Session 2: Season of the Witch

The party stands in the bright burning shadow of a scorched vegetable golem and spies something glittering in the ashes. They approach and see that it's a golden talisman. After some discussing they take it (avoiding contact with the skin) and decide to head back to the farm. They see Granny on the porch again all mostly a plant and decide to try putting the talisman on her. This goes badly and her eyes pop open and she starts staggering towards them all drag me to hell style. They manage to get the necklace off of her before it turns into anything particularly dangerous and decide to load up a cart with all the food they can find that was more than a week old.

On the way back they encounter the dead bodies of the knight and one of the people he was fighting and loot the corpses, finding a bunch of gold on the knight and an old map and an extra pair of socks on the other guy (thank you Vornheim loot the body table). Ovaria decides to take the already mutilated corpses of the dead and arrange them like the worst tableau vivant you could imagine. Then she sketched it so she could show it to her buddies underground later. It's like a dark elf book club or something.

Upon returning to town they delivered the food to Connie, who had mixed emotions upon hearing (most of) their story. She would need a new farm to supply the inn, but was happy the party came back with something. They all hit the tavern and eat dinner/grab some drinks and unwind. The bar begins to fill up and the party hears a few rumors about things like the underground sales of Gryphon eggs, the recent imperial troop occupation of the town and that it's open mic night. The bard performing is doing some beatbox looping with his wand and free styling over it. Clubion decides that he doesn't understand these hip new bards and decides to call it a night and grows himself a little grove out behind the inn to sleep in.

With the night winding down, the others decide to go to sleep and head up to their rooms. Ovaria gets a knock on her door from Connie, who totally wants a piece, but Ovaria shoots her down and the party proceeds to slip into dreamland.

I'm a chump DM that loves to use dreams for things. Especially talking to your god and stuff like that so I used this as an excuse to level them all up.

Fern dreams about new potion recipes!

Kenje dreams in puzzles and learns how to better solve them and pick locks and stuff.

Clubion has cocooned himself like a weird moth, and dreams of all the animals he can turn into now.

Ovaria dreams she was partying with Lilith, who gave her some new spells and then they made out a bunch.

Ham Sung-Cho

It was around that time that Ovaria awoke to the sound of someone rummaging through her stuff. It was a witchy looking woman, frantically tearing apart the contents of her dresser in search of the necklace.

Ovaria jumps out of bed and pounces on her, pinning her to the ground. The Witch attempts to spray a bunch of poison out of her mouth at Ovaria, but misses.

The commotion awakens the others and they barge in the room to Ovaria and the witch cursing each other out and tussling on the floor.

The witch breaks free and summons a bunch of daggers to fly around the room at them and they all spend some time trying to dodge a bunch of knives. It's around now that Clubion awakes in the middle of a dream about turning into a horse and canters his weird, half horse self up the stairs into the room to further add to the confusing melee of daggers and bodies.
Fern takes matters into his own hands and hurls a potion of charm person at the witch like a grenade. She gets doused with it and instantly becomes docile and friendly and asks the party nicely if she can have the necklace back (it was hers and she dropped it while drunkenly dueling another witch somewhere in the skies above the fields of amber). She says that if she doesn't get it back, her patron, The Manticore of the Holy Mountain will be super pissed at her. Ovaria gets it, patrons are weird in like a dating your boss kind of way. She offers to tell the party a BIG secret if they let her have the talisman back and they agree on the condition that she also breaks the weird plant curse on (most) them. She does, and then relates to them this tale.

You know how like the world is all boned up by wizards? How they control all the trade and puppeteer all the rulers and generally treat the land as their personal chessboard? Well I used to date one of them. He goes by the name The Saintly Skull (ugh wizards are so lame what was I thinking) and the secret is that he's been dead for years. His tower has been running on autopilot, keeping all the charms and spells he's worked on the land going. Without him alive to guard it, the tower is not only approachable, but might even be possible to deactivate. It's far from safe, and The Gaptooth Mountains are a challenge to traverse in their own right, but if someone were to make it there and break his seals or charms or whatever, all of the rotten shit he's worked over the last couple hundred years could come crashing down and usher in a new era of freedom from all these gross wizards. 

I know, I know, why haven't I gone and done anything about it? Well truth be told I could give a shit about all of that. I'm not risking my ass for anybody but me, and if I get this necklace back I'll be made in the shade.

The party gives her the necklace and breaks the spell. She tells them all to get bent and flies off. They decide that they're exactly the kind of rag tag group of heroes that could pull off a crazy stunt like this and decide that they'll set off in a few days.