vault backup: 2026-07-25 21:13:01

vault backup: 2026-07-24 16:07:14
vault backup: 2026-07-24 16:00:34
2026-07-25 21:13:01 +10:00 · 2026-07-24 16:07:14 +10:00 · 2026-07-24 16:00:34 +10:00 · 2026-07-24 15:58:33 +10:00 · 2026-06-30 21:32:44 +10:00 · 2026-06-30 19:13:08 +10:00
67 changed files with 927 additions and 28 deletions
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
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@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
 ![[Acquisitions Inc Logo.png]]
 Mega corp founded by Omin Dran with various franchises and subsidiaries, including [[Nihilus Creatatus]], operating under them.
 [Acquisitions Incorporated | Acquisitions Incorporated Wiki | Fandom](https://acquisitionsincorporated.fandom.com/wiki/Acquisitions_Incorporated)
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
 ![[Grippli Meeting.png]]
 The grippli are a diminutive race of humanoid frog natives that live in the [[Shadowed Tangle]] enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]]; they are a peaceful people that live in harmony with nature and have no concept of material wealth.
 Pictured is the party visiting their village in [[Entry 1]].
 #### Notable Members:
 - [[Elder Thrum-Of-Reeds]]
 - [[Leap-Over-Stone]]
 - [[Ripple-Skip]]
 - [[Pebble-On-Shore]]
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - VEC
 ---
 #### Notable members:
 #### Franchises:
 - [[Crimson Carrion]] - ([[New New New Jerusalem]])
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 Local franchise of the [[Verdant Expansion Co]] operating in the area of [[New New New Jerusalem]] that the party defeated early in the campaign; they were investigating the site of a long lost franchise that were last working in the local forest. They rediscovered research that led to the reverse engineering of a crystal drill, that was capable of tapping the arcane wellspring under the Shadowed Tangle forest, threatening the [[Messianic Marches]].
 #### Members:
 - [[Alistair Venn]] (Surveyor)
 - [[Bartemius Fowl]] (Administrator)
 - [[Garrick Stonehand]] (Foreman)
 - [[Tamsin Greaves]] (Quartermaster)
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
 ![[Nihilus Creatatus Bright V2.png]]
 The party's [[Acquisitions Inc]] franchise.
 #### Members:
 - [[Grunt Roarson]] - CEO, Decisionist and Chief Vision Officer
 - [[Spastica Autistica]] - CFO
 - [[Kremit Croakbane]] - Sergeant at Arms, Stratestician
 - [[Coinclinkz]] - Head of Archeology and Master of Corporate Espionage
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
 The first failed franchise that was founded by [[Gnomeo]], [[Spastica Autistica]], [[Kremit Croakbane]] and [[Coinclinkz]].
 Gnomeo tricked them in to forming the franchise, under him as the CEO, as a means to steal their savings and flee the country; the franchise fell behind on fees and was promptly put up for fast resale by [[Acquisitions Inc]] head office. It was purchased by [[Grunt Roarson]] and rebranded as [[Nihilus Creatatus]].
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Human
  - Sorcerer
 aliases:
  - Alistair
 ---
 ![[Alistair Venn.png]]
 Alistair Venn was a human sorcerer that was working as a surveyor for [[Verdant Expansion Co]]'s [[Crimson Carrion]] franchise, helping them locate and study potent specimens and potential magic extraction sites in the enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]].
 He reverse engineered the crystal drill that had previously been used to tap the arcane wellspring under the forest, causing the original destabilisation to the region centuries ago. He was notoriously nerdy and had a love of trading cards.
 He died when he was left bound and gagged by the party in a cloud of magical spores in the enchanted forest; [[Thaddeus Bramble]] used the forest to grow roots through his body and absorb him, which he claimed was a painless and peaceful death.
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Gnome
  - Administrator
 ---
 ![[Bartemius Fowl.png]]
 Bartemius Fowl is the gnome administrator for the [[Crimson Carrion]], the local franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]] working in the [[New New New Jerusalem]] area. He works out of their local field office in a rented room in [[The Chalice]].
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Animal
  - Familiar
 ---
 ![[Cheetos.png]]
 Cheetos is the feline familiar of [[Coinclinkz]] the kenku warlock; she has eyes of different colors, with one being an unusual luminous purple.
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Grippli
 ---
 ![[Elder Thrum of Reeds.png]]
 The wizened old leader of the enchanted forest [[Grippli]], he has seen many seasons and favours methodical thought and gentle reasoning over brash actions and violence. He ensures his tribe maintains a harmony with nature and strives to ensure none come to harm.
@@ -1 +1,11 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Crab
 aliases:
  - Terrence
 ---
 ![[Forest Guardian.png|877]]
 The Forest Guardian is a colossal blue crab, approximately 8 feet tall and 24 or so feet wide, that patrols the enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]], under the control of [[Thaddeus Bramble]]. The forest guardian is a grippli volunteer that has been transmuted permanently into this form, to defend against external threats and maintain the balance of nature.
 The current incarnation of the forest guardian was named "Terrence" by the party, during their conflict with the [[Crimson Carrion]] franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]], where they were supported by the mighty crustacean.
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Dwarf
 ---
 ![[Garrick Stonehand.png]]
 Garrick Stonehand was a mighty dwarven warrior and member of the [[Crimson Carrion]] franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]]; he served as their foreman in their logging camp, in the enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]].
 He famously fought [[Forest Guardian|Terrence]], [[Kremit Croakbane]] and [[Grunt Roarson]] single handedly, nearly killing Grunt and Terrence during the fight; He met his end when he was torn in half by Terrence, the [[Forest Guardian]], at the climax of the battle.
 His magical war maul is now carried by [[Grunt Roarson]].
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Human
 ---
 ![[Gertrude Blythe.png]]
 Gertrude Blythe is old spinster that lives in the town of [[New New New Jerusalem]], she is known for posting the missing pet fliers for [[Speckled Jim]], offering a reward of a modest amount of silver.
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Gnome
 ---
 ![[Gnomeo.png]]
 Gnomeo is a gnome con man that famously started the original Acq Inc franchise "[[The Band of the Badgers]]" with [[Kremit Croakbane]], [[Spastica Autistica]] and [[Coinclinkz]], using it as a premise to steal their money and flee the country.
 He is rumoured to have been killed, off-planet in Northern Tiefland, in an owlbear attack.
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Grippli
 ---
 ![[Leap Over Stone.png]]
 Leap over stone is younger member of the enchanted forest [[Grippli]] that encountered the party when they were travelling along the road through the forest. He and his two compatriots, Mud-Singer and Thorn-In-Reeds, stopped the party and pleaded with them to reconsider helping the "Dry Skins", referring to the members of the [[Verdant Expansion Co]] logging camp, after a few failed attempts to non-violently get the party to leave the area.
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Grippli
 ---
 ![[Pebble on Shore.png]]
 A curious child of the enchanted forest [[Grippli]], who was very inquisitive about the party when they visited their village. [[Grunt Roarson]] attempted to barter for this child with the elders of the tribe, to have as his ward, for unknown reasons.
@@ -1 +1,9 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Animal
 ---
 ![[Red Heron.png|971]]
 The Red Heron is a curious and confusing creature that inhabits the enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]], it is always on for a chat and enjoys rambling to anyone that will listen, while hunting [[Grippli]] tadpoles in their pools.
 Pictured is the Red Heron being encountered by [[Spastica Autistica]], who held an extensive conversation with it, while investigating bird calls she believed may have been [[Speckled Jim]].
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Grippli
 ---
 ![[Ripple Skip.png]]
 Ripple-Skip is a fierce and hot-headed grippli who leads the warriors of the [[Grippli]] tribe in the enchanted forest. He is often at odds with [[Elder Thrum-Of-Reeds]] and is unusually aggressive for a grippli, favouring violence and quicker results over reason.
@@ -1 +1,13 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Goblin
  - Administrator
 aliases:
  - Roz
 ---
 ![[Clerk Roz Grakshnir.png|883]]
 Roz Grakshnir is the ancient goblin secretary and administrator of [[Nihilus Creatatus]]; provided by head office, she runs the day to day of the franchise, oversees the minor employees and serves as a liaison with corporate.
 She takes no nonsense, is exceptionally blunt, very difficult to please and does not tolerate people putting on airs around her.
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Animal
 ---
 ![[Speckled Jim.png]]
 Speckled Jim is a uniquely magnificent example of a common pigeon, that was imprisoned as a pet by [[Gertrude Blythe]]; he is a friend of [[Thaddeus Bramble]], who reports him to be a dashing rogue of a creature, brimming with character and majesty.
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Gnome
 aliases:
  - Tamsin
 ---
 ![[Tamsin Greaves.png]]
 Tamsin Greaves was the gnome quartermaster of the [[Crimson Carrion]] franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]], working in the remote logging camp, in the enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]]. He famously studied The Art of Barter, written by [[Joffrey Tiefstein]], and was an aspiring entrepreneur, before his untimely death at the hands of [[Coinclinkz]]. 
 He was known for using [[Joffrey Tiefstein|Joffrey]]'s teachings to obfuscate amounts of money by converting it to coppers. (ex. offering a hireling 3000cp instead of 30gp)
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - NPC
  - Human
  - Druid
 aliases:
  - Ted
  - Ted Bramble
  - Thaddeus
 ---
 ![[Thaddeus Bramble.png]]
 Thaddeus "Ted" Bramble is an ancient human druid, that is permanently merged with a tree, in the [[Shadowed Tangle]] enchanted forest near [[New New New Jerusalem]]. He came to be this way after a deadly wild magic eruption occurred, during an altercation with a franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]] a few hundred years in the past, when he destroyed their original crystal drill, that was used to break the seal on the arcane wellspring under the forest.
 He has unfettered control over the entire forest, being able to tap into the wellspring through the roots of the trees, and controls their growth to maintain a magical seal so that deadly eruptions and instability no longer threaten the region.
 Ted has a symbiotic relationship with the [[Grippli]] of the forest, watching over and protecting them as their god, while they in turn worship him as "Moss-Where-Heart-Was" and bring offerings, including feeding his remaining human biology the healing waters of the forest.
 He protects the balance of nature and stability of the region for the greater good, and has shown he is willing to go to any lengths to uphold his ideals, when he killed [[Alistair Venn]] and two of his guards.
 One of Ted's more mystical feats is his ability to transmute a member of the [[Grippli]] into a mighty [[Forest Guardian]], to serve as his muscle and defend against threats more directly, when needed.
@@ -1 +1,15 @@
-![[Coinclinkz.png|611]]
+---
 tags:
  - PC
  - Kenku
  - Warlock
 ---
 ![[Coinclinkz V2.png]]
 Coinclinkz is a Kenku warlock, head of archeology and master of corporate espionage of [[Nihilus Creatatus]].
 He was abandoned by his birth parents, then discovered and raised by human farmers, who trained him to act as a living scarecrow for their fields. One day, while roaming the wilderness near their farm, he came across a mysterious book that whispered to him and, over time, taught him the dark arts of a warlock. 
 He has a mysterious cat familiar called "[[Cheetos]]" with two different colored eyes, that accompanies him on his travels.
 He now seeks his fortune on his own, having a lust of artefacts and shiny things, one day hoping to rediscover his birth parents along the way.
@@ -1 +1,13 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - PC
  - Dragonborn
  - Paladin
 ---
 ![[Grunt Roarson.png|649]]
 Grunt Roarson is a blue dragonborn paladin, CEO, Decisionist and Chief Vision Officer of [[Nihilus Creatatus]].
 He is a nepo baby of the wealthy Roarson family, that graduated from the private school "The Academy of Applied Adventuring", before being given a considerable "small loan" by his father to make a profit for the family. He used this, on poor advice from his brother Gary, to purchase a cheap, failing [[Acquisitions Inc]] franchise, that he rebranded as "[[Nihilus Creatatus]]".
 During his formative years at the academy, he enjoyed business courses and acquired a particular love of the word "Synergy". He is fluent in corporate speech and is quick to attempt to exploit any opportunities that present themselves.
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - PC
  - Frogfolk
  - Bard
 ---
 ![[Kremit Croakbane.png]]
 Kremit Croakbane is a frogfolk bard, Sergeant at Arms and "Stratestician" of [[Nihilus Creatatus]].
 He hails from a region known as the Schwachkopfmensch Marshes, which he dreams of one day uniting and ending the internecine conflict that ravages his people. 
 He possesses and plays a "Frogtar", an instrument of his own invention; he is a self taught bard, having learned by watching the performances of other bards while travelling.
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
 ---
 tags:
  - PC
  - Human
  - Ranger
 ---
 ![[Spastica Autistica.png]]
 Spastica Autistica is a human ranger and CFO of [[Nihilus Creatatus]].
 She presumes she was orphaned during a goblin raid on her home village as a child, that led to her fleeing into the wilderness and being raised by a bear, before being discovered in her teens by an elven ranger called Erevan, who took her in and trained her.
 Reaching her majority and being the second best ranger in town, she left home to seek her fortune and hopes to one day find her family, if they are still alive.
@@ -1,46 +1,46 @@
-1/03/2026
+*1/03/2026*
-The party is comprised of Grunt Rawson the blue dragonborn paladin, Cumburgler the human monk, Vasselina Moistalina the tabaxi bard, and Spastica Autistica the human ranger. They are ex mercenaries that were dissatisfied with their previous trade and, after finding a flier for adventuring franchises, decided to seek their fortune and strike out on their own.
+The party is comprised of [[Grunt Roarson]]son the blue dragonborn paladin, [[Coinclinkz]] the aarakocra warlock, [[Kremit Croakbane]] the frogfolk bard, and [[Spastica Autistica]] the human ranger. They are ex mercenaries that were dissatisfied with their previous trade and, after finding a flier for adventuring franchises, decided to seek their fortune and strike out on their own.
-They arrive at the outskirts of the town of New New New Jerusalem, they are down to their last few coins as they struggle to get their new Acquisitions Inc adventuring company, "Nihilus Creatatus", off of the ground. Finding work has been much harder and lower paying than the corporate pamphlets made out, and there aren't hordes of old ladies looking to pay significant sums of gold to clear rats out of their basement. Unfortunately, that isn't corporate's problem, the team are still contractually obligated to pay their franchise fees, and need to make some gold, and soon.
+They arrive at the outskirts of the town of New [[New New New Jerusalem]], they are down to their last few coins as they struggle to get their new [[Acquisitions Inc]] adventuring company, "[[Nihilus Creatatus]]", off of the ground. Finding work has been much harder and lower paying than the corporate pamphlets made out, and there aren't hordes of old ladies looking to pay significant sums of gold to clear rats out of their basement. Unfortunately, that isn't corporate's problem, the team are still contractually obligated to pay their franchise fees, and need to make some gold, and soon.
-They wander around the town square, hit up the local notice board and find some interesting listings: A notice about a missing pet pigeon called Speckled Jim from Gertrude Blythe, A flier for a local yard sale at a farm, and a request for mercenaries and laborers to escort logging supplies for Verdant Expansion Co to a nearby logging site.
+They wander around the town square, hit up the local notice board and find some interesting listings: A notice about a missing pet pigeon called [[Speckled Jim]] from [[Gertrude Blythe]], A flier for a local yard sale at a farm, and a request for mercenaries and laborers to escort logging supplies for [[Verdant Expansion Co]] to a nearby logging site.
