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The A-Team has been travelling to Biel, the capital city of Iounin, in order to seek a wizard’s assistance identifying the nature of a mysterious goblin artifact. On the road, the party came across a group of mercenaries hired by the Hearing House, the governing body of Iounin whose headquarters is in Biel, to drive out goblins in the south due reports of increasing unrest among the tribes. The A-Team discovered the tribe the mercenaries pursued was peaceful and killed the mercenaries in retaliation, taking the Hearing House contract off of one of the bodies.

After a close encounter with Klaas, a powerful hobgoblin mage who has been pushing for the uniting of the goblins against the empire, the party arrived at Biel. Shadyboi attempted to forge a duplicate contract, but it didn’t pass scrutiny. The guards at the gate took the forgery and said they’d validate it with the Grand Chancellor of the Hearing House, Marianne Ravenswood. The party agreed to this, but instead of staying at The Fisherman’s Inn in the Merchant District as they’d agreed, they paid for rooms at The Dragon’s Hide, a seedier inn found in lower Wakenat.

Shadyboi, finally in a larger city, peeled off from the group to seek out some information. Attempting to tap into the criminal underbelly of the city, he struck up a conversation with two kenku whom he came across in a seedy tavern called the Hog’s Head. After inquiring about with whom he might meet to get some side work, they told him to seek out someone named Jabari, a tiefling who prefers to conduct his meetings in the tavern/casino, The Squalid Squid.

Upon arrival, Brottor locked himself away in his room. Shelby and Shump decided to get some food and look for the local magic shop, but when they invited Brottor, he declined to join them, only opening his door a crack to address them and then quickly shutting it again.

Shelby, in an attempt to keep up their ruse to the guards, paid for a few rooms for several nights at the Fisherman’s Inn to provide them cover, even bribing the desk clerk to confirm that they were staying there, but had just stepped out.

With that settled, and with Shadyboi rejoining the group, they all made their way, much to Shump’s chagrin, to Maloo’s Magnetic Marvels, the local magic shop. Inside, they met not Maloo, but a gnome artificer named Pisa Lightsteel, who was watching the shop with his mechanical automaton Clankybones while Maloo was out running errands. 

The party was unable to afford the 200gp price of Identifying the totem, nor did they have any pearls on hand to trade in exchange. However, Pisa was willing to waive the fee if the party agreed to fetch some spell and potion components on which the shop’s stock was low. The party agreed on the additional condition that they also get a discount on healing potions since this would be a mission of some risk. Pisa agreed, the party purchased several potions and headed back to their rooms at the Dragon’s Hide to prepare for their journey to commence early the next morning.

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As you might guess, Oscar dropped out of the game. I have a few plans for how to write his character out without just having him completely vanish, but that will have to wait until they get back to town as they’re now going on a FETCH QUEST!

To be honest, I don’t have a really solid plan for what they’re going to do next. I know I want them to do a dungeon crawl because they haven’t done one yet, and I want Brandon to have a little more time with the totem…and that’s about all I’ve got. I’ll figure out more before our next session.

I’ve been sort of in a funk recently, and I’m not sure why. I generally like to plan a fair amount ahead in case the group ends up skipping something or going in an unexpected direction, but I’ve had a bit of a difficult time coming up with ideas. It may be that we’ve had to reschedule a few times, and I just really look forward to these games. I could also be that things have been stressful at work. Either way, I’m hoping it clears up soon.

On to brighter news, my wife and I found a gravity feeder of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Heroclix. We spent the past few days rebasing them onto 1×1 in buttons, and now I have a whole mess of new fantasy minis! And for a fraction of the price of D&D minis. I’m especially excited to get way more goblin and orc minis. I bought a really cheap zombies-and-soldiers toy set years and years ago, and they work in a pinch, but there’s something enjoyable about being able to look at a mini and say, “Yes. That’s a goblin.” Plus we’ve been using superhero Heroclix as our minis, which creates some humorous visuals to say the least.

Justin and Danae bought and painted their own minis a while back, and they look great. It honestly seems like way too much work, but I gotta admit it looks nice, and I like the idea of the customizability.

Anyway, next time, the A-Team goes on a quest for crocodile teeth, and giant crocodile eggs.

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