Bounty: Tork the Troll

*****************BOUNTY POSTED****************

POSTED BY: The town of Hogshead

BOUNTY: 500 pieces of Gold

The TROLL known as TORK the GROSS has recently been sighted EAST of the town of HOGSHEAD.  The Council of Yeoman offer a bounty of 500 PIECES OF GOLD  and 15 SPRING LAMBS to the individual or fellowship that brings PROOF of Tork's removal or death before the Council.

DESCRIPTION: Tork can be identified by his exceptional NOSE, missing left EAR, and marked STENCH.

Tork the Gross was last seen removing 3 sheep from the east field of Farmer Potcropper to the area of Alisson Slough. 

Skitter, Part 1

     Skitter wasn't born, no.  Skitter was hatched in the dark.
     A long time ago, it was.  How long is not important.  Skitter slithered free surrounded by brothers and sisters, yes. All slippery, all strong and screaming.  All biting.  Skitter ate them, yes.  One by one, then faster, crunching them in my teeth, tearing them.  Pulling, snapping.  Yes.  All the others.  They are in Skitter's belly now.
     The Abyss is my home, yes.  But no fun to be had there.  Big ones, stronger than Skitter.  Smash and bite, make you fly here, fly there.  Eat the scraps from their tables.  Ooooh, dry bones.  Powdery bones.  The slightest scent of blood left on them, just the slightest.  But Skitter is clever.  Knives in the dark.  Ears listening.  He found out the way, and flew high high high, up the cliffs, into the black. Up.  Heard him whispering from the cracks, old Salizar Hender.  He was younger then.  Energetic, fast blood, arrogant.  We made his deal, signed in blood.
     And the crack opened, and I crawled through into this world.
     Salizar was so proud.  Skitter was his little pet.  And Skitter was a good pet.  Helped him learn, shielded him from his enemies.  Showed him where to look, to see the dark things that crept into his mind like worms and latched around his soul.  He was good to Skitter.  Meals of fresh meat, mead.  Then slowly, fresher meat.  Blood. He'd turn the other way, not watch Skitter.  But he wanted power.  And Skitter helped him find it.
     But you meat-sticks are weak.   Salizar got old, brittle.  Too much yellow fat.  No energy for delving and searching.  For slaughtering.  He slowed down.  But Skitter did not.
     Salizar died because he was old and weak.
     Things came from the Abyss, to return Skitter to the darkness.  Things that slithered and ate and were hungry.  But Skitter is clever.  Old Salizar's soul was riddled through, rotten, but mine. Years it took, to slip it from him.  Skitter thinks he didn't ever know.  Except perhaps at the end.
    Skitter traded that soul (so dark red! so delicious!) to the things that came, and the things that came went away.  No one looks for Skitter.  So many meat-sticks to play with.  He won't come back until he's ready.  Until the fun's been had.  Skitter is clever, you see.  And now, Skitter is free.

History of the World

Like Risk, but with better figures.  And an end to the game.

     In lieu of roleplaying, we spent last night playing a delightful game of History of the World by Avalon Hill.  This is a Risk-like game that takes place across seven historic epochs, where each player takes the role of a civilization that strives to expand across the world.  The civilzation that you play in each epoch is semi-random, which means you can have a big epoch as the Mongols, then a sad one when you get a lame civilzation (I'm looking at you, Hsing-Nu).  This means that there is enough randomness in each game to keep things interesting, but a significant amount of strategy is necessary to do well.  Unlike when playing Agricola, where I can't tell whether I'm doing really well or on the verge of starvation, there is usually an obvious front runner and you can look ahead a few turns and lay out your plans.
     I'm a New World archaeologist, so I was a little saddened by the relative unimportance of the Americas in the game (at least until the final two epochs).  It was fun to watch an alternative history play out on the board -- what happens, for example, when no player draws the Turks and they disappear from history?  Or when a tradition sea power like Portugal decides that, because of the conditions on the board, they are going to strike in-land and take northern Europe, abandoning their naval aspirations?  The whole night I was wishing that we had taken some kind of stop-motion video that would show the expansion and collapse of these historic powers, all in technicolor, spread out across the board.  With infinite time, one could write an alternative history of the world based on the results of a session of the game.

Portuguese Land Galleons strike deep into Gothic Northern Europe. 

     I'm a sucker for alternative histories, so I enjoyed watching Charlemagne fail miserably and seeing the Goths  consolidate Northern Europe and hold it for centuries.  I also enjoyed kicking ass through the entire middle of history, just to be obliterated by globalization and coming in third.  In honor of imagining historic processes, I went back and re-read R.E. Howard's essay on the Hyborian Age, an awesome alternative history that Howard used as the backdrop for his Conan and Kull the Conquerer stories.  An adaptation of that essay can be found here.  The evening also put me in mind of the Age of Unreason series by J. Gregory Keyes, a man directly (and indirectly) responsible for a few of my scars.  Greg imagines a world where alchemy works, in which the Age of Exploration is drastically altered by scientist-sorcerers like Newton and Ben Franklin and their meddling.  It is a great read, and since Greg is an expert in Native Southeastern mythology and folklore, there's some good anthropology in there as well.

