Chronicle: Session 7

Spindle turns to everyone. "I think you guys should follow this map. I...think I should go find out what my father left me. I'll meet back up with you at the place, but I really need to go find out what he left."

Before anyone can so much as open their mouth to object, he's scampering away into the trees. The party is...unsurprised, but Spindle's proven to be the hardiest member of the group, so we guess this is fine. If anyone was thinking of making chase, that thought is interrupted too as a horse-drawn cart trundles across the path, blocking their view of Spindle and what direction he's darted off to. As the horses shy in response to the gnome bounding in front of their path, a startled voice sounds from above the carriage - "Whoa, you mad bastard!"

"Sorry, pal!" Tsalta calls out. Faeleth adds, "Our cat's very badly behaved."

"That was a cat?"

"Sometimes." Faeleth remembers that Spindle is still wearing the corset. "He's a very well-dressed cat."

The driver peers down from atop the carriage. "I've seen some crazy things, but..." he sighs, "Well, what brings you travellers to this neck of the woods?"

Everyone stumbles over explanations until Nuth flashes a wide grin and confidently proclaims, "Campin'!" Tsalta nods and murmurs agreement. Yes, we're camping, that's it.

Where's our camping gear? Tsalta claims she's got it all stashed away in her hair. The gnomish driver looks across at her - "Don't see many goliaths around these parts..." He doesn't remotely buy Nothing's explanation that she's a 'really big dwarf'.

He hops down from the cart and carries on chatting, curious as to where we're headed.

"Oh, we're taking a family camping holiday," says Faeleth. "This-" she gestures to Tsalta, "-is my beautiful wife, and...my daughter."

"Yes, this is our wee sprog!" Nothing doesn't even know how to respond to this. Sure. Whatever. This is happening. The gnome tilts his head as he casts his gaze over the group, about as dubious as a person should be when you encounter an elf claiming to have a tiefling daughter by her goliath wife. Tsalta throws an arm around Faeleth's shoulders ("Come here, darling!"), and Faeleth tugs a too-baffled-to-resist Nothing in to her side also. Nuth tries to put on her most guileless smile.

He finishes his appraisal. "...I've seen stranger." His eyes linger on Tsalta, though... "Hold on, you seem familiar. Have we ever met?" Tsalta denies any such thing (in the most suspicious tone of voice, like, ever). The gnome waves a hand, "Never mind."

Now, what about him, where's he headed? He's travelling to a small village up the road, Log Hill. The party asks if they can join him - they could do with picking up some food, supplies, odds and ends...

He asks if the group have any good stories, and the party falter. It's not that they don't have stories, per se, it's just...where do you begin, right? He's still suspicious of our camping rationale, despite Tsalta's insistence that she's a 'very good navigator'.

Eventually, we exchange names, Tsalta receiving a Mage Hand handshake from our new travelling companion, whose name turns out to be Bobby. (Tsalta's much less interested in Bobby than she is his mule, Donkey.)

"So, where are you guys from?"

"Well, I'm from Red Larch-" begins Nothing, before catching herself as Faeleth and Tsalta give her a Look, "-WE'RE. We're from Red Larch."

Tsalta returns the question, where's Bobby from? "...About. From everywhere and nowhere, really." There's an awkward lull that Tsalta spends fussing over Donkey. Nothing introduces herself and gives Bobby a Mage Hand handshake of her own, to his surprise.

"Oh, you can do it too! ....But seriously, what's your name?"

"It's..." Nothing is beginning to realise that her name, outside of the widely understood context within her hometown, tends to cause confusion. "You can call me Nuth?"

"You called your child Nothing."

Faeleth blames her 'wife's unconventional sense of humour' for the oddity of Nuth's naming, but Bobby's still perplexed and rightly so by this whole charade! And hey, what were the mechanics of.....this....union....???? Again, Faeleth's quick to respond over the top of Tsalta's attempt at deflection: they adopted. ("In case you couldn't tell," adds Nuth.) Nice save.

The conversation turns to our 'cat', who Bobby reckons looked suspiciously like another gnome. "Oh, he is!" Nothing clarifies. "Sometimes. Also a cat. He's neither here nor there. I dunno." Tsalta claims we found him in a bag by the river. Which river? Tsalta doesn't remember. It was...their honeymoon. They were very drunk? In the woods?

It is all becoming quite distinctly a shambles as Bobby continues to poke holes in this collection of flimsy falsehoods, Tsalta in particular starting to buckle under the pressure of trying to hold together a consistent story. She doesn't like lying!

Blessedly, his attention is diverted as the cart approaches its apparent destination: a small camp. A dark-haired man stands there, seemingly expecting the arrival, and Bobby clearly expects to see him too as he pulls the cart up beside him. "Alright, pal? Are you the guy I'm looking for?"

He nods. "...I am Blake."

"That's blakeantly obvious. Are you my guide?"

Blake confirms this, and offers to show the way. Seemingly satisfied, Bobby hops down from the cart to take Blake aside, a little way away from the rest of the party. They briefly converse in a hushed whisper. Naturally, the party attempts to eavesdrop at least a little...They don't catch a whole bunch, but manage to pick out the words, "Do you want payment now or later?" from Bobby.

At a regular volume - that is to say, still kinda hushed, because that's how Blake sounds in general - Blake asks, "And who are these?"

Bobby smiles. "Don't worry about her, she's Nothing. This is...Salt...Tsalta, that's it, and her lovely wife." Tsalta beams and corroborates: indeed, this is her wife and wee babby! Bobby proceeds to say we've been "travelling together", giving a stern no-nonsense look over his shoulder as he continues, in an attempt to stop anyone from saying anything that might undermine his clear attempt to suggest we've been around one another for more than half an hour or so.

Blake accepts this explanation, and starts to pack up his things in preparation for heading to Log Hill.

This packing-up is quite rudely interrupted. By a pack of wolves. They stalk out of the trees, snarling, towards everyone. There's quite a lot of them.

Where everyone else sees a bunch of scary slavering wolves, Tsalta sees a whole load of potential friends! Judging by their sizes and pack formation, she reckons that big lad there is probably the alpha, so...

Tsalta casts Animal Friendship on that one! The wolf's eyes unfocus for just a moment, but then they stare back sharp and bright as it growls all the louder. She makes a soft sound of disappointment - "Well, that didnae work, shit. I guess we'll have to...oh, I don't want to hurt them!"

Bobby scoffs. "These are primal beasts, you can't make friends with them." He struts forward, drawing his set of pipes, "They only understand fear." With that, he brings the pipes to his lips and plays an eerie, haunting melody. There's an immediate shift in posture from three of the wolves - they recoil from him and start to ever so slowly back away. (Tsalta turns to Faeleth, and in an undertone confesses, "I don't like him very much...") The alpha and its nearest packmate, however, are undeterred, and the largest wolf leaps forward to sink its teeth into the gnome's arm.

Following suit, so do its friends! This day has turned abruptly into a very bad day for Bobby as he's harried by the entire remainder of the pack. (Those he spooked continue to creep backwards for a few seconds before turning tail and fleeing at full speed into the forest.)

Nothing sees this and immediately draws her dagger, lunging for the biggest wolf as it continues its attack on Bobby, who exclaims, "Finally! Someone's doing something useful! Thank you very much! At least you're not trying to kiss it!"

Faeleth, who has far from taken a shine to Bobby and who despite herself is feeling quite defensive of Tsalta, retorts, "I'll have you know, sir, that I seduced a fucking gargoyle, so perhaps violence isn't always the answer!"

"Hey, I asked for a story and I get one NOW?"

Faeleth glares at him even as she draws her rapier and makes the very unpacifistic move of taking a swipe of her own at the wolf, but the blade whisks over its head as it snaps at Bobby. She darts away towards the treeline to take a more advantageous position where she can keep these wolves at a distance and try to pick them off. Bobby draws a shortsword and swings....also misses.

Tsalta, unimpressed, mutters, "Now, of all the gnomes I've been with, I'm not attracted to this one."

Bobby turns to look at her at that with an expression of sudden realisation, and under his breath, says, "Oh. Shit." Before he can chase that thought, the wolf grabs him by the arm and starts to shake him, practically lifting his feet clear of the floor. Composure utterly deserts him as the gnome flails and struggles to get away until he passes out, finally flying clear of the wolf's jaws in a heap.

