0304: Role the Dice: Asteriskos Sapphirus – “Session” 3, Part 1 (2024)

Title:Role the Dice: Asteriskos Sapphirus
Author:Travezty
Media:Tabletop RPG
Topic:Dungeons & Dragons
Genre:Adventure / Romance
URL:Chapter 4
Critiqued by BatJamags, Kane, and Silabar the Librarian

Hello once again, wardens and lunatics! Welcome back to this fic. To recap-

Department of Ominous Foreshadowing Agent Trilby: Don’t bother.

… Oh god.

Kane: That bodes ill.

Silabar: How so?

Agents Trilby and Derby are from the Department of Ominous Foreshadowing. Everything they say bodes ill.

A/N:WHAT’S UP, MUCKACHUNGAS!?

We’re… really sticking with that, are we?

It’s Travez!

Do you really think you need to remind us who you are in the fourth chapter?

And I’m here to bring you the first chapter of the next arc of our journey!

More specifically, you’re here to bring us the customary superfluous marathon author’s note preceding the first chapter of the next arc of our journey.

So for the previous arc, I decided to name the previous arc the “Flowers for Algernon” Arc.

Even though it had nothing to do with flowers, so you were just overexplaining a reference.

And this next arc is going to be called “Red vs Blue” and I think you guys can guess what this one means.

You will be ripping even more things off? Because otherwise I’ve got nothing.

Now before we begin this arc, I am going to reiterate that for each Arc, I will solemnly swear to do my best to make each Session in each Arc be at least 5,000 words long

Kane: Count yourself at liberty to do much less.

(not counting the Author’s Notes),

Much, much less.

and each Arc being at least 3-5 Sessions long, at minimum.

You said three before!

On that note, I need to bring up that I recently obtained the new book for 5E called “Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse”, which brings in a huge cubic buttload of new rules for most of the races and the more iconic monsters.

Mostly it just cuts rules (and lore) in favor of “*Shrug* Do whatever, I guess, I’m not your boss.”

Uh, ahem, Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes were books that added a bunch of new monsters and a few playable species. Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse re-compiled all this material with very minor rules modifications and less lore for reasons I am still fuzzy on. Tome‘s lore sucked anyway, so Volo’s is the only real loss and even that doesn’t really matter, but Multiverse‘s sheer superfluousness annoys me on principle.

As such I will be changing the character races from the Legacy Versions to the Modern Versions.

Which are not that different, so nobody cares.

However, I am also planning on getting the book “Spelljammer: Adventures in Space” for the new races and backgrounds.

Spelljammer is another D&D setting. Basically the game’s owners decided that sci-fi was selling well and told the designers to make a sci-fi setting. For a fantasy game. Yeah. Well, the designers proceeded to make “D&D IN SPAAAAAAAACE” as the most shamelessly over-the-top self-parodic exercise in hilarity they could manage, mostly based on outdated models of the cosmos. Basically, each D&D world exists in a crystal sphere with the stars as points of light shining through the interior. Outside are flows of flammable gas called phlogiston which runs between the many spheres. Magical vessels called spelljammers, propelled by magical artifacts called helms, can traverse both the interior space and the phlogiston. Traversing this space are factions such as the ooze-like plasmoids, the anthropomorphic hippo mercenaries the giff, and the astral gnomes, whose ships are powered by giant space hamsters running in hamster wheels. (They then bred miniature giant space hamsters. These rodents of usual size do indeed exist.)

Silabar: I love space hamsters.

… Please don’t say “to eat.”

Silabar: What kind of monster do you take me for?!

A… dragon…?

*Awkward silence*

Anyway, then, Fifth Edition’s quest to make everything about the stupid “Great Wheel” plane system kicked in, and the new version of Spelljammer takes place in the Astral Plane, a place mostly notable for being boring and empty. It does have Space Clowns as monsters, though, so that’s a thing.

But that is for another time!

Kane: Which is of course why we are hearing about it now.

