By Emma "Companion" and Zack “Bubbles O’Sudsie” Koval
What you missed: Timmy's birthday (Companion's POV).
We arrived on the mouth of what would soon be a long trail battle. Upon arrival we were informed that Timmy had gotten his birthday stolen, and we would need to get it back before sunset or else he would lose it forever. We were told this happened right after he finished his homework, which his mother said that if he did not complete he would not celebrate his birthday, and presumably unprompted. After following through the direction that was indicated that Earl von Hurl the Duke of Puke went through we were met with a gate, a henchman with riddles and "stuff" blocked our path.
There we got the first sighting of the Duke, as he told his henchmen to not let us pass.
We ended up getting through by solving riddles, and engaged with an enemy line.
They were covered in inches worth of filth, and sometimes patches would come off of them and hit our weapons and equipment, rending them unusable until we scrubbed it off.
We fought them foot by foot, until we arrived at a small clearing, where we met the angel of cleanliness. I chose to try to converse with the duke to try to figure out the truth of the matter at hand.
Upon talking with the Duke further I was able to determine the other side of the story.
Timmy did not want to complete his homework, which he had put off to the last possible moment, and as such he set up a ritual and called the Duke to do it for him. However in exchange he lost his birthday. It was also revealed tht this was not the first time this had happened, however this time we had gotten involved.
Since this was a contract that both parties agreed upon, and had both given given consent (Timmy had agreed to give up what mattered most to him), this was not an issue that should have been resolved with force. I therefore tried to negotiate the price of our intrusion, and Timmy's birthday. The price that I bartered it down to was four birthdays (which would be four of five of my birthdays [birthday is the closest word for it in english]) and the death of the angel of cleanliness. However, as I was too slow to rile people, this plan was not executed. However we managed to learn that the Duke was able to be negotiated with. And, that he was growing more amenable to deals as time passed.
As we progressed in our venture we eventually found the condition to return the birthday by force: blow out the candles on the cake before the sun sets. We also learned why the Duke wants birthdays: because he is able to leave his imprisonment for the day, allowing him a semblance of freedom.
Knowing that we were closing in to the cake, still wanting him to have a bit of freedom, as he seemed lonely, and knowing that a lot of our casters had expended a bunch of their spells in prior encounters, I bartered two of my birthdays for spell resets.
When we reached the cake there was one final obstacle in our path: the vice principal of Timmy's school. Which used magic to freeze (time based, not temperature) all but one of us at a time and would quiz that person. If the person answered successfully they would be allowed to fight them.
Once we bypassed this hurdle Timmy had to answer some questions on his own to bypass a magic barrier, and he blew out the candles on the cake a split second before getting killed.
Once raised Timmy gave us the hat off his head, explaining its properties.
Upon putting it on:
1. It makes you invulnerable to everything
2. It makes it so that you cannot wield weapons
3. It lowers your intelligence to a miniscule ammount (to the extent that you cannot cast spells with it on)
We used the hat to retrieve stolen items that the Duke intended to vanish off with, and then he explained that he cannot come with us any further. I attempted to get him through with a divine aid, and it worked to an extent. I can now call upon him on the two days that I traded him.
What You Missed - Neden Questing: Happy Birthday Timmy (Bubble's POV)
I am not what one would call an active adventurer, but after the call went out to adventurers about a particularly gross Fae taking a small child's birthday, I knew I needed to be there. Both to help wash away the muck of this mean Fae, and whatever filth the small child happened to generate. Humans, especially small ones, are gross.
As everyone gathered, little Timmy explained that a fae named Earl Von Hurl, the Duke of Puke had taken his birthday, along with all of the stuff for his party including the presents and cake. He even had a lollipop he wasn’t allowed to lick (which helped reduce the sticky factor considerably). The Adventurers, galvanized by the sad story, set off to get it back by the magical deadline of “Fundown” following Timmy’s lead and magical guidance.
As we cross a bridge and a soft spot into Faerie, we arrive in what must be the most filthy section in the entirety of Faerie. It makes me want to jump in a tub of ammonia just thinking about it. Regardless we came across a gate, with a snotling (the term I remember for these slovenly fae) in front. Repeating orders whispered to him by a fae hiding behind a tree on the other side.
We had to answer some “Riddles and stuff” to get past this gate. The main thing I remember here was that one riddle was hyped up as “A Doozy”, and then Lord Sir Tao answered “A Doozy” to it. Even though it was not the intended answer, when pointed out that they had said it would be a doozy, they kept their word and accepted it.