Tsalta doesn't notice that strange utterance, too busy trying to keep these wolves alive while also keeping them at bay, and turns her sword hilt-first to smack one on the back of the head in an attempt to knock it out. She wails plaintively as Nuth completely disregards her pleas to not hurt them, the little tiefling grabbing the biggest wolf with one arm around the neck and showing it her best stabs with her free hand!

Faeleth sees Bobby go down, and sees Nothing keeping the big wolf occupied, and begrudgingly runs over to grab him by the cape and drag him unceremoniously out of the fray. (Rescuing gnomes in undignified fashion, this feels familiar!) It's pity, more than anything. The potion she shoves in his mouth is delivered with equal frustration. Ugh, what a waste of a potion. But hey, he's conscious now!

The smaller wolf's legs buckle under it as Tsalta's second attempt to knock it out succeeds. As Bobby calls the one Nothing's stabbing a 'big ugly bastard', Tsalta makes a mournful noise of complaint, but never mind Tsalta's feelings - that wolf is biting Nothing, and she's just shoving her dagger into as many soft bits of the big ugly bastard she can find until it's well and truly dead. There. Sorted.

Nuth unspools a little stretch of rope from her bag, slices off a couple of feet, and muzzles the unconscious wolf. Bobby doesn't understand why we don't just kill it, but Nuth sighs with a shrug of resignation. "Tsalta wouldn't like it if I did, an' I've already killed one. Compromise."

"...How about we just leave it," chimes in Blake, as he's finished packing up, and Faeleth rounds on him.

"Oh, yeah, thanks for all your help by the way. You douchebag."

He claims he's been dealing with them since he's been camping here, so... Faeleth interjects. "So it should have been easy!" He carries on justifying his nonparticipation - he saw the 'big girl', and thought she could handle it with ease. Meanwhile, Bobby is so kind as to offer Nothing a quick Healing Word...which, considering the state of her after wrestling that wolf, is greatly appreciated as the smarting in her arms and shoulder subsides.

As we set off, Bobby tells Blake he'll need somewhere private to have a word with this...'family'. Blake offers his personal cabin, and off the party go to Log Hill proper! It is situated, as one might expect, atop a hill.

Blake gives the guided tour of the town, what's what, where's where. Food shack, armory, stonecutter's...The Potion Shop, recently established by a man new in town. He's 'not like the rest of us', a bit of phrasing that piques everyone's interest. Different how?

He's a genasi - something only Bobby has even heard of. Interesting!

And here...is the local pub, The Bended Bough. Another one! Nothing proudly declares herself to be from the hometown of the original Bended Bough - she didn't know it'd branched out like this. So to speak. Tsalta breaks from the group immediately to seek out a much-needed drink.

Blake points out the prison, "Nobody who goes in there has ever come out..." He clears his throat, "...There's pretty much only one person in there."

But anyway, yes, the pub. Blake pulls Bobby aside. "Tell the barmaid 'nice jugs', and she'll let you in," he instructs, before entering the tavern and heading straight to the back of the building. Tsalta's already situated herself at the bar.

Bobby turns to the remaining pair, Nothing and Faeleth, and asks how much they know about their...large friend. Nuth laughs.

"Ha, not a bunch, only met her like three days ag-" She claps a hand over her mouth, turning even redder than usual. Shit, the family lie! That's a thing! She forgot! Bobby seems unsurprised, though. He doesn't even acknowledge the slip as he asks if she mentioned anyone called Gandalf.

Hoooooo boy. As Nuth blusters, unsure whether to lie or spill the juicy details, Faeleth steps in.

"No, now I'm curious. How do you know Gandalf?"

There's a little standoff here, each side reluctant to disclose before the other does. Bobby suggests that he'll divulge once he knows he can trust us. Faeleth points out that she literally just saved his life...

"Well," Bobby begins, "I've not seen him in a while...but he is my father."

It's safe to say that this is mindblowing information. Nuth stammers, her eyes darting in the direction of the tavern door where Tsalta's inside, drinking. "You're not, um..." Another pointed look in that direction.

No, no! If Bobby were her child, would he be gnome-sized? It's a fair point.

As the conversation peters out in the wake in that revelation, Faeleth enters The Bended Bough and sidles up alongside Tsalta. (Bobby, meanwhile, casually meanders around chatting in the aim of finding out anything interesting from the bar's patrons.)

"HellOOOOO my darling wif-"

Faeleth holds up a hand. "The ruse is up."

"Thank gawd for that."

Faeleth leans in closer and lowers her voice. "I have something interesting to tell you. You know your....conquest..." Tsalta's nonplussed. "Your. Well. Gandalf....did you know he had a son?"

Tsalta is puzzled. She knew he had a daughter, but...a son? No. Nothing tries as subtly as possible to jerk a thumb over her shoulder in Bobby's direction. Tsalta looks where she's indicating and the penny drops. With a scoff, she says, "Well, he's nothing like his father. He was much more respectful of me! Don't see the resemblance in the slightest." She turns away with a huff of frustration, and picks up her drink to move to a table alone - this news isn't sitting well with her one bit! (Unfortunately, the disagreement over the wolves has given her a rather sour first impression.)

Bobby shrugs off the mysteriously venomous glare this giant woman is giving him across the tavern, and hops up to the bar. "Cracking tits, love! I mean. Lovely jugs." He recieves a hearty slap across the cheek - "How dare you!" Tsalta chuckles into her flagon. The barmaid across from the first hurries over.

"Ah. I assume Blake sent you. This way." She gestures to the back door. Bobby whistles and waves the rest of the party over.

Tsalta looks up, but doesn't move. "Ain't going fucking anywhere, pal. A'm having a drink."

Faeleth, too, isn't pleased! "I'm not a dog."

"Then stop acting like such a bitch?"

God, the tension. Bobby may have been insulting just then, but he has no idea of the kind of hot-button he's unwittingly pressed there. Tsalta sees Faeleth stiffen in icy fury and rushes in to place herself between them, a protective arm around the elf's shoulder - "I'll come with you, if you'll-" (here, she looks at Bobby) "- just stop."

Nothing cracks a grin of approval Bobby's way. "Pff. Nah. He's alright." And then we're all ushered into the back room, the door closing behind us. Blake, naturally, is there waiting impatiently.

"What kept you? ...And is that a handprint on your face?"

Bobby shrugs. "Got some feisty barmaids here!"

"...Don't tell me you told the wrong one."

"You failed to specify!"

"Oh. Yes. I forgot to tell you they were twins."

Anyway, barmaid confusion aside, he leads the party down a well-lit corridor into a room that contains, on the floor, a lamp. As everyone enters, in a puff of smoke from the lamp's spout, a blue-skinned man emerges - human-sized, human-shaped, but blue from toe to tip. Well, not really 'toe' to tip, as he becomes wispy smoke emanating from the lamp from the waist down, but you get the idea. Bobby turns to Blake.

"This your friend?"

Yes. This is...the wizard, he confirms. He turns to the strange blue figure - "What have you done now, Albert?"

Albert, it transpires, has gone on a series of benders so wild he's forgotten to pay. Every time. And after accruing this debt he's no way to repay, he's been bound into this lamp as a sort of alternative jail time. He'd appreciate some assistance out of this predicament.

"Are you a genie?" ventures Tsalta. Albert says he's not, but she's undeterred - "Can I rub your lamp?" The genasi laughs, shrugs it off, and continues. He'll grant one of us a wish- "SO YOU ARE A GENIE!" crows Tsalta, triumphant - but the wish needs to be for him to be freed of the lamp.

Bobby promptly does so! With a flash, Albert is restored - legs and all. Well...that was easy.

"I wish for you to go back into the lamp!" Bobby declares, but nothing happens. He shrugs. "Just testin'."

Albert takes his leave, encouraging the party to visit his shop later, where he will find a way to repay us for our aid with some freebies.

Now the room has been vacated, Blake brings the party closer together, and in hushed tones explains that one of the reasons he's brought us here is because he fears someone in town is spying on him, and would like assistance in finding out who. As Bobby questions the whys and hows, Blake mentions that he's afraid that someone is reporting to "some person" - his phrasing vague in the way that people phrase things vaguely Very On Purpose. Then he clarifies. "I think they said...The Collector."

