Another week down! Let’s Ponder the Orb!
Where we’ve been
This week we hit a milestone - 20 subscribers1! It may seem a low number compared with all of these “how to grow your substack to make money” posts out there saying you need 1k+, but I’m not here to make money2 - I’m here because I enjoy writing! I know every one of these 20 subscribers3 is here because they like what I write, and I’d take that over a silent 1000 any day! So thankyou all for being here!
This week was the longer of the cycle, with Monster Monday exploring the iconic D&D monster, the Mimic, with Worldbuilding Wednesday explaining my reasonings and accomodations behind removing humans from my world altogether, and with Folklore Friday bringing you the tale of The Owl and the Crocodile, a folkloric explanation for Owlbears and Dragons from my world.
Where we’re going
This week, it’s Christmas day on Wednesday, and as such, I have an extended version of Worldbuilding Wednesday, from 3 of the questions I got about my world in response to this Note of mine:
At the time of writing, I had 3 excellent replies, and 3 very good questions about magic, conflict, and dessert-based wizard feuds. The usual stuff. My worldbuilding answers will be coming out on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday!
Now, some more of the campaign!
The Cheese Chasers, Chapter 3
Last week, the party had arrived in the town of Steepfield and spent a merry couple of hours beating up Brock O’Lee, the halfling owner of the Fallen Demon tavern and adoptive father to Thunderbrand. At the end of the session, they were approached by a gnome who introduced himself as Enzo Copperhead, who invited them to join him tomorrow morning to see his inventions.
In the morning, the party awoke and took breakfast in the Fallen Demon - Grizz opting for two portions, and Marva eating a selection of bugs which she brought with her, avoiding the food offered.
After breakfast, the party made their way to the huge new tower in the lower portion of town, which was destroyed4 in the opening oneshot of the campaign, and they take in the rebuilding efforts; the area is now clear of rubble and fallen towers, and a great swathe of land has been cleared for rebuilding. In the middle of this stands the new tower - a looming behemoth of metal, stark alongside the slightly ramshackle construction around it. Several new bridges link it to other buildings alongside it, but it stands clear of the tops of the buildings around by a full quarter of it’s height.
Inside, they meed a halfling receptionist who sends them up to meet Enzo, the gnome who met them last night. He greets them warmly, and asks if they would like to see his newest creation, which he has built for the Cattle Drive this year.
They follow him down to the Slaughterer’s district of town, where great warehouses stand to house, slaughter, and prepare the huge cattle the drive brings in each year. The one Enzo approached has an odd feature - standing stones, etched with runes, stand around the walls of it. Grizz, the Were-bear Barbarian, has to pass a wisdom save against the runes, which seem to incite a fear inside him. Inside, Enzo shows them his creation - 2 rows of 3 iron golems, standing silently. Their hands are blades, and the floor is a thick metal grille.
Enzo explains that he has built this as an autonamous slaughterhouse5, which is carefully tuned for maximum safety and efficiency. The runestones, he explains, have two purposes- to keep wild animals and strays out, and to keep the golems in. The Golems are tuned to a single purpose - to slaughter any 4-legged animals which enter the building6. The party express some concern about this, but Enzo has utter faith in his measures and explains that they work significantly better than hiring butchers once a year, and it’s safer for the workers if they only have to interact with the cows after they have been processed.
Then he takes the party back up to his Tower, where he shows them the view from the top. He points out the new additions to many rooftops - large, cross-latticed ballista, which they can see hold 4 bolts apiece. He refers to them as “Hashbow”, and explains that he has made them to help defend the town from aerial threats. When asked what threats, he reels off a list of monsters which have never been seen in Steepfield before, including Dragons, which are all but extinct in Arenstar, and then changes the subject.
He points out the huge copper tank on the side of Sentinel Hill, which is filled with water, and the web of copper pipes he has added to the buildings, to bring fresh water to the upper floors of the town without the need for ten minutes of pumping, or winching buckets up and down.
This is when Marva, the warlock, snaps “Why are you showing us all this?”, and he gets to his point.
Enzo’s daughter, Skye Copperhead, is insistent on joining the Cattle Drive this year, and he wants someone capable to look after her. When he heard that the party (who are referred to as the Cheese Chasers - see footnote 1) were in town, he knew that they would be perfect to look after her. He offers them 100gp to take care of her during the cattle drive, and to keep her from getting hurt. The party accepts. Afterwards, Enzo adds: “She is going to be so excited - she loves you guys!”.
That afternoon, the party and their mounts assemble outside of Steepfield, and meet their charge - Skye Copperhead, a gnome who wields a hammer (called the Skyehammer, which she made herself) and who rides a monowheel called Clanker, which also has it’s own, smaller, Hashbow. She stands out like a sore thumb in the crowd of halflings on horseback, but then so do the adventurers, riding a pony, a giant goat, a wolf, and a silver drake. There is also a peacefully protesting group of halflings, who are outright against the slaughter of animals and want the town to stop eating meat. They are cultists of the Cult of Vey’Gahan7, who preaches that they eat only vegetables.
The group sets out North to ride to the plains, track the Giant Cows, and then herd them back to Steepfield to be counted, thinned out, and then either released back to the plains or slaughtered for meat.
The party travels North with the Halflings, and a few hours later they spot movement in the woods to their right, and they root out a strange individual - a skinny halfling in a robe of sackcloth, and clutching