Battle Report

Emrys Adventurer's Guild Battle Reports

Adventurer: Marhala Banjomin Seere

Date: 19/11/224

For my first adventure, I joined a party visiting the Goblin Market, where there were some gladiator matches going on. Someone offered to pay us to lose some fights on purpose, but I was more interested in watching them, since I've never actually been in a fight before.

I met a really pretty Minotaur woman and used my music to inspire her in her fight, but she lost to one of the other members of our party, who clearly didn't understand the whole 'losing on purpose' deal. Homophobic, tbh.

At least I managed to make a bit of money betting on some of the other, much more boring, fights. And it gave me an excuse to buy her a drink and take care of her injuries, so I can't complain too much.

Date: 1/12/224

We met a little old lady who asked us to accompany her on her journey to visit her sister, whom she (apparently) hadn't seen in 200 years. She told us to call her Peppermint (which I'm sure was definitely her actual name and not something she came up with on the spot when she saw a bottle of peppermint schnapps on the bar).

Peppermint rode on the back of Pearl's dog Cat and led us through several different realms to a giant hedge maze in a land where it was always Spring. The entrance was a door made out of the same plants as the walls. It opened easily, but the rose-doorknob got crushed in the process. I used my magic to fix it, but I still felt bad. Can flowers forgive?

On the first path we went down, we found ourselves shrinking as we walked forward. Noticing that the shrinking stopped when we stopped walking, I decided to try walking backward instead, and it worked! And I definitely didn't fall on my ass. Anyone who says I did is a liar. But still couldn't continue forward without shrinking, so we went back to the entrance to the maze to see what was down the other way.

There, we came upon a river, though we couldn't see where it was going. What we did see was a beautiful and terrifying horse made of water. Luckily, the horse was happy to accept sugar as payment for giving us a ride up the river to meet the Lady of the Lake. who disappointingly didn't have a fancy sword to give us.

We ended up on the bank of a small stream. There was a cottage in the distance, but much more importantly, there were apple trees all around us. They came in every color accept red. (We later learned that this was because all the of the red ones had already been picked. They're the best ones for pie, I guess?) Hungry from our journey so far, I picked a pretty purple apple and took a bite. 0/10 would not recommend. It was mushy and tasted bad and knocked me out for 3 whole days. (The others sad it was only 3 seconds, but it felt like days.) It was Hell. Literally. I won't go into to much detail here, but let's just say I may need to invent an entirely new genre of music to convey the way it felt.

As we continued through the orchard to the cottage, I saw a pretty pink apple and decided to try that one, too, figuring it couldn't possibly be as bad as the Death Apple. Pink is too nice a color for anything like that. I must humbly admit that I was wrong. The pink apple was worse than the purple one. -1000/10. It made me think my friends hated me. I tried to ignore it, but my fellow party members could tell something was wrong, and eventually we did Talk It Through As A Crew, figuring out it was the apple's fault, and actually we are all friends, and everything is fine. And I'm definitely not still scared of Pearl. That would be ridiculous.

When we made it to the cottage, we knocked on the door and were greeted by a beautiful woman. My true weakness… She let us inside and told us about her 2 older sisters, the older of which matched the description of Peppermint, whom we suddenly realized had disappeared. The pretty woman went to get her sister, and we ended up talking to all 3 of them, but we never saw them in the same room at the same time. I'm not totally convinced that they're not all the same person, but the whole thing was really confusing.

They asked us for our names, but even distracted by a beautiful woman and incredible food, I knew better than to give that away. I did eat the food though, so maybe I'm not actually much smarter than my fellow party members who did give away their names… (The food was so good you do not understand. 1000/10. Worth potentially being trapped in a fae-like realm. Which we weren't. Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't be here writing this report. Right?)

Date: 21/10/224

My party spent the shortest day of the year attempting to 'prove our metal medal mettle along with the rest of the guild. We ended up in front of a section of the giant maze/dungeon thing that had four entrances to choose from. We chose between them by following the smell of popcorn. We were hungry. This was a very good choice because we met a very strange man named Fantastic with a very strange contraption that he pushed around on a cart. It was several times the man's size and entirely dedicated to making popcorn and toppings to go on popcorn. The popcorn was good, but I don't really like the way it gets stuck in my teeth, so I asked for an apple instead. Don't worry; it wasn't purple.

