31)
“So let me set the scene,” Tomi says as he writes down his equipment. “The shop is small. It’s a general shop. The one you can buy anything, from horse dung to platemail. Except information. In one corner, we have the armour section. There’s literally just one of each thing. Maybe two sets of leather armour being sold as a bundle and you have to pay like fifty percent more if you try to buy just one. You know it’s essentially a scam. You’d still pay two and a half gold for it. The shop is run by a…”
He rolled his dice to generate the NPCs as he talks.
“…half… black elf… with a daughter and who… was recently widowed. His name is… Ellas. The daughter looks Ynna over. Once. Twice. Does she care for fauns? We don’t know. But we can tell she’s not really here to make friendly conversation. She wants Ynna to buy whatever she needs and get out. Even more so, because Ynna clearly is wearing some really nice chainmail and carrying a well-made sword and shield. She probably also noticed the war pony…”
He couldn’t help that he snorts at the picture, and said, “Okay, can I just say it’s super funny to me a half-goat is riding a small horse? You got to agree with me, right?”
He waited for responses in chat and saw plenty of yesses.
“Anyway, Ynna is being observed by the shopkeeper’s daughter, who absolutely can tell Ynna’s been in a noble’s service long enough to have a whole war pony. That’s not nothing.
The shopkeeper exits a room in the back and sees Ynna. He greets her.”
Tomi cleared his voice before he spoke with a somewhat deeper voice for the shopkeeper. “‘Greetings. You are not from this town, are you? Not a whole lot of fauns around here, commonly.’
‘I indeed hail from elsewhere.’
The shopkeeper hums and says, ‘So do we.’”
Tomi rolled to know whether the shopkeeper would friendly or found it suspicious that a faun in armour and with a sword and war pony appeared in his humble shop, then added, “‘Are you here for any specific purpose? Or just to… look around? Browse the goods?’”
Tomi was about to roll a D4 for inspiration, but stopped himself. No, he has rolled Ynna’s alignment and her charisma. It wasn’t great.
“‘I’m browsing for now.’ I walk to the armour to look at it for no reason, because I have 10 gold and I’m not going to be able to afford plate armour. As I browse… I find nothing worth of note.”
He took his tarot deck and shuffled it slowly. “I didn’t set this up at a shop for now reason, friends,” he said. He had held off with it while he set it all up, but now was the perfect timing. He said, “Get your pen and paper, friends, because it’s time to begin our paladin’s adventure.” He picked a card near the top of the deck and placed it down at the centre of the frame. He was silent for a moment. “Let’s see what fate offers us.”
He flipped the card and found it was Eight of Wands. He knew this one well. “We got to do this quick, it seems, friends. And…”
He placed another card next to the first one. Knight of Cups. Romance. Seduction. Charm. He cursed under his breath. A goddamn bard quest.
He rolled two D4s and got two ones. Geez. At least let one of the NPC be the quest giver. He rolls the two D4s again twice.
“…as Ynna browses the various goods, someone else enters the shop. It’s a youth, maybe fifteen, who’s clearly well-off. Ynna overhears how he talks about how his beloved just doesn’t look at him. The shopkeeper gives a perfunctory reply of comfort, while the daughter offers warmth that almost seems uncharacteristic considering how she’s been side-eyeing the poor war pony.”
The rolls needed to be noted, and the new NPC added to his roaster, so he fell silent for a moment, jotting it all down in his journal as he replaced the dice where he kept them and put away the used cards to shuffle into the deck after this encounter.
Having done so, he glanced at the chat and saw someone sent the message, Smells like love triangle.
The man snorted.
32)
The keywords he had secretly generated on the side as he added the characters were… “adventure”, “high” and a few useless ones he couldn’t use, and the quest was supposed to be time sensitive, and related to romance, seduction, and charm.
He quietly rolled a die on the side to find out if the sweetheart of this youth was a regular mortal, and if they were male, female or neither.
Meanwhile, he narrated, “The boy says he hasn’t seen his sweetheart for a few days, but he thinks maybe his family has found out about it — and boy, if he’s a running into the general shop with platemail and dung side by side to cry rivers of tears every so often, I’m sure the whole town knows about these young gays.”
Mortal boy. Moderately important to the quest.
High. Adventure.
Elevation.
What the hell, he’ll just go with the classic tower plot.
“Ynna comes forward from between the shelves and decides to meddle because how can she not — she’s chaotic good. ‘Maybe your sweetheart got tired of you,’ she says. It’s absolutely meant as advice, but her charisma is shit. So that’s the best she can offer. ‘I overheard you by the… fertiliser.’”
He saw a comment saying that was out of character of her to have some tact instead of just calling horse dung for what it was.