Nothing tries to interject - "Hey. Wait, what." - but Blake continues, on how he overheard someone talking about him to this 'Collector', but when he closed on them they fled and he failed to see them in any detail. He urges us to be discreet in our investigation.

He points out a door on the other side of the room.

"What's in it?" asks Nuth. Blake doesn't know - he only knows that he was supposed to guard it until such time as we arrived. Tsalta, understandably, wonders why he expects us to enter if he doesn't know what's there! It could be anything!

Blake continues to explain. The person who sealed this door wanted him to keep its contents safe until we - specifically us - came to retrieve it. When queried about this mysterious someone, he mentions he was short and black-

"Right. RIGHT. With ya." Nuth's got it.

"What a dickhead. I hate that man!" Tsalta's got it, and there's a look of quiet understanding on Faeleth's face as well.

Bobby sees this, and gives the party a curious look before asking if Blake can give us a moment alone. Blake obliges, and Bobby pops himself down cross-legged on the floor and indicates for the party to join him. (They do so.)

Bobby knows there's clearly more to us than we're letting on. People don't travel to places like this for no reason, nor do they follow gnomes they've barely met into the back rooms of seedy bars for no reason. What really brings us here?

Faeleth shakes her head. "You first."

Bobby is in pursuit of a series of keys. He has family members under threat from this "Collector", and collecting the keys will hopefully provide him a way of resolving this threat. Now. What about us, and how do we know the 'mage in black'?

Nuth speculates that Bobby and ourselves are in similar situations, if we're both here following Hand. "How do you know him? He lives back at my hometown."

"By reputation. He's very...distinctive."

Right. Well, Nuth explains, we've been following him after some disappearances of our own. Tsalta adds in that she's just tagging along, cos Nuth and Faeleth got her out of the dark - she doesn't like the dark...

Bobby nods understanding in response. "I know, I remember." Tsalta peers back at him in confusion - "What?"

Bobby waves away her question ("Nothing. Never mind.") and Tsalta gives him a look of intense suspicion. The number of odd comments he's made regarding her is really starting to rack up, now - who is this guy and why does he talk like he knows her? She doesn't remember him one bit.

He carries on - well, it seems like his goals have aligned with ours, so. Working together seems in everyone's common interest. But he should do the talking, alright?

Tsalta interjects! Faeleth's more than capable of doing the talking - did Bobby not hear about the part where she seduced a gargoyle?

This, Bobby determines, is cause for Faeleth to prove her stuff. A dance is in order. A dance-off is in order. With Tsalta providing a wonderfully jaunty jig on her fiddle (note: I'm almost certain that Tsalta does not actually have a fiddle on her person, but screw it, she does now because this scene said so!), Bobby gestures for Faeleth to begin - "Ladies first?"

She shakes her head, sweeps her arm out in the gesture, likewise, "No, no. After you."

"After you."

"No..." Faeleth motions in even more grandiosely, flourish and all, "...after you."

Bobby gives himself a little pep-talk, then gets to dancing. It's somewhere between a cossack dance and an Irish jig, and as you'd expect from a gnomish bard, it's a fine dance!

Faeleth casts her mind back to that darkened room full of gargoyles and red runes, and tries to remember how she did it. The arms go up, sure, the hips set up a sway but it's not quite right, everything's off-beat and it seems that without the imminent threat of gargoyle attack she's just not in the zone. Also it's really not the kind of dance for this kind of music, you know?

Bobby, emboldened by his clear upper hand in this battle of performance, whips out his own fiddle and starts playing into Tsalta's melody, harmonising beautifully. Goddamn it. Bards!

Well, this isn't fair - Faeleth doesn't even have an instrument! How can she compete?

Actually, who needs an instrument?

She pulls out her rapier from its sheath, tosses it in the air end-over-end, catches it with a flourish and just starts jamming the fuck out on what is, at this moment, a +1 improvised air guitar. There's hair-tossing, there's knee-sliding, a little rapier-twirling for good measure - it's without question a stellar air-performance, and at the end of it she spins to bring the rapier in a smooth arc to within an inch of Bobby's throat. She looks down, a smirk playing about the corner of her mouth.

"That's how it's done."

Bobby can't argue with that. Looking up at this elf, with her blade hovering at his throat, hell, he's kind of into it. (Be honest, now. Who wouldn't be?) Tsalta's fiddle music fades out - she can see this is thoroughly over. The contest is won.

(Despite herself, Nuth finds herself grinning as she watches the show, and applauds as Faeleth takes a bow. Sudden, potion-induced revelations are the worst like that. They're hard to adjust to. It takes a moment for her to remember that this Faeleth here, the cool elf with the sword who saved her life without hesitation like twice and who can dance a gargoyle into submission and who kept guard over her and Sally all night at Moira's, is the same person she saw run a sword through her mother's heart without so much as flinching. But she does remember. She stops clapping abruptly.)

Blake barges back into the room - "Stop this noise! We don't have time for this." He glances at Faeleth. "...Put that sword away. I need your help getting in here."

"So is this where the key is?" Bobby asks.

Blake hasn't been told what's beyond the door specifically, but he supposes it must be. It's something 'of great power'.

In that case, then, Bobby proposes everyone has a chance to get more prepared for whatever might lie beyond. No use rushing into this headlong. Blake supposes this is fair, and leads the way back to his house - "Feel free to rest here. I've got to go and pay some visits."

He goes to the house next door. Wink wink. Sounds like he's unlikely to be home tonight. ("Saucy bastard!" murmurs Tsalta.)

Now, at this point dusk has well and truly started falling, and there's the little glowing lights of fireflies weaving their way through the air. Tsalta eagerly scoops a little collection of these bugs into an empty jar and ties this makeshift lantern into her hair - a natural night-light!

Bobby strikes up conversation - "So, I know your story-" he begins, looking Tsalta's way. Another one of those weird remarks!

"Do you?"

"....No. Slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue. But tell me more about yourselves! What's your story?" He gives Tsalta and Faeleth a curious glance - "Are you seriously married?"

Faeleth laughs. "No." Tsalta gives Faeleth an affable little nudge on the shoulder - "I wish, pal!" The elf gives her a little wink back, and aside to Bobby, adds, "I know, she's gorgeous though." (Tsalta absolutely beams at Faeleth at this - the biggest smile the elf's receieved since the two have met, and Tsalta's a pretty smiley lass in general! Faeleth smiles warmly in return. N'aww.)

Bobby's curious about Nuth's name - an odd name, 'Nothing'.

She shrugs. "Picked it myself...'Nothin' but trouble!" She flashes him a grin. Bobby reckons Trouble would have been a better name, doesn't she think? Can he call her Trouble? She mulls on it for a moment, then laughs. "Yeah, go on then."

"Was just thinking, then you could be like, 'Here comes Trouble!'" She cackles at that. Yeah, that's kind of great! Loving it!

She shares what little else she can think to say about herself - mentions her missing kids, which Bobby nods at. He's heard of kids going missing, far as Frieberg. Sounds rough. And how about this "Collector" - have the rest of us had any dealings with this individual?

"I don't know. I think I might have been being...collected...?" Tsalta ventures, her voice uncertain. Faeleth is reluctant to relinquish really any information about herself, and as Nuth starts to try and do the job for her, Tsalta cuts over - "Look, I know you're a wee bit pissed off at her-"

"Oh? Why's that? ...What happened." Bobby sounds like he can already tell the answer's gonna be sure something. Tsalta is visibly uncomfortable. There's tension suddenly.

Faeleth replies slowly, clearly picking her words carefully... "Okay, look, in the past I may...have...done-"

Nuth's got no time for that. "Murdered my parents?"

"-DONE jobs...as an assassin."

Tsalta turns from Nuth so fast to look at Faeleth it's a miracle she doesn't sprain something. "WHAT?"

Faeleth tries to make it sound better. "I was a very honorable assassin?"

Nuth has no time for that either. "Were they bad people?" Faeleth stresses that they were nobles, in a way that makes it pretty clear she feels the answer is 'yes' by default. Tsalta, still reeling from this Very New Information, wonders aloud if this is why Faeleth seemed to have such violent inclinations towards Terry...

