the-idiot-party

[the-idiot-party]

Uce Goes Fucking Bonkers, section 1: The Dreams

After the events of the first mission had passed and the merchant was saved, our heroes settled in for a restful night. They got used to their new home and got acquainted with the staff until the sun went down and sent them off to bed, where everyone except for Uce slept soundly.

Uce had a very odd night. She was about half asleep, just ready to slip away, when she saw something in her room. What it was, she couldn’t tell, not with her eyes mostly closed, but she could hear it taunting her. It swirled around and called her name with a voice that sounded like the speaker had woken from thousand years’ rest, raspy, offensive to the ear, and dreadful enough to make the skin crawl. If there was more to this unexpected guest’s message, Uce didn’t hear it, because she’d fallen asleep by then. Her dreams led her somewhere into an empty dark space, not unlike a void with only support under her feet to stand on. From there, she had two options; she could stay there in the void or she could take her chances with what looked like the only exit, a door that stood out in the darkness because of the light exuding from it. Uce didn’t want to stay in the void, so she took her second option and found herself in a field full of wheat tall enough to reach her chest (no hard feat with her height of 3’2) that swayed with the wind and a tall, faraway tower that glimmered in the sun. About that time, Uce woke up with no memory of her dream or the stranger she’d seen before, so unbeknownst to her, this marked the first night that she saw visions in her sleep.

Almost every night that she slept in a bed went the same way. A vivid dream came and went forgotten by morning, but something was unfolding before Uce slowly, night by night, piece by piece, a narrative for something much bigger than Uce.

The night right after the first dream, she met someone in the field. They were a young girl, striking in appearance with green eyes, red hair, her face dotted with freckles, who seemed like she’d been waiting for Uce to arrive. Uce was greeted like an old friend and invited to sit down next to the girl while they made their introductions. What Uce learned was that this girl already knew who she was, and that she lived in the tower. Her name, although she offered it, was obscured and inaudible, but before Uce could think too much about it, the girl asked to hear a song. She requested a song from the bard that she admired for how freely she sang and played, and Uce granted it before her time was up and she sat up in bed, well rested.

Over the course of time, Uce got to know this girl better, meeting with her in her sleep to talk and enjoy her company. This girl, Libby, Uce had realized after Lia managed to get herself into the spirit realm for a minute or two as a result of wild magic, didn’t just live in the tower. She studied there and learned magic from tutors with high expectations for her. She was good at magic, but the stress got to her a lot. To take the edge off, she met Uce whenever she could to talk with her. The conversations were pleasant to her, sort of an escape from her high pressure life, where she wasn’t under so many restrictions. Although any advice Uce offers is terrible, she asked for it a couple times. Once, to ask if practicing necromancy was a good idea when she’d been told it was evil magic and it would displease the woman she was learning for (the answer that came from Uce was “Magic’s just a tool, it can’t be inherently evil. Just use it for not evil things”), and once to ask if there was an escape from all the restrictions placed on her. There was one, Uce told her. She just had to do whatever she wanted. For someone like Uce, it wasn’t hard to do, but Libby, she seemed surprised.

That was the last of her that Uce saw until the Heroes’ second mission, where her dream started much more violently than usual. Instead of a cool breeze, there was oppressive heat. The air was filled with ashes and the wind howled, batting around burning wheat that covered the world in violent shades of red and orange, and the tower… The tower was burning too, screams were pouring out of it, and for a moment, Uce was terrified that she’d lost someone. Libby wasn’t in her immediate view; if she was in that tower, burning, Uce couldn’t do much to save her. She wasn’t, though. She popped out of the burning wheat, mostly unharmed save for a few small burns, and smeared with ash. Overcome with relief, Uce went to ask what happened to her, but Libby broke down into tears before anything could be asked. Uce figured that she was shaken from escaping the tower until Libby asked if what she’d done was right. She had a death grip on Uce, she begged through tears to hear that everything was okay and that what she had done was the right thing to do. Uce couldn’t answer, the soothing words she had to offer were stuck in her throat, and Libby collapsed under the weight of her grief, shaking with sobs as flames completely overtook her body.

Uce, though? Uce was fine. She was crying, but she was fine, and she was back in that void she’d begun in. She assumed that it was over then, that she might wake up, but no. She heard a familiar voice. It was that stranger, back to taunt her from the darkness again with his commentary and rhetoric as he waltzed around her. Much of it, Uce didn’t fully understand or respond to; she was still trying to process, but when she got her bearings, she took advantage of a pause to ask him who he was.

“Already asking the fun questions.” She already knew him, he said. They’d met once before, and through the process of elimination (she hadn’t known anybody for the duration of her dreams that could do this), she figured that it had to be that god she’d laid low. “Are you the one that I slapped with a thunderwave?” She’d done that to many, it wasn’t quite an identifier, but he didn’t deny it. And, as much as he’d enjoy to continue their conversation, she had things to do tomorrow. His farewell came in the form of friendly advice, “Stay cool,” and before Uce could respond that she was always cool, she was awake. This dream, unlike the many others she had, stayed fresh in her memory where she could mull it over and ultimately get nowhere, since it stood without the context of her other dreams.

The dream after that was plain, perhaps a long time after the fields burnt down. The wheat was all cut, the ground was patchy with the stems, and the tower, standing the way it had before, seemed like it was entirely uninhabited. Uce didn’t do much, there wasn’t much to do, and when she woke up, the memory was gone as usual.