“Remember, she was in the service of a noble before this. She can at least have some tactful phrasings. That’s not charisma-based in people. Charisma is more about the feel, the confidence, the rhetoric. Tact can be experience, knowledge and intellectuality. Her intelligence is her highest rolled stat. Let her be smart, guys.”
33)
Ynna spoke to the youth, named William, and managed to extract information about the sweetheart. Recently, the other boy — rolled to be a half-elf stableboy named Eldrin working for the lord of the town, who was William’s father — had been distant to Wiliam. It had been after the last festival when William had let Eldrin borrow a flower brooch. Eldrin wouldn’t so much as look at William, and it had been like this for a little over a month. William had finally not been able to take it and had come to complain about it, because in the past few days, Eldrin hadn’t even been at the stables.
As Tomi thought about his next step, he checked the latest messages. He highlighted a two-euro message that just said, aaah young love.
“I remember my first love,” he replied. “I wasn’t even this stupid.” He paused. “I was even stupider. At least William here is having a clandestine little teenage affair with the stableboy. I just looked dreamily at my love and dreamt about dates, as if that would give me attention. Even being a menace had probably been more effective.”
He tapped the rubber end of his pencil against the journal.
“‘Did anything happen recently?’” he said in Ynna’s tone of voice. “William shakes his head, but Ellas says, ‘When I was at the town square some days ago, I heard a roar.’”
That was all his randomised keywords used up. Perfect.
“Ynna finished up at the shop, leaving the tragic boy and scowling daughter behind. Let’s see what we find at the town square.”
A shuffle of the deck and another card pulled. Flipping it face up, he drew three of coins, reversed. He had to ask the chat what it could represent. He got a few responses and picked what he liked.
“The town square is chaotic. Not because there is commerce happening, but because there’s a conflict.” He didn’t roll for this one, and just let the image flow. “A big burly man is being confronted by a woman. She’s angry. Throwing things at him. I hear that she want something from the man and as I get closer,” he drew another card, and he got Ten of Cups upright, “I hear she is demanding her lover back. This is clearly a pattern. Something is going on with the lovers in this town. It’s one thing to meet a sad youth, and another to immediately stumble upon another broken couple.” He jotted the card down and shuffled his deck before putting it aside. He discreetly rolled a die on the side, while he said, “The man isn’t just big and burly — he’s armed. At first he’s unbothered by the woman, but then her dirty shoe hit him in the face, and he stands up.”
The chat already picked up where this was going, and there was plenty of messages with just the sword and shield emojis.
The encounter die he had rolled agreed.
He took several D4s in different colours.
A big man, what at least seemed like a regular woman, onlookers moving away, and one half-goat on a small horse.
He rolled. Ynna’s initiative roll was four, the horse got three. The horse followed Ynna’s lead, clearly. The woman got one. The burly man three.
“Ynna charges into the fray on her horse to stop what she absolutely can see is some kind of fighter or barbarian ready to swing his fist at a regular human. She raises her shield to block the blow, shieldsworn as she is.”
He paused to roll his die, having finally revealed if he actually made Ynna a shieldsworn or not. He heard a ping and looked at his screen.
Fifty gifted subs.
Immediately a message from wstrbstr256o2: celebrating the shieldsworn
This user really was bribing Tomi’s followers, it seemed. With subs.
“Thanks for the subs, Letters and Numbers.”
34)
Turns out that Ynna didn’t need to interfere. While pretending to only be in battle, he flipped two cards he had quietly placed face down out of frame when he put aside his deck.
Rolls on the side, cards on the side, secretly keeping a long list of keyword generator up on his laptop… it was all to smoothen the stream and move quickly. He also had several NPCs he reused in different campaigns no and then in case he was out of ideas.
These two cards were one for each of the two fighting characters.
He had first thought the big burly man had to be a barbarian, but drawing Knight of Swords, he pivoted and went with a berserker type warrior.
The other was more perfect and a big shocking. The Tower. Destruction. Explosive change.
He had a few standard stereotypes he went with for many major arcana. The devil was a warlock type of character, the magician was a wizard, with the wheel of fortune being a sorcerer. The high priestess was a divine healer kind that wasn’t necessarily focused on faith, the high priest a religious one, the empress a non-religious one. Strength was a fighter, and justice were paladins and which kind depended on orientation. Monks were in the temperance card.
The hermit was Tomi’s character’s card.
The tower… entirely depending on context.
So… what was it this time? A town square. Destruction. Change. Battle…
A little of a reach, but… some kind of necromancer, perhaps?
Or perhaps worse… pyromancer?
35)
“Ynna takes the strike from the fighter. She can’t counter, so she shouts to the woman, ‘Miss! Escape!’ but it’s undercut by the fact that Ynna feels tremendous heat begin to lick the armour at the next moment.
