But first, we need to see a man about a bridge.

Rusty and Esmerelda make their way to the bridge that needs to be fixed. A cursory inspection reveals that it has been deliberately destroyed. Rusty is just starting to figure out what is needed when a voice speaks to him from behind. He turns around to see a cross between a Kuo-Toa and Yoda, but Rusty is led to believe this is actually an elderly Sahaugin prophet/seer. He is blind and doesn’t seem to speak anything except Sahaugin, which would normally be a problem.

Thankfully, Rusty’s telepathy is language agnostic, and he has no trouble. Yoda’s people destroyed the bridge because they had requested the users of the bridge speak a prayer to “The Great Bitch Queen” as they crossed. The bridge users did not do this, so they destroyed the bridge.

Rusty explains that this was probably not a deliberate insult to the Great Bitch Queen, but simply a failure to understand the request. His persuasion roll for that was truly startling. Rusty is considering a dip into Bard now. Having smoothed the troubled waters, Rusty receives permission to build the bridge on the proviso that he puts the Bitch Queen’s holy symbol all over it, and puts up a sign about the prayer. He presents a proposed design, which is approved with minor modifications. He is also planning to tinker the prayer signposts, so that when travelers pass, they will play the prayer in its original Sahaugin. While he works, Yoda chats to all the fucking sharks in the river so they don’t eat us all.

The prayer is: “Great Umberlee, Bitch Queen of the Waves - with brine upon my lips I beseech, I cast my voice upon the tide. In the depths of your fury, I seek your grace. Guide me across the bridge where your power abides.”

The Captain’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

The Captain, Dennis, Louie and Raymond are walking through the woods. Louie and Raymond stumble into some traps and get nut-punched, and that was the last thing that went right for the poor Captain. We follow the giggles that follow the nut-punching, which morph into nibbling, crunching noises. We find a Capybara eating a cracker. This was the beginning of the end for The Captain. He rescued the poor cracker from the Capybara. A little further in, we find a toadstool ring, and all jump in. Well, Louie was wrestled in by The Captain, but the end result was the same. We all immediately turn into: a squirrel for the Captain; a mouse for Dennis; and a frog for Louie. Three letterboxes also appear, and they direct us to find things to turn us back to our normal forms. For The Captain, it is an acorn; for Dennis, it is some cheese; and for Louie, it is a lily pad.

The Captain immediately runs up the nearest tree to look for acorns, and is attacked by an eagle. Well, The Captain’s colors don’t run, motherfucker! He attacks the eagle, and kills it to death!

Dennis and Louie climb Raymond to get a look around, and he heads to a nearby pond - narrowly avoiding being struck by a falling avian corpse. When they reach the pond, they see there is a nearby outhouse, which is making grunting noises. Dennis runs over and peeks under the door to see what is going on, and sees a wall of blue leather that groans “Ooohh, I shouldn’t have eaten all that cheese.”

The Captain, coated in eagle gore, follows along as the new king of the treetops. His scent invisibly wafts over the clearing. The blue wall of leather says “I smell something - blood! That will go great with this cheese!”

The door of the dunny is flung open with dramatic force. Dennis is hurled across the clearing at velocity, and is only saved from smashing into a tree by Raymond catching him with his tongue. Out of the shitter runs a huge Wereshark, its beady eyes fixated on the bloody squirrel. He hurls his trident at it, knocking it out, and out of the tree! The Wereshark races across the clearing to grab The Captain. Just as his clawed fins were about to close around the poor little squirrel, Raymond does a fastball special and flings Dennis at him. Dennis the fieldmouse punches the Wereshark and stuns it. He then runs up its arm and breaks off some of the cheese it has in a death grip in its off hand, and runs away.

Louie ignores all these goings on, and extracts a lily pad out of the pond, in defiance of the little sharks swimming around.

The Captain comes to, in time to see another squirrel race off into the trees. Squirrels mean acorns! The chase is on! He rounds a bend and there is that bloody capybara again! It’s eating an acorn! That is not on! The Captain runs up to its mouth and tries to pull the acorn out, but fails and gets eaten by the Capybara. Everything goes black.

Dennis gets ambushed by other mice on his way back to the toadstool ring. They steal his cheese and run away, straight into some quicksand that Louie is stuck in. Louie drags himself out, steals the cheese, and lets the mouse die. Dennis, chasing the mouse, also goes in the quicksand, but shadow steps out.

Louie and Dennis didn’t see which way The Captain went, so they head back to the circle and return their items. They turn back to their normal forms.

Meanwhile, back at the Capybara - The Captain regains consciousness, again. The Capybara says he will give The Captain his acorn if the Captain returns the rest of his cracker. The Captain tells it he left the cracker in the toadstool circle. The Capybara’s squirrel friend goes to look, and steals the cracker right in front of Louie and Dennis, the brazen thief. They follow it back to the Capybara, who at this point is locked in a mortal battle with The Captain who has climbed into the Capybara’s mouth and is attempting to eat his way out, upwards through the brain. He succeeds in doing this, steals the acorn out of the Capybara’s corpse, also steals back the cracker from the squirrel, and runs back to the Toadstool ring.

Down with Lycanthropy!

Once all the party members are returned to their normal shapes, a Pixie appears and says we’ve passed all its tests, what do we want. The Captain (in a rare moment of lucidity) asks it for some fairy floss. The Pixie says it has some, and will give it to us if we kill its mortal enemy. “The Wereshark!” yells The Captain and runs off back to the pond.

