Big Woman, Little Trouble

**"Big Woman, Little Trouble"** is the 4th session of Campaign 2.0.

## Summary

* We head back to the Augury after having this mission assigned to us by Orkrush. On the way, we realize Ralo’s been gone this whole time!
* Ralo goes off into a bar and plays cards with some dudes. After a tiefling man wins him in a game, Ralo scoops all the gold off the table and dips! The tiefling man flings a throwing knife into Ralo before he’s out the door. A chase sequence ensues, and at the end of it both parties are covered in horse shit and blood, but Ralo escapes with the money.
* When we all reconvene at Bryna’s lab, we try to come up with a plan of action before we head out on our mission. We decide we’re gonna try a stealthy approach.
* Bryna advises we find extra help before we go out - last time we fought bandits, it wasn’t that easy. Bryna works on a new type of ammunition for the Thunder Cannon while Sulelia, Twiggs, and Ralo go to the Bastion of Helm.
* The gang once again enlists the help of Landen! He’s not too thrilled about being held up on all his paperwork, but reluctantly comes with us because it’s Orkrush’s orders.
* We all spend the night at Bryna’s lab. Sulelia and Ralo decide to take a little walk in the night. The two discuss a lot, bond even! Ralo explains to Sulelia that his whole life he’s been thieving - at some point it was the only way he could make ends meet, but he also loves the thrill.
* During their walk they hear a humming noise coming from a building. Said building’s door has a red glow glowing behind it. They knock on the door, are asked for a password, and give the wrong one apparently, ‘cause no one answers afterwards. Well, that was weird.
* They venture out into the meadow beyond the Augury. Suddenly, Sulelia spots something off in the distance. An oval-shaped blob? And it’s just floatin’ around… Sulelia asks Ralo if he can see it, and he can’t. She decides to investigate and Ralo hangs back.
* Sulelia calls out to the blob. *“Hey, guy!”*
* ...And upon doing so, has to make a Constitution saving throw, fails it, and immediately drops to the ground.
* Ralo’s like, fuck, and rushes over to Sulelia. Her skin’s turned gray and she has no pulse. He rushes from door to door pleading for help, but everyone’s sleeping!
* Ralo eventually spots some mysterious hooded dude with a raven perched on his shoulder. Ralo asks him for help. The hooded dude instructs Ralo to lie Sulelia’s body down. He places her hands on her body and dark magic emanates from his palm.
* Ralo checks for a pulse… and finds one! He looks up to thank this mysterious guy, but he’s disappeared. Ralo can’t get inside Bryna’s dorm without her opening it, and when she doesn’t answer Ralo decides to just sleep outside with Sulelia in his arms.
* I’m not gonna talk about the boob-touching. I’m not.
* Sulelia wakes up, remembering absolutely nothing about the latter half of yesterday. Why is she sleeping outside? Why is Ralo here? What is what? Who is who? She learns from Ralo what had happened last night, and she asks him not to tell anyone of this.
* Sulelia and Ralo are let back inside Bryna’s lab. Everyone questions where they’ve been, and Sulelia takes Lenden to the side to explain what she saw. Sulelia asks whether the creature she’d encountered could be the Big Bad Evil she’s been searching for. Lenden has no clue as to whether it is or not.
* Twiggs can sense that Sulelia and Ralo are hiding something. Ralo is able to convince him he hasn’t a clue what she’s talking about, but Twiggs still suspects Sulelia.
* And so, we make our way back towards the bandit hideout! We make about a days worth of travel before we decide to stop.
* Sulelia and Landen are on first watch. Landen spots a blob-like creature off in the distance, but Sulelia can’t see it. Sound familiar? They learn that the being is undead through their divine sense. Landen really doesn’t like this thing… but decides to go back to the party instead of pursuing it.
* Next watch is Ralo and Twiggs! The two spot light ahead. Whassat? Ralo scouts ahead to investigate and finds that the light is from a campfire, and a single very large goliath woman is sleeping beside it.
* God damn, she’s huge. Not in a fat way, though, she’s pretty ripped. Ralo and Twiggs think she could potentially be an extremely useful asset, though, especially considering our next mission is to raze a bunch of raiders to the ground. They walk over to her and, uh, prod her with a stick to wake her up.
