by Ethan "JB" Goldman
This Saturday the nation of Chimeron called for a hunt, and naturally it fell on me to report it.
After all I am the Realms' greatest hunter… at least, among those who are still around… and write reviews… and are named Jean Baptise.
You know what? It doesn’t matter if I am the “most qualified” , I was the lowest bidder, and that is all that matters.
The way the hunt operates is simple. There are things out and about, those things drop tokens, those tokens represent food. At the end of the day you can exchange a set number of those tokens for food, the staff eat from the tokens no one checked in. In practice this means that, there was around… seven different feast menus cooked simultaneously, but spoilers I guess.
When I arrived I realized to my shock I was probably the third or fourth best fighter among the hunting parties… this is not a good thing.
Keep this a secret between the two of us, but my morality is frequently the subject of heated debate, (well not exactly heated, more a “I get denounced for some crime against four or six gods and three species, and I say ‘um… okay, and?’ and roll my eyes to indicate disinterest/contempt) but I am actually pretty bad. Not morally just… competency.
However, for a hunting party so deep in the wilds of Chimeron that it was no longer legally definable as “Civilization”, many of the individuals who joined this hunt did so as their introduction to the… “Killing Work.” Many of whom were relearning how their specifical magical talents interact with Chimeron's proximity to the Faewylds… Which also meant, perhaps more importantly, we were a hunting party with few healers and other magical experts.
(It also means a lot of people COULD be better fighters then I am but they didn’t have armor.)
This is important because this means the fact I lost to cheese (Twice) is not entirely my fault.
With the influx of new talent the hunting parties were divided into two groups.
The first group was led by Katsuie and composed mostly of people Katsuie presumably met along the way, including at least 1 demon.
The second group was me, the Blackheart family, Iawen, Iawen’s kids, Omri, and this wolfcat who’s name I kept (and continue to) keep forgetting.
Later on Blackwood showed up and I went from fourth best to seventh because Blackwood “knew what they were doing” or whatever.
I can not say how the other great heroes fought or what threats they defeated… but I can say what we fought.
Team Iawen or “The Kebobs of Justice” were first alerted that a poor merchant had his cookie stores robbed by a malicious, malevolent even, horde of cookie enthusiasts. We initially tried to negotiate with the thieves but this did not work because the only thing the bandits valued were cookies, and with our lack of cookies we had nothing we could offer that they respected.
So we killed them!
I am going to say that a lot to be honest.
Afterward on the way back we found a farmer who needed help guiding his pigs back to the pen, and we did NOT kill those, we helpfully used some ears of corn of guide them back to their pen and all was well.
Next on our itinerary, there were concerns that a false goblin king had arisen, ruling over the nearby goblins and Chimeron asked us kindly to “Get rid of them”.
It turned out King Geezer wasn’t for show, he seemed nearly invincible, a strength of arms he used to bully those around him into paying tribute. However Iawen’s seer magic informed her of a secret. Geezer wasn’t named Geezer, it was Geaser, the pronunciation was off… and he had to be killed as all tyrants are.
So I took Iawen’s dagger and approached Geaser with two silver as tribute. And then I stabbed him in his moment of trust. Et tu Baptise? Then fall Geaser.
Thus always to tyrants.
So after THAT we were told of two important issues, a farmer needed help with his cows and… you know… there was a lot of hunting, I’ll hit the highlights.
Trips the Kobold “Seer” needed help finding his friend. His friend was a untouchable potato spirit with a tendency to cry. Tulli made a special wagon to help pull the potato back to her friend. Then trips tripped.
There were a lot of jokes about throwing the potato spirit and the like, but I didn’t get them! I am not deep into potato lore!
Savage Sarah befriended an escaped gingerbread man.
A artillerist needed our help defeating his evil sister with grenades. The artillerist sister turned out to be a poor shot and only managed to kill Iawen’s kids. Iawen was not enthused about this, and beat the sister to a inch of her life, knighting through two grenades until we finished the job with our own grenade (which is apparently the only way artillerists can die) as the child killer lay bleeding among the gunpowder. Iawen then informed the artillerist that she was not going to be so lucky to merely die the next time she lay a hand on her children.
