. Surely there is some way to use your magic to make up for what you did? Recompense could go a great way towards insuring that we reach the most painless resolution to this conflict."

 Matter the second.
 "It seems to me that farmer Grazly here acted in haste when he gathered as large a crowd as he did. I can understand the type of impassioned thinking that one makes in the heat of the moment. Maybe a little mercy is in order here. On the other hand there is a lot of perfectly good watermelon going to waste if we don't act quickly. Maybe watermelon corpses could serve as an alternative payment for the rest of our contract . "

Muddlebriggs:

Muddlebriggs is hesitant to pray for forgiveness with a strange cleric he doesn't know, but he is genuinely repentant; and at the mention of amends, he says "Yes, I would be willing to plant some seeds and use my magic to regrow the man's crop. It wont win any ribbons, but he should be able to at least make money from this season." he says looking expectantly at the group.

"As for your fascination with the produce ma'am I suppose I could grow you what ever you like... I just beg you please don't send me to jail." He says pulling his wide brim threadbare hat off and down at his waist.

Grazly:

"Look I promised one hundred gold and I have paid one hundred gold, it's just being split among those who fulfilled the contract." He says with a huff. "And besides my farm is ruined... I am going to have to take out loans this season just to feed my family since I have nothing to sell, and hope next season pays off the loan and it's self. This has been financially ruinous to me, I couldn't afford more if I wanted too." He says with a scowl as he looks over his ruined farm. Looking to Nash he says with a sigh "If you want to eat smashed and muddy watermelon be my guest, maybe there is one or two that isn't beyond consumption."

”A man not willing to ask a higher power for forgiveness is not truly repentant,” Gregar says disappointedly.

As for Grazly, Gregar figures even a successful farmer would not have 500 gold to pay.

Overall Brock seemed much more sympathetic towards the man who performed the crime than the victim in this case.

"Jail or not really isn't up to us. Constables will make that decision. But I'll make sure to tell the story the way you told it to us. I'm sure you'll get treated fairly."

For the farmer

"Feels like there is a lesson in here for you Grazly about how you treat people. And as my father was always happy to say, lesson learning is a painful experience."

Alright the official outcome is that Muddlebriggs was turned over to the authorities. And that you all receive 20gp to add to your wealth or buy more stuff with before you set off on your adventure.