A Lady’s Primer on Extraplanar Contract Negotiations, or A Lesson in (Amber) Pearl Clutching
Linzu returns to the guild hall and sells the various gold and trinkets he found so far. Bobahra sells him new dagger. It is a VERY nice dagger. Linzu enjoys shows this dagger off to anyone who’ll look. Linzu appears behind me, and starts to show off his new dagger. Mitsuku is passed out in a corner of the room the three of us are in.
Garian and Thaskagh push through the hazzahmbies in the hallways and all the way out of tent. Quill, Linzu, and Mitsuku follow. We manage to get out of the tent back onto the main fairgrounds. We head to Pistols’ tent. Every hazzahbie is now red-eyed. They are surrounding all tents. As we pass, they follow. Pistols’ tent now has 10 briar guards protecting her tent. Garian charges through the hazzahmbies surrounding her tent and breaks through to get inside. Pistol and the briar guards clear an opening for the rest of the party to all get into the tent. Pistol is managing to keep the hazzahmbies at bay, but it’s a struggle. Pistol can feel that everyone else in the fairgroundse is turned into a hazzahmbie. Quill casts “comprehend language” and begins to study the land deed that Iliana had found. From reading it, he is able to slightly understand the magic of the realm and recognize the “feeling” of the magic of the staff doors that are scattered throughout the fairgrounds. Pistols’ tent has a staff door, but it is small and weaker because her tent realm is not fully connected to fairgrounds. Quill asks Pistol if she can connect the staff door to another specific staff door. Pistol requires some help, as she is so focused on keeping the briar guards powered up and keeping a barrier around her tent, so Quill assists her as best he can. Pistol and Quill connect the staff door in her tent realm to the staff door in the bathrooms, which is Petyr’s realm. The connection is weak, and only about 10 people are able to get through.
Pistol takes Iliana by the hand and stabs a thorn into her palm. She apologizes to Iliana for the pain, but it appears as if this binds some of the briar guards to Iliana. Iliana commands some of the briar guards to pick up a few of the people in the tent and carry them through the portal. Mitsuku dives through portal first and explains to Petyr what is going on. Peter agrees to help. 100s of Peter’s arms pop out and stabilize the portal open so that it can allow more people to pass through. The rest of the party starts to help people from Pistols’ tent through, hoping this would get them to a safer location.
Once people from Pistol’s tent are brought through into the bathroom, they start to turn back into Hazzahmbies. Mitsuku tackles one of them and yells to Petyr asking if he can help restrain them. Peter creates wooden forms of Mitsuku that tackle the rest of the hazzambies and hold them in place pinned to the ground. As the final group of people are through the portal, Pistol is able to phase her realm tent out of the fairegrounds. Before Pistol does this, she whispers something to Iliana. All of the surrounding Hazzahmbies are still very focused on where her tent realm used to be.
Thaskagh pokes his head through the bathroom door to survey what is going on in the fairgrounds. He sees all the hazzahmbies still massing around where Pistols’ tent was. SevFI use this as a chance to make a run for the main tent. Iliana asks Peter for bird shit. Petyr is very confused by this request, but one of his many arms scrapes some off a tree branch and gives it to her. Garian asks Peter if there is a staff door in bathroom to main tent. Petyr shows us to it, and it is one of the toilets. Mitsuku and Iliana instantly dive in the toilet. Garian jumps in but somehow just comes out of another toilet. The same thing happens to Thaskagh. Garian and Thaskagh both try again, and Garian comes back through another, different toilet this time. Thaskagh makes it through. Garian grumbles and tries to go through again. Linzu and Quill jump finally jump in as well. Mitsuku and Iliana were able to pass through the staff door network and end up inside the main tent. Garian, Thaskagh, Linzu, and Quill all end up seperately near by the main tent, but not inside of it. They are able to see each other, but appear to be about 100 feet apart from each other. The four of them attempt to sneak closer to the main tent so that they can try to get inside of it.
A pack of hazzahmbies see Thaskagh. They pick him up and start carrying him towards the main tent. Inside the main tent, Iliana and Mitsuku are in the center of a large open area. Suddenly, a ring of fire appears around them, trapping them in the center area. They see rows of seats around with ghosts watching a circus. Iliana says, “Where’s the magic bird when you need it?”. The voice of Clowox says, “They’ll be here soon enough,” and laughs. A group of hazzahmbies start to enter the tent carrying Thaskagh. They drop into the ring of fire as well.
Quill, Garian, and Linzu manage to sneak close to the entrance of the main tent, but get spotted by the hazzahmbies and are carried inside and are tossed into the ring of fire with the rest of SevFI. Floating on one end of the ring of fire is a gigantic face of a clown with two floating hands next to it. The hands float infront of the face, basically forming stairs leading from the mouth to the ground. The mouth on the clown face stretches into a very wide open mouth smile, and Clowox steps through and approaches the party. He demands that we give him the land deed. Quill is still holding onto the land deed, and while hidden behind the rest of the party, he attempts to make as close of a duplicate of it as he could, doing his best to make it radiate the same type of magic that he was able to detect from it when he was inspecting it the first time. He steps forward and hands Clowox the false deed. Clowox grabs it and starts laughing, and then starts to look closer at it and realizes its a fake. Clowox backhands Quill, sending him flying as he lands near the inner edge of the ring of fire. Clowox demands the deed again.
