Manage the White Moose Inn
Returning to the White Moose inn, our intrepid heroes find that something is amiss.
There is an algae covered man sleeping in an ice covered trough outside the stables. He takes your animals and sends you inside.
Inside the inn, it's obvious that some serious upgrades have gone down. Everything looks and smells fresh and clean. With just a hint of that new lacquer smell. The place looks seriously upscale.
Behind the bar is a dwarf that our party has never seen before. The man looks absolutely wild, with a fierce temperament that doesn't quite hide the fact that his wild corona of hair is really just a friar's cut. Our party approaches the man at the bar, confused and ask for the shrub. The barkeep checks his appointment books, and informs the party that they aren't on the list. At this point, Dain steps forward. He informs the barkeep that this is his fuckin inn, and the shrub in fact reports to him.
The barkeep looks confused, but steps down from his stool, and into a back room. Dain goes to follow him, but is blocked by a half-orc.
While waiting, the party hears whispers about a betting on a fight going on tonight. The Brawler is coming in and its going to be a big one.
Where would a fight be going on? Lonelywood is not big enough to host a fighting pit, not to mention that it is illegal.
The dwarven barkeep comes back in, and ushers the party into a lavish office. A massive desk, beautiful pictures, books on every wall. And sitting in the plush chair is the bush.
The Bush has had some work done. He's gotten leaf fillers, his leaves are filligreed with gold, and golden chains wrap him like a goddamned christmas tree.
As it turns out, the old staff left of their own accord. But the bush is not giving out answers easily. And it all seems very suspicious. The party agrees to discuss the terms of this new set up during the fight in two hours. The bush (now the Shrub) insists on kicking out people from their rooms and giving them to the party. Atala and Breena take him up on his offer and head into their rooms.
Breena has an odd encounter with the housekeeper "Wild" Sam, and decides to take a bath. There is now magical plumbing, and the bathing room is beckoning. There is a gorgeous clawfoot tub, and various potions, powders, elixers, etc. Naturally, Breena decides to take the grossest looking potion and dump it into her bath. She slides in...and keeps sliding. She is the most comfortable she has ever been and is happy to relax. What she doesn't know is that the potion has turned her into a pile of goo, and she will be that way, unkowing for the next four hours.
Thatcher and Vaede decide to opt out of the rooms, and head to the stable. Where they have a heartwarming conversation with the strange cursed man about his past, his love of animals, particularly ducks, and the fact that he is not contagious but can't promise anything if you drink his bathwater.
They find that the stables are meticulously clean, warm and comfortable. They also learn that the staff are all earning 1 gp a day. Which is insane.
Atala heads out to find the lovely speaker of the town, Nimsy. She offered her attic to refugees and gave everyone cookies. Nimsy welcomed her in, and asked how the inn was going. It looked to her like the inn was doing really well. Nimsy wasn't pleased that the bouncer charged everyone a fee to even come into the bar, but was happy that she at least now got her attic and her 12 childrens rooms back.
Dain heads to the common room to find some food and drink. He is greeted by a wood elf with impressive posture, dressed modestly in a dress (Except the generous neckline of course). She is muttering to herself about her debts, but brings Dain a hearty pumpkin stew in a sourdough bread bowl, and exceptionally delicious roast mutton. While eating, Dain finds himself drawn to the barkeep and his loud obnoxious story. One in which he escaped a dragon, found his way in Menzobarranzan, was seduced by a matron mother, and barely escaped with his life. It all seems nonsensical. Dain asks the wood elf about the barkeep, and she tells him that he is indeed, full of shit.
Two hours later, the party (sans Breena, who is still goo) is gathered, and taken to a decrepit building behind the inn. Inside the building there is just a set of stone stairs leading downward. They head down the stairs, and Dain marvels at the work he sees. Intricate stonework that would have taken years to create. Delicate archways leading to various rooms smelling of food, perfumes, strange odors, and just straight up sex. Velvet lines the walls, and curtains section off each room. At the end of the hallways is a massive arena. Tiered steps with intricate seats carved into them lead into a fighitng pit, with two hallways where the fighters will come in and leave. The party is led to a private box, where, stomachs churning. They confront the Shrub about how he did all this, and where the hell this place came from. Vaede discerns that this ancient cavern is in fact, a pocket dimension. The party is currently sitting in the astral plane. And true enough, as they look around the arena, they see types of people and creatures that they've never seen before, such as gith, or giant purple humanoids.
The fight begins. The Brawler, a large stone goliath, and Nicki, a very short human. It isn't a long fight, and to the untrained eye, Nicki is not doing well. She is only using her fists, but Dain can see, that she is perfectly hitting the weak spots in the goliath, and after a few tense minutes, it crumbles. A giant magical broom sweeps up the goliaths remains, and Nicki is crowned victor.
At this point, the party confronts the Shrub again about how all of this came about, and leave the conversation with very few answers. The Shrub is willing to give them good gold to keep this business going. They'll reconvene in the morning to discuss it.
After the fight, nursing drinks in the tavern and trying to reconcile the events of the last 24 hours, Breena rejoins the group, blissfully unaware of everything that just occured.
The next morning at dawn, the party heads back to the Elven tomb, where they know they can find a singing whimsical mummy, who might have answers for them. They find the mummy sitting at a small fire, roasting a hot dog of indeterminate origin. He shares that an awakening spell should not last this long on shrubbery, like it would for animals. At this point he pouts that the group left him, and leaves to find his old friend Marty, to see how he's doing after his crazy ass girlfriend cursed him.
The party revisits the scrying mirror in the tomb. They first look for the original staff they had hired for their inn, but find that they were casualties in the recent dragon attack. Vaede then turns her eye to the shrub, taking psychic damage upon figuring out what she was looking at.
The Shrub, is in fact a beautiful demon lord who has assumed his shape and done who knows what with the shrub himself.
As the party decides what to do next, Vaede hears human refugees trying to find their way to Lonelywood. They look poor and ragged, and the party offers to take them back with them, with the warning not to visit the White Moose Inn. But as the party turns the direction of Lonelywood, the family promptly turns the other direction and starts walking. Thatcher called out to the family, confused. The family insisted that they were following the party, while obviously walking a different direction. They tried tying ropes to the family, only to find them pulling the opposite direction while insisting that they were going the right way.
Vaede does some thinking, and makes a connection. The cover charge at the inn was ridiculous, 3 gold pieces. More money than most refugee's carried with them. But, Nimsy wasn't taking on refugee's and had made it sound like everyone who came in was able to get a room at the inn. There's some nefarious magic afoot. After consulting the party, Thatcher came to the conclusion that the Shrub had cast a spell around lonelywood, where only people with enough coin would be able to find the city, and those who were poor were left to wander.
Plot type
Side Quest
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