Brawl of the Wild

**Brawl of the Wild** is the 9th episode, in which the Guild deal with some vicious woodland critters.

## Synopsis

When the wizard Binbag spirits our braveish heroes to a bewitched forest, they find all critters great and small are frothing at the mouth and hungry for a fight.

## Summary

Sometime after the last adventure, the Guild is relaxing in a tavern. There is a sudden clap of thunder and the Wizard Binbag appears before them. He tells them there is something rotten in the deep wood of Falmore, animals have been attacking innocent people, and they need to fix it. He tells them to help a person known as the "Professor", and then tells them to finish there drinks before he teleports them to the woods.

Once there, Binbag gives a secret handshake to a girl who's waiting there and then disappears. The girl introduces herself as Yetta Lägg, and says she is the Professor's research assistant. They are shown into a caravan that has been in the woods for a while, and she introduces them to the Professor, who is obscured in a hazmat suit that makes it difficult to understand them, to anyone except Yetta. Yetta explains that the Professor wants them to bring one of the animals back so they can examine it. She tells them that the squirrels have killed forty five people and the rabbits have killed two hundred, and doesn't even mention how many the other animals have killed. The Guild come up with a plan to make Dob the bait, and he uses Prestidigitation on himself to make himself smell like cat food, which confuses the Professor.

They venture into the forest with Yetta, On the way, Merilwen senses something very wrong with the forest. Once they find clearing, Dob lies in the open where the others hide. Egbert tries to climb a tree but falls out of it, but then successfully jumps to the top of it. Corazón hides so well even he doesn't know where he's gone, Prudence hides behind a branch she snaps off a tree, and Merilwen uses Mask of the Wild to hide in a bush.

Suddenly a massive pig appears out of the forest sniffs at Dob. Merilwen casts Entangle to ensnare the pig, but she ends up just smacking it. The pig then picks up Dob and turns to leave. Merilen tries to uses Speak with Animals to talk with the pig, but as it turns around she she's that its mouth is covered in green foam and its eyes are demented. It drops Dob at roars at her. Merilwen tries to use Animal Friendship, but it doesn't work and the pig charges at her, knocking her into a tree. Meanwhile, Corazón eats some berries from his bush and begins tripping out. Egbert jumps out his tree and tries to pin the pig with his shield, but he fails and mildly injures himself. Dob plans to rodeo the pig into submission, but Prudence fires an Agonizing Blast and dislocates the bottom half of the pig from the rest of it, killing it.

Yetta sees the dead half of a pig and voices concern, as they needed the specimen alive. A high Corazón takes a trotter from the pig and wears it like a hat, and Dob heals Egberts wounds. Suddenly, Merilwen notices the ground beneath them has started to shake, and realised that Dob isn't the smelliest thing in the forest anymore, the steamy, vaporised pig corpse is. Just then, a tornado of squirrels comes into the clearing and eat the two halves of the pig. Corazón cats Grease, which causes the squirrels to go flying in different directions. Corazón catches some in his bedroll, and Egbert tries to catch one out of mid air, but fails and it hits his face, which knocks it out and makes it easy to retrieve. The Guild then cheese it back to the Professor.

Once back, the Professor examines the squirrels and comes to the conclusion that there's something in the water supply that's making the animals go bad. Egbert suggests they find it and track its source. After trying to remember how to find water, Dob mentions that he used to live in the woods and thinks that if he just wanders into the foliage he'll somehow be able to sense the water. This gets the Professor's attention, who tells Yetta that Dob reminds her of someone she used to know. The Professor then takes of her hazmat helmet and reveals herself to be Suzette, Dob's missing sister. The two siblings hug for ten minutes. Egbert cries at the reunion, steam bellowing out of his eyes. Suzette explains that she left Dob to try and find someone to find someone to cure his rabies, but couldn't find anyone, and when she returned Dob was gone. Thinking he was dead, she vowed to find a cure to rabies so no one else would have to share her brother's fate. After explaining this, she voices her confusion on how Dob is apparently fine. Dob tells her to take his blood, as the cure to rabies might be within. Suzette then takes two pints of blood, leaving Dob very delirious.

