Episode 12: This mayor is annoying

OK, so last episode had us returning to the town in the wee hours of the morning and finishing up resting, eating, spell acquisition and such. Divine castors like Lutor, Fizzledorp, and Meghan have prayer routines to do; Malek has spell book to study; and Thonk our "fist mage" spends time with paints and such. So that he can "cast fireball" of course. :)

Anyway once it actually became morning a couple of the more people oriented party members (Fizzledorp and Malek) went to talk to the Mayor, to try to get him to agree to meet with Shinara. The mayor, he is a classic politician. Doesn't know hardship, is used to his mansion and servants, his big task is hand shaking and taking care of contracts for the town. And now he's living in the woods and it's not going well for this pampered city boy.

The mayor was decidedly unhappy that we brought a werewolf back into the camp, but was OK with it after he was informed she was restrained (she's not). He then announced there was nothing he could do for her because there is a large beast out in the woods scaring off the hunters and all of the villagers are going to starve. Essentially anyway. Fizzledorp asked if the mayor wanted us to go deal with this large beast, and this is where it was good Meghan wasn't there. He proceeds to pull out the contract he has with the Talons for our services and reads the legalese. So Fizzledorp and Malek told the mayor we were going to go take care of the large beast, but he had to sit down and talk with Shinara as she wants this to end as peacefully as possible. He did agree to do that after we came back.

And we're off to find this large beast, Shinara is with us. I'm glad for her assistance as this is her deity's area we're entering. After some time travelling, the normal woods sounds went away and there was the sound of something large crashing up ahead. So we sent our two sneaky souls - Malek and Vohn - ahead with Paul and us loud ones stayed put. OK, Meghan isn't loud, she's just not as sneaky as Malek and Vohn, and she can have communication with Paul so we don't lose track of the two parts of the party.

Paul is flying over-watch while the two sneaky ones proceed forward to find out what we're dealing with, and not long after they left us Paul sends back a "oh crap" feeling*, dive bombs the two sneaky ones while bee-lining straight back to the main party. Luckily they understood Paul's actions and returned to us quickly

Meghan informed the party that there was an incoming issue so please be prepared, and promptly turned into a mountain lion. Once Vohn returns to the main party, Meghan walks straight up to Vohn - looking him straight in the eye since we're the same height at this point - and does a classic cat headbutt and then zoomed off to hide.

We get set up behind some trees when two Large wolf like creatures come into view. They look wolf like but very very big and not quite right. Let's call them nightmare beasts for now, I think they did have a name but I can't quite remember. So we set up and start attacking these things, they are very much not natural even if we're not entirely sure what they are.

Meghan asked Paul to go sit atop a tree and pull over-watch as these are way beyond his abilities.

The rest of us set about the business of dispatching these things. Meghan decided to take the first round to stalk one of the creatures. Everyone else picked one of the nightmare beasts and unloaded their damage of choice on them. Then the two nightmare beasts moved - super fast movement rate - to get opposite of each other and let loose with a frost blast sort of breath weapon. Did quite a lot of damage to a good chunk of the party, this is not good. Meghan and Paul were unharmed.

And that was the end of our lunch hour this day!