Enter the Marut

By order of Primus, Horus Hopkins are to be corrected from this timeline. You will come with me in order to be purged. Compliance is mandatory. Correction is not cruelty. The law of time is absolute, and you are its anomaly. The past is not a playground. Each footstep leaves a scar upon the world’s memory. Submit Immediately Horus Hopkins and your variables will not be harmed.

Horus: No?

Unacceptable answer.

As the Marut takes hostile steps in our direction, we see in the iris of the Marut’s central eye a flashing kaleidoscope of images; past, present and future flickering together - but somehow, we can clearly see every step on the path of time. We see Horus activating the Chronosphere, we see ourselves in the future. Horus is unconscious. We see: a cow with a cowbell to the left, a wild porcupine to the right, and we’re stuck in the middle with The Captain.

Stealers Wheel Cowbell

The Captain immediately moves toward the cow and starts tapping it’s cowbell with the hilt of his dagger, while singing “More Cowbell!” Rusty gives him a tinkered attachment that he can clip to the cow’s collar that will ring the cowbell in perpetuity.

Louie engages the porcupine in conversation, but can’t speak its language - so Rusty steps up as a trusty universal translator. Louie has a discussion with the porcupine about the Hedgehog Knights - the porcupine is a big fan - and he gives it one fine berry. “That is one fine berry” says the porcupine, and in return he tells us we should head to Burrowdale, northwards through the Whispering Thicket.

The Captain picks up the unconscious Horus, and we set off toward the north - but as he is leaving, he hears a voice from the area of the cowbell that says “Needs more Cowbell”. He turns back to see glitter in the air, setlling slowly to the ground around the cow. Every third ring, in mutters some additional aphorism and releases another ejaculation of glitter.

Interlude - young Horus

Young Horus is wasting his life, playing with partially deceased plants in a garden. He attempts to use Chronomancy to resurrect the poor experimental subject, but (just) botches his Arcana check, and istead brings it to some cursed balance where it is not quite dead, but not really alive either. Shrodinger’s Pansy. Horus probably messed this up because he was distractd by Gary, who is a duck again. An old Harendon approaches - Elder Willowmoon, young Horus’ mentor. She instructs the young rabbit to go to the highest hill near the village, and to construct a teleportation circle at the top of it. Apparently she got high on her mushrooms and the stars, or Selune, it’s unclear, told her that a refuge point would be needed.

Horus has never successfully created a teleportation circle before, nor is he anywhere close to the level required to do it - but why should he let that stop him? Taking his pop-up “My First Spellbook” with him, he and Gary march up the hill to get to work.

Nobody at all in the party recognised this as a transparent ploy to get young Horus out of the way to prevent a cataclysmic temporal contradiction from occurring when old Horus turns up.

To Hobbiton Barrowdale!

The party moves through the Whispering Thicket. It is appropriately atmospheric. We reach a half-buried archway with glowing runes partially obscured by vines and dirt. Rusty clears them away with Mage Hand (he’s finally learned some caution) and they are revealed to be in the shape of cute little bunny feet. The Captain sticks Horus’ hands and feet into each recess, and the portal opens up to a different place.

Just before entering the portal, Vilgax casts Disguise Self on himself, and transforms into The Captain’s evil twin. Possibly good twin? Which one has a mustache?

The Captain leads the way through the portal. It is like entering a burrow, then being ejected from the burrow, but in a different place. Ethan spends significant time describing Barrowdale, Dennis tuned out for most of it. Suffice to say it is a charming hamlet. Harendon families gather for the Carrot Festival. The Captain calls for help - “Help! I have an injured Harendon here!” A tall, lanky Harendon approaches and asks what happened to Horus, why is he so old, etc. The Captain says this is not Horus, it is the Ginger Ninja. The Harendon responds that no, it is Horus, and he should know. He is Horus’ best friend, Fucktail.

Fucktail?

“No, Flicktail! My name is Flicktail! Stop bullying me!”

Sure, whatever you say, Fucktail.

We follow him to the Giant Carrot Fountain. It was never explained whether it looks like a giant carrot, or is actually a fountain of carrots. There we find an old Harendon who asserts her name is Elder Willowmoon, and that she is a viewer of the stars. Louie spots the logical flaw in her statements, given that we are all underground. There is a lengthy diversion here.

Elder Willowmoon thn takes us to the Town Hall to see the mayor. The Town Hall is appropriately twee on the outside, and grand and imposing on the inside. Inside we meet Mayor Clover Bunnyhop, who is an idiot; Captain Dash Longear, the guard captain, and Mint Softwhisker, a local drug addict.

Elder Willowmoon addresses them: “Council, for generations we have been at peace beneath the watchful gaze of the stars. But I have felt a change coming. You dismiss these tales as fancies, but I tell you the Mind Flayers are rising. You have refused to recognise this for so long that it may be too late. But at the eleventh hour, outsiders have come to Burrowdale, bringing with them a future version of Horus. Please listen to them now, as you have not listened to me.”