-Vasselina Moistalina grabs all three of these and presents them to the party; Grunt takes personal interest in the search for Speckled Jim and the others want to check out the yard sale. They find out from the locals that the town is called "New New New Jerusalem" because the previous instances of it had been destroyed in mysterious circumstances, then later rebuilt; there are rumours of instability in the area in the past.
+Kremit grabs all three of these and presents them to the party; Grunt takes personal interest in the search for Speckled Jim and the others want to check out the yard sale. They find out from the locals that the town is called "New [[New New New Jerusalem]]" because the previous instances of it had been destroyed in mysterious circumstances, then later rebuilt; there are rumours of instability in the area in the past.
 They hit up a local farm where an old couple are selling off odds and ends, they obtain a leatherworking set, a dog bowl labelled "fido" that Spastica Autistica is convinced is a holy relic and overpays for, and 3 "Happy Animal Friends" trading cards that belonged to the couple's now adult son.
 As they are leaving the farm, Spastica attempts to use her ranger powers to locate animals in the greater area, hoping to sense Speckled Jim, but finds about 3000 misc birds instead.
-They head to the local inn next where Verdant Expansion Co have a temporary field office setup in a hired room, meet the gnome administrator, Bartemius Fowl, and are given the task of moving a cart of logging goods from the town, to a logging site in the nearby forest. They are offered 250 silver (25gp) each up front, and on their return for proof of completion of the task. Spastica goes over the paperwork, as CFO, and signs it after reading the fine print.
+They head to the local inn next where Verdant Expansion Co have a temporary field office setup in a hired room, meet the gnome administrator, [[Bartemius Fowl]], and are given the task of moving a cart of logging goods from the town, to a logging site in the nearby forest. They are offered 250 silver (25gp) each up front, and on their return for proof of completion of the task. Spastica goes over the paperwork, as CFO, and signs it after reading the fine print.
 The goods are needed as there have been issues with supplies going missing, mystery illnesses and workers walking off the job, getting creeped out, at the logging site and there is a labor shortage.
-The party collects the cart, with the unusually strong Spastica pushing it, after Cumburgler somehow failed miserably to do it himself.
+The party collects the cart, with the unusually strong Spastica pushing it, after Coinclinkz somehow failed miserably to do it himself.
 As they head into the woods, the surroundings slowly begin to change and become more fey, with the forest becoming quiet, sounds echoing and distorting strangely, trees becoming increasingly blue and colours in general become more vibrant. There are glowing lichens, mushrooms and saps etc.
-Not long after entering this new region of the forest, the party begins to encounter issues; one wheel of the cart suddenly sinks into a mudpit that seems to have spontaneously sprang into existence around it. Cumburgler attempts to show off his strength again by lifting the cart out of the mud, fails, and proceeds to just push himself down a meter into it instead. The party get the cart unstuck, hand it back over to Spastica to pull, and continue on their way.
+Not long after entering this new region of the forest, the party begins to encounter issues; one wheel of the cart suddenly sinks into a mudpit that seems to have spontaneously sprang into existence around it. Coinclinkz attempts to show off his strength again by lifting the cart out of the mud, fails, and proceeds to just push himself down a meter into it instead. The party get the cart unstuck, hand it back over to Spastica to pull, and continue on their way.
 The sounds of the forest suddenly go silent, fog is rolling through the trees off to the side of the road and there is something large moving through and disturbing the trees with a rhythmic clacking and scraping sound. The party ignores this and hurriedly resumes their journey.
 After walking for a period of time, they come back to the same patch of mud they encountered earlier, although there were no branches in the path and it seemed to be going straight, somehow they got turned around 180 degrees.
-The sounds of the forest suddenly go silent again, and the same presence is passing by them in the trees as though something is on patrol. Vasselina tries to use his Tabaxi agility and claws to climb a tree and see what is going on, fails, slipping on the wet, sappy trunk, and lands on his head, but is able to see a large blue claw stab down through the fog as it makes its way past. Spastica tries to investigate as well and finds that the creature is a massive blue crab that is perhaps 8 ft tall and 24+ft wide cruising through the forest, oblivious to them.
+The sounds of the forest suddenly go silent again, and the same presence is passing by them in the trees as though something is on patrol. Kremit tries to use his amphibian agility to climb a tree and see what is going on, fails, slipping on the wet, sappy trunk, and lands on his head, but is able to see a large blue claw stab down through the fog as it makes its way past. Spastica tries to investigate as well and finds that the creature is a massive blue crab that is perhaps 8 ft tall and 24+ft wide cruising through the forest, oblivious to them.
-They move to return to the cart, but as they are attempting to resume their journey, Grippli (small frog people) leap out of the forest and bar their path. Their names are "Leap-Over-Stone", "Mud-Singer" and "Thorn-In-Reeds". They repeatedly call the party "dry-skins" and complain about their kind harming the forest and that they have been causing the situations that have been inconveniencing them passing through. They plead with the party to leave the forest and not help the dry-skins that are hurting their home. The party agrees to go with them to their village and speak with their elders about the issue, but as they are talking, a distinctive bird call is heard through the trees nearby, could this be Speckled Jim ?
+They move to return to the cart, but as they are attempting to resume their journey, [[Grippli]] (small frog people) leap out of the forest and bar their path. Their names are "[[Leap-Over-Stone]]", "Mud-Singer" and "Thorn-In-Reeds". They repeatedly call the party "dry-skins" and complain about their kind harming the forest and that they have been causing the situations that have been inconveniencing them passing through. They plead with the party to leave the forest and not help the dry-skins that are hurting their home. The party agrees to go with them to their village and speak with their elders about the issue, but as they are talking, a distinctive bird call is heard through the trees nearby, could this be Speckled Jim ?
-Spastica runs into the forest trying to find the source of the sound, comes across a clearing with a pool and a majestic, tall red bird fishing in it. She attempts to approach the bird, identifying it as a "Red Heron", then proceeds to try and have a conversation with it using talk with animals. The bird is most gracious that she wishes to talk with it and begins rambling extensively about its life and other irrelevant things. Not put off by its behaviour, Spastica continues talking with it and enjoys the exchange, until the Grippli arrive, notice it eating their tadpoles from the pond, and throw a spear at it that drives it off.
+Spastica runs into the forest trying to find the source of the sound, comes across a clearing with a pool and a majestic, tall red bird fishing in it. She attempts to approach the bird, identifying it as a "[[Red Heron]]", then proceeds to try and have a conversation with it using talk with animals. The bird is most gracious that she wishes to talk with it and begins rambling extensively about its life and other irrelevant things. Not put off by its behaviour, Spastica continues talking with it and enjoys the exchange, until the Grippli arrive, notice it eating their tadpoles from the pond, and throw a spear at it that drives it off.
 The party follows the Grippli into the forest, passing by various oddities and curiosities on their way, such as the "opinion moss", that when listened to closely, is whispering and muttering various contradicting opinions possibly held by people on this plane.
-They arrive at the Grippli village of "Rootbound Chorus", a rustic melange of huts on stilts, spanning walkways and a series of tiered small waterfalls and pools through the centre with some bioluminescent green water. They notice what appears to be a sick/dying grippli woman being carried by others, placed into the waters of one of the pools and they can see her visibly recovering.
+They arrive at the Grippli village of "[[Rootbound Chorus]]", a rustic melange of huts on stilts, spanning walkways and a series of tiered small waterfalls and pools through the centre with some bioluminescent green water. They notice what appears to be a sick/dying grippli woman being carried by others, placed into the waters of one of the pools and they can see her visibly recovering.
-They see some small juvenile Grippli running around that show curiosity towards the outsiders and Grunt tries to purchase "Pebble-On-Shore" for some reason.
+They see some small juvenile Grippli running around that show curiosity towards the outsiders and Grunt tries to purchase "[[Pebble-On-Shore]]" for some reason.
 Grunt asks Leap-Over-Stone about how they come up with their names, says it sounds like how a race called "Indians" come up with theirs, just looking out of a tent flap at their birth and naming them after the first thing they see. The Grippli is mildly offended and says that their naming scheme is part of their culture and not for dry-skins to concern themselves with.
-They continue on towards where they can find "Elder-Thrum-Of-Reeds", a warrior Grippli called "Ripple-Skip" and his cronies intercept them, express their distaste for outsiders and that they should just go and kill everyone at the logging camp, they want war. The elder arrives and clarifies that that is not their way, they are a peaceful people that live in harmony with the forest; its magical waters help sustain them and in turn, they help sustain the forest.
+They continue on towards where they can find "[[Elder Thrum-Of-Reeds]]", a warrior Grippli called "[[Ripple-Skip]]" and his cronies intercept them, express their distaste for outsiders and that they should just go and kill everyone at the logging camp, they want war. The elder arrives and clarifies that that is not their way, they are a peaceful people that live in harmony with the forest; its magical waters help sustain them and in turn, they help sustain the forest.
 He confirms that they have been causing the nuisances at the logging camp and that they have been trying to drive the dry-skins off through peaceful actions; ideally they want a peaceful solution and seek the party's help. He explains that the continued logging of the magical forest is harming "the spirit of the forest", as all the trees are connected, and threatens the collapse of the ecosystem, their sacred pools etc.
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ Grunt and Spastica ask what the Grippli can offer them as compensation and end u
 The party travels through the woods back to their cart, curiously the path through the undergrowth now seems obvious and easy to follow, whereas before it seemed impenetrable. They take their cart to the logging camp and have no further setbacks on the way.
-They arrive at the logging camp, see magic blue tree stumps that seem to have had the roots withdraw from the soil and curl up like the legs of a dead spider, with holes bored on the tops of them. They meet with dwarven foreman Garrick Stonehand, who addresses them sharply, thinking they are workers or soldiers standing around idle; they explain why they are there, delivering stuff, and are referred to the quartermaster. The party walks into the makeshift office and find the gnome quartermaster, Tamsin Greaves, talking to the VEC mage surveyor, Alistair Venn, who is holding a strange crystalline hand drill.
+They arrive at the logging camp, see magic blue tree stumps that seem to have had the roots withdraw from the soil and curl up like the legs of a dead spider, with holes bored on the tops of them. They meet with dwarven foreman [[Garrick Stonehand]], who addresses them sharply, thinking they are workers or soldiers standing around idle; they explain why they are there, delivering stuff, and are referred to the quartermaster. The party walks into the makeshift office and find the gnome quartermaster, [[Tamsin Greaves]], talking to the [[Verdant Expansion Co|VEC]] mage surveyor, [[Alistair Venn]], who is holding a strange [[Crystal Drill|Crystalline Hand Drill]].
 The mage turns away and pockets the drill (that they notice has a glowing gem on top of it), while the quartermaster is talking to them, signs their paperwork to say they have completed the job and asks them to take the paperwork, and the empty cart, back with them to Bartemius. The group calls him out for trying to get them to take the cart back for free and, flustered, he quickly references a book from his shelf "the art of barter" and tells them that he will pay them 2000 coppers to take the cart back for him. Grunt is mesmerised by this large sounding offer and hurriedly agrees to it, having the papers signed by Spastica, not realising its only 20gp.
@@ -62,9 +62,9 @@ They tell them to consider it and add requisitions for large amounts of poison,
 The party head back to the Grippli, tell Elder-Thrum-of-Reeds and co what has transpired; deeply concerned he mentions the Spirit of the Forest again and that perhaps they should be allowed to talk to the "spirit" in its hidden glade, although its deeply sacred and secret to them. He suggests they have a guide to take them there and summons the Red Heron, forgetting its a nuisance that was eating their tadpoles, alarming the other Grippli before its quickly frightened off again. He apologizes and says he sometimes makes mistakes, "Sleepy Thrum" some of the young Grippli call him. They travel to the glade and find a large, gnarled and warped tree in the centre, with the face of a man protruding from it as well as one arm.
-They find out that the "Spirit of the Forest" or "Moss-Where-Heart-Was" as the Grippli call him, is actually a druid called Thaddeus "Ted" Bramble who was spliced into this tree during a magical mishap long ago. He hears of the issues with the logging company and confirms that he's sensed it and could feel the trees dying, he has a symbiotic relationship with them and these lands as part of his circumstances.
+They find out that the "Spirit of the Forest" or "Moss-Where-Heart-Was" as the Grippli call him, is actually a druid called Thaddeus "[[Thaddeus Bramble|Ted]]" Bramble who was spliced into this tree during a magical mishap long ago. He hears of the issues with the logging company and confirms that he's sensed it and could feel the trees dying, he has a symbiotic relationship with them and these lands as part of his circumstances.
-The giant crab is in the clearing near the tree, with its limbs curled in resting and watching the party, guarding Ted; it turns out that this was a Grippli that had "ascended", choosing to become a forest guardian when the old one died. The Grippli worship him as a god and feed him their magic imbued healing waters that help to maintain his humanoid biology. Ted advises them that he is able to use the strange arcane power of the forest to transmute volunteer Grippli into a guardian for the forest that he can exert some control over and guide.
+The giant crab is in the clearing near the tree, with its limbs curled in resting and watching the party, guarding Ted; it turns out that this was a Grippli that had "ascended", choosing to become a [[Forest Guardian]] when the old one died. The Grippli worship him as a god and feed him their magic imbued healing waters that help to maintain his humanoid biology. Ted advises them that he is able to use the strange arcane power of the forest to transmute volunteer Grippli into a guardian for the forest that he can exert some control over and guide.
 The power comes from the arcane wellspring under the land, a naturally occurring font of power that was locked inside the earth, until magical surveyors from VEC arrived in the region a century or two ago, started fiddling with these arcane syphon/drill apparatuses and broke the seal on it. Wild magic eruptions started happening at random, causing widespread chaos in the region, destroying the local town of Jerusalem etc and as a druid, he came to investigate the imbalance in nature. He found a surveyor and small team attempting to use the drill again to attempt to extract magical energy from the wellspring into gemstones. Ted attempted to stop them and cast a spell to destroy the drill, unfortunately, the wildmagic caused his spell to go awry and caused a terrible explosion that killed the VEC personnel and when he woke, he was partially merged with this tree, that has only grown larger and absorbed more of him since then.
@@ -0,0 +1,159 @@
 *30/5/2026*
 - Session starts with a brief retrospective on how the party came together and their individual backstories, [[Kremit Croakbane]] the male frogfolk bard tells the party of his time in various military bands roaming the countryside; he plays the “frogtar” a tall, stringed musical instrument that he made and learned to play himself, by watching other bards. He is from the Schwachkopfmensch Marshes and aspires to create his own powerful war band to help stabilise his war-torn home region.
 - [[Spastica Autistica]] is a female human ranger who left their home town to search for their parents who went missing after the village was attacked by goblins about 10 years ago and many people were slain. She was effectively orphaned and fled the village during the attack, ended up in the wilderness and was raised by a bear for about 5 years. After that, an elven ranger called Erevan (Elfstein?) accidentally injured her with an arrow while hunting and took her in, training her as a ranger for the remainder of her formative years.
