[h3]Darkwood Adventurers![/h3]

It had been months, but, at last, the seekers of the pie were ready. They’d been gifted the mighty power of leveling which Jeon Du Termas claimed was the very same that had once let him slip free of all realities and into the void beyond which had been the pathway to his divine power (the god had left out the indeterminate amount of time he had spent starving to death) and been dubbed the Forest Furies. Then they’d trained hard and gone on practice missions during which they’d lost two of their number ( to injuries) and gained one more.

As such when they approached the place which they had been told the secrets of pie could be found, Pebble (level 15 [traveling tosser]), Fern (level 16 [adventurer]) and Stag (level 11 [spearelf explorer] and level 4 [hunter]) were joined by Lorelei (level 3 [beastkin adventurer]), whom they’d met by chance at the weekly dance party last night.

The four of them were crouched in the underbrush, and looking out at the wide patch of dead earth that lay beneath the towering tree within which their prize was said to lie, who’s branches blocked out the sky high high above them. There was only one question.

“Wait. So. How do we get up there?” Stag asked from the back of the group

Lorelei smirked and showed one of her clawed hands. “Easy! I climb up and drop a rope for the r-rest of you guys.” Without waiting for the others, Lorelei rushed forth out of the bush and gracefully climbed the tree. One, two, five, ten meters up to the first branch, where she deftly grabbed one of the tools she kept on her toolbelt at all times - a hammer - and used it to nail a big metal stake into the tree through a hoop at the end of her rope. She uncoiled the rope, which she’d kept tied around her waist, and let it drop down all the way to the ground. After testing if it was secure, she sat on the branch and waved at the rest of the adventurers, her tail swinging gracefully behind her. 

“Is that… stable?” Stag asked only for fern to brush past him saying “Probably, lets go!” followed by Pebble, who was going to get that pie or die trying. 

The monsters who were going to try and make sure Pebble ended up taking the die option took that moment to introduce themselves to the group.  A rotting corpse of a hammerhead shark with glowing red eyes proceeded to poke its head down out of the foliage of the big tree to see what the banging noise had been about. Upon seeing the cat it made a guttural hiss -which she responded to in kind with one of her own as she crouched down low- and lunged at her, while a small swarm of other undead tonnikala started to rain down out of the branches with vicious intent.

“Look out!” Stag called out in warning, while Pebble was already trying to help, calling out “[two birds!]” before tossing a stone with remarkable strength that proceeded to thwack into a skeletal piranha and then defect off at a right angle to smack another one with perfect precision, causing both to drop from the sky.

More were coming however, but Lorelei didn't have the time to worry about that. She dodged the undead shark’s charge by throwing herself back-first onto the branch and in a smooth fast movement, Lorelei’s clawed hands swiped at the shark numerous times, severing some fins, popping an eye and disemboweling it. The shark’s rotting maggot-filled guts spilled all over the catgirl, and the shark continued to crash head-first against the tree trunk with a sickening crunch.

The flimsy undead construct practically pulped itself against the thick as a clearing tree trunk and the remain’s dropped down, lifeless, towards where the rest of the [adventurers] were dealing with the rest of the trouble.

“Oh no no no what do we do?!” Stag stammered, backing up as a stinky ol salmon came swimming at him, only for Fern to dart ahead of him and skewer it with her weapon

“It’s just like spear fishing!” she told him, before gagging at the smell of her kill. That was all the opportunity another tuna thought it needed to go after her, causing a panicked Stag to call out “ah, look out, [quick stab]!” as he rushed forwards and then his spear moved in a flash to skewer the tune before it could strike Fern.

“Wow. Hey, not bad. I should get in danger more often if it's gonna get you to get over your nerves” She taunted him, before flicking the sammon off of her pointed stick and charging another, leaving the worried Stag to go chasing after her.

While the elves dealt with the droppers down below the slowest of the past it’s sell by date seafood introduced itself to Lorelei as two coconut crabs crawled down the tree trunk, their big old meaty claws twice the size of her clawed hands beared. 

“Wao!” Lorelei hissed and deftly jumped back along the tree branch, giving herself a little bit more time to delve her hands into her tool belt pockets. Coming up empty, she instead dropped her whole back onto the branch and pulled out a long collapsible quarterstaff from it. As the crabs caught up with her, she gagged and spoke, “[Sweep]” And in one fluid motion, swept both crabs off the branch and sent them reeling into the depths of the forest. “N-Nasty things-” She whispered before dropping to her knees and leaning over the branch to throw up due to the scent.

