Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Having dispatched her duty to Baron Fordham’s water system, Delphine caught up with her fellow performers. They spent the next several days hauling a sickly Boggs around in a blizzard, trying to hunt and forage enough to keep from freezing to death before they starved to death, with limited success. To add insult to injury, they attracted the attention of a Nightstalker—a ferocious, bear-like beast with the temper and intelligence of a wolverine, and at least an order of magnitude more mass and attitude. Even Kolo-kolo, the Ring Island tiger, crouched down and backed away slowly upon first meeting the nasty beast. By dint of setting several fires around the camp, they managed to keep it out for one night, but it was starting to look grim for Our Heroes. Nightstalkers, as one would guess from the name, are strictly nocturnal, and don’t like either light or fire.

Fortunately, fate intervened in the way it often does when you’re an RPG character. Mama Quilla stumbled upon a contemplative hermit of antique vintage, who invited the wayward group back to her cottage. As contemplative hermits rarely have any use for cash, the group instead decided to help out by eliminating the Nightstalker menace…one which had obviously been sniffing around the venerable lady’s very doorstep.

While that endeavor could have easily ended disastarously, it turns out that even Delphine and Cha-rool can work together when it’s necessary (although he still has abomniable taste in literature). First, they pitched into the den a drugged the carcass of one of their hunting kills, hoping to slow down the beast. Then, in front of the entrance to the foul nest, they set up several stout wooden stakes, which, as a backup measure, had been dipped in the latrine pit—hoping that if a frontal assault failed, a nasty infection might succeed…even if one or more of the characters were observing the Nightstalker’s digestive tract from the inside at the time. Finally, they lit fires around the base of the tree under which the monster laired, and waited. Delphine and Mama Quilla climbed the sturdiest trees they could find, weapons at the ready, and Cha’rool took to the air to do what he does best…set things on fire, then pounce on them on them, claws out.

It didn’t take long for the smoke to drive the Nightstalker out into the daylight and onto the stakes, which quickly took it from cranky to enraged. Although Delphine would never admit it directly, Cha’rool deserves most of the credit on the kill, between his fireballs and his claws. Delphine only managed to get one javelin shot in before she had to hold on for dear life while the beast shook the tree she was in, and Mama Quilla’s blowgun darts probably wouldn’t even have penetrated the thick hide. Kolo-kolo also managed to get in a bit of damage, and although it took some doing, the Greatest Show on Yrth managed to win the day. Cha’rool even has a necklace of the creature’s formidable claws and teeth to show for it.

It turns out that Nightstalkers are quite tasty.

After a week or so, Boggs was well enough to travel, and the group set out once more to track down the still-elusive dragon. Upon making their way to the nearest road, they found The Wizard waiting for them, along with four wagons and a dozen or so of his interchangeable kobold minions. And he is most definitely Not a Happy Wizard, either. Personally, Delphine would rather have a conversation with the nightstalker…or even Cha’rool.

A few days into the seige of Fordham, Delphine decided to take the bull by the horns and ask Blake, the wizard, about the possible location of a dragon, on the pretense of wishing to avoid it.

“Subtle,” commented Cha-rul’s player.

Delphine merely quirked an eyebrow, as if to say, what in our time together has led you to believe that subtlety is something I do?

Not surprisingly, she was spectacularly unsuccessful in extracting the dragon’s whereabouts from the wizard. She was, however, amazingly well-informed about the concept of compound interest after a long conversation with Niall.

That evening at dinner, Baron Fordham requested that the various remaining performers from the Greatest Show on Yrth take on missions particularly suited to their talents. In return for information about the location of a nearby dragon, they agreed. Delphine was asked to scout along the underground aquaduct and “deal with” anything that might disrupt the city’s water supply.

“That’s fine,” she said, “but I’ll have to wait at least an hour after eating.”
“But…don’t you eat underwater?” The Baron looked puzzled.

Dryfolk have no sense of humor.

Still, she agreed to the mission readily enough. Given that it’s winter, and therefore the water was likely to be uncomfortably cold, she took the precaution of coating herself with a protective layer of heavy oil, and set off via the keep’s main cistern.

The journey was indeed long and cold, and she had to stop to rest and get warm after reaching the first wellhouse. Fortunately, nothing seemed amiss at that location. By early morning, she had reached the main access point outside the city. Nothing was amiss yet, but a handful of masons were apparently preparing to cause some trouble with an improvised dam.

Surprise is truly a wonderful thing, as the aqueduct’s access well was the last place from whence an attack was expected. Delphine’s javelins and atlatl quickly dispatched the two who were obviously awake; a well-placed spear thrust took care of a third. The fourth individual turned out not to be asleep at all, but was more than happy to depart with all due speed when offered the opportunity.

GM: Are you actually letting him go?
Me: Sure. There’s no need to torture him. It’s not like he’s an ex-boyfriend or something.
Cha-rul’s player: Dating you? That would be torture.

Fine talk from a character whose entire reason for being with the Caravan of Marvels is not getting murdered by his wife.

A short half-hour’s work with the spear saw the contents of bags and barrels of sand, aggregate, and other cement-makings scattered far and wide. The mules hitched to the wagonload of larger rocks were likewise happy to depart with all due speed, and in a sufficiently random direction as to make retrieval a time-consuming hassle, if nothing more.

A good morning’s work completed, Delphine climbed back into the aqueduct and made her way to the river without encountering any further difficulty. Mission completed, she duly sent the agreed-upon “all clear” signal back to the keep.

Now, all she has to do is make her way to the rendezvous point and find out which of her cohorts has survived their missions…if any.

“Sharkmen are not cabana boys.”—Delphine

When the Wizard wants a dragon, you find him a dragon. Even if it means going into the middle of a civil war.