[the-idiot-party]

R+R time

So, after sort of apprehending a god and becoming the heroes of Hitoshi, our characters had a little while to settle in and get used to Hitoshi.

First, they had to take care of their quarters. They were given a guild to stay in on the King’s Grounds with everything taken care of for them. They had staff, a chef and a bartender named Ruvle and Tiddlywinks respectively, anything they asked for (within reason) would be added to their rooms, pets would be provided, and their families too would be given a place to live in Hitoshi.

Additionally, they were introduced to Phurri, a brilliant court scientist that would occasionally provide new magitech for the heroes, and in fact, she created the nameplates for their rooms (only Cedar’s name had been spelled correctly, Vega’s had been spelled “Veiga” and Uce’s “Uccielm.”).

From there, it was free time for the heroes. That day had mostly gone by, so they opted to stay in. They ended up going to bed early, which was a good way to start off their new lives, except Uce was getting some weird dreams.

Day one, they decided to do some exploring. They all went their separate ways that day; Cedar headed to the Knowledge Sector, Vega went to go and get a pet, and Uce went to the Entertainment Sector.

Vega found out about the markets and the Military Sector, when he took a detour there, but didn’t do much else.

Cedar, when he entered the Knowledge Sector, had found a quiet place befitting him. He had found some semblance of peace, away from people making out with things or throwing other people, so did some research on druid magic. Aiming to become more powerful, potentially learn a new spell or two, he looked for a good book on it. Eventually, he did find what he was looking for, but he first found a book of ~erotic illustrations~. He didn’t read it.

Uce was surrounded by colors and sounds, alive and constantly in motion. On an off day, this would have made for a sensory hell, but the day had just begun and she had her wits about her well enough to find her way around. First, she put in some insurance, buying new violin strings just in case, but then she decided to see a show. With her newfound fame and friendship with Armorus, she was given a reduced price to see “Specter of the Grand Stage,” a one man play by Armorus. It started off well enough, with a specter and a grand stage, but it slowly devolved into alternate universes and unknown siblings of the protagonist. Incomprehensible, but fun, which Uce told Armorus when she found him outside of the playhouse after the show was over. Unfortunately, Armorus couldn’t talk long because he was between shoots, but he had some free time on a schedule that he gave Uce.

All of that activity had wound the heroes down and exhausted them, so they returned home and ended their day.

Day two, they went shopping. For a couple hours, they just went around appraising or selling the loot from their adventure in the temple, but Vega. Vega wanted to get a pet that could live in the cold of the Arm Mountains where his sister lived. That in mind, they headed off to the Nature Sector in Hitoshi and before finding animals, Cedar found out a little about potions that he could potentially make with ingredients he’d found.

After that, though, all three were led to a tundra where they might find a pet for Vega, and Vega locked on to a pair of flippers, a beak, and a lot of fat. The animal, or so its handler told them, was a penguin (pronounced peng-wan), and immediately, Vega fell in love with it. This penguin was huge, an absolute unit, difficult for even Vega (the party’s fighter, the strongest one there) to lift. In the end, though, he succeeded and decided to name it Slider. As heavy as Slider was, they had to get him home immediately, where he was set up. Cedar decided to try and speak to Slider, being a druid, and what he found out was that Slider wanted all of them dead and eaten by the end of the day.

Luckily for them, Slider could barely stand up on his own, and they were leaving soon to assist their saved merchant, Hearth, with setting up a shop in Hitoshi. She just needed to shelve her wares, which our heroes were more than willing to do, especially because she’d promised an honest reward.

It went fine for a while, they got about a quarter done with the job, but their work was interrupted by a band of three robbers. One of them was focused on robbing the cashier, one was keeping an eye on the others in the shop, and the last one had tied the door shut to keep anyone from leaving. All three of them were children, which wasn’t exactly a problem in and of itself until they proved to be children that were terrible at their jobs (they couldn’t get over the counter without hurting themselves, couldn’t handle getting stabbed. It wasn’t pretty.), so Uce ended the fight with a bit of scolding and with permission from Hearth, used some rope to tie them up and question them. As it turned out, the three kids didn’t really have a choice in the matter. They owed a debt to someone or something they called the Red Heart.

Not a single one of the heroes knew what the Red Heart was, and neither did Hearth, so they turned the kids in and finished their work, got their honest reward, and continued on their way.

Day three, Vega was trapped under Slider and couldn’t get out of bed.

Cedar had checked out that book of his, so he had research to do on druid magic that he spent his day on.

Uce didn’t have much to do, so she called her new friend Armorus. He had free time that day, so he was able to meet up for a short time, and the two of them didn’t really know where they wanted to go, so Armorus suggested a spa. The Red Heart Spa.

See a connection? Great, because Uce did too. She was nervous the whole time, partly because of the name and partly because she wasn’t used to this sort of scene. The building was a huge heart shaped building bathed in red, with a very luxurious interior. After a short greeting, Armorus and Uce were given some bathing assistants and lead to baths, where they made light conversation.