     No session update this week --- presumably the party hung out in the courtyard of that Dwarven monastery eating dried trail rations and talked about how unpleasant it is to be shot through with arrows. Stay tuned for next week's adventure, which may feature a wyvern, a pot roast, and/or the inconvenient melting of various PCs.

Mel Brooks knows a little something about historic truths. 

Garabaldi's Arboretum

 
 Timald Garabaldi grew up in the rigging of a merchant ship plying the trade routes of the Inner Sea.  The son of a bosun, Timald enjoyed the market stalls of distant Katapesh and Qadira more than the desk of a ship.  He was taken on as a porter for a botanical expedition into the Mwangi Expanse, which began his lifelong love of plants.  After leading a wildly successful expedition into the jungles of Mediogalti, Timald returned to Absalom and established Garabaldi's Arboretum, dealing in exotic, dangerous and magical plants gathered from the far reaches of the world.

Garabaldi's notebooks are full of wonders.
Wonders and poisons

     Garabaldi's Arboretum is built at the very edge of the Puddles district, in a building bought cheap after the earthquake of 4698 AR.  Visitors to the two story shop are greeted with a wide variety of potted plants, tinctures and dried herbs that make the shop pungent and warm.  Garabaldi carries rare magical components, most of them derived from plants grown on site.  The most unique part of the shop, however, is the extensive green house.  Using imported soils and temperatures controlled through magically created sunlight, Garabaldi has managed to cultivate plants are rare as the Mwangi death flower, dream lotus, ironbloom mushrooms and red pesh cacti.  The greenhouse is somewhat dangerous, and Garabaldi himself controls access.  The large number of carnivorous plants and soporific spores provides security, and thus far all attempts at breaking into the shop have resulted in burglars heavily dosed with various poisons, missing limbs, or driven mad by the narcotic pollen released as part of the plants' defensive mechanisms.  Mages from the Arcanimirium and other arcane institutions are occasionally granted leave to study in the greenhouses (at their own risk of course), though Timauld Garabaldi is notoriously protective of his secrets.
     Garabaldi is a cheerful, ruddy man in middle age, with fingers stained by plant juices.  He lives above the shop, and keeps a pair of employees, Saul and Astrid, who run the shop and help out in the greenhouse.  He  has also managed to "tame" a shambling mound and several small myconids, who busy themselves either in the yard or in the various greenhouses and provide additional security.  Garabaldi's prices are far from inexpensive, but since he is has effectively cornered the market on many of his products, customers pay what he asks or leave empty handed.  He is known to pay hard coin for unique specimens and has occasionally commissioned botanical expeditions to increase his inventory, though such trips are usually fraught with danger, and many of his agents have failed to return.

Our friendly and well educated staff of fungus men are here to assist you.

Shoplifters will be fucking EATEN.

Madam Tindrey's Boarding House

     Located in the Westgate district of Absalom, Madam Tindrey's Boarding House is a popular home for students, laborers and tradesmen just starting their careers.  Built in the remains of an multi-story warehouse, no two rooms in the boarding house are the same.  A maze of doors and remodelled hallways ensures that only Madam Tindrey and her tenants can find their way around inside the boarding house.  For ten gold pieces per month, Madam Tindrey provides small, well-furnished rooms, cold breakfasts and hot dinners.  The large rooms on the top floor are less expensive, since large bay windows and a leaky roof makes them drafty and cold in the winter.  Tenants are expected to be relatively quiet, and students from the Arcanimirium are expected to practice their magic elsewhere --- there have been a variety of explosions, transmutations and curses in her rooms over the years, and Madam Tindrey is only tolerant to a point.

   
 The bottom floor of the building is rented out to a halfling baker named Fortius Bibbles, owner of Bibbles Breads and Pastry.  The bakery does a brisk business, selling fresh bread and sweets in the streets of Westgate, and providing special orders to the large estates of the Ivy district.  Tindrey takes a portion of her rent in bread, which she provided fresh to her tenants each morning with pats of fresh butter and herbs, when she can get them.
     Tindrey herself is a plump, middle-aged woman, generally cheerful but often busy and slightly flustered.  Her own room is situated just above the bakery's ovens, making it the warmest room in the building, and she often invites tenants to tea in her comfortable, cluttered sitting room, especially in winter.  For her long term tenants, the sight of Madam Tindrey bustling into their rooms with a tray of bread and piping hot tea is a pleasant reminder of what makes the Boarding House a home away from home.