“EW. Hey watch it where you chuck up up there!” came a shout from Fern who had narrowly avoided being spewed on while the rain of vomit was the last straw for stag, who upchucked against the tree. While they were dealing with that nastiness, Pebble was toughing out with a scrunched up nose as she used a big rock to smash the last of the rotten fish’s brains out.

“Well. This has been the worst” she complained, as she discarded the stinky rock and grabbed a rope and started to climb, leaving Stag and Fern to follow once the latter had patted the former on the back sympathetically.

“Sorry about this. Most of the ‘training’ we’ve been sent on has just been dangerous not. Well. gross. Never seen anything like this before, and I hope we never do again” Pebble apologized to their newest member once she caught up with her, though Lorelei was too busy retching to reply.

“Yeah what was this?” Fern asked as she got up into the branches

“Maybe it's the g-g-g-ghosts. They've found a way to  come back and haunt us for eating them!” Stag suggested worriedly.

“G-Ghosts or not, they’re disgusting… I will have to wash my clothes l-like 20 times once we’re done here…” Lorelei said in between gags, then sat up and wiped her mouth. “S-So the reward should be at the top, right… There can’t be many more c-corpses left…”

“We can only hope,” Pebble agreed, before grasping a branch and beginning to climb. They got about two meters before suddenly bursting out into a clearing, the thick covering leaves smothering the light having suddenly thinned out, being replaced by a looser knitting of spaced out  strong branches. These would have been harder to climb between, if there hadn’t been the strangest thing.

A village, grown out of the tree itself. Branches twirled and twisted and wrapped around each and grew in unnatural ways other to form walkways, streets and stairs connecting stylish homes with leafy roofs. All this spireld up and up the tree, forming a lovely looking community that even had denizens. At least that was how it looked at first, but the humanoid figures they had spotted were not elfish in proportion, squatter and wider as they were, and, as the keen eyes of the elves could see, they were not made of flesh but rotting wood.

They stumbled through the tree village, patrolling its walkways on the look out for intruders. 

Those intruders ducked back into the foliage as one of the red eyed monsters started to turn their way. It paused, groaned, when it found nothing to see, and then kept walking along the branch road they had popped up next too.

“Ok. not over” Pebble noted, while Stag asked the obvious question:

“What are those t-t-things?” to which Fern’s only answer was “Whatever they are, they can't smell worse than the tonnikala”

“Smell or no smell, I don’t think we c-can take on so many of them… There must be dozens…” Lorelei furrowed her brow, and after a while nudged Fern with her elbow, “Time to sneak. I’ll go first.” The catgirl nodded, her tail accidentally slapping Stag across the face as she snuck out of the bush and across the branchy street to hide behind a hut. The others followed after her, and just like that they began to make progress. 

By being patient and using as much cover as possible and thanks to Lorelei’s superior hearing, they had soon made it over half the way to the top. 

It was when they used a tight and particularly humid alley as a hiding spot that things went wrong, as what they had at first thought was a regular mound of plant-y rubbish was actually a tree-zombie covered by rubbish. As the group of adventurers leaned against each other with Lorelei peeking out of the alley to decide when it was safe to move on, the tree-zombie-hobo awoke and sat up with a groan, its glowing red eyes looking straight at Pebble, who was standing behind everyone else.

“Huh, what was that noise?” the [thrower] said, turning, only for her eye’s to go wide as she beheld the lumbering monster coming at her, arm’s ending in splintered claws outstretched. She bit off a scream and stumbled backwards, only to bump into Stag’s back and for them both to go sprawling.

“I got you” Fern whisper shouted as she nimbly stepped over her companion’s forms and drove the spear deep deep into the rotten chest of the zombie, a victorious sneer on her lips, only for that smile to be wiped away as the organless undead was barely slowed and kept trying to push forwards, impaling itself further on the spear to get to her.

“What the- ah!” Fern cried out in pain as it slashed at her, thorny claws nipping at her belly before she could pull fully away, leaving a pair of bloody streaks on her torso. The adventurer cursed, and delivered a knee to the thing’s own stomach, but as there wasn’t one under there all it did was crack the wood more, and did nothing to stop it from grabbing her by the arms. The thing held tight onto Fern’s arms and growled at the elf, baring its gaping hole of a maw. 

Before it could try anything however, Lorelei jumped over the two elves still sprawled on the floor, hissing. The thing hesitated, and that short moment was long enough for the catgirl to close the distance and break one of the thing’s arms in two with a lethally quick ax kick. 

