Session 14 - My Friend Gurk

Drant: How do you kill a dragon?

Fritz: Lots of people...lots of blood...and lots of screaming.

Drant: That doesn't seem very intuitive.

Fritz: The screaming and the blood are involuntary.

Plot points/Scenes

Gurk

• F: “Who are your new….friends?”
  • Gurk (kobold)
    • He’s a kobold underling, the Fourth Yell for some master that lives deep in the mountains, he’s been sent on a quest to gather information and intel for his master
  • Brother Gurp (bugbear) (has a warg?)
    • Drant adopted the 6 rust monsters which were aggravating our power line construction, and Brother Gurp is a bugbear who has taken it upon himself to shepherd and protect the Holy Cattle
• Gurk has a questionnaire he’d like everyone to fill out
  • “What sorts of questions are on your questionnaire?”
  • G: “What’s your national holiday? What time does everyone get off work? What is your greatest weakness?”
  • Apparently he’s also got specific questions for Carissa and Brian Tangerlyn (when are the most people working in the mines, which tunnels are unused, which tunnels are most likely to collapse)
  • Also wants to know about some important people
    • A Ay-ron Deeming
    • Gay Lord Tare-iys-may
    • We have no idea what he’s talking about
  • Questions
    • When do you guys sell the most power?
      • The third wednesday of every month 10am-11am
    • What part of this machinery is the most likely to fail
      • The doorbell
    • What is your greatest fear?
      • *hard thinking*
      • Clarifies: as a company
      • Inviting nobility over and having them notice the dust gathered on our fan blades
    • Drant has a question for Gurk: what makes your master mad?
      • Looking at him weird, smelling him, etc.
      • “I’ve found its best to be no closer than 3 yells away bc everyone closer than that is continuously getting eaten”
    • Which of the three of you would you be most likely to search for if they went missing?
      • First part of that question, Jalan is the most likely to get kidnapped
      • Second part, we accidentally reveal EVERYTHING ABOUT JALAN AND FRITZ’s CONNECTION because our dumb asses were debating how far the other person would have to travel before the other was motivated to go save them
    • What would have to happen for us to give up all of our money?
    • What would it take to join a dragon in his quest for whatever he’s questing for?
      • J: Cool hats
      • F: but that’s an absolute must, if there’s like a ton of benefits, included dental care and everything, but no cool hats, deals off
      • Jalan also requests being worshipped on top of a pyramid
    • Any wants?
      • J: “the pet owlbear squishy that I lost (soot colored, gets angry if you don’t feed him fish) lost him when I fled the underdark”
      • G: “OH! Good question! Why did you flee the
      • underdark?”
      • J: “Shit.”
• Drant advises Gurk’s disguise (he’s made up like a child (since he’s a small kobold) with glasses/moustache
  • A child doesn’t really have a mustache
  • But the glasses attached to a nose and a mustache went great!
  • But the nose was made of skin….and you have scales
  • F: oh GOD. where did you get the nose?
    • She misunderstands. It’s a prop glasses/moustache. She thought he literally pilfered a nose off somebody and was wearing it around
• Gurk tries to start wandering around
  • F: “OFF LIMITS NO STOP”
  • D: *reveals all of our traps* “we don’t want you to get hurt little buddy”
  • F: “...........Drant.”
• Gurk’s next stop is down into town to question Carissa
  • Jalan gives him “forged papers” to get him past the guards
    • It’s just 10 gold folded into a piece of paper
• Discussion
  • D: “well this dragon isn’t OUR problem”
  • F: “ehhh it kinda is”
  • D: “well let’s just kill it, how do you kill a dragon”
  • F: “lots of people...and lots of blood….and lots of screaming”
  • D: “well that doesn’t seem very intuitive”
  • F: “the screaming and the blood are involuntary”
• Prioritize
  • Drant’s shoes (4 days)
  • Build pleasure barge (sheen priority) (<2.5 weeks)
  • Borksnob explode fort (2.5 weeks)
  • Court for David Hauschmead (2 months 3 weeks)
  • Election (3 months)
  • Dragon coming for the power plant (indeterminate)
  • Dragon coming for the research facility (indeterminate but more urgent than above)
  • Jalan’s bounty hunters (indeterminate)
  • Pen up Drant’s rust cows (asap)
  • Phantasmium experiments?
• Brother Gurp and Drant - building a pen
  • Nymph tells of the rust cows getting interested in eating the building
  • F: “Drant. Please hurry.”

