A Collaborative Finish to a Well-Played Game Player : YoshimiGame : Nothing Ever Happens in the NorthSystem : 5eDM : lostcheerioPost : Epilogue II: Thirty Years Later Context : This is the last post in a one-shot game that took us from March 2022 to March 2023, from a buoyant silly beginning to a dramatic dark conclusion. Yoshimi, PlaidPeregrine, and ElderOblex are my three wonderful players -- they have bonded creatively, met all challenges and setbacks with good cheer and wit, and have given me and each other a lot of fun and surprises over the last year. Not only did they work well together as players, their characters were so attached to each other in the face of peril and perplexity, that at the end of the plot of this game, it really did seem like there would have to be more. Reason for Nominating : I gave Yoshimi, ElderOblex, and PlaidPeregrine full license to go wherever they wanted with their epilogue. After over 300 posts together, we've grown to trust each other with the characters and the world, and I was happy to pass over the reins and see what they would do. What a delight they created! The post just before this one is "Four Months Later" but this one is a stunning "Thirty Years Later." All three of them worked on this post together, and the characters' voices ring true, as they each put in their energy and ideas to project the future. I couldn't be more pleased with the players and the way this game turned out, and I think the collaboration represented here reflects exactly the kind of writing and thinking that leads to great gaming here at RPGX.
Epilogue II: Thirty Years Later "Wolfric the Wild is raising dissension in Mavro Elos. He will never challenge your rule, but he enjoys making trouble. An itch that is easily scratched by a state visit from Queen Sharpsword." "How often must I warn you to not call me Queen in private? That is a hereditary title." A faint smile played across Bataar's lips before he gave his automatic reply. "At least twice a week for twenty years." The tall, heavily-muscled Prince Consort looked out from the high castle window, which commanded a sweeping view of the pastures and grasslands of Elytheria. The Unruly Provinces, unruly no more. Sigur got severely disappointed in any Baron who displayed unruliness. He turned back to face his wife. "Forging a new nation by force of arms in the heartland of what had been an invading army's territory is the other way to become Queen." Sigur waved a hand irritably, to Bataar's further amusement. Even after two decades of reign, his wife refused to put on the airs of one of the mightiest military commanders of her era. He felt a surge of renewed affection. "As well you know, respect for the Queen is all that keeps the fragile equilibrium among the Baronies." "And respect for the Princess." Bataar grinned broadly, his dark eyes twinkling. When General Sigur and then-Captain Bataar accepted the surrender of the Unruly Barons before the gates of Elytheria, the victorious army's leader had legendarily been far along with child. Iris Borthi had been born two months after the coronation. The Prince Consort agreed, "The army would follow our young Captain to Avernus." "I'm full aware that, after all this time I should be…content…with duties of state, but…" "But your hand misses the grip of a sword." Her husband finished the sentence for her. "It is natural. Fighters will always be fighters." "I might be able to face all this with equanimity, if there were just…one more adventure…" "Your Grace, two visitors! Nothing the guards could do would stay them from barging forth, and…" "Oh hey, Batty," Roofs greeted chirpily, emerging from the stone masonry that had suddenly realized it had been temporarily transformed to liquid and could therefore now be violated by Dao machinations. Once her whole five feet tall person stood clear of the wall, the stone turned thick, solid, and structurally tight once more. "Brought your fave Apricot Surprise Purple-Orange Fizzy for you and the boys. Kegs’re downstairs with Higgins. Please tell your guards to horning stop threatening him if they don’t want an owlbear fart in the face." "Roofs!" With a burst of youthful laughter, Sigur ran across the room, barely stopping herself from throwing her arms around the blue-skinned tiefling. She instead clasped her old friend's forearm tightly, her eyes shining."Flyde’s gone. Again." She explained that the Hin was never one for settling down, and all his talk about making 'littler Roofs' in all the years they ran the tavern together never really saw the light of day; or the dark of a candlelit bedchamber for that matter. Roofs herself had dithered and dallied and claimed she never wanted to settle herself. Add to that her continuing search for her eldest brother Lehem and that whole clusterhorn with their Mother, it was really just too much to deal with at the moment. "Your brother is causing problems again? I thought we resolved that issue with his cambrion ex-girlfr…" "Ahem. Like I SAID, Flyde left me to deal with all his mess in the Formerly World's End Tavern Serpent and Horn . Again. Plus there's trouble brewin' with those Big-Bellied Beardos ..." Roofs sighed, a feat that took longer than ten heartbeats. "Thistle’ll fill ya in, obvs. In short, we need ya. Again ." "Thistle! Where is…" aodrable as she sploshed past them with Moss Paw, who was an intimidating four feet tall now, coated in a vibrant green hairy moss with teeny tiny forget-me-not-like flowers petaling in a pale blue around the water spirit's head like a royal crown. The Forest Gnome looked unaged, really, except her hair was longer, but braided down the front, and a bit down the back, and her wreath of twigs seems to be entwined with thin braids. Wide round blooms of a yellow and purple