By Nixon "Jasper" Showalter
Hello friends, foes, and otherwise,
Oh Blackwood, your lands never fail to give me stories I will be telling until my final day, which now may be sooner than ever! But, I will get to that in due time. For now, there is a story to tell of land disputes, forest ventures, the use of bone, and more tavern festivities than you can imagine.
The story starts on a beautiful Friday night, where Evie’s Tavern was in full swing. With a campfire outside keeping the surroundings nicely warm while the temperature allowing for those who want to wander to do so comfortably, we couldn’t have asked for a better night. I spent a joyous amount of time at the bar chatting with the bar keep, Alder, and getting served absolutely delicious (and maybe magically enhanced?) drinks. While much of the night was very calm, at some point someone absolutely knocked out the King of Chimeron and as one of the King’s Guard… oops. In my defense…… Yea no I have got nothing for this one. But he was fineeeee so it is fineeeee. That being said, I did do a much better job of guarding the King the rest of the night.
While doing so, I got to listen to a person named Rock Oct-Tuah (on a side note, that is surely how the name is spelled and also surely it was so easy to stay very focused on the conversation after hearing this name for no reason in particular). Anyway, Rock had some very interesting information on the geopolitical situation of the two trees, Mova and Dirn, and how Agatha, one of the six sisters protecting them, is trying to stage a defense of Dirn from some baddies, specifically mind flayers being amongst their midst (this surely will not come up later). I tried my best to retain as much of the information as possible as I knew the following day it would be crucial to help sway the ents in our favor.
While this was happening, a band of adventurers were traveling into the night to earn the blessing of the many Animals of Eroewan. These animals were the animals, in the sense that they were the first of their genome and were extremely special. One of the animals I helped gain the blessing of was the Bear. The Bear was injured, surrounded by wind elementals. These elementals fought well and continued to fight us while a few of us attempted to help the Bear. After a long fought battle, we were able to dispel the elementals and get the blessing of the Bear. With us getting the various animal blessings, the night went on with nice festivities and good times talking to many friends!
I awoke Saturday morning ready to head back to the tavern. While the night held promises of fun activities and festival feats, the day held work to be done. Louisa, the event planner hired by Evie to help plan the festival that night, had set up a job board in the tavern for us to begin helping the festival, helping the ents of Eroewan, and generally getting things ready for the coming days. The first job had us going off to a lumber mill which some ents were.. rightfully.. protesting. Now the issue with this is that I went into the job agreeing with the ents so this was already slated to end poorly for dear ol’ Jasper. We arrive at the lumber mill to find a line of well equipped ents, stopping the lumber mill from working. Now I will note, down on the right end of this line it is to my understanding Dan Diamond was doing some amazing negotiation with the ents and had a really great deal lined up. On my end of the line, I was talking to a home grown ent from the South Side of Eroewan who really had it up to here with the wealth inequality between the new money and the old money ents of Eroewan. Now me and this southie ent immediately hit it off and this interaction literally shaped the rest of the event for me and not a single other person which made for some great moments later on. I ended up fighting him honorably to gain a bone that would be helpful later.
So back to this good deal Dan Diamond had us giving the ents around 100 bones as they were upset that we use so much wood for tools and stuff but never bones. I heard this, only the part about 100 bones, and my auction brain kicked in and I immediately raised the stakes to 1000 bones. This was apparently not the vibe as everyone immediately tried to stop me but as is life, the ents were happy! So then the ents wanted a 10% down payment which, in this bone economy?????? In all my days. So I got the down payment down to only ~1% but promised interest over 96 months so I will personally owe the ents approximately 10000 bones. It’ll be fine. I also promised my southie ent friend that I would start using more bone tools and armor so stay tuned for that!
As we headed back to the tavern, I was eager to take up a new task! While all of the main jobs were going on, there was also the ent democracy taking place. This basically meant that we could vote on what the ents were going to do by seemingly killing the ents that disagreed? I didn’t understand this until after we did it a few times but that is just the way it goes sometimes, ent politics yano? So we fought some very strong ents to encourage the vote to have them march on Dirn.
The next task I went on was the quest for salmon berries in the woods. Boy oh boy, the salmon berries. Some very eager youngins came back from the mines where they had rescued some stolen art supplies, so I enquired if any of them were particularly eager to go fetch some salmon berries from the woods. A few of them were interested, as well as a few older adventurers, so we all set off into the woods. Louisa gave us a “special basket” which I immediately handed off to a child as we wandered around aimlessly.
