Session Date: 06/10/2024
I was gone this session, so Bosch’s player took the notes this time. :>
After getting patched up from almost getting bitten in half by a brine shark, Opal suffered an even worse injury: he tripped and chipped a nail. This took him completely out of commission, and Vogue and Faylen helped carry him back to The Vim & Vigor Brothers’ wagon.
This left Tabby, Mary, and Bosch to do something about the circus looting the town. The first question they had to answer was, where were the rest of the townsfolk? The circus tents weren’t nearly large enough to contain everyone. While scouting around, they ran into several circus employees looting with impunity, but no townsfolk. And when they looked back, Bosch had disappeared too.
For his part, Bosch had elected to follow the sound of fireworks. Peeking around a corner, he saw two workers drunkenly chatting as they took turns setting off fireworks. Before he could do anything, a woman in a brightly-colored outfit approached and smacked the workers upside the head for making so much noise. “How is the town supposed to sleep through this?”
Seeing the workers cowed, Bosch ran up and interposed himself, telling the woman (“madame Grenon” as one worker deferentially called her) about how much he liked the show and that she should be praising them, not insulting themM
A successful intimidation check bought him a little time to talk, and he used that time to argue that noise is good when stealing from people, because this one time, his crew caused a rockslide outside a town to distract from a heist. Grenon pointed out that that was a totally different situation, with no delicate sleep magic going on.
Having made up her mind, Grenon pulled two daggers and sweetly informed Bosch, “this is the part where you start running.”
Meanwhile, in the silence left by no fireworks, Tabby and Mary were able to overhear the beginnings of a fight, and ran towards it. (They rolled the same high number, with Tabby’s roll being a natural 20.)
When they arrived, they found Bosch dancing and dodging around the Non-Euclidean Gymnast, darting in to try and grab a dagger before darting back away, while Grenon angrily explained that he was supposed to run away, not just run around. She punctuated this with a stab, dealing a moderate amount of damage.
Tabby was first to react, quickly closing the distance and retaliating with his own hit. Offended—or at least pretending to be—Grenon chastised him for hitting a lady, and called out to Mary to support her. Mary strode twice to flank with Tabby, and smacked her with her staff.
On his turn, Bosch ran back over to the wheelbarrow where the workers had placed the fireworks. Hefting it over his head, he dumped it out, spilling everything on the ground and creating a patch of difficult terrain. He encouraged the two to get back to launching fireworks, but they just kind of put up their hands in a “leave us out of this” gesture.
Now surrounded and seeing the small goblin carrying around a large wheelbarrow, Grenon vanished and reappeared on a nearby rooftop, then booked it into the distance.
It looked a bit like Faylen using Dimensional Assault, except the effects were subtler and could probably be concealed as a normal part of a circus routine.
Mary was eager to compare notes and/or patch up Bosch’s cut, but he had other priorities. Almost immediately, he and Digger Shumway (the one of the two circus workers who didn’t run away) went back to launching fireworks, comparing notes and techniques.
Bosch had no official experience with pyrotechnics, but he rolled very well on Goblin Lore, which is more or less the same thing.
With Bosch no longer seeming to notice anything unrelated to fireworks, Tabby and Mary decided they’d better keep tabs on the gymnast before she got too far. Tabby helped Mary up onto the roof, and her +12 perception easily located the woman’s colorful uniform in the distance.
Before setting off, Mary asked some local wildlife to help guide Bosch once he returned to reality, and left Talitha with them as well.
Tabby and Mary jumped between rooftops (with varying levels of grace) until arriving near the tent Grenon had entered. They tried to stay out of line of sight, though only Mary was successful. Deciding that stealth wasn’t his style anyway, Tabby leapt down from the roof. Catching the fabric of the tent entrance, he gracefully landed inside, earning panache for the next encounter.
Turning to face the newcomer were Oddball the Clown, Grenon, and Dogsworth, plus a number of workers packing up the circus’s ill-gotten gains. Tabby spoke first, telling them enough was enough, and it was time to return everything to the townsfolk.
Oddball responded that that wasn’t how they did things around here. They’d stolen these items fair and square, and they were going to keep them. “Running a criminal enterprise isn’t cheap, you know!”
The two went back and forth for a while, making demands and threats but never quite moving to hostilities. It slowly became clear that Oddball wasn’t eager to kill, but absolutely would not consider leaving empty handed, not after going to all this trouble.
After hearing a squeaky wheel in the distance trundling towards the group, Mary entered the tent to back Tabby up. She brought up the plight of the animals under Dogsworth’s care, for which Oddball apologized, saying changes would be made.
Internally, Mary vowed not to accept this. No matter what deal was or wasn’t struck here, the animals would go free. The argument continued in this vein for a few minutes more.
The next interruption came as Oddball was in the middle of explaining just how much the circus needed this money. “Everyone here is like family to me, and I care for them so very deeply.” (This came off as a lie, even without a Sense Motive check.)
A wheelbarrow was pushed through the tent entrance flap, full to the brim with pyrotechnics equipment, odds, ends, cool rocks, the local animals Mary had spoken to, Talitha, and Digger Shumway)
Peeking out from behind, Bosch waved and apologized for being late.
Seeing Bosch, Oddball turned to Grenon and asked if this was the goblin she said the stabbed. “Because he doesn’t look very stabbed to me.” When Grenon didn’t rise to the bait, Oddball went back to explaining how he needs to steal to care for his “family,” and that forcing him to give it back would be the real crime.
After catching up on what was going on, Bosch proposed a compromise: split the loot. The circus could keep some of it, because they did go to the effort of stealing it, and that seems only fair.
He confided in Oddball that he didn’t think they’d go for it. “They’re always saying to put stuff back, and it’s usually easier just to do it. It’s just stuff, anyway, it’s not that important.” Tabby and Mary, to no one’s surprise, didn’t go for it. Finally, Oddball announced that there seemed to be no way around it: they’d have to fight.
Bosch perked up again. “That works too! …Ooh, is this going to be a cool circus fight?”
Oddball explained that no, the plan was to use weapons and magical spells until this meddlesome adventuring party ceased moving, at which point the circus would pack up and leave.
Disappointed, Bosch explained that he’d envisioned something more like a battle in the circus rings, with confetti, fancy lighting, and a ringmaster’s booming voice announcing everything. He said Oddball had done a really nice job introducing the brine shark fight, and he thought it would be really cool to do more of that.
At this, Oddball had a minor epiphany, declaring that he’d let his job as a crime boss get in the way of his true passion for performing arts.
Building off each other’s enthusiasm, Oddball and Bosch began planning out a staged battle, or perhaps even battles. Logistics like how many would fight at once, and in what order, and how to make it look as cool as possible. When asked by their respective sides, they maintained that they were still enemies and were still planning to destroy the other. But they had to do it right, which meant “on stage.”