Anyway, thanks to me obtaining “Monsters of the Multiverse” I can now modify the characters,

I don’t care.

and bring in two new ones that I wanted to do but I couldn’t due to one of them being a Kenku, and their speech problems driving me crazy!

You have not developed the characters you have in the slightest.

Also, kenku are little raven or crow dudes. Their concept used to be that they were cursed to only be able to mimic sounds they’ve heard and not form words of their own. Then they became playable in Volo’s Guide, and it turned out that that’s really hard to play at the table. So rather than acknowledge that kenku weren’t a great choice for a player species, Wizards decided to just nuke their lore and make them generic bird guys, even though they already had playable bird guys with the aarakocra.

And the author, then, (a) wanted to write a kenku; (b) was so lazy he decided he literally could not do it with the old speech limitation; (c) thought he needed a sourcebook’s permission to ignore this limitation even though he happily contradicts official lore in numerous other places; and (d) could not use an aarakocra (which were introduced in a free online PDF supplement, so it’s not just not having the book).

So be prepared for two more players!

By which you mean two more characters in this narrative story you are writing which is still not a game.

One more thing I need to bring up, in this chapter, I will be bringing in 3 new characters into this story, in which I don’t hold all the credit for their creation,

*Shadow Warriors intensifies*

so instead of introducing the characters here, I will bring up their people of Origin.

Their… people… of… origin…?

Silabar: Your world only has humans, right?

First off is a new Fanfiction user by the username ofRune20006he has been a friend of mine for about a year now and it’s thanks to him I actually came up with something interesting for his character,

And as we have seen, coming up with something interesting is not something this author usually does.

and for the record he is a Drow-Simp, so if any of you guys don’t like the Dark Elves, please walk away now.

Well, that’s… oddly insulting for also being defensive. (I think I infodumped the Drow back in the third riff.)

Next isEvowizard25, they are another good friend of mine whose first and only D&D Character inspired me to create one based on them, though i hope to give them a better ending, or at least a better death, in this story!

Given the promised hundreds upon hundreds of chapters and the delivered eight, counting the Mountain of Front Matter, I am skeptical.

Finally there isD3lph0xL0v3r, and they have been an acquaintance of mine for about a year or two, and they are a fan of my My Hero Academia stories, and once I promised them to create a D&D Version of Fumikage Tokoyami, so here I am, keeping that promise as best as I can, though I hope that I do a good job imitating that edgy character.

*Shadow Warriors intensifies more*

Also, I don’t know who that is, but on the tags list it goes.

So anyway, let’s get down to brass tacks…

He says, still an entire paragraph away from something which is closer to but does not actually constitute content.

So the next step on our journey begins, and I am sure you’re going to like the two I will be bringing up in a little bit. So I guess that’s enough out of me for now!

Kane: More than enough.

Please be sure toFollow, Favorite, Review, and ShareThis story with any and all of those you know who love Dungeons and Dragons! Catch ya on the Flipside!NAT 20!

Silabar: And now we begin the chapter?

No.

Session 3: Return of an Old Friend

The old friend in question being infodumps! The author has helpfully decided to put off starting the f*cking chapter by summarizing the entire fic to this point. Kind of.

Our Story began when a young human from the Realm of Earth, Traves Medina, had died in his own world

We were never told he died. He assumed it and seemed to have been corrected by not-Bahamut.

and his soul, though heavy with the sins of his past,

What sins?

Kane: Poor writing.

… Okay, fair.

had been summoned to Mount Celestia.

(Which may have been an illusion.)

Confused and terrified that he was to receive punishment, Traves started questioning his presence there, only to be met with the Platinum Dragon God, Bahamut,

(Who may have been Tiamat in disguise.)

and his Seven Golden Guardians. Upon being told that the World that Traves had forged

(Read: Piled together out of stuff he stole from every other canon he could get his hands on and then pasted it over top of a map of real-world earth with no regard for the actual places he’s mangling.)

was under threat of being destroyed, Bahamut offered the human a chance at redemption for his sins

What sins?!

in exchange for saving the world he saved, and possibly a true chance at happiness should he accept. After some banter and thinking over the offer,

(And so, so, so many game mechanics.)