The thing screeched and recoiled and let go of Fern, only for Lorelei to press forward. She lacked the weight to tackle the thing to the ground, so instead she baited it out and used its first strike’s momentum against it. By taking a hold of its arm and sweeping her legs against its rooty limbs, she brought the monster down, a crack echoing down the alley as Lorelei stomped on the thing’s shoulder, disabling its other arm.

As the tree-zombie whined and groaned, flapping about on the floor, Lorelei panted. A moment later, she wiped bits of wood and sap off her clothes and went back to the edge of the alley, checking to see if any other entity had heard their little encounter.

The numerous sets of red eyes already looking right at her when she peaked out made it safe to say that they had. The zombies were coming. At least they were slow.

Back in the alleyway Fern was hissing with pain as she used a combination of some gummy wax and a relatively clean leaf to primitively bandage her wound shut, her [field aid] skill doing most of the work of actually getting it to stick. Stag meanwhile had pinned the un armed zombie to the floor with his own spear and was nervously looking on as Pebble inspected it

“It's just wood. Not like the kin who have guts. Just rotting wood all the way though” she noted, as the cat girl returned with the bad news.

“Bad news guys, we g-gotta run. The whole town heard us!” She explained quickly, her eyes wide as a pair of (adorable) saucers and ears flat against her head. “They’re pretty slow, so we s-should be able to outrun them all the way to the top.” She didn’t sound too confident, but came up to Fern and patted her on the shoulder. “Y-You okay? Can you run?”

“Yeah. I think I can-” Fern began to reply before Stag wrapped an arm under her shoulders for support. “Oh. Ok yeah definitely good to go now” Fern correct herself, giving Stag a smile before Pebble started to shoo them forwards.

“Get a move on you two, I’ll stick to the back. Slow them down even more” she then said, tossing a stone up and catching it “So let’s go!”

And go they did, racing upwards on their long elfish legs and nimble cat feet, with Pebble dancing at the back and giving the front runners of the growing horde a pin point rock shot in the knee for their exceptionalism whenever her skills came off cool down.

Ahead, at the top of the tree, sat of all things a tower, the upper most oranges all joining together to make a mighty spire that looked out across all of the forest. The winding road they were on led up to two mighty gates, which were, oddly, open slightly ajar rather than sealed shut to keep intruders out. Not that the elves noticed discrepancy, the lot of them having only just learned what a door was during their sneaking, and the why’s where less important than what it let them do, which was squeeze in through the gates and then slam them shut behind them, sealing them in the tower that became swiftly besieged by the undead hordes.

As the lumbering dead moaned and clawed at the door the [adventurers] took in the room at the bottom of the tower, which was fairly specious, and featured mainly an reception desk (ot that they knew what was) varios chairs to sit in while waiting to be served and, behind all of this, a shallow spiral staircase leading up  the wall.

Behind the desk bathed in light shining in through amber windows, sat a much more put together wooden undead, clad in a cloak of dead leaves, the hood of which framed a considerably more detailed head stylised like a skull. It was casually flicking through the pages of a book that matched the description of what the [adventurers] where here for, but its red eyes flicked up upon hearing them enter and cleared its throat

“Greetings heroes, and welcome” it said with a polite customer service voice, before slamming its hands on the table and standing up and concluding with “TO YOUR DOOM! Nyeh he heh!” in a cackling voice.

“What.. Who?” Stag stammered, before being cut off by the undead’s introduction:

“I am Jim, the legendary, the magnificent, the stupendous, and mortal kind’s eternal foe!” he declared, arms spread wide and grand as himself proclaimed titles

There was a pause and then Pebble said “Well I’ve never heard of you?”

“Till today, Nyehehehe. My legend starts here, and it will spread far and wide. If you survive to tel lthe tale that is! Now, prepare yourself for my most devious plot yet!” he said, before grabbing a gnarled wooden staff sitting by the desk, thrusting it forwards and shouting “furniture attack!”

At his word’s the dead wood making up all the rows of chairs around the sprung to life and began kidna awkwardly stumbling towards them on stiff legs while the litch sprinted up the stairs, pie making instruction based brize tucked under one arm, cackling wildly as he went.

Lorelei kicked over one of the attacking chairs and watched it wiggle about until it stopped moving, tail swishing curiously behind her. “T-This is kinda cool!” She mused, casually knocking over another chair that had approached her, then another, watching each one until they stopped moving. 

It was a stare from Stag that broke her out of her reverie. “Oh! Um… Right, l-lets catch this wooden prime!” She shouted with renewed vigour and deftly ran past all the wiggling chairs and up the stairs after Jim. Vines dropped from the ceiling and wooden roots emerged from the walls and floor to try and trip her up, but Lorelei’s catlike agility made it seem like she was effortlessly dodging every single trap. As she neared the top of the stairs and saw Jim run off into a long hallway, she shouted. “Hey, gimme that recipe book or I’ll turn you into c-charcoal! Come on guys, keep up!”

