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| Hooray! |
The big day finally arrives! Trigg and Emelda, wearing crowns of wildflowers, meet outside of the abbey. The Abbot comes out to greet them and asks them (before the crowd of assembled witnesses) if they freely consent to enter into marriage, then leads the two of them before the altar to exchange vows.
The ceremony is brief, but between the feasting, drinking, and dancing the affair still manages to last all day and most of the night. The Inlow’s feel that the yard of the Golden Unicorn is too small for their only daughter’s, so the wedding feast is held on the village green. There are long tables laden with food and barrels of abbey beer, all decorated with a profuse assortment of flowers (many of them magically conjured by Lady Winter for the occasion). After the main feast there is a considerable amount of less organized eating and drinking, along with a great deal of dancing lit by scented bonfires.
Emelda’s bridal chest contains her fabrics (which Emelda and her female relations have been assembling and embroidering since she was a girl), some cookware, a set of painted plates and cups, and her few small pieces of jewelry. Her father gives Trigg several sheep (nominally, anyway: they’re still pastured on Farmer Inlow’s land since Trigg lacks a sheep pen and any pasturage), along with a bottle of good wine and a bedframe. The bedframe is the most expensive item in the lot, and apart from a chest and a couple of stools is the couple’s only piece of furniture.
Trigg, Gimwort, Tansybell, Old Dolf, Sassaran, and Taravol each spend 500 gp on the feast and receive 500 xp. Eldred has a place of honor at the table but gains no XP, as he has no money to spend.
Gimwort finally achieves level 3 and rolls well on his stat increases, netting +1 Dexterity and +1 Constitution!
Feast Events
As always I’m interpreting the results from HERE, using a softer tone for a bucolic village rather than a Viking mead-hall.
Trigg foolishly attempts a feat of strength and fails, not realizing that the beer barrel he was given to carry in the footrace was packed full of earth and stones (thanks to his new brothers-in-law).
Gimwort, having been given a real beer barrel to carry, easily wins the race.
Tansybell knocks Errol Inlow to the ground after he tousles her hair. To everyone’s surprise, Emelda’s hot-headed brother immediately takes to Tansy after this and the two become fast friends.
Old Dolf enraptures everyone with his tales of fighting the undead side-by-side with the brave Trigg Sunbold. To his friends’ slight surprise, Dolf makes Trigg out to be the hero of the story and downplays his own role to a sort of squire.
Garlan Inlow, Emelda’s poetical older brother, becomes infatuated with Sassaran. She does not reciprocate and it takes some time to actually explain the situation to her, by which point the young man is thoroughly embarrassed.
Taravol ends up drinking with the Abbot (as an educated man the Abbot speaks Elvish and has a taste for the stronger elf-wines) and for his role in the destruction of the evil relics he receives a Ring of Protection marked with the symbol of Lathander.
Lady Winter gives Emelda a winged kitten and formalizes the gift of Trigg’s strips in the fields. She also receives his oath at this time – he’ll owe his first month’s taxes next week!
To the party’s disappointment, Ivy Almyr does not attend the wedding.
The Old Thaddath Farm (now the Sunbold Farm) is still in bad shape despite all that Gimwort and Emelda’s brothers could do. Trigg will need to purchase tools, material for more extensive repairs, and other sundries before it can be a properly functioning farm. But for the night of the wedding it is clean, swept, and decorated with garlands of flowers.
NPCs About Town
The Ringlad Brothers’ party (consisting of the twin rangers, Pious Oddle the cleric, and the dwarf Flarkin of Toadmarket) returns from an expedition to the Haunted Halls. They recovered a silver mirror and a few gems. Flarkin is later overheard boasting about how he destroyed some living statues that nearly killed all of the others. Elm Ringlad, who previously lost an ear and a finger fighting skeletons in the temple of chaos, has had most of his hair burnt off and smells strongly of smoke.
ElfQuest
At the end of the week Sassaran and Taravol finish purchasing and packing their supplies, saddle their new horses, and say farewell to the party before setting out on their journey.
Readers may recall that after the first assault on the temple of chaos Taravol failed his morale check. Normally this would result in his refusing to adventure again, which would have been a disaster for the quest. Since other rolls from previous downtimes had indicated that he wanted Sassaran to join his party, I decided that she would convince him to see it through by promising to leave Eveningstar with him afterward. I thought more characters would die before the quest was achieved, but even in victory it feels appropriate that the solemn, silent Sassaran would prefer to stay with a friend that she can speak to. I may run the pair of them through some adventures if I get tired of Eveningstar before I run out of steam on this solo campaign – perhaps the elves will even pass this way again! But for now I think Sassaran is retiring on a happy note.
Behind the Curtain
So ends this extensive episode in post-adventure bookkeeping! The campaign has certainly grown in scope, as solo gaming allows me to indulge in NPC activities. I’m now tracking two NPC parties with three quests amongst them (Ivy’s campaign to rule Eveningstar, the Ringlads' somewhat cowardly attempt to earn fame and fortune, and Flarkin’s desire to earn enough to retire and go into business with his cousins back in Toadmarket), a magic shop, and a half-ruined farm. Plus there’s whatever’s going on with the elves, and Lady Winter, and the evil priest who escaped from the temple…
I played two more expeditions before work and life put the game on a long hiatus, so regular readers can look forward to a new PC joining the cast, Eldred the Enchanter finally reaching level 2, and an eventful encounter where the sword Scalebane earns its name!
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