Quick facts
Campaign: The Wonders of Arlia (Campaign 1) · Where: a casino tavern and the Silent Vaults on Scotch on the Rocks · Previous: C1 Chapter 08 · Next: C1 Chapter 10
Running on no sleep, the Cacklers picked a fight in a tavern, killed Captain Rootbeard with a thrown dwarf, freed Captain Barqs, and went back into the Silent Vaults. What they found there was a family tragedy.
Masha and Vath came with the Cacklers as far as Scotch on the Rocks and went their separate ways there. Vath never had the Collector’s curse lifted; it later killed him aboard a ship back to Beerlia.
Let’s go wreck shit
Nobody had slept. Terra Misu Umber said she “can’t sleep. I’m exhausted,” and offered a plan: “let’s just go to the tavern and just wreck shit.” Greene was all in. They strong-armed a terrified bartender, pushed past a curtain, and walked straight into ten Rose Ribbon Army soldiers.
The fight went badly fast, and only Oolong’s healing kept them all standing. Just as they dropped one soldier, with Terra saying, “I just want to cleave him in two,” Captain Rootbeard burst through the door, turning into a werewolf as he charged. He knocked Terra out and landed a cursed bite on Greene, who groaned, “That was all I had left.”
Oolong used his wand of polymorph to turn himself into a giant ape. Rootbeard gave a yelp like a wounded dog and ran out the door.
The ape picked up Terra. She looked at him and said, “Yes.” He threw her through the casino’s glass window into the street, where she landed on the fleeing Rootbeard and brought her axe down, splitting him right down the middle so he butterflied open in two. Rose Ribbon reinforcements arrived to find a werewolf “butterflied like a filet mignon” in the street. Inside the wrecked casino, the Cacklers summed it up: “Well done. Well done. We fucked up.”
Freeing the crew
The building was evacuating, and four more soldiers turned up. The Cacklers split up. Juliette and Reese went invisible and headed upstairs looking for Ibeesee. Terra and Sophie took the guards. Greene and Tala went outside and used the Power Pole to get up to the second floor. Oolong, still a giant ape, climbed the outside of the building and tore it apart. They all met on the top floor and wrecked Ibeesee’s room, finding nothing but papers.
In the cellar they freed Captain Barqs and his crew. Oolong stole a ton of gold along the way. Back at the tavern they worked out what was going on: Ibeesee was handing the Rootbeer Float to the Rose Ribbon Army in a hostage exchange for her son, Joey.
The diversion
Everyone, allies included, marched to the Silent Vaults. Rose Ribbon forces were guarding the outside, so the Cacklers came up with a beautifully unhinged plan. The allies, led by Goku, would make a big diversion while the Cacklers snuck in.
Greene vaulted his way to the rock on his Power Pole. Tala turned into a giant eagle and carried Juliette and Oolong. Captain Barqs and Terra teleported straight up to the rock, and Terra started attacking the first guard she saw. Goku fired a kamehameha straight into the front wall of the Vaults.
The eagle crew landed on the Vaults’ perch, and Tala flew back to help the diversion team. Inside, a door read “You cannot enter this room.” It taunted them: “You guys thought we would do the same puzzle as last time.” After a string of bad jokes (“I don’t know if the problem is the spell or the joke now”), the “Interrupting cow” knock-knock joke opened it. Past the slides and traps, Terra baseball-slid into a gelatinous cube and destroyed it with an uppercut from her ram ring.
Joey and Ibeesee
At the end they found Joey, Ibeesee, and a well-decorated Rose Ribbon soldier. Ibeesee’s eyes were black as night. She wasn’t in control of herself, and she ignored Greene’s attempt to use her son as a shield (“Ibeesee, you better leave us alone or I’m going to hurt him”). She cast a circle of death. Joey fell dead, and the same spell dropped Terra.
While Barqs tried to bring Terra around, Ibeesee came out of the trance and realized what she had done. “You killed Joey,” she said, blaming Barqs for letting Joey fall into the army’s hands. Then, broken, she cast circle of death again, killing herself and leaving the Cacklers beaten.
“This is all my fault,” Barqs said. “I should have stuck up for Joey and made sure we brought him back to her and none of this would have happened.”
Ships in bottles
The Cacklers went straight to looting. In one locker they found a small glass bottle holding a model ship that looked a lot like the Rootbeer Float. Oolong and Greene tore through the other lockers and found two more bottled ships, the Nightfall’s Rest and the Wicked Temptress.
When Juliette tried to pick one more lock, there was a little crack and a hiss of air. A cork shot across the room and the tiny ship inside magically grew, bursting through the lockers and smashing the other bottles. “What the fuck did you do?” Greene yelled, running. They shouted “Interrupting cow” at the door on their way out.
From the edge of the Vaults they saw the diversion team, Tala and a wildfire spirit among them, standing between three soldiers and three unconscious friends: Goku, Reese, and Sophie. A half-orc charged through the gate, tackled a soldier, and was stabbed by the others. Terra vaulted down off Greene, yelling, “I just want to slice his head clean off.” Juliette, turned into a giant eagle by Oolong, landed to check on the fallen. Sophie, Goku, and Reese were all stable. The party had won again, and again they were standing in the wreckage of their own plan.
Previous: Chapter 8: The Collector’s Fall · Next: Chapter 10: The Occupation of North City