I’d like to see you try nyeh heh heh!” Jim jeered, before shouting “zombie ambush!” as the doors on either side of the hallway were flung open and a mini horde of lumbering dead shambled out to give the [adventurers] a bad time. Lorelei could do nothing but jump back with a yelp as she narrowly avoided being grabbed by the zombie horde. “W-What the heck kinda skill is that? Cheater!” She hissed and stretched her arm towards the horde, “[Zombie Retreat]! [Zombie Kill]! [Cat Luck]! Ugh!” When none of the things she shouted actually did anything, she huffed and stepped back even further .

“You can’t just make up skills,” Pebble informed her, before shouting “[enhanced improvised toss]” and throwing an undead chair at an incoming zombie, both it and the chair exploding into splinters.

“Yeah well then where the heck did that thing learn to do all this stuff!” Fern complained as she and Stag arrived, their [traversal: forest] having proved to have a second use of avoiding tripping over an re-animated forest of root and vine as well.

“M-maybe focus on getting him to stop?” Stag countered, while using his spear to flip an aggressive bit of furniture off of the staircase and sending it smashing down to the floor.

“Right. Arms, legs and heads, let’s go!” Pebble tried to regain order, before hefting another of her diminishing supply of stones and aiming for headshots with them. Fern scowled, speared another zombie and cursed as she ran into the same kind of problem she had already had: Pointed sticks were not good against the lumbering dead. So she ditched it, yelled “[improvised weapon]” and then ripped a door off its wooden hinges and started using it lengthwise as a battering ram.

“What!” Lorelei didn’t know what was happening anymore, and just decided to go along with it and followed Fern closely, kicking away any tree zombie that strayed too close from the group’s flanks. “[Cat Kick]! [Cat Kick]! [Cat Kick]! [Cat Kick]!” She yelled many times, even though she didn’t have any skill with the words “cat” or “kick” in it.

Eventually, they had pushed through the thickest part of the horde and found themselves at the foot of yet another staircase, though this one was a spiral kind and went straight up, with windows (more like holes) looking out towards the forest. It wasn’t like the group could stop to admire the view though, with the undefeated horde hot on their tails. “A-All of this to learn about pies!” Lorelei screamed as she began running up the staircase, lungs starting to burn.

“My life is on the line here. Maybe. Just keep running!” Pebble ordered as she raced ahead while Stag helped an increasingly winded Fern climb up the staircase until, at last, they reached the top of the tower for a dramatic final showdown.

They emerged under a blood red sky and once again found Jim opposite the stairs, only this time stood atop a set of battlements with only a bearskin rug between them and him. As they arrived he swept his staff towards them and cackled “nyeh he he, you may have bested my hordes, but are you ready for my final and greatest minion!” he declared before thrusting the staf up dramatically and crying out “rise my creation!” 

And rise it did, the ‘rug’ pulling itself off of the ground to reveal itself to be the, rather beaten up, remains of a mossbear, hulking brutes of the forest, big as a grizzly and twice as tough.

“Lets see how you deal with-” Jim began, only to be drowned out by a triple cry of “[forest-kin slayer]” followed by twin shouts of “[rock hard throw],” “[piercing javelin]” from two of elves as they unleashed all of their long cooldown priority target skills at once on the rotting form of a beast they’d had to deal with before down in the darkwoods.

Stag’s last (and only) spear lanced out, stabbing right through the mossbear’s eye, Pebble’s small stone hit with the force of big rock and caved in its other eye, and finally Fern just ran at the blind thing, jumped and brought the door she still was caring down in an overhead smash with a cry of “[expend weapon]”, the door dealing a spectacular blow that brought down the moss bear before it literally disintegrated into ash.

“This…” Jim trailed off as his final gambit failed spectacularly. 

“Ahh,how the turns table! N-Next time, get yourself a few elf friends. Maybe then you’ll stand a chance!” Lorelei grinned and cracked her knuckles as she approached Jim “Any l-last words, machine?”

“Last… words? Last words! ” the lich cried back as he as scrambling up onto the battlements to and right up to the edge, before turning with a leer and holding up the book and began to threaten them with “not one step closer or I’ll-” only to receive a rock to the chest that sent his pitching towards the edge and his arms pinwheeling for balance. At that exact moment, Lorelei shot forward and snatched the book off of Jim’s flailing arms and watched as the villain fell off the tower. 