The fae whispering orders soon revealed himself as Earl Von Hurl, a truly nasty piece of grime, Lord and prisoner of the lands we were in. Von Hurl, knowing we needed to get the birthday back by Fundown, did everything he could to slow us down, from making us fight minions, covering us with heavy grime, setting up a barrier between two trees and attempting to gaslight us into thinking we could not just walk around it, and other such things.
During this time, we learned more about this Duke of Puke. Firstly, his powers of filth is so strong that while covered in his filth, Von Hurl and his minions were immune to Fae Stones and the Bane until scrubbed clean. Then we learned that he ruined the dress of the True Court’s Duchess of Beauty, which is what earned him his exile to his little land of mire. Then, there was the awful and sad reality that technically, the Duke made the deal with Timmy fair and square as Timmy had summoned him to get someone to do his homework, and the phrase: “For your birthday, I will do your homework” means VERY different things to a slow human child and a timeless Archfae. Lastly, the most dire and awful piece of information we learned, was that EARL VON HURL CAN GRIME SOAP! WHOLE BARS OF SOAP! It was horrendous.
Luckily I had come with a lot of soap, and it was at this point I got to meet one of my personal heroes, Clean Living: The Inventor of Washing Hands! Clean Living is an angel under the domain of poison, or more specifically of antiseptic materials and hygiene, and currently serves under the Dark One, returning putrid things to the All. Clean Living decided to show up and help us on this quest, due to his perfectly reasonable hatred of the hygiene habits of the snotlings, helping us by making a more powerful soup that worked on the spiritual and on the real.
To make this soap, the party worked on killing and bringing corpses of the snotlings to myself and Potato, and we cut open the bodies to harvest the fat needed to make soap, which was then rendered down with added water and lye, and stories from our fellow adventurer’s pasts to scent the soap, including a powerful story about her troubled past from Isoda. This soap was able to almost immediately wash away the grime with no effort to scrub at all! Clean Living gave me another gift to aid in our quest: Scour: The Holy Soap dagger, once used to punish blasphemers in times long past, was now to be used to wash away the ick as we try to forcibly undo a deal between a Duke and a child.
Eventually we get to a deep swamp of grimy muck, that contained Timmy’s presents and a bunch of Crocs, and an elder Croc with an alarm clock in its gut. With the power of holy soap and some friendly undead who didn’t need to breathe, and Gale’s helpful alligator mount, the presents were retrieved after much struggle. While I don’t know what happened before and after, I did briefly exist in this swamp just long enough to drown in grime. I need to bleach that memory from my mind...
But anyway, within the presents were a bunch of Timmy’s homework. Omri led the charge in doing the homework, though we all had to contribute, because we needed to help invalidate the deal Earl Von Hurl and Timmy had made, with the other half of the deal being late handled by Companion coming to a deal with Von Hurl selling him two of the five birthdays she had for some reason I don’t understand. Time. Blech. One homework problem of note was “What is the difference between Dragons and Dinosaurs?” and my answer of “None per Alexander Cecil” was marked as correct.
After a little bit of travel, we met some sort of Teacher demon, forcing us to take the test that the homework was supposed to prepare us for, and would give out “Pop Quizes” to the party members. Only those who had answered one correctly could harm the creature. Once the test was slain, we pushed past the last of snotlings and arrived at the last barrier before the cake, a test Timmy had to answer himself. It was hard for him, but with a little bit of help from us, Timmy gave the correct answers until the final question, which was not multiple choice, but a practical exam. He had to do a ritual for Prophesy to get the recipe for his birthday cake. Omri and some others helped Timmy assemble and cast the spell, at which point Timmy got his birthday cake and birthday back just before Fundown.
At this point we were able to leave Von Hurl’s feculent domain, deal undone and all parties getting what they wanted. Timmy turned 9ish, the Duke got two birthdays as specific days he could escape his prison on a technicality, and I got to meet my hero and get a powerful blade of sanitation.
Signed
Bubbles O’Sudsie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On an out of character note, this was genuinely one of the most fun quests I have been on in the realms, this plot staff did an excellent job making a light hearted and silly quest for us to do, the wonderful NPC’s fought to their role excellently, and Tim Suitor was a scummy and filthy and expertly played antagonist as Earl Von Hurl. Mine Falls, while definitely a northern site, was a great site for a one-day quest. The downside of having to let normal folks pass us by on the trail was not that bad of a burden, for a cheap but very nice site.
And as a final note, the soap making thing we did IC was complimented by Ethan making real OOC soap on a camp stove, scented based off the stories we told. We got to take it home.
