(no subject)

[dragonoflife]

Twenty years after! A spicy meatball! Kermit the Frog narrates the introduction. The DM reminds them of their last encounter: they had defeated bone-and-sinew creatures from beyond!

Nobix: They were quite ugly, so we shot them in the face.

Their innards were hearts. Ellerian, who has spent several minutes looking for his character sheet, now spends several minutes looking for his dice bag. They continue on their slow slow way towards the dwarven tram station. It’s a horrible night to have a curse.

Ellerian: “Much evil is afoot here.”
Nobix: “Really.”
Ellerian: I mutter to myself. In elvish.
Bex: “Much evil is a FOOT here!”
Ellerian: IN ELVISH.
Sable: The streets are deserted?
DM: At the moment, yes. The people had run away.
Ellerian: After that horrific monster attack, it’s not too surprising,
DM: In fact, it takes only a couple extra blocks for you to walk down before hearing the noise of the city creep back in. And in fact, you come up to a throng of bystanders ahead.
Nobix: “Really don’t know what’s going on here, lads.”
Ellerian: What do we observe?
DM: There’s a group of people there with some city watch guards trying to keep them from pouring down into the streets.
Ellerian: I see. (a pause) Bad idea: ‘Blah! Blooh! We’re the monsters!’
Morzan: Aaah, Real Monsters?
DM: One bystander points out a meaty digit and says, ‘Oi! It’s the city task force! What news of what happened? Have many died?”
Ellerian: Is that us now? The city task force?
Erik: I’m not sure. I honestly don’t remember what happened last time. I heard what the DM said, I don’t remember that part.
DM: (making a motion of something going in one ear and out the other)

They catch Erik up again. Bex requests a short rest, and is reminded that this is Pathfinder and those aren’t a thing. They shove commoners away and demand they eat cookies. The group sort of shrugs, apparently concluding they are indeed the city task force.

DM: You’re the only ones coming from the direction the guy pointed at.
Ellerian: There’s some monsters behind us. But one of them’s wearing a deerskin cap and is carrying a magnifying glass.
DM: ‘Warrwuurgwaarwarrghwaugh!’ ‘I dare say, Holmes, you’re quite right.’
Morzan: I guess I’ll step up and be like, “What goes here, citizen?”
DM: “What’s the news of what happened? How many are dead?”
Morzan: Oh lord.
Erik: I reiterate the scene that we approached to.

They do. Erik bitterly notes that another DM would be having them arrested. The city watch attempt to make passage for them, and on they head.

DM: Will the dwarves have the answers for this? I doubt it. Says the ominous voice in the sky.
Ellerian: I agree with it. In Elvish.
DM: You are smitten. Now you love the dwarves.
Ellerian: I am smitten with the dwarves!
C: That’s great. And they can’t tell because you don’t speak their language.
Ellerian: Yes I do. I took that.
C: You won’t choose to speak it.

The group continues to suspect that Ellerian knows Common and just refuses to speak it.

C: There’s a fictional character that has that schtick.
Ellerian: Definitely not my character, who is not fictional in any way.

They enter into more dwarfish territory, and thence to the tram office. Thane Beeren Grimshield greets them, with special note for his kinsman Nobix.

DM: “You must be, what’re they calling you now, the task force of the city, eh?”
Erik: I honestly don’t remember us getting an actual title.
Ellerian: We apparently got it in absentia.
DM: “Aye, it’s been said you’ve been wandering around doing things for the city. Sounds like a task force to me.”
Erik: “Ehhhh…”
DM: “Except for maybe my kinsman, yuir appearance is a bit confusing. I thought you weren’t leavin’ the city for another week or so.”
Bex: “Things have happened that have changed our plans.”

Now they remind Morzan of their purpose here. Ellerian is called Aibghalien, to his fury, and vows his next character will be Jeff the Fighter, who is nondistinguishing and generic as possible.

Jeff: I have a longsword.
C: Longswords are good.
DM: They do 1d8 damage.
Jeff: Plus Strength. Oh shit, rules knowledge! I’ve betrayed my nature!
Nobix: Jim the Knight is even more generic.

The thane tells them to make himself at home in his office; Erik digs a burrow, and Ellerian grows a tree, leading to an angry war of deforestation. Nobix gets handed a letter from his commanding officer which briefly tells him to stay with the task force, as the rest of the unit has gone back to the homeland. The thane tells them of the break-in; someone broke into the armory and stole a schematic, then escaped through the vents. They spend a little bit hashing out details.

Bex: “I will admit I’m a little curious to go back to the spot and see how they got into the ventilation and kinda where it would go towards. Get an idea of where it might have gone.”
DM: “Aye, if you want to investigate the scene of the crime, I’m sure we can make that arrangement.”
Nobix: “I am really up for that, I’m really curious as to how they pulled this crap off.”

The thane takes off to arrange this. They are offered refreshments.