Captain Longear and Mint listen with concern, but the Mayor is a grumpy bunny. “I am quite sick of your fearmongering. We are drawing close to the carrot festival, and this is a time for bonking, not thinking.” Typical rabbit. This is why we have stereotypes.

Young Horus, again.

The young version of Horus has, by now, reached the top of the hill. He lays his My First Popup Spellbook on the ground and painstakingly traces out the Teleportaion Circle. While he works, he notices a local farmer - a human called Cletus, separate from the Harendon colony but known to them. The farmer approaches, noticing that he is trying to trace out a magic circle, so he gifts him a Stick of Destiny, that he happened to be carrying around. Cletus says Elder Willowmoon sent him, and provides pointers on how best to get the circle correct. Horus, the flaming racist that he is, dismisses Cletus’ assistance and goes back to tracing in the dirt.

Where Everyone is persuasive.

The Captain waxes lyrical about how he has seen the horrors approaching, and that the town really needs to get its shit together.

Rusty, who was surprisingly persuasive, says that the Harendon need to band together and prepare to defend their homes.

Vilgax, disguised as Evil Captain, tells the elders:

The aliens are coming. They view all other species as lesser. They eat the brains of other species and perform foul experiments on them. They deal in slaves. They are not to be underestimated. I would hate for your people to be culled like cattle. Also, swashbuckling is awesome. Yaargh!

Vilgax is having issues getting into character.

This is good enough for Captain Longear: “I concur with Elder Willowmoon. I understand that you want to keep the towns spirits up, but the peoples morale does not matter if we all die.”

Mint agrees: “I agree”. “Oh, and if you are worried about the next election, I’ve got some drugs that will definitely help.”

The party wisely decides to temporarily ignore this plan to corruptly manipulate the results of a democratic process.

The mayor is shocked that his fellow councilors are against him, but like the seasoned politician/coward that he is, he adroitly changes his position. “Very well. As long as we don’t cause panic, we might as well prepare.”

He proceeds to extemporate on what can be done to prepare.

Quest list.

1. Gondor calls for Aid! Outsiders, use one of our ancient flares to warn and summon our nearby forest allies the Treants and Rock Golems. If there is an army coming for us, it wouldn’t hurt to have allies distract some of them to give us the advantage.
2. Flee! Women and Mayors first! I would recommend we begin preliminary evacuations at least for those that believe this warning. If these outsiders would be willing to locate and activate the mini pockets into the feywild within Burrowdale with cheeky, silly and mischievous behaviour, the guard could arrange packing and escorting the Burrowdalens.
3. Awaken Treebeard! Outsiders, I recommend we weaponize living Architecture. Turn the village’s bio-responsive tree-houses against the invaders by feeding them specific magical nutrients that make them hostile to alien presence. Make sure you imbue the nutrients with different types of magic and energy.
4. Mercenary Ogres If you deliver six sheep to the sheep masher clan atop the hill, they should honor our ancient treaty and in return, the ogres will provide their protection—and their mighty strength. Their help will be… invaluable in breaking down the alien ships’ armor. The ogres’ fury, properly directed, is a force few can withstand.

Oh, and Mint heals our unconscious old Horus with magic Thyme. He wakes up confused and paranoid, but that may not be from the magic crack he’s taken, Horus is just like that.

Flee Quest

That Captain runs around the town looking for mushroom rings, reasoning that they would indicate where the veil between worlds is thin. He finds one in the town square, and he whispers sweet nothings to it until a portal to the Feywild opens. Then he terrifies the nearby townsfolk into fleeing through the portal, but it closes after only 3 of them pass through. The Captain beseeches everyone to attempt to open more.

Side note: when the portal to the Feywild opened, some stray energy affected Rusty, and he spawned a crop of new Flumphs. He quickly packed his children off to the Magnificent Mansion, and set Wit to babysit them.

Louie does something unrecorded - and probably unmentionable - to the Carrot Fountain, and causes another portal to open there. Another 3 furries saved.

The Captain manages to open another portal - 3 more.

Rusty attempts to open a portal using “weird, silly and mischievous” behaviour by dressing up as a caricature of a robber, complete with mask and striped clothes, and stealing the 6 sheep we will need for the Mercenary Ogres quest. He even pantomimes the audience, and Pat the Sheep Farmer who he is stealing from, to keep quiet when the farmer catches him. Either it is impossible to multitask in Burrowdale, or Ethan didn’t even realize, but no portals open for Rusty.

When all the Feywild pockets have been found, we have managed to pack 12 myxamitosis ridden rabbits through to safety.

