Who Murdered the Tree?

After a quick recounting of the first session, we jumped into the game with the three adventurers heading straight for Headswoman Pelli’s home where they had stayed two nights prior. They found the Headswoman there having a meeting with two of the other elders of the town, a pair of old grandmothers who represented other families that had sent two generations of men off to the war against the Dark Tyrant in the east.

It didn’t take long for the girls to get the jist of what had happened. The afternoon after they had left the day before, a large group of the ruffians who had been frequenting the town Inn had come into town and been asking questions about eight travellers on the road matching the girls’ description. The ruffians claimed their innocent friends, a group of hunters, had been viciously attacked near the King’s Way and they were looking for the ‘vile bitches.’ No one in town believed them, based on their dress and the thuggish way they acted and demanded things, but that didn’t mean secrets were kept. One or more people in town had spilled the beans about the girls' visit, and what had been seen.

“Eight?” Elyse asked in confusion. “Did someone else come through town?”

“Nought but you and them,” Pelli said with a shrug.

“Musta been someone spinnin’ tales,” Grandmother Florence said. She was the oldest of the three women and smacked her lips in disgust after she spoke.

“Pelli said you killed some ‘o them sumbitches out in the woods,” Grandmother Yellowdove added. She was a halfling woman, so her age didn’t show quite as heavily on her since her folk kept their youthful appearance for much longer. “Any chance one or two got away?”

“A crossbowman,” Olivia grimaced. “Almost took my head off, and shot Jade in the ass, then disappeared into the forest.”

“It was my thigh,” Jade sighed in exasperation.

“Well, that’s the fibber then,” Grandmother Yellowdove said with a nod. “Went back and had to tell ‘is friends why ‘is other friends was dead, and made up a story about there bein’ more ‘o you so they didn’t sound like the coward they is.”

“Men,” Renee said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. Then Elyse giggled and flashed me a grin.

The bandits, or ruffians, or whoever they were had occupied the tavern for the night, and everything had been tense until, late in the evening, a piercing animal howl had cut through the countryside. The girls all looked at each other upon hearing that, connecting it to their fight with the big magical wolf and its **** howl. The boss of the ruffians had gotten enraged when he heard it, and he ordered the firing of the Inn and pulling down of the Chun-Shi Tree since it was a local landmark that the girls had been seen admiring. Then he’d broken into the Town Hall and destroyed every piece of furniture with his own hands and found the lockbox with the small amount of taxes that Pelli collected to have ready for the actual tax collectors who would come out in the name of the Duke.

In the morning the ruffians had left the town. Pelli and the Grandmothers felt a little thankful that no one had gotten kidnapped or something, but the destruction of the Inn and the ruin of the Town Hall were severe economic blows to the town. The loss of the ‘big apple tree’ was a cultural loss - they didn’t know anything about the legend of Chun-Shi, but every wedding in the village for generations had been conducted under the boughs of that tree.

After a brief discussion, the girls convinced Pelli to call a meeting of Town Elders so that they could make their pitch to hunt down the bandits as the official sheriffs of the town.

They stayed with Pelli again in her home that night, and Olivia asked questions about the other Elders they hadn’t met and found out that three older men on the council of seven were likely to cause the most problems; two of them were patriarchs of the largest farming families and had been appeasing the bandits for a couple of years, and the third was the local Hedge Priest, an elderly dwarf who claimed to have been part of the founding of the village. The Dwarf also happened to worship Grace, a deity whose followers were often known for turning the other cheek and forgiving others rather than seeking vengeance - often to their own detriment. Those three could swing very well swing the seventh member of the Elders, the devil-born Elf Margaretta. She was apparently a hermit, and a bit of a witch, who had come to the village several human generations ago and gone through a turbulent time due to her fiendish features, bearing curled horns sprouting from her brow and permanent scorch marks on her fingers as markers of the pact that some ancestor of hers made with a creature of the Hells.

Armed with that information, the next morning they attended the Elder meeting in the cleared-out Town Hall. The girls had a plan, however, and split up before the meeting when they saw that one of the farming family heads was running late. Renee stayed outside, waiting to socially ambush him, while Olivia and Jade went to work inside on the dwarf and the farmer there.

I decided to take it easy on them and let the girls separate the two so that they could each make their own attempts to sway the men ahead of time rather than give them one roll for both. Tori and Rhia apparently had different approaches planned, so that ended up being a good thing.