And for a solid couple minutes, Armorus was honest. He admired Uce, he admitted, because he didn’t know that bards could fight like that. He certainly wasn’t made for it, he was a bard of glamour for whom performing seemed to be the only real option, with his bright personality and charm. He had to wonder where it came from, the sort of fortitude that it took to throw someone off a cliff, to rush headlong into a fight, and that turned into a question for Uce. How did she do it? Where had she come from, and what had she been through?

She didn’t have a complicated answer. She’d grown up in the Clemented Capital with freedom within reason to pursue anything she wanted, and a free spirit herself, it suited her to adventure ceaselessly, to express and create. It suited her to form fiercely sympathetic values and let them guide her into the graces of poets, Lore college, and then into the mercenary job where she’d met Armorus. It was only natural, at least to her, that she’d have ended up where she was now.

Their baths ended shortly, and the both of them were glowing. Their skin was soft and clean, their hair shone under the light of the sun, there was a rosy pallor to their cheeks, but Armorus still seemed a bit melancholy, so Uce switched the subject to the Red Heart and whether it had any connection with the spa they’d just been in.

According to Armorus, the Red Heart was a part of Hitoshi that nobody really talked about. It was an underground crime syndicate, removed from the citizens and their daily lives for the most part, but an elusive challenge for officials. It was nigh impossible to find where they were located, and while Hitoshi hadn’t exactly given up on the search, they were losing steam.

That, however, was as much wisdom as Armorus was able to impart before his free time was up and he had to return to his filming schedule. Although he wasn’t able to talk much more, he let Uce know that she could always contact him via crystal, which he’d given to her and the other heroes. Just in case.

Without much else to do, our heroes kicked back for the rest of the day and decided to sleep once more.

[the-idiot-party]

The Very Beginning Synopsis

The Very Beginning is how the heroes came to be. 

They started out as three individuals who happened to answer the same cry for help to save a merchant that had gone off for wares and hadn’t come back.

They arrived on the scene, Cedar, Uce, and Vega, to find her and they tracked down, with Chisai and Devina, a temple where they found all sorts of shenanigans, fame, a holy man named Wensil, a cult, and a god that they beat up only to find afterwards that they had actually pushed him forward.

In the future, that god would be coming back stronger than ever through a child gifted with excellence in magic.

They didn’t have to worry about that for long, though, because they were shortly whisked off by a star of entertainment who had broadcast them and gotten high ratings and high approval that they got to see for a moment when they landed amidst adoring faces.

After that, though, they went to the King’s Grounds to become mercenaries sponsored by The Crown.

The three of them had, in a day, become heroes.

[the-idiot-party]

The Very Beginning, continued

Once the staircase had been revealed under the coffin, Cedar, Uce, Vega, Chisai, and Wensil followed it down some ways until they’d arrived at the bottom.

That staircase had led to a cathedral where a ritual was being held. With our merchant. We didn’t know what was going on, but we didn’t want to rush in, so we all attempted to sneak into the room to get a grasp of the situation and perhaps ready ourselves for a sneak attack. Most of us succeeded, but Uce failed and she was noticed by the group of cultists and the mindflayer leading them. They asked her name, and not wanting to risk her identity being found out if they were angry, she lied. Unfortunately, she’s got a disadvantage on deception, so she was found out easily and what she learned was that they were, in fact, delighted to see her there.

They were trying to summon a god via sacrifice, the exact god we’d just learned about, who had grown up isolated and outcast, until finally he’d gained power enough to become a god, and to have a witness for such an event was very pleasant for this group of cultists.

Unfortunately, those cultists were going to lose a fight to the party hidden around the cathedral, and it was going well. All of them with the exception of the mindflayer had fallen to might and magic, and the mindflayer was next. He was almost done for, almost toppled, but he was determined to bring back the god he worshipped. Although we were guarding the fainted sacrificial merchant with our lives, the ritual had to go on, so the mindflayer sacrificed himself and from the ether came their dead god.

Because of the haphazard ritual, he was summoned weak and unable to fight very well. He was taken care of with a series of attacks, spellbound by Cedar and Wensil, slashed by Vega and Chisai until at the very end, Uce landed an attack that destroyed his form, dissolved it in the pulse of thunder to the rhythm of an 8 g-note song she’d gotten off of a defeated goblin.

So the god was killed, and the merchant, Hearth, was saved from an untimely fate and reunited with her father in a tearful embrace that was near immediately ruined by the bickering of his hired mercenaries.

They didn’t expect much when they exited the temple, but they were met by a group of paladins that retrieved Wensil and sat the three mercenaries down in a tent for a chat. The god they’d just destroyed wasn’t quite gone. Defeating him had provided him an in, freedom to come back with the help of a magically gifted child, and he would be resurfacing one day.

Despite the imminent disaster, the three were asked not to fret and not to blame themselves, but to leave with their escort. Now the three were confused. They hadn’t come with an escort, so they had absolutely no idea what the paladins were talking about, but upon leaving the tent, they say a man who was beyond flamboyant.

He was decked out in skirts, tights a corset, his face very made up and his hair styled in a half shave and long, pink locks. The second he saw the three mercenaries, they were greeted like old friends while they tried to figure out who it was.

And the answer came quick to the bard. This man was a bardic legend, a star across the continent, named Armorus. Now the party, either starstruck or sickened, knew who he was, but why a man like Armorus was out here talking to them and presumably posing as their escort was lost on them. It turned out that from the start, he had been recording them through a crystal camera and broadcasting their adventure up to their visits into the chamber hidden under the temple through the secret door and beyond, and the recording had raised his ratings exponentially.

