Session 4 - Shoes on the Ceiling

Session date: November 6 2019

The party, having agreed to travel to Waterdeep and fetch the dragon skull for Dr. Naznarth, meets at the southern gate out of Neverwinter, ready to go.

They're met by one of Dr. Naznarth's employees, who provide them with a horse and wagon, and a packet of documents assumedly the shipment order or whatever for the Dragon Skull that they are headed to retrieve.

The party heads south for a day, with Dae driving and Teddy keeping lookout during daytime travel. They travel for some time without much interruption and find a circle of travelers and wagons who have set up a central camp for the night. The party decides to join them.

Some of the other travelers are other merchants or caravans, and some of them are running their own side hustles. The restless and mischievous members of the party decide to do a little hustling themselves, and see if they can make any coin doing some mending, or entertaining. Teddy plays some awful beats on his drum while singing... not his best performance. Dae haggles with one of the merchants who mostly seems to be selling wrist-mounted sun dials. Ivan expresses interest in the sun dials, but not in paying for one. Topknot finds a small girl with a broken doll, and for the price of a button, he mends it for her, before she runs off to rejoin her family's wagon for the night.

Teddy gives up his performance, and goes to find some food for the group, buying a meal for the whole party so they don't need to break out their rations yet. Topknot collects a bunch of firewood for the journey, and then the party sits their various watches and rests for the night. Topknot steals one of the sun dials from the merchant, and also pees on or around him. He then takes the "watch" and puts it under Ivan's bedroll.

The next day the party travels a bit more and discovers what looks like a circus tent. Dae and Teddy are excited about this as they've never seen such a thing, and they enter immediately. They're greeted by a somewhat hairy dog-faced merchant named Maggie and she refers to the place as Maggie's Marvelous Magic Shop of Magical Delights. Ivan somewhat rudely asks what she is and she replies that she's a Gnoll. He twitches, and immediately heads outside.

Topknot immediately goes into rogue mode and starts looking for stuff to steal. He casts detect magic and finds a number of magical items around the store, including what seems like it might be a set of Pipes of the sewers, and single sending stone without its matched pair. There are also a pair of shoes stuck to the ceiling, and they seem likely to be a set of Slippers of spider climbing. Maggie mentions that an assistant was trying out the slippers and went up on the ceiling, and then fell out of them, and they've been stuck there ever since. They have a running contest and basically anyone that can get the slippers off the ceiling can keep them. The party then proceeds in a number of different ways to try to take on this challenge, and ultimately end up spending the entire day failing to do so, but coming quite close a number of times. Meanwhile Ivan has been outside trying (also without success) to burn down Maggie's tent, but the tent seems to be quite magical in nature and is unscathed. The grass and surrounding area, however is all burned up. Topknot also manages to steal a very decorative short sword.

The party finally gives up on the shoes, and moves a bit further along and sets up camp again. They sleep and keep watch more or less uninterrupted once again.

The following day they continue their journey south and after a bit of traveling find an overturned wagon in the road. Topknot jumps out and heads forward to investigate stealthily while the party approaches in the wagon at a measured pace. Finding nothing initially, Topknot steps out to wave the party over and is immediately attacked by a Kamadan, and a fight breaks out.

The party has some initial trouble with the Kamadan, with a failed Fairy Fire spell from Teddy and several missed attacks - Topknot completely bending his freshly pilfered shortsword, which turned out to be purely decorative in nature.

After a round of fighting, an Ogre comes out of the woods and joins the fray as well, saying "Kitty found food!" Dae lands a clutch Hold Person spell on the Ogre and the party makes pretty short work of him, then going back to focus damage on the Kamadan and defeating it fairly easily in the end.

After the battle, the party investigates the area a bit more, and finds that there were some objects or something dragged off into the woods, following these tracks they find the scene of a terrible slaughter - what seems to be one of the families that they had camped with two nights before, all torn to pieces and partially devoured. They do notice, however, after some grisly inspection, that there don't seem to be any pieces of the small child that was with this family, so they begin to look for her, and end up finding her hiding in their own wagon.

After placating her a bit, and then also telling her of the fate of her family (and then placating her some more), they learn that her name is Casey, and that she and her family were headed south to a town near Waterdeep called Redcap. They arm her with a dagger and some encouragement, and tell her that she can travel with them and they'll take her to Redcap and see if they can find a home for her there.

> Hiding is brave, if you can’t hide stabbing is good too. - Topknot
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-- Session Ends Here --