In this case, that was exactly what it meant. We were minding our own business, on the way to Fordham (which Delphine has started referring to as Boredom) in order to resupply before consulting the local wizard, Blake. We’re told he might know where a dragon is. Delphine is hoping to find a viable egg, as that seems to be the easiest solution, and her current traveling companions are already sufficiently diverse and annoying, thank you.

We’d seen a few signs of conflict in the area, but when we arrived at Fordham, we didn’t manage to figure out that the fighting was a lot closer than anticipated. So, we did what any traveling circus does; we set up outside the city walls and started performing.

Unfortunately, the attack came that evening, and there was no way that the Greatest Show on Yrth was going to be able to pack up its wagons and get out of the way in time.

The besiegers surrounded the town and drove as many people as possible into it, including our not-terribly-bright drivers and roustabouts (also known as the All-Kobold Jug Band).

Delphine knows a bad situation when she sees one, and had no desire whatsoever to get caught up in it. She grabbed her portable valuables, weapons, and armor, and managed to make her way through the beseigers’ line. In fact, the entire group got split up in the confusion, with Delphine, Mama Quilla, and Kolo-kolo (the Ring Island tiger) hiding out a bit off the road north of the city, toward Blake’s tower; Boggs, Affed, and Gregor inside the city walls, and Cha-rool and the minotaur fighting for their lives outside the city walls. They managed to do a fair bit of damage before the sphinx was shot in the wing and the minotaur was hit (fatally, we discovered later) with a ballista bolt.

Fortunately for us, though not necessarily himself, Blake the wizard was present to assist in the defense of Fordham, and enlisted Boggs’s and Cha-rool’s assistance in retrieving his “ward,” Niall. Mama Quilla and Delphine were able to reunite with their fellow performers, and Niall (actually a forty-something accountant from modern Chicago) was duly retrieved and transported back to the keep. Delphine has developed somthing of an interest in the money-magic that Niall calls “accounting,” and has intent to explore those mysteries further at her earliest opportunity.

So, how does a stuck-up, party-loving sea-elf find herself working (shudder!) as an attraction in a travelling circus known as The Wizard’s Caravan of Marvels? I’m so glad you asked.

Moraliel Wavedancer lived in the warm, shallow waters south of Bilit Island, the pampered—dare one say spoiled—youngest daughter of one of her tribe’s most respected members. Her life was a comfortable round of social engagements and entertainments, flirtations, the admiration of the youth of her tribe, and cozy fishing and trading expeditions with her six sisters and innumerable cousins. That tribe, like most sea-elf tribes since the coming of the Maelstrom, was nomadic, though they were tempted to settle near Araterre, in a new trading village. However, the recent, unexplained disappearance of one of Moraliel’s more annoying and less desirable suitors made the Elders wary of that vicinity.

One day, while swimming near the continental shelf, led there by a bit of boredom, rather more curiosity, and the desire to go further than anyone else, she happened across a group of shark men performing some bizarre (and incomprehensible) ceremony. Not only was their ceremony weird, they weren’t even supposed to be there; shark men hail from deep, northern waters, several thousand miles away, near a land called, by the humans, Sahud. She observed, fascinated, from a coral cave, trying to make sense of their bizarre language and actions. Unfortunately, near the ritual’s peak, she was spotted.

The shark men took extreme umbrage at Delphine’s presence, and they gave chase. They followed her through seaweed forests, mazes of rock and coral, and even through a cloud of stinging jellyfish. They would have killed her, if not for the intervention of a human mage. The man whom she would later refer to as simply “the Wizard” plucked her from the sea and floated her high above the surf with magic.

However, sitting comfortably in midair beside her, he foretold that they would never give up trying to kill her, for when shark men get a scent, they never forget it. In fact, they were circling still, below, as she could see. Furthermore, she would bring nothing but death on her tribe if she returned, for the shark men were mighty warriors, and no amount of elven trickery would prevent the deaths of many sea elves.

But he had a solution; there was one place they could not follow—dry land. He would provide a refuge for her and a job where she could use her obvious talents and good looks. All she had to do was sign this contract…Or, he said, “I could just leave you here, to the predations of yonder shark men…”

And so, she became Delphine of the Deep, a member of the Wizard’s Caravan of Marvels, performing feats of grace and dexterity for audiences full of dryfeet and complaining her way through what looked to be an insufferably long contract.

I decided it was time to play a character with no redeeming qualities, and I have to say it’s been fun. She’s modeled after Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, only without the drinking, drugs, and casual sex. In fact, she doesn’t drink and is something of an ice princess; the slinking about is quite definitely only part of the act.

Her companions in the travelling life are Mama Quilla, a big-cat trainer and Kolokolo, her tiger; Cha-rool, a self-important, storytelling, sentient-eating pantherine sphinx with a talent for fire-magic; Boggs, a hobgoblin with a few tricks up his sleeve and ambitions of ringmasterdom; Affed, a belly-dancing Medusa; Hysterion, a genuine minotaur complete with temper and ability to massive amounts of damage; and Gregor, who has a lot of scars and will eat absolutely anything.

We’ve only had a couple of games so far, but the premise is that when the Wizars wants something, he sends a group of us out after it with minimal guidance and instructions. Our first mission was retrieve a particular book from a monastery. That went reasonably well, in that none of us got killed, nobody burned the bat-winged, black sphinx as a demon, and we got what we came for.

Our current mission is to get the Wizard a dragon; preferably live. We had to cross a border between two kingdoms, and naturally, with a war brewing, there was plenty of scrutiny. When the sergeant of the border guards was looking at the sphinx, he asked “Is he dangerous?”

“Yes,” Delphine told him. “He’s cranky, and has abominable taste in literature.”