#(mis)adventures

The Musketeers are hired to provide security for one of Lord Louis’s parties again. It’s mostly for show, until the nobles are taken hostage.

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A spur of the moment client turns out to be more trouble than he’s worth.

Read on Ao3

D&D (Mis)Adventures!!! (Christmas Edition)

We (mother, father DM, sister, me) sit down for this one day session. We’re told that we are elves having to go meet Santa. Why? Because we’ve made the naughty list!

Khaladriel (the walking collateral damage, sometimes called collateral sometimes called calamity by those who know her) works for the Christmas cheer sector of the pole. She monitors lists, communicates with all kinds of living creatures, and tries to explain the true meaning of Christmas beyond just presents and decorations. She returns to the message of the baby Jesus and about entering into people’s lives. She is also a maaaaaajor foodie. She is never without food or Christmas spirit glitter bombs that have general magic properties. See first two pictures and elf on left.

Bob (the builder, who works for the toy development section) is an old, pudgy, cynical elf. He believes Santa is enslaving elves and has a general grouchy disposition. He carries tinkering tools (typically a handsaw and mallet), sling with a flask of spiked nog. He has a proclivity for always creating guns as toys. Legitimate guns. He is constantly moved to gentler and gentler toy assignments while Santa and the elves are constantly surprised by how he manages to work guns into his projects. Pictured in middle.

Tinsel (the decorator) is a ditsy blonde elf who wants to sing Christmas songs and decorate. She is never without garland and other decorations. She is pictured on the right, wrapped in garland, Christmas lights, and carrying mistletoe.

To get on the naughty list, Bob had built a snow shooter for decorating houses with. He is attempting to help Tinsel with her job. Khaladriel, walking by innocently with her bag of marshmallows, gets pulled aside. They load the gun with marshmallow and cover the town with the sticky food, landing then in Santa’s office.

Santa explains that with 12 days to Christmas, they have to do some work to get off the naughty list (not onto the nice list though). Three tasks. He gives them a magic whistle to blow when they finish so they can return. We have one rule: don’t be naughty.

First, to get mistletoe. The three get thrown into a portal to go get the plant. Due to a calamity check, Khaladriel crashes into Bob upon landing. They are near an orchard and a house. They decide initially to go to the orchard, but a dog comes running after them. While they could climb a tree by climbing on each other, when Tinsel and Bob run Khaladriel stays behind to greet the puppy, looking for a stick to play fetch with it. It picks her up and runs off to deposit her in its house full of bones. She uses bones to play fetch with the beast larger than her while her friends come running through the snow after her. The lady of the house, Miss Elto, comes out and tells the dog to attack. She is a real Scrooge, saying Nicholas has sent stupid elves around again and is very unhappy. The dog house collapses, as Calamity has caused Khaladriel to have thrown a support beam when playing fetch. The builder fixes it as best he can and they convince the woman to leave them alone.

The group debates on the meaning of the mission, Tinsel recalls that Santa’s first rule was to not get caught (interpretation?) and decides he means the plant. Bob and Khaladriel decide Santa meant miss Elto, not mistletoe, on Khaladriels input that Christmas isn’t about just the surface stuff people see. There’s deeper meaning to everything. They decide they need to spread Christmas cheer to the woman and build her a gift. Going to the shed to work, they decide on earmuffs and blinds to help her shut out the noise and sight world (bobs input) and keep her warm~ (Khaladriel’s input). Tinsel, meanwhile, goes into the forest to successfully harvest LOTS of mistletoe. Bob builds shutters and warm earmuffs using the fur on their hats. The blinds, however, wind up too big to move. They search out a snow plow to use as transportation as Tinsel gets back. Khaladruel hops on and starts trying to start the plow, getting it fired up and going fast to make a path to the house. On a successful control animals check, she has the path going directly to the house.

Tinsel would like Bob to blow the whistle to return to the pole, mistletoe in hand. However, he is determined to deliver his gift and builds a rolling table so the two can transport the gifts. Meanwhile, a nearly botched check means Khaladriel actually does not have control of the plow and crashes into the house. Had calamity check is a nat 20, causing severe damage. The woman, furious, sicks Holly the dog on Khaladriel and grabs a gun. When she has that, she sends the dog after the 2 coming to the house and fires at Khaladriel, hitting her. The dog does damage to Tinsel while Bob, determined, continues to the last. Khaladriel flees, screaming apologies as she goes. Bob gets the gift to the woman, who stops. She is touched by their generosity, having never been given a gift before. She calls the dog off, sends it to fetch Khaladriel, and the three (two once Bob inputs that Khaladriel is not allowed to touch sharp objects), set to fixing the porch. It takes 7 days, but it is fixed better than it was before. They ask her if she will come with to the North Pole, convinced Santa wants a word with her. Her agreeable nature was begrudging to start, and even moreso when she realizes she must ride a flying reindeer to travel, but they persuade her to go.