"I didn't want to kill him! I just wanted to do him some damage. I don't like it when people...hoard wealth. When there are people worse off, who have to live without."

Tsalta's still not quite on board. "And what's that got to do with killing-"

"-It was a job. I didn't like doing it-"

"-so it was okay for you to get money?"

Faeleth looks down, the floor easier to look at than the grief-angry Nothing or the bemused Tsalta or this gnome she's only just met.

"My family was starving."

Tsalta sits back, taking that in. "...shit."

Nuth, who had been angrily interjecting during Faeleth's explanation with lots of 'well that sure makes me feel better!' and so forth, shuts up. "...oh."

There's a long, weighty pause, before Tsalta asks where Faeleth's family are now.

"I don't know. My parents are gone. My brother is dead. I don't have anybody, so..." she trails off, uncomfortable, the most vulnerable any of them have seen her in this last week or so of all her daring-do and stoicism and smooth deadpan deception. Tsalta moves in to put a huge arm round the elf's shoulders and gives her a gentle squeeze.

"Now, that's nae true. You've got me."

Faeleth doesn't respond, she just stays there motionless and ill at ease. She doesn't shuck off the arm slung around her shoulders, though.

Tsalta's next on the question list but she says, simply, that her family are 'wonderful, but it's not the time to talk about them now'. She sounds earnest enough, and her hand unconsciously moves to touch one of the beads woven into her hair.

Bobby notices this, and asks if he can take a look at that bead - Tsalta allows it, offering him the ladder braid on the back of her hair (with a fond thought of sweet, absent Spindle). He clambers his way up and studies the little purple stone briefly - "Huh! Interesting. Your father was a dwarf, you say?"

Tsalta frowns. "I...never said he was a dwarf." This strange gnome... "Do you know what it is?"

"Nope!" Bobby replies, chipper as anything. Perhaps too much so. "Pretty though, isn't it?"

Okay, well now this gnome has really added to the pile of suspicious utterances.

"What is going on here." If Tsalta's not going to pull him up on this, Faeleth's going to. Bobby suggests it's time to sleep, but nope, she's not having that.

"No, I don't think so."

Tsalta takes her cue. "Look, this is the who-knows-what'th time you seem to have recognised something about me. And I'm a bit...not uncomfortable, but-"

He looks at Faeleth and Nothing. "Did you tell her?" It's clear enough what he's talking about. They nod. "It appears you guys have come across my father."

"Yes?" Tsalta's not sure where this is going...

"....What's he like these days?"

Nuth's first to respond. "Mad as a box of rocks?" Tsalta backs that up, more tactfully - "He's not...the best. I think due to things that have happened...things that he regrets. He isn't stable of mind."

Bobby laughs in a high burst, he sounds almost gleeful to hear it. "He did it! He actually did it? I didn't think he'd do it. Tsalta...what do you remember?"

"I remember everything." She remembers Gandalf's confession, about his eloped daughter, what he did in his fit of anger, she remembers the result of his deal with Terry in the aftermath.

Bobby looks thoughtful for a moment, then quickly switches track - hey, he just remembered a good story, actually!

...So, you know what, there was a time he was in a bar, right, and the guy at the bar asks 'Hey, why're you all carrying your weapons?'. And they say, 'Mimics!' And the barman laughs, he laughs, the table laughs, they kill the table...good times!

Tsalta chortles hard enough to send Bobby toppling out of her hair. "That's a good one, pal!"

Atmosphere successfully lightened, the party retires to bed. Blake wakes them in the morning (to Tsalta's disgruntlement - she wasn't yet changed!!) and checks in to see if there's anything people need to do before checking out that door.

Tsalta does - someone owes her a potion (this said with a very pointed glance at Bobby)! She wouldn't mind a trip by the local armory either, and Nuth seconds that - her scimitar's all messed up and a sharpening would not go amiss! A trip to the shops, then!

At the armory, Tsalta picks herself up a shiny new warhammer, which she tests out in the training yard out back. As she brings it down on the dummy, Bobby casts a quick illusion to make the head "explode", to Tsalta's mild disgust. "Ew...you know that's not my style!" (The illusion fades and reveals a significant dent in the dummy's head. Bobby's a little put out that his illusion wasn't appreciated!) She buys a big ol' shield, too. All the better to protect with.

Meanwhile, Nuth's nearly swindled for that sword-sharpening, almost handing over five gold pieces without a thought (when you're used to having a couple of silver to your name at best, and suddenly you're triple-digits in gold, five doesn't sound like a bunch) before Bobby swoops in to call the guy out for that obvious, hideous price inflation. "Now I see how the shops stay in business here!"

He drops the price (once, then again at Bobby's continued disdain when he reduces it to ten silver) to a single silver piece. Rip-off averted, to Nuth's great appreciation. Faeleth takes advantage of the shopkeep's shamed state to blag a handful of free lockpicks in compensation for the hassle he's caused, before everyone moves on to get those potions Bobby 'owes'.

At the potion shop, Bobby rolls his eyes. "Okay, so what does everybody want."

"We'll see what's there, shall we?" Tsalta strides through the door, proclaiming to Albert as he stands behind the counter - "Hello! It's all on him, what've ye got?"

At Bobby's clarification that they're after healing potions, Albert ducks into the back room and returns with a pair of potions of greater healing - for free, as a thank-you for us doing him a good turn. Sweeeeeet. Albert gives the party a curious look - "Are you lot fighting a lot, if you're in need of these potions?"

-lta says, looking down at Bobby, "We saved his life, so we wasted one on him."

Bobby raises his eyebrows and turns to Albert to clarify, "I'd just like to say I've never been attacked until these people turned up. In fact, last time I got attacked woulda been when she-"

He just keeps talking like he knows her! "Again, pal! Care to tell?" She stares down, way down, to the exasperated gnome.

Faeleth gives Albert a smirk. "Oh, we just need them to heal the sick burns we've been dealing him."

Burns, she says? Albert rootles for another potion and holds it out to her - this treats fire-related injuries like a dream, soothes away burning sensations...it's called Gaviscon, and she's free to take some. But he's still curious - are we sure we don't fight? Bobby, at this point thoroughly disgruntled, gives Tsalta a frustrated glance.

"The way this is going, we certainly might end up doing so!"

Group tensions aside, Bobby's suspicious of Albert's odd 'curiosity', a suspicion not dulled in the least by the genasi's breezy justification that he just likes to learn about the folk who pass by here. Is there anything else we need?

"Anything else ya got?" Nuth's scanning the shelves for anything that looks fun and magic. Bobby points to a shelf - "What's that?" - and Albert pulls down an understated, dark wood wand. It was traded to him, he says, by a traveller who passed by, but Albert has yet to take the time to discern what exactly it does.

Bobby calls dibs! Aww, Nothing liked the look of that, but...fine. She peers at it anyway in hope of discerning what its nature might be (and hoping that if she can't, her patron will lend a whisper like he sometimes does). Bobby turns it in his hand but doesn't get any magical feel from it at all, and immediately regrets slamming two gold on the counter for what is basically a fancy stick as far as he can tell.

Nuth seizes the opportunity to 'borrow' it for a quick once-over, and unlike Bobby she does feel the magic, it thrums in her hand. Tsalta urges her to 'give it a flick or something', but unwilling to accidentally explode a shop or something, Nuth proposes that it might be better to step outdoors a sec.

She points the wand at a nearby tree, arm extended awkwardly as everyone gathers round to watch (this little thing feels like a swishy twig compared to her dependable quarterstaff, and she feels a touch silly)...and attempts a hesitant Eldritch Blast.

There's a vivid flash of crimson as the force of the blast knocks Nuth flat on her backside, the tiefling thoroughly unprepared for how much kick this tiny thing delivers! The tree now sports a char-mark that seems a little more charred than this spell's usual impact sites. Nothing looks up at this from the floor and grins. "Cool!"

(She offers Bobby his two gold back, but he waves that aside and tells her to consider it a gift for escorting him through wherever the hell we're headed.)