So let that be a important lesson to everyone…
THEN we had to face our greatest foe yet… Cheese. Evil cheese. Evil hot cheese. Sexually Charged Cheese… the vilest kind.
See some farmer person took some cheese and put it in a magical furnace. After beating Sir Vespar in a battle of wits for the rights to the cheese (I picked paper and he picked rock), we found ventured forth. Navigating through a lava grid used to heat the cheese… only to find out the cheese was locked…
Somehow, as we tried to break the lock, the cheese just broke through. Now the cheese wasn’t especially armored but we were outnumbered and just overrun. Iawen escaped with our corpses, and the cheese followed us until Blackwood saved the day and defeated the approaching cheese.
THEN we were attacked by some baby dragons. Then when the dragons lost they ran away crying to a much bigger dragon.
Now the dragon wasn’t happy we killed its kids, and we felt a little bad about it, but the dragon apparently either didn’t speak draconic or had absolutely no interest in talking to us anyway… so we fought it.
And dragons swing hard, and healing was limited, so I ran away hoping that I could get Lady Tarnisha’s help healing the dragon… and when I came back the dragon was dead!
Which was super embarrassing for me, because I was hoping I made a, you know, strategic decision that could’ve helped a lot of people but I just wasted Tarnisha’s time. I was even doing relatively well against the dragon thanks to my blade, but my metal was apparently stronger then my mettle was…
A few people were upset about us killing and intending to eat a dragon because they were part dragon. Unfortunately for them, I am not the person to express these complaints to.
“Can you imagine” they said to me, scorn in their voice. “That would be like… cannibalism!”
The interesting thing about new people is that for once my reputation didn’t precede me.
You know what was also interesting! We met another farmer! This one did not rely on extraplaner mold or magical furnaces to make their cheese… instead they used the greatest power of all… religion!
You see, the farmer needed to placate the spirits of Tomatoes, Cows, and Basil. And I was here for it!
Tomato demanded entertainment, Cow demanded the betterment of the Cows under the farmer, and Basil wanted help fighting aphids. Savage Sarah realized that Ladybugs were great at fighting Aphids and was really really excited to see a ladybug… but Basil wanted a order to these things and so they were last.
First was Tomato who demanded a play, which I ended up director. Omri suggested a romantic tragedy, and I was to direct and narrate… so I introduced to the world The tragic Romance of Jortsa and Sir Roman. Apperantly it was really popular because a lot of spirits watched it. Anyway I did my due diligence to plug the ad read at the end for VQ2, and that was done.
After terse negotiations with the cow and several bad jokes, the cow spirit agreed to bless the farm…leading us to finally fight the aphid menace…
Turns out bugs? Pretty weak actually, even when small… BUT since the Basil spirit sort of owed me, they were able to summon a Ladybug spirit for Sarah before we returned to full size.
If it is possible to worship the Caprese trinity I would, will, and already have. But I did not want to bother the poor farmer too much.
There were more fights, regenerating wizard pigs who rolled all but two of our youngest (with the spirit of Blackheart helpfully coaching the newbloods on how to fight), corrupted clockwork cheeses that needed to be cut in triangles, a potato horde that needed to be peeled away, and cow communists… However this was not even all the fights that happened, just the ones I saw. So we have to rush through them a little.
There was a legendary questing beast, some fabled moose, some fae creature that Katsuie definitely found dead of natural causes outside the fae’s hunting preserve, and a evil rabbit as well. I am sure they were very interesting stories, I just wasn’t there.
Now that feast time came, came the complicated part of dividing the parties in half and organizing the food distribution. Which is the part people probably wanted me to talk about… so sorry it took 3 pages to get this far.
I got:
The holy Caprese salad I ran a play for
Tabbouleh made from a bog beast I just bummed off Katsuie cause he didnt want it.
Rabbit Stew made from Rabbits Iawen shot down that I didn't mention.
Baked potatoes that Trips gave us for helping his friend.
Mint cookie sandwiches that we liberated from those bandits.
Every other table got something else. I also… did not have feasting gear, I did buy a bowl but they did not sell spoons.
