Ace's First Birthday

Ace's First Birthday is a oneshot that aired via livestream on Twitch on Sunday, October 3rd, 2021, between Arc 4 and Arc 5 on the week taken off from posting podcast episodes. Later, it can be accessed on YouTube. The oneshot is DMed by Aubri (who played Ace in Arc 4) and takes place three months in-world time after the events of Arc 4.

## Characters and Players

**DM** (Aubri- She/Her)

**Aster** (played by Haley - She/Her\*) is a Tiefling, monk, and twin brother of Quinn.

**Bixlebong Borple** (played by Gus - He/Him) is a Human artificer. He is sometimes a bit anxious, and tries his best to become closer friends with all of them. He is the only one that was not part of Arc 4 as a Player Character.

**Quinn** (played by Grace - She/Her) is a Tiefling bard and twin sister of Aster.

**Russ Tauron** (played by Sean - He/Him) is a Minotaur paladin.

\*Haley since then has changed their pronouns to She/Any

## Plot

It's Ace's first birthday, more or less: they appeared out of nowhere a year ago, and now celebrate that year as their birthday. A party in the garden of the Tauron household is planned for this occasion.

The oneshot starts with a little monologue: early in the morning, Ace goes, as usually, for a jog. As they bend down to tie their shoes again, suddenly, a ghost appears behind them, and snaps them away.

The imaginary camera cuts to the Borple household, where Bix wakes up and talks to his grandma Bettlebee. She asks him if he knows anything about her Ectoplasmic App Manifestor, which seems to have vanished from her lab, but he doesn't know anything about it. He has breakfast, and then runs over to the Taurons, as he realises that he was supposed to help with the party preparations, and missed all the previous dates for the preparations.

The point of view shifts to the Tauron household, where Russ wakes up in his bedroom. Quinn, in the expanded treehouse, is already up again, preparing more things for the birthday party. Aster also gets up at the prospect of Clarabelle's breakfast. The children, including Bix, who came over, and Clarabelle all have breakfast together, while Big T is exercising in the garden. After eating, Clarabelle wants to speak to Aster privately, but he insists on the others being allowed to listen, too. Clarabelle promises that he is not in trouble, and gives him back the knife that he lost during Arc 4. She learned what happened at the stadium from Sporro, a friend of the family, and gives Aster the knife with the words "I'm glad you lost it the way you did", and a wink. Inscribed in the knife are the words "With love. You'll always be a Tauron.", and it is packed in a silver box with velvet lining. Aster, deeply touched, leaves the kitchen to go to the tree house to be alone and deal with his emotions.

Suddenly, all of them can hear Big T yelling in the garden. They run towards him, and see how four sets of ghostly hands steal the presents they prepared for Ace, and fly away towards the forest. They roll Initiative and try to chase the hands. Bix manages to hit the hands that stole Aster's present and get it back, Aster gets back Bix's and Quinn's present, and Russ gets his own present back. As they hit the ghostly hands and brought them down, they realised that they were little orb-shaped drones projecting the images of hands, and apparently related to what Bettlebee had been working on.

Even though they got all the presents back, the chase was not much of a win for the group: during the chase, most of the party preparations were destroyed. One of the sets of hands smashed the table with drinks, one destroyed Clarabelle's favourite rose bushes, for which she had already won "Best Garden in Winster" fourteen times in a row. One knocked over the ice sculpture of Ace, that was donated by the mayor of Winster and probably paid for with public finances, cracking it in half, and Bix ran into the cake table, and the cake pops Quinn had prepared fell to the ground. To reach the last drone, Aster had to pop the balloons Russ had blown up the evening before.

The party decides that they want to find out who was behind this, and follow their first clue to the Borple's house to talk to Bettlebee. She cannot tell them much, only, that it really seems to be related to her work, and sends them to Harley, with whom she had worked before, to find out more. Also, she gives them Harley's research binder to bring her.

Harley dissects the little orb drones and finds out that they really are a combination of orb technology and the technology of the Ectoplasmic App Manifestor, that could create some sort of ghosts. From her, the group also learns that Bettlebee's research was funded by one of the major orbula teams, the Tyle Tarrasques, who wanted to be able to produce images of orbula players that passed. She finds a switch that can make them return to whoever programmed them, and the party walks outside to follow the drones back to their creator.

The orb drones lead the group to the stadium, where they really see the images of some orbula ghosts: Ronaldorb, Ian Rusher, Torbin Heath, Franz Beckenorber, Christine Sinclorb, and Orbula Cruyff himself. Behind the ghosts, there is Ace, seemingly in some kind of trance, playing with an orb. The party gets into Initiative, and starts fighting the ghosts. As Aster knocks the orb out of Ace's hands, Ace collapses. Punching the ghosts leads to their faces flickering, and when they knock one of them down, behind them, the face of a coach of the Tyle Tarrasques appears. The group finally realises that the "App" in Ectoplasmic App Manifestor stands for "Appearance", and that there are people masking as these ghosts. The coaches address the "ghost of Orbula Cruyff" as "boss", so Aster finally grapples and threatens him, and the fight ends. Behind the ghostly appearance, there is Dwala Keys, who owns the Tyle Tarrasques, and offered Ace three months prior to join them. She confesses that she could not believe it when Ace told her that they wanted to retire, even less so after they saw them in action against the Sorborough Squonks and then against themselves. So, she started working with the Arcane Academy, after she had learnt about the Borples while she was in Winster recruiting. They wanted to get Ace interested in orbula again by giving them the opportunity to play with their idols, so that they would sign the contract. The party decides to tie her up and report her to HASMOLIGA.

As Ace wakes up again, Aster tries to distract them a bit longer by jogging together with them, so that the others can go back to the Taurons to fix the mess and prepare the party. They manage to fix the ice sculpture with fantasy duct tape, Bix cleans up a bit, Russ blows up a few balloons (but they do look a bit wobbly), and Bix and Quinn work together to make a trifle out of the remains of the cake.

Finally, Ace comes back, surprised and happy about what the others did for them, and they can celebrate together. They all give them their presents: Russ gifts them a weighted orb, that has hidden arcana inside it, with which the exact weight can be adjusted. They have something similar for training. Aster gifts them an earring that wraps around the ear, since trying to pierce Ace's ear did not work. He made the earring himself out of wire and is quite self-conscious about it at first, but Ace is delighted and tells him that he should open a business. Quinn gifts them a giant painting of all of them together that she commissioned a girl from her cheerleading squad to do. It says "Friends forever", and Bix is in it, but looks a bit like he was added last minute. Bix, finally, gifts them a bunch of potions with unknown effects, and Ace immediately opens all of them.

The oneshot ends with Ace initiating a "birthday stack".

## Trivia

* The names of all of the orbula player's ghosts were inspired by soccer players: Ronaldorb by Christiano Ronaldo, Ian Rusher by Ian Rush, Torbin Heath by Tobin Heath, Franz Beckenorber by Franz Beckenbauer, and Christine Sinclorb by Christine Sinclair. Orbula Cruyff, who was already introduced in Arc 4, has a name inspired by Johan Cruyff.
* During the oneshot, the name and cast of Arc 5 were announced.