Breakfast time! The moment Blake mentions there's a proper little cafeteria with a chef who makes good food, Bobby's off like a shot, falling over himself in his haste. Even with Spindle absent, it seems gnomes spontaneously racing off into the distance is just a fact of the party's life now. (Tsalta remarks on the similarity - 'I see where he gets it from!' - prompting great confusion from everyone else, who only now are learning that Spindle is related!! She gives them the breakdown of...that...scenario.

Nothing and Faeleth take that bombshell in over the walk to get breakfast.)

Welcome, Team Jailbird, to Fantasy Greggs! It's manned by a young man with a rather familar cadence... "Got a special offer on today, anything at the counter for one silver, o'wight?" Tsalta gets herself a nice cream cake.

Bobby eyes the cakes. (They're some damn good looking cakes.) He tosses a gold piece to the counter. "I'll take them all." He pauses. "How many you got?"

The guy at the counter leans over to see who's so interested! "Got more in the back - me wife makes 'em, I sell 'em, o'wight?"

Tsalta's tickled by this, and mutters under her breath to Faeleth, "O'wight, Terry?" He overhears this, and asks if we've met his father - it turns out the man serving up the cakes is Jimmy Tibbs, son of the infamous Terry himself. The party's expressions as they nod assent speaks volumes, and Jimmy holds up a hand, "No worries. Not a fan of me father myself."

WONDERFUL! Everyone takes a shine to Jimmy in an instant. Anyone who thinks Terry's a right dick is alright by us. With that, everyone orders what they fancy for breakfast (some orders more fanciful than others - Bobby gets a pint of 'unicorn tears' that is, of course, just water). They chat with Jimmy, discovering that he grew up here, but opted to remain behind at Log Hill as his father Terry instead struck out, abandoning the financially struggling village to make his own settlement in a more lucrative location.

They also discover that Jimmy's wife, Meredith, is a half-orc. She's not much of a talker. (She's more partial to guttural grunts.) When she brings out Faeleth's sweet-roll from the kitchen, Faeleth subtly flashes her a flirtatious wink. Who knew that was her type? Meredith's eyes widen, but she gives a coy little wave back to the elf as she retires to the kitchen once more...

I will not linger on Faeleth's breakfast decision to neck a glass of a very questionable bovine substance. To be fair, Jerry brought it to the table in the first place.

Oh, and we all get some fancy long-life sandwiches for the road. An arcana check on the sandwiches from Nuth reveals that they're not even magic, they're just made with some wild-ass ingredients that let them keep for a week. It's some good, good bread.

With this, it seems everyone's ready to go!

Blake advises Bobby on the way to the bar - this time, look for the one with the mole over her eyebrow. And it's "nice jugs".

Bobby promptly approaches the nearest barmaid and once more declares, "Cracking tits!" (From behind him, a soft exasperated 'Nooo....' from Tsalta.) He recieves a slap across the other cheek. "It's not her!"

As Bobby wonders aloud why we have to do this the second time around anyway, Blake's already through the door. The gnome looks around, a little embarrassed, "I feel a little set up here, if I'm honest. I'm not my father - I don't like it!"

Bobby and Blake bicker over the specifics of the barmaid password (Blake frustrated that Bobby failed to follow his precise instructions, Bobby perplexed as to why it should even matter at this point) as everyone files into the back room. Time to take on this door.

Now, Bobby is a guy much more accustomed to proper usage of doors than the rest of the party. This is a man who understands that to get through the average door, you turn the handle and push. And as he enacts standard regular-person door protocol with this mystery door, the door exclaims, "Ow! Get off of me!"

Bobby stumbles backwards in surprise. "It's talking to me!"

"How dare you push on my nose!"

A face emerges from the material of the door itself - a crude set of eyes, nose, and a mouth. Tsalta edges nearer to it and ever-so-sneakily reaches across to see if she can poke it up the nose. It somehow fails to notice this, and she elicits a sneeze from the startled door-face! She pulls away, giggling to herself.

Oh! There's writing on this door, just below the face. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words shall never hurt me."

Bobby scoffs! "Words will never hurt you? Well then, you've never had a vicious mocking, have you fella! You ugly bastard!"

The door bursts into tears. "I...*hic*...I've never been called t-that before...how dare you..." The mortified face melds away back into the shape of a much more regular door, and the door swings open. Bobby cackles in delight. As the party proceed through the door, Faeleth gives it a little consolatory pat and whispers, "Sorry, he's a bit of a dick."

The room they enter into is stonewrought and square, and there are keys scattered all over the floor. In the center of the room is a small podium, atop which sits a chalice, a swirling purple glow emanating from within the cup of it. Bobby turns to Blake - how is this the key?

"Can you not see?"

He can sure as hell see a bunch of keys.

There's more keys within the chalice itself, floating within the milk-white liquid it contains. It might actually be milk, actually. The chalice itself, all the way down to the horn-like shape of the handles, does sort of evoke a cow.

On the wall is a series of symbols, with a word next to each. "Virgo." "Aquarius." So on, so forth. A few of those words are inscribed on the floor tiles. Bobby sighs.

"I'm not much for puzzles. Have any of you got experience with this?"

Nothing lets loose a bark of slightly bitter laughter. "Oh boy. Yeah. We've sure had our share of puzzles."

Tsalta chuckles when Bobby suggests he'll leave that to us, then. "Like uncle, like nephew - he didn't know what a puzzle was either."

"....I don't have a nephew."

"NEVERMIND! Let's carry on!" Nope, Tsalta's not getting out of it that easy - now Bobby wants to know what's going on! She shakes her head, "You wouldn't answer my questions, so let's carry on."

Faeleth snickers, looking down at the gnome with a smirk. "Ooh, burn. Do you need some Gaviscon?" Bobby attempts petty revenge with a Mage Hand slap to the back of her head, but whiffs and the hand overturns the chalice nearby. It tips on its side with a clatter, but curiously enough, none of the liquid within spills out, forming a smooth surface as though the top of the vessel were covered with a glass lid.

Blake rushes forward, cursing under his breath, to right the chalice. Everyone else starts collecting keys from the ground. (Nuth dares to attempt sipping from the cup, but finds that the arcane 'lid' works both ways - her upper lip finds resistance as she tips it to drink. Guess the solution isn't drinking it, huh. She starts gathering keys too.) Tsalta notices there's symbols like the ones on the wall on the keys! And with that, Bobby makes the connection: perhaps putting the right symbol-bearing key to its corresponding word tile will...do...something?

That sussed out, the puzzle proves easy! When the final key's rested on its tile, there's a shaking and grinding of stone as the cup's plinth lowers to the ground, and as the stand goes down, the level of milk within the chalice rises, spilling over the rim and the keys inside being pushed out with it.

New keys! Bobby notices one key that seems different to the others, inset with a shining gem and doesn't feature a sign from the writing on the wall. "Do you think there's anything left to do here?" he asks, holding up the One Different Key, "This one seems like a pretty special key."

Blake agrees - he recognises that key, the dark-skinned halfling arrived with that key in his posession. Tsalta borrows the key from Bobby, looking to see if there's a keyhole in the door that was once a face. No dice: that door hasn't got a keyhole at all!

So. Hmm.

Bobby points out that the rest of us were sent here looking for a key, too. By...Hand, was it that we called him? (He knows him only as The Black Mage, or The Mage In Black - he's not encountered this name for him before.)

And Hand set up this room? Nuth nods - what with all the puzzles, it does feel like his style.

How long has Blake been guarding this? ...Only a day. Blake mentions in passing hearing of the prophesy and thinking it was related and...Bobby cuts across him. "What do you know of the prophesy?"

"Only as much as you've told me. That there's a prophesy, and you need to find something, when I was told to set this up I assumed it would be related-"

Bobby laughs darkly. "I'm just searching for a key. And I assume the rest of you are looking for the same one."

Nuth is curious, in that case, if Bobby knows what's meant to happen next once the key's found? Yeah, kind of, he says. But that's a 'for later' thing, apparently. He tries to grab it out of Tsalta's hair with Mage Hand, not yet trusting her (or the party at large) with it...but she snatches it back out of the air. She doesn't trust him either. She tucks it down the front of her shirt, for security.

"Well," begins Blake, "As I was saying, I was waiting for a party fitting your description - I didn't expect him," a sharp inclination of his head towards Bobby, "I expected a...hairier...gnome with you."

