The “Curious Case of the Tiny Thieves” is being joined in progress and so a little backstory is necessary:
The dexterous and rather handsome rouge Lutz was investigating these “Tiny Thieves” with his band of mostly merry adventurers: Raest a cleric of Palore, Bran the mighty barbarian, Torment the super naive atheist paladin, a wild magic user called Very Forgettable Name, and Iesha or Aida or Ada AKA: the old lady magic user who casts a lot of sleep spells. They discovered the little thieves trying to abscond with their solid gold cat statue which they received as a gift for returning a talking cat to an old lady who was really a dragon in human form — long story.
Turns out the whole town hated these mini scofflaws as they has been on a veritable spree of the crime variety. A reward was offered and pursued by our fairly fearless heroes. As far as they knew the criminals were: 6-8 inches tall, never seen in full light, and immune to sleep spells. Lutz made a super cool trap for these minute miscreants but they avoided it perhaps because the gang had left the lights on. Seems obvious in retrospect… They did find tiny foot prints in the fireplace the next day! They were also found the same footprints the next room over where a very expensive necklace had been stolen. Tiny thieves: 1. Adventurers: 0.
That was all prologue, believe it or not.
Upon investigating the roof and dirt surrounding the “Sleepy Dragon” the team supreme found evidence of rope used to climb down the chimney and footprints leading away from the inn. Following the trail of regular sized footprints the gang pretty much got lost right away. Sigh. The trail was definitely headed south and that’s about all they knew. In that direction lay: The bad part of town, The duke who had suspiciously never been robbed, and a new unknown church that ministered to the poor in said bad party of town. “Why not stop in at the working class church and ask around?” thought pretty much everyone. Raest, who apparently has more money than sense, decided that 5 gold was an appropriate bribe/offering to a dirt poor chump. Not 5 copper, mind you, but 5 gold. As in 500 copper. Bran had been invited in to the small place of worship by Raest in a move that was so very sensible it belied his previous insane tipping/bribing strategy. I feel like I’m focusing on this too much… But seriously 5 gold. FIVE DAMN GOLD. It makes a rouge wretch to think of it.
Iesha noticed the lay priest was totally lying about everything with her wicked awesome old lady perception skilz. However that information was disclosed after Raest and Bran had disappeared into the hovel/church.
Lucky Lutz, the super awesome leader of the group, had wisely decided to keep his ear to the door and therefore heard screams from within. First through the door and down the stairs Lutz sprinted only to be held up by the barbarian’s massive size in the stairwell. Bran had been stopped by…
The Tiny Thieves! They were clearly automatons (explaining why they could not be put to sleep) and surprisingly strong as they managed to subdue the brick shit house that is Bran and even Lutz: the slipperiest rouge in the land. Unfortunately for those wee jerks, Torment has a bewildering talent with his net. He effortlessly swept them off of Lutz from 10 feet away!
But what of Raest and his terrible ability to estimate bribes? He was in another corner of the savage basement of heck getting all perforated by the lay priest of a bad guy god. That’s right: Raest had paid 5 gp for an invitation to an underground murder party.
Raest cast a quick command spell which, as you may know, can be only one word. That word was “retch.” Cult-y McJerk Face then heaved up his lunch while getting pulverized via mace to the face. He died fast in a bewildering flurry of vomit and steel. Despite this early success Raest was lit up like a Christmas tree by a bunch of magic bolts from a pair of magic jerks. Torment barely missed falling into a pit trap and then charged the head cult guy who’s name probably starts with a V. Sadly V(icky?) introduced Torment to the Xmas tree experience mortally wounding the paladin. Torment collapsed to the ground unconscious and bleeding out. Bran and Raest kicked ass for awhile but succumbed to the combined forces of the tiny thieves and dickhead magic users. Low on health, they were put into a magical sleep and were soon to be easy pickings. Surely Lutz could have saved the day had he not been magically blinded and therefore unable to help his friend Torment dying just a few feet away. Aida was upstairs drinking water and that other guy was investigating the latrine. Really. They may or may not have had a slap fight while getting down the stairs.
Things looked dire for our rag tag group of misfits until the cult leader made a mistake. Which was good because the only thing stopping his dance of diabolical destruction was the late arriving, but very hydrated, team of Aida and wild magic guy. Did V(oldemort?) over estimate the strength of his magic portal’s vacuum power? Or did he simply slip like the jackass he was and always will be? Maybe we’ll find out next time because everyone but the old bat and a mostly dead Torment got sucked through the portal into another land.
Another land of suck. 5 seconds of being in the new place revealed 2 things:
1) The new bad guys are plentiful and way into lacquer armor.
2) Lutz and company are to be offerings of some sort. Which doesn’t sound good at all.
Cliffhanger!