Muppetborn Campaign

Eventually Chris will put something here...

Stolen from Lady's Zo's backstory:

The plot of the summer 2021 campaign centered on four Muppetborn who were employed by Queen Brenda to drum up goodwill. The group were dispatched to investigate the more verifiable of the many rumors, all while representing the palace and help those they encountered. Getting to the bottom of the rumors was not as important as making a show of assisting everyone in the palace's name. But if there were foul deeds at play, they were to put a stop to it in the name of the queen.

It turned out that many of the rumored events were the direct result of Lady Zo's plans, for which she had personally hired three mercenaries of varying ability. Several people had indeed disappeared from the small mountain village of Poppyseed Lane, but the party learned from Lady Zo's assistant (and combat butler) Chadwick Entertainment Queso that the rumors had been investigated and most of the supposedly-missing had already been accounted for. The villagers had been put under a hypnotic trance by one of the mercenaries to mine a large red crystal, believing afterward that they had been "away visiting family." A large yellow crystal on display in the Cappitaleta city square had been replaced with a glass one by another one of the hired help, causing Lady Zo grief and embarrassment as she was present for the revelation. A cart carrying a large green crystal was taken by bandits, but they were already slain by the third mercenary before the party encountered their hideout. A crate delivered by rowboat to "some place to the west" contained a large blue crystal delivered directly to the Whirlygig Manor. Lady Zo herself had absconded with a book from the Poppyseed Lane school library, Rhoda the Wanderer's Field Guide, that detailed a ritual that used crystals of varying colors to transport objects between two places.

As the party conducted their investigations, they found that Lady Zo was strangely present in, seemingly, multiple places at once. She made it a point to keep an office in every town within her jurisdiction so she could be closer to the people and any events that required her immediate attention. She accomplished this through the use of several cloaks that she had prepared with clothomancy spells and blue crystal shards to activate the spell from a distance. After extensive practice splitting her attention several ways simultaneously, no one had reason to suspect that they were not talking with the "real" Lady Zo who was usually safely in her manor at any given moment. The party investigated her Poppyseed Lane office after midnight to try and discern her ruse, discovering that she was hoarding, rather than eating, the biscuits brought to "her" each day by the mayor. They also disturbed her cloak, knocking the crystal free from it, which necessitated that she send Chadwick to replace it with another prepared one.

Once they brought their suspicions to the Whirlygig Manor, the party was dropped into a dungeon room and had to fight the three mercenaries and Chadwick before reaching the hidden room where Lady Zo was performing the ritual outlined in the stolen book. Her expectation was that she would summon the Juggerupagus, a pilotable Muppetborn take on the Juggernaut from Tomb of Horrors, which was waiting for her to teleport into her circle of colored crystals from an identical circle of crystals somewhere in Nova Mascotia. However, Lady Zo misread the requirements and substituted a green crystal for what should have been a purple one, and the ritual went awry. Slowly rising from the circle was a balor, a creature unlike anything the Muppetborn had ever seen. (The balor was similarly confused.) When Lady Zo found that he would not obey her, she directed the party to attempt to shatter one of the crystals before the demon crossed entirely into the Plush Plane. They successfully shattered the green crystal, and everyone and everything nearby was pulled into the new portal that opened in the wake of the first one, crystals and all.

**MUPPETBORN IN AVALON**

Upon landing on some grass somewhere, the Muppetborn found that they could not move and slowly lost consciousness. Shortly after, the goddess who created the Plush Plane spoke to them, took pity on them, and explained that this was never supposed to happen. The Hand had created clothomancy for the Plush Plane alone, and while She couldn't introduce the magic to another plane entirely, She could return the Spark of Life to each of them individually to carry with them in this strange, dangerous world. Ultimately, it was discovered that a total of six Muppetborn were reanimated in this way (attuning them to this new plane as a result): the four adventurers, Lady Zo, and the one of the three mercenaries whom the party had left alive. The portal had dropped everyone in a moving line in order of passing through it, so the Balor was some distance away from the party, and from Lady Zo.

While the party began exploring the Alshifa region, Lady Zo found that most of her magic was useless outside of the Plush Plane. Desperate, she briefly took up a position helping at a halfway house she happened upon, though she never actually managed to achieve any work for the owner before being discovered there by the party. Aided by local recluse Tara Pynn, the party was working on rebuilding the crystal circle, this time with a proper purple crystal to link them to the one in Nova Mascotia back home on the Plush Plane. With no other options, Lady Zo tagged along with the group offering only the smallest bit of assistance when necessary.

Once the party took possession of a large purple crystal, they discussed what to do about the Balor that by this time had reached the halfway house and was threatening the nearby city. Lady Zo reasoned that she should be able to cast the transport spell from a distance using blue crystal shards, as she had always done through the ones in her cloaks. The party agreed to try belling the tiger, offering the Balor one of Lady Zo's cloaks to assist him in finding her to exact his revenge. (They also learned that his name is Sazzozoth when one of the adventurers kept calling him by an invented name, though this detail was never shared with Lady Zo.) Using the four colors that Lady Zo had used initially, with green in place of purple, she successfully sent Sazzozoth back from whence he came, against his will.

Following a long rest and an attempt by bandits, the group set the proper four colors in a circle, and Lady Zo began the ritual again. But as she reached the end of it, she abruptly stepped outside the circle, intending to stay behind as the party was transported away. Lady Zo assumed that the weapon she has commissioned was still awaiting her summon, and that she could separate herself from her would-be captors and lay claim to it in the same moment. But the party reacted quickly and used telekinesis to pull her back into the circle as she completed casting.

The group was successfully transported to the workshop in Nova Mascotia where they were surrounded by armed guards while Lady Zo slipped away behind her business partners. While severely outnumbered, the group found that they were not outgunned. The armor, weapons, and spells gained while in Avalon proved especially potent once brought home to the Plush Plane, and the party could not be opposed. But despite a thorough search, they could not find Lady Zo.

As it turned out, Lady Zo had returned to the crystal circle after resting long enough to cast the ritual again, hoping to call back the Juggerupagus. But it was no longer where it had been transported in Alshifa, after some gnolls came upon it and were unceremoniously crushed under its wheels. Once she could cast it again, Lady Zo used the ritual to return to Avalon to look for it to no avail. By the time she was able to try to return home, one of the adventurers had pulled up the purple crystal to take with him to Muppetascar for studying purposes, leaving Lady Zo stranded in Avalon until such time as the circle is recreated somewhere on the Plush Plane.