[h2][/h2] Things were moving rapidly in Sanctuary. It had been many moons since queen Pieapple had been crowned, and yet only recently were things accelerating towards getting the would expedition to the underground started. Why? Well the fact that the queen now had a second goddess breathing down her neck about this certinyl helped, the queen now required to set up a trade route between her distant kingdom to be and the town of Shadowton down in the Umbral woods, the difficulty of the logistics of that little task be damned, certainly helped. However it was another thing entirely that had kept her back. Love As the assembly of [adventurers] and freshly appointed [settlers] gathered at the base of the tree, the elf queen held the arm of her partner [abbr=Formaly just Bark, who had been with her party when they had explored the underground, been injured before they tok on Jim and claimed the cook book, and then subjected to all of Pieapples’ baking experiments]Barkbear[/abbr] as the man’s new wooden leg foot was checked over by [abbr=formally just Fern]Fernfreind[/abbr]. “And if you tilt it back a bit. Yup. circle around. Yup that’s good too,” the kneeling [druidic adventurer] informed the [apprentice druid] as the wooden deer leg, which had some nice leafy greenery actively growing on it, moved about as she instructed till she was satisfied. “Look’s like you're all set to go. Just don’t go running into battle before a bit more practice. Or else you might end up breaking your other leg and end up like [abbr=formally just Stag, sensing a pattern here?]Stagstep[/abbr]” she joked “Har har” the [forest ranger] who was the subject of the joke laughed dryly, their first run in with their collective Huwu’idang patron having left him looking like a saytar with his pair of replacement legs. His [animal companion] doe seemed to find it funny enough despite being these idiots having coste her 3 legs (they’d grown back) “Are you sure I can't convince you to come?” Pieapple asked her friend as the other elf woman stood up, a question they both knew the answer too, because it had been asked too many times to count now. “No, I’m sorry. I know I said I would, and I still wish I could, but I have a duty now, one bound to the darkwoods” Fernfreind apologized, with a short little bow “I know I know. It's just. I’ll miss you” “Hey, don’t be like that, we can still see each other thanks to you setting up the guild in the Bazaar” Fernfreind insisted, before adding “And to think you almost ended u like these two pulling that off, that must have been some deal” in reference to the two thin scars on one of Pieapple’s arm and leg joints “Ah, ha ha, yes. It really was” the [monarch] replied, having actually gotten those scars due to telling a joke after the negotiations were over “but yes, I suppose we will, but still, it won’t be the same” “No, no it won’t” Fernfriend sighed, before glancing over at stag and asking “still sure your staying? Last chance to get away from me you know~” The elf gave a snort of a laugh and replied, simply “nah I got duties too” “Well don’t let them make you a stranger” Barkbear told the other man, before stepping forwards and wrapping both him and Fernfriend in a big bearhug (somewhat literally, given the mossbear cloak he was wearing), before reaching over and pulling his regal love into the undignified group hug. “Alright that’s enough sapiness, we’ll be here all day otherwise” came a call from an elf leaning against a tree well out of bearhugging range. She was dressed as your prototypical [rouge], masked and covered in dark clothes and thus ironically stood out a lot among the lightly clad elves. She was also practically covered in the new grown knives that looked like great sharp claws made of the same material as thorns were, and her hand made up of a series of vines was never far from them. “Alright Alright [abbr=offhandedly mentioned (and unnamed) in the cave exploration quest, injured off screen afterwards]Sleektooth[/abbr], calm it, now is exactly the time for sapiness. Now come give your friends a hug” Barkbear demanded, before putting his new foot to the test by chasing after the antisosial [rouge]. After Sleektooth had been captured and forced against her will to be sociable, it was, at last, time for the adventure to begin. The trio of [adventurous] joined the rest of the expedition, as the two would stay behind, stepped back and joined the crowd there to wave them off. “Alright, last call, everyone who’s coming, coming?!” Pieapple called out, just in case some idiot was about to be caught with their pants down and seeking relief while the others moved on without them. “Oop! Wait!” The sound of crashing branches and snapping twigs came from a nearby room, as a figure stumbled into the royal presence of the queen, giving an accidental bow as she planted face first into the ground. When she stood up, the party would see one of the scruffiest elves in existence, with a mossy robe, wild orange hair and some sort of hollowed gourd leaking wild grape wine. She smiled at the group. “Erm, sorry for this, your royalness uh, Berrypie, yes?” “Name is Pican, most people call me Pumpkin though. Yeah.” she sniffed, adjusting herself as much as she could, given her state. “Phew, avoided sneezing. Good. Wouldn’t want to waste wine, or this pretty wooden palace.” The guild’s briefing on the woman would confirm her name, or at least, the nickname. It also said her class: [vagabond], another rather to deny fact, given her looks. What was puzzling was perhaps what had led her to be part of such a high prestige group, many had tried to get a spot after all. “How would sneezing waste the wine?” Sleektooth murmured to Barkbear while Pieapple leaned in to listen to the guild [secretary] they had with them whisper the [vagabonds] info to her. The details put an odd smile on the [monarch]‘s face as she corrected “It’s Pieapple actually. Blame Lecktoria” and then reached out a hand and