After Dob comes to his senses again, Suzette realises that she doesn't know what to do with all the blood, as she's still rattled from reuniting with Dob. Dob introduces Suzette to his friends, and she questions if he actually is cured, pointing out how weird his friends are. She puts the blood in syringes and gives them to the group in bandoliers, and they all head out together to find the water source.

After a few hours, they discover a river that is glowing green. Corazón checks his calendar, and sees that it isn't St. Patrick's Day and realises how serious this situation is. Corazón makes invents two peddle powered swan shaped boats that have Corazón's face each, which Merilwen name Coraswans, and they peddle up stream. As they travel, they are attacked by four rapid crocodiles. Egbert uses his Flame Breath to propel his Coraswan away at top speed, burning one of the crocodiles' snout, causing it to give up. Dob stands up on his Coraswan and cats Thunderwave, killing two of them and causing the remaining one, and any nearby animals, to eat them, allowing the group to escape.

They eventually find the the source of the green liquid, as they leave their Coraswans and discover it origination from a cave. It doesn't take them long to see that it is defended by a thick tripwire rigged up to a sack of rocks, a trap that makes Egbert and Prudence groan at its stupidity. Corazón, still tripping from the berry's, uses Mage Hand Legerdemain to disarm it, which impresses no one, except Egbert who is impressed that Corazón is still standing. They decide to send Corazón to stealth into the cave, but he ends up just singing about how he's stealthing into the cave. Once inside, Corazón sees a bunch of Kobolds brewing their equivalent of moonshine, the green liquid a toxic byproduct of their operation. It is at that moment Corazón sobers up, when the Kobolds are alerted to his presence.

Corazón claims to be a still inspector and asks to see the Kobolds supervisor. They are annoyed by this and tells Corazón to follow them. Merilwen takes this opportunity to cast Destroy Water and removes all the water in the moonshine, making it pure alcohol. A Kobold takes a swig of the pure alcohol moonshine and vomits. Corazón becomes aware of Merilwen's plan and tells the Kobolds to wait near the vat of alcohol while he goes to get the proper forms, claiming to be infuriated with the poorly managed aspect of their illegal moonshine operation, before running out of the cave.

As the Kobolds mock Corazón for being a jerk, Merilwen leaves the cave and tells the others what she just did. Egbert comes up with a plan to slam dunk a bomb into the alcohol. After Dob inspires him, Egbert successfully somersaults, lighting the bomb in mid air and dunks it into the vat, fist bumping his friends and the Kobolds on his way out. The bomb goes off. Corazón is already out of the blast radius, Egbert is immune to the blast and Prudence protects Dob and Merilwen with her flame resistant body, with Dob pulling his sister behind him. Everyone, except for Corazón who has eaten some nice mushrooms, takes some minor damage from the blast, the only real damage is that Dob and Merilwen no longer have eyebrows.

As the dust clears, Dob can taste the ash that used to be the Kobolds. Suddenly half of a Kobold lands in front of them, which Suzette injects with Dob's rabies infected blood just to be safe. Dob says he's missed her. The Guild realise that, since there's still some of the green liquid in the water supply, things will take a while before they get better, but they know they will eventually. Plus, some of the Kobold's blood got into the water supply and, since it contained the pure alcohol, all the rabid animals are blind anyway. Merilwen leaves a message for her fellow Druids, claiming that they found the remains of an accidental explosion in the cave after it happened, and warns them not to drink the water for the time being. As they walk off into the blood mist, that could easily be mistaken for a sunset, Dob and Suzette hold each other close as they end their adventure together.

## Guild Hijinks

* Invented a paddle boat that has different designs on each, but is named after it's maker, Corazón.
* Corazón finds some berries in a bush and inexplicably eats them, getting extremely high and "stealthing" his way into a Kobold cave.
* Egbert slam dunks a bomb into a vat of pure alcohol.
* The Guild blind an entire forest with Kobold blood.

## Character Development

* Prudence protects Dob and Merilwen from an explosion, although she claims the reason why is because she didn't want their nice stuff to burn.
* Corazón casts Minor Illusion to make it look like Dob still has eyebrows.

## Behind The Scenes Trivia

* It was revealed that another possible title for this episode was "Rabies Day Out", but because it spoiled the episode, they decided against it.
* Brawl of The Wild could be a reference to "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London

## References

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfzXVS1xTnI