striped trumpeted flower haloed her head with spirals of velvet and red thin flowers sprouted upwards, reaching for the sky. She was brightly ridiculous, to the degree that a pair of beautifully green butterflies were fluttering about her head, landing on the vines to feed from the array of botanicals of her crown. As she teleported about with Moss Paw like a merrier version of Satan Calus, from out her side satchel she handed out handknit socks to all the astonished denizens of the castle- polka dotted, striped, half-calf, knee-length, thigh-high, leather soled, angor-trimmed, with stars embroidered around the ankle, and some with pink squirrels and purple acorns. By the gods, it was a festival of woolen socks for Winter, along with a few special Gonme-styled caps for Human-heads. Now standing before Not-Queen Sigur and her Princely consort themselves, she offered lovely carved boxes full of embroidered and wooley goodness. A third box was for their daughter, who was not to be seen. But eager to show off its contents, Thistle opened the box nonetheless."I thought that you might want to give these to your daughter one day." "I am overcome by this gift, Thistle. I know Iris will be honored to wear this symbol of the first adventure of her mother and her godmother." "Your Sigurness," Thistle started, stamping her old staff to the ground as she made a dramatic point of her friend's nobility. "...the Dwarves of the Blue River Mountain Crabby clan are all in a huff about the second, smaller Fizzy Brewery we are building. We are expanding for different flavors, after Ale Master Bloomingwhiskers Twigdigger Honeywhisperer found another source of bubble-water two breakfast walks closer to the mountains. He was able to run the water through cinnamon-red-bark and it tasted like apple pie. It isn't as bitter as the other fizzy. Apple pie , Sigur. And the Dwarves are saying that we're disturbing their fish, and if it wasn't for their silver-finned fish farts, the water would taste like water and not fizzy apples." "Heh. Silver-finned fish farts. Yeah, they mentioned something about angering a goddess of harvest yada-yada something dwarfy, it was pretty confusing. So we offered 'em Fish Fart Fizzy. Special brew, single-origin. It's gonna make their teeth blue. Coz someone - who shall not be named -" and Janny twirled in the air at this, obviously sharing in the joke, "said those dorfs deserve it." "So we corked a small barrel of Fish Fart Fizzy, dying it barely blue, and having an expert crafts-Elf imprint the name on a tin plaque, with a copper fish decorating it - and it was really pretty, Sigur. Hand-hammered. Stiff Dwarven print. AND then someone said the name was said in sarcasm?!" She side-eyed Roofs before focusing on Sigur, knowing this is THE most important problem she's ever had being a noble warlord-lady. "I didn't understand, so we met them at the half-built, half-walled new mini-Artsy-Brewery that we named "Fish Fizzy" to make the Dwarves happy, and we gave them the keg-barrel, and ol' Red Beard the Cranky laughed angrily. And he almost pitched our present into the rocks, but his second in command, Red Beard the Stinkeye, decided to drink it out of the keg like an Orc. Who drinks anything with their lips pressed to wood? The flavor would be wrong. But Stinkeye said it wasn't bad and didn't taste like fish, because it tasted like apple pie. But then the Brewer said it tasted more like crabapple cinnamon with nose-bubbles to Bigs. And to Dwarves, it's like spiced-apple-fish-BURPS, which Stinkeye said was different and more hearty. Then I found out the brewery forgot to add the alcohol - however they do that with flowers." The Gonme blinked fantastically at Sigur, knowing she would totally understand the chaos that was going to ensue between water rights, fish hunting, Goddess anger, and giving Dwarves an alcohol-free ale. The last bit there was the most important according to everyone . "Now they moved four Dwarves into our Brewery and said it's theirs, and they were going to 'do it right', and to 'piss off' tiny g oat G nomes. So…can you help? They said we have to talk with the Goddess Queen of Silver-finned Fish of the Dwarves and get her blessing deep in the caverns below where the water goes. Roofs said we should pop'm in their honkin' hornin' noses and set their beards on fire." "Soooo. You in?" "It was wise of you to come to me, Thistle." She paced back and forth as she proceeded to think out loud. "I know dwarves, and their etiquette. As you may recall, my father's barony was aligned with the neighboring dwarf kingdom against the goblins. They take resource rights extremely seriously, with their mining-centered culture. Commerce treaties with a dwarven monarch involve book-length memoranda of understanding that list every individual who might conceivably be involved and their ancestry to three generations, and a symbolic yet punishing contest of feats of strength, as well as copious quantities of drink. Giving dwarves weak ale as a diplomatic gesture is nearly worse than insulting their grandmothers' prowess in battle. But there are ways to bring down the tension in a situation like this one before it falls apart into all-out war…" "It's a long journey to the Fort. On the way there are bound to be small towns dealing with bandits, random encounters with monsters, and so on." Sigur's face lit up at this prospect, but then immediately started to fall, so he quickly added, "I am sure I can sign documents in your absence, and Iris has the army well in hand. I will tell her when she gets back from her tour of the western provinces." "Then what are we waiting for? Nothing ever happens here! Let us away to the North..."
Last edited by lostcheerio; Mar 8th, 2023 at 09:35 PM .
Mar 1st, 2023, 11:17 AM