offered it to her to shake “lovely to meet you Pumpkin. Are you, ah, holding up ok there?” Pumpkin cleared her palm against her skirt and shook hands with the queen, smirking. “Yeah. Sorry. All the spores from the underground have given me a bit of an allergy. Most elves don’t struggle with that though. Just me.” she picked up her reed scarf and put it over her face, it made her look weirdly mysterious, despite the pathetic entrance. Sleektooth was sure she did it better. “You guys want to go to that strange tower by the lava lake yeh? Dangerous route, but possible… if you don’t take the path down the uh, putrid lake with the glowing stones… or the normal lake, it has a giant cave penguin issue, eats the boat and you whole, they do.” “That we do, that we do, and that is, of course, why we need you” Pieapple replied, as much telling herself and her friends and flowers that as she was agreeing with the [vagabond]’s words. “Are you shu-” Sleektooth began to ask, but the [monarch] who had a map of the underground in her head and as a result knew just how much she didn’t know about it cut her off with a hissed “yes! Yes we do” “We then… Welcome aboard!” Barkbear said stepping forwards and clapping Punmpkin on the back and then basically pulling her along into the group “Come along now, let's be off, and you can regale us with your tales of underground exploration!” [...] “And then I uh, It was me, the pit of lava, and a very angry jellyfish.” she hummed, moving her arms about. “Thinking it was my demise, I drank up the last of my wine, but I choked on it, going like, poh poh poh and coughing. But guess what. That counted as invoking Po’s name and my precious wine was more than a sacrifice. It went like, bwahhhhh in flames and the idiot jellyfish got filled with hot air and flew all the way up, getting itself snagged by a stalactite crab. [lucky] me, yeah?” “For sure for sure” Sleektooth agreed, strolling along side the [vagabond] to whom she had warmed up to immensely “Girl i’d have loved to see the look on that fish’s face when it flew off” “I don’t think they have faces” Barbear pointed out “Ye ye, they are called fish because they float in the air. They are more like blobs with lots of tentacles.” “Well, still, bet it was funny” Sleektooth readjusted her statement “Well, hopefully you’ll be able to share some of that luck with us” Pieapple added cheerfully, before muttering “because we’re going to need it” to herself “Well, the hard bits are the small stone bridges over a bottomless pit. That bit… we will need luck. But the rest, just be careful and be prepared.” Pumpkin adjusted her own supplies and the mossy cape she wore. “If things get bad, let me be the bait, my clothes are very sour tasting so anything that eats me, will spit me! Just gotta hope it doesn’t chew…” Pieapple shuddered visibly at the mention of being eaten, while Barkbear wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulder. “Eh, it won’t come to that I’m sure. We can handle ourselves in a fight just fine” Sleektooth insisted, quick drawing a knife in an attempt to demonstrate this, but the fact that she did this using her vine-y replacement hand did put a bit of a damper on that. “I wouldn’t rate us that highly. Fernfreind and, ironically, Stagstep where the ones who had pure combat classes, where as we three have a mix due to being out of the action for… varying amounts of time” Pieapple countered. Her two companions had retired fairly early on and had only recently got back on the path of the [adventuror] while she herself had been leveling by means of baking and statecraft for a while now. “Which is why we have help, yes?” Barkbear reassured her, gesturing to the varicose other [adventurous] scattered throughout the convoy. There where the fish scaled leaf sharks (who could make impressive leaps using their [float like a fish] skill), the boar twins (who rode into battle on a pair of tamed tuber-boars) or the titan blades (a group of [warriors] who where towering even for elves and who used massive swords) to name just the themed groups. “They can handle anything the dark woods could throw at them, so they should be just fine down here too” Barkbear insisted, before adding tentatively “right?” [hider=prestige/spirit] -- Adventurer’s Guild: Start 8 -3 to invent plant prosthetics: the ability to use animated plants as replacement limbs. Requires at least a few levels of [druid] or other plant friendly classes to pull off, and higher levels in those will generally give extra skills related to using them better, going from just a bit better than pegleg/hook to cybernetic augmentation esce bodily enhancement (although a person that high level would probably be superhuman anyway) +1 for significant role +1 for colab +1 for 10,000+ chars End 8 -- Pumpkin Start: 0 +1 mentioned +1 featured in a post unrelated to their creator god +1 collab +1 5000+ characters +1 10000 characters End: 5 [/hider] [hider=might usage] Lektoria: -1 MP: Elven Vagabond Hero: Pumpkin - 2 AP: creation of varied underground fauna (Mushireens, Cave Jellyfishes, Cave Penguins, Cave Dinosaurs, Rock Crabs. Tubberlings, Tumblesnake among many, many other wacky creatures) 0 MP 0 AP Remain [/hider] [hider=summary] Pieapple’s expedition to claim her kingdom begins at last. With her are not stag and fern, because they are staying behind due to being indebted to a big deer. Instead she is joined by the two other party members from the first underground exploration, Barkbear and Sleektooth, both of whom have come out of retirement thanks to new limb replacement technology solving their career ending injuries. They are joined by the lovable [vagabond] Pumpkin, who ontop of being a user of Po’s fire magic, has also traveled the underways a lot on her own, and is thus acting as their guide. Also a bunch of other elves are along for the ride so that the kingdom can have a population that does not consist entirely of Pieapple and Barkbear’s spawn. [/hider]