Traves was reborn into the World of Anora as a Sapphire Dragon

Silabar: Who still is not sapphire.

named Drugo’Naigo, the Son of a Sapphire Greatwyrm and an arrogant and foul dragoness.

Upon completing his backstory and finding himself in the Material Realm, Traves felt ill, so much so that, like George of the Jungle, crashed into a tree.

… Seriously? Seriously? Tone, author. Manage it.

Injured and losing consciousness, a winged figure found the dragon and brought him to his campsite, where, upon waking, was introduced to Drugo as the Tiefling Cleric named Damosarion.

Kane: Who is not a tiefling.

Silabar: And shouldn’t be a cleric.

And might be a slaver.

The two spent a good hour or two conversing and getting to know one another over some roast boar, and soon made their way to a town named Long River, where they learned of a party that was being formed to take care of an ongoing giant rat problem.

Despite not thinking they exist.

Kane: Stop.

Joining them was a Druid named Ember, a Blood Hunter named Annamina, a Soulknife named Fiona, and a Ranger named Longclaw.

I still find it hilarious how these two join a pre-existing group that was already working on the quest and yet are automatically presumed to be the leaders being joined by the others both here and in the original chapters.

Also, why do you call Sly Blooper out as a soulknife, her subclass, when you described every other party member by class?

Drugo quickly became the center of attention

Such is the way of the Stu.

for two of the ladies

… Such is particularly the way of the Stu.

as Ember had found the dragon to be adorable, whilst Fiona studied him as if appraising a gemstone. The group quickly got to know one another, and Drugo actually bonded with Longclaw’s Drake companion, Ghost.

Shame we didn’t actually get this character development, unless learning everyone’s names and that Ghost exists at all counts as “bonding.”

Unfortunately, the group was unexpectedly given some powerful mead, in which the group found out that Drugo couldn’t hold his liquor and nearly attacked his new party members. Thinking quickly, Damos knocked out their belligerent comrade and cured him of the drinkable toxins flowing through his body,

Are we seriously recapping this nonsense? If it had been as funny as the author seems to have thought it was supposed to be, I might not have been entirely disinterested in it the first time, but I still would be now, and it wasn’t, so I was, so I especially am.

Silabar: Your language has… quirks, but I cannot identify anything it’s done to warrant such cruelty.

and the other set out to work. Damos, Longclaw, and Fiona found their way to the Temple of Obad-Hai, where they not only learned about the backstory of the Wererat that was causing trouble,

but also that the

Kane: -priest was the leader of the “underground” resistance?

Ratman may have been slowing down a possible Abyssal Invasion of the town by forcing the farmers to destroy the crops they were growing in the tainted soils.

Did we learn any of this? Because… there have been a few times when the author brought up something that I thought was not established only to check back and discover it was and I was just too bored to notice, but I recall snarking this section pretty thoroughly and I’m pretty sure I don’t remember anything actually explaining the initial stated problem of “giant rats attacking our farms.” We were just supposed to accept that the rats were the good guys on no evidence. Like, Burgrave Margrave Landgrave Math revealing himself as a glabrezu was basically the first time any of the protagonists had any actual evidence for the backstory they were being fed.

Meanwhile, Mina and Ember were investigating one of the farms when they were suddenly ambushed by a pack of Abyssal chickens.

Oh, so you reread your writing and realized that Puff didn’t discover the evil chickens of doom? (lol…as you can see theyre very random)

If not for the timely arrival of their black sapphire companion, who nearly gave his life to save his new friends, then Mina and Ember would have been eaten alive by the demonic poultry.

First of all, you wrote this sentence with a straight face.