* The woman rises. Ralo and Twiggs insist in a panic that they meant no harm ohmygodpleasedon’thurtus. We need help killin’ some banditos. The goliath fighter introduces herself as Veru (played by Lyle). She finds them kind of amusing, but doesn’t appreciate being woken up.
* “We’ll talk more about this in the morning,” and with that Veru turns right over and goes back to sleep. The two rogues sit there dumbfounded for a moment before leaving.
* Next morning, everyone meets this mystery woman! Sulelia and Veru seem to get along great, Ralo and Twiggs seem to trust her, but Lenden and Bryna are pretty damn cautious. Bryna is especially very intimidated by the goliath.
* Away from the group, Bryna and Lenden absolutely lay into Ralo and Twiggs for having taken this complete stranger with us. What if she just decides to kill us all and mount our heads on pikes, huh? Huh?
* Seeing as he’s the only sensible one here, Bryna apologizes to Lenden for all the times she’d given him a hard time about the whole… brutalizing prisoners thing.
* Ralo and Twiggs mock Lenden for being so concerned about potential violence from Veru when he’s gone ahead and killed people, too. Lenden is very visibly upset by this.
* Meanwhile, Sulelia and Veru are chatting up a storm! We learn that Veru is a gladiator and tours across Itoa, performing from town to town. She also has a lot of fans and is very good at what she does!
* Lenden’s a little bummed. And by a little bummed, I mean the dude’s crying. And by crying, I mean he’s having a legitimate PTSD-riddled episode. He reveals that the prisoners he had brutalized were demons, and that said demons had killed his friends. Yeesh.
* Eventually we reach the bandit’s treehouse hideout! The battle goes pretty well and we kill them all, and at some point Veru flings a bandit off of a stories-tall tree.
* On one of the bandit’s bodies, we find a note that details the location of a shipment of cattle in Sylvany, signed by “O”. Who the heck’s that guy?
* We also realize that we’d been told there were 5 bandits here. We’ve only killed 4.
* ...Oh well! We scrounge up everything we find and start heading back home. We make it back to Nir Dorrun, drop off Lenden and give our thanks.
* Back at Bryna’s lab, Veru decides to accompany us for the time being - she’s got nothing better to do. We all sit down and have a discussion about what we all think of each other. Are we a team? Why are any of us still here, sticking with each other? Either way, for now we’ll all stay together.
* Sulelia and Veru visit the Augury’s library! There, Sulelia researches undead creatures. She learns that the creature that killed her is called a bodak.
* Back at the lab, Twiggs asks Sulelia what she was doing out the other night. She comes forward with the truth and reveals to everyone her deadly encounter with the bodak.
* Bryna recalls an incident with a group of students that were found dead in the meadow, looking very similar to how Ralo described Sulelia looking when she’d been killed by the creature. She also remembers that followers of the Raven Queen revive others before their time has come, and figures that who the hooded figure that revived Sulelia was.
* Ralo leads us to the building where he and Sulelia saw the red light and humming sound from. Bryna reassures him that it’s just how the warlock district is - they’re all pretty spooky folk. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
* Y’know what sounds great? Getting smashed. Let’s all head out for drinks! We all head to the most popular tavern in Nir Dorrun, the Waterways.
* Ralo and Twiggs are up to no good. The two try to sell the poison we’d concocted - seeing as the user gets addicted to it once it’s consumed, they come up with a plan to sell it to someone and raise the price each time they repurchase it. Absolute fiends.
* Well, their plan goes to shit. A natural 1 rolled on Ralo’s part leads to him picking out the worst possible guy to try and scam. The guy’s an aasimar clad in shiny armor with symbols of the sun emblazoned on it. Long story short, Ralo and Twiggs are both hauled off to Helm’s Bastion and are thrown into prison.
* Meanwhile, the girls get wasted and stumble back home.