[My good friend Adam runs a homebrew game set in a world named Ediera; a high-magic setting of airships and floating cities, wracked with manastorms and camel jerky. My character is an Aarakocra Monk named Bee, who happens to be illiterate. This is her version of events, with help from another party member.]
Okay hi hello. Have we started? Oh!
Okay. My name is Bee and this is the story of how I became the greatest warrior in all of Ediera. So, me and Kri and Thistle went to the desert and–
Thistle’s Notes: Here I interrupted and asked for a bit more introduction. Bee was unhappy that I wouldn’t let her just jump ahead, but I reminded her that I’m the one who can read and write here, so I’m doing her a favour by acting as scribe for her… interesting perspective.
I’ll set the scene. Right now we’re on an airship. It’s been weeks since my journey began! I’m travelling with my new friends, Kri and Thistle.
Kri is an Aarakocra like me, only not like me because she’s more like a magpie than a hummingbird. She’s also more in touch with her Aarakocra-ness than me. She’s still got the accent when she speaks Common, and she knows about the weather and talks about her clan a lot. She can do magic too, which I used to think was suspicious, but it turns out she’s okay.
Thistle is something called a Firbolg, which – she says – means she’s descended from Giants. She knows all about the stars, which I think is because of how tall she is. You’d notice the stars too if they were right next to your head! She does magic like Kri, but not like Kri because she can turn herself into a star sign.
I like them a lot. They’re really patient! Yeah, sometimes they get annoyed with me, because I’m not as smart as they are. Which I totally get! Swatter, who raised me when I lived in Artis, used to get angry when I didn’t understand things – but after he’d calmed down he always said that was because he loved me and didn’t like it when I couldn’t look out for myself.
Anyway, Thistle is looking at me weird now so I’ll get on with the story. She’s very nicely agreed to write down what I say, because I never learned to do it myself!
Should I talk about Alistair? Alistair has been a friend of mine for years, ever since Swatter and me tried to rob him outside a pub in Artis. He seemed to prefer talking to me than Swatter, which I always thought was weird, because Swatter was better at talking than I do.
The “Alistair” Bee is referring to is Alistair Felswick, Genasi adventurer and expert in Elven culture and archaeology. I’m realising now that I should perhaps have gotten myself more than one cup of coffee for this.
Anyway, I’d gotten a request to meet with Alistair at his home, which is where he lives. And apparently it was urgent. Only, when I arrived, Alistair wasn’t there, and instead I found Thistle – only I didn’t know her name yet – knocking at the door.
‘Hey, whatcha doin’?’ I asked.
‘Oh. Hello,’ said Thistle. She talked all fancy. ‘Are you a friend of Alistair’s? I’ve received an invitation to his humble bode, the place in which he resigns.’
Bee’s impression of me is less than accurate.
‘Ah, I’m here for the very same reason,’ I told her. ‘Do you think it’s something important?’
She didn’t know, but she thought it must be. It wasn’t like Alistair to keep people waiting. Soon, we were joined by another Aarakocra – Kri. She’d been invited just like us, and I immediately recognised her as a potential rival.
I think it’s good to have a rival. They inspire you to push yourself, y’know? I’ve never had one before.
But, we weren’t having much luck getting in the house, even with three of us. Frankly, I was losing interest – Alistair clearly wasn’t home, and I’m not prepared to stand around all day knocking on a door. What am I, a woodpecker?
We must have looked pretty suspicious though; I mean, I did stick my beak through the letterbox at one point. So suspicious, in fact, that we attracted the attention of Alistair’s neighbors. One neighbor, anyway.
‘Ahem,’ said a voice from behind us. ‘May I ask what you’re doin’ to that there door?’
A Halfling stood there, all small like, uh…
Here, Bee paused for one minute and seventeen seconds as she internally grappled with ‘simile’ as a concept. I made some suggestions, but these only caused her face to scrunch up further. Eventually, they settled for:
…like a Human, but not as big. He had a pipe made of some rich-looking wood in his mouth, with a plume of bluish smoke trailing as he spoke.
‘Weer, weer, we’re here to visit Alistair,’ said Kri. She’d started talking in Aarakocra before switching to Common. ‘Do you know if he’s gone out?’
The little man looked puzzled for a second, but then he flashed us a warm smile that was lessened only a little bit by the wisps of smoke leaking through his teeth. Teeth kinda freak me out in general, if I’m being honest. They’re bones that grow in mammals’ mouths! It’s not natural. Bones are supposed to stay on the inside!
I’m glad I don’t have any. Teeth, that is, not bones. I do have bones! They’re hollow!
Bee was very insistent that I include her diatribe here. She says it’ll give the document “character” and help us “sell a million copies”.
‘He’s out at the moment, I think,’ said Charles. ‘I’ll tell you what, you’re more than welcome to wait for him at my little old house across the street.’