 - [[Coinclinkz]] is a male aarakocra warlock, he was abandoned by his birthparents, found by some human farmers who took him in, raised him and trained him to stand in their field as a living scarecrow. He has always wanted to know who his family was and why he was abandoned. One day while wandering in the woods he found a mysterious book and magic focus, the book whispered to him and taught him the dark path of becoming a warlock. He has a fascination with artefacts and shiny objects. One day he decided to spread his wings, leave his foster home to seek his destiny and his lost parents.
 - These three met in the Dran and Courtier Inn, in Red Larch, after arriving on the same day during their individual travels, looking for lodging and odd jobs on the road. It was a busy day with many people making business deals, creating new franchises and Spastica was approached by a greasy, slick haired business gnome with a monobrow called “[[Gnomeo]]”. He offered her a business opportunity to make a great deal of profit with minimal effort by joining him in standing up a new franchise of Acq Inc; alongside her, he managed to persuade Kermit and Coinclinkz, they formed their enterprise “The Band of the Badgers”.
 - He had very little money himself, convinced them to invest all their savings into this new business venture to pay the initial licensing fees and provide them with startup capital. Early on, he directed them to run an errand on the far side of town to collect some simple wares; when they arrived at the warehouse, they were not expected and the workers had no order to fill for them. Returning to their business, they found that Gnomeo had disappeared, along with all of their money; weeks later, they pieced together that he had fled on an off-planet transport bound for a place called “Northern Tiefland”. Rumour came back through various traders that he had been killed by an owlbear in Northern Tiefland, much to the concern of a local politician who frequently railed about owlbear attacks.
 - This left them in charge of a failing business with no source of income and looming contractual obligations to head office; they must continue to pay their franchise fees of 100gp per quarter, plus 10% of their profits on time, or face liquidation. This is where [[Grunt Roarson]] joined the party, a blue dragonborn paladin, born into wealth and granted a small loan from his father to invest in a business. On intentionally poor financial advice from his much more intelligent brother, Gary, Grunt was convinced to purchase this failing franchise that had been listed by Acquisitions Inc for quick sale. He rebranded the company as “[[Nihilus Creatatus]]”.
 - Grunt is a nepo baby that is fresh out of a fancy private school “The Academy of Applied Adventuring”, where he studied business, among other things, and discovered his favourite buzzword “synergy”.
 - Now the session starts properly where they left off at the end of Session 1, in [[Thaddeus Bramble|Ted Bramble]]’s clearing, deep in the enchanted forest of the [[Shadowed Tangle]] and they are discussing the current situation with verdant expansion company with him.
 - Grunt inquires about the magical wellspring and if it is “infinite”, then tries to ask [[Thaddeus Bramble|Ted]] about tapping it and finding a way to monetise this source of power. Ted reminds him that [[Verdant Expansion Co|VEC]] attempting to tap the wellspring in the past is what caused the regional instability and destroyed the town several times over. Grunt persists in his line of questioning and wants to know if maybe they could “filter” the magic, perhaps through the trees and siphon off a lesser amount of the power, citing rubber and maple syrup trees. Ted says that that is a painful practice for the trees and he doesn’t really approve of that sort of thing.
 - Grunt says that when he was younger and sick once, they took some of his blood out, it hurt briefly, but it made him feel better; perhaps if they took some of the magic out, it would ease the pressure and make the forest feel better. Ted doesn’t feel that that is valid here, it’s not quite how this works, being an infinite magic source, it’s better left alone as greed has already led to calamity. Grunt inquires about the magic water that flows through the forest into the [[Grippli]] village that seems to have healing qualities. Ted tells him that it seems to have picked up ambient magic, like a normal stream would pickup tannins from the local trees.
 - Ted tells them that they need to stop VEC, get the [[Crystal Drill|crystalline extraction drill]], the research notes and reports and destroy them. He expands that no one with knowledge of these things can leave this forest, it’s too dangerous, someone could start this work all over again. He only grew over and hid the camp last time this happened and it wasn’t enough, as the research was re-discovered and the drill was reverse engineered, he’s adamant about being more thorough this time. The balance of nature must be preserved.
 - He clarifies that the workers in the camp need not be killed, he can use the magic of the forest to modify their memories if they can get them to enter the trees. He also requests that they avoid involving his “children” the grippli, as he wants to protect them, but offers the assistance of the crab, the Forest Guardian, that is currently in the clearing protecting him. Kremit pats the giant crab.
 - Kremit begins planning how they can assault the camp and deal with the occupants, but Grunt isn’t sure how this venture would pay their bills, he wants a financial incentive. Coinclinkz is on board with Kremit and is excited to assault the camp with the crab. Kremit proposes luring some of the VEC personnel out into the forest, perhaps telling them they found some valuable resources, allowing Ted to mind wipe them.
 - Grunt says that the plan has promise in the absence of any other plan, but starts talking about profit again and attempting to trade with the grippli for their magic water to export instead, for a permanent revenue stream. 
 - Spastica agrees that they should lure some of the staff away from the camp, but suggests having 2 of their party sneak into the camp and try to rob them off the research notes etc while that is happening.
 - Kremit consults Coinclinkz for ideas, he agrees that he’d like to get the head dwarf from the camp and lure them into the forest. Kremit loosely agrees with Spastica’s idea to split the party and have half survey the camp while the other half lure off some of the workers.
 - Suddenly, Grunt has a thought, what if Ted wipes their memories as well, after they have finished this task for him and the rest of the party agrees that this has been on their minds too. Kremit asks Ted if he’d wipe their memories and he says “noooooo, that would be TERRIBLE….” and Kremit narrows his eyes.
 - Kremit relays their plan to Ted, that they will go off to the camp, lure off some of the workers with a story of a massive tree that looks very magical and full of resources, then have ted mind-wipe them. Grunt says they should look for some foil in the camp, if there is a mess hall, and cover their heads to protect them from Ted’s mind wipe just in case.
 - They depart with the [[Forest Guardian]] and head to the camp; from the treeline they can see workers continuing to log trees, working in pairs and making very slow progress with big bandsaws on the magical wood.
 - Spastica tries to talk to the crab and give it some basic instructions, giving it the command word “submarine” to charge and chase people away if they need it. It folds its legs and arms in and basically looks like a blue rock as it waits for the command word and they head into camp.
 - They meet with the foreman, [[Garrick Stonehand]], and he is suspicious as to why they are back so quickly, he only sent them off to return the tool cart to town about an hour ago and they couldn’t have possibly made the trip in that time. They tell him that they found something more important that they need to tell him about, and try to tell him about the special tree they allegedly found. He isn’t interested and tells them to go talk to the quartermaster and surveyor about anything to resources, he just oversees the labourers.
 - They head to the camp office, tell [[Tamsin Greaves|Tamsin]] and [[Alistair Venn|Alistair]] about an impressive tree they found, they are very receptive to this; Alistair the mage asks if the tree was growing and Grunt tells him it was covered in glowing resin and growths, very impressive. The mage asks for the location of the tree, but Grunt tells them they have to agree to terms first, they want to be paid for the information. Tamsin says that they could potentially cut them in for 3000 copper pieces, in exchange for the information and makes this sound like a tremendous sum of money, when it’s only really 30gp. Grunt accepts immediately, not understanding the exchange rate.
 - Alistair, 3 guards and 3 labourers assemble to follow the party into the forest, Grunt tries to size up the named characters but can’t make much of them; Spastica discerns that Garrick looks tough, he’s got a fancy looking war maul on his back and armour.
 - They head into the forest, after a short while, they enter a stand of trees with fungus growing on them that starts to release a fog of glowing spores; the party walks further ahead acting like they are scouting and leading, while the spore cloud thickens and engulfs the VEC personnel. The labourers collapse along with one of the guards, looking bewildered as they go unconscious, while Alistair and two of the guards resist the spore effects and stagger out in a coughing fit.
 - Before they can react, the party choses to attack and gets a surprise round; Grunt charges into their midst and swings at Alistair, but misses as he moves his head coughing. Spastica also misses her attack with her longbow, falling over a tree root, and is prone. Kremit tries to grapple the mage, succeeds and has restrained. Coinclinkz casts Sleep and one of the guards is unconscious.
 - Grunt attacks the remaining guard and hurts him pretty badly, Spastica shoots the mage, Kremit tries to shove the mage into the spore cloud and fails, Coinclinkz casts sleep again and drops the remaining guard. The mage casts scorching rays and deals high damage to Kremit and some damage to Grunt and Coinclinkz, then starts ranting that he will kill them all.
 - Kremit stabs the mage, Grunt misses him as the mage keeps wrestling with Kremit, Spastica shoots him again, Coinclinkz hits him with an eldritch blast for small damage.
 - The mage casts shocking grasp on Kremit, who is starting to look pretty injured. Grunt hits the mage and smites him for massive damage, but non lethally knocks him unconscious.
 - The party tie the 2 guards and the mage up, then drag them back into the spores so that they will be affected and have their memories erased.   
 - Grunt searches the mage and finds a couple of Happy Animal Friends trading cards, 20 gp and the crystalline drill they were looking for.
 - Coinclinkz and Kremit search the guards and find 10 silver pieces on them and take their longswords.
 - The part has a short rest and heal up, the spores have dissipated in the intervening time and the guards, mage and workers are all delirious and confused. Grunt asks a guard what they remember, their memories are from before they started their assignment at the logging camp, they remember travelling. Grunt successfully deceives them, telling them something went wrong, they were ambushed, went crazy and had to be tied up for their own safety. The guard breaks down in tears saying “what have I done!?”, looking down at their bloody hands and badly injured mage next to them.
 - Grunt tells them to relax and have a sleep, they will go and find the people that did this to them and stop them, then come back for them and make sure they get back to their headquarters, get a bonus and a day off. They are very happy and said they always knew that the company would look after them and that they were part of the corporate family when they signed their contracts.
 - They are trying to formulate a new plan and consider returning to the camp, Coinclinkz is smoking a pipe and very astutely remembers that when they were last at the camp, the workers fled at the first sign of the crab. They only have 3 guards left to deal with plus Tamsin and Garrick. Grunt suggests to Kremit that he get the grippli to follow them in to battle and tries to persuade him with images of glory and leading a frog army to victory, but this fails as Kremit wants to avoid them being hurt.
 - Grunt attempts to talk to the mage and asks them what he remembers, he tells him that he remembers being in the card shop back in New New New Jerusalem looking at Arcana cards, but he didn’t buy any of them because they are so lame. They discover that there are 3 competing card shops all next to each other “Games”, “OK Games” and “Slightly Above Average Games” all run by men of different ethnicities. Examining the mage, Grunt noticed that he had a VEC company tattoo with their franchise name “The Crimson Carrion” on it on his shoulder.
 - Grunt says to Kremit, that as he’s the smartest among them, he should become their corporate strategist “Stratestician” and formulate a new plan for them to maximise their synergy. Kremit says “The profit margin with the crab will raise exponentially when attacking the camp, given our synergistic ability to become autistic” and Grunt says that he “Could not become more autistic, I’ve become non-verbal” and that he’s had a “Bureaucrogasm”.  
 - They settle down and leave the area, moving back towards the logging camp, Coinclinkz in the rear of the party is too focused on smoking his pipe and doesn’t notice roots beginning to sprout from the ground around the bound guards and mage.
 - The party names the giant crab “[[Forest Guardian|Terrence]]” and Grunt uses the side of his shell as a whiteboard to plot their strategy. He suggests that they run towards the camp with Terrence 30 seconds behind them and pretend to be fleeing from him, using him as a distraction, so they can get behind the guards in the camp and pincer attack them.
 - They run into the open, yelling that the crab is coming, the workers start to flee, but then pause when nothing appears to be coming out of the trees, and start to walk back to their tools. The party manages to run all the way to the walls of the camp before the 30 seconds elapses, met by confused and sceptical guards, then the crab erupts from the trees and the workers flee in mindless terror.
 - The crab is very large and fast, it catches the slowest of the workers very easily, picks them up and crushes them in it crusher claw, causing Grunt to wince from the unintended innocent death.
 - The guards are starting to rally and run towards the gate nearest to the crab, the foreman Garrick grabs two of them by the scruff of the neck, drags them near and starts hurriedly talking to them, making special ops hands signs, gesturing at the crab. He runs out of the camp with the two, lets them get ahead of them, then the two guards join hands, lower them and fling Garrick into the air as he steps on their hands; he sticks the landing on top of the crab, attacking with his war maul. Terrence attempts to grab Garrick in a fury but can’t get its claws up over its back, it attacks one of the guards instead and crushes them violently.
 - Grunt runs into the camp office and starts yelling to Tamsin telling him that the camp is under attack and the guards are dying; he asks where the safe is, saying that they need to get it safe, suggesting that he gives it to them so they can “take it back to headquarters. This makes Tamsin suspicious and Coinclinkz, standing outside the entrance, mimics the voice of Garrick and says that Tamsin needs to trust Grunt, he’s holding off the crab as long as he can, but he needs to give them the safe. Unfortunately he fails his deception check and Tamsin immediately attacks Grunt with 2 daggers, doing negligible damage.
 - Grunt hits him back for considerable damage, followed by Spastica slashing at him with her short sword, injuring him significantly. Outside, Kremit cinematically jumps on top of the crab, somersaulting between its closing claws, and confronts Garrick with his sword out. Coinclinkz casts eldritch blast on Garrick, doing very minor damage, singeing his armour.
 - Garrick hits Kremit with his maul for massive damage, reduced slightly by Kermit’s Cutting Words “Hit me harder, Daddy” that unsettle him.
 - Terrence attacks the guard in front of him but misses, slamming his claw down into the earth.
 - Tamsin is engaged with Grunt inside the camp office, realises he’s in bad situation that he is unlikely to survive, disengages and runs out of the office, fleeing. Spastica tries to shoot him in the back with her bow as he flees, but misses. Coinclinkz shoots him in the back with an eldritch blast and he is starting to look quite injured as he staggers from the blow.
 - Grunt runs out of the camp, uses his Champion Challenge ability on Garrick, swearing at him, making him mad. Spastica shoots the guard in front of the crab for high damage, Kremit casts Dissonant Whispers on Garrick dealing modest damage. Coinclinkz shoots Tamsin in the back again with an eldritch blast for high damage, causing him to sink to his knees and start to crawl away as he continues to flee. The guard in front of the crab turns and rushes towards Spastica with his spear, Terrence fails to hit him with his op attack, the guard hits Spastica for minor damage.
 - Garrick moves to hop down from the back of Terrence, Kremit misses his op attack, Garrick jumps down and charges at Grunt. Grunt uses his readied action and attempts to hit Garrick as he comes into range, misses, and Garrick makes two attacks against him for massive damage. Garrick laughs, taunts, and then spits on Grunt. Terrence attacks  Garrick and attempts to crush him in his claw but doesn’t do much damage and Garrick holds them open heroically.
 - Seeing Grunt being massively injured by Garrick and Spastica desperately fending off a guard, Coinclinkz decides to shoot Tamsin once again with his eldritch blast as he pleads for his life, saying he’s only an accountant. Coinclinkz says “keep the change” and blows a grapefruit sized hole in his chest, executing him.
 - Spastica keeps tangling with the guard attacking her and misses with her short sword, Kremit attacks Garrick again with dissonant whispers doing modest damage. Grunt attempts to use Command on Garrick and this fails, his voice breaks as he squeaks “stop”. Garrick hits him with his maul and crushes him into the ground, knocking him unconscious.