Thaskagh attempts to charge at Clowox and tackle him, but Clowox easily side steps the attempt and a horde of hazzahmbies attempt to tackle Thaskagh, but he is able to shove them all away. The whole tent is now full of hazzahmbies. Garian charges at Clowox and stabs him with the iron nail that he found in Small, Medium, and Large’s tent. It burns Clowox, but after a few seconds, falls out of him. “I’ll give it to you, that was the most entertaining thing I’ve seen since being here at the fairgrounds.”, says Clowox. Clowox explains why he wants the deed. He claims that it was stolen by Small, Medium, and Large and that they have no right to this place. Clowox explains that this place is “Aetherion’s Legacy”. Quill tries to remember anything he can about the name Aetherion, and remembers reading something about “The Joy Brothers”. Aetherion was known as The Joy Maker, and his brother was known as The Joy Spreader. Aetherion is Clowox’s brother. Clowox also states that he is currently stuck in this realm. SevFI and Clowox try to talk things through and eventually Clowox gives them an offer. Give him the deed and he will allow safe passage for SevFI, the remaining hazzambie’s to be returned to normal and allowed to leave, and Small, Medium, and Large to be freed from the amber pearls. Garian convinces Clowox to free Small, Medium, and Large first, as we need to speak to them first as the land deed is actually theirs. Clowox frees them.
Garian talks to Small, Medium, and Large. They confess to Garian that it’s “stolen land,” and that they won in combat. They didn’t realize exactly what this land was, as basically it took all of Aetherion’s power to create it and give to him, and this is basically the last thing of Aetherion to exist. Small, Medium, and Large ask how long its been since they were trapped and we say about a month from our estimation. Due to these contracts with the other attractions being left open for as long as they have, all the attractions have been feeding off of the power they recieve from being here for much longer than they normally would which explains why some of them have appeared to go off the deep end. Small, Medium, and Large ask if there are any of the attractions we have found that still seem to be friendly, and we tell them about Petyr, Errrtor, Pistol, Turkantor, and the one “mermaid” that was still left alive.
Small, Medium, and Large are going to rally the remaining attractions, but need time to do so, and ask us if we can distract Clowox. They sneak through the “Back Stage”. Clowox says that we have had long enough to discuss things with Small, Medium, and Large and demands the deed again. We manage to convince him to play games with us for a bit first.
First up is Thaskagh, who is forced to play a balance game. He is raised up on a bunch of small pillars that he has to jump between before something knocks him off the one he’s standing on. He manages to make a few jumps, but eventually falls to his death. His spirit appears in the crowd now, and looks to be terrified, but is clapping along with the rest of the ghosts in the audience.
Garian goes next and is forced to be in a shadow puppet play. The giant floating hands start casting shadows that appears to be very realistic on the wall of the tent. Garian attempts to make a shadow puppet, and it also appears to be very realistic. A few battles happen between the shadow puppets with Clowox winning some of the rounds, and Garian winning some of the rounds. Eventually, Clowox create a shadow gryffon that attempts to attack Garian instead of the shadow puppets, but Garian manages to strike it down with his sword. With this action, Garian has won his game.
Next game is for Linzu, who gets loaded into a cannon and shot through floating rings of fire surrounded by walls. With only a few mistakes, Linzu eventually manages to pass through enough rings of fire to win his game.
After Linzu, it is Iliana’s turn. Clowox turns her into a cat and is forced to play “Kick the Kitty”. She is forced to run through an obstacle course of moving legs. She manages to make it partially through before she is kicked multiple times and dies.
Mitsuku’s game forces her to swim through piranha-infested waters. She manages to make it through and win her game.
Quill’s game is a game of strength. He is forced to play a High Striker game. He is given a large mallet and the High Striker game appears in front of him. Quill is given 6 swings and needs to ring the bell at least 3 times. Somehow, Quill manages to ring the bell on all 6 attempts. After completing his game, Quill turns to Clowox and gives a smart ass comment of, “Its actually more about technique than actual strength”.
While the games were happening, Small, Medium, and Large were gathering up all of the attractions they could find. They would pop back in using the “Back Stage” and hand specific things to some of the members of SevFI while Clowox was distracted. Large handed Mudlet back to Garian, and Small give a feather to Linzu and told him “At the signal, snap the feather in two”. Medium handed Mitsuku a large shell and tells her “At the signal, blow the shell like a horn.”
After the games were done, Clowox demands the deed again, saying that if we do not finally give it to him, we’re all going to die. Suddenly, a whistle is heard. Garian sets Mudlet free on the ground, Linzu snaps the feather, and Mitsuku blows the shell like a horn.
A turkey sound is heard in the distance. The whole tent is ripped from the ground. Turkantor floats down into the center of the area with Large on his back. Water flows into the area putting out the ring of fire around us and two mermaids come in with it. One of the mermaids is actually Small, the other is the mermaid we left alive. A giant earthen fist shoots up from the ground and grabs Clowox. There is a showdown between the attractions, and Small, Medium, and Large agree that they will release Clowox from this realm, but he will be banished and never allowed to set foot here again. If he does not accept this deal, they will be forced to continue this fight. Clowox reluctantly agrees and fades away from this realm. All of the hazzahmbies return to normal people. Small, Medium, and Large start to help the people and they hand us a small diamond that has the spirits of Thaskagh and Iliana in it. They tell us to bring this to Bahbahra and that she’ll known what to do with it.
SevFI returns to the guild hall, gives Bahbahra the diamond, to which she hands it to an assistant who brings it to the infirmary for ressurrection. Bahbahra explains to us that due to all of the damages incured, that our reward is only a fraction of what the original reward is. We end up with about 100 gold left to be split between the members of SevFI. SevFI finally gets a chance to relax for a bit as the quest to help the Troope de Termina is now complete.