3.502: Monster Squad

Synopsis

3.502: Monster Squad picks up where 3.501: Under a Strange Sky left off, with the five amnesiac strangers in the market square of Evanstone as evening comes on, the rain starts to fall and the shops are about to close. A flash of lightning gives them another quick glimpse of that other place, with a strange sky, enormous structures stretching up until they almost scrape it, and something huge roaring past overhead before it is gone. They agree that they all saw the same giant creature, and the DM, Alex Morrison, offers a Yog-Sothothery check to make sense of it. The rolls are poor, and the best they can say is that they have not seen a single animal in town apart from the cat, which he suggests may be why Sheriff Terrick Cobb was so pleased to meet him.

The party splits up to find a place to stay. Glenn Ghoulia and Major Baker's Cat go to the Stoneway Inn to bargain for rooms, while Drandy Savage, Tim and Mathon head into the general store, where a bell over the door rings as it does in every world. The shopkeeper, Alam, sells most of the ordinary adventuring gear, and Mathon, who wants a cloak to cover his alarming appearance, buys a large, slightly burned one for two gold pieces after a failed attempt to haggle him down. Tim sees some nicer wares behind the counter and tries to use the others as a distraction to sneak a look at them. Alam catches him leaning over the counter and tells him that the red bottles are potions of healing at fifty gold pieces each, well beyond Tim's means. Meanwhile Drandy introduces himself, offers his services as a paladin and asks why nobody is out at night. An Insight roll shows that the question rattles Alam. He admits that people have been vanishing, that there are screams in the night, and that stepping outside brings on a cold feeling like something reaching inside you. He says he would leave if he were not mortgaged up to his eyeballs, tells them to be indoors before dark and to stay near a fire, and locks up behind them.

At the Stoneway Inn, Glenn and the cat meet Shen, an elf with carrot-orange hair who runs a completely empty tavern. The two sell themselves as a traveling comedy and musical act, and Glenn offers a ballad about the inn in place of payment. Shen wants a gold piece per room, and the cat works him down with Persuasion and a failed dance routine until the price comes to a few silver. The cat also turns out to speak elvish, and Shen, the first elf the party has met, answers him in kind. When the others arrive, Glenn and the cat try to tell them that the rooms cost far more than they actually did. Over a bowl of milk for the cat, and a promise of dead flesh from the basement for Glenn, Shen explains that murders and disappearances have plagued Evanstone, that people shutter their windows and keep fires blazing, and that no one seems to go missing while indoors. The hill is a taboo place that no local goes near, and he has only lived in town a few years himself. When asked about Mayor Warder Ebengard, he takes some convincing, and a silver piece slid across the counter, before he says that the trouble started right around the time the mayor left town about a week ago. He tells them of rumors of strange goings-on at Ebengard Manor, of people disappearing over the years, as if the town were being offered up, and of a special vault and rituals. He thinks that if anyone has a way to stop what is happening, it is whatever the mayor has hidden there. Shen also lets slip that he was not always an innkeeper and may be able to help them decipher things, and when pressed on his angle, he says he simply would like not to die in the night.

The cat lays out a plan to sneak into the mayor's estate, find the vault, pick the lock and free all of the missing people, who will then sing songs in the party's honor. Most of the group agrees to go that night, and Shen promises not to lock the doors on them and says to knock thrice when they return. Lightning flashes again, and Drandy and Tim fail Wisdom saving throws. Each sees the other place once more, then a room that is almost familiar, and when the vision fades the two of them look at each other and feel as though they have known each other. Shen leads the party out the back door past the kitchen, and the group heads for the manor, the largest building in town behind its high wall. The rain is coming down hard under a faint red glow from the moon. The cat has a climbing speed and takes to the rooftops as a lookout, but Tim slips off the wet roof and lands in the mud. Glenn's grave nose catches a hint of rotting death, and everyone rolls well on stealth as they slip from house to house.

At a T intersection, Drandy's Divine Sense picks up something ahead and to his right that is neither undead nor fiend but oddly in between, and then a third presence behind. The cat sees nothing from the roof, and Drandy warns that something is coming from every alley and starts to climb. Tim picks the lock on a back door with a total of 26, and he and Glenn slip into a dusty, one-room shack with ash all over the floor and every window locked from the inside. They stack their heads in the doorway to peek out, and Glenn casts faerie fire toward the intersection. Violet, shapeless outlines shimmer to life in the alley, one of them reaching a cold tendril toward Tim, another sliding toward Drandy, and others closing in from the intersection. The whole party can see them now, with advantage against them, and the DM calls for initiative as the episode ends.

Funny Moments

• The party's Yog-Sothothery and animal-handling rolls come up so low that the table calls it "the worst roll ever," and when someone says they saw Cthulhu himself, the table asks whether he sings. A round of Cthulhu's "song" follows, with the review "that first one wasn't so great, but that second one, it really transported me."
• The DM again slips into the old characters' names. He calls Drandy "Dr. Simeon," Tim becomes "Tallahassee Tim," and Glenn is called Dom, as in Dom Druncard, when he steps into the shack.
• Tim sees a general store full of goods and decides that his first move is to steal. After being caught he says, "I'm a thief," and then "I'm at conflict with myself." He later offers to "come back later and slice your throat" before adding, "Just kidding," asks where he can smash clay pots full of rupees, and keeps calling the shopkeeper "John."
• Alam insists that business is great, right up until Mathon points out that the sheriff said no one comes through town. He then admits things have been "a little slow," and that he is "mortgaged up to my eyeballs" with terrible credit.
• Mathon introduces himself to the shopkeeper as "Mathon" and then as "just Barry McConnell," a callback to the Billy McConnell voice from last episode.
• The cat greets Glenn with "you ugly freak" and keeps calling him that, and the pair pitch themselves to Shen as a traveling comedy duo. The cat is Glenn's agent and manager, whom he takes along because he "drives a hard bargain."
• To get the price of the rooms down, the cat prances across the counter, sings "I'm a kitty cat and I dance, dance, dance," and then falls off the counter. The DM rules that it is good enough for three silver.
• Glenn asks Shen whether he has any flesh of the dead, and Shen answers that he does, but will have to go down to the basement to get it.
• Shen tells the party that "bangers don't pay the bills," and that "daddy needs food," while his empty tavern sits behind him. The party calls him Jennifer from then on, and he goes along with it.
• Told to knock thrice, the table works out that this means not once or twice, but that twice followed immediately by thrice would probably count.
• Tim and Glenn stack their heads in the doorway like a cartoon, and the DM notes that Glenn's wet hair is dripping all over Tim's. Tim answers that his cloak is waterproof.
• A joke about someone's mother is met with Glenn's reply, "my mother is a delightful ghoul."
• The DM rules that the heavily armored party members slip through town so stealthily that they stop at every corner to pull up their chain mail, and someone at the T intersection announces, "I pity the fool."

Notable Quotes

• "Dude, I speak elvish." —Major Baker's Cat
• "Just Barry McConnell." —Mathon
• "I'm mortgaged up to my eyeballs." —Alam
• "Bangers don't pay the bills." —Shen
• "It's almost as if the people of this town were being offered up." —Shen
• "Knock thrice when you arrive." —Shen
• "We're heroes, they love us, they sing songs in our honor." —Major Baker's Cat
• "I can't really sense it. But it's there, brothers." —Drandy Savage
• "I'm at conflict with myself." —Tim
• "My mother is a delightful ghoul." —Glenn Ghoulia