 - The guard fighting Spastica misses with his spear. Terrence attacks Garrick and misses his first attack, then critically fails his second attack, getting his claw stuck in the wall of the camp office that has been caved in. Grunt critically fails his death saving throw and is very close to death. Kremit uses healing word on Grunt, yelling “Get lifed!” evangelically, causing one of Grunts arms to grow slightly so his hands are the same length.
 - Spastica hits the guard with her short sword and he is near death. Coinclinkz runs over to Tamsin’s corpse, collects the safe key and then fires eldritch blast at Garrick, mildly damaging him and causing one of the links of his chainmail to split open. Garrick turns away from Grunt now he’s no longer a threat and makes 2 successful attacks against Terrence for massive damage, wiping out half of his maximum health, smashing through the chitin of his shell.
 - Grunt tries to stab Garrick in the back, but fails as his sword is batted aside by Garrick wheeling it around to make another attack against Terrence. Kremit casts dissonant whispers again, causing significant damage and Garrick is looking very weak now. Spastica slashes the throat of the guard attacking her, causing his head to flop back as he drops to the ground, Grunt screams “non-lethal!” At her in the background, dismayed.
 - Coinclinkz attempts to cast Toll the Dead on Garrick but it does almost no damage. Terrence attacks Garrick, manages to clasp him his crusher claw, raises him up from the ground, manages to break his other claw free of the building and uses it to tear him in half, showering Grunt with blood and gore. He drops the mangled corpse and armour to the ground, Garrick’s maul drops head first into the mud, its haft standing straight up, invitingly.
 - Kremit searches Garrick and finds a Maul +1 and a snuffbox of “beetle snuff”. Coinclinkz searches Tamsin thoroughly and finds a sealed document tube with research notes and reports in it, a sample of magic wood and a vial of glowing resin. Looking through the document tube, Coinclinkz also finds a spicy female drow calendar.
 - Grunt takes the maul and equips it. Coinclinkz enters the damaged camp office and unlocks the strongbox “safe”, collecting 200 silver, 75gp, some signed blank requisition forms, and on the wall in the office is a taxidermied pigeon that Grunt grabs. Kremit searches the dead guards and finds 30 silver, 2 more longswords and a spear.
 - The party mount Terrence and ride him back towards Ted’s clearing, they pass the area that they left the bound guards and mage in earlier, but there is now just a mass of roots that appear to have bored through fabric there. The crab keeps moving and shortly they arrive at Ted’s glade, Grunt asks to bathe in his healing waters and Ted says they are welcome to. This close to the source the magic is potent and anyone that partakes feels like they’ve had a long rest.
 - Grunt tells him that they have cleared the camp and that Ted may now cover it again, he says it is already underway, he felt the disturbance in the forest and that the logging had ceased, beginning to direct the growth of the trees to obscure the camp.
 - Ted says that he sensed the mage that they left bound earlier and felt it was best, for the safety of all in the region and the balance of nature, if he were no longer and threat and hopes that they can forgive him for gently killing them. He expresses that they felt no pain, they simply went to sleep from some more spores and was absorbed by his roots. The party are not comforted or convinced by this, with Grunt saying “no pain ? What, as your roots bored through their bodies!?” And Coinclinkz chuckles and mock screams. 
 - Ted tries to assuage their fears that he is a threat and expresses that the mage had knowledge of the wellspring, the research and was the one that had reverse engineered the drill. The threat of someone potentially being able to recover that knowledge from his mind through magical means was too great, even if it was remote.
 - Grunt inquires after the rest of the workers and Ted placates him, saying that they posed no threat, they were innocents and had their memories modified and they are being guided out of the forest by his magic, watched over by the grippli. Ted asks what Grunt has attached to his belt, spying the taxidermied pigeon and Grunt tells him that it is [[Speckled Jim]]. Ted says that isn’t Speckled Jim, Speckled Jim is known to him, he’s a dashing rogue of a pigeon, quite a character that is alive and well, last felt flying north over his forest a few weeks ago; the taxidermy is Dotted Greg!
 - Grunt is enraged by this news and hurls the taxidermy into Ted’s stream, as Ted continues to wax nostalgic about how great Speckled Jim is and how he’s happy that he’s free of that “horrible old woman” who kept him in a cage. Grunt is confused about how pigeons work and says that he’d just fly back to the woman but Ted explains that pigeons instinctively fly home and uses messenger pigeons as an example, when they’re released they fly to the place they are trained to go. Grunt has the wrong end of the stick and is now concerned that the “horrible woman” might be sending nefarious messages somewhere.
 - Coinclinkz is looking at his draw calendar in the background.
 - Ted tells Grunt that [[Bartemius Fowl]] in town is the last remaining member of this franchise of VEC, they just have to get him into the forest and then he can wipe his memory. He asks for the crystal drill that they were sent to collect as the subject of the mage’s untimely death comes up again and Grunt tries to lie that they haven’t seen it. Spastica asks what the drill is made out of  and Ted says “chocolate” sarcastically, no it’s obviously made out of crystal…
 - Kremit starts to pipe up about the drill and Grunt tells him to shut up, then starts talking about making a deal for access to the healing water again. Ted says that if they could give him the drill, the research materials, reports, and clear up the remaining VEC personnel with knowledge of the wellspring, he may be able to come to an accord with them for a few barrels a month of healing water.
 - He asks them if they have found any of the research materials, Grunt again tries to obfuscate and say that Ted will find them when he absorbs the logging camp but Ted says that will take a long time and he needs confirmation that this knowledge hasn’t gotten out. Grunt asks why this knowledge is import and how is it dangerous, Ted recaps again that the region would be destroyed if they tried to tap the wellspring again; the reason its called “[[New New New Jerusalem]]" is because the town was destroyed a number of times and many thousands died.
 - He is becoming suspicious and attempts to detect Grunt lying, but Grunt passes his deception check and they sense that Terrence was slowly circling behind them, anticipating an attack, but has stopped. Kremit says that they shouldn’t be too greedy and is trying to nudge Grunt to back down and not antagonise the ancient druid in his lair.
 - Grunt asks if they could take one of the small grippli, maybe serve as a representative of Ted, but he isn’t really swayed by this suggestion, saying they already have a frog man in their party, why would they need another. 
 - The party wants to have an aside and Ted says that he isn’t going anywhere, take their time.
 - They mull over the offer for the healing water, Kremit counsels against trying to swindle this ancient tree druid, Coinclinkz is considering forging documents and Grunt says that he should be their Master of Corporate Espionage moving forwards.
 - They give Ted the research notes and reports and he destroys them with acidic sap, thanking them enthusiastically. Coinclinkz asks if he can keep the nsfw drow calendar and Ted says he doesn’t feel like that has any real relevance, he doesn’t care. Grunt and Coinclinkz try to glance at the documents before they are destroyed to glean something from them and manage to memorise some information about the samples of magic forest materials and their potential use.
 - Ted says they just need to find the crystal drill now, Kremit asks if this is what he is looking for, produces the drill and Ted produces a vine that lashes it from his hand violently, smashing it against a boulder, atomising it.
 - Kremit asks if Ted could make Bartemius gay when he modifies his memory and Ted confusedly says he could probably do that ?
 - The party return to the road, collect the empty cart they were pulling earlier and head down the road. They run into a group of workers in plain clothes slowly walking along the side of the road in a daze, Grunt approaches them and says they have work for them to do, hands out contracts and says they should sign them. “What? Something need doing? Work-work”. The workers say they aren’t literate and Grunt is even more enthused by this, has them sign a simple “x” on the employment contracts, he’s gained 4 new basic labourer employees. Kremit says he wants to train them in swords and martial arts, he wants a mercenary band.
 - The party is sitting inside the cart, with the workers pulling it back to their “head office” hovel. They meet their secretary “[[Roz Grakshnir|Roz]]”, who is an ancient goblin and ask in a husky smokers voice if Grunt has lost any more money today, cackling at him. In their head office there is a few poorly constructed plywood dividers to make rooms, a boardroom that Grunt spent most of their money on with a lavish table, chairs and chandelier and the “Bio Drainage Synergy Centre” that is the lavatory.
 - There is a man in a suit with a briefcase waiting for them that wants them to pay their franchise fee and tithe, Spastica pays him a hundred gold and 13 silver. He congratulates them for turning a profit finally, he informs them they are now considered a rank 1 franchise and offers them an Acquisitions Inc Portable Vault. Spastica says that she will take it as CFO, he hands her a contract then grabs her hand and stabs it with his quill, then writes her name and the franchise name on the back of a card on a lanyard, in her blood. He incants a spell, runes flare and he hands her the card, telling her to tap it against the wall.
 - She taps it against the wall and a massive vault door magically extrudes from it, she spins the wheel unlocking it, it swings open and reveals a 10ft cubed pristine white tiled room. The rep tells them that only the registered user can open the vault. Grunt asks what happens if they lose their card, or their CFO dies, can they still access this vault ? The rep says they can fill out the paperwork and requisition a new card that should arrive within 3 - 75 business days, or they can travel to head office and pay a fee for them to open a portal to their vault. The vault exists physically on a licensed demiplane that Acquisitions Inc own.
 - Kremit asks what if her soul was in a different body, or if she was undead, the rep says that they are very open and accepting of alternative lifestyles, if she was feeling body-fluid, or was undead, they could make some accessibility accomodations for her.
 - As the session closes, Grunt is tasking the new workers with fixing up the office and improving the shoddy walls and fixtures in the building.
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 - Session opens with the party at their headquarters the morning after having just met their administrator, Roz, the ancient goblin lady, and received their “Portable Vault” access card from a head office representative. Grunt had tasked the workers that they had “hired” at the end of last session with fixing up the headquarters and replacing some of the makeshift walls/room dividers in the office.
 - The party is in the meeting room with Grunt running their “morning huddle”, he gets a status report on their finances from Spastica who tells him they have 117 silver left, after they paid their franchise fees to head office.
 - He consults their chief “Stratestician”, Kremit, for their current business strategy, who reports that they should “get more money”.
 - Consulting Coinclinkz, head of corporate espionage, he asks for a report on any current intelligence he may have and Coinclinkz says he isn’t sure, but is looking into intelligence on artefacts that they could recover from dungeons for their company.
 - Grunt suggests that they could try and find a dungeon, keep all the traps etc in place and “run” it, harvesting resources from misfortunate adventurers that come to investigate it. Another idea he has is to buy a dungeon, sneak into it and rob their own horde stored there and then write it all off on insurance. The party isn’t too sure about these ideas.
 - Grunt goes over the events of the day before and suggest that they focus on wrapping up business with Ted and entice Bartemius Fowl into the forest to get his mind wiped so that they can complete the quest to get access to the magic water from Ted. Kremit pipes up that they could call their magic water product “Baldur’s Gatorade” and is met with rousing approval from the others.
 - They start making plans to raid the office of the Crimson Carrion franchise located in the local inn “The Chalice”, it doesn’t appear to have guards per se, just a bouncer that keeps drunks under control. Grunt stresses that they should try not to kill anyone, he doesn’t approve of murder, being a paladin.
 - They try to think of some hair brained schemes to bring Bartemius a “pot plant” or some “dirt from the forest”, thinking that if he stands on that, does it technically count as him “being in the forest” and fulfil their promise to Ted ? No that probably won’t work.
 - Kremit and Coinclinkz ask Grunt about his oath and if it is to the company, instead of a deity, and Grunt confirms that this is basically the case, he swore an oath to uphold the ideals of his father’s company and he must follow the tenets of that, or lose his magical abilities.
 - Kremit returns to the task at hand and says that he agrees with Spastica, they should go to the office and charm/cast sleep on Bartemius, they will have nothing to worry about.
 - Grunt re-affirms that they must not kill him, if they think about it from a profit perspective, every life is like a potential customer and they don’t want to eat into their client base by killing them.
 - There’s an aside where the party discusses Kremit “Frogmaxxing” and theorising on what the standards of frog beauty are.
 - They end their meeting, get the cart that they were tasked with returning to Bartemius and make their way over to The Chalice, with Spastica stuck pulling the cart, despite being the smallest of the group.
 - Arriving at the inn, they find Bartemius in his office, off of the main common area, enjoying industriously signing and filing paperwork with his magic quills and various documents floating around him, going in and out of filing cabinets.
 - They study the inside of the inn, its the better of the town’s two accomodations, with the alternative being “The Leaky Tap” that is more of the peasant inn, where as this is more suited to merchants and people of modest means. The middle aged, female human innkeeper, Blanche, is leaning against the bar and idly cleaning glasses as it isn’t too busy during the middle of the day. Kremit, at roughly four feet tall, is barely level with the bar top standing up.
 - Grunt addresses the gnome, Bartemius, as “Little man” and immediately offends him, telling him that he is little, that is a factual statement and “facts don’t care about your feelings”. Kremit peers over the desk and tells Bartemius to “Grow up”, eliciting a golf clap from him and him saying “ok ribbit, lookout we have a ribbitter over here...”
 - They get down to business after these pleasantries and he asks them if they have completed their task and if they have their contract with them. Grunt asks if he has a copy of it and remembers what they were supposed to get for doing the job and Bartemius is delighted that they forgot the terms, telling them they he thinks he promised them about 20 silvers for completing the task. Kremit rummages around and finds the terms of the arrangement and that they were actually supposed to get 25 gold pieces each and Bartemius apologises profusely saying he must have been thinking of another deal, he has so many things on the go at the moment. He retrieves 100gp from his lockbox, virtually causing him physical pain to part with it; the money is all hyper organised in little pre-packaged bags of 25gp like rolls of pennies.
 - Grunt tries to deceive him that there was a fifth member of their group and they need an additional 25gp for that absentee, but Bartemius is not convinced, it’s very hard to convince someone of something that isn’t on a physical contract in front of them. Grunt brings up the fact that he tried to fib to them about the amount they were to be paid and Bartemius apologises again, saying that he just had a little moment and just hasn’t had his coffee yet. Coffee is life and he hates Mondays.
 - Coinclinkz tries to flatter him by calling him a tall, smart and generous man, then suggests that they have some paperwork that they’d love for him to sign, visibly exciting Bartemius as he loves dealing with paperwork; however he is resistant to leaving and suggests they bring it to him, because he has all his quills and equipment laid out and ready, there.
 - Coinclinkz nods and feigns interest and then asks him what that is behind him, and as Bartemius turns, he attempts to charm him, failing and causing him to have moment of dizziness in which he says he must need some more coffee and pours another cup. He asks again if there is any real reason that they can’t bring this “paperwork” to him and asks if it is important.
 - Grunt has an aside with Kremit, discussing the cart that they have at the moment and how he feels that it is “ownerless” at the moment and they could take it; Kremit asks if they would need to get the registration forms for it, surely it would be owned by the Crimson Carrion and Grunt laughs and says that surely they wouldn’t register a cart, its not like a real life trailer. Kremit says that they should register it and make the license plate “RBB1T”.
 - Spastica says that there may have been some damage to the cart while they were using it, and that Bartemius should probably inspect it before they return it. He is incensed and says that damage to company property is very serious and immediately closes the office, getting his travel quills and measuring calibers to go and inspect the cart. While he is thoroughly looking over the cart and measuring the thickness of the wheels, complaining that it would have been nice for them to clean the cart before returning it, Coinclinkz casts Sleep on him, causing him to yawn and collapse as he started pointing out rock chips.