It was a number of things - Cedar’s beauty, Vega’s strength, Uce’s yeet. All three of them had their merits well known by the time they’d flown via Armorus’ stagecoach into mainland Hitoshi, a metropolitan land with all sorts of people and well sorted sectors. They didn’t visit any of them, not yet, for they had business to sort out. They landed in the midst of new fans, men and women fawning over Cedar, soldiers admiring Vega (although, plenty of them couldn’t be bothered to watch Armorus’ show or show up for his arrival), and children throwing dolls as far as possible.

The three mercenaries only got a glimpse, though, before they were escorted to the King’s Grounds to meet His Majesty himself, a yuan-ti veiled from mortal eyes according to Hitotian customs. The King had heard of, or possibly seen for himself, the exploits of the three mercenaries and he was impressed. Beyond that, he was in need of mercenaries himself, brave souls that could meet the requests of subjects no matter how dangerous with guaranteed results. Soon enough, they’d become mercenaries sponsored by The Crown.

They, from three nobodies on a hopeless quest to find a merchant, had become The Hitotian Heroes.

[the-idiot-party]

The Very Beginning

A little while ago, before the events I’ve described to you thus far, before there were heroes, there was a small party of five going on a hopeless rescue mission.

A merchant had gone off on a journey to the Arm Mountains, a place for only the most hardened of warriors, for wares to sell, but she never came back. She never sent correspondence, either, so her father was worried enough to hire a few mercenaries to go and find her, and if need be, save her.

The mercenaries, by name, were Devina, Cedar, Vega, and Uce; the person that had hired them, and who was working with them, was named Chisai.

I entered the campaign a little late, so unfortunately Uce showed up only once the party had already started after the lost merchant, once goblins had been fought and tracked back to the temple.

The entrance to the temple was dark, pitch black, and as we filed in to go down the steps into the void below, Cedar saw a glimmer in the distance. There wasn’t much to make of it, it was just there for one second and gone the next - by the time it could be addressed, everybody had made it down the steps and they had a choice to make. Which way were they going? One way was a bit of a tight squeeze, the other had all sorts of debris blocking it, and the latter was the popular choice.

So, the group of five started down the path and along the way were traps that almost everyone except for Chisai managed to get through with no trouble, and it lead to nowhere. The end of our path was cut off by a seemingly bottomless pit spanning from wall to wall, which left nowhere to turn except for the way we came. When we turned to leave, though, we were met with a pack of goblins and so started the fight that gained us our reputations.

The fight was cut and dry, the order meaningless because those goblins were defeated easily with a couple highlights being that

1: Cedar almost died.

2: Uce started her reputation as a particularly fierce sort by stabbing one goblin through the neck, hurling (and effectively yeeting) him into the chasm, and then scaring the rest of them off. Particularly impressive because she’s 3’2 and no type of fighter, but rather, a bard.

3: Vega started a reputation as well, as the loose cannon for following Uce’s lead and throwing some of the goblins at other, retreating goblins.

Following that, they all went back and took the other route, taking them further into the temple. What they found were a couple rooms, and the first one they entered had a chest in it.

Nobody knew what that chest was holding, or if it was safe to open, so we decided that the one to check it was going to be Devina and the way she was going to check it would be kissing it. French kissing it right where its lock was. She had to be paid to do it, but when all was said and done, the chest was just a chest with a shriveled old eye in it, which Uce decided to take.

After that, there was a seemingly empty room that, when inspected more closely, led to a secret chamber. The room was full of arcane magic, with four separate rooms that had all sorts of models set up, and a coffin in the largest end of the room with a poem above it that, at the time, we couldn’t figure out.

So, we all went back and went into the last room, which was full of goblins and some hobgoblins and one shrouded figure that had been tied up in the room. Nobody in the room had noticed us yet, so we decided to try and launch a sneak attack to free who we hoped was our lost merchant, and in the middle of the fight, we noticed that now we were four. Devina was missing, but we couldn’t dwell on it because we were now in the middle of a very heated battle.

Everybody had a game plan, and for the most part, Cedar, Chisai, and Vega were focusing on the fight itself. Uce planned to take advantage of the chaos and get closer to the mystery captive, and she got caught, but she was close enough to use mage hand to release them and reveal a man. He seemed surprised to have been freed, and in return, he healed Uce and joined the fight. The group, returned to five, wiped the floor with the goblins, and after the fight was done, the captive introduced himself.

His name was Wensil, and he was a paladin who had been sent into the temple for some sort of recovery mission. Since we hadn’t found the lost merchant yet, and only had one place left to explore, we decided to help him and show him the area we’d found deeper in the temple.

With his help, we managed to solve the puzzle by rereading the poem, which turned out to be the life story of a self created god, and we pieced it together, performing it with the models in each room until it was done and in the process, we gained a couple different things, pieces of the puzzle that helped us with the next model, until we got the last one. A perfectly round emerald. When we came out of the fourth and final room, the coffin had sprung open to reveal a model of a corpse of that self made god, which included his missing eye. We tried two things to get some reaction; first, we put the shriveled eye in the socket, and when that didn’t work, we tried the emerald. That worked.

