Party Animals

an adventure starring Niserie, Stella, and Jade. 
Tweet: Join Niserie, Jade, and Stella as they solve a train mystery and solve the bad vibes in the forest. 
Setting: the train line between Niqamui and Mishui 
Non Player Characters: 
* Smiler 
Plot Summary: 
When you see an animal talking to you in the woods, do you a) try to find out what it wants, b) try to pet it, or c) try to get it drunk? Our Firebreathing Kittens Jade, Niserie, and Stella (and Lenny - don’t forget him!) encounter this quandary in this adventure. Read on to see which option they choose :) 
The adventure begins on the train from Niqamui to Mishui, where the three FBK adventurers, Niserie’s wolf, and Stella’s squire/personal aide Lenny are headed for a job. Soon after the train enters a long tunnel, it comes to a sudden and mysterious stop. Stella thinks it is a surprise train party, and thus begins to celebrate, narrowly avoiding a mass panic situation from the train’s other passengers. Meanwhile, Niserie pokes her head out to see if she can find out what is going on. She finds no enemies or apparent causes of the train’s sudden stop nearby, so the three Kittens ensure the other passengers are safe at the moment before going to the engine car to investigate. 
When they get there, they immediately find why the train isn’t moving - Jade does a graceful accidental front right into the answer! The engine car and conductor are both missing - the car looks like it has been ripped off by an extremely strong creature. The train isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and everyone on it is stranded in a tunnel. 
While Stella buys all the passengers who drink a couple drinks and creates a fish out of water to keep the party going, Jade and Niserie escort the passengers off the train, so they can have somewhere to run in case the creature decides to come back and tear off more train cars. They discuss what do to in case another train comes, and Stella summons a Draconic Spirit to stand at the tunnel entrance to hopefully get any incoming train to stop before it enters the tunnel. This dragon has metallic scales resembling a safety vest and carries a stop sign like a crossing guard, so the adventurers name her Safeira (safe-ira) the Safety Dragon. Meanwhile, Niserie casts a spell to locate the missing train car and finds that it is quite a ways away, steadily moving South. 
Safeira guarding the entrance is a temporary solution, as the spell only lasts for an hour. So, in an incredible feat of strength, Jade pushes the entire train five feet. It doesn’t reach the end of the tunnel, but she does inspire the other passengers to start a train pushing contest / activity. Over the course of about 50 minutes, the passengers all band together and push the train to the end of the tunnel. Niserie and Jade decide that the safest course of action is for the passengers to wait outside the tunnel, in case Safeira despawns before an incoming train spots her. 
Having ensured the safety of the train’s passengers the best they could, the adventurers try to determine what happened to the train car. Niserie determines its location to be unchanging and at the very edge of her detection, due South. She finds many horse tracks leading to the Southeast, but they are not leading toward the train car. Stella hears a distant screech of train brakes, so the next train must have come just in time to see Safeira before she disappeared. She decides to resummon the Draconic spirit so the party can use her for transportation - for alerting the driver of the next train of what is going on, and to gain an aerial perspective to help in locating the missing car. 
The party flies back into the tunnel for a short and strange conversation with the driver of the next train, who changes course to head back to Niqamui. They then fly several hundred feet into the air and see a path through the forest heading southeast, presumably made by a large creature - or a train car! Niserie uses her Ranger magic to detect other creature types, but only detects an elemental somewhere in another direction and two dragons - Safeira and Stella, as she reveals that she is half dragon (her creature types are Humanoid and Dragon according to her D&D race) but keeps her heritage hidden as dragons are not well perceived by society. 
Riding on the back of Safeira the Safety Dragon, the party follows the path made through the forest, flying 50 feet above the treetops. Eventually, the spell begins to fade and Safeira lands before the party falls off her. Now in the middle of the woods, Niserie goes into stealth mode - she helps the other party members, particularly Jade in her heavy armor, evade detection from a giant. Jade can finally walk through the woods relatively silently, and she marvels at the sounds of nature she has been missing for so long. 