DM: ‘Malt beer… Fresh meat off the bone…’ Fungi.
Morzan: Meat off the bone and fungi? Yeah, I’m in.
Erik: What’re you guys talking about? The one I read, they had a great time in the mountains. They had beer and then they left and everyone was happy. I don’t know what book you read. Clearly not the right one. I believed the dwarf, I just skipped that chapter.
DM: ‘Eh, Gimli knows what he’s talking about. …where’s Gandalf?”
Ellerian: Aww, they just came out of Rivendell and talked about how great it was there, I’ll skip ahead.

Crime Scene Vision reveals countless unconscious bodies, as they wait twenty minutes for the thane to return. Ellerian mutters about them sanitizing the scene, but they head off to the tram warehouse. The thane tells them the warehouse was heavily guarded and the other access was the entrance for the trams proper. They finally reach it, determining it to be human architecture repurposed as they are ushered in.

DM: You are led through the rack towards the back where there is a small single door opening, also heavily guarded by two guards, who stand at attention as you make your appearance. The thane again simply nods, and you all enter the doorway and immediately start to descend. It is at this time that the thane lights a torch, as the hall itself is pitch dark. Dwarves don’t need light, you see.
Ellerian: I use the power of low-light vision!
DM: Excellent. You see slightly further than some of your comrades.
Nobix: Yay!
Ellerian: Elven arrogance triumphs again!
DM: Down and down you go, further and further beneath the earth. Breaching the crust!
Ellerian: To the core. Which we have to restart with nuclear explosions.
Erik: (after a shocked pause) Why would you bring up that movie?! Did you watch it again recently?! It’s like ten years old!
DM: Eventually the ground levels out. None of you were prepared for it! Thud thu-thud thud! And down here it seems cramped, as if a dwarf built it.
Ellerian: (miming his face grinding on the ceiling as he walks forward)
DM: It’s as if someone said, “Hey, humans are five and a half feet at maximum, right?”
Erik: ‘This is where we dug too deep. Watch out, there’s many a Balrog here. Jim-Bob dug too deep and got killed by lava.’ What are we, in Dwarf Fortress?
DM: You are led down these halls, they branch off here and there, they seem very unremarkable. At one point it opens up.
Ellerian: It’s a ridiculous passageway! I thought this was just some warehouse, and we’re traveling to another zone entirely!
C: Could’ve saved us all this trouble with a loading zone.

They finally reach their destination, the armory. The dwarven belcher has been returned to the homelands, but the gaping hole in the ceiling remains! They begin investigating, searching and detecting no meaningful magic, coming up pretty much totally blank. They finally send Bex up into the hole.

DM: “Aye, there was one guard that was actin’ a bit peculiar, and then we found him unconscious near the tracks. Maybe a bit of stolen identity?”
Erik: “A mind-altering spell of some kind?”
DM: “Aye, that was also thought of, but why would he be back at the tracks?”
Erik: “Just to get him out of the way, maybe. It’s hard to say.”
C: Cast Scry.

The dwarves have prepared their clone army, which is… good news… Bex keeps rolling Perception in the hopes that eventually the DM will give him something. He climbs until he reaches a grate.

DM: Strangely enough, this grate has been broken open, and there is a large side of ham stuck into it.

Silence.

Bex: Ham.
DM: Mmhmm.
Bex: Okay. I’m going to roll Perception.
C: This is indeed ham.
Bex: This is weird.
DM: Think like a square ventilation thing, wooden, built by human hands, and just a big hunk of ham with bone-in, stuck in there. Blocking you from going further up.
Erik: I’ve heard rumors that the dwarves were experimenting with wall food.
Ellerian: Why would a ham be here?! Is it actually serving a structural purpose?!
C: The ham is blocking your progress.

Bex determines a substance has downright fused the ham to the structure; Erik insists it’s a magical malfunction of some sort, while Ellerian jumps to sovereign glue. The group descends into madness over this weird turn of events.

Ellerian: Maybe it’s a calling card.
C: Again, why ham – a calling card?! That’s great! The Ham Bandits!
Ellerian: Morzan, are there any criminals that use ham as a calling card?
Morzan: I have no idea!
Erik: Oh my god, the Hammy Bandits, and they all have bad puns.
C: The leader of the gang is obviously named Skinner. That’s how it got melded to the grate, it was steamed!

Madness continues as Bex comes back to report on what he’s seen. Somehow he proposes a trip to find more ham hanging out.

Ellerian: We need to go to New York.
Erik: A misdirect—oh god. No. No. No, we’re skipping it. We’re skipping it. We’re bypassing it.
DM: I’m trying to put it together in my head.
Erik: No! No. No. We’ll never know. We’re bypassing the pun. I’m pulling us off the expressway. Stop thinking about it!
DM: You know I like deductive games.
Ellerian: This one’s really oblique.
DM: Okay.
Nobix: I don’t get the ham part… at a-all.

Bex proposes this is somehow a scent thing. Ellerian and Erik continue to spar over whether they will visit the pun. Morzan clambers up to investigate the ham as well. Erik deploys the Ham Eraser. Madness! Morzan cuts off the ham!