 - They only have 1 minute to act while he is under the effects of the spell and quickly heave him into the cart, gag and cover him up with hessian sacks and other materials found in the stable yard, before rushing for the western gate of the town.
 - The gate guards aren’t very perceptive and don’t notice anything suspicious about the party, waving them through without issue.
 - They proceed down the road into the forest, until they reach the transition where the trees and plants appear more magical and enchanted, then they remove him from the cart and tie him to a tree. While they are tying him to the tree they notice a glowing yellow fungus begin rapidly growing on the trunk, similar to what they saw when luring Alistair into the forest the day before. Spastica wisely moves back, while Grunt and the others continue chattering by Bartemius until the fungal growth bursts, erupting into a cloud of spores that envelop them.
 - Kremit and Coinclinkz succeed on their con save and leap out of the spores, while Grunt’s eyes cloud over and he appears groggy and disoriented, incapable of moving on his own. Spastica pulls him out of the cloud and he seems confused as he comes back to himself, unable to remember the last hour or so, the last thing he remembers was standing in the Chalice about to talk to Bartemius.
 - Spastica explains the last hour to him but he is quite confused and doesn’t believe them, saying that he can’t believe they abducted this man and brought him into the forest to murder him!
 - While this altercation is happening, they notice that a path is beginning to appear into the trees as shrubs and foliage moves out of the way on its own. They follow the path to Ted’s clearing.
 - Grunt confirms that they have successfully done his bidding and Ted is very gracious that the realm is safe once again, the balance of nature is maintained and he offers they a woven reed basket of “shiny rocks” that the grippli brought to him as an offering if they were successful. In the basket is a mix of glowing tree resin, actual shiny rocks and a few uncut gemstones that they haven’t really distinguished between as they have no concept of material wealth.
 - They collect this and Ted bids them safe journey, before Grunt interrupts and says that he has one last thing that he wishes to discuss with him, bringing up the magical water of the forest. He tells Ted that his current situation isn’t sustainable and that he can’t just keep wiping everyone’s memories, he should be trying to integrate into society and that they can help with that.
 - Ted is confused by this and says that generally he wants to avoid society and ideally anyone knowing of this enchanted place, so no-one will try and exploit it, but he will honour their original verbal agreement of several barrels of water a month. Grunt says that was the old deal and he wants to renegotiate, saying that him having more knowledge of the outside world and external forces coming to the region would help him, he could become a force in his own right and better defend the place. Grunt suggests he send a member of the grippli with them to be Grunt’s squire and that this would help him learn more about the outside world.
 - Ted listens to this exhaustive ramble of Grunt obviously fishing to effectively have a pet grippli, and says that he is sorry that the spores have affected his mind in this way, he clearly has forgotten that they have had a similar conversation before and the answer was no; Ted won’t risk the innocent denizens of his forest and have them be exploited by outsiders, he respects the balance of nature and protects his “children”.
 - Grunt tirelessly continues to argue, not getting anywhere. Ted says that he has also had some thoughts about this arrangement and has come up with a plan to direct the water away from the forest via a magical root system to a point of their choosing, all they have to do is take this magical seed and plant it where they want the water directed. This way, their water bottling enterprise will not be directly associated with the forest and there won’t be people carting things back and forth, drawing attention to it. He also says that he would be able to communicate with them via the tree if required and they could tell him of any of these “external forces” that Grunt has been going on about.
 - Coinlinkz goes up and has an elaborate secret handshake with Teds remaining half human, half tree arm, whose branches form the word “blood” at the end.
 - Grunt says that he’d just like to have a frog man to follow him around and Ted points out that he already had Kremit, who is much more powerful than the Grippli and he can’t improve upon perfection.
 - Coinclinkz takes the magical seed from Ted, Grunt eventually concedes and they say their farewells. They go over the basket of shiny rocks and appraise the gemstones in there, thinking the two stones may be worth about 40gp total, but the other stuff is more exotic and they would probably have to find a use or buyer for it.
 - Coinclinkz is smoking his pipe and one of Ted’s branches comes down, revealing some dry buds and leaves on the end of it that he shakes off into their hands to refill their pipe bowls with.
 - Kremit wants to go back to the grippli’s village “Rootbound Chorus” one last time before they leave, and they follow the stream down from Ted’s clearing towards them. Arriving, they are met with cheers and a lot of enthusiasm from the simple frogs, they are roasting a heron on a spit over a fire and invite the part to join them for a celebratory feast. The scene is similar to the ewok village at the end of Star Wars, a raucous celebration with a lot of pan flutes etc, overseen by Elder Thrum-of-Reeds.
 - Kremit has a chat with the elder and explains the situation has been resolved, the forest is safe and he has nothing to worry about anymore and he encourages them to not “sell their children”. Elder Thrum thanks him and confirms that they wouldn’t sell their children, they have no concept of material wealth. Coinclinkz makes an inappropriate comment about genitalia and the Elder says that grippli actually have a cloaca, causing Kremit to cringe.
 - Kremit asks Elder Thrum if there is a shared origin between their peoples and the Elder confirms that they are sort of cousins, they diverged from the frogfolk many years ago. The frogfolk seemed to lose their way, they developed technology and left the forests, becoming more aggressive and making war on other races, before eventually succumbing to their Goobermensch civil war, it’s very sad.
 - Kremit asks him if he knows anything about “frog relics” and the Elder is confused, not really sure what he is referring to and asks if he means “The Ark of the Croakenant” ? Don’t open it, terrible things would happen.
 - Coinclinkz takes a moment to talk to his cat, Cheetos, asking it if there is anything more they should be investigating in the forest, it’s one violet eye briefly glows as it makes eye contact with him and he gets a sense in his mind of something subtly pulling him far to the west.   
 - They remain in the village for 2 hours, enjoying the festivities and then return to the road, following it further east until they find their cart again and notice that Bartemius isn’t tied to the tree anymore, there are only loose bindings on the ground there.
 - They make their way back towards the town and encounter a small figure trudging along the side of the road ahead, walking with a strange, dazed gait; they recognise that this is Bartemius and try to call out to him by name, but there is no reaction.
 - Grunt approaches him and tries to talk to him, addressing him as “Little man” again, causing Bartemius to turn and look up at him in confusion, saying good day and asking him if he can help him, he doesn’t know where he is. He looks around at them, peering from face to face blankly and then asks them if they know who he is. Kremit tells him that he is their employee and Coinclinkz pipes up, saying that he is late for work and they came to find him.
 - Bartemius asks him what he does for work and Grunt tells him paperwork, which seems to rouse something in him as he mulls over the word ‘paperwork’, suggesting that he thinks he likes that. Grunt tells him that he’s already collected his annual wages and he needs to get on with his work now, successfully persuading him and eliciting an excited “yes sir!” Followed by him doing the Rimmer salute.
 - Grunt tells him that Bartemius’ name is “Greg” and continues to gaslight him into believing his new identity in his addled state. Greg says it’s coming back to him now, he remembers going to school and studying accountancy and Coinclinkz hurriedly tells him that that is enough, he doesn’t need to remember anything else, they will remember things for him.
 - Coinclinkz says that they will have to do their business taxes next month and asks “Greg” if he can do them for them, which he enthusiastically agrees to, saying he is very good with business tax. He explains that he can move numbers around, increase their deductions and expenses and make it appear like they made far less profit than they actually did, minimising franchise fees. Grunt is extremely keen hearing this, immediately looks at Spastica and jokingly tells her that she’s fired, they don’t need her anymore, or at least she’s demoted.
 - They head back into town, passing through the guard checkpoint at the gate with the guards calling out “alright Bartemius” nodding to him, causing “Greg” to confusedly look at the others and ask why they were calling him that; they tell him that “Bartemius is his nickname” and Greg says that that is strange, they must have poor literacy in his region and they should make an effort to lift literacy.
 - They take Greg back to their headquarters to be met by Roz asking “what’s this piece of shit doing here ?”, then belittling and making fun of Grunt before he mumbles something, to which she jabs him on the chest with a clawed finger and says “Don’t tell me how to do my job”. “Corporate’s just waiting for you to fuck up”.
 - Grunt asks her what she is going to do after work and she tells him that she is going to go home and go to sleep, not that it’s any of his business what she does outside of work.
 - They leave Greg with her to be inducted, filling out an employee starter pack and Roz gives him a rare smile, saying that it’s nice to meet someone that actually fills out the paperwork correctly.
 - The party heads back to The Chalice and they start rifling around in Greg’s office, the innkeeper looks concerned about what they are doing initially, but Grunt explains to her that this is just corporate business and they are conducting a hostile takeover. She shrugs in the end and says that she doesn’t really care, the room was paid up for another 3 weeks and she was keen for an opportunity to raise the rent and get a new tenant in there.
 - The party takes all of his fancy quills, seals and sealing wax, pouches of meticulously organised coins, around 3000 copper and 50gp worth. It doesn’t seem like any reports had gone out to head office yet, he was waiting for information to come back from the logging camp. They find the rego paperwork for the cart and keep that; on the wall there is a certificate with a seal on it for the official formation of their franchise that Grunt throws in the fire. He also finds their official stationary with a letterhead etc and destroys all of that as well.
 - Grunt is amazed that this cart was registered and there is a bit of banter about how this must have been the first cart ever registered in this region, with the VIN number being 00000000001. Greg is very thorough and methodical, he would have approached the local bailiff and thoroughly confused him with registration paperwork that he’d never seen before.
 - Spastica goes to a jewellers to get the shiny rocks evaluated and identifies that the 2 gems are indeed worth 40gp, but they can’t really make heads or tails of the other materials in the basket.
 - Grunt thinks about taking the rest of the shiny rocks to a glass blower to see if they can do anything with it, but he’s torn between that and making a zen garden at their headquarters with glowing gravel. Spastica is thinking about taking a sample of the water to an alchemist for testing. Grunt decides to try and use the blank requisition forms that they found at the logging camp to get some glass vials.
 - Kremit takes the magical seed back to their headquarters and plants it behind their building on their land, mystified as it starts to germinate and grow before his eyes as soon as it’s planted.
 - Grunt heads over to the main drag to visit a game store to investigate his Happy Animal Friends cards, discovering 3 stores, “Games”, “OK Games” and “Slightly Above Average Games”. There are 3 ethnic men standing outside their respective stores, all bickering and trying to encourage passers by into their store. Ali, from Slightly Above Average Games draws Grunt’s eye and entices him in with his promise that “Ali can get you anything you need, express!”.
 - Entering Slightly Above Average Games, he finds that Ali Baba sells a wide assortment of mostly novelty goods, minor magical items and trinkets as well as popular culture merchandise. Grunt asks if he’s interested in buying things, shows Ali his HAF cards, but Ali says that he isn’t really interested, he might have some old stock laying around to sell, but he’s not buying, these are more or less a dead, old franchise that is out of print and favour.
 - Grunt tries to show him what cards he has anyway, first presenting his “pig” card to which Ali says everyone has a pig card, its so common, the Grunt presents his “shiny owl bear”, which Ali tells him is a very poor fake that appears to have been made by a child; it might even be made of chocolate. He creates a minor illusion above his hand of a slowly rotating card that he tells Grunt is what a real shiny owl bear card looks like. He offers Grunt a copper piece for his forgery, saying thats probably more than it’s worth. He looks at the rest of his cards and offers him 10 gold for everything he has, mentioning that he likes his shiny pitbull card, it could be summoned with the right accessory.
 - He tells Grunt that back during the card series original run, you could get a very rare and expensive accessory called a “Battle Bracer” that would allow you to summon the monsters on shiny cards. While those are very hard to find these days, he could acquire a “Combat Cuff” through his contacts instead, for 100th the price of a Battle Bracer, a mere 30gp, that is basically the same thing, Ali could get it, express.
 - Grunt isn’t completely sold and says he will try his other options at the other stores before committing to anything, asking for the name of the next salesman at OK Games, Ali tells him that the man’s name is Bob. Grunt goes into OK Games and talks to the very angry Lebanese man called Bob, surveying his very meagre stock of primitive wooden dice in primary colours, dice mats and a big spit of rotating meat by a fire. It seems like its half takeaway and half dice shop, there are free rules for a game called “humans and offices” there that Bob is trying to sell for money, dodgily. He offers Grunt 2 kebabs for his cards, says he doesn’t really know anything about card games, he mostly just likes the social interaction with customers. Grunt asks if he has any “singles” and Bob doesn’t know what he’s talking about, offers him a single slice of kebab meat instead.
 - Grunt says his place really is “ok” but says he would like to go to the next business and try there instead, Bob tells him the name of the owner is “Giorgio Anakopalopitus” of the store “Games”. Grunt enters, looks around, realises that this appears to be just a takeaway and asks him where the games are. Giorgio says that the game you play is what happens to you after you eat one of his souvlakis; he tells him that the Trojan has 17 spices on it and asks him if he’d like one.
 - Grunt is disappointed and heads back to headquarters, meeting up with the rest of the party to have yet another meeting. As he arrives he notices that the tree in the yard has already grown into a small sapling about a meter tall. Inside, he finds Roz and Greg working together, the office is cleaner and tidier than it was before, Greg is pointing over her shoulder and trying to show her how to use different coloured quills and colour code things etc. He starts the “afternoon huddle” and asks the party what ideas they have for a business strategy, Kremit tells him about his idea for a talkshow called a “Frogcast”, like a regular talkshow, except he does it. This idea is rejected as nonsensical and Kremit follows up with his next idea, “foldable carts”, a portable cart that you can fold up and take with you. He has no idea how this would work, but its an interesting idea; Grunt asks him quizzically if he wants to get into retail and there is an inscrutable back and forth between them as they confuse each other.
 - Grunt moves on from Kremit and asks Coinclinkz if he has any information on their rivals, as the head of corporate espionage, Coinclinkz says that Greg has tidied things up so they can now start doing more productive work. He says that they should put up posters asking for information about dungeons, so they can go find them, complete them and then refurb them, charging people an entry fee. Grunt is mildly interested in this idea and says there is the skeleton of something there.
 - He gets an update from Spastica next who tells him that they have quite a bit of money at the moment, around 200 gold, Grunt decides to try using the VEC blank requisition forms, he sends Coinclinkz down the post office to deposit the forms and have them sent down to the docks to be filled.
 - Finding Speckled Jim comes up again in conversation as a pressing priority.
 - As they are continuing to have their fourth meeting of the day, they hear a bit of disturbance out in the office as someone comes in and is talking to Roz, who shortly appears at the door to the meeting room, to tell Grunt that she has a job for him. She says that he’ll hopefully have a chance to make some money and maybe his franchise won’t fold this month, then chuckles at him. She tells them that there is some sort of disturbance way out west in the mines that has caused them to halt production, they are requesting help from anyone that will send aid; Grunt says that he’ll add it to the agenda noncommittally and Roz leaves, passive aggressively not closing the door when she leaves.
 - Grunt questions Spastica, as the resident ranger, if she knows where a pigeon might have gone, not bothering to ask the literal bird-man (coinclinkz) beside him about bird behaviour. Greg pops his head in, hearing them talking about locations in the area where the bird might be, and provides them with a crude map of the area, saying it might come in handy. Hearing the word about the disturbance out west, Coinclinkz once again has the sense of something in the back his mind nudging him to the west.
