Dearest Venture-Captain Sheila Heidmarch,
I have arrived in Sandpoint. What a hellhole. The only pub in town is one run by a bunch of kids with abandonment issues. It was all I could do to keep their grubby little mittens out of my pockets. Luckily, the locals are so starved for entertainment that I was able to set up shop in the tavern until the Pathfinder team arrived. Can you believe these locals have never heard of “Stacy’s Mum” before?! I mean, it hit the Magnimar charts at no.3 for a week!
The party you mentioned arrived, looking worse for wear, about a day later. There was a gruffy, tree-hugging dwarf named Ellwood that has a rather questionable level of affection for an ape; a drunk named Ness who had seemed to suffer from identity issues and doesn’t know what she wants to be; a wild eyed, fanatic dwarf priest named Bono with a “kick-the-cat” principal to training his acolytes; and the smoldering Ms. Pickpocket and self proclaimed orphan elf mother herself, Nastunye. Now I see why you asked me to keep an eye on them. Subtlety doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary.
While chatting it up with the tavern locals and picking the odd hair out of my beer, the town’s sheriff gathers the crew for a bit of a chat. I see my opportunity and quickly introduce myself and offer my assistance. Only Bono has heard of “Stacy’s Mom” and I think he was lying to me.
The next morning the party was met by a wild-eyed farmer who claimed to have seen walking, flesh-eating scarecrows! My first reaction was to strike some sense back into the poor sod and send him on his way. But this group of Pathfinders took to the story like ants to sugar. So off we went, looking for spooky scarecrows. Luckily, I had some joke material regarding scarecrows that I practiced on Bono with. I think he like it. I’ll use it in my main act.
Come to find out, the scarecrows were spooky and did in fact move. Worse yet, they bit the druid’s monkey on the shoulder. The ape returned the favor by shredding the thing to pieces. A bit of an overkill, really. Note to self: do not cross the ape.
Once this happened, there was mad talk about burning the farmhouse, burning the fields, burning everything! I had the strike up a few songs to quell the rising bloodlust in this group.
So one of the scarecrows was, in fact, a human missus bound to a wooden post. That’s when I began to consider this to be another one of those bizarre sex cults I keep reading about in Magnimar. I kept my deductions to myself for the time being.
The missus takes off in a panic and the druid “snackles” her! It’s a new word I was forced to invent to describe what I saw! A “snackle” is a snuggling tackle. When the little lady took off over the pasture, the druid gave chase like a cat after a mouse and tackled her, rolling her into a snuggle position, gently caressing her hair to calm her down. It worked, but there was an uncomfortable period of time (at least to me) that the druid continued his soothing snuggle well after the lady had calmed down. I looked up in a little bit of disbelief to see if any of the others were perturbed with this extended length of time “snackling” but none of the other party seemed to register any discomfort.
Another of the scarecrow broke free of his bonds and scampered into the depths of the field. Perhaps fear of being “snackled”? Who can say. Regardless, the party considered moving to the farmhouse to secure a defensive position.
It was along the way that I spotted the large Varisian stone statue. Naturally, my college training kicked in and discoursed a long tale of the historical implications of these giant statues and their socio-economic and pseudo-arcane/religious symbolism they represented at the time of their construction in the Age Before Ages. No one really listened. Meanwhile, the drunkard mumbled something like “Hey, it’s the Stone Warrior.” and everyone nodded like she was a genius! I’m the one who studied in Magnimar, not her!
Pathfinder Skald, Former BackAlley Boys Member,
Artivus Spicklewick