The Third Adventure

[acodispo]

"Thanks, Noh, that was a close one! I agree with Dougal. Let's leaf!"

Head home by the obvious route, and we shan't even stop for snacks!

[mushgnome]

XP Totals

I awarded an XP bonus for assisting Ursa with her research. Including the Beetle and Tunnel Thug encounters, your new XP totals are:

Tet 1566
Willie 732/732
Dougal 1455
Noh 619
Kiplyn 619
Dame Simonetta 729

Please visit the OOC thread for an important announcement: http://forum.immersiveink.com/viewtopic ... 494#p32494

[mushgnome]

Our Heroes find themselves in need of a couple week's worth of R&R. Please feel free to write a paragraph or three describing how you spend that time. You don't need to just sit around the Pancake House; if you'd like, you can ride the ol' turnip truck on a sightseeing tour of Lovecraft Country New England. For example, maybe you'd like to go to Arkham and visit the petting zoo.

For those of you who have accumulated Mythos points, here is a house rule for your consideration: Hobbets have resilient mental health and can bounce back from nearly any trauma. During down-time between adventures, you may choose (if you wish) to reset your MYTH to 0, as you mentally "come to terms with" the unpleasant memories of your adventure. This is all or nothing, not a granular decision, so you couldn't for example reduce your MYTH from 5 to 2. @acodispo, @ehiker133, @kipper: Please let me know if you want to take advantage of this Mythos-reset.

This is in addition to the standard Cthulhu Dark rule: Once your MYTH hits 5, you gain the ability, you can choose to decrease your MYTH in 1-step increments, by destroying or suppressing mythos evidence.

[kipper]

Dame Simonetta doesn't have any big plans, unless any young hobbet stalwarts need her along whether they know it or not to keep them out of trouble! Otherwise, she'll wear her nice clothes and reign in the common room of the pancake house.

I won't be taking advantage (yet) of the house rule to reset her MYTH to 0.

[acodispo]

Over the weeks, Willie spends plenty of time in the Pancake House, helping out, and eating his fill (of course).

He also spends some time in the countryside, hiking along the shores of the reservoir, spelunking in some of his old cave-haunts. But he does not return home for a visit. And while he invites his friends & comrades on these jaunts, he is just as likely to be solitary, wandering alone in the cold mists of morning, staring out over the dark waters, peering into dark holes in the earth...

Willie will be keeping his precious MYTHOS point for now.

[ehiker133]

Dougal spends his resting time sitting in front of the fire and thinking about the creatures they've come upon, especially the creature inside the pit demanding the "salt water".

He tries to dig back through his memory, wondering if he'd ever heard any stories about such a thing. (Dougal retains his MYTHOS points, as well...)

[mushgnome]

The calendar fades to mid-December, and it's a cheerful winter scene in the village of Hornpipe. Everything is covered in a soft blanket of snow, and the townsfolk burn candles in every window to hold back the long nights. Most of the Humans have an insufferable attitude toward Hobbets, but a few of them aren't half-bad, and from time to time, the House of Pancakes will even get a Human customer, curious to try the exotic cuisine. And Frederick VIII does not disappoint! He has a knack for reinterpreting classic Hobbit recipes with new ingredients that are non-threatening to the Human palette. For example instead of whole bran, he uses refined white flour. Instead of cow's milk butter he serves a tub of weird greasy stuff called 'marjeryn.' Instead of syrup made from the sap of the maple tree, he provides a super-sweet and sticky syrup made from corn dregs (waste product from the town distillery). And the Humans love it!!

From time to time, the druid Ursa surfaces from the dungeon for a hot meal and conversation with her old pal Frederick. Her research is going well, and she is proud to say, with the help of all that rope, she is exploring new heights and depths of the Grand Chasm system, and discovering routes unknown to previous generations of Adventurer. Ursa provides excellent medical care to Dame Simonetta and the other injured Hobbets, and soon everyone is back to full strength.

Frederick negotiates with his landlord, the Miller Hornpipe, and rents out an unused storage room on the second floor of the Windmill atop Hornpipe Hill (next door to the House of Pancakes). This space becomes Hobbet Headquarters, so our dignified Heroes can set up cots and don't have to sleep on the floor of the restaurant. Once they get used to it, the constant wooden creaking of the windmill is sort of relaxing, like being on a ship at sea. The party druids Noh and Potty set up a laboratory where they can research potions. The raven Carc spends endless hours relaxing on his perch, hypnotized by the spinning blades of the windmill.

Any questions or conversation for Frederick, Ursa, or the Human townsfolk?

[mushgnome]

Dougal spends his resting time sitting in front of the fire and thinking about the creatures they've come upon, especially the creature inside the pit demanding the "salt water".

He tries to dig back through his memory, wondering if he'd ever heard any stories about such a thing. (Dougal retains his MYTHOS points, as well...)

Dougal digs back through his memory, and remembers a story by the human author Jools Worm. In the story, a group of adventurers set sail from Kingsport on a ship called the Nautilus, that magically travels under the sea! In one of the most memorable chapters, the Nautilus is attacked by a whale-sized creature with saucer eyes, many tentacles, and a sharp beak that can tear flesh to shreds.

Dougal feels that the sea monster from the Jools Worm story, and the Creature in the Pit, share a kinship.

Dougal gives a disinterested shrug as he realizes, this knowledge isn't particularly triggering or scary to him, as it would be to the average Hobbet. Dougal kind of suspected tentacle beasts would be on the menu, when he signed up for the Adventurer's life. He's cool with it.

Normally when a player asks a Mythos-related question, my question back would be: Are you willing to risk your Sanity to know the answer? However in your case I already know you are game for it so let's roll the dice.

Dougal's MYTH score is 2, so he has a 2-in-6 chance to know Mythos lore. However, if he rolls a 6, then it triggers a SAN check.

Dougal rolls 1d6=2, so he both knows the answer (low roll is good), and doesn't go (further) insane.

However, your devious DM rules, that Dougal couldn't possibly know this creature's exact identity, as 1) it is unique, and 2) has been imprisoned for a looooooong time. So I'll just give you a hint.

[mgtremaine]

Kiplyn is happy to have made it out alive, and with gold in his purse to boot. "That was a lot more interesting then harvesting cabbage". He would spend the time thinking about the caves below, eating, checking his adventuring gear, replacing his used torches, and finding nicely formed sling stones. "Maybe I should get a sword like all them heroes in the stories. He says to no one in particular one day.

[mushgnome]

OOC: We probably won't go back into the dungeon until after the new year, but I have a fun idea for a low-stress holiday one-shot. Some of you might remember for example, one year I did a "trolls vs goblins" type of thing.

Stay tuned...