by Gwenplaine the Jester (Dustin Mack)
Neden. A wretched hive of scum and villainy. Or at least a regular source of zombies and bandits. Whatever. I had been away from the Realms for almost 2 years on official clown business, but I decided to come back to see what was going on in the great land of Neden.
I arrived in Neden a while before everyone else and chatted with the group. They're a funny crew. Except that Kahrma, she's kind of a jerk. As time passed and people arrived, we found ourselves with quite a varied group. Everyone got their armor on and cast their spells and prepared for whatever the lands of Neden had in store.
When everybody was ready to go, Naj told us what was going on. It seems that the guys in Neden had lost a bunch of stuff, hats, weapons, familiars, and more. They were offering some rewards for returning their things, some were weapons and some were the type of magical trinkets commonly found in Neden. We were also told of portals that were randomly appearing with bandits and other things coming out. So our job for the day was to deal with portals and get Nedens stuff back.
Naj was kind enough to show us some of his portal magic. When a portal was identified it would reveal symbols that showed how to deactivate it. Good information to have, as we soon had bandits coming at us through these portals.
Not long after our first portal fight, Dresden told us about a dwarf woman nearby that he wanted to get to know, but he needed some help. Some people gave him suggestions on what to say to her, while others went to the dwarf to tell her how great he is. I was ready to just give them both love potions and call it a day, but all the wingman stuff seemed to be working. Once Dresden was confident enough talking to her, he pulled her hood up to reveal it was really that guy with the beard. Darkin? That might be it. I should’ve used my potions.
We went on fighting bandits, finding some that had things we needed to return to the Neden guys. One of them had apparently stepped in something, he had what looked like a green gooey face stuck on his shoe. We found some bandits with numbers on their faces, 1 to 4. I didn't see how they were defeated because I was dead for a lot of this part. But they were defeated, that's what matters.
I think it was around here that we took a break and headed back to the base to turn in the things we found, and eat some delicious Neden pizza. While we were resting up some people disappeared. Star guy, someone I can't remember, and Toah. I mean Tao. Yeah Tao. It was some yellow guy with a white face. Not as good as my white face, but they can't all be that good. Anyway, it was decided that we needed these people back. Doing this led us to another portal where if we weren't careful we could go mad. Well, that's what we were told, at least. I felt fine. There were some death traps inside. I died again. Not just dead, I got myself impaled on one of the death traps. Meh. We got the people out and all was well. For the time being.
Eventually we made our way to Nedens orchard, where they grow apples for their cider. We needed to collect 15 or so or there would be no cider. Of course, those bandit jerks were also trying to get the apples. There was also some guy with like 200 eyes that could freeze you in place if he looked at you. Oh, and some kind of aggressive monkey. We met up with the suave Señor Fuego. He wanted his dagger, El Fuego. We stopped him and his cronies. It took some time but we managed to get enough apples and some more of Nedens missing stuff.
Bringing the apples back to the base, Priest Z was able to cook them into spell resets. Best tasting spell reset I ever had. By now there wasn't much left to recover, so away we went again.
We fought our way through more bandits. These guys just wouldn't give up. Even when the mighty Neden Man shot a massive fireball through them, they kept on coming. Señor Fuego was back, rambling about something, thinking he can defeat us. Obviously he was wrong, or I wouldn't be here telling the story. So we finished him, closed up the portals, and moved on.
I think this was when Naj tried to teleport us all back to our base. Tried. I don't know where we ended up, but there were people there with green blobs stuck on their head. I hear these weren't good things to have. We made it past the blob heads only to run into a couple guys with real ugly faces and a dragon. Dragons really get everywhere, huh? During the battle some people got head blobs of their own. Something about this caused them to turn on us. But we survived this too.
It turns out the dragon had a head blob too, and that's why it was attacking us. Probably should've offered it tree fiddy, I hear that works on monsters. Somebody knocked his block- I mean blob off and he became docile. I was ready to make it my Undead, but it wasn't dead despite Toto- I mean Tao’s efforts. We gave it some food and it was happy. A happy dragon is better than a mad dragon.
At this point our time in Neden was coming to a close. We met once more at the base, where Lord Syruss had some announcements, including naming Naj as his second in command. Neden had their stuff back, the bandits and other beasties were defeated, and we all survived. Everyone identified their new goodies and we all went our separate ways. It's never dull adventuring in Neden.