Abyss Modified Session 19: Probably not the last unicorn

***Out of the Abyss spoilers as well as classics awesome fantasy tale spoilers***

The party of Thelrum, Xanaphia, Dinak, and Godric with their Npc gnome guides, Telegar the Eladrin mage, and Eldeth the dwarven fighter made their way into Guantlgrym via way of magic portal. They were in the Iron Tabernacle, the burial chambers to be exact and making their way to the king’s chamber. They saw different clerics and priests of the dwarven gods repairing broken grave sites and were waved through to the higher levels, Eldeth having run ahead to talk with her uncle and announce her friends.

They found King Bruneor seated on his throne with advisors standing at attention in the wings. King Bruneor greeted them and thanked them for returning his niece to them, he asked them for any information they could share about the underdark and their adventures. Godric started from the very beginning, helping beet farmer girl, the kobolds, jumping to the mindflayer and the floating baby, the back to Jimjar eating his own arm due to madness. The advisors stared on in shock, unsure how to deal with any of the information. The group helped fill in some of the gaps in the memory of the bard. The king and his advisors were dumbfounded the party had survived as well as escorted this mage Telegar and Eldeth as far as they did. Having no other choice, King Bruneor invited the party to return to Gauntlgrym in three months time to help advise and possibly lead another adventure into the underdark.

Having been told about the party needing to get to Baldurs Gate, King Bruneor also said that three different caravans would be leaving soon headed in that general direction. There was Dunar’s Imports selling mostly wines from the south heading to a town a little north of Baldur’s Gate, there was Pletha’s Traveling goods headed to a small town in the mountains, and finally Daddy Fate’s Traveling Menagerie of Magical Monsters. (For those of you who have read or watched the Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle you may know a bit about what I have planned for this arc) The party looked at each other and chose the menagerie. They all rested for the night, except for Godric, who chose to hit up the night life of Gauntlgrym. He ended up sharing stories and drinks with Daddy Fate and a few of his crew and found his room in the morning to hear the wake-up call as he laid down.

The group found Daddy fate and his crew of about twenty hunters and trappers, mostly rough looking humans and half orcs, and possibly a gnomish clown, waiting in the upper tunnels for them. Before them were seven burly horse drawn carts and they could hear the snarling of a few animals from within the carts. They chose to join the drivers on a few of the carts instead of walking. When they stopped for the noon day meal, they watched a few of the hunters return with a few deer they had killed. They kept some for a communal stew and the party got to see them feed the animals of the menagerie. They tossed in an entire deer for the troll, another for the manticore, two halves of a deer in the serpent’s cage, and placed some grain in the unicorn’s cage. They also had what they said was a harpy where they threw in a quartered deer. There were terrible sounds that came from that cage. The manticore seemed powerful, having a winged lion body with his spiked tail and man-like face full of way too many teeth, but he was shaggy and his muscle seemed to hang of his bones, it growled at anyone that got close. The serpent just looked like a writhing mass of snake and the party gave it almost no attention. The troll was massive and asleep moments after finishing its deer. The unicorn was odd, it had strange bracelets just above its hooves and what seemed to be a fake party cone shaped horn. Thelrum sent his spider familiar under the cone to find a real unicorn was being obscured. The party discussed and questioned each other on why they might have a unicorn, why it wasn’t talking to them, and why did it seem to be missing its magic. They found out its name was Branix. The party also peered into the harpy’s cage and saw large owl eyes staring back at them, she was almost as large as the manticore, wings wrapped around herself, her anger was palpable.

After seeing the monsters, Thelrum used arcane lock and alarm on a few of the cages just in case. They started their journey again after their meal and came across a downed tree, as if someone had attempted to block the road. Daddy Fate called for the troll and had his cage opened, Thelrum speaking the password to allow the cage to open. The troll stood almost twenty feet tall and quite rotund squeezed himself out of his larger cart and approached the tree. The troll noticed bandits in the tree and threw it at another nearby tree that also had a few bandits in it. Having seen the power of the beast the remaining bandits ran away, the troll got back into his cart and the party continued on their way. That night they made camp, most of the party sleeping in Dinak’s magic rope extra dimensional space. Daddy Fate had also set up what appeared to be a large tent that he shared with no one, the other hunters and trappers set up to guard the perimeter and the carts were circled for protection.

The party took shifts watching for threats and they noticed the trees were full of owls, and every one of them was staring at the harpy cart. Finding this odd, Xanaphia informed the second watch about the owls. Godric summoned a magic hand and poked one of the owls to see what would happen, causing the owl to give him a dirty look and move further away from him on the branch. They found one of the hunters towards the end of the watch and asked him about the owls, finding that they had been showing up since they caught the harpy. It seemed they had only just recently caught the harpy and had lost a few men in the process. The guard walked them to Daddy Fate’s tent and they talked with him about the strange owls and the other monsters for a bit.

The next moring they reached the halfling town of Thistlebottom. They worked on setting up a larger tent in the shape of a semi-circle and helped the halflings from the town bring out benches. Godric used his bardic skills to draw in the crowd and his mask of many faces to look more outlandish. Xanaphia used her magic lute to make words in the sky above the tent. The party was asked to help come up with some new acts as well.  They brought out the manticore which begrudgingly did a few tricks, the serpent came out and seemed to grow to enormous proportions, wrapping around the entire tent and audience. Gordric made himself look like a snake person and scared the kids in the audience. The gnome came out in his clown get up while riding on the unicorn and did a few tricks as well. Dinak took aim at a target and the arrow fell short. Thelrum put a pumpkin where his head was, having pulled it into his shell and had Dinak shoot again. Dinak used his magic charm to start his arrow on fire and shot it straight through the pumpkin. The audience started screaming until they remembered Thelrum was a turtle man and could pull his head in. Xanaphia and the troll got to do the finale, the troll threw Xanaphia into the sky over sixty feet straight up, and feather fall brought her down. Illusionary fireworks filled the sky and everyone was happy. The halflings of Thistlebottom were so grateful for the entertainment that they gave the party a feast while Daddy Fate set up his private tent where halflings went to buy merchandise from the show. They talked with the village elder and found out a rather famous dark elf had been in the area awhile back, which is why Dinak’s lineage did not bother them. The next morning the party found they had free time before everything needed to be packed up so they asked the elder if there were any odd things they could do to help out.  He mentioned they used to have a silver mine but some kind of monster had taken it over. They party agreed to look into it for them and we ended there for the night.