As soon as the emerald was fitted into the eye socket, the bottom of the coffin fell out and allowed the contents to fall down yet another staircase, dark at the bottom, and the only way left to go.

[the-idiot-party]

The Circus - Synopsis

So! We had a pretty dramatic time at the circus.

The rundown of what happened is that our heroes went to the circus, and after meeting the performers and seeing the prince, they watched the show fall apart because of a creature that had disguised itself as a balloon man.

Through wit, effort, and almost dying, that creature was defeated and although the show couldn’t go on after an attack like that, especially not without one of their cast members, everyone there was saved and Lia, Uce, and Cedar got an extra reward from the crown on the side. 

After that, we ended up just going out to dinner with Hanny and Formaggio, and there we overheard that the reason the creature was at the circus was because of the Red Heart underground, since June was being chewed out by some man in a mask for not having a handle on the situation.

And that was the end of The Circus Arc.

[the-idiot-party]

Git e x p o s e d

The Circus - Conclusion

Hooo boy, long post! Sorry it’s a bit clunky, but a lot happened since the last part of The Circus Arc.

After we all got nice and introduced to the performers, we decided to do some final touches, like getting snacks and balloons, before taking our seats and watching the show.

It started off fantastically, with colored smoke and lights filling the tent, our favorite ringleader’s voice echoing out to announce the start of the show and narrate the performances.

First, Angelica. Her scene was set with ice and frost, the air turned cold and snow fell, landing and disappearing rather than melting. It was the climate of the Arm Mountains, where Angelica had come from, and where all sorts of fighters trained. Angelica herself was putting on a fierce show, a coordinated fight that kept the audience on the edge of their seats until her performance was over.

Then, the ringleader welcomes the diametric duo, Hanny and Formaggio! Their performance brought a much more tropical climate to match that of the Malakas islands, forged in fire and water, dangerous and beautiful like the two actors breathing fire and bubbles. When their time was up, they made it off stage with Hanny a little late, but it was okay because she’s adorable.

The next performance was very, very different from the whimsical one that came before it. The stage was set in the homeland of most of our player characters, where the patterns of life and death had their strongest hold. There were old gods, new gods, sprawling plant life that came and went as it pleased, a measured chaos that became the heartbeat of the Clemented Capital.

So who else to present it, than the very son of a god? Giorno came first, the embodiment of light that soared overhead with a song from heaven trailing after him.

And then there was Cherri, the yin to Giorno’s yang, the inevitable darkness that precedes and supersedes the light. She had a melody of her own, in sharp contrast with Giorno’s, and despite that…

They fit perfectly together.

Two halves of a whole.

A harmony that disagreed with itself, fought with itself, until either side was at its strongest.

It filled the tent.

The lights cut out.

Fresh’s mom called.

We paused the campaign.

This happened at least one more time immediately after she hung up.

And when we came back, the song had ended much sooner than anyone had imagined it would, and Giorno was singing alone.

Something had gone wrong, and it wasn’t until the lights came back on that we saw Cherri lying on the floor, completely passed out, and a creature just a couple feet away.

It was horrific, a mockery of a man with appendage shaped flesh and a false face sitting atop the forehead of its real one. In its hand was a balloon, or at least something that looked like a balloon, with a fetus in it. Horrifying enough? Not yet, it’s not. There’s more.

Just that, though, was enough for the danger to set in and the stands to panic and leave the tent.

Immediately, we knew what we had to do. We had to fight this thing because everybody was in danger, especially one child that the creature had locked its sights on. Most of the cast members had opted to get the people out of the tent to safety, but Formaggio and Angelica stayed behind to help us. So we rolled initiative.

First up was Uce, who along with Lia, was feeling a burning sensation where she’d tied a balloon on her wrist and in her throat. She opted to cut the balloon off and distract the Balloon Man from the child, which worked! Fortunate for the child. Not for her.

Next was Lia, who decided to get the child out of dodge and identify the Balloon Man for what it was, a creature, and she also found a lot of illusion magic.

Cedar used his turn to get closer to the creature, but there wasn’t much to do.

The creature, distracted, went after Uce.

Angelica decided to throw an axe at it and subsequently discover that it’s nigh immune to slashing damage.

Formaggio, if I remember right, used the strongest fire attack he had and did massive damage while subsequently using up its use.

The fight went in that order from beginning to end, the highlights being:

- Uce figured out that the creature had a connection to all of the kids with balloons. Whatever pain he felt, they felt, and they were under some sort of trance. She decided to warn her teammates about the balloons and advised them to try and get those off of the children.

- Lia ignored the warning and did not remove her own balloon until her next turn, but helped Formaggio destroy the children’s balloons.

- The creature grappled Uce and tried to insert the children’s souls into these toddler sized dolls of the ringmaster they’d gotten, but Uce, in one of her darkest hours, remembered that there was a lot of illusion magic going on. She cast Dispel Magic. Potentially game breaking because of the nature of what the heroes were fighting, but because it was a clever move, it canceled out the animated dolls.

- The creature started eating Uce and knocked her out.

- That shady drow elf that showed up before made his second appearance and offered, because it was really his fault that this creature was here at all, to revive the near dead gnome.

- Lia and Cedar decided, while Uce was BEING EATEN, to have an argument with the drow elf over whether or not he’d monitored his creature well enough. (He hadn’t.)

- Lia cast a wicked Fireball and took the rest of the creature’s HP down to none.

