[Dad_Scaper]

I see my last post was 11/8/17, or roughly two months ago. Time for an update!

Our trek through the wilderness was interrupted by an encounter with some kind of small giant, who turned out to be a bit of a softy. He wanted us, it turns out, to clear a few phase spiders out of his hut, because they scared him. The encounter probably should have been pretty easy but for some reason it nearly killed me.

Anyway. With some help from an appreciative giant, we had a good night's rest, and made our way to a dwarven village nearby, where we'd been hired to solve some sort of problem. After some investigation, it turned out the problem was a "yeast ooze" living in the tunnels underground, and messing with the yeast that the dwarves needed to brew ale. The most memorable thing about the battle with the massive ooze was that, during it, our bard turned around and ran away and we were immediately joined by a gnome barbarian who took his place.

My brother, the DM, had finally persuaded the player to drop the fussy bard that he clearly didn't care to play, in favor of a more streamlined character who could rush to the front and slash things up with a giant axe. So that was a good day, partly for the player, and partly for party composition. After all, we'd been in desperate need of a beatstick, and a reluctant bard was a second "face" character we didn't need on top of mine.

Anyway. With the sudden and mighty help of our new barbarian party member, we dispatched the ooze. We picked up our reward and some directions toward Hong Zhou, a river town where our halfling monk Finn hoped to pick up some clues about what happened to his clan and to his family. Hong Zhou turned out be just the kind of place my half elf charlatan sorcerer, Del, loves: a rough and tumble town for gamblers.

So we've been getting to know the town and Del intends to try to ingratiate himself with "the Clasp," the network of thieves' guilds, as an ally, though he is not himself a rogue. When we start the game tonight we will be competing in some sort of dueling competition to entertain the locals and give them something to bet on. Each of us is squared off against some particular bad guy; my opponent is some sort of devil creature.

Hopefully I'll do well enough to impress the lass who runs the local chapter of the Clasp. And, yes, my brother is borrowing heavily from Matt Mercer's material for the campaign setting.