Bee, you have to introduce a person before you put their name in the narration. Otherwise the audience won’t know who you’re referring to. No, you – oh, now look what you made me write, ugh.
‘My name’s Charles,’ said Charles Willingham, the Halfling man who had walked up to us before and said we could wait at his house.
…Thank you.
So, we went over to Charles’ house, across the street; a building that was an almost perfect reflection of the one we’d been attacking the door of. Inside, he led us to a little kitchen and began to make tea in a copper kettle. I was relieved to be offered something hot to drink – there was a definite draft in the house, even though we’d shut the door behind us.
I could even see the hairs on Charles’ beard moving with the wind when he brought over the cups!
‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked, setting a bowl of the stuff in the centre of our table.
‘Just half for mine,’ said Thistle.
‘Oh same as me!’ I said, pouring some into my cup and only spilling a little.
Bee is neglecting to explain here that I take my tea with half a spoon, not half the cup. She should be relieved about her lack of teeth in more ways than one.
Charles peered at each of us in turn. ‘So, how do you know Alistair?’
I explained what I’d said earlier in this thing; that I’d first met him when Swatter and me tried to mug him, and we’d been friends ever since. Kri said something about him needing, uh, her feathers for a special hat, I think. And Alistair once visited the tower Thistle studied in and he taught her about sports.
I met Alistair when he visited the Great Wizard Umbras for a consultation on star charts. During his stay, Umbras’ personal assistant came down with a quite severe case of being murdered, which Alistair and I collaborated on. On solving, I mean. Sports were not involved. Unless murder is a sport, which it isn’t.
According to Kri, Alistair led an expedition to rescue her clan from a freak manastorm that they’d been caught in. I’d like to ask her more, for clarity’s sake, but I don’t know if it’s a traumatic memory for her?
And Charles the Halfling puffed at his pipe and nodded with a sense of relief. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I had to be sure it was really you.’
His outline wobbled, like he was a reflection in a bathtub, and then spread upwards with a noise like a slide whistle.
I don’t remember any such noise at the time.
Alistair Felswick smiled at us, warmly, looking like himself again. I was kinda disappointed that I’d already finished my tea, because I was surprised enough to spray it everywhere, you know?
‘We might not have long,’ he said. ‘I’m being followed. I just came back from the Black Desert, and… well, I can’t go into detail on what I found there. But I’ve called the three of you here because the Queen, uh, she currently wants to see my head on a spike, I believe.’
‘You’ve made an enemy of Queen Annabelle Quilton?’ Thistle actually did spray her tea everywhere, and it got all over the table and the floor and Alistair’s hair. Kri went to help mop it up, and she slipped, and fell on her butt, and she said ‘ouch, my butt’.
I’m beginning to worry that Bee might be a compulsive liar?
Alistair continued his explanation after we’d put Kri’s butt in a big bandage that made her look like a wrestler. ‘It’s all a misunderstanding. I need the three of you to plead my case to her, as I suspect I won’t be able to do so myself.’
‘Wook, why not?’ asked Kri.
There was a tearing sound. Suddenly, this portal just appeared like a wound in the air, all dark and swirling. It dripped weird purple onto the floor. I shot up from my seat, ready to act – it had been hours since I got into a fight – and I saw both Thistle and Kri jumping up as well.
Alistair, though, just looked resigned.
Three figures in dark cloaks charged through the portal. They were going straight for Alistair himself. I leapt across the table and hit one with a swift kick to the side of the head, but by the time I landed the other two were already past me.
I turned back to see Kri clap her hands together and send one crashing into a bookshelf with a huge boom of thunder, and Thistle had banged this walking stick on the floor – the grain of the wood shone with starlight, and I thought she was going to do some kind of spell… but then she just brained one of the cloak guys with it!
I did do some kind of spell; it’s called “Shillelagh”. And I would prefer not to include the word ‘brained’ if possible, along with any other such lurid hyperbole you might be tempted to employ, Bee. This isn’t tabloid news.
She crushed the guy’s skull, and like, brains got all over the carpet… but that didn’t stop them! The first one I’d kicked, behind me now, yelled something in a language I didn’t understand, and then everything went black. And all the while, Alistair just stayed in his seat, looking all defeated.
I wanted to shout at him not to give up! But one of the cloaks had cast a Darkness spell, so he obviously wouldn’t have been able to hear me.
And then, the lights came back on. Only instead of Charles the Halfling’s house, we were standing in rubble in the middle of the street! The cloaks had taken Alistair, and the house he was hiding in!
Allow me to field this one: Once we’d gotten our bearings, Kri and I inspected the rubble to find a device of quite cunning artifice that seemed to have been used to amplify magical effects. I suspect Alistair used it to set up a safehouse, though how long it had been overlaid on the wreckage, I am not sure. We didn’t exactly get chance to investigate further, because Bee had seen something in a window and already wandered off.