After traveling at light speed back to the freezing pole, the elves recall that their magic resistance to cold is not shared by the human race. She is all but frozen solid, and other elves have to come use a crane to remove her from the reindeer. Khaladriel runs to get Santa while Bob gets a drink. “Santa! Santa! We did it, we got her!”

“You’ve finished? It took you seven days!”

“But we finished~”

“Where’s the mistletoe?”

“She’s in the sleigh room.”

“She?”

“Miss Elto?”

“What?! No, I said *mistletoe!” 😖 “you’ve abducted our neighbor? She hates Christmas.”

And so Santa goes, uses magic to restore her. She is irate, Tinsel gives Santa a piece of the mistletoe she successfully retrieved and he holds it up, revealing that it is magic and is a sign of peace. Miss Elto calms and accepts that it was a mistake. Santa accepts that they technically finished their job, but now he’s used the mistletoe and it can be used magically once. Tinsel reveals she grabbed a lot, having been the only one to successfully accomplish the correct goal, and gives him more.

It is now their job to go for Silk. Santa explains he means literal silk, reminds them not to be naughty, and tosses them through yet another portal.

Through the portal they go once more, tumbling out in front of a creepy decrepit factory. They go in, looking for silk. Upstairs first, they find none stored. Going downstairs, they see through a hole in the wall that there’s an elevator. Bob decides the elevator is the best mode of travel. Khaladriel sees the bannister is good for sliding and jumps up. Tinsel, afraid of both, will take her chances with the creaky stairs sloooowly. She lights her lights to see.

Khaladriel laughs and squeals as she slides, but on a failed dex check and another nat 20 calamity check, crashes at the first bend of stairs and goes falling two floors down. She attempts to grab onto elevator cables as she passes through the shaft, but completely wipes out.

Bob travels with creepy elevator music, perfectly at peace in his own twisted bad elf way. The elevator shakes, he hears crashing and screaming of Khaladriel, but is overly familiar with why they call her Calamity and doesn’t even bat an eyelash. He gets into the caves, webs everywhere. He starts assessing, looking for silk being smart enough to know the caterpillars spin webs of silk. He hears muffled noises, looking above him to see various cocoons around. He notices movement periodically around him. Quickly, he identifies that one of the cocoons is still moving. He realizes he is too short to access it and shouts to the others, “come help me!”

“Alpha formation beta, GO!” Khaladriel shouts, immediately ready to spring into action to help her friend. However, from inside the webs all Bob hears are the muffled words, now identifying it as his friend who is stuck. She wiggles her way out, falling 15 feet and narrowly missing Bob. He arms her with a mallet, having already noted other movement. Recovering quickly, she begins walking around, “helloooooo?! Caterpillars?!... spiders??” She also notices movement and puts her index fingers in front of her mouth to imitate pincers, making clicking noises.

Tinsel gets to the bottom finally, staying back near the stairs spooked.

The spiders descend. Khaladriel immediately begins communicating while Bob, assuming she’s crazy, hides/climbs up for a sneak attack. He hits, and the spider falls onto Khaladruel. Tinsel runs to hide, but gets stuck and has more spiders around her.

Khaladriel screams at Bob that she’s communicating and shouts to Tinsel to use mistletoe. Tinsel takes the fetal formation, covering her face with one hand and holding up the plant with the other. The spiders calm, and Khaladriel takes up communicating again. She explains why Bob attacked mistakenly, and that they want silk. The spiders want food. They ask to eat Tinsel in exchange, but Khaladriel offers to put in a word with Santa and get them a cow for Christmas. They agree, and the three begin harvesting silk from the cocoons of the dead factory workers.

Khaladriel asks to blow the whistle, but Bob denies her. They go back to the pole, the other elves appalled by the dead flesh and grunge of the silk. They immediately send for the fat man, who is less than pleased with their accomplishments. Magically, he cleans the silk and sends it off. He notes that the factory is overrun, and we tell him we’ve promised the spiders a cow.

The final task, to tell Ralphie he’s on the naughty list. His brother Ronnie made nice list, but we need to help Ralphie. Upon arrival in this dessert area, we are outside a cave. Turns out, Ralphie and Ronnie and a two headed Cyclopes. They can’t get along well enough to even manage to act properly as a body. Bob takes to using scare tactics, warning them of three ghosts that will visit in the night. Tinsel starts singing. Khaladriel goes in to talk to them and start finding out what’s happened. Eventually the other two join in the cave and begin trying to find out what’s going on and convince Ralphie to be nice. This scene is chaotic, as the three elves can’t even get along. Ralphie tries to lift a gun to fire at them, but cannot without Ronnie’s hand.