- Because she’s a wild magic sorcerer, she ended up going into what was another realm, right where Uce was trying to fight for her consciousness. She was doing just fine, but Lia helped her up nonetheless and the two of them returned soon.

Once the fight was over, we were left to get our bearings. The drow elf had disappeared, so we were given medical attention (with the exception of Angelica, who decided instead to look for her axes).

Most minor wounds were treated, and Uce was brought back to stability before Armorus showed up. He was a mess - usually, he would be seen decked out in bright colors, fishnets, skirts, bows, a corset, and of course makeup to go with it. Usually, he would be flamboyant and full of energy to bother Lia and Cedar with.

Today, he was neither. He showed up in drab clothing, simple makeup, hair undone, and he looked worried. It only made sense, he was in charge of the entertainment center where all of this had gone down; the event was ruined and people were jeopardized.

And then he saw us. Most of us were fine, but Uce being a friend of his and very wounded, decided to try and hide her shoulder and arm where she’d been bitten to avoid freaking Armorus out. Turned out to be a wise idea because when she failed, the man broke down into tears and sobs. After a few attempts to reassure him that Uce was fine, he was sort of pulled away by guards and it kicked off a pretty casual end of the night.

We ended up deciding to grab a bite to eat with Hanny, Formaggio, and one other actor, so that Lia (On another episode of Lia + wild magic, she ended up unable to get drunk for about a month) could drink Formaggio under the table for all of the stuff he was carrying on his person.

We also heard June getting chewed out by some unknown person for playing a part in that balloon creature getting loose.

That was just about all we got up to, though. All we did after that was rest up and prepare for the next day.

[the-idiot-party]

The Circus - Conclusion

Hooo boy, long post! Sorry it’s a bit clunky, but a lot happened since the last part of The Circus Arc.

After we all got nice and introduced to the performers, we decided to do some final touches, like getting snacks and balloons, before taking our seats and watching the show.

It started off fantastically, with colored smoke and lights filling the tent, our favorite ringleader’s voice echoing out to announce the start of the show and narrate the performances.

First, Angelica. Her scene was set with ice and frost, the air turned cold and snow fell, landing and disappearing rather than melting. It was the climate of the Arm Mountains, where Angelica had come from, and where all sorts of fighters trained. Angelica herself was putting on a fierce show, a coordinated fight that kept the audience on the edge of their seats until her performance was over.

Then, the ringleader welcomes the diametric duo, Hanny and Formaggio! Their performance brought a much more tropical climate to match that of the Malakas islands, forged in fire and water, dangerous and beautiful like the two actors breathing fire and bubbles. When their time was up, they made it off stage with Hanny a little late, but it was okay because she’s adorable.

The next performance was very, very different from the whimsical one that came before it. The stage was set in the homeland of most of our player characters, where the patterns of life and death had their strongest hold. There were old gods, new gods, sprawling plant life that came and went as it pleased, a measured chaos that became the heartbeat of the Clemented Capital.

So who else to present it, than the very son of a god? Giorno came first, the embodiment of light that soared overhead with a song from heaven trailing after him.

And then there was Cherri, the yin to Giorno’s yang, the inevitable darkness that precedes and supersedes the light. She had a melody of her own, in sharp contrast with Giorno’s, and despite that…

They fit perfectly together.

Two halves of a whole.

A harmony that disagreed with itself, fought with itself, until either side was at its strongest.

It filled the tent.

The lights cut out.

Fresh’s mom called.

We paused the campaign.

This happened at least one more time immediately after she hung up.

And when we came back, the song had ended much sooner than anyone had imagined it would, and Giorno was singing alone.

Something had gone wrong, and it wasn’t until the lights came back on that we saw Cherri lying on the floor, completely passed out, and a creature just a couple feet away.

It was horrific, a mockery of a man with appendage shaped flesh and a false face sitting atop the forehead of its real one. In its hand was a balloon, or at least something that looked like a balloon, with a fetus in it. Horrifying enough? Not yet, it’s not. There’s more.

Just that, though, was enough for the danger to set in and the stands to panic and leave the tent.

Immediately, we knew what we had to do. We had to fight this thing because everybody was in danger, especially one child that the creature had locked its sights on. Most of the cast members had opted to get the people out of the tent to safety, but Formaggio and Angelica stayed behind to help us. So we rolled initiative.

First up was Uce, who along with Lia, was feeling a burning sensation where she’d tied a balloon on her wrist and in her throat. She opted to cut the balloon off and distract the Balloon Man from the child, which worked! Fortunate for the child. Not for her.

Next was Lia, who decided to get the child out of dodge and identify the Balloon Man for what it was, a creature, and she also found a lot of illusion magic.

Cedar used his turn to get closer to the creature, but there wasn’t much to do.

The creature, distracted, went after Uce.

Angelica decided to throw an axe at it and subsequently discover that it’s nigh immune to slashing damage.

Formaggio, if I remember right, used the strongest fire attack he had and did massive damage while subsequently using up its use.

The fight went in that order from beginning to end, the highlights being:

- Uce figured out that the creature had a connection to all of the kids with balloons. Whatever pain he felt, they felt, and they were under some sort of trance. She decided to warn her teammates about the balloons and advised them to try and get those off of the children.