Second, you still haven’t given up trying to make almost dying to chickens sound like an achievement.

With the timely arrival of the guards to clean up the mess and tend to Drugo’s injuries,

*The riffers hold up their Generic Guard Captan foam fingers*

an imp messenger informed the group of what Team A had found out.

Silabar: Who or what is… Team… A…?

In 2022, an adventuring unit who may or may not be on crack were isekai’d into a bad D&D campaign for crimes that the fic only just now saw fit to tell us they committed. These idiots did not escape from a minimum security chicken coop but made it to the Long River underground anyway. Today, they are still wanted by no one whatsoever, they survive as soldiers of misfortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, you still shouldn’t hire… Team A.

Silabar: That did not help in the slightest.

After discussing their findings that night at the Inn, the group discovered the Ratmen Leader, Algernon, the son of the town noble’s daughter and a powerful Archdruid, turned Wererat, had been trying to avenge his father who had been unjustly burned alive by his grandfather, and save the town from the demonic plot to open a portal into the Abyss.

Silabar: A true tragedy of antecedents.

Kane: This is why I don’t associate with my family.

Silabar: I meant grammatical ones!

Thankfully, with the commotion that Mina and her group caused, the Town Guard had been spending the rest of the day cleaning up the abyssal chickens that had been hiding in the farms,

(Without nearly dying.)

(A generic guard NPC actually is weaker than an abyssal chicken in the game’s stats, by the way, so these guys should have been in danger.)

Silabar: Not with the keen leadership of the unnamed guard captain.

*Captan

and quickly formed up, along with the Ratmen and Priests of the town to deal with the Abyssal Threat. After storming the manor, our heroes discovered that the Noble Lord of the Town,

Kane: Who still lacks any actual title.

though angry at his daughter’s recklessness, was going to allow the marriage between his daughter and the Archdruid to happen, only for the man to become possessed and devoured by a Glabrezu Demon.

Not that any of this stuff about the marriage was actually explained in the first place in this summary, mind you.

Fortunately for our heroes, the Glabrezu had sacrificed much of it’s power to find Algernon and infect him with Lycanthropy, so as such, he was nowhere near his full power.

Kane: You do not say.

A brief but fierce battle ensued against the demon, with Ember opening up with a Faerie Fire Spell that granted Fiona the necessary opening to deal a heavy blow to the demon, though the spell was ended early once the Glabrezu realized what was going on.

Are we seriously going to get another blow-by-blow of the entire fight?

Shortly after, everyone joined in, with Damos declaring the Oath of Conquest to unleash a powerful Guiding Bolt at the Demon,

Kane: Even though he is still not a paladin.

Silabar: And a paladin actively sworn to a fiend would be an oathbreaker.

joined soon after by Mina whose training had caused her to unleash a fierce bolt from her Dragon Wing Hand Crossbow.

I… guess you could say that her training was an indirect cause of shooting the guy, but… mostly she just… shot… the… guy…?

Their enemy brutally beaten and nearly dead, Ember revealed herself to be Anastasiya Elin, the Heir to the Throne of Suncradle’s Empire of Russia, to which she beheaded the demon.

Revealed-? I guess it was only in the boring character bios at the beginning, so maybe the others didn’t know this, but it wasn’t really much of a reveal since you already explained this at painful length to the audience.

The Celebrations

YEAH-HOO

taking place the next day saw everyone grow stronger from this, and as a show of gratitude by Algernon and the People, the party was given much in gold and gemstones, with Drugo receiving a great reward in the form of a Skull Bowl and Skull Cup made from the skull of the Glabrezu, the very first additions to his future hoard…

Silabar: The skulls of your enemies are not normal objects to hoard!

Kane: There are normal objects to hoard?

Silabar: Also, do not put demons in your mouths, children.

Now, as we end the Flowers for Algernon Arc, what new adventures await our heroes…?