 - Spastica talks about bird behaviour and where they might want to go and nest in various forested biomes etc and Kremit pipes up that they can’t just check every tree in the region… Grunt says that he’s never seen a pigeon in the forest, he’s only seen them in the city, where he normally is.
 - Coinclinkz briefly goes outside and tries to commune with his cat to see if he can glean any more information about their current situation from his patron but is not successful, the cat simply raises a paw up and brushes at his face.
 - Kremit goes outside and joins him, smoking their respective pipes while Grunt goes into the city to try and search for Speckled Jim, trying to pick up and inspect every pigeon he comes across.
 - They meet back up later in the day and Grunt uses his Coin of Decisionary, asking it if they should continue to hunt for Speckled Jim, he flips it and on the face it says “This will be a lucrative decision”. He calls a vote on what they should do next after considering the “key take aways from this meeting”, they resolve to follow up on the missive from Roz, directing them to the Broken Peaks copper mine to assist with getting production running again, even though Grunt doesn’t value copper and thinks its a silly metal.
 - They head out of town on a multi day journey, travelling through the village of Sychar on their way, Coinclinkz stops to talk to a farmer working on repairing a stone fence by the side of the road, near a few other labourers slopping around in the mud. He asks them if they know anything about any caves or dungeons in the area and the farmer, Gerald, gives them an incomprehensible reply in a very thick rural farmer’s dialect, clapping on the shoulder at the end and smiling “alright ?”. Coinclinkz thanks them and they return to their work on the wall, he returns to the group and bluffs what he learned from the farmer, marking a random spot on the map at the end of a road, proclaiming there was something of interest there.
 - They camp for the evening, the next day continuing their journey, travelling past the community/village where the mine workers live, then up a twisting road into the mountains to the mine proper. They encounter a small group of workers walking down the track towards them with pickaxes and basic tools, looking dejected and try to talk to them, asking them why they are walking away from the mines during the day when they should be working.
 - The miner tells him that something happened and they lost contact with the deep exploratory miners, a young worker called Harvey was sent down to check on them but was killed on the way back to the surface. The mine was hastily sealed after the body was discovered, it was deemed too dangerous, by the foreman, to continue work. He doesn’t really know much more than that, they’ve been sent home for the time being and they hope the mines re open soon, otherwise they will start to struggle to make ends meet. The miners walk off towards home, grumbling and commiserating about poor Harvey.
 - Kremit makes a joke about “Harvey Minestein”
 - The party continues to the mine proper, it has a few outbuildings, they see that the entrance to the mine has been rudimentarily sealed with boards, debris and boulders, with 2 simple guards with leather jerkins and pitchforks posted outside it. Kremit asks one of the guards about the accident, saying that he wants to see Harvey’s body. They point him to a storage shed where a medic is looking at the body with the foreman at the moment.
 - They find the body laid out on top of a large crate in the storage shed with a dwarven foreman looking on as an older human man with a basic medical kit makes an incision in the body, checking the entrails and goes “he’s definitely dead, I don’t know what to tell you.” “I’m used to dealing with broken arms and bruises, I think this man just needs a priest, there isn’t much I can do for him.”
 - Kremit and Spastica inspect the body with their combined survival and medical skills, locating a pair of puncture wounds on the man’s neck, surrounded by unusual black veins and they are sure that that is what has killed him. Grunt talks to Brint Slagbarrow, the foreman, telling him that he’s here to help and immediately asking what is the reward. The foreman is taken aback and asks them if they are the Baron’s men, or if the baron sent them, Grunt says that they are not, and Brint goes on to tell them that the baron has given them basically carte blanche to get the mine back up and running as soon as possible. Brint suggests that they could give them maybe 10% of their output, Grunt asks for 20% and suggests that they could get the mine running more efficiently than before, approximately 110% of its usual output. Brint offers him 20% of the extra 10% that they will produce with Grunt’s ideas and Grunt tries to wrangle him back the other way towards a higher reward.
 - Brint says they can worry about the reward after the job is done, tells them about the situation, Harvey was killed by something in the mines after they lost touch with the four dwarven specialist miners that were exploring in the deepest regions. Says that they are miners, not warriors and he cares for his men, they are all part of a tight knit community and he doesn’t want to endanger them recklessly. He suggests that if the party can safely return their missing people, there would be an additional reward in it for them, he also offers basic supplies like healing remedies, torches and pickaxes up front.
 - Grunt continues to try and finagle a higher reward out of him, but Brint is resolute, saying they’ve had trouble with city folk in the past and he doesn’t deal in fantasy future scenarios of what might happen, he deals in factual reality in the present. Reward after results.
 - Grunt asks Coinclinkz if he’s claustrophobic and if he can tolerate being underground as a weird bird man and he says that he should be alright, he might be part cave turkey somewhere in his ancestry. The party distributes the four healing potions they have been given, they are blue raspberry flavoured.
 - The guards tear down part of the temporary barricade and usher them inside, hastily rebuilding it behind them, sealing them inside the mine. The guard cheerily asks them for their safeword to know when they are returning and suggests light-heartedly “oh no, it’s killing us, it’s killing us!”
 - They light up some flaming torches and head into the mine, with only Kremit having dark vision and the others being mostly blind; the air is still and smells musty, dead air, slightly sulphurous like there may have been some blasting in the past.
 - They note there is a drag path on the ground from where the body was likely extracted from deeper in the mine and they follow it down another level. They find where the corpse seems to have been found, a large rusty outline on the ground, preceeded by some footsteps leading up to it that appear to be a miner’s boots, with a lot of other strange marks on the ground. Spastica and Kremit use their combined survival skills to determine that something with small, pointed feet has been tramping around in this area, something with more legs than a human.
 - Grunt uses a paladin ability to sense poisons and poisonous creatures, he determines from some of the traces of venom on the ground where the corpse was, that this appears to be from a giant wolf spider and keeps this information to himself to not frighten the others.
 - This region of the mine seems like its been frequently and recently worked, its very well shored up, with a lot of wooden beams and well cut passages, large mined out areas where veins have been exhausted etc.
 - They follow the spider footsteps deeper into the mine, seeing that they wrap around up onto the ceiling of the tunnels and disappear when they get to rocky surfaces.
 - Grunt decides to consult Spastica on her beast knowledge and what she’d know about giant wolf spiders, asking for a friend… She tells him that they are significantly sized spiders, around the size of a large dog and are not the most dangerous species of arachnids but still nasty.
 - They cautiously proceed into the mine, with Grunt using his literal “Spidey sense” to act as an early warning system for spider ambushes for the next 10 mins of travel. Coinclinkz doesn’t have dark vision but is using his familiar abilities to see through the eyes of his cat, Cheetos, who does have dark vision.
 - As they go deeper into the mine, there are more frequent untouched veins of copper in the walls, as well as gemstones that commonly appear near copper, the tunnels get gradually smaller, now only 8 feet in diameter, as they get to the more exploratory shafts that have been cut by the dwarves in the deepest regions. Kremit takes the lead, with his military scout experience and dark vision, seeing that up ahead there is a carpet of thickening web on the surfaces of the tunnel and calls for the party to halt.
 - Where the web begins to appear is where the tunnel narrows to a choke point only a few feet wide, where miners have gone in-between  some harder strata of stone, and they struggle to see what lies ahead. Grunt questions if the web is sticky and considers touching it, Spastica warns him not to, explaining that spiders could feel the vibration of prey and come to investigate, Coinclinkz considers using burning hands to clear a big swath of it, but Kremit wisely uses a torch to clear a small area of it experimentally.
 - Kremit is very apprehensive about going through into the next section of tunnel but Grunt claps him on the shoulder and sagely says that “sometimes you can be clever, but other times you just fucking Leeroy Jenkins the shit and fight the thing”. Grunt brandishes his torch ahead of him and confidently moves forward through the opening, methodically clearing the web from the floor and walls.
 - In the tunnel ahead there seem to be a series of harder boulders or veins of stone that form protrusions coming out of the wall, obscuring the path ahead as it winds around them. Moving around the nearest one, Kremit sees a giant wolf spider perched on the far side of it and screams, dextrously leaping away.
 - Kremit asks the others if spiders have foreskins.
 - Battle starts and there is a brief exchange with this spider with kermit hurling ineffectual curse words, Spastica missing bow shots, and Grunt hammering it into goo with a single swing of his magic maul. As the first spider dies, another appears, along with a strange humanoid with clawed limbs, spider fangs and many eyes on its head.
 - Coinclinkz engages the humanoid from range, firing Eldritch Blasts at it, Grunt tangles with it in a brutal melee and the wolf spider rushes to attack Kremit, lunging off the wall and sinking its fangs into his neck. Kremit resists the venom and shoves it off, shearing 2 of its legs off with his sword, Spastica scores a good hit on the humanoid with her bow, Grunt shields himself with his faith, Coinclinkz scores another minor hit on the humanoid.
 - The humanoid spider sinks its fangs into Grunts neck successfully on the second attempt, significantly injuring him as he is poisoned. The wolf spider tries to re-orient itself and attack Kremit, missing, Kremit exploits the opening and drives his sword into his abdomen, near shearing it in half, then kicking its corpse away.
 - He tries to cast dissonant whispers on the humanoid, but it has little effect. Coinclinkz misses with an Eldritch Blast and his shot goes wild, illuminating the length of the tunnel and cutting through some web. Grunt focuses on defence and dodging as Kremit moves up to flank the Ettercap, it turns and attacks Kremit instead, sinking its fangs into his neck and grievously injuring him, before following up with its claws, barely missing what would have been a fatal hit. Kremit reflexively jumps away to safety, behind Grunt, then follows up with another cast of Dissonant Whispers, chipping a little more damage off of the Ettercap.
 - Spastica scores a powerful hit on the monster with her bow and it is barely clinging on to life, Grunt struggles to wheel his maul around in the narrow tunnel and misses it, Coinclinkz scores a direct hit on it’s head with his Eldrith Blast, a lance of red energy bores into it’s forehead, pressurising its internals and causing all of its eyes to explode outwards as it dies. He then bends his bird man head over like a seagull and lets out a triumphant screech.
 - Spastica collects some of the monster’s venom to attempt to brew a potion later. Grunt removes the head of the ettercap, wanting to offer it to the mine foreman as proof that they have cleared the threat from the mine and he continues burning away spiderwebs.
 - They move through this region where there was heavy web and come to the exit from their current tunnel that opens out into a large chamber with a huge fissure through half the floor and up into the wall, looks like someone has been blasting and uncovered this. The party can see that there are webs and strands of silk coming up over the rim of this fissure, and scattered around the perimeter of the chamber are a number of webbed objects of varying sizes. On one wall there appears to be a thick mat of web that may be obscuring an opening, but they aren’t sure what is behind it.
 - Kremit wants to have a rest and heal himself, he lays down on the ground, but looking up can see a significant amount of webs covering the ceiling of the cavern and alerts the party, gets the sense that this wouldn’t be a good spot to rest. Coinclinkz considers casting Burning Hands up at the ceiling, Grunt thinks about collapsing the tunnel preceding this chamber and Kremit wants to retreat up the tunnel to rest and then return.
 - They agree to leave and rest, as they are exiting, Spastica has a look around and notices that she can hear faint, muffled noises coming from the covered opening on the wall and the surface appears to be moving slightly; it sounds like muffled cries for help.
 - Grunt is still considering collapsing the tunnel and leaving whoever may be there to their fate, but Spastica lectures him that he is always talking about preserving life and potential customers and that not returning the miners would affect their reward.
 - Grunt relents and admits she is right and tells the rest of the group to go and bust them out, if it is the miners. Kremit hastily casts a healing spell on himself and drinks a potion. They become concerned about the forms around the perimeter of the chamber and worry that these may be full of baby spiders. Grunt fails his perception check and doesn’t believe that these are moving and are unlikely to contain spiderlings.
 - The party moves around to the other side of the fissure and Coinclinkz pulls his dagger, working with Kremit and Grunt to cut away the covering on this opening, peeling away a heavy sheet of matted web. Inside they can see a trio of enwebbed, dwarven miners that appear to be alive and well, just bound. They become more animated and excited seeing the torchlight from the party, the party frees them and the dwarves thank them profusely, saying that a big spider caught them and sealed them in this alcove, they think maybe this is the spider’s pantry and she’s saving them. 
 - The dwarves ask them if they killed the big spider and the party is confused and frightened as its beginning to dawn on them that they are in great danger; they ask how big the spider is and the dwarves say “about the size of 8 horses” eliciting a nervous laugh from Coinclinkz. Kremit asks the party how fast they can run.
 - Grunt calls for quiet and says they should try and sneak out of the chamber but Coinclinkz is becoming animated and talking about killing the spider, causing the dwarves to cheer “ROCK AND STONE!” And “FOR CARL!” As they tell the party they can help kill this big beast by bringing the ceiling down on it.
 - Coinclinkz peers out into the darkness with his torch raised and can just see the glint off of something shiny, on the periphery of the light, descending from the ceiling in the middle of the chamber. “Ah fuck, rock and stone, brothers...”
 - The dwarves see that the party doesn’t have a lot of equipment, start passing out specialty mining supplies like alchemist’s fire and tell them that subterranean spiders are often vulnerable to fire damage. They say that while they aren’t warriors, they are expert miners and if the party can keep the spider busy, near the centre of the chamber, they can bring down the ceiling covered in stalactites down on it in short order, sealing the crevasse.
 - Kremit moves first, playing a brief melody to inspire Coinclinkz, then lobbing a flask of alchemist’s fire out into the centre of the chamber, at the colossal spider they can now see has reached the ground, missing, creating a small pool of fire on the floor.
 - Coinclinkz moves forwards and casts Burning Hands on the spider for massive damage, setting its hairs alight as they continue to burn off, creating an 8 legged fireball.
 - Grunt charges up and hits the spider with his maul, smiting it for huge damage and it now appears quite injured.
 - One of the eggsacs ruptures as the spider takes a lair action, causing a swarm of watermelon sized spiders to emerge.
 - Spastica throws a jar of alchemists fire at the spider, covering it in burning oil, extending the burn duration on her and further injuring her.
 - The dwarves are beginning to climb the wall, hammering small round platforms into it and helping each other rapidly scale its surface towards the ceiling.
 - Grunt hit her again with his maul and she is looking quite battered, she retreats to the side of the chamber and drives her fangs into one of the webbed bundles on the floor, sucking it dry and the party can see the victim inside kicking a bit, still alive. Her wounds seem to be visibly healing as she does this, then takes some additional damage as she is still on fire.
 - The spiderlings rush across the chamber and swarm onto grunt, biting him for significant damage. Kremit inspects one of the webbed forms that he is standing next to, able to see with his torch over it that it appears to be a miner that may be paralysed or near death. Kremit then runs over to Grunt, trying to slash some of the spiderlings off of him with his sword, masterfully killing 7 out of 8 of the swarm, leaving a single watermelon sized spider wrapped around Grunt’s head, continuing to try to bite him.