Morzan: I’m trying to open that grate.
DM: With the ham gone, now it’s a much easier task. You put your crowbar in there and work it around and eventually the frame pops off.
C: You pulled the pins out of the ham.
Erik: A ham-based locking system.
Morzan: Ham grenade!
C: This whole ham thing is probably payback for something that happened -- (covering his mouth and yelling muffled words)
Ellerian: No, no, we’re heading for a double eclipse of the two moons of this planet.
DM: I’m just hamming it up.
Erik: Stop. Stop. Stop. Don’t—
Ellerian: Moons Over My Hammy.
Erik: SEE?!
Ellerian: Even old New York was one New Hams-Are-Jammed.

Morzan finds herself in a cellar, and starts poking around the house – and finds mysterious markings on the floor, of dubious nature!

Ellerian: ‘Jets Rule.’ (snapping and starting a knife fight)
Morzan: I’ll yell down the cellar for Bex.
DM: Bex is gone. Back down to present diseased ham.
Bex: ‘LOOK AT THIS HAM!’

Morzan makes a copy of the markings, and comes back down. They conclude this is likely the ritual that they found the bodies in earlier! Erik and Ellerian both vigorously roll 14 on their Knowledge checks and conclude it is some sort of summoning. It gets weird.

Ellerian: Is this ham people?!
DM: It’s not Soylent Green.
Ellerian: That didn’t answer my question! Is this in fact an actual ham from a pig and not, like, a person ham!
DM: It’d be a very big person.
Ellerian: There could be – there was an ogre working with the other guys!
DM: I can’t argue that, but that isn’t a human, now is it?
Ellerian: HumanOID ham!
DM: Okay, fine. Are you going to study the ham further?
Ellerian: The hell – oh, I do have Knowledge(Nature). And I rolled a 20!
DM: This definitely does seem to be of porcine nature.
Ellerian: Okay, just checking. Is it celestial ham?
DM: No. Run of the mill, gone-off ham.
Ellerian: Look, they used hearts, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used spare parts for other things. Like jamming a grate, apparently.

Then it gets worse.

Ellerian: An ancient Babylonian leader committed this crime. It’s a Hammurobbery.
Morzan and Erik: Oh my god.
Nobix: I’m sorry, my eyes rolled back so far they’re now in my head.
DM: Hey, I momentarily lost the will to live. I was honestly like, ‘just let me die here.’
Ellerian: Ooh, that’s like a double word score.
DM: I’m going to start tying nooses around the house. I’ve become Normilan, thanks Ellerian.

A brief diversion over how many hearts and how many people involved in the ritual confuses everyone. They start summing up the numerous questions they have no answers for, briefly considering that the ritual and the thieves coincidentally ran into each other before dismissing that as too implausible. Why did the monsters emerge now when the theft happened last night? The DM points out that the markings in the house were in chalk and thus probably unusable. Cake slows the game.

Sable: What are you all eating?
Morzan, Ellerian, and C: Cake.
Sable: Oh. Hmm. I have to go dip into my cookie stash later.
C: COOKIES?!
Ellerian: COMMONER FOOD?!
Sable: While everyone else is thinking about the ham and eating, Sable has already examined all the weapons in the dwarven armory and satisfied herself, satisfied her curiosity, and she begins chatting up the guards, discussing the virtues of various warhammers.
Erik: That first statement sounded kind of weird. She examined all the weapons and satisfied herself. What does it mean?
Sable: Only to you, Erik…

Sable establishes that yes, it was the plans to the Belcher. The guards also reiterate that it appeared to be one of their own, while the thane notes that the schematics don’t contain enough information to construct or reverse-engineer the Belcher. Erik convinces himself that the entire stunt was an act to get the accused dwarf back to the dwarven kingdom.

DM: The ham! It all hinges on the ham!
C: The linchpig, if you will.
DM: Oh, that was a beautiful one. (to Ellerian) If you had something for puns, I’d take it from you and give it to him.
Ellerian: What the fuck?!
DM: That was beautiful.
Ellerian: All the hard work I put in to this table over the years and one good one from him destroys it all?! Fucking shit, man!
DM: You flood me with them!
C: Mine was well-timed. Not as clever as yours, but much better timing.
Erik: Also it didn’t require any work on my part. I have to wait for the pun to come out, while he sits here with his goofy grin… (imitating that)
C: That was perfectly exaggerated to just the right amont.
Erik: I know there’s a pun coming, Ellerian is smiling again!

Ellerian insists that notifying Carrick of the circle’s existence is paramount, to prevent future summonings. The dwarves summon the masons, or alternatively, the Stonecutters. Weird music erupts. A furious argument results over whether Ellerian is pun-pushing or not.

Ellerian: I made reference to it TWICE!
DM: That’s enough. It’s in my brain. It’s the little bug from Wrath of Khan.
Ellerian: So I’ve installed a horrible mind-worm that I poured in through your ear? I guess that’s another thing on the bucket list that I can Chekov.

Silence. The DM’s expression makes Ellerian collapse.

Erik: Your bucket list, full of torturing the DM. You kept saying Moons Over My Hammy, I don’t know why.
Ellerian: I said it once. It just echoes in your skull!

They head back to the Mages’ Quarter, and Ellerian finally prompts a furious no-more-pun demand from C. Shockingly, he doesn’t get it. Some of the game report might have been lost here. Find out next time?