Fear, Flight, and the Girl Named Susie

The dockworkers and the first fight

The party stands where the festival left them: associated with Lady Arabelle, surrounded by dockworkers, and responsible for knocking a fiery egg from a child's hand. Valen denies remembering the act. Mruno repeatedly accepts responsibility for it.

Eldenhold is divided between nobles and the poor. Because the party is associated with Lady Arabelle and the Queen, the commoners see them as noble henchmen asserting authority over the lower districts. Six dockworkers close in.

Reese casts Fear in a thirty-foot cone and delivers a challenge about pitchforks and purpose. The spell frightens nearly the entire group; most of the dockworkers drop their weapons and run. One worker resists. Valen approaches him with a quarterstaff, misses initially, then lands a strong follow-up strike and warns him to reconsider.

Mruno Bars attacks another dockworker with a magical insult, saying he could carve a better face out of a pumpkin. As the frightened workers flee, Valen makes an opportunity attack against one of them.

Grenak gets the close-range fight he wanted. Grenak walks up to the last remaining dockworker, slaps him across the head with open palms, and lets him run. Grenak refuses to pursue or kill him, explaining that humans are too small and fragile to be worth the effort. Demons, in Grenak's view, are the proper opponents.

Grenak needs a bathroom

After the fight, Grenak announces that he needs to piss. The group points out the fountain and treats it as a community urinal. Pip Thistledown is an adult halfling, which somehow becomes the fact everyone needs before accepting what follows.

Pip remains furious that Grenak knocked him into the fountain. He cites an official article or sanitation rule. Gerrold Dunn, overseer of the marketplace, confirms that pissing in the fountain is prohibited—but waits until Grenak finishes.

Grenak apologizes to Pip, asks where an orc can get food, and wonders whether any goat is available. Pip later falls into the same fountain, exactly where Grenak urinated. The smell is pungent. Grenak explains that he has not drunk water recently and has been eating greens.

The riot spreads

While the party deals with Pip, Lady Arabelle finishes her speech. The party's actions ignite the existing tension between commoners and nobles. Guards arrive, commoners fight them, and the market erupts into looting, thrown objects, and firebombs.

Mruno Bars decides to let the chaos escalate and tells the group, “I tried. Nope, that's not my problem.” Grenak and Reese start taking bets on whether the guards or commoners will win. Mruno places gold on the guards, and Grenak matches the bet. Valen reacts with visible disappointment and attempts to calm the crowd by climbing onto a table, drinking an unattended ale, and giving a speech about citizenship. His speech convinces some people, but much of the riot continues.

General Thornvale declares martial law

General Garric Thornvale arrives with the Iron Guard. The soldiers clear the marketplace with overwhelming force, putting down commoners without regard for whether they are women or children. Sergeant Braska Holt appears troubled by what is happening but does not openly disobey.

Pip warns the party that the general is coming and repeatedly tells them that they are fucked. Thornvale reaches the stage and declares Eldenhold under martial law. He orders everyone to clear out and specifically points to the party, ordering them to remain in place.

Lady Arabelle moves toward the party and asks them to work with the general. She explains that the party started the disturbance and will likely be questioned. The party refuses to talk to the authorities. Grenak says that he is bad at questions and answers, uninterested in math, and hungry.

Thornvale and approximately ten guards begin advancing on the party. Lady Arabelle looks angry and disappointed. Reese casts Darkness between the party and the advancing troops. The guards collide with one another in the darkness, giving the party time to run. The party escapes through the city rather than surrendering.

Choosing the road north

Once clear of the immediate pursuit, Grenak complains that Eldenhold has no demons and is boring. Grenak misses Bertha and wants a real fight. Reese supports the search for a suitably large demon skull for Bertha, while Valen agrees to follow Grenak wherever he goes.

The party considers the Deadlands but learns that the journey would take roughly a week or more. They decide to head north toward a port town and eventually reach a western island rumored to contain demons. Valen's History check confirms that the island is associated with evil and that a demon hunt there is plausible.

The party's route planning is driven almost entirely by the possibility of “big titty demons.” Grenak initially follows a direction supposedly indicated by the wind. When Valen explains that the island to the west may contain even larger and more numerous demons, Grenak changes course and becomes interested in traveling there by boat. The party agrees to travel toward Port Town, with the possibility of catching fish or sushi along the way.

Escaping Eldenhold

With the city under lockdown, the party slips through side streets under invisibility and other concealments. No one sees where they go, and they leave Eldenhold without being tracked.

Eldenhold burns behind them while the party disappears north. Reese is willing to leave the city to its fate; their priority is killing demons.

The singing contest

The party travels toward a northern port town. Grenak says he knows many songs. Valen challenges Grenak to a singing competition with Mruno Bars.

Mruno answers with “Dick in a Box,” easily outperforming Grenak's road song. Grenak argues that it may attract women but will never impress Bertha, then launches into a long explanation of Bertha's magnificence while maintaining vague eye contact with Reese.

The road to Ashenvale

The group chooses the road rather than crossing the pasture. A location on the map earns the name Rotten Banana Town, but they continue toward Port Town and eventually reach the completely desolate settlement of Ashenvale.

The party sees movement in abandoned houses but no ordinary residents. They find an inn, a blacksmith, and several silent houses. The inn door is barricaded. Grenak's strength allows him to push it open, sending the objects piled behind it sliding across the floor and startling someone who flees upstairs.

Susie in the abandoned inn

Grenak calls into the dark inn, explaining that he means no harm, has money, and wants food. A young voice asks whether Grenak is one of “them.” An eight-year-old human girl cautiously descends the stairs and invites the party to sit.

The girl introduces herself as Susie. She offers the party stale beer from an old barrel and explains that Ashenvale has been plagued by zombies and ghosts. The zombies began appearing approximately three months earlier. At first they wandered without attacking anyone. Later, ghosts began appearing at night, and the residents fled one by one.

Susie stayed because she had nowhere else to go. She has been living in the inn and cleaning it. She does not know where the rest of the town's people went. When asked about family in Port Town, she says she is an orphan and that her parents died long ago.

Reese immediately offers to find Susie a family in Port Town. Susie likes the idea. The group debates whether it is safer to travel onward or spend the night in the haunted town. Susie points out that she has survived there for three months, which undercuts the party's concern and leads to more jokes about whether an eight-year-old is tougher than they are.

The party restores the barricade, eats cheese, and settles in for the night, unaware of Susie's true nature.