Upon returning to Gallanai, the group was met with a unique situation in their Yggdrasil outpost. Lamerie, the orc chef, was the only one there.
"Sven quit," she said. "Just up and left."
"So who will take his place?" Valdulk asked.
Lamerie shrugged.
In the meantime, the group was getting acclimated to having a child around. Valdulk quickly got attached to her, expressing quite a lot of fatherly concern for her well-being, making sure she didn't grow up to become the evil witch they encountered in the swamp. She was a bit humorless, though -- often taking things at face value and not being quite able to express strong positive emotions. Draeden tried his hand at some humor, with a swift, "Babs, do you have ligma?"
She looked puzzled. "Huh?"
Draeden tried to keep a straight face. "Ligma. Do you have ligma?"
"What's... ligma?"
"OOH! LIGMA BALLS!"
He got on a table and dabbed, pleased with himself for such a dubious (and simple) trap. Valdulk awkwardly tried to explain to her what his joke actually meant when a figure appeared in the open doorway.
He was a tiefling man with curly black hair, a large mustache, and a flowing brown cape. He walked into the room with quite the entrance, and boasted a thick accent. "I am Senior Harlopps," he said before sitting in Sven's chair. "I will be your new outpost coordinator!"
The group was weary of this man, as he was just as strange as he sounded. While they were getting settled in (and Harlopps began a rambling life story that no one paid attention to), Rhymus gave his secret letter to Babs, and asked if she could read it.
"Oh, yeah," she replied. "You can't?"
He shook his head. She readily translated it for him, and handed back to him a message he almost collapsed as he read. The others definitely took notice of Rhymus's reaction to the letter, and they met in secret to discuss their plans out of Rhymus's (and DM's) earshot.
After getting set up for the night (drinking grog, ignoring Harlopps's rude dismissal of their real names for names he thought was theirs, and so on) Valdulk decided to sleep on the floor of Babs's walking cottage for the night to protect her from danger. He felt something shifting within him... not the desire to conquer the lands for his own gain anymore -- but something fatherly, expressed once back in the swamp village with his spell book parting gift, and again with his newfound daughter.
In the morning, Babs seemed to have regained some memories. She found a new magic item in a slot of wood under her potions chest, giving it to Valdulk with little care for its use or purpose.
The group, hot on the trail of their last mission before going to Yggdrasil itself and getting promoted, decide to go to the markets to attend to their various needs. Draeden, first and foremost, wanted to get matches -- and with the variety of items sold in big cities, he did so with ease.
Next, Rhymus really needed to sort out these new memories. Tinnia? Why was the letter written in the language of the Hells? The name, as he thought it over, was more and more familiar with each passing minute. He found the nearest Sanctum Shop and asked the wizards there for books on the Hells. The first wizard he met, a man in a pink coat and hat, initially tried to sway Rhymus from taking these ancient tomes, but his boss eventually descended from the staircase of the tower and let Rhymus borrow them for the time being.
After Rhymus left, Valdulk went into that very tower and bought Babs a red wizard's hat to match her red robes. The longer he spends with her, the more attached he gets -- deep down, he feels it has to do with his past, wanting to rectify the things he experienced in childhood -- and to that end, he spoils the girl. But her previous look of indifference looks more like happiness now, with a new hat and new things to read.
When they all returned to Yggdrasil's Gallanai Outpost, they (they as in Valdulk and Draeden) decided it was time to take a look at what was on Rhymus's secret note. They creep up on him with a plan.
"Say, Rhymus," Valdulk says. "You look tense."
Draeden's ancestral guardian materializes and rubs Rhymus's shoulders. "Why don't you go to sleep?" Draeden asks.
Confused and a bit scared, Rhymus says, "What are you two doing? Is a plot of yours a'brewing?"
"We just want what's best for you," Draeden insists.
"We're WORRIED, Rhymus," Valdulk says."
Rhymus tries to ignore their advances but they keep persisting. Draeden and Valdulk trade off with things like, "No, really, go to sleep..." and "It's fine, you'll be alright!" until Rhymus decides he's had enough. Voices are raising -- Rhymus is struggling against his own restraint -- and Valdulk finally shouts, "TELL US WHAT'S IN THE NOTE!"
Rhymus stops. "That was all you wanted?"
Valdulk and Draeden, who had been planning on trapping him a dimensional room, stealing his note, and having Babs translate it for them, both nod. Rhymus just shakes his head. "Why create such a task? All you had to do was ask."
They crowded around and had Babs read aloud.
Rhymus, having lost most of his memories, doesn't quite remember who Tinnia is. No one else knows a woman by that name either...
Trusting it would come up conveniently later, they decided to turn in their mission and head out for their last -- aiding Fort Flynight for three days and three nights. After another excursion in which they angered Godo and Miss Zimmy, the three travel to the northern hills of Roundfrost by way of mobile magic portal, encountering quite a peculiar mage on the other side. At first, all they see is a short, hunched figure in a black cloak and an orange wizard's hat. But slowly, he turns around, and reveals his face -- that of an orangutan.
"Ahhh-mmmm," he says, standing in the snow.
And at that, the group had no idea what to think.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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