Mercenary Ogres

Rusty makes his way up the hill with 6 sheep in a comically large sack, and finds the ogre settlement. They throw rocks at us - miss - then want to arm wrestle. Louie decided to arm-wrestle, but forgets about his poison. The Ogre screams, then sulks. The Captain then arm wrestles with him, and crushes the ogre - after Rusty used Silvery Barbs to nullify the ogres natural 20. They take the sheep, and agree to honor the ancient treaty and come to Burrowdale’s aid.

The fires of Gondor are Lit!

We get the flares out of Louie’s portable hole, and they’re soaking wet. A quick Prestidigitation later, and they are toasty dry. Launch! The Treants and Golems presumably saw that.

Shit on the trees.

The trees of Burrowdale need to be awakened with different types of magical power. Everyone in the party donates some. Dennis donates Force. Louie donates Holy power. Everyone else chips in, but exactly what they donated is lost to time. Horus probably donated time. Anyway, the trees come to life. Woohoo!

What that all means

As a result of successfully completing all the quests, this is what happens:

• Because the Ogres are helping, the AC of the Nautiloids is reduced by the constant bombardment of thrown rocks.
• Because the Treats and Rock Golems are helping, this is simulated by every party member getting an extra action per turn. Basically, everyone is hasted.
• Because the Tree at the centre of the village is alive, every party member gets one action from the Baba Lysaga’s Creeping Hut stat block, but it can’t move.
• Because we opened all the available portals, there are 12 guaranteed survivors.

The Demise of the Mind Flayers

The Mind Flayers arrive in their Nautiloids. Initiative! Dennis finally gets to go first, with a Natural 20 for an adjusted 33. The Tree goes second, then Nautiloid 1, then The Captain, Rusty, Horus, Raymond, Louie, Nautiloid 2, Gary, Nautiloid 3 then Nautiloid 4.

Dennis is going to fuck some shit up! He flies over to Nautiloid 1 and gets out his Whip of massacring Abberations. With 2 full actions he can do 10 attacks with the whip alone, 2 of which were critical hits. In addition he uses his tree action to attack the ship too. By the end of that, it has lost more than 75% of its HP from some fucking fairy swinging a piece of string.

Then the tree has its go, and fucks that Nautiloid up some more.

Then it is the Nautloids go, and it’s captain wisely decides to hold nothing back, because he probably isn’t getting another go. He activates his Arcane Shield as a Legendary Action, which makes the ship immune to damage until the end of his next turn. Then he attacks the ground with his tentacles (he’s a little disoriented?) which sets one of the fields on fire and kills Pat the Sheep Farmer. He was an idiot with no sense of humour anyway. Next, the Nautiloid attacks the Tree. Lastly, the Nautiloid Warp Pulses Dennis, who shrugs it off and gives the ship captain the middle finger. Pathetic! This is when the ship captain realises he probably should have deferred that Legendary Action until after his turn, as the Nautiloid’s damage immunity now expires. Oops.

The Captain uses his tree action to Dimension Door himself onto the top of Nautiloid 1 and sneak attacks it with the intent of forcing open some of the copious damage Dennis has done to allow him to enter the ship. He succeeds! He gets inside and Critical Hits the ship captain with sneak attack damage, killing him instantly. The Captain takes command, and sails again!

Rusty notices an Intellect Devourer chasing some citizens, and he Lightning Bolts it. Then he moves into the tree to get line of sight to Nautiloid 2, and he fireballs it. Then he uses his tree attack to attack Nautiloid 2 as well, then he moves back a little so Nautiloid 2 no longer has line of sight to him.

Horus uses the tree to attack Nautiloid 2, and critical hits it. Then he runs to save a guard he sees being chased by an Intellect Devourer. Then he upcasts a 6th level spell slot Fireball at Nautiloid 2 just as it is ejecting Mind Flayer ground troops. Most of the Mind Flayers explode into ash, and the Nautiloid takes 50 fire damage.

Louie mounts Raymond and notices some civilians retreating into underground burrows. He sees Intellect Devourers also heading for the burrows, so he bounds over there and smashes them with his Morningstar. Twice. Then Raymond kills the last one with his mouth. Because he doesn’t want to lose any of the sweet 509 temp HP he still has from Arkhan the Cruel.

Some of the Mind Flayer ground troops proceed to kill a child, because we didn’t have enough of a reason yet. Nautiloid 2 smashes a building, but there wasn’t anyone in it, so no casualties from that.

Cletus, who is all the way over on the other side of the other map and not even in the initiative order, saves a bunch of citizens from being killed by Mind Flayers. Nautiloid 4 takes umbrage, and fires a blast a Cletus. It has him dead to rights. But Fucktail, in a moment of heroism that will be remembered throughout the ages, dives across the beam and knocks Cletus clear, saving Cletus’ life at the cost of his own. You will be remembered, Fucktail, a hero to the end. We salute you!

The score so far

20 citizens saved of 150. 5 dead.