Good!Party: Druids Gone Wild

Ragheera comes bounding out of the bushes and comes rushing towards Ruin, and is about to pounce on Ruin when all of a sudden… she dies. 

Martini, invisible, has killed her.

Marshall: “Oh, are you fucking kidding me?” He comes striding over towards the corpse. 

Glanduil comes out of the grotto: “What did you DO?” 

Ruin is just standing there, aghast, hand on his sword. 

Glanduil starts berating Ruin, who’s still shocked speechless. 

Marshall rolls up and prepares to resurrect the paragon ape. Glandular: “She was a paragon creature. Your priestly magics won’t work on her. The only thing that can bring her back is a circle of druids.”

Ruin, who has teleported to the far side of the village. “Yes! We should do that!”

Marshall explains that Artemis is still here for him, and then turns into the world’s biggest snake. Valdur the Mayor has emerged, and is flustered and angry that Marshall is still there. Marshall casts Animal Shapes, and turns Martini into a bunny and Ruin into a bat. Then he just starts turning townsfolk into happy little animals. Valdur the Mayor winds up as a billy goat. There are now animals everywhere, frolicking. Except for the snakes; they’re slithering around and making little heart shapes. 

So the druids are watching all this Nature and looking baffled. Elendor: “It’s a test! The great and mighty Jensen has visited us again, and this is a test of our faith!”

Marshall: “No! No it isn’t!”

Elendor remains convinced. She comes over to the tree and cries out for Jensen to reveal what to do. Lyren and Tyriel have gone over to Glanduil, and see this as a sign of a different kind; the power of nature is stronger than they’ve seen it in a century. Elendor is still rattling on about Jensen, and Marshall finally runs out of patience and implodes her. 

Lyren: “Holy shit! You killed Elendor!”

Tyriel: “You bastards!”

Glandular: “I do not understand, but… I haven’t drawn upon the source in months. I do not know if I still can.”

The others: “You must try, brother.” 

 

He tries to cast speak with animals, but fails. The power sink that they once used is dormant. Ruin is flapping around, and Marshall frees him from the spell. Ruin drops thirty feet and does a superhero landing. (It’s very hard on the knees; fortunately he heals.) 

Ruin: “Okay, so what did you do to restore the tree before?”

Tyriel: “Well, we would gather druids around and pray to the Elder Treant.”

Ruin: “So try that again.” 

They try it, and Glanduil comes back able to cast Speak With Animals. 

Marshall speaks to them and claims that he speaks for Artem-hiss. He convinces the former druids that the death of the gorilla was their fault, and they must restore the tree and resurrect the gorilla. Also, the non-believer has been dispelled. 

They are terrified, and Marshall proceeds to convince them that the Druidic Bacchanalia is the way to go. The druids are reluctant, but Ruin points out that they could summon other druids, women, and Martini gets enlisted to locate some druidic womenfolk to take part in this. 

We work out a particular set of images to project to the other druids. Think Girls Gone Wild: jello shots off of Ruin's abs, skimpy outfits, all that sort of thing. We convince the townsfolk to take part in creating this image. 

Druids start showing up the next day. Ruin has never seen so many skimpy outfits made of leaves. We get the bard in the inn, Cillarin, to provide party music. Gwyren the merchant has a pony keg of alcu’ul which he sells to us. We set the date of the party for the end of the full moon, in about five days. 

We get about two dozen women, but also about three dozen men; and since the full moon is over, Martini goes and pulls Nym out of the casket where she’s passed her war-bear time. Nym’s a bit thrown by this whole thing; like, the world changed completely while she was locked in the dark. Ruin hands her a drink to take the edge off, and then Martini starts talking her up on her own empowerment. She’s also encouraging Nym to take her pleasures with other women so as to avoid pregnancy. Martini then puts on her Slave Leia outfit, and orders Ruin into his Slave Leia outfit. (Ruin is secure in his masculinity and just goes with it.) 