Jade ended up talking with the farmer and Grandmother Yellowdove, recounting the fight with the wolves and the size of the pelt they got off the donkey-sized one. She was clearly working the angle of reminding the farmer of the dangers his family, and the others like them, were facing on the farms where they were isolated. I gave her the option of rolling diplomacy or intimidation to see if she’d made her case but she wasn’t trained in either of the skills so they were the same. She decided on diplomacy since it was the more positive of the two, but she only rolled a ten total. The farmer Elder was impressed by the story but thought she was telling a big fish story and stretching the truth a bit.

Olivia, on the other hand, approached Egglestein the Dwarf. He was so elderly that his beard and the sparse amount of hair on his head was a soft, silky white and the crags in his face looked like they’d been eroded there by centuries of rainwater. As soon as Olivia started to try flirting with him I made a snap decision just to mess with her - Egglestein was not only elderly, but he was also hard of hearing and so gay that he couldn’t pick up on flirtation from her even if he tried.

Egglestein’s clueless responses to Olivia’s opening flirtations, voiced in my favourite ‘old man’ raspy accent, got some guffaws out of Elyse and Tori, and Rhia asked to roll insight on Egglestein. She got an 18 overall, so I revealed that old Eggy was completely clueless about her flirtations due to his combination of age and sexuality. That got Rhia throwing her hands up in the air and grumbling good-naturedly.

“What about the elf-devil lady?” Elyse suggested. “You could try flirting with her. Shane, you said she was in the room too, right?”

I had actually been surprised they weren’t more interested in Margaretta after I described her, but then I was working off of assumptions from my usual game - everyone in The Game knew that a devil-touched individual came from a sexual union between a mortal and a devil, and their descendants often reflected their fiendish parentage in more than just some visual cues. That was one detail that Rhia must never have picked up on from getting the stories out of Mel and Dan.

“She is,” I said. “She’s been speaking with Grandmother Florence off to one side. You’re pretty sure Florence is trying to get her on your side, but based on basic body language you can tell Margaretta is being a little standoffish.”

“OK, I’m going to thank Egglestein for his time in considering the matter we’re meeting about,” Rhia said. “And then I’m going to head over there and put the moves on Margaretta. Maybe she’ll be more receptive.”

“Alright, since this was Elyse’s idea, I’ve got an idea,” I said, and quickly wrote out some notes about Margaretta on a sheet of paper and tore it out of my notebook, handing it over to Elyse. She looked at it, raised her eyebrows and glanced at me, then smirked and nodded.

“Olivia,” I said, turning back to Rhia. “You approach Margaretta. She primarily looks like an Elf, with a slender body and a natural grace, but the signs of age just starting to play around the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a single thick braid, and the horns on her head sprout from her brow and run horizontally across the front and then curl back over her pointed ears. You also notice that she wears a thin pair of gloves beyond her otherwise normal villager garb.” I gestured to Elyse, who stood up and put on a ‘minding my own business’ act.

“Wait, Elyse is playing Maragretta?” Tori asked.

“For this scene,” I said.

“Huh,” Tori said, clearly surprised. I knew it was a different tact than most DMs would follow, but I liked giving my players things to do and Elyse seemed game to follow my directions. I’d given her a couple of personality notes about Margaretta, and a secret about Margaretta that would fuel her responses - namely that Margaretta was the guardian of an ancient shrine to her fiendish ancestor out in the forest, and wants to keep anyone and everyone away from it in case of it corrupting people.

“Well, if we’re acting it out,” Olivia said and stood up so that she could approach ‘Margaretta.’ “Hello,” she said, putting on a warm smile. “I’m Olivia. We haven’t been introduced, but I think you’re Margaretta?” The girls had forgotten I’d said that Margaretta was talking with Grandmother Florence, but that was fine since they were getting into the roleplay.

“Oh, yes,” Elyse said, affecting a light and airy voice for the character, and offering her hand in a dainty, aristocratic way. “Your reputation precedes you, Olivia.”

“As does yours,” Olivia said, taking Margaretta’s hand and raising it up to her lips, giving it a slight kiss on the back of the fingers as she bowed slightly. “I’m so glad that a woman such as yourself, with your insight and knowledge, is here to help with the decisions to be made.”

“Well, when needs must,” Margaretta said with a little sigh.

“I have to admit,” Olivia said. “I’m surprised to find a woman of such striking beauty and youthfulness as part of an elder council. I love your eyes.”

