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After investigating mysterious circumstances in Opal Town and defeating the disciple of a snake goddess, the Doubley-Doos have continued their journey south to reunite their goblin companions with the rest of the Rockmore tribe. 

After finding markings that indicated a large group of goblins passing through the area, the Doubley-Doos traveled south for a few more days, and as the third day’s light turned to dusk, they spotted a covered wagon camped off the side of the road. They met an old goblin man named Eustice, a story teller who offered them food and a place to stay for the night. As they ate, Eustice told them the story of Kuro the Conqueror, a powerful goblin chieftain who was killed in battle during the great Goblin/Elf wars. Kuro’s destiny was not finished, and the gods returned him to life with a gift — a powerful whip that drained the life of his enemies and would control anyone that met its lash. No one knows what happened to Kuro or the whip after the war, however. That story was lost when the elves burned the goblin histories.

They continued south the next day, and by the following evening came across a village in ruins. Buildings had been smashed and burned, leaving behind smoking craters and piles of rubble. As sad as the sight was, there was also good news — the town was rebuilding. Halflings hustled to and fro carrying tools and supplies. Among the halflings, they also spotted goblins. Shelby recognized Fric, the Rockmore tribe leader, discussing plans with one of the halflings and rushed over to greet him.

It was a joyous reunion, especially for their long lost goblin family. Fric explained he and his tribe had come across this village, Farlo, after it was laid waste by some of Klaas’s troops passing through. They’d taken any supplies they could and burned everything they couldn’t carry with them. 

After a bit of catching up, the Doubley-Doos agreed to pitch in and help with the rebuild. It wasn’t long before the mayor, Hilni, was called into a meeting. Mayor Hilni’s wife, Idalie, said that one of the children had gone missing — a boy, barely past his toddler years. He’d wandered into the woods. 

Everyone mounted a search party and began their search. Dormin found the tracks of small halfling feet leading toward a tree. The tree was otherwise nondescript, but had a strange knot on it that Dormin and Shump recognized as a fey symbol. Shump wasn’t sure if it meant “Enter” or “Do not Enter.” Around the base of the tree, they found halfling footprints mixed with bootprints. Both sets stopped at the tree.

The trio rendezvoused with the mayor, updating her of their findings before returning to the tree. Shelby touched the knot to investigate it further and found herself pulled inside. Shump and Dormin followed her, and soon all three of them found themselves standing in a thickly wooded area with no obvious way back. Shump recognized they were in the feywild.

They found more booted footprints and followed them for a time, but soon lost them in the thick underbrush.

After walking for a few hours, searching for any more signs of the boy, Shelby noticed something strange on the ground ahead. She drew up short, but couldn’t call out in time to warn Dormin or Shump, who were assaulted with a cacophony of whispered voices. Dormin was able to shake them off and drew back. Shump, however, was entranced by their words and walked directly into soft, cloying dirt.

Before them, possibly ten feet in diameter, was a roiling, shapeless mass covered in babbling, whispering mouths. Dormin and Shelby readied themselves to save a stupified Shump from this mound of goo and mouths.

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If you read through this and thought, “this doesn’t seem like a lot of stuff to have taken 2 sessions,” you are correct! I was horrendously out of practice and had never run a session online before. We tested several different softwares and ended up with Zoom because Zoom will let you join meetings via the browser without needing an account or the app.

Skype claims you can do that…but if you’re not using specifically the application downloaded and installed from their website, it is absolute dogshit. Holy hell. The one from the Windows store? Garbage. Using the Chrome extension? Garbage. Just…wow it’s bad.

I really didn’t want to use Zoom because the free version limits meetings to 40 minutes, and I don’t want to pay for a steaming software. But Zoom’s sharing feature lets you share video AND audio for a whole window or app screen. Google Meet does similar, but will only work for a particular tab, and will seemingly only share the audio from that tab. So if I want to play music, I have to choose between playing music, or showing a map. Not both.

I do have a weird issue where when playing music it sometimes gets REALLY loud for my players while not being particularly loud for me. I think it’s adjusting the volume to be quieter when we talk and louder if we get quiet, and I don’t know how to stop that.

I also was and am incredibly rusty. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything DM related that I feel self conscious and frustrated. I didn’t really think I had done a good job, but everyone else talked about how much fun they’d had, so I guess it was an overall win. Still not happy with my own performance, and I hope to be better next time we play.

This next session will be interesting. I’m trying to run combat theater-of-the-mind style in the vein of Powered by the Apocalypse games rather than minis and maps. All of the programs I’ve seen where you can create tabletop maps, I haven’t liked their interface. None of them seem particularly intuitive — including Roll20. I will probably play with that one a bit more at some point to see if I can figure it out, but I really just want something where I can throw a map down, add some bushes and tokens and go.

This particular adventure is meant to be a relatively light-hearted intro into the game, especially because when we picked back up, the police riots were omnipresent and I didn’t have the heart to run a more serious session addressing the politics in the game. This could be fun, re-introduce an NPC that Steph loved, and let them have some oddball adventures.

This next session will be when I actually get to try out combat, so I’ll let you know how it goes. I love minis, but I think D&D combat is a bit clunky, so if this streamlines that, I may have to pick between minis and fluidity-of-play in the After Times.

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