Niserie notices some Bad Vibes in the forest, as it is much quieter than it should be, but she can’t quite locate the source. Eventually, the party comes across a disembodied voice in the woods, and they all react quite differently: Niserie nocks an arrow, Jade says “hi, I’m Jade!” and Stella hides behind Jade until she gathers the liquid courage to recklessly introduce herself and flirt with the disembodied voice. The party finds that it belongs to a grinning grey cat on a branch. Jade immediately wants to pet it, and Stella offers it a drink. They ask about the train car, which the cat has obviously seen, but it refuses to tell them where it is. Instead, it goes further down the path and then disappears. 
Thus begins a wild goose (or caboose?) chase where the party encounters a talking bear and then a monkey. The interactions are virtually the same: Jade wants to pet the fluffy animal, Stella wants to party with the talking woodland creatures, and Niserie wants to find the root of the Bad Vibes. However, when they get to the monkey, it leads them to the entrance to an abandoned mine. It takes the drink from Stella, but promptly pours it out, much to her chagrin - it was very good quality and expensive whiskey! She fights her natural dragon’s instinct to kill the monkey for messing with her hoard, then calms down and tells Lenny her plan to fill the empty bottle with cheap beer and prank someone - or sell it for much more than it’s worth. 
The party tells the monkey what they want with the train car - mainly just to find the conductor and make sure he’s alright. The monkey reveals that they want to decrease order in the world, and it decides that the party is chaotic enough to show them the source of the Bad Vibes - inside the mineshaft. The tunnels fill up with fog as the party goes in deeper, until they get to what Stella is convinced is a secret drug lab. She offers to help sell the products, as long as she gets a cut. Niserie hides in the fog, while Jade and Stella try to find the monkey and investigate the lab. 
They find less of a drug lab and more of a mechanical workshop. The monkey appears before them and shifts into the bear, then the cat, and then it’s true, final form - a very long limbed and pale giant. Niserie realizes that it is a very dangerous creature, but it appears more cornered than menacing. She drops her weapons and encourages the rest of the party to do the same. Stella thinks the creature looks cool and shape shifts to match its form, though she can’t quite reach its height. 
The giant, who reveals that their name, or at least what they are called, is Smiler. They lift the fog to show several conspiracy boards, one of which has Stella and Jade’s pictures on it. It is missing Niserie’s picture, which is explained by the fact that she is an independent contractor and hops between various guilds. Smiler also reveals that they hate organizations, and thinks Firebreathing Kittens is affiliated with the organization P.L.E.A.S.E, and the Ekenblim, both of which Smiler hates the most. The Kittens reassure them that the FBK is hardly an organization, just a place where people connect and take adventuring jobs, and they have not heard of PLEASE - they don’t even recognize that it is an organization, just a word circled many times on a paper. 
Smiler lifts the rest of the fog and reveals the train car, which has been turned into a gnarly mechanical spider. The Kittens admire Smiler’s work, offer their friendship to them and encourage them to become an inventor or a baseball player, as they have talents that could be useful to society. Smiler declines the offer to become a part of society but accepts the Kittens’ friendship and is (hopefully) no longer hostile to the FBK. They lead the party to the conductor, who has been tied up and seems hurt but definitely alive. Jade heals his injuries and unties him, and Stella offers him a drink that he gladly accepts. 
The party decides to conceal the location of the train car and Smiler - instead, Stella resummons Safeira to take them to Mishui and suggests an alibi. They looked for the train car and were unable to find it, but they did find the conductor stumbling around the woods, dazed and somewhat drunk, and just spent the day riding around on the dragon. Thus concludes the adventure. 
Memorable Quotes: 
* “Lenny’s here too!”
* “Another title idea”
* Stabdalone - honorable title idea mention
* Stella: “Do you have any idea how much that cost!? Oh well, it wasn’t mine anyways.”
* Jade: “You can hear birds?? And deer?”
* Smiler, to Niserie: “How about you, what is your name? I heard the others calling you ‘misery’ or ‘bad vibes.’”
* Niserie: “Let’s go with ‘Bad Vibes.’”
Category:Episodes