- Lia ignored the warning and did not remove her own balloon until her next turn, but helped Formaggio destroy the children’s balloons.

- The creature grappled Uce and tried to insert the children’s souls into these toddler sized dolls of the ringmaster they’d gotten, but Uce, in one of her darkest hours, remembered that there was a lot of illusion magic going on. She cast Dispel Magic. Potentially game breaking because of the nature of what the heroes were fighting, but because it was a clever move, it canceled out the animated dolls.

- The creature started eating Uce and knocked her out.

- That shady drow elf that showed up before made his second appearance and offered, because it was really his fault that this creature was here at all, to revive the near dead gnome.

- Lia and Cedar decided, while Uce was BEING EATEN, to have an argument with the drow elf over whether or not he’d monitored his creature well enough. (He hadn’t.)

- Lia cast a wicked Fireball and took the rest of the creature’s HP down to none.

- Because she’s a wild magic sorcerer, she ended up going into what was another realm, right where Uce was trying to fight for her consciousness. She was doing just fine, but Lia helped her up nonetheless and the two of them returned soon.

Once the fight was over, we were left to get our bearings. The drow elf had disappeared, so we were given medical attention (with the exception of Angelica, who decided instead to look for her axes).

Most minor wounds were treated, and Uce was brought back to stability before Armorus showed up. He was a mess - usually, he would be seen decked out in bright colors, fishnets, skirts, bows, a corset, and of course makeup to go with it. Usually, he would be flamboyant and full of energy to bother Lia and Cedar with.

Today, he was neither. He showed up in drab clothing, simple makeup, hair undone, and he looked worried. It only made sense, he was in charge of the entertainment center where all of this had gone down; the event was ruined and people were jeopardized.

And then he saw us. Most of us were fine, but Uce being a friend of his and very wounded, decided to try and hide her shoulder and arm where she’d been bitten to avoid freaking Armorus out. Turned out to be a wise idea because when she failed, the man broke down into tears and sobs. After a few attempts to reassure him that Uce was fine, he was sort of pulled away by guards and it kicked off a pretty casual end of the night.

We ended up deciding to grab a bite to eat with Hanny, Formaggio, and one other actor, so that Lia (On another episode of Lia + wild magic, she ended up unable to get drunk for about a month) could drink Formaggio under the table for all of the stuff he was carrying on his person.

We also heard June getting chewed out by some unknown person for playing a part in that balloon creature getting loose.

That was just about all we got up to, though. All we did after that was rest up and prepare for the next day.

[the-idiot-party]

“Man always carries a gun in case he needs to escalate situation”

[the-idiot-party]

Circus, Continued

In the next piece of our venture, the heroes made it to the circus! The show has not yet started, but the performers have been introduced. 

Said performers are...

Cherri: Cherri is a woman with beauty marks in the shape of a snakebite and two differently colored eyes. She has a lover in Hitoshi, but she hasn’t been back for a while and doesn’t know if she’ll find him there. We bought tickets from her, and she told us that royalty may or may not have been coming.

Giorno: Giorno is an aasimar man, and in a way, the star of the show! He catches attention very easily, and when we spoke to him, we got our tarot read.

Unfortunately, while he was practicing some tricks, he had a magic malfunction and the cards got blown away into the tent, so we helped him get them back. What we learned about him later was that his patron is sort of his father, and he can be worshiped with traveling. He’s pretty far from his patron, though, so that could be the explanation for the card incident.

The Ringleader: The Ringleader is a dwarf girl that made the mistake of touching a cursed doll, which sort of absorbed her consciousness from her body. She has some control over her body, but it’s pretty limited.

Now the next two we’ve already met, but one of them we haven’t seen before and they would be

Nise: Nise is none other than His Highness, the Prince of Hitoshi and the patron of The Hitotian Heroes Guild. He came to watch the show from a private and well guarded seat.

And one of said guards, although the Prince may not like her much according to her, is Aust! She invited us to get a drink or two with her after the circus, and how could we say no?

We also invited another entertainer.

Angelica: Angelica is a goliath woman with quite a scar and quite a lot of strength! She’s the backbone of this circus, and she does most of the heavy lifting. Her hobby is fighting, which is a shame because only the squishy magic users made it to that session.

Next, we went to talk to a couple others that we’d seen around, namely a merperson dancer and a tiefling firebreather.

Hanny: Hanny is the merperson who sort of pulled Lia into a well executed dance, and she’s a huge sweetheart despite her very vested interest in tragedy. We told her that a few of our guildmates weren’t with us and her immediate assumption was that they were dead. Or in a coma. Or leaving us for royalty.

Formaggio: Nicknamed “The Red Cheese,” Formaggio is a level headed tiefling that is used to Hanny’s antics. He was a former member of a guild whose boss he didn’t enjoy, so he left to join the circus! What we’ve learned about him is that he doesn’t much like Armorus, and he’s a red tiefling that breathes fire.

Soon enough, Formaggio dragged Hanny off and Cedar followed suit with Lia to avoid a feedback loop of tragedy enablement, and Uce noticed someone.

Shady Mcgee: We don’t have a name for this elf yet, but Uce found him in the shadows whispering into a crystal communicating device that there was someone he couldn’t find that he was looking for, and of course, that wasn’t too good.

We close right before the circus starts, on the agreement that we’ve got to look out for Shady Mcgee and that Hanny is absolutely adorable.