As time went on, we lost more and more members of our party to fatigue as we found maybe four berries in the woods. We returned to the tavern where we learned we actually needed ten more berries. I was.. jaw dropped to say the least. Louisa reemphasized that this was a special basket and with whatever will power I had left, commanded the basket to lead us to the berries. And it uh. It did. Thankfully we figured this out after quite a long time of getting lost in one patch of berries we had completely picked dry. But with the magics of the basket figured out, me and a few of the youngins that still remained managed to pick the remainder of the berries for a delicious dessert later.
Now after this quest, someone came up to me calling this quest Kid’s Quest. Let me be the first to tell you, this was not Kid’s Quest. It was a very difficult quest for seasoned adventurers where most of the questing party and then towards the end all of the questing party was made up of children. Do not be fooled by these false truths and really anyone who says this may be infected with a mind flayer slug so like… yea… identify them or something… maybe just strike them down to be safe…
The next job we went on was headed towards the mines. One of the children on berry quest yearned for them and when the children yearn for the mines, you take them there. The objective here was to get a bunch of crystals out of the mine and use them to power some lights for the tavern. There were seemingly kobolds there, mining for who they claimed was their boss, a being with tentacles around their mouth. Not great.. Not great at all.. So we managed to pass the OSHA kobold guarding the door by using too much divine magic and then stabbing him anyway at the end. We were able to get the crystals and then head out of the mines, gaining some sick explosives on the way out.
Now a little tidbit I forgot earlier, an esteemed blacksmith named Clint approached me looking to make things out of the bones I acquired. Now Clint is a blacksmith who works mainly with bones but is expressly not a bonesmith. He made that very clear. He was very shy but praised his abilities and agreed to make me a helmet and a sword out of the bones I had. Now this was before we went on berry quest so it had been some time now but Clint had returned with a fabric wrapped item. He hyped it up, saying it was a rush job but he was able to make me a helmet with bone. He explained his process, taking the bone I gave him, some adhesive, and a… premade helmet… to make this bone helmet. It was.. A blue mining helmet from the kobold mines with the bone I provided duct taped to the top.. But! It did act as armor so I suppose that is exactly what I asked for. I proceeded to wear this helmet the entire day, looking absolutely marvelous I am sure.
Now to wrap out the daylight, the votes we were.. rigging.. we were definitely rigging them.. finally came to a close. The vote came up about basically feeding the new money ents to the old money ents because they were grown with magic or something. I thought we were all on the same page about the socioeconomic struggles of the ents, especially those on the south side. So when I exclaimed that I would not stand for the new money southie ents to be fed to the old money ents and got the most wild looks I may have ever seen in my entire life, I realized this was not the case. Maybe one day the people of the Realms will understand the geopolitical struggles that the ents of Eroewan face.
We were all ready for this moot to be over it seemed, but Agatha had other thoughts. She invoked her divine right to keep the moot going because she didn’t like the results so the entire field squared off into two sides. I.. didn’t really know where to be. But luckily there were some very bright people negotiating with Agatha and managed to get her to yield and end the moot right there! Everyone was happy to hear it!
We then had some time to talk to the people of Blackwood about their thoughts on bringing Gaia to their lands. This was something going on a bit in the background. Part of Evie coming with her tavern was possibly introducing Gaia to these lands. So I went around and heard from many of my friends on their thoughts, shared some of my own, and learned a lot of interesting things about Gaia and the lands of Blackwood. All very interesting information, I’d recommend you ask them about it some time!
These adventures brought us into the light, where the Midnight Festival really took off. There were a bunch of incredible merchants selling beautiful wares, Potato had a stand making absolutely delicious food the entire night, as well as some extremely fun games hosted by Louisa. These games could earn you tickets, tickets which you could then put into a raffle, fun!
In addition to the raffle, there was also a game, Temorse’s Tiles, in which the person who could beat it the fastest would get an awesome prize. So I played this game again and again, getting my time all the way down to 5.42 seconds. Now Lissa, who was very good at this game as well, was my main competitor. They got a time of 5.43 and it was decided that when the gap was that small it was basically a tie. We agreed to stop fighting and split whatever the prize was to be. After some time of fun, the prize was drawn and it turned out to be Louisa’s glittery blue hat! Now somehow, there was not a single identify on site (I’m looking at you Kwido). However, Toah so kindly offered a bunch of seer magic to figure out what it does!
So Toah did some magic and I swear he was gone for like fifteen minutes rolling dice and casting spells. When he returned, the hat which Lissa was wearing at the time floated between me and Lissa before Toah pointed at me and caused the hat to forcefully attach to my head. Now when it did this, it made me collapse to the floor as it pulled out all of my bad memories and then forced them all back in. That sucked and I would not recommend it, but other than that and the fact I now could not take it off, it was not so bad at all!