“Well, thank you,” Maragretta said. “You have very beautiful eyes as well. Human eyes are such windows into the soul.”

“Tell me, Margaretta,” Olivia said with a smile, casually looping her arm through the elf’s as they stood next to each other. “How much do you know about what’s going on out in the woods?”

Margaretta didn’t know much - she lived about a mile outside of the village near a spot famous for being ‘cursed.’ The fact that she’d started the rumours that it was cursed several human generations ago was part of her secret. Elyse took some liberties in describing her home, turning it more into what sounded like an old Southern Plantation Estate sort of building than the small hut I’d originally thought it would be, but that was fine.

Eventually, Olivia and Margaretta were starting to flirt a little more directly, and Olivia said, “I wouldn’t mind coming around to your hidden manor, maybe get a tour? The view from your bedroom overlooking the pond sounds quite delicious.”

“Alright, I think we need a diplomacy check,” I said, interrupting before Elyse could answer. “Let’s see how receptive Margaretta is to a forward move like that.”

Rhia went back to her spot and quickly rolled, consulting her sheet for the skill bonus. “Nineteen,” she said. “That’s got to be good enough.”

I scribbled out a few more notes for Elyse and handed them over to her, giving her a chance to read them as she smirked, grinned and nodded before handing them back. She pulled Elyse back over to resume their scene.

“I think a tour of the grounds would be a good way to get to know each other,” Margaretta said, a playful light in her eyes. “The pond is good for more than looking at though. It’s so relaxing to strip down and float in its cool waters, and I have all the privacy I can ask for.”

“Are you suggesting that we go skinny dipping, Margaretta?” Olivia asked with a playful raise of one eyebrow.

“I might be,” Margaretta answered and then winked.

“Awesome job, ladies,” I said. “Olivia has definitely made a positive impact on Margaretta.”

“That was fun,” Elyse beamed as she and Rhia separated, getting back to their seats.

“It was fun to watch,” Tori nodded. “You did really well just improving a character too, Elyse. You should consider going for a stage role for Fall Performance.”

“Nah,” Elyse said. “It’s different just playing a game here and doing something on stage.”

“That was fun,” Rhia said, echoing Elyse but looking at me. She met my eye and I knew that she knew I’d made the opportunity to act more, and flirt, happen and she was thankful for it.

Renee still had her scene to do outside the town hall, but it didn’t take too long. She was intending to intimidate the late Elder, and after a brief scene where Elyse got to play up the spooky side of her shadow magic, she rolled a fifteen on an intimidate check. The farmer patriarch wasn’t left pissing himself, but he was definitely a little shaken by Renee’s mystical powers.

The meeting itself didn’t take too long after that either; the girls apologised to the Elders for what had happened to their village, and their unintentional part in it happening. Then they pitched their desire to help clean out the bandit problem and hunt down the Gang that had attacked the village - they just needed the Village's blessing to do so as their Sheriff and deputies. They already had Pelli and the Grandmothers on their side, and Margaretta quickly agreed as well. The farmer that Renee had spooked voted positive as well, giving furtive looks over at the sorcerer as she smirked back. That only left Egglestein and the farmer that Jade had failed to convince voting against. The farmer changed his vote in the name of trying to make it a unanimous decision, but Egglestein refused - “Forgiveness is the universal truth,” the old Dwarf said. “I cannot cast a vote for the violent end of any sentient being, no matter what they have done.”

With the vote over and their course of action decided, Headwoman Pelli a pin in the shape of a heater shield with a small sword etched into it. After a quick discussion, the girls decided Olivia should be the Sheriff, since she was a member of an order of Knights already, while Renee and Jade would be her deputies.

“And that,” I said. “Brings us to a quick washroom break.”

“And booze break!” Olivia said. “Those beers have to be cold by now. Can we use glasses from the kitchen?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Go ahead.”

All three of the costumed coeds got up, heading for the garage and the beer fridge, leaving me shaking my head. Watching Rhia figure out how to flirt in character with Elyse had been fun and funny, but it had also been a little sexy. Both of them were attractive girls, and once they’d gotten the rhythm it had been… maybe not arousing, but definitely arousing adjacent. And based on their choices, it might just keep getting steamier from there.

I blew out a breath, still trying to mentally grapple with what might happen, and then shook my head again. All I could do was focus on the game in front of me.

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