Martini opens with a very successful welcoming speech. Then we introduce the alcohol, including Jello Shots and Elvish beer with a bit of aclu’ul mixed in to give it some kick. Next up is the dance-off in the cages, and Cillaron uses his song to Inspire Competence, so the dancing is a lot better than it might have been otherwise. Then we lead everyone in a prayer to the tree… except that Glanduil runs forward, rips his robes off, and yells: “Earth-Serpent, come down!”

Marshall comes down, and the druids climb up on him and start going to town with each other. Near the back of Marshall’s tail, Nym has started biting other women. Martini sits her down to explain about the importance of consent. Ruin would help, but he’s busy having jello shots licked off his abs. 

Martini puts her to sleep and carries her into the inn and up to the room; Loris is in his room, muttering to himself. She leaves Nym in the room, tells Loris to look after her, and leaves again. 

Next up: Karaoke. Cillaron eases back to instrumentals, and Martini opens with a song. Ruin follows up, and does a decent job. On his way down from the stage, Kattur again tries to grab him and Ruin teleports away; she misses and hits her head, so he returns and uses a wand to heal her. Kattur: “You saved me!” Ruin teleports away again. 

Cillaron is panicking before his actual set. Martini gives him a pep talk, and he gets up there and gives a very successful performance to a crowd of very drunk elves. 

Marshall has now been a snake for five days; he’s feeding himself with Create Food and Water and Heroes’ Feast. Constantly. Marshall can’t change back yet; his milksnake brings all the druids to the yard.

It’s a very successful party. The next morning, the sun comes up, and Marshall is draped in naked bodies. Martini has gone back to the room, kicked Ruin out, and gotten a solid night’s sleep. Ruin has slept in Kattur’s bed, because it’s the one place she wouldn’t look for him. 

Ruin come stumbling into the room and asks Martini what she did with his clothes. Martin looks a challenge at himi: “Find them.” 

She then goes downstairs and finds Glanduil. He’s passed out on Marshall’s head. Martini pins a note to his hair and then goes to eat breakfast. He shows up about noon, and he’s brought flowers. “Are you doing anything for lunch today?”

Martini: “Yes. We’re having a ceremony, to rejuvenate the tree. And as the manly head druid, you’ll need to lead them.” 

“Oh. Would that impress you?” 

Martini: “That would impress everyone.”  She settles in to help him with his speech. 

Ruin, meanwhile, has found Nym and pointed out the obvious way to avoid ever having to be the Jensenian Virgin again, so they’re down in the crypt making good use of the sarcophagus. (Note: Apparently one of Ruin’s children is now going to be a warbear; DM says of course she becomes pregnant.) 

Glanduil gathers the druids and starts a set of prayers, restoring some of the natural power of this place. 

Martini finally admits that she hid Ruin’s clothes in in Kattur’s room; he sneaks in and retrieves them. 

So the tree is partly recovered, and Marshall chooses that moment to resurrect Elendor… in his throat. He promptly spits her newly-revivified body onto the pavement. 

Martini starts clapping, and after a moment everyone else does too. Elendor finds herself looking around at a crowd of druids praising Artemis, the Earth Power, and the elder treant. Martini drops Deep Slumber on Elendor before she has a chance to say anything or start praising Jensen again. We take her off the stage, and Ruin and Martini wait for her to wake up. 

Martini convinces her that she was brought back by the power of nature, and that she absolutely 100% was not destroyed by Marshall. Then she casts Modify Memory so that Elendor suddenly remembers being led astray to undertake the worship of Jensen. Elendor now remembers being killed by the tree, just as the vampire was. She was brought back by the tree as well, because she was in the prayers of the people reviving the tree. And as she awakened, she was told that she needed to arise and lead the druids again. Also, while she was dead she saw the souls of other druids being tortured, and demons inhabiting their bodies. 

Elendor is much more of a leader than Glanduil, so with Martini’s help she returns to the courtyard and makes her Unite The Druids speech. It’s successful, and the druids begin to reassemble. Better still, if we just stay around here, the evil priest Cardinal Septimus is likely to show up. So, we want to lure him here and murder the shit out of him. 

Marshall slithers off into the wilderness, and returns as himself a few days later. He leaves behind the legend of the Sacred Earth Serpent.