After we talked to Fantastic for a bit, he told us we could call him for help later if we needed it and then left. Oh, and he mentioned that when we got inside, we should go left. Obviously, we listened to him and went left. And definitely didn't trigger an obvious trap that got us attacked by a giant skeleton.

We then came across a very tiny door, and when I opened it, a strange (celestial?) child- Well, I don't know how exactly he went through the door because he came out normal-sized, but then he thanks me. For opening a door. He gave me a piece of cloth that says he owes me his life, and then he just left. If anyone knows what that's all about, could you let me know? I'm still very confused.

The next room we entered was very… green. There was a small man with a lot of energy and a set of stairs that supposedly led down to Hell. There was some weird illusion stuff going on with the doors, and Fantastic came back briefly to give us some more food and advice. Ultimately, we decided that going to Hell was what we needed to do to prove our metel, but then we… got distracted.

We realized that the back wall was fake and went through it to investigate. The room seemed to be empty at first, but through our genius detective skills, throwing ball bearings to see if they would hit anything, we discovered a very large invisible man. He made himself visible and told us that he was going to judge our souls and either give us gifts or send us to Hell. Forever. This seemed a lot easier than just going to Hell ourselves, so we agreed. Naturally, we all passed because we're amazing. Take that, stupid Death Apple! And now I have a super cool magic lute. Happy Winter Solstice!

Date: 5/1/225

We were sent to 'clean out' an abandoned house for this guy who'd recently inherited it from his uncle. There was only one entrance to the building, which seems like bad design to me, and no one bad been able to solve the riddle required to get through it, but we solved it easily and made our way inside.

There were unlabeled potion bottles on basically every available surface, and Pearl's very intelligent dog Fish (Are all of her dogs named after other animals?) was able to sniff out what some of them were, and we each took one, in case it came in handy later.

The hallway was covered in broken potion bottles, and two one of us (Jelenneth. Just Jelenneth. Not me.) fell onto the glass. The remnants of one of the potions turned Jelenneth into a Rhinoceros, which was super cool. There were two doors at the end of the hallway, and the first one we entered was a lounge full of very comfortable looking furniture. (Did someone remember to steal a chair on our way out?) Already tired, I decided to lie down on the chaise, and I fell asleep instantly. It was the best sleep I'd ever had (Something I've struggled with ever since the Death Apple Incident) until I was rudely awoken by someone (Stonly) hitting me in the head with a shovel.

The second room was a circle lined with suits of armor. In there middle, the was a set of horse armor, under which 3 goblin were attempted to hide. Not believing (or more likely, not caring) that we were there to clean the house, they attacked us, bringing 2 suits of armor to life to help them. We fought them off bravely and with little trouble.

There were 3 lever on the wall, and pulling them revealed a set of stairs going up to the 2nd floor. The top of the stairs was obscured by gravity fog, which Asher investigated and Pearl took care of, but before we went upstairs, we went back to the lounge to take a nap to recover from our fight.

Upstairs, there were 2 more rooms. The first one we entered was a potion room. Again, none of the bottles were labeled, but Fish helped us identify a few to take. There was a lever on one wall labeled 'in case of emergency,' but Pearl wouldn't let me pull it to see what it did.

The other room was a living room, where 4 men appeared to be having a fancy party. I walked right up and talked to them, and they offered us drinks and snacks. (The brandy was so good I decided to take 5a bottles to go.) Asher and Pearl were more cautious and decided to wait outside, but the rest of us had fun. I played my lute because it's not a party without music, and they all seemed to enjoy it, so clearly they have good taste in more than just drinks. Unfortunately, Pearl and Asher were right to be cautious.

Pearl spoke to me telepathically (Did you know she could do that?) to warn me that the men were actually doppelgangers. I tried to excuse myself from the party, but the doppelgangers blocked our exit and attacked. Asher came into the room to join the fight while Pearl helped from afar with her magic and crossbow. I took out 2 of the doppelgangers with daggers covered in poison I'd gotten from the other room. And I'm being completely normal about the fact that that was the first time I've ever killed anyone and not at all thinking about the purple-apple-induced Death dream from last month.

After taking care of the doppelgangers, we found the bodies of the men they were pretending to be in a completely not-at-all-obvious spot behind the couch, one of which was the uncle of the guy who'd hired us. With the house cleared of danger, we took our loot, accepted our payment, and left.