I grabbed a handful of tabbouleh bare handed, the bulgar spilling between my fingers… suddenly, I had a spoon.
Everything was good, and the other tables were more then happy to trade, allowing fun to be had by all… except the baked potato, which no one was going to eat when venison was a option.
I don’t think anyone ate the dragon, which I mean… feels wasteful but whatever.
My favorite dish was probably the caprese salad, because I worked for that the hardest. I liked everything there, which I can not always say about feasts, and this is especially impressive because of all feasts, this one would have been afforded the most leniency given he complexity and scale involved… but it didn’t need the leniency.
If I had to make a complaint it was that, for one reason or another, a single person was in charge of both recording every tables food choices, and also telling everyone what those options were. Which is entirely all too much for one person to do and, only after all the hunts were completed, which tightened the deadline rather thin. This probably was done to make it so the hunts were a bit mysterious, but if we were told which token meant what throughout the event, even if we didnt know which token came from which quest, things would have been easier on everyone.
HOWEVER time for court!
Court was short, since most people were new only Chimeron had business to attend to.
Most of it was acknowledgements of skill and accomplishments, Orion stepped down as militia head and gave it to Bogen. Also Griffen, squire to the King, was given the task to create a kingsguard to protect King Cecil, you know, in case war happens or something.
The reason for this was because war happened or something.
Bear in mind this involved speeches from both Garrimaddon and King Cecil so, if i were to give the exact speeches we’d be here all day, so I am going to, I want to say paraphrase but this probably counts as butchering.
Garrimaddon sends a letter that says. “Cecil, since we all know I am super cool, the rightful king, and the absolute best, I know you will surrender to me. Give me all your stuff and tell everyone I am great and deserve a million girlfriends. I promise not to do anything super evil.”
So Cecil goes. “Okay everyone, lets be real, theres no way in hell I am going to do that but let me explain exactly HOW not cool Arvitt here actually is. See we used to have these spirits called Kal en Dral who were actually cool (yes they were Saka don’t roll your eyes), but they left to protect us from these things called Kal Kre Bain, see there were rules to their exile that also helped ward them from us, and these Kal Kre Bain are such assholes that the Kal en Dral actually willingly gave up their ability to meddle in our affairs to help us against them. You see the Kal Kre Bain can be almost anything, but they bring ruin to all the lands they go to. And you may say “But Cecil, we do that too” but we do that by action, we go to war for causes good and bad. And we can argue about that, but the Kal Kre Bain and their agents the Bainen cause ruin to the world just by being IN it, their literally presence is poison. And if WE were killing universes just by standing there I’d say we were monsters too. And Arty here summoned one of those Kal Kre Bain, the Erl King, to our world just so he could rule over the ashes he claims he rightfully deserves. And, I can not stress this enough, our world burns just by them standing around, their invasion of Coventry and the treasures it holds, while certainly vile, are but drops of bucket to the pain they bring upon the land. So I am, as per Chimeron law formally summoning the lords of my provenance now, and asking them, shall we go to war.”
Then everyone says yes except Magus Janus who said: “Listen my King, I will follow you anywhere, but as the Time guy I have to point out that every time we do this war stuff someone dies. You are aware of this right? Not everyone in this room is going to be here by the end of this.”
And Cecil goes “Yes, that is true, and it’s not like I am going to war TO kill off my own people… but against the Kal Kre Bain, death is certain, whether we fight or not. I can not ask the rest of the Realms to die for it if we do not do the same… so I ask again, do we go to war.”
And Janus goes “Yeah alright, just wanted to make sure we were all aware of the score.”
Then Cecil kindly asked the Kal en Dral that, since the Kal Kre Bain were clearly here anyway, that if they were to help out again that would be nice.
So I would like to return Cecil’s sentiment.
Elemental spirits, if you are still around, and still reading the View from Valehaven (why?), it would be nice if you helped defeat your mortal enemies.
And if you elemental spirits happened to be the spirits of tomato, cows and basil… send me a message we should hang out some time.
Sir Jean Cest Magnifique Try Baptise
Knight of the Steward, Sword of Summer and Your Friend
(I am serious about the offer Caprice spirits.)