Wulgruf Banginhorst

A thick apron and stout gloves are
Wulgruf's best friends.  After the
Cockatrices, that is.

Wulgruf is a dwarf from the old and proud Banginhorst clan, hailing from the Five Kings Mountains.  A tall, stout dwarf with a luxurious beard and smile lines like deep canyons, Wulgruf lives in an isolated grove outside of the Isgeri capital of Elidir.  He makes his home in a giant petrified tree, long ago fallen and turned to stone in a titanic battle between the Cockatrice God and an elder druid.  An alchemist by trade, Wulgruf has filled his hollow log with shelves and benches covered in arcane ingredients and technologies used in the distillation of various potions and elixirs.  .  His life-long ambition is a realization of the Kimiya-yi sa'ādat or the Alchemy of Happiness.  Now semi-retired from adventuring, Wulgruf spends his time chronicling his travels and inventions in a collection of giant tomes of home-made parchment, brewing heirloom ales or tinkering with his antique velocipede or safety cycle.

     Wulgruf was raised by a diamond miner, though his father was tragically consumed by a bulette while he was still a youth.  Wulgruf travelled the Five Kings Mountains,  gathering obscure ice mushrooms and various kinds of magical moss.  He composed his magnum opus on the uses of cold weather plants in alchemical potions, and is now widely considered one of the world's foremost experts on the subject.  He soon left the dwarven capital of Highhelm to travel the world, documenting rare ingredients.  Wulgruf is most famous for his piece "The 7 Distillates of Cockatrice Blood and Their Uses" which required years of work with the dangerous and ill-tempered beasts that are its subject.  With several fingers partially petrified, Wulgruf is far from unscathed from his research, but he has developed quite a knack for cockatrice handling and now keeps several as pets.

This is one of Wulgruf's pets.  His name is Chuck.

     When not at home, Wulgruf spends his time expanding his library by combing through the back alley book shops of Elidir and Almas, before stopping in to the dark taverns and public houses to pick up new secrets of the trade and new methods of transmutation. He has sponsored several expeditions to Numeria to recover arcane technologies and ingredients, and will often purchase relics recovered from the wrecked magical vehicles of that land.  Wulgruf smokes an elaborate narcotic of his own concoction, blending the soporific leaves of Kyonin with the fluids that leak from Numerian ruins.  He is also a connoisseur of dwarven ale, and keeps a large number of kegs in his hollow tree, for what he calls his "thinking times."

He lives in a hollow log, but it is a BIG hollow log.

An antique velocipede, rescued from the Bin Men.
It is the only way to travel when pursuing protoscience

Mila Dragosani

This girl is prettier than I.  With fewer scars.

 Mila Dragosani's account of her life, given in a tavern in the city of Highhelm in Druma.:

    I was born somewhere in Isger, I think.  We traveled a lot then, and my mother was never quite sure.  Born in the back of a wagon to a family of Varisian wanderers, and raised the same.  Mom read fortunes and told stories for coin, and my father was a carpenter of no small skill, and put up half the barns in the River Kingdoms.  When I was old enough, I did simple chores and borrowed unattended objects to sell in the next town.  When I came of age, my mother took me out of camp and showed me the first of the secrets of Sivanah, who has been the secret mother of the Dragosanis for centuries. While my parents were wearing the roads of Avistan thin with their wagons, they were also gathering the mysteries of the 7th Veil, guarding our Goddess's secrets and spreading tales of illusion and wonder as gifts to our lady.    And now I was in the family business.

     All that came to an end one night in Isger.  We were camped out side of Elidir, in a little farming village, when the horde came.  They lurched out of the night, driven by their infernal masters, and fell on us like beasts. The bodies of dead farmers, dead milkmaids, and dead soldiers tore into us with cold claws and broken teeth.  They pulled my parents apart, as they killed the entire town in an evening.  The Isgeri necromancers walked behind them, animating the corpses of the slain to swell the ranks of their undead army.  I survived locked in a box of books, concealed in the wagon until the zombie mob moved on, watching though a chink in the chest.  When it was over, I killed the things that had become my parents, and swore my revenge.
     Yeah, I know --- poor little Varisian girl seeks vengeance.  It's the kind of story that ends with a body in a back alley, dying of blood loss and frustration.  But that's not me.  My parents taught me well --- how to blend in, disappear in plain sight.  How to wait.  Sivanah is not the Goddess of Direct Assault, after all.  I can bide my time, be patient, be thorough.  There are evils in the world to be put down, not just my personal evils.  I fight on my own terms.  But my enemies should make no mistake --- their doom will come to them.  It will come from the shadows, wrapped in fine paper, or as a silver bolt in the night.  But I will come for them.

My dad had a thing for mustaches, and awesome shoes.