And finally, the recap ends. I’m honestly impressed that a fic for a canon with no set narrative somehow managed to earn the plot regurgitation tag, but it has paid for it in gallons of word vomit.

It has been three days since the group had defeated the Glabrezu who had threatened the town. Over the past few days, Damos, Father Dorian, and Ember have been working on cleansing the land of the demonic corruption caused by the Abyssal Portal, using a combination of holy water and druidcraft, the river and the fields have been purified and made clean.

Silabar: Holy water is getting to be more common than the normal kind.

Once cleared, Drugo did what all Sapphire Dragons do best

Silabar: Plan a military campaign? Consume oversized arthropods? Scream mind flayers to death?

and started utilizing his natural affinity for digging to plow the fields for the farmers,

Silabar: I suspect you have significantly overestimated the degree of overlap between the skillsets of tunnel-digging and farming.

You know, if the entire crop was corrupted, these guys are probably going to get very hungry this year. A Russian ruler deliberately causing a famine in Ukraine… now why does that sound familiar?

I hate this f*cking fic.

as Longclaw aided in planting the seeds and getting the first sprouts blooming with his own Druidcraft, whilst Mina and Fiona focused on keeping watch over the town, as well as rooting out any remaining Abyssal Threats. Over these past few days, the group has been working together with the townsfolk to get them back up and running, the People of Kyiv smiling as their saviors do far more than their duty required of them.

However, after the Third Day, the group decides it is time for them to move on, in which they then take notice of a man in blue robes sitting at a table within the Inn they have been calling home for the past few days.

“Please, somebody help me! My home is being beset by a dragon!” The Old Man says, looking at the people who are trying to eat.

Kane: He entered the inn and then sat down at his own table just so he could accost other diners with his troubles, but did not bother actually approaching any of them?

“A Dragon you say?” Drugo asks, walking over to him, “What Kind of Dragon?”

The Arbitrarily Capitalized Kind.

Silabar: They are very Rare; Legends say they have Capitalization Breath, but I Suspect they Merely Yell Very LOUDLY.

“It is a Red Dragon!

Silabar: Ah! More of the reason I’m actually here!

Silabar: Assuming roughly equal age and spellcasting ability, red dragons rival gold ones for the most powerful type. They breathe fire, and they favor mountains for lairs, though they have poor taste in this respect and favor lone, ugly, rocky things with no snow at all. Never having the chance to have snowball fights as wyrmlings likely goes a long way to explaining their disposition: sour, prideful, and solitary even by draconic standards. Where alignment restriction applies, they are typically Chaotic Evil.

Basically your “classic” dragon, with a side order of even more direct cribbing from Tolkien than usual given that the descriptions for their favored lairs tend to match the Lonely Mountain pretty closely.

It’s taken up residence at Moldoveanu Peak!” The Old Man says,

Looks like… real mountain in Romania. The peak seems to be pretty narrow; not sure precisely where you’d put a dragon.

But the author no doubt googled “tallest mountain in Romania” and called it a day.

“It’s terrorizing the villages north and south of the of said mountain!”

of said mountain!”

said

… Battle stations, everybody! Lorenzo’s back!

*Bats ducks under the desk*

*The guests look on, nonplussed. They know not what horrors he has witnessed.*

“Wait, you came all the way here from Romania?” Annamina asks,

Passing up most of Romania itself, the entirety of Moldova, and the substantially closer major Ukrainian cities of Odesa and Lviv, no less.

Then again, Kyiv is being written as a remote town near the Russian border some f*cking how, so who knows where the f*ck anything is in relation to anything else.

to which the man looks to her and kneels.

Kane: From a sitting position?

“Wai-“

“Princess Annamina Van Helsing!

… Oh, yeah, this fic is so boring I forgot she was also a princess, maybe. Was that of “Transylvania” (urgh) or the timeline-butchering “Holy Empire of Rome?”

It is you! I was hoping the rumors were true that you were spotted here!” The old man says,

They’ve been here, what, five days? Six? How fast can rumors spread across a few hundred miles?