Field Trip into Stonedeep

• We follow Gurk into town to watch what’s sure to be hysterical go down at the Embassy, and encounter Brother Gurp cutting down a tree with his club to build the Holy Cattle’s pen
  • F: “DRANT! That’s cruel!!”
  • D: “I don’t want him to cut himself, he’ll tire himself out eventually”
• Gurk at the embassy - puts on glasses/nose, approaches the guards
  • Guard: “Um…”
  • Gk: “I am no kobold! I am a…...huuuuman…...what is the weakest point in your armor?”
  • Gd: “What?”
  • Gk: “W-H-A-T, is that how you spell that?”
  • Gd: “Are you daft?”
  • Gk: “No, I’m Gurk.”
  • Gk: “If I wanted to become an obsidian guard member to tear it apart from the inside how would I do that?”
• Carissa agrees to entertain him for awhile
  • After 10 minutes of him meeting with carissa, door opens and she’s laughing, “good joke, good joke!”
    • She already kinda knows about the dragon in question
      • Doesn’t take him seriously
      • We’re fucking dense
• Soup kitchen is today, public outreach and charity and all that
• We (representing the prison) should expect to get a visit from some mysterious robed people representing Ragnar
  • Days, weeks, months, who knows
  • Don’t lie to them, they just want to talk to Nevermore
  • Only plan to be in town for like 4 hours
• Drant visits his shoe shop
  • “Halfling shoes welcome”
• Fritz visits a lumberyard - she’s super concerned about the rust monsters chewing through the front door and eating her shit
  • D: “you’ll be fine.”
  • F: “Our. Entire. Facility. Is. Metal. Or did you forget we’re imprisoning a centuries-old magical psychotic killing machine in our basement?”
  • Drant protests that buying wood for a fence isn’t necessary
    • But he suddenly remembers that Nymarinian had informed him of tying them together, not down...
  • It’d be 500 gold including delivery for the amount of lumber necessary transported up the mountain to our base (it’s a long hard haul)
    • Professional trade? Fritz creates a machine that you could insert a just-cut-down tree into and get a bunch of pre-cut planks
    • Ultimately declines because time is precious but she threatens Drant that his bugs better not eat anything
• Soup kitchen
  • Jalan’s got aporaphobia but everyone manages to be cordial and sociable for the duration
• Coming home
  • Hear a bunch of metallic screeching noises
  • Fritz panics: “DraaaaaanNT”
  • Drant can sense it’s definitely coming from the rust cows
  • They’ve wrapped themselves in their Nymph-webbing around a tree and are screeching because they can’t get out ^{I don’t know why I find this so hysterical, every time I read it I chuckle}
  • Brother Gurp
    • Club is shattered, hands are blistered and bloody, he’s trying to pound shattered bits of tree into the ground into a weird facsimile of a circle
    • He basically beat a tree into splinters, dragged those splinters into a clearing, and started pounding those splinters into the ground in a circle with his bare hands
• Visiting the mine
  • Negotiating with Brian for access to phantasmium
  • Phil falls asleep
  • Drant tastes some phantasmium
  • Drant distracts while Fritz “steals” but is immediately caught
    • Enters into a business deal with Brian Tangerlyn
    • She gets the chance to perform tests on it and she’ll only buy from him from now on

Plot type

Session

Parent Plot

Act 1: Just Your Normal, Everday, Morally Ambiguous Power Company