And what do you know of him, asks Faeleth? Only that he is a 'contact'. Blake is super, super vague about this!! He, again, refers to a 'propehesy'.

"I feel set up. I've been after this thing for weeks." Bobby says, voice low and serious. "You say this 'Hand' plays games?"

Ayup. The party can confirm: that's kind of his thing.

Blake ventures that he last saw Hand headed to the northwest. Bobby just wants answers. He's been chasing rumours of this key for weeks, travelling to here in pursuit of it, and it's not an easy place to find. He comes here, finds his contact, Blake...and he's been guarding the key for but a day? Answers.

From the doorway atop the stairwell down to this corridor, there's the sound of hasty retreating footsteps. Has this conversation gained - and just lost - an eavesdropper? Bobby immediately wheels around and makes chase, creating an illusionary disguise as he runs: the gnome becomes at once a burly auburn-bearded dwarf. The rest follow!

The door of the tavern forcefully slams shut as Bobby crests the top of the stairs; someone is definitely fleeing the scene. Outside, he gets a glimpse of a human-sized, human-shaped figure rounding a corner at speed...

However, as everyone gives chase, it turns out there might be a...bigger...problem out here. There's a crashing of trampled undergrowth as from the treeline at the edge of the hill sways a segmented, barb-tipped tail. Moments later, the rest of the creature reveals itself - a gigantic, oversized scorpion.

Nuth's footsteps falter - "Guys, does anyone fancy going back inside...?"

"We can't not help them!" Tsalta exclaims, and Blake concurs - this is his town, and he plans to defend it. What about everyone else here?

Well, Nuth reckons, that can be taken care of, right? With Thaumaturgy helping her voice carry, she can become the one-tiefling megaphone, and yell for everyone to stay indoors because there's a Big Fuckoff Scorpion out here and stay inside until it's pissed off to somewhere else? Bobby nods - "Tsalta, with me, we'll distract it. You get everyone out."

As Nuth starts up yelling, Bobby's getting increasingly panicky - actually, you know what, that plan's a bust, let's just....let's fight it, we're gonna have to, aren't we?

Blake takes over Nothing's intended job, getting astride his horse and trying to spread the word that people should get to safety. Bobby urges Tsalta forward (conspicuously keeping himself well behind her - for all his talk, the scorpion's freaking him right out) as everyone hurriedly starts planning - if we split off with one group headed towards it and another going down a nearby alley, we can try to distract it and lead it around the town rather than into the village proper. That way, at least it's not smashing the place up with its big scorpion body.

Bobby reckons he can help drive it away, and waves Nuth, Tsalta and Faeleth in the direction of the alley. They need no further instruction, and trust the bard to do some coolass thing that'll, like, work.

Bobby puts his plan into motion: a Minor Illusion to create the impression that the buildings the scorpion is currently moving towards have no gap between them - presumably it won't want to try to traverse a solid wall...

Coming out of the other side of the alley, the rest of the party get to work peppering the scorpion with every ranged thing they have to hand. Tsalta and Faeleth loose arrows into it, and Nuth's wand proves itself more useful by the second as her Eldritch Blast hits with a staggering burst of crimson light. ("THIS WAND IS DOPE AS HELL!!")

Bobby fires off a spell through his illusory wall, but the scorpion had moved just a little since he put it up and argh, it just flew wide. He darts away to try to find a less obscured vantage point. (He hears the footsteps of his original quarry growing ever more distant, but...ugh, probably important to deal with the Big Bug.)

The scorpion, having taken this hail of arrows and magic, turns to face its assailants and starts to thunder forward towards them. Tsalta takes a leaf out of Spindle's book, training her bow on the creature's eye, but it glances off leaving only a light scratch.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" Bobby exclaims as he rounds the corner to see this, and Tsalta tosses her hair over her shoulder as she retorts,

"To piss it off, lure it away! That was the plan!"

Screw that. Nuth's running, trying to put distance between herself and it, she doesn't want to be in range of those claws or that stinger, especially not with it pissed off!

Faeleth splits from the group, darting off and up into the low boughs of a nearby tree. It looks like (or at least she hopes) its attention is on the bulk of the group, it's not watching her... Perched still amongst the leaves, she takes a moment to set up her shot, bowstring drawn...

The arrow is loosed and flies straight into the center of the scorpion's head as it turns to pursue the others, exiting intact from the other side and ripping through its poised stinger for good measure. The creature collapses in a heap of motionless black chitin to the grassy ground.

That...went better than expected!

As everyone catches their breath, Blake returns on horseback, and he's got bad news. During his rounds, he accounted for everyone in town save one. Albert is nowhere to be seen. Not in his house, not in his shop, not anywhere.

Do we care? He's not our problem, Bobby reckons, and nobody can really disagree with that. (Nobody's quite put two and two together yet.)

Blake did find one thing, though, at Albert's. A ring. He holds it out for everyone to look at. Everyone takes a gander, but the only one to whom it pings as special is Nothing. (Well. It's less that she's seen one of these before, and more that she's got her ever-so-helpful voice in the back of her head who knows so much more about magic than she does.) This ring is a ring of...communication.

"Oh, fantastic!" Bobby makes a grab for it, and she sharply pulls her hand back, the ring held tight in her fist.

"No! Nah, na-a-a-h. Wait. Think, yeah? Spies. Spies."

And as though on cue, a voice sounds from the gem inlaid in the ring. Nuth opens her hand and everyone moves in to listen.

"Who is this?" says the ring, "This is not the voice I am used to hearing."

Quick as anything, Bobby plucks the ring from the tiefling's hand. "O'wight? Name's Jerry." The accent is impeccable. As is his air of slow-talking confusion as he queries, "O'wight? Can. You. Hear. Me?"

There's a pause before the voice coolly intones, "Where is the imbecile I sent."

"I dunno, I found this on the floor, if you tell me who this is then maybe I can find 'im, ow'ight?"

Oh, no, the ring's not parting with information like that. (The more Faeleth listens, the more she could swear she's heard this voice in the past but...whose? Perhaps she's imagining the recognition.)

"Okay then, how about you tell us where you're about and we'll bring your lovely ring back, o'wight?"

No dice. That's not something they're willing to share either, and it seems no amount of "Jerry"'s persuasion will sway them. In fact, it's received with a thinly veiled threat: this is, apparently, someone we don't want to mess with.

Oh? And who's that? Be nice for 'Jerry' to at least have a name so he knows who not to fuck with, then, wouldn't it?

"Let's just say...your little horned friend will soon be mine." With that, there's a sound of shattering glass, and the ring falls silent.

Bobby looks around the group. Does anyone know who that was? His voice falls to a whisper as he addresses Nothing - she said her friends had been taken, yes? She nods, still a little stunned from the ring bearer's ominous sign-off. He suggests that this could be the Collector.

He lifts the ring close to his mouth, heedless of the fact that his message is unlikely to reach the other end, his tone one of icy fury, "Listen here, you fucking cunt. I don't care who you've taken, who you plan to take, but me and my friend...we're going to find you. And we're going to fucking kill you."

The ring doesn't respond, of course. Bobby smashes it on the ground at his feet.

"Now, how the hell," he looks at Nothing, "do they know who you are, and why are they after you?" She doesn't know. She doesn't recognise that voice! He looks to the rest of the party, but Tsalta of course hasn't the foggiest. What about Faeleth, then? She has ties to Nuth's family, so to speak. So who was after her family?

Realisation dawns on Faeleth that yes, actually. Thirteen years may have passed, but that voice is one she's heard before. That voice belonged to a woman named Sanity. Sanity, the tiefling who commissioned her for the assassination of a noble family. Oh.

Tsalta catches the shift in the elf's expression. "Well, you look surprised to hear that voice." Nuth wants to know if Faeleth knows who that is.

She speaks, slowly. "I think...I think that might be the woman who hired me," she pauses, not particularly wanting to bring this topic up again, "...to kill your whole family."

The word whole stands out to Nothing. Her whole family. The question slips out before she's had time to think about it. "Wait, were you meant to kill me?"

"....Yeah." Well, Nothing now has a thousand and one questions running through her head, and she now has even less idea of how to feel about Faeleth, but before she has time to start asking her anything, Bobby interjects with a very, very good point. We shouldn't be doing this in the open.