With a cool new hat and loads of opportunities ahead of me, I headed into a nice tavern room with the hat still stuck on my head and went to sleep, looking forward to the day to come.
The sun rises as did I, ready with my glittery, overly small hat! The final day had us adorning a new temple of Unity in Blackwood. There were eight gods being recognized, with one of the eight being up to us to elect. Each god had a task that they wanted us to partake in, so we set off to go do all of these tasks. The first was ridding the.. evil? no good? energy from some new money ents. We were able to speak words to imbue our swords to extract this essence from the ents, which turned them from extremely hostile to amicable. I made an extremely good ent friend who was rid of their anger and opened their arms to give me a hug once they regenerated before Griffin absolutely slaughtered him. You would think that being there would have made Griffin’s actions more justifiable but it didn’t, my poor ent friend.. Anyway, that was all good! We then began to discuss what we needed to do next and one of the tasks was to “redeem someone”.
Now, dear reader, think of someone that should be redeemed. I am sure you did not think of me. Probably. Regardless, I don't need to be redeemed. I am awesome! And if I did need to be redeemed, I don’t want it! So people start asking to redeem me, I firmly deny, and go on my way. Some people “ask” (threaten) to cure me of my vampirism, I also firmly deny, and go on my way.
Now, dearer reader, you may be remembering the little blue hat on my head. It is important to note some people were recklessly throwing around claims that this was in fact a mind flayer being sucked onto my head, and I tried my best to dispel these baseless claims! It is often rude to accuse your friends of being husks for mind flayers but here we are, I was not awarded this kindness.
Now, dearest reader, imagine my surprise when I hear my name from some distance away and look over to see King Orion and Sir Laika slowly turn their heads towards me before absolutely charging in my direction. Now I had sheathed my sword because we were not fighting, so I was left to run backwards frantically screaming for my life as I attempted to use just a shield to keep myself safe. It.. did not work. But boy oh boy did I try. Anyway, according to others accounts they disenchanted my awesome, drippy, stylish new hat and did in fact find a uh.. mind flayer slug burrowed into my brain. Not cool, but hey that slug is mine and honestly a friend at this point. However, others disagreed and Laika used lay-on-hands on me which immediately destroyed the slug.
Now, dearerest reader, lay-on-hands generally cures one of all ailments, curses, and otherwise. So while the slug was gone, I looked and felt much fleshier than before. It has been… nearly a year and half since I have felt the warmth of my own body being not undead, feeling the hunger that mortal humans often do, so… I guess I am coming into my own again as just a human. My journey as a vampire has taken a pause, if not a forever hiatus. It was a day full of changes.
The rest of our journey had us fighting some wolves to get their pelts to prove to The Wolf that we deserved their blessing. We also ventured into the woods to help one of Gaia’s champions (lower case c) find his next replacement. There were some moral quandaries but we were able to fill the slot to protect the forest there. While this was going on, I believe Ypnn was casting some magic to learn there was a traitor among us. And you would neveerrrrr guessss whooooooo. Well. There were two but only one is ironic. In the time since I had been cured, Laika was infected with his very own mind flayer slug. How ironic. But the real traitor was Louisa, the party planner, who was.. for some reason still joining us on this adventure, who also gave me the mind flayer hat, who would’ve thought. So they Second Chance’d away and left us to think about our actions.
Part of these actions were the fact that Ypnn was slowly losing their shadow as they cast magic. And to figure out that Louisa was evil, Laika had cast some magic as well. This had given the Shades enough to make clones of them… I think. There were most definitely two Ypnns and two Laikas. Which there isn't usually. There was a longish fight, I had a nice talk with clone Ypnn before making them realize we were at an impasse of decisions and they disappeared which.. surely cant be good for anyone. Clone Laika was destroyed from my understanding which is definitely good as it ran at me swinging Sword of Light. Upon destroying it, it dropped a necklace full of essence of Shade which Laika promptly destroyed. Me personally? That would've been going on my person, but to each their own.
As we went around, we were getting the god tasks done, and by this time had completed all of them. We held a vote to fill the eighth slot, and Chronos won the vote. I tried my damndest to get Nos to be the eighth slot but it happens to the best of us. If I had a litttleeee more time to politic, I would’ve had to vote. We returned to the church, placed all of the god candles, and the Temple of Unity was officially up and running!
I imagine that was a lot, and probably a lot to keep up with, but the important summary is my time at Evie’s Tavern and in Blackwood are some times I will never forget. The weekend was extremely enjoyable and full of memories and stories I will be able to carry with me here on out. And if you are worried about me missing my brain worm friend, don’t worry, there are always more friends to be made!
Until the sun touches the sea,
Jasper Sherwood