[the-idiot-party]

The Circus

So, our heroes have finished the second mission. 

They return home battered and beaten down, unwilling to talk and unable to cope.

So what do you do to lift your spirits after you fail to keep your new friend from imminent death, get betrayed, and watch your betrayer summon a goddess of anger and war into your dead friend because of all the hatred they harbored before their death?

You go to the circus!

Our heroes had seen them before their last mission, coming in as a parade led by an Aasimar man, and they were all set up and ready by the time that the heroes were back. Armorus made sure they knew it.

[the-idiot-party]

Tag Key

For the sake of organization, all of the posts on this blog are sorted by certain tags.

The #Context tag is for any vital information about the events of the campaign or blog relevant information.

Any #Intro tag is going to be used for the introduction of all sorts of things, but so far the only intro tag is #NPC Intro for any NPCs that recur beyond their arcs.

Of course, posts for specific characters that aren’t plot related will have their names tagged on them, but an umbrella tag will be either #Heroes, or #NPCs, and arc specific NPCs will also have their own tags. So far, the ones we’ve got planned or available are

- Plot NPCs

- The Circus NPCs

Because the purpose of this blog is to keep up with the campaign, there will be two types of tags for storyline related posts. The first are tags related to their place in the storyline, (tags like #Mission one or #Mission two), whether they’re for canon events or memes. The second are #Synopsis tags! To keep information from getting scattered while I record ongoing arcs, every arc will get a synopsis post once it’s finished. (#example arc synopsis is likely to be the tag structure.)

The arcs that have been recorded so far, in chronological order from the campaign, are

- The Very Beginning

- The Circus Arc

If a post has characters or events with a certain affiliation, you’ll find it tagged. So far, there’s #Affiliation: Hitoshi, and #Affiliation: Red Heart planned.

And there are a few tags for parts of the campaign that aren’t quite an arc of their own, but have their ongoing narratives.

- R+R

- The Dreams

[the-idiot-party]

NPC Intro

As a foreword, this is the main post for NPCs. For the sake of both organization and avoiding arc spoilers, the NPCs on this list are going to be limited to recurring/main story NPCs, but the list is going to have a lot more updates as developments are made and new characters are added! Don’t worry too much about keeping track, though, because any new characters will have separate introduction posts before they’re added to the list with their details.

So, you’ve met Vega, Cedar, Uce, and Lia, but what about everyone else?

There’s most definitely more to the cast, and here is where you get to meet them!

Without further ado, we’ve got:

Main Hitoshi NPCs

These NPCs are mostly associated with the main setting - Hitoshi, a bustling city full of opportunity and diversity.

Armorus - A very flamboyant bard/star entertainer who is in charge of Hitoshi’s entertainment district.

Phurri- A tabaxi inventor that does her work in the knowledge district, she’s very nervous.

Guild NPCs

The NPCs here are with our heroes in the newly formed Hitoshian Heroes Guild.

Ruvle - He’s the first member of the guild’s staff, the chef.

Tiddlywinks- The other member of the guild’s staff, a bartender. Tiddlywinks is her alias, but her real name is unknown.

Aust- A new Drow recruit with a background in crime that she recently shed to become a citizen guard.

Baradad- Another new recruit with a past that he doesn’t remember, but a lot of promise.

Red Heart NPCs-

The Red Heart is in the underbelly of Hitoshi, a hidden crime syndicate. These NPCs haven’t shown up often with a few exceptions, so their descriptions might be a bit sparse until later! Do make sure to check up on this post often, because it’s the main NPC post and updates will be made to it often.

Yuki - She’s the leader of the red heart.

Maya - A necromancer and lead scientist.

June - An orc man that would love to fight anyone at any cost.

Devina - A rogue woman, and one of the people that has the ability to grant others access to the Red Heart.

Misc-

Hearth - A merchant that our heroic team rescued from getting sacrificed. She’s very nice, too!

Akemi - A weapons merchant that the party immediately fell in love with, half man, half snake, and excellent at his craft.

[the-idiot-party]

Our Adventure Starts

Hello all, and welcome to The Hitoshian Hero’s Guild, a blog run by myself for keeping up with a dnd campaign written and run by Fresh! For privacy’s sake, I won’t be linking them, but they’re evil and I love them.

Let’s start by introducing the characters!

We have

Fresh, the dm, playing as everyone and everything!

Veggie, myself, playing as Ucilm (Uce) - A Gnome Bard with a violin and a free (read: uncontrollable) spirit.

Skittle, the most nonintimidating one, playing as Lia - A Half Elf Sorceress who appeared to us on a cloud like the angel she is!

Sm, the only one with a life, playing as Vega - A Human Fighter who isn’t supposed to be drunk, but still is most of the time!

Hatchet, one of the good things left in this world, playing as Cedar - A stoic Tiefling Druid that doesn’t know he’s gay yet!

All of these characters have had their entrances and even a couple adventures, because I didn’t think to set this blog up while we were starting, but I’ll try to catch everyone up on the progress we missed!

For now, this blog is dedicated to the iconic in and out of rp exchanges by the players, the events, quality memes, and occasional character development updates!

We’ll be going from the end of Mission 2 onwards!

If you don’t know where to go from here, I might suggest starting at The Tag Key! That’ll provide you with the information for where to go and how to find it.