After I couldn't talk my way into the VIP fights in Gnarles Barkley, our troupe decided to head off in search of better luck in Barterstown. Maybe more than a little eager to be rid of our hapless heroism (I think maybe this stone weight on my shoulder is wearing off on me... gross), the town let us leave without fuss. And the worst part was, we didn't even get paid.
But fortune smiled on us, as we came across a circus on our way. "How serendipitous," I thought to myself. What better place to collect a bunch of suckers with full wallets, than a circus? I was only slightly phased by the copious number of dead bodies littering the grounds, and immediately went into the big tent. I didn't find the bags of loot that I was really looking for, but rather a weird clown... thing. It moved through clown tunneling, and tried to kill us. Which is actually becoming a frequent event, now that I've met my present company. We put up a valiant fight, and as evidenced by these sentences, we survived. Unfortunately, there was no money to be had in the clown's accessories, or in the corpses outside. It was beginning to look like another "Your good deed is its own reward" sort of adventure, until the tall dwarf found the cache cleverly hidden in the tent fabric folds. After only a little... encouragement (to which I don't begrudge him at all, hell, I would have needed some too), he split it with the rest of us.
We arrived in the big city, and preceded to train our disciplines. I was lucky enough to find a teacher right away, and dove right into my studies. Literally, there was a lot of diving. I would have felt better if I had not been diving into rock piles and pits full of ... I don't even want to remember, but my windling teacher insisted that this was the best way to teach to me fly. I kept trying to tell him that I _can't_ fly, but apparently my long and painful string of failures didn't convince him. Mercifully, he eventually moved onto my next essential skill: party crashing. Now, I've never needed to crash a party before, because I've always been invited, so I was sexcited to learn something new. It all went fine and good, until we were discovered, and I learned that the ideal escape route was... wait for it... _to fly away_. Yes, friends. I fear that our standards for teaching excellence have fallen dangerous low. Never have I repeatedly incurred so many broken bones in the name of an education. I just hope that I fare better next time I want to train.
After taking sufficient time to heal myself, we headed out on word of a rash of unsolved and scary-sounding murders. Sure enough, we came upon a farmstead surrounded by bodies bearing strange claw marks. The farm family seemed nice enough, so we set watch. My shoulder windling and I stayed in the compound, and the tall dwarf and horse guy waited outside. Maybe not so surprisingly, shambling blood-thirsty specters filed out of the house shortly after dark in search of our bait... I mean people on the street. The whole family was duly accounted for, and after much, _much_ effort, we managed to put them all down. And by "we," I, of course, mean, "me." Yes, I was the sole survivor of this terrible fight -- only I was left to carry the bodies of my companions to safety, to care for and tend their wounds. ... Okay, I kicked them until woke up, and refrained from spitting in their drinks like I normally do. But the carrying part is really true! It was hard. Especially the horse.
We went back to the farmstead once everyone was moving again, and tried to explain what had happened. But how do you explain to a nice family that they turn into horrifying monsters at night and kill people? They weren't really buying it, and I couldn't think of a lie fast enough. But after another night, we learned more about their situation: after dark, the monsters awake but the sweet family is still safe in their beds. Efforts to remove the family from their house during monster time results in no injuries, even though they were dropped from a upstairs window. (Of which I'm actually jealous.) Even after burning the house down with the family inside, they still wake up fine. It's really creepy, and something is very obviously wrong. But after our close encounter with death, and the lack of burn-ability, I'm not sure what we can do. Try and reason with them? Try our hand at gold farming? I mean, I'm sure some of the corpses on the street have wallets. I don't know. We'll see.
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