“Heh. Neat.” She muttered as she stowed the book under her arm and walked back to the group, only for a cackling to rise back up from below the tower and the litch reappeared, seeingly flying.

“Foooooool!” Jim cackled, before taunting “remember this day, heroes, as the day you [i]alost[/i] stopped the legend of Jim! nyehehehehehehehe!” and then rising up further, revealing himself to be standing on the backs of two flying sea turtles that swift bor him away front the tower while he laughed at them from on high.

He also ducked the rock tossed at him this time.

“What a weirdo” Fern commented, before sitting down, the exertion and wounds catching up to her, Stag sitting down next to her and adding “well at least it's over”

“Thanks to you, Lorelei. You really saved my skin there” Pebble said , her eyes locked onto to the book the catgirl had under her arm

“That eager for a p-pie, huh?” Lorelei sighed and handed the book to the elves, “Well, it was fun tagging along with you guys, and I got to prove that short people are as cool as any e-elf.” She declared and nodded to herself with a satisfied grin.

“Yes!” Pebble practically snatched it from the offered hand and then raised it up triumphantly and delcard “pie!” which was greeted with a shower of confetti bursting out of the now open pages in celebration of a quest complete. Then there was a little pause before Pebble noted “wait… how do I use this too make pie?”

She frowned and brought the book down and after turning it over a few times and poking it figured out how they worked and started leafing through it. “it’s… pictures. And little squiggly things” she said, describing her interpretation of the contents.

“Guess we’ll have to figure it out” Fern said “later. Sit down and rest Pebble. We still need to get back down and past all the ‘zombies’ and stuff”

Stag moaned at the prospect, till Fern punched him lightly on the shoulder “ah come on, don’t be like that. Least it’ll be easier”

“Mmm, short rest, and then we get back at it” Pebble agreed, first sitting, and then laying, down as Jeon’s system made up for his delayed gratification of the pie book with some instantaneous rewards for surviving his treehouse of dread puzzle:

An absolut bevy of level up notifications.

[hider=level ups]

Pebble:

level 13 [traveling tosser] -> level 23 [adventurous thrower] 

Gained skills:

[double shot]

[danger sense]

[rapid reload]

[analyze corpse]

[forest camouflage]

[craft: poisoned throwing darts]

[lesser enhanced strength]

–

Fern:

level 15 [adventurer] -> level 24 [forest-friend adventurer]

Gained skills:

[the forest provides: weapon]

[root trip]

[favored enemy: undead]

[all weapons proficiency]

[forest camouflage]

[improved resistance: claw attacks]

–

Stag:

level 11 [spearelf explorer]  -> level 20 [spearelf explorer]  

Gained skills:

[pathfinding]

[increased carrying capacity: spears]

[aim true: my last spear]

[first aid]

[forest camouflage]

[lesser enhanced endurance]

level 4 [hunter]  -> level 5 [hunter]  

Class consolidation  level 20 [spearelf explorer] + level 5 [hunter] = level 15 [ranger]
Gained skills:

[companion: redwood deer]

–

Lorelei 

level 3 [Beastkin Adventurer] -> level 10 [Beastkin Tinkerer]

Gained skills:
[Passive: Lesser Enhanced Reflexes]
[Passive: Lesser Enhanced Mobility]
[Passive: Cat’s Kick]
[Passive: Cat’s Luck]
[Lesser Craftskip]

[/hider]

And after that, well, zombies never stood a chance.

[hider=summary]

Fern, Pebble and Stag, 3 of the elves from the exploring the underground post, along with Lorelei the cat girl, (all of them now [adventurers] of various stripes) arrive at the base of the treehouse dungeon Jeon had made to house the  legendary artifact: Granysmith’s cookbook, which he had tasked them with retrieving so they could use it to progress towards completing Lektoria’s quest for Pebble, which was to make pie.

The 4 of them battle, sneak and run their way up through the sprawling treehouse settlement, facing off against Jim’s many undead minions, before confronting him at the top of the treehouse. Lorelei snatches the book off of him before he escapes on the backs of two undead flying sea turtles

The [adventurers] then examine their prize, realize that they will still have work to do desciperingit, and then take a short rest to level up before hedging back down the treehouse, mopping up the remaining undead with their new [skills]

[/hider]

[hider=mp]

None spent

[/hider]

[hider=prestige]

Darkwood [Adventurers] Guild: 

Start: 3

+1 prestige: playing a significant role in the post
+1 prestige: collab
+1 prestige: +10000 characters 
+5 from completing the divine quest: claim the legendary artifact: Granysmith’s cookbook

End: 11

[/hider]