Khaladriel stokes up a fire for cocoa, but in a Clamorous way the fire becomes a roaring flame which starts smoking out the cave and knocks the Etton unconscious. He eventually wakes up and crawls out. Bob, pleased with the teamwork that required, offers them a high five. Both raise their hands to high five him and they end up double face planted in the ground. This causes more fighting, but they work together to lift the gun. Only in warning about Ronnie ending up on the naughty list do they stop again.

Eventually Khaladriel emerges with cocoa. They drink. It turns out Ralphie was given the gun by his parents so they can defend themselves when peasants come to attack them. Ronnie won’t let then practice because he wants a pet fat orange cat that Ralphie will just want to shoot. Ralphie has been poking Ronnie in the eye a lot and calling him stupid in frustration. We get them to agree to compromise and start working together. Each agrees begrudgingly, so long as Santa brings what they want.

And so, bribery wins out as Bob would say. He lets Khaladriel blow the whistle, which she takes a comical anime style huge breath and way overdoes (seeing as its magic). Bob knowingly covers his ears. They ride back, keenly aware that they have somehow underfulfilled this mission.

Back at the pole, they inform Santa of what happened. Santa says he only gives pets to kids with parent permission (which we warned them to obtain) and he doesn’t give ammo to naughty kids. Just because Ralphie is off the naughty list doesn’t mean he’ll be on the nice list within 5 days. Similarly for us.

The DM informs us we’re at our final courses of action. We are no longer naughty, but we aren’t nice yet. Are we okay with this? Do we want to be nice? How?

Tinsel leaves. She tells her friends all about how Santa tried to have her killed and is thoroughly traumatized.

Bob and Khaladriel scheme. They decide, in a twist, they’re okay not being nice. Christmas is about more than toys. However, Ralphie and Ronnie showed potential. They decide to break into the list after it’s checked twice and add Ralphie to the nice list (Khaladriel’s doing) and ensure they each get what they asked for (Bobs doing). They succeed, Bob believing they pulled a fast one and that the fat man can be manipulated so long as you know how to avoid being seen by the beholder ornament while Khaladriel assumes Santa knows (because he knows everything) and has allowed this to happen because they are acting selflessly.

Story time!

So I suddenly remembered the time I was in sixth grade primary school. Our school has this system for the fifth and sixth grades where they split up people during joint Maths classes based on their skill level. I think there were like, five different groups? But anyways, I was placed in the 2nd highest level right, and I was there for about half a year? And then they moved me down to 2nd lowest level for some reason (I think the teacher couldn't read my writing since it was so small? I'm not sure tbh) and I was kept there for about a month.

Now, the thing is, the stuff they do was really easy, and I was passing like, 90% of the material. And I was confused like ??? Since people get moved up and down pretty often based on their performance and I was stuck there with my 90% average. A few months passed by and they decided to combine the 2nd and 3rd lowest level into like, a single level but split into two groups (since there were too many students). And my teacher came up to me and asked me if I was doing okay and blah blah blah and I was like ??? Yes??? Didn't you see my work? And she gave me this symphatetic look and was like "Yes honey, that's why I'm asking". And by this moment I was like what.

I forgot to say, we mark our own work. So they give us activities and we do them and the teacher goes through the answers and we mark it ourselves. Since I came from a different country, I still used my old teacher's marking style which was a fancy, looping "ribbon", and I think from where the teacher was standing, it looked like a cross. So imagine me just casually ticking my work and my teacher just standing there thinking that I was some dumb bitch who couldn't answer 90% of the questions on the paper.

So then like, 2 weeks before school ended, I got asked if I wanted to move up to my original level. But at that time I was already so pissed and tired and like bruh school's nearly finished why, and told them that I'll just stay.

I got mad at Blackout. I got mad at Blackout.

Blackout's there, sometimes. He helps her dig out some of the heavier things. He's always quiet. She used to be quiet, too: hiding away in empty hallways, empty rooms, empty nooks, empty crannies - absorbed in a datapad, a story, a picture. The quiet was soothing, made it easier to think. It helped clear her head when that burning in her spark got to be too much, around the other newsparks.

Now, though, she's learning what it's like to be not-quiet. Not all the time - ideas that warrant being talked about don't come to her often - but once she starts she really gets going. It's nice to have Blackout, then: he's very patient, a really good listener.