 - Coinclinkz casts Scorching Ray on the colossal mother spider, doing enormous amounts of damage, he has Cheetos on his shoulder and his pipe in his mouth as he fires the rays out of his finger-guns. Two curling masses of fire wind out from him and hammer into the spider from opposite sides, causing her to explode like the Death Star as she dies. Above them, they can hear rapturous cheering of “ROCK AND STONE!” And “FOR CARL!” As the dwarves see the spider die.
 - Grunt splats he remaining spiderling against his face, unfazed and then walks over to the remaining 2 webbed miners and cuts them loose, revealing men on the edge of death, covered in black veins. Grunt channels his divinity and gives everyone below half health a surge of healing, perking them up dramatically.
 - The dwarves have them clear the danger zone around the crevasse and bring the ceiling down with a bunch of mining charges, a big stalactite slams down and plugs the fissure along with a heap of rubble.
 - After this happens and the dust settles, Cheetos leaps off of Coinclinkz shoulder and runs over to the wall, where the dwarves blasted, and begins chirping and jumping, scrabbling against it, looking up. Coinclinkz follows where she is looking and sees that some sort of worked stone doorway flanked by scrollwork pillars, that was previously encased in rock high on the wall, has been revealed. 
 - The dwarves zipline down from the ceiling, rush to the third webbed body that was drank by the colossal spider and find their fourth comrade, Carl, now drained and deceased.
 - Cheetos climbs up the wall to the revealed doorway, Coinclinkz’ eyes roll back in his head as he switches to seeing through her senses to inspect the door, and he sees there is a barricade over it covered in arcane script. While he doesn’t initially recognise the language, it swims before his eyes and resolves into a language he can comprehend. It says “Let it be known that this place has been sealed by The Stars of David, on the holy mandate of the divine one, let none enter this pagan temple.” He can sense that this is the place he was being drawn to over the last few days.
 [End of session]
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 ![[Messianic Marches.png]]
 The region that [[Nihilus Creatatus]] is currently based in.
 #### Notable Locations:
 - [[New New New Jerusalem]]
 - The [[Shadowed Tangle]]
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 The town in which [[Nihilus Creatatus]] has based their franchise, located in the [[Messianic Marches]] on the continent of Mythrael; it is a relatively young, bustling frontier town in a developing region, ruled over by Baron Benjamin Eisenberg. The town has abundant farmlands to the south that take advantage of the unnaturally fertile lands surrounding the Shadowed Tangle forest.
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 Home village of the [[Grippli]] of the [[Shadowed Tangle]], visited in [[Entry 1]] by [[Nihilus Creatatus]], known to possess healing waters that flow through it into various pools that help to sustain its people.
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 Forest located in the [[Messianic Marches]], home to [[Thaddeus Bramble]], the [[Grippli]] of [[Rootbound Chorus]], and previous worksite of the [[Crimson Carrion]] franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]].
 The forest has an arcane wellspring under it that was previously tapped using the [[Crystal Drill]], destabilizing the region and destroying the previous incarnations of [[New New New Jerusalem]].
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 The nicer of two Inns in [[New New New Jerusalem]], historically held a local field office for [[Verdant Expansion Co]]'s Crimson Carrion franchise.
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 ![[Crystal Drill.jpg]]
 The magical extraction apparatus reverse engineered by [[Alistair Venn]], that could potentially be used to re tap the arcane wellspring under the Shadowed Tangle Forest, in the [[Messianic Marches]]. The drill was seized by [[Nihilus Creatatus]] in [[Entry 2]] and destroyed by [[Thaddeus Bramble]] to ensure the safety of the region.
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 %% Begin Waypoint %%
- [[Joffrey's Diary/Session 1]]
+- [[Session 1]]
- [[Session 2]]
+- [[Joffrey's Diary/Session 2]]
 - [[Session 3]]
 - [[Session 4]]
 - [[Session 5.5 (Notes)]]
@@ -16,5 +16,6 @@
 - [[Session 13 (Notes)]]
 - [[Session 14 (Notes)]]
 - [[Session 15 (Notes)]]
 - [[Session 16 (Notes)]]
 %% End Waypoint %%
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 16/5/2026
 - Session opens with the party still in the arena, having just defeated Vocath’s 3 arena challenge rounds; Joffrey is on the ground unconscious and Cinnamon the dog is completely dead.
 - A Solar dragon being ridden by an astral elf has just burst through the glass dome over the arena and landed on the floor. The elf dismounts, raises the faceplate of her helm and the party can see that she looks like princess Xedali (It’s her twin sister, Xelith); she complements them condescendingly on winning 3 fights in a row without rest. Through the damaged dome the party can see a fleet of star moths on orbit of Vocath’s station.
 - She proclaims that she’s here for her sister, demands that she be given to her now, and the party can faintly hear a pained gurgling from Joffrey, as a bloody froth trickles from his mouth. Squelch uses lay on hands and heals Joffrey for half health, he sits up and delicately dabs his face clean with a silken handkerchief, seeing the dragon and elf for the first time.
 - “Hello, is it me you’re looking for ?” He says to the princess, “are you here to give us some medals?”.
 - She says she is here for her sister, Joffrey asks if she means Toopla, she firmly restates she is there for Xedali. He rolls this word around in his mouth, repeating it, pretending he’s never heard it before. Squelch asks if she means “Ze Deli ?” And points to an ethnic meat vendor in the crowd, selling Gabagool and soft cheeses, among other things.
 - They further try and obfuscate and tell her that their interactions with elves haven’t been great, so they generally try and stay away from them. While these antics are going on, Captain Garglinale starts casually walking towards the perimeter of the arena and Joffrey sends him a mental message, telling him to get aboard the ship and flee with Xedali.
 - Xelith suddenly points at Garglinale and says that she knows that he captured her and has her; Joffrey lies and tells her to leave his servants out of this, Garglinale is just a poor castaway from a debris field that they nursed back to health, he’s now his manservant. Xelith brushes this aside and yells at Garglinale, demanding to see her sister. Joffrey acts shocked and say “Your name is Garglinale !?” And is ignored.
 - Squelch says she should let them leave while she deal with Garglinale; just then, a voice can be magically heard around the arena stating that the party should give them what they want, they better not turn his arena into a crumbling mess, or there will be consequences! (it's Vocath). He can be seen in his arena box, surrounded by a forcefield, sipping wine and glaring down at them.
 - The party is incredulous and says that he seems to be acting pretty weak and tries to incriminate him, suggesting that he was going to join them and attack the Astral Elves and their imperial citadel. He scoffs, but sits down quietly and adjusts the tint on his forcefield, turning it into a mirror finish and discontinuing his broadcast.
 - The party are conferring quielty and looking concerned, there doesn't really seem to be a way out of this situation; just then Garglinale starts to run for the arena wall and Squelch attempts to cast Hold Person on him, to Joffrey's dismay. Fortunately Garglinale resists this and Joffrey casts Darkness on him to help him escape by making him harder to hit as he Spider Climbs up the wall at a sprint.
 - The solar dragon fires a breath weapon at him and hits him for massive damage, even with the darkness spell obscuring him; Joffrey suggests to Autismus to cast Darkness as well, overlapping the spheres, then moving them apart creating two targets for the dragon, possibly confusing it and letting Garglinale escape. He agrees and casts his spell, beginning to move them apart, as Bubba approaches Joffrey and drops to his knees by Cinnammon, lamenting her death; Joffrey kneels beside him and whispers in his ear, telling him that this is all Dave's fault and he is so sorry that Dave has done this to him.
 - The dragon recharges and fires again at Xedali's urging, fortunately shooting the wrong sphere of Darkness, allowing Garglinale to escape; Joffrey cries out and says "oh no, they killed Garglinale, he's been disintegrated!" hoping to confuse them further.
 - As this scene is unfolding, a voice loudly cries out behind them "Stop this!" and Xedali appears, floating down into the arena beside them. Xelith waves the dragon back and it sits down, she greets her sister and asks if she's come to surrender herself. Xedali asks if they are ok and looks over their battered appearances, as Joffrey and Autismus quickly heal themselves. She says she is here to diffuse the situation and that everything is going to be ok, before she starts walking over to her sister and the dragon.
 - Joffrey follows and the rest of the party join her in walking towards Xelith. When they are part way there, Joffrey receives a sending, it's Xedali, and she tells him that he has to take her ring, she dropped it in the sand behind her so her sister wouldnt get it and she says she has to surrender now to save them.
 - Arriving in front of Xelith, Xedali says that she is surrendering and that they must leave this place now, her sister is triumphant, tells her it is for the best, seizes her and re mounts the dragon, flying away.
 - As soon as they are out of line of sight, Joffrey turns and sprints, then flings himself on his hands and knees, desperately feeling around in the sand for the ring, yelling out that he thinks he dropped a coin when he went down earlier. He finds it and hides it in his coat, he tries it on quickly to see if anything happens, it doesnt, and he hides it again.
 - Vocath reveals himself again and says condescendingly that they handles the situation well, possibly saving a lot of ships and damage to his fortress; Joffrey agrees and says that Vocath should pay them a percentage of the damage that was avoided due to their actions. Squelch scoffs at Vocath and says that he isn't much of a merchant prince, he didnt do anything, he was a coward. Joffrey chimes in and says that this is why he is only a merchant prince, instead of a merchant KING, popping his collar and is ignored by Vocath.
 - Vocath tells them that there will be a meeting of all the faction representatives in 1 hour in his chambers and that they should be there, then teleports away as the party continues to make jibes at him.
 - Joffrey continues to complain that there aren't any rewards for winning the arena fight etc, Squelch tells him to shut up, at least they are alive, Joffrey says "yes, but how many days of your life do you want to live, being poor...?". Joffrey offers the party 10gp in wages each for doing a good job in the arena fight, Squelch throws them on the ground and Autismus tries to slap him and he's quite happy to take the money back if they are rejecting it.
 - As they are moving to leave, Joffrey puts an arm around Bubba and consoles him about the death of Cinnamon, taking out his locket with the symbol of the goddess Waukeen on it, saying a brief rite over the dog's corpse, before tossing it in the bag of holding. Bubba asks if they can have a viking burial for her and send her off into space on a flaming barge, but Joffrey says that they might be able to bring her back, there is still hope; Dave may have failed them, but they might be able to find someone that can help them.
 - Bubba says they need some info, they should go to the men's gallery and Joffrey says yes, he should go investigate those leads and gives him 20gp to get rid of him for a while. Squelch and Autismus settle down for a short rest on the docks while Bubba and Joffrey walk off in opposite directions.
 - Bubba finds a ship full of Thri-Kreen, mantis people, and tries to talk to them, but they speak in insectoid clicks and strange noises and pretend they can't understand him, snubbing him. He tries to make bug sounds back at them, not speaking their language, and just racially offends them as he makes finger guns and winks, walking off.
 - Joffrey arrives at a ship full of Hadozee monkey men, none of them look dodgy or like necromancers or herbalists so he ignores them and keeps moving, trying to stay on task and ignore the merchants.
 - He arrives at a lizardfolk ship and these definitely appear more shady and like they may suit his needs; they have cybernetics and some are dressed in shaman or warlock outfits. He approaches them and asks if they might know where he can find goods and or services that may be less than legal in many star systems. They ask what is less than legal and he says he is interested in necromancy, poisons etc but the Lizardfolk are unbothered and are happy to talk about them.
 - An old crone lizardfolk woman comes out, she has a cybernetic arm and a rotten cloak, she’s covered with talismans etc. Joffrey asks if she knows much about necromancy and such and she says she knows everything about death and decay. He asks her if she can raise Cinnamon, she says she can but the soul has moved on, Joffrey doesn’t really care about that and asks her for whatever is cheapest, as long as it will move around and be about as playful as before. She says that considering it’s in a wheelchair, it probably will be about as playful… 
 - He asks for some poison or a paralysing agent that would be capable of disabling “a big green rat”, referring to Squelch, as he thinks about acquiring the second elven ring, now that he has the first, and is worried about him interfering.
 - They discuss payment, the lizards aren’t interested in regular currency or precious metals, they are interested in death and decay. Joffrey offers them the brain of a dead intellect devourer that is starting to decay and they perk up at this and agree to the deal, selling him a Torpor Poison and raising Cinnamon as a zombie dog who now has 3 working legs.
 - He gives the dog a pat and is very pleased with himself that he’s fixed her, proudly walking off to find Bubba and present Cinnamon to him.
 - Bubba comes across a ship of Aarakocra (Bird People) and approaches them, desperately trying to find someone to gamble with as his gambling addiction kicks in. He tries to talk to them about how fast their ship and break the ice, before asking them to gamble, but they are sort of hippy people by nature and aren’t interested. They tell him they don’t know of anyone in the area that is running any gambling events and he tells them this place fucking sucks, getting very frustrated.
 - The aarakocra observe that he isn’t from around there and must not be part of the crew on the next ship over, that appears to be feral looking halflings. He is crestfallen that they don’t know him, as he just fought in the arena and won 3 rounds. He leaves and heads back to the party on the ship, where Squelch is resting on the deck with his lizard steed.
 - When he arrives, Joffrey says there is someone there that is excited to meet him and proudly presents zombie Cinnamon, saying he has accomplished what Dave couldn’t. Autismus is horrified and points out everything that is wrong with this situation, Squelch screams that its the evil undead, but Bubba is very happy to see his dog and picks them up and puts them on his shoulders. Autismus vomits and the zombie dog goes over and eats it, to his disgust.
 - Joffrey takes Bubba aside and qualifies that Squelch has always been a bit funny about Cinnamon, but he might be even less amenable now that she is undead, being a paladin, and maybe he should keep them away from him. He dusts off his hands, says he’s done his good deed for the day and walks off towards his quarters.
 - Autismus has an aside and says a quick prayer to Dave, updating him and complaining about the undead dog.
 - They hear the tones to signify that Vocath’s meeting with the representatives is starting and they hustle over, with Squelch riding his lizard into the chambers.
 - Vacath tries to throw the party under the bus, says that he has convened this meeting on their behalf, don’t look at him, he’s just a facilitator “have at it” and everyone in the room looks at the party. Autismus cringes away and doesn’t like people looking at him, Joffrey loves the attention and basks in it, Squelch stands on top of his lizard and tries to address the crowd and inspire them to attack the space elves. Joffrey says quietly behind his hand that they haven’t had anything to do with the elves in this start system and are probably nonplussed about them, just happy that they have taken their princess and gone away. True to form, the crowd are listening but not really sure what he wants from them.
 - In Uncle Sam style, Squelch says that he wants all of them “We want you, you and YOU to join us in our fight”.
 - In the crowd there are clans of Hadozee, Thri-Kreen, Aarakocra, Feral Halflings that are greek, and the cybernetic lizardfolk (Saurians) with the old crone necromancer as their leader; they all seem blank and uninterested so far.
 - Squelch tries talking about the elves wealth being theirs if they wish to take it, but only the Hadozee perk up and Joffrey turns around, now excited and listening. He continues to work this point and says they could all get rich, except Vocath, fuck that guy, he’s got enough.
 - Joffrey chimes in and tries to make it clearer that what Squelch is saying is that there is an existential threat hanging over all of their heads, and that is the elves. “That’s right and they’re coming for YOU!” Squelch bursts out and Autismus starts performing sign language, as their translator for the hard of hearing in the crowd.
