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Previously, Shelby and Shump were pursuing a pack of goblins through the Melritan Mountains when they encountered a firbolg named Kelkian Densebirch, a representative of the Hearing House in Biel. He was returning from official Hearing House business after being away for quite some time and and offered them a place to rest if they accompanied him to his nearby village. They agreed, and upon arrival, they met Rhass, Dormin, and Badger, themselves adventurers who had only just arrived at the village…along with another Kelkian who’d arrived a week or so earlier.

Greleth, the mayor of the village, attempted to interview the two doppelgangers to ascertain which might be the real one, but this was interrupted by a bugbear attack. After fending off the attack and taking one of the attackers prisoner, the party realized that one of the Kelkians vanished in the confusion. They attempted to track him, but were unsuccessful — any tracks he might have left trampled from the chaos of the invasion. Finding no further leads, they decided to turn in for the night.

The mayor woke Rhass in the night and, under the guise of seeking help, lured him out to the edge of town before attacking him, revealing she was actually a large, toad-like creature known as a slaad, a creature known for shapeshifting and laying eggs in the wounds of its victims. The adventurers managed to defeat the creature, and Rhass removed a gem embedded in the creature’s head to examine further later.

With the slaad defeated, they rushed to the mayor’s quarters and found her safely asleep, where she had been all night. They explained what had just transpired and all agreed they wanted to speak to Representative Kelkian next and investigate his quarters to see what the imposter might have been up to.

In their searches, they found official Hearing House documentation, written in a special code in Kelkian’s handwriting, and what appeared to be a partial key to break the Hearing House code in a different handwriting. Additionally they found a stone shaped like a shouting mouth, which Kelkian said he didn’t recognize.

The party then split up, with Rhass, Shelby, and Dormin going to speak to the nilbog prisoner while Badger and Shump went to investigate the woods near where they slew the slaad.

Rhass disguised himself as an albeit smaller version of the slaad to speak to the nilbog. It didn’t appear to recognize him and asked if he worked for Klaas — the goblin mage said to be stirring up goblin rebellions in the region. He revealed himself to be an enemy of Klaas, stating that he was only in the area to get the totem from Shump.

Badger and Shump, meanwhile, didn’t find any further threats, only a herd of deer. Badger slew one and had Shump help to haul it back to the inn.

Once everyone regrouped and shared what they’d found, they decided to rest and talk further in the morning. Waking in the late morning, the party gathered downstairs to enjoy breakfast, including deer sausage courtesy of Badger. Rhass puzzled over the strange mouth-shaped stone and performed a ritual to Detect Magic, which revealed evocation magic. Eventually, he realized this was, in fact, a sending stone.

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Everyone was here for this session! Holy smokes!

This was an unconventional session for me. I usually try to pace each session like a comicbook — character arcs or overarching events might get touched on, the “A” plot (or current quest/adventure/mission) is explored further, and there’s usually one good combat. This time, however, there was no combat. It was all just roleplay and investigating. I was a little worried they might get bored, and I think there might have been a handful of moments where one of the players tried to push everything along a bit faster, but overall I think I was able to keep things from getting too bogged down, and everyone did a great job RPing their investigation.

When games reach points like this, where there’s not necessarily a specific next step and the way forward is a bit nebulous, it can be tough to plan for a session. You have no idea what everyone might decide to do. I wrote out brief summaries of a handful things that they might pursue, plus a few adventure threads I could sow in if it seemed like things were dragging, and otherwise hoped I could improv my way through anything else. I’m happy to say that things worked well, and I didn’t find myself too out of my element at any point.

One of my favorite bits of the night was when the group came looking for the mayor, and were stopped by a guard — because of course a guard would stop a group of out-of-towners demanding to speak to the mayor in the middle of the night. I’ve been playing the firbolgs as quasi-US Midwestern/Canadian — shades of Fargo and Plankton’s wife Karen from Spongebob — having them be overly polite (almost passive aggressive at times) and overly verbose, which has led to a lot of fun roleplaying moments.

I decided that not all of the guards would necessarily know exactly what had transpired the previous day — it had all happened so fast, and the head of watch hadn’t been present for all of it — so as they were explaining the slaad’s impersonation of first the representative, and then the mayor, I decided to have a bit of fun. As they were describing this imposter/duplicate/doppelganger thing, I put on a dawning look of understanding and said, “Oooooh. You mean a doubley-doo!” Everyone immediately jumped onto that, “Yes! Yes! A doubley-doo! So that’s why we need to see the mayor!”

Once they were taken to the mayor’s quarters, and they began explaining the situation, one of them said something to the effect of, “[…] and so we actually just finished defeating yet another imposter–that is, a doubley-doo–of you, mayor.” The mayor, who had just been woken up in the middle of the night by a group of non-locals who were now speaking essentially baby-talk to her, frowned and said, politely but firmly, “You can just say double. I’m an adult.”

They kept trying to make “doubley-doo” a thing for the rest of the night, bringing it up to every NPC they spoke to, but nobody else had any idea what they were talking about because I’d decided that was just that one guard who was maybe a bit weird, and maybe wasn’t as mature as the rest. It made for a hilarious series of social goofs, and made everyone crack up each time it didn’t work.

Also, once they realized what the sending stone was, they dubbed it “the rocky talkie.”

I love this group.

Who knows what shenanigans they’ll get up to this week? I’ll have already found out by the time you read this, but you’ll find out…probably next week, depending on when I can get the time to write another of these up.

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