DM Dancing Wind -- Hooligans At Home (And On The Road)

Game Master Dancing Wind

Acquires frightened 1 condition until the end of her next turn

"Into the wagon, Alihana!"
Bressaldyn's voice is urgent and hoarse.

Alihana sees the steaming drool of the wolf hit the grass and sizzle it to a brown nothingness. She doesn't need any further encouragement.

Hearing her song, everyone feels a bit more capable.

The smell of the wet fur from the mangy carcass meets her nose, but there don't seem to be any other animals lurking in the shade.

All the normal twitters and chirps are silent. Nothing is moving.

Mage Armor 13+1= 14 AC; Inspire Courage +1 attack, dmg, fear

Alihana stands up, and with intricate patterns of her fingers, sends a gush of water at the wolf.
"હાઇડ્રોલિક દબાણ" she shouts.

The water slams the wolf away from Bressaldyn and its back leg seems to drag.

The wolf turns its attention away from Kaesera and toward the bloodied blade.

"Good job,"
Bort hurries back along the line of wagons. Behind him, the screams of the panicked horses die down. He kneels down to look more closely at the jaws of the large wolf, still dripping green ichor. Shaking his head, he pokes at the liquid with a small twig, and watches with concern as it sizzles and burns away.

Bort stands. "Tamli" he shouts. "Bring the healers' kit!" He eyes the blood smearing Bressaldyn's clothing.
"Better get that taken care of."

In the wagon, Rosalind reaches for her shortsword on the floorboards. Standing, she notices blood on Alihana's arm.
"You might want to get that cleaned up and bandaged" she says as she sheathes the sword. "Those wolves were crawling with vermin."

Climbs down from the wagon.

Tamli hurries back with a small chest, "Let me see that," she says as she lifts Bressaldyn's arm. "Cooky, get some water. And you, Alihana, change your gown and let me see your arm. I don't want that dirty sleeve to cover a clean bandage."

As Eydis hurries over, Tamli nods toward the chest. "Take what you need. There's a small bag in there if you want to put together your own kit."

Cooky returns with a cask of water and opens the bung to wet some cloth.

As Tamli cuts away Bressaldyn's ripped shirt, Eydis looks more closely. "That's pretty bad."

She stows her holy symbol in a belt loop and reaches for a damp rag to wipe away the wolf saliva and fur. Opening a small tin, she spreads a finger full of golden unguent across the slash.

Tamli wraps a few turns around Bressaldyn's arm as Eydis hands Alihana a damp cloth. "Here, clean yourself up and I'll put a few patches on you as well," she says.

Olf and Ulf walk up, scratching and moaning. "I'm dying, probably," said the one on the right. "Yeah, we're at death's door," said the one on the left, as he rubbed his forearm. They have a few splatters of blood, but no obvious injuries. They sit on the ground, looking up at Tamli. "What will you do without us?"

She glares at them. "One small slice from your own dagger, and you're dying?! I doubt it. But you do seem to have some fleas. Stay away from the cargo, I don't need those pests getting into everything." After a few minutes, she hands them a twisted wad of paper. "Rub this on your arms; it should get rid of them."

The terrified horses are still skittish, and Cookie's wagon is slewed across the road, one rear wheel deep in the ditch. With Glunda talking softly to them at the front, Ulf and Olf put their shoulders to the rear frame, but nothing moves. The horses are shying and dancing away from the carcasses.
"We need some help here," Tamli says.

Alihana tears a small branch from a nearby tree. Probing the mud under the wheels, she finds a rock that is acting as a brake. A few more minutes of digging with hands and stick loosens the rock and allows the wheel to move forward again.

"Fine job you did." Bort is looking at the pile of wolf carcasses. "Let's pull these back into the woods so they don't stink up the road. And dinner tonight will be at The Feedmill. It's on me."

Bort says, "Let's take a few minutes to make sure all the cargo is secure and none of the wagons are damaged." He and Tamli begin an inspection, while Cooky offers mugs of ale to the passengers.

Eydis touches her divine symbol and offers prayers of thanksgiving to Sarenrae.

Alihana looks up the spell that fizzled in her spell book. Confident that she was a victim of circumstance, not stupidity, she closes the book, satisfied. "Let's go check that big wolf," she says to Eydis.

They walk back to the pile of wolf carcasses in the woods where they can be seen chatting, while the occasional spell flares from their fingertips and holy symbol.

Alihana kneels, filling a small vial with the green mucus. Shaking their heads, they stroll back to the wagons. "Probably not magic; neither Eydis nor I can find any signs of magical auras."