Date: 16/1/225

We went to investigate this creepy crypt in the graveyard where some children had gone missing. The door had been broken into, and there was an empty coffin in the middle of the crypt. When one of us laid down in it and closed the lid, we were transported to this weird alternate depression world. We went through one at a time, and by the time I got there, the party members who'd gone ahead of me were in the midst of battle with some skeletons.

After defeating the skeletons, we saw an old tower and the distance, and since that was the only thing here that wasn't also in the other world, we figured that was where we should go. Before making it to the tower, were went through some old, dark ruins where we were ambushed but these creepy little guys (meazels, apparently). The one I was fighting asked me to join his band when he saw my lute, but he also almost killed me, so I was getting some pretty mixed signals there.

By the end, 3 of us almost died, but we managed to kill 4 of the meazels, and the last one ran away scared. We found the missing kids hiding in the ruins, and they told us that their imaginary friend had come to life and protected them, which is awesome.

Someone should probably do something about that crypt to stop any other kids from going in there.

Date: 2/3/225

A dragon was threatening several villages near the Lightning Keep, which apparently once belonged to a beautiful wifwolf (Yes, that technically should be the correct term for a female lycanthrope. Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous.) The castle was said to have a powerful lightning shield that could be activated by 6 lightning rods, which we were sent to find.

One our way there, we were attacked by a pack of wolves, but they were no match for us. We defeated them with our superior strength and intellect and knives. like, a lot of knives. and they ran away with their tails between their legs.

When we reached the keep, the only entrance was barred. While my fellow party members debated how best to fashion a makeshift grappling hook to get over the wall around the keep, I magicked myself inside. Our rogue passed me her thieves' tools, and I picked the lock (a skill I never knew I had. Should I become a thief?) to get to the lever to raise the portcullis to let the others into the courtyard. We first went into the main building of the castle.

In the kitchen, there was a well that seemed to hide something shiny at the bottom. Suspecting it was one of the lightning rods, we sent our rogue down to investigate. Despite our best efforts to prepare ourselves for the obvious trap, we were caught off guard by a water weird but managed to fight it off and get away with the rod. 1 down, 5 to go.

We continued investigating the ground floor, but then I had to go to the bathroom, so my party accompanied me in search of the outhouse. Inside, I found a mischief of rats as well as a spell to help me communicate with them. They agreed to help us search the castle in exchange for cheese.

While we waited for my new friends to return, we checked one of the smaller buildings outside. Upon seeing several sleeping monsters and no lightning rod, we decided to close the door and leave them alone. (Don’t worry, we put a sign on the door later to warn anyone else who might try to enter, and people always read warning signs. Right?)

The rats brought us a key to an unknown lock and informed us that one of their comrades didn’t return from one of the upstairs bedrooms, so we went upstairs to investigate and avenge our new friend. There, we encountered a zombie, who came close to killing a couple of our members, but we managed to defeat it (Again: knives. so many knives. cloud of daggers is the best spell I've ever learned. I will be writing a song about it.)

With the zombie gone, we investigated the 2nd floor and found 4 more lightning rods, as well as a set of rings needed to activate them without being electrocuted (thank you, rat friends). We had to circle back to the first floor to find the final rod in the mantel of the fireplace in the dining room, but then we were ready to deliver them to the villagers, who were grateful to have a way to protect themselves from the dragon.

Date: 6/4/225

Um… sorry, all I remember is the pretty pirate lady… Oh, it was a rescue mission, and there were these big, scary elementals and lame cultists, and at least 2 of us almost died, but we succeeded with awesome magic, terrible flirting, and an invisible birdman. Oh, and my friends left me behind to die, but it’s fine because, you know, pretty pirate lady (Side note: I might be considering joining a cult, but don’t worry about it)

Date: 1/6/225

Ok, I know it's been a while, and considering how my last entry ended, it definitely looks like I left to join a cult, but I swear that's not what happened. I was just having an identity crisis. Happens to the best of us, right? Anyway, I would like to formally request to have my name changed in Guild files to Banjomin. I've also changed my lute into a banjo, which is definitely a coincidence and not at all based on a terrible pun. Anyway, I should be back to adventuring next month. Also, if you know anyone with a spell or a potion or something that can change a person's sex, could you let me know?