That’s right, my enhanced senses of perception had spotted something in Alistair’s second-floor window across the road – it looked like a humanoid figure, beckoning us closer. Very suspicious.
Kri and Thistle joined me. ‘You know, this coo-could be a trap,’ said Kri. ‘Why would it be gesturing for us to go over there?’
‘It’s reverse psychology,’ I told her. ‘Whatever it is, it’s scared of us, so it’s pretending to invite us over.’
‘That doesn’t make much sense, Bee.’
I recognised her tone. Sometimes Swatter would use that tone when he was about to leave me outside or hit me or whatever. It’s the ‘incoming challenge’ tone – I used to call it Swatter’s ‘training voice’. Which, obviously, meant it was a challenge from my rival!
‘You’ll never beat me there,’ I grinned.
‘…What?’ Kri tried to play it cool, but I saw through her.
I’d already set off running. I sucked in a deep breath and used my Step of the Wind to leave both Kri and Thistle in my dust! But the thing about Kri is that she isn’t bound by the strict training code that Swatter instilled in me. She doesn’t wear weights on her wings; she didn’t have to train on the ground only, because flight wasn’t an unfair advantage for her – her whole clan could fly! Not like me and Swatter!
So what if she flew past me while I ran up the stairs? What if she got on the roof and came down the chimbley?
Bee, did you mean to say ‘chimney’ there?
Yeah, chimbley. She could fit, I think!
So, I skidded to a stop, and then cannoned up through the air toward the window I’d seen the beckoning figure in. No wings, just leg power!! Sure, Kri might think she could get ahead through the chimbley, but when I crashed through that window in a shower of broken glass and blood and feathers, she wouldn’t see that coming, no way blue jay!!!!
That’s an Aarakocra expression.
Oh, really? Well, Kri and I were downstairs, having let ourselves in through the now-unlocked door. I have to admit that neither of us knew exactly where you’d ended up.
I was on the floor in a bedroom, I think. It was a bit of a messy room, but more importantly, there was a flash in the corner of my eye! I caught sight of a little red hat, rapidly scurrying away from the doorway, toward the stairs where the two of you were lying in wait.
The trap was sprung!
Yes, instead of Bee descending the stairs, instead we encountered a diminutive little gentleman with purple skin, brown robes, and indeed, a little red cap on his head. He had horns and claws and sharp teeth, and when he spoke, it sounded like air squeezed from a balloon and a knife scraping a dinnerplate, both at the same time.
‘Oh hello there, you lot,’ he squawked. ‘My name’s Terry, good to meet you, and all that… Um, Alistair said that I was to invite you into his house after the one across the road disappeared.’
I followed the little man – who later told us he was an Ink Devil – down the stairs to where Kri and Thistle were shuddering at the sound of his voice.
‘They took Alistair then?’ he asked us.
‘They did. Do you live here with him?’ asked Thistle, question for question.
‘Yeah, I’m Alistair’s assistant. He said this would happen, and that I’m supposed to help you.’
‘Help us do what?’ asked Kri, not wanting to be left out of the questions game.
Terry the Ink Devil looked up at us with pleading red eyes. ‘Rescue him.’
He bustled off through a hallway, and we followed. ‘Well, he did ask us to clear his name with Queen Quilton,’ said Thistle.
Kri nodded, though a little stiffly. Terry was leading us downwards now, probably underground – and Kri seemed to be getting more nervous as we progressed. ‘Hoo, how would three nobodies – friends of a wanted criminal, even – manage to get an audience with the Queen?’
‘Maybe we could break into her room in the night?’ I suggested.
The two of them shared a look.
‘I’m serious!’ I said. ‘She wakes up in the night and there’s three figures surrounding her bed, and she freaks out, and we lean in and say, “You made a big mistake when you arrested Alistair Felswick”. That’ll help her realise he’s innocent!’
Neither of them acknowledged the suggestion this time. I think they were lost in thought.
‘I don’t think it was the Queen that took him, actually,’ said Kri. ‘What happened with Alistair was a bit too cloak-and-dagger for a Royal arrest, you know?’
Thistle nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’d help if we knew what it was he’d found in the Black Desert.’
‘Well, we’re here!’ shrieked Terry.
We were definitely underground now. Before us was a huge vault door, that Terry shook his fingers and made slowly swing open. I’d expected a panic room or a fallout shelter, but inside all I could see were a few desks, some cabinets with indeterminate treasures inside, and stacks and stacks of books. Thistle’s eyes had lit up.
‘Welcome to Alistair’s Library, I suppose,’ said Terry. ‘You can have a look round, if you want.’
Roll History 