“No, I was talking about Daisy - where has he gone?”

Louie runs off to assist the Captain. Dennis sticks around just long enough to get some details about Daisy from the Pixie before chasing after them. Daisy is a cow, and she ate the Pixies lucky four-leaf clover. The Pixie wants it back. Daisy is in the clearing at the top of the hill, near the oak tree. Dennis gets the general direction, then runs after the rest of the party.

The Captain races (stealthily) into the clearing by the pond to observe the Wereshark leaning over the pond consoling his children and telling them he will get them another lily pad. The Captain backstabs the crap out of him from behind! It doesn’t die, though, and retaliates. The Captain, as it turns out, is not immune to Lycanthropy - but that takes a while to cook, so the fight is still on! Louie catches up and proceeds to be thoroughly useless, trying to broker some sort of peace. Well, there’s none to be had here!

Dennis, running through the forest, decides to draw some cards from his Deck of Wonder. This round goes much better! He draws 3 cards:

1. The King of Wands. Resistance to Thunder damage for 8 days.
2. The Fool. Dennis gets an uncommon magic item - a House of Cards.
3. The Ace of Wands. One non-magical possession goes missing. Dennis’ backpack.

Fortunately, the DC to find the backpack is only 15, which Dennis can make in his sleep, so he notes the location to go back later.

Back at the pond, Louie poisons the Wereshark so it cannot move except by jumping. Fortunately, everything it wants is right there. The Wereshark hits The Captain. The Captain hits it back. The Wereshark uses a Legendary action to hit Raymond. Louie heals The Captain. Dennis arrives and does a mighty flying strike to the Wereshark which does nothing. He then angrily grabs back his silver dagger off The Captain and stabs the Wereshark, and stuns it. Then he gives The Captain the dagger back, and uses Step of the Wind to hurl the Wereshark into the middle of the pond. Louie takes a lily pad out of his portable hole and plants it in the pond.

The Wereshark then hurls his trident, which narrowly misses The Captain - and skewers that squirrel that has been chasing us. The Captain throws Dennis’ dagger at the shark, and Louie tries to catch it - but only manages to hurt himself. The Wereshark grabs the dagger. The Captain grabs the trident, then breaks it in half and jams the pieces into the loo. Louie tries to disarm the Wereshark and fails. Raymond tries to do the same, and succeeds. We leave.

Daisy, the eldritch lady.

We pick up Dennis’ backpack, take a short rest at the toadstool, then head off in the direction that we have been told Daisy resides. On the way we meet a kindly old woman selling potions, a lesser healing potion goes for the low, low price of one toenail. Nice try, Hag! Not today! We move on.

We reach the acorn tree and there is a cow in the paddock. The Captain has calmed down a little by now, so Dennis steps up to the plate, runs into the pasture, and bites the cow. It takes some damage, doesn’t fail against stun, and is immune to poison, so the only real effect is that Dennis’ teeth dissolve. Her blood is silvery, too - weird. First time Dennis has seen silver Coke.

The Captain shoots Daisy with his bow. Daisy regurgitates two silver piles of goo. Louie hits one of the piles, which damages his Morningstar - (-1) to hit and damage now. Louie takes the hint, backs off a bit, and starts shooting the Cow.

Daisy attacks Dennis psychically, doing pretty good damage. Then it telekinetically hurls Louie off the hill. One of the silver blobs attack Raymond for some damage, also doing damage to his barding. The other one has a go at Dennis, but misses.

Dennis disengages, flies down the hill, picks Louie up and flies back. Daisy throws Louie off the other side of the hill. Raymond is also thrown off the hill, but in the original direction Louie went. The Captain shoots the Cow again.

Louie starts running up that hill. So does Raymond. Dennis hits the Cow twice, but then gets both frightened and feebleminded, and runs away. The Captain also fails his save vs fear and runs away, but comes back a bit later. Raymond makes it back to the pasture and kills one of the silver blobs. Louie, once again makes it up the hill, only to be thrown off again. Dennis attacks with some daggers, but then fails vs fear again and runs away.

Raymond kills the second silver blob, and Daisy starts running away toward the forest. Dennis chases but is telekinetically thrown - toward the forest. We have you surrounded now! Raymond chases after Daisy and hits her, but is thrown back. The Captain breaks out Bigby’s Hand and grapples Daisy, dragging her back toward the pasture. Raymond hits Daisy, but is thrown back again. The Captain hits Daisy, but is thrown back about as far as it is possible to go. At some point about now, The Captain fails a concentration check and Bigby’s Hand drops.

Dennis races back to the fight and hits Daisy twice with thrown daggers. The Captain runs back up the hill but doesn’t get all the way up this turn, so can’t see Daisy. Daisy clubs Louie down the hill, again. Louie climbs back up, mounts Raymond, and charges into melee with his morningstar! He smites the Cow! Then he and Raymond do a synchronized strike with the morningstar, from above, and Blackrazor, from below. They meet in the middle, and Daisy is dead!

A piece of Daisy lands near The Captain, and he briefly sees tentacles nothing at all.

We recover the four leaf clover from one of Daisy’s stomachs, and then hear clapping. The Pixie is here! Louie walks toward it holding the clover high in triumph - and steps on some more clover.

Oh dear.