Kane: Perhaps my homeland has been haphazardly dropped onto this world as well. The Elven Empire’s capacity for gossip is limitless; it is a conundrum to natural philosophers everywhere.

“Please, we need the help of you and your party to deal with this dragon!”

“Wait a minute! I’m still hunting the vampires that slaughtered my mother and father!

No you’re not, you’re dicking around with demonic chickens.

I-” She stops herself as she remembers a lesson from her mother, and she clenches a fist, “Alright then, but we won’t be able to make it back to Romania for well over a week even at a fast pace!”

Then how did rumors reach there?!

“I have just the thing!” The Old Man says, bringing the party outside as what appears to be a carriage built of black wood and steel, and Drugo looks at the thing, wondering something.

Silabar: How a twenty-five-foot-long dragon is expected to fit in it?

“What do you think, your highness?”

Puff the Magic Dragon: No, not your highness, the other highness. Why do we have two princesses again?

“Simple and functional, I like it!” Mina says, but then Drugo walks around it, examining it. “Drugo?”

Oh, wait, that was Unnamed Old Man talking. Author, something I’ve been letting you off the hook for too often because I’ve usually been able to parse it but which there’s really no excuse for: Don’t put one character’s dialogue on the same line as another’s actions.

Also, I feel like “carriage” implies an inherent degree of luxury a bit higher than “simple and functional.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel something beyond the doors of this carriage…!”

Kane: I am hardly surprised the carriage is occupied, but what contrived witchery has led you to “feel” it?

He turns to the old man, “Is this thing enchanted?”

Kane: A carriage not being empty can only be a work of sorcery.

“I am happy you noticed!” The Old Man says, I may be an old man, but back in the day I was one hell of a wizard!

Are there any normal people in this world? The cook is a wererat (I… think), the priest is a rebel, the nonspecific noble is a demon… what’s your beef with civilians?

Silabar: There was… the barmaid, as I recall?

Kane: Who was evidently empowered to hire adventurers on behalf of the town.

Silabar: The guard captain!

Captan.

Kane: Shut up.

Kane: Ahem, you mean the one with an apparently unlimited supply of holy water on his person at all times?

It’s not so much D&D as an MMO. Characters are only interactable if they’re quest-related.

Wait, no, there would still at least be vendors or something.

I still am, but I’ve grown too old and frail to be able to battle a dragon, even one as weak as the one terrorizing the village.

Kane: A halfway competent magic user, let alone a “hell of” one, is typically quite comfortable in disregarding the petty constraints of mundane aging. Even humans, and those things expire if one gazes askance at them.

Kane, you’re half-human.

Kane: Do not remind me.

So I designed this carriage for you all, so that it can comfortably fit up to 6 people inside with a driver and some horses to pull it along!

It’s a fantasy clown car.

Not only that, once each day, you can use this to cast Magnificent Manor and Hero’s Feast, allowing you to be somewhere you can eat and sleep!”

Oh, heaven forbid our glorious heroes be subjected to the indignities of camping and foraging when they can arbitrarily be given magical shortcuts. What kind of adventurers are you idiots, anyway?

Kane: *Muttering* Lucky ones.

Argh, okay, basically, Mordenkainen’s (if you’ve noticed this name appearing a lot, he’s a Greyhawk wizard NPC based on D&D creator Gary Gygax’s old player character in his home games; a lot of the characters from those early games got spells named after them, and Fifth Edition likes to name most sourcebooks after notable NPCs) Magnificent Mansion temporarily creates a pocket dimension with a mansion in it which disappears after like a day or something. It is way higher level than the characters (they’re 4th level; wizards and bards only get access to this around 15th level at the very earliest) because it basically obviates any challenge of survival or finding lodging, it makes night ambushes near-impossible, and while those aren’t huge benefits, it would just feel kind of stupid if a character who’s not a major-league magic user could pull a mansion out of their butt, you know?