 - They start trying to whip up the crowd and continue to express how powerful the elves showed themselves to be there today, surrounding and threatening the fortress, while Vacath was as useful as a mewling child, hiding himself away. They tell them about how all of their races are buying overpriced garbage goods from him and he’s set himself up to have a monopoly over trade in this system and keeps them fighting each other.
 - Vacath isn’t very happy that they are trying to turn the crowd against him, but also is too much of a coward to step in and do anything. Bubba is handing out leaflets into the crowd as they are talking. They continue to rail against him and tell the crowd that he’s done nothing but take everything from them and he’s got them frightened of him, when he’s pathetic and can’t stand up to a couple of elven women. Squelch talks about his garbage goods, rusting armour, glow sticks etc. Autismus calls him a “notorious pussy” and keeps signing to the crowd.
 - Joffrey jumps on top of a crate and starts giving a very impassioned speech, saying that “they can burn the lands and boil the seas, but they can never take the skies from us, brothers, they can never take our freedom!”
 - Some of the crowd are starting to talk amongst themselves and a hadozee representative approaches them, asking what would be required of them and what they would stand to gain. Joffrey says there would be a profit share in toppling one of the most powerful races in the astral sea; he says that they would be perfect for logistics for their fleets and offers them sole rights to the trade of war materials, provided they can maintain an adequate supply and don’t price gouge.
 - He goes on to say that if they are successful and the hadozee refuse to assist them, they will be denied trade in all alliance ports. The hadozee are on the fence and say that if they had more followers, they might be interested in joining up, but continue to grumble.
 - Joffrey is growing tired of this bickering and noncommittal talk and pulls out a platinum rod, shouting to the room that the first faction to join them will receive it and the greedy hadozee turn around and immediately agree to join. He starts handing out contracts and asks for their pledge in writing, says that they can have exclusive trade rights if they can satisfy demand, otherwise they reserve the right to take their business elsewhere.
 - Having locked in the merchant race, he encourages the rest of the party to go and talk to the other factions and see if they can find common interests. Squelch goes off to the talk to the lizardfolk and Bubba goes to talk to the feral halflings.  
 - Bubba tells them that if they say them fight in the arena, they would have seen only a small portion of the power that Joffrey could grant them. They are quizzical and ask if Bubba always does what Joffrey says and he says no, but it’s bordering on a lie. They ask him what happened to his dog, they saw it die and Bubba tries to deflect them and says that they are mistaken, it’s actually evolved after that battle and no longer needs a wheelchair.
 - The greek halflings tell him they are keen for benefits and ask what they will get out of it, Bubba says “oh you like benefits ? Well you can get some Centrelink, well, it’s called Joffreylink and you can get 1000 Joffrey-bucks and there is room on the ship for you”. They clarify that they have their own ship and it has a fully sick sound system, they don’t need the party’s ship. In any case, Bubba succeeds in persuading them to join in the battles and they are keen for the promise of benefits.
 - Squelch tries to talk to a lizard man that is blankly licking his eyes in front of him, asking him what he would need to do to convince them to come on board with this venture. Lizard man says they are pretty impressed with the party’s combat prowess, but why would they abandon this system to join a foreign war when they are close to dominating this one.
 - Squelch suggests they are under Vocath’s control, but they scoff at this and say that he is only an arms dealer. Squelch explains that they clearly need him, otherwise if they were truly strong they’d be able to pillage all the neighbouring races without him. They are still unconvinced about why they should fight the space elves when there are none in this system. He tells them that the elves are coming, they’ve just proved it by showing up and walking all over them.
 - Autismus supports him and says that if the elves come, there won’t be a single egg in their hatcheries that will be unharmed by the conflict. He takes out an egg and crushes it in his hand and says “This would be your babies.” He says “you don’t want the space ethnics to get all the rewards, do you?”. The lizard men say they have just about got them all crushed and they don’t even make good zombies. Autismus nods and says they don’t even make good tzatziki. The lizard men say they do make good tzatziki when you cut them up and put them in it.
 - Squelch says they should join the war effort and they can promise them mass casualties and all the war crime tzatziki they want. As the finish successfully convincing the lizardfolk to join them, the loud sounds of celebration, Zorba music and smashing plates can be heard from the greek halfling delegation, as Bubba is dancing with them and they have Joffrey raised up on a chair, bouncing him as he plays the flute.
 - Autismus asks the lizard men to teach him that tongue trick and starts trying to lick his own eye.
 - Squelch pats his lizard mount’s scales and they change colours like sequins being tilted on different angles.
 - Aarakocra approach Joffrey and ask him what their history is with these Astral Elves, Joffrey explains that they attacked their planet, destroying his bank and causing all his belongings to fall into a big chasm created by giant vines. The aarakocra say they have heard about these vines before and they are very destructive. Joffrey says that they are about to go through a change of government and become far more destructive, as the very angry elf woman that they met earlier at the arena is going to become their new leader if they don’t stop them.
 - The bird people agree that they are a scourge on the universe and they agree to join forces against them if the party is going to have a large enough fleet to threaten them. They agree to join as it seems that everyone here is more or less on board at this stage.
 - Joffrey approaches the Thri-Kreen, the mantis people, as no one else wants to try and talk to them, and he asks if they’ve seen the light and the way things are going in this room, will they join them, too ? The lead mantis person is holding an object and he starts clicking and making bug noises for about 30 seconds, then the orb flashes and, in common, it says “indeed”.
 - It clicks and continues making more bug noises for a long time, then the universal translator conveys that their only interest is food. Joffrey asks what they consider to be food, they say “anything” and he says that should be fairly easy to arrange them something to eat and he’s confused why they would be worried about that if they will eat anything.
 - The bugs tell him that they aren’t interested in the petty squabbles that have been going on in this system and they are happy that the party is getting the factions to leave on this quest, leaving all the planets for them to acquire food from. They say that due to the ongoing calamity in this region, food has been becoming more scarce as the hunting grounds shrink due to the planets cooling. Joffrey asks why would they want to stay here and have all these planets that are dying, he could help them find a new, better planet somewhere else to live on.
 - He says that if they stay here, they will be able to hunt for as long as they want, but as long as they want will likely only be a few years before the black hole consumes their worlds and they will all die out.
 - The bugs think about this for a while, it’s quite an alien concept to them, they agree to send their next generation with them to support them. 
 - Joffrey turns around to look at Vocath across the room and says to himself “it’s time for the smug face” and gives him a self congratulatory grin.
 - Vacate sulkily says that he isn’t part of anything that is happening here, his station isn’t a staging ground.. however they are free to peruse his wares and buy whatever they like.
 - The party have a brief chat, Squelch says they will need a lot of stuff to fight a war and Joffrey suggests that they shouldn’t buy from Vocath, he’s an asshole that holds a monopoly out here in the middle of nowhere and they can buy things elsewhere.
 - Joffrey addresses Vocath and says that their bargaining power has just increased dramatically now that they have the backing of the races of this system. Vocath denies this and says their bargaining power is the same, he says that they will need to outfit this army with ships and weapons etc and Joffrey rebukes him and says he doesn’t want Vocath’s garbage, he’s seen his wares and there was nothing of quality or interest. Vocath says that these were only display models, he has wares stored elsewhere and Joffrey starts thinking there might be a warehouse or supply depot they can raid, but Vocath clarifies that he has dimensional storage and can pull ships etc from it.
 - Squelch says to Vocath that his offer still stands and he will give him 100 gold for his “rusty armour” (magic armour) he had on display, that he’d previously tried to charge 2000 gold for; this is rejected again and vocath refers to him as a funny little green thing.
 - The party has another brief aside after Vocath says his offer still stands and he will help them in exchange for salvage rights of the astral elve’s Imperial Citadel, but Joffrey says this is unacceptable, they can’t give him access to a super weapon that is capable of draining planets and ascension. Squelch asks what the harm is if they are planning on destroying it, he won’t be able to use it, but Joffrey believes its too dangerous, it could be repaired/restored and they currently don’t even have a plan on how they could destroy it anyway. They’ll circle back to that problem and the deal with Vocath, they can maybe work on a deal for basic goods etc with their new logistics expert monkey men instead to get them going. 
 - Autismus sourly says that he’d sooner trust the greeks than the monkey men, he just doesn’t like em. Joffrey brings up their resources and says they don't have anything of real value to give vocath anyway, limited money and items. Autismus starts inventorying the other factions resources. Aarakocra have 6 ships, halflings have 5 ships, lizard people have 6 ships, thri-kreen ellusively are providing their "next generation" but dont mention ships or ship counts, monkey people have 4 space galleons. Joffrey asks if any of them produce anything, but no, they are the remnants of their civilisations that only consume goods that vocath provides, locked in conflicts. He suggests that they need to find someone that produces things so that they have a reliable source of goods at non egregious prices.
 - Joffrey counsels that they have profited immensely in ammassing the fleet that they have, they don't need to be greedy and push their luck trying to weedle vocath out of goods, because they will come out second best and only waste resources. The party starts talking about where to go to marshal their fleet, they eventually decide on the Rock of Braal as a good neutral, central location with a port and resources. The monkey men can handle all the logistics and establish supply lines and Joffrey suggests placing Captain Garglinale in charge of the fleet as their admiral, due to him having previous experience in fleet command. They can collect Tiefstein Tower as well, to add another ship to their fleet.
 - Joffrey calls a vote on what their next step is and they all resolve to head to the Rock of Braal and leave the fleet some distance away in the same system so it isnt threatening the port. He suggests that now that things are in motion and they will need all their resources for the trials ahead, he will probably need to do a full audit of everything they have onboard the ship.
 - They are going to have a week long journey ahead to perform down time activities, Joffrey is likely going to be experimenting with prayers to The Endless, in defiance of Dave, adjusting his spells in his ring of spell storing, plotting and scheming and inspecting Xedali's ring.
 - Autismus is going to spend some time praying to Dave and wants to research why his imp hasn't returned and can't be summoned.
 - Bubba is keen to get back to Jahn, hand in the giant fish head and hopefully join the fishers guild.
 - Squelch wants to get some information on their home planet and see how that is going and if the Astral Elves have finished destroying it yet. He also wants to check in on the Dragon Queen and her asteroid/ship and also collect his magic hammer from the Scrapjacks on the Rock/see where they have gotten up to with it.
 - They all agree they will need to try and get more information about the Imperial Citadel of the space elves.
Author	SHA1	Message	Date
kye	d8122481d3	vault backup: 2026-07-25 21:13:01	2026-07-25 21:13:01 +10:00
Matthew Rowbottom	75f23f65ee	vault backup: 2026-07-24 16:07:14	2026-07-24 16:07:14 +10:00
Matthew Rowbottom	56100e81cb	vault backup: 2026-07-24 16:00:34	2026-07-24 16:00:34 +10:00
Matthew Rowbottom	ba5b944588	vault backup: 2026-07-24 15:58:33	2026-07-24 15:58:33 +10:00
kye	225dac223c	vault backup: 2026-06-30 21:32:44	2026-06-30 21:32:44 +10:00
kye	ebe407eeee	vault backup: 2026-06-30 19:13:08	2026-06-30 19:13:08 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	635a215e4b	vault backup: 2026-06-27 12:54:57	2026-06-27 12:54:57 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	d1015e35fb	vault backup: 2026-06-26 21:11:33	2026-06-26 21:11:33 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	02b202df81	vault backup: 2026-06-26 21:10:16	2026-06-26 21:10:16 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	6b66bda945	vault backup: 2026-06-23 22:08:48	2026-06-23 22:08:48 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	facba829dd	vault backup: 2026-06-23 22:07:18	2026-06-23 22:07:18 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	f9a020cf81	vault backup: 2026-06-23 22:05:55	2026-06-23 22:05:55 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	ba972b4ce8	vault backup: 2026-06-23 22:05:16	2026-06-23 22:05:16 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	ff6e2a4e69	vault backup: 2026-06-21 19:00:33	2026-06-21 19:00:33 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	263a676203	vault backup: 2026-06-21 18:52:42	2026-06-21 18:52:42 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	1ffe6f88f3	vault backup: 2026-06-21 18:35:31	2026-06-21 18:35:31 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	f00f414b92	vault backup: 2026-06-21 18:33:46	2026-06-21 18:33:46 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	69374beeef	vault backup: 2026-06-21 18:30:18	2026-06-21 18:30:18 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	c3a58855f1	vault backup: 2026-06-21 14:04:23	2026-06-21 14:04:23 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	872b4969ae	vault backup: 2026-06-21 13:54:11	2026-06-21 13:54:11 +10:00
Matt Rowbottom	2db5d53176	vault backup: 2026-06-21 11:55:12	2026-06-21 11:55:12 +10:00
Matthew Rowbottom	78294e4a13	vault backup: 2026-06-21 00:26:56	2026-06-21 00:26:56 +10:00
Matthew Rowbottom	ce45862776	vault backup: 2026-06-21 00:26:17	2026-06-21 00:26:17 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	d31b32ad37	vault backup: 2026-06-11 17:03:13	2026-06-11 17:03:13 +10:00
Joe Bloggs	1504410a0e	vault backup: 2026-06-11 17:03:03	2026-06-11 17:03:03 +10:00
		`@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@`
							`The first failed franchise that was founded by [[Gnomeo]], [[Spastica Autistica]], [[Kremit Croakbane]] and [[Coinclinkz]].`

							`Gnomeo tricked them in to forming the franchise, under him as the CEO, as a means to steal their savings and flee the country; the franchise fell behind on fees and was promptly put up for fast resale by [[Acquisitions Inc]] head office. It was purchased by [[Grunt Roarson]] and rebranded as [[Nihilus Creatatus]].`
		`@@ -0,0 +1 @@`
							`The town in which [[Nihilus Creatatus]] has based their franchise, located in the [[Messianic Marches]] on the continent of Mythrael; it is a relatively young, bustling frontier town in a developing region, ruled over by Baron Benjamin Eisenberg. The town has abundant farmlands to the south that take advantage of the unnaturally fertile lands surrounding the Shadowed Tangle forest.`
		`@@ -0,0 +1 @@`
							`Home village of the [[Grippli]] of the [[Shadowed Tangle]], visited in [[Entry 1]] by [[Nihilus Creatatus]], known to possess healing waters that flow through it into various pools that help to sustain its people.`
		`@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@`
							`Forest located in the [[Messianic Marches]], home to [[Thaddeus Bramble]], the [[Grippli]] of [[Rootbound Chorus]], and previous worksite of the [[Crimson Carrion]] franchise of [[Verdant Expansion Co]].`

							`The forest has an arcane wellspring under it that was previously tapped using the [[Crystal Drill]], destabilizing the region and destroying the previous incarnations of [[New New New Jerusalem]].`
		`@@ -0,0 +1 @@`
							`The nicer of two Inns in [[New New New Jerusalem]], historically held a local field office for [[Verdant Expansion Co]]'s Crimson Carrion franchise.`
		`@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@`
							`![[Crystal Drill.jpg]]`
							`The magical extraction apparatus reverse engineered by [[Alistair Venn]], that could potentially be used to re tap the arcane wellspring under the Shadowed Tangle Forest, in the [[Messianic Marches]]. The drill was seized by [[Nihilus Creatatus]] in [[Entry 2]] and destroyed by [[Thaddeus Bramble]] to ensure the safety of the region.`