The caravan starts moving again toward Etran's Folly. The forest gives way to cultivated fields where people can be seen hoeing weeds.

"Those look like turnips",
She looks across several plots of land.
"They're all turnips! What do they do with all those turnips?"

Within the hour, the wagons roll across a small bridge over a stream and enter the village. The road cuts straight through the town, although at the south end, it bends around a hill which is topped by tumbled stones and burned timbers.

"What happened here?" Kaesera looks around, puzzled.
"Wattle and daub buildings. And so run down! Some of them don’t even seem to be lived in."

Kaesera cranes her neck taking in the astonishingly dilapidated buildings, some with roofs collapsed. The smells and sounds of a busy village are also missing. No kids running through the streets, no parents shouting at them to do their chores.

"The plague 20 years ago hit this village hard," says Bort.
"Wiped out some entire families. It's never fully recovered. Used to be nearly 600 folks hereabouts. Now there's hardly half that many people."

The caravan circles around a large, flat, cylindrical rock with a hole in its center and a bowl-shaped depression off to one side.
"That's the Plaguestone," Bort announces.

"When the plague ran rampant, the healthy kept their distance from the sick, hoping to stave off infection. That's what the town council came up with to try to help them out. The townsfolk left food and remedies for the sick in the bowl and the sick dropped coins into a depression on the other side that was filled with vinegar to decontaminate them."

The wagons pull into the stable yard of The Feedmill: the only inn, tavern, and general store in town. With the inn on one side, and the stables on the other, the gate in the wall between them completes a secure enclosure for goods wagons and livestock.

The teamsters pull into their standard semicircle and unhitch their teams, helped by Edra Wythe, the halfling stablehand. "That one seems lame," she worries, pointing at one of the horses. The stables are her domain, and she and Glunda seem to be well acquainted.

A door opens and the smell of slightly burnt bread floats out from the kitchen. Delma Fulst greets Bort and Tamli warmly. "So good to see you. We're almost out of nails at the store. And were you able to get that length of fabric for me?" Delma's aging father, Targen, is the mayor and nominal owner of the store, stables, and inn, but Delma keeps everything running.

As the teamsters unhitch the horses and lead them into the stable, Delma takes everyone upstairs to the loft above the stalls and the partitioned spaces that form the 'inn'. The old straw mattresses look far from soft, but they are at least a step up from sleeping on the hard ground outside.

"You're the only guests tonight, so make yourselves comfortable," she says. The space closest to the stairs seems to be Edra's home, but everything else is at least swept free of straw and dust.

Back downstairs, Ulf and Olf are carrying boxes into the back door of the store. Laughter sounds as they joke with Delma, but she's adept at getting them to do the lifting of the heavier goods onto the shelves.

Boisterous and loud singing can be heard coming from the kitchen. Amora Kasillan, the cook, shouts, "Phinick Padley, get in here and take this plate out to Hallod." A small goblin scurries through the kitchen door.

"I've got parcels to deliver and some business to take care of. Let's all meet back at The Feedmill at the end of the afternoon." Bort puts parcels in his backpack and walks out the gates of the yard.

Tamli is quietly talking with Glunda and Edra as they lift a horse's foot and peer at the hock. Cooky is stirring something in the pot on the coals at the back of his wagon, unfolding a small square of paper, sprinkling its contents into the pot, and then tasting the result. With a small frown, he rummages through a chest filled with other folded bits of paper, obviously not satisfied with the current blend.

Rosalind opens the door to the small store. She looks around at the assortment of hand farming implements, cook pots, and tools.

"Welcome," says Delma. "See anything you want to look at more closely?"

Rosalind shakes her head. "Nothing in particular. Unless you have any oddities or curiosities. You must get strange things offered to you from time to time."

"No, the only interesting things I have are these two potions of healing, and this crystal."
Delma opens a drawer and pulls out two small vials and a small crystal. "Got this potency crystal. You could have it for 2 gold. Or the healing potions."
She lifts a small vial with a ruby-red liquid. "They're 4 gold each."

"No thanks,"
Rosalind continues wandering through the small space. Clearly what's available here is for survival and subsistence, nothing more.

The front door opens. "Hello Alihana, are you looking for scrolls?"

"Scrolls, old books, old papers, anything like that,"
Turning to Delma, "I'm particularly looking for old alchemical items or formulas. A friend in Almas is quite the alchemist and I always try to find something unusual to bring her when I visit."

"The town hasn't had one of them chymist witches in 20 years. There was one, but she died in the plague."
Delma's lips press together in a thin line, obviously holding back whatever she's thinking.

"Does Bort bring special orders?"