Meanwhile, Heroes’ Feast is only slightly lower-level and farts out a pile of food which grants a bunch of buffs including curing all poison and disease and long-term temporary health points. Because I guess Create Food and Water (exactly what it says on the tin) or Goodberry (creates a handful of magic berries each of which can feed someone for a full day; actually lower level than Create Food and Water and feeds more, but available only to druids while several classes can cast the other one) would just be too pedestrian for our special snowflakes.

And some random guy who doesn’t have a name and has at most a rumor that one of these characters might be around here and might be able to help them, appears out of thin air to grant them free castings of these spells whenever they want.

Kane: Obviously a trap. Cast Identify on the contraption. If it is not what the old fool says, kill him and burn it. If it is, you have not yet uncovered the scheme. Take him prisoner and interrogate him telepathically.

Silabar: As utterly insane as that plan is, this does seem awfully… convenient. I don’t think I’d trust it either.

“Can the food be brought out so that I can eat as well?”

…

Seriously?

This man just appeared out of nowhere to give you a magic artifact which will give you daily super magical healing feasts with no cost or effort on your part, all of this indefinitely assuming you get to keep the carriage… and your first reaction is to ask if it’s even more convenient?

“Of course it can!” The old man says, smiling at the dragon. “Though I am not sure if a single dragon wyrmling can pull this thing with so many people! This carriage was designed to utilize four horses…”

Silabar: Except he is inconsistently established to have the size and strength of a young adult dragon, who could certainly pull nearly anything you hitch them to.

“Shall we give it a test?” Drugo asks the old man.

I’d rather move on from this scene, but then if this fic cared about what’s interesting to readers, I wouldn’t have bothered riffing it and thus wouldn’t have discovered the myriad other problems.

“I suppose…” He then sets about trying to hitch Drugo to the Carriage… and failing miserably, as he is shaking too much to try and get the straps on him properly. Mina steps in, helping the old man adjust the harnesses, straps and breeching to be able to fit for Drugo… It doesn’t work… the main problem is that Drugo’s tail is much longer than the current breeching will allow, whilst the straps and bands aren’t fit for a Dragon. However, the stable master and blacksmith, who happen to be watching, offer to help adjust the carriage’s breeching, straps, bands and harnesses for about 2 days of work and about 200 Gold.

Silabar: You could buy an entire carriage and two draft horses for that much! And they’re not even certain Drugo is capable of pulling this one, so they are spending two hundred gold pieces on a test. That’s as many as two thousand silver pieces, and that’s terrible! My friends, I believe you are being swindled.

Finding this reasonable, Mina actually pays for this to be done

Silabar: *Draconic facepalm*

and the men set to work, measuring out Drugo’s body, whilst taking his tail into account. Thankfully, Drugo’s body, sans his tail, is around the right size for that of an average draught horse,

Silabar: I believe the hom*ophone you are looking for is “draf-“

BOOZE HORSE

though the old man says that, based on his experience, Drugo is actually better than any horse he has ever seen,

Silabar: … In which respect?

Kane: And given that the old man is a retired wizard and not indicated to be any sort of rider, driver, stable master, or other person of any particular knowledge or experience with horses… how would he know?

Maybe he’s a better BOOZE HORSE. You know, one of Kane’s adventuring party is a wizard from a respected family of dwarven brewers, maybe I should invite-

Kane: Absolutely not. And in any event, we’ve established that the wyrm cannot hold his liquor.

with the only horses coming close to matching Drugo being that of Nightmares, Pegasi, and Unicorns, and even then it’s cutting it close.

Kane: Nightmares, as one might infer from the sickening pun with which they are named, are ill-tempered fiends in the shape of horses. Pegasi and unicorns are yet more disgusting, being celestial horses with unnecessary appendages.

On that note, we have a minor scene break here, and the Wordcount Gods have decreed that this is the best place to cut the riff, so I’ll have to see you all next time.