Ynna looks back and sees the woman is gathering fire in her hands. The warrior’s strike is pressing down on her, and both fighter and shieldsworn are engulfed in fire. They take…” Tomi rolled the damage dice twice. “Two points of damage to Ynna, because the chainmail gets very hot and burns through any layers beneath. The fighter takes a single point of damage…” He rolls two d20s. “…and both are afflicted with burn. Must smell absolutely awful. I don’t know about mister fighter, but with all the hair of Ynna, the burnt hair smell would be really strong.”
He jotted down the damage and effect in his journal. He glanced at the laptop screen and saw the message: roll for hair.
36)
Roll for hair.
Great.
Tomi grabbed a binder from the shelf behind him and opened it up as he said, “I do have a table for that. Or like four or five.”
He grabbed a day and made a few rolls.
“Uneven, curly hair that’s pulled back. Light brown, apparently. While at it, let’s just roll for age and race. Our bulky guy… is an elf in his thirties. Ynna gathered this while being barbecued.”
Tomi rolled his three dice again. He looks at his horrible roll. The fighter and the pyromancer attacking first while Ynna was in the middle, trying to shield herself and stop the fight.
Tomi narrates, “The elf fighter pulls back. He doesn’t care about Ynna and just passes him to attack the Pyromancer. The Pyromancer evade and jumps out of the range of the sword before he casts another fire spell at the buff elf. That’s another three damage to Buff Elf from the attack and four from the burn. Chat, what level is Buff Elf? Because he has taken eight damage. Level one has ten hit points in this game. Is this Buff Elf cooked or what?”
He went on to his own turn. “Ynna… Man, I hate chaotic good characters.” After a moment of pondering, he continues, “Ynna attacks the pyromancer to stop her from causing more trouble. She uses her shield, which would still hurt like hell, to press against the pyromancer, and, with a tone that’s supposed to be friendly, she says, ‘Did you misplace your lover?’ She pauses and adds, ‘Like how man misplaces their socks sometimes?’”
Somehow, the pyromancer was convinced to stop when Ynna added, “I can help you find him. I’m looking for another misplaced lover, too.”
37)
The chat concluded it would be the funniest if Buff Elf was level one
Tomi decided to send him to the local healer before the character died on the street and brought the half-goat more to do — like proving her innocence.
Nope.
That was not a subplot he wanted to get into.
With that, he managed to extract some information but, once calmed down, the pyromancer was very quiet and didn’t want to talk.
He managed to find out that she had been out of town, that her lover had been gone for about a month. She had left soon before he disappeared. Just days.
And the nights before she left, the Pyromancer heard a loud, hostile roar. She couldn’t place it. And all eyes seemed to be on her, even if she saw no one.
38)
“‘Why was she out several nights in a row?’” Tomi turn to the bookcase and got a notebook. He flipped to a page from a very old session. “Trik’s back, baby.”
His lawful evil pyromancer side character, Trik Scarlet. She had been an ally through a whole campaign just to switch sides to join the big bad during the final boss fight. Tomi’s character died at the hands of his own ally.
Her fear? Midnight.
Her goal? Overcome her fear.
Her motivation? Hate.
“Trik tends to be up and about at night.”
She hadn’t made an appearance since.
What she actually was was unclear, but he knew she wore the face of a human to pass for one.
“‘What level is Lady Scarlet? It was Scarlet, right?’ Yeah, her surname is Scarlet. Good question. She’s definitely higher level than one. Let’s put her at… five.” He paused and added, “with nothing but starter spells. She collected all of those to do all pyromancer paths at once.”
He had to see how to change her stats to fit the system he played with. He’d do that later.
“Ynna asks the Pyromancer, ‘Do you know if anyone else has lost their lover as of recent?’
The Pyromancer chuckles. ‘Don’t worry. If there is, I’ll get them to talk.’”
He paused and looked at the time.
“I think that’s a good place to end today’s session. Trik and Ynna will head out on this lost lover quest together next session, it seems. When it is? I was thinking in a couple of days. Editing this and putting it up as a VOD will take time, so I want to be done with that before the next sessions.”
39)
He continued to hold a post-session chat with the members and also ended up converting some of Trik’s stats and skills to show how it’s done.
He was happy several people remembered Lady Scarlet — as his chat still called her, apparently.
Once the chat was over, he turned off his setup and stretched his body. His entire body felt stiff after being seated for so long.
He yawned for no reason.
That was his cue. He left things as they were on the desk and went to brush his teeth, turning off the lights on the way. He then dropped his joggers on the floor and tossed his tanktop to the side, and crashed straight into the bed, barely covering himself up with the blanket before he was drifting off.
Only now did he notice that he was super exhausted.