True, that.

Blake offers the key to his house. We can stay a while. Least he can do. He's gonna go take care of the townsfolk, he says, but he totally goes back to his girlfriend's place. It's not even subtle.

Subtle is more Bobby's forte. At Blake's, he moves to the side of the house furthest from the one Blake occupies, and covertly takes Tsalta aside to a room away from the others. His voice a low murmur, he begins, "Now, I know you have no reason to trust me, okay? But you did once, and I think you should again."

"You'd better clear me up after this, pal."

He thinks that'll be difficult, but...sure. He asks Tsalta if he trusts 'those two'. Of course! (Bless Tsalta. It's only been a day, but then again, it seems she's a pretty good judge of character.) Bobby slips out of the house to check outside again, then returns and gathers everyone together.

He doesn't trust Blake, he explains. Dodgy as. Bobby bets he's in cahoots with Hand - do we trust Hand? Everyone shakes their heads. Not as far as we can throw him. Nuth wonders whether she can try to find out how we're all being watched, or followed, or whatever way we keep being found.

How?

She produces the book that she found, way back in that dusty basement. It says you can ask a magical question, right? And surely this has gotta be magic, right? So it's worth a shot, even if whether it'll actually help is another thing. (Bobby inhales softly as he sees the book. "Oh. These are rare.")

Time to give it a whirl...? These instructions are so weird. Turn clockwise three times and hoot like an owl... Welp. She does it. (Tsalta wonders, as she watches this truly odd display, if the girl's gone mad?) Nuth holds her question on repeat in her mind: "How are we being followed?" She lets the little book fall open.

Out of nowhere, a spectral owl swoops through the room, calling out in a human voice, "Thrice the brindled cat hath mewed!" Good thing Nuth's helm is there to decipher that cryptic hint into its straightforward meaning, right?

Proceed with caution.

"That's it?" Nuth blurts, plaintive. It's a magic book and it's stating the obvious! We know to proceed with caution! She sighs. Guess that's better than nothing, sort of.

"Well that's a bit shite!" A very, very disgruntled Tsalta grabs the book from Nuth's hands and berates the damned thing, "'Proceed with caution'? Oh, noo, we thought we'd go head-over-heels and rush straight to it. Ye waste of time."

Vaguely, an idea implants itself in Nothing's mind without her conscious attention: be cautious because...someone might be scrying on you. What? Was that the book? Did the book do that? Huh. Maybe it's not so useless. She mentions that, but Tsalta's still not sure that's strictly useful information. Coulda guessed that!

The party speculate. Bobby feels that Sanity's involvement is far too convenient. Faeleth eyes him..."What are you implying?"

"Oh, nothing at all," he says, in the universal tone of I'm Absolutely Implying Something And What I'm Implying Is That You're Somehow Complicit. Nothing at all? Faeleth sounds genuinely taken aback and more than a little affronted that he could even indirectly be accusing her. Bobby insists he meant nothing by it...and he sounds...genuine? She chills out a bit.

Okay, never mind this! Tsalta wants her answers, stat. It's high time for Bobby to spill it. She stares down at him from her fullest, most formidable height.

"SO. How do you know me? You've been going all 'I know that, I know this', all these things you keep noticing like when you're all 'Oh, let me check out your bead'..."

He blusters a little. Bead's of dwarven make, he just thought it was interesting...?

"Fine. But you know me. How do you know me?"

Bobby says everyone knows her! (Nuth refutes this: she don't know her! She's known her like, what, a couple days?) She's not having it - she's been off in the mountains, none of that.

Yes but, Bobby points out, Gandalf is his father. And Gandalf was rather fond of her, she helped him through some things, back before the deal...

"And you knew about the deal?"

That he was talking about it, sure. Not that he was going to actually do it, Bobby says, that laugh returning to his voice just as it did when he was last on this topic. He says he knew what a deal like that would do to Gandalf's mind...and oh, he deserved it.

It was a horrible thing he did, Tsalta agrees with that detail if nothing else. Nothing, eager to be filled in, asks what he did.

"You wanna tell them, or shall I?" Bobby gives Tsalta a look, his bitter amusement giving way to an expression of stony seriousness. She sighs, and begins to explain.

Gandalf, before he went mad, had a daughter. Tsalta didn't know about Bobby, but she knew of his daughter. Met her, even. This daughter of his fell for a deep gnome, and Gandalf was...unhappy. He took objection to the pairing-

"He was a racist old prick," Bobby clarifies.

-so the two of them eloped together, ran away and hid on the outskirts of a village that...no longer exists. And it doesn't exist any more thanks to Gandalf.

Nuth's eyes go wide. "Shit." Tsalta continues on.

So. Gandalf's daughter and her beau, they had a child, a little boy... At this, she turns to Bobby - remember when she said that whole thing, 'Like uncle, like nephew'?

"Wait, what."

"You've got a nephew. We'll get back to that."

She's promptly distracted from her tale by a loud mooing from out in the trees. Without a beat, she moos right back in reply. There's a scurrying, a pitter-patter of feet from the same direction and scampering out comes none other than Spindle!

"Ohhhh, here he is, it's my little babby!" Tsalta scoops the little grey gnome up into her arms, cooing in delight as one might over a child or perhaps a beloved pet. It's hard to tell where the line is drawn between those things with Spindle anyway. She ruffles his hair. "Where've you been, ya wee daftie?"

"I got this!" Spindle declares, beaming and holding out a little wooden box for her to see.

Bobby blinks, recalling the greyish blur that darted out in front of his cart the morning before. "...This is your 'cat'?"

Tsalta hoiks Spindle up onto her shoulder. "This is your nephew."

("-And our cat.")

Spindle cocks his head. Nephew? What's a 'nephew'? Tsalta does her best to explain the familial relations that constitute uncle- and nephew-hood as the boy nods along, but as she's not sure he's really getting it, she simplifies. "It's family. You're family."

As Bobby lets that sink in, Tsalta gives Spindle a vegetable pie she bought earlier. Nuth asks, "So, where've you been, kid?"

Spindle's been back to his dad's place, he says. There was a note about how his dad really loved him, and also some 'special things'. Bobby cuts in to ask where Spindle's father's place is. Spindle asks which father! The one he just 'went to see', his cave-father, or the ones he doesn't know?

(At this point the entire game comes to a halt to try and discern Spindle's family tree and which dad is. There's just so many dads and pseudo-dads. Too many dads.)

Bobby's curious in general about what Spindle knows regarding his family. Spindle describes as best he can the vision ('the picture he saw in his brain') he had through the potion - the great fire, the village burning. To that, Bobby holds up a painting of a gnomish woman. "Who's that?" Spindle replies that it looks like his mother from the picture, and then just carries on telling the story of how he was saved by wild bobcats as Bobby quietly stows the painting back away, thoughtful.

With his life story so far completed, Spindle pauses to scrutinise Bobby properly. "Who is he?" Bobby says in reply, simply, "A friend." It seems a satisfactory answer for the little gnome, who still doesn't seem to quite parse the concept of an uncle.

Now the conversation turns back to Tsalta, as Bobby still has many more questions to ask. What does she remember of Gandalf breaking his mind? Are there any...missing patches, fuzzy memories or anything of that sort? Days she can't account for?

There's nothing like that, not that she can think of. She was there, she remembers it. Bobby lapses into thoughtful silence again for a little while, then, "...I can't believe there's more of my family left. I thought it was only the three of us."

"Three?" Tsalta didn't know of another child of Gandalf's. But yes, apparently, there was another brother.

There's a little sigh from Spindle. "At least you have family. All my fathers are dead."

Bobby's attention turns to him, "Spindle, was it?" The little gnome nods. "Well...there's more to family than just fathers. I'm having a hard time getting my head around it myself, but...I might be your uncle?" Bless him, Spindle still doesn't get it, but oh well.

Soooo. Remembering that Albert's place is probably deserted, Bobby excuses himself briefly to go over there to do...something or another. He asks us to look after Spindle in the meantime, and Tsalta gladly obliges, always happy to entertain the little guy. She coaxes Spindle into sharing the results of his little trip out, and showing her the little box he brought back.

It's roughly the size of a small jewellery box, sealed tight with some sort of magical...seal. He's not tried to open it yet - the others encourage him to try (it might be especially for him!) but when he gives it a go, no such luck. It's shut tight no matter how he pries at it.

"This is all he left me, and..." Spindle looks truly crestfallen, "I think it's broken."

"Nah, I think it's just...locked!" Nuth says, ruffling his hair, though she's not got the foggiest idea how to un-lock it. Tsalta asks Nothing to do one of her 'special checks', look at it real close, maybe? (Haha oh dear, everyone probably thinks she knows so much more about magic than she actually does. Has Nuth ever actually mentioned her patron hands out the info she relays? I don't think she has.)

As she peers at the box, discerning very little and praying for a whisper in her ear that she sadly fails to receive, Spindle blurts out that he saw something interesting, too, while he was out! He saw a blue guy! Running, he was. 'About....' he looks uuuup at Faeleth, '...Your size?'

Welp. That's probably Albert. Helpful to know, though.

Bobby returns, and there's something he thinks he should share. From his tone, it's probably a pretty big deal. There's a couple of scrolls tucked under his arm. Hey, who can speak Draconic?

"Oh, I can speak, like, everything!" Nuth offers. Tsalta sees the strange characters on the scroll Bobby's holding out - "Oh, I know that too!"

He passes one scroll each to the pair of them. "I need to know what's on these. DON'T activate them, don't read them out, just tell me what's on them."

Nuth's got Dispel Magic, which he dismisses as not important, but maybe that'll be useful - he'll hold onto that. Tsalta's got Greater Restoration, and as she announces that, Bobby points her way - fantastic. Go read that one out.

Tsalta starts to read aloud from her scroll, soft peach-pink light flowing out and enveloping her as she does. She feels a shift, like a weight's been lifted from her shoulders that she never knew was there. A moment passes...and then the memories start flooding back, bringing with them a weight of their own. Things click into place, filling gaps in time that had gone unnoticed for years. Gandalf was not the only person affected by the deal he made - she was, too, her memories erased and rewritten by the magic to hide something so massive, so important that it shakes Tsalta to her core that she could ever have forgotten.

She has a child.

She has a wee baby girl.

The memory comes back to her of the day she left little Rosa in her father's care. She left her with Gandalf while she went to gather food, and she returned to find him without her baby...instead, with Terry. From afar, she saw them talking, making some agreement, saw the binding magic encircle their clasped hands, a splinter of it weaving through the air towards and into her. And that's when she forgot. Forgot Rosa, forgot Bobby - Bobby, whose constant arguments and dislike of Gandalf she never quite understood.

She forgot that that moment there where the old gnome's mind broke was not from disobeying the terms of the deal. It was an integral part of it, shattered then and there by choice.

It all sinks in, Tsalta standing frozen in place as a tear starts to roll down her cheek, devastated by the revelation and the sense of utter betrayal.

That's not what Nothing thought someone would look like after a Greater Restoration. "I thought that was a healing spell..."

Tsalta's gaze is downcast as she replies, "Yeah. It was."

Unsure whether now's the time to press her on why a healing spell just made her cry, Nuth instead asks Bobby for that Dispel Magic scroll back - it might be able to open the weird box Spindle's got here. He obliges, and then does what the tiefling didn't: asks Tsalta what she remembers.

Her brow furrows. "I've got...a baby."

"Not so much a baby any more, but yes."

"....How many years has it been?"

Bobby thinks back, and...she'd be...a little younger than Spindle, at this point.

Tsalta asks if Bobby knows her. He mm-hmms. She asks where her daughter is. He says that's a 'complicated question'.

"Just give it to me straight."

Bobby explains. There's a prophesy that a descendant of a great gnome hero, thousands of years ago, would be the catalyst for opening the gates of hell. And Bobby thought - there's more, he says it's convoluted - Bobby believed it to be Tsalta's child.

Gandalf did too. The prophesy spoke of a child of 'impure' gnomish heritage, which was the reason for the old gnome's ire towards other races and his furious objection to his daughter choosing to couple with a deep gnome. He didn't want any of his descendants to befall this curse.

So he removed his daughter. And his young nephew. That way there was no chance of them meeting the prophesy's description.

Then Tsalta came along, didn't she. And so followed Rosa. Except this time around, he couldn't bring himself to do it, he couldn't kill his own child. So he did the only thing he could - destroyed the memory of her, and had Bobby hide her away.

"And where is she? Why can't I see her?"

"She wouldn't be hidden if I told you." The last fourteen years, Bobby elaborates, have been his life's work keeping her protected.

But from what, Tsalta asks! Her, casting shit? From others? Bobby's not clear on that detail himself. The prophesy isn't that specific.

As this conversation happens, Nothing gives Spindle a long look, thinking that if Gandalf was trying to kill him...wouldn't that make him equally prophesy-eligible? She doesn't say it, though.

"So you're not going to let me see my own child?" Tsalta's distress is edging towards anger now, her frustration aimed at the only person who matches the shape of a target for it.

"I never said that."

"So can I go and see her?"

Bobby says she's very far away. Many days' travel. He needs to know he can still trust Tsalta, it's been fourteen years, and how is he to know if she's the same person he once knew? He remembers her as kind and loving, absolutely. But who's to say the world hasn't changed her over time.

Until he gets to know her again, Bobby says, he's not ready to risk it. Too much is at stake.

Tsalta turns to Nuth and Faeleth. "Guys, you'll back me up, right? I'd never hurt somebody!"

"Ah, they've said themselves that they've known you less than ten days."

Spindle lets out a long moo, and Tsalta snuggles him close with a soft chuckle. Bobby's expression softens. "You're definitely one of his, aren't you."

The little gnome wriggles to peer down at Bobby. "Who?"

"Your father was nuts too. You fit right in."

Spindle beams. "They do call me Ballsack around here!" At that, Bobby splutters out a proper little laugh, the bizarreness of the exclamation lightening his mood just because it's so weird.

"Ballsack?" he chortles.

As best he can, Spindle recaps the story of Tsalta's confusion over his species, and Bobby shakes his head with a wry smile. "Well, you're far from wrinkly, I don't think I'll be calling you Scrotum any time soon."

Tsalta sighs, processing Bobby's terms. "So, you just want to check I'm still nice, still kind, that I wouldn't do anything to my daughter." Faeleth pipes up that she'd vouch for Tsalta. She may have only known her a few days, but she truly would. Nuth agrees, pointing out that Tsalta didn't even want to hurt a wolf that was trying to maul someone to death.

Spindle is incredibly jealous that we got to fight wolves without him, he wanted to prove that he's dominant. He puffs out his skinny little chest, and Bobby chortles at the frankly adorable display. "Yes. Yes you are. Hey, how about we go hunt some wolves, how's that sound?" The little gnome all but lights up with excitement. "Yeah!"

Tsalta mutters in resignation - she supposes that if she's not to see her daughter for a long time, we may as well...get on with something else in the mean time. "You have kids?" Spindle's wide-eyed. Tsalta sighs a 'yes'. Bobby points out that Tsalta's a step-great-aunt now! Or a...stepgrandmother?

This lineage is complicated and everyone's brain hurts.

"Oi, Spindle, can I take a look at your box a sec?" Nuth ventures.

As he passes it down to her, Spindle says, "I don't think you'll get it open..." She smiles. Let's see how it goes, huh?

Taking the Dispel Magic scroll and reading the strange harsh consonants, a shimmering spectrum of light flows over the box and then shatters outwards. The magic is now, it seems, dispelled.

Inside the box, which now opens freely, are some papers.

One is a note from the farmer, Sam Shanks. It opens with an apology - sorry, I know this isn't a lot, but­ - and it goes on to refer to the other scroll sitting within the box. Sam was intending to give it to Spindle when he came of age, but should he be reading this then...it seems something must have happened, and in that case, well. It's important that Spindle have it.

Disappointed, Spindle mutters, "He gave me paper."

Tsalta suggests he...unroll the paper. He does so, then gives her a plaintive look and holds it out at his full arms' length for her to see - "I can't read this!" He repeats it, quite upset that he can't understand the nature of his gift, which is indeed written in a script that isn't Common or Gnomish.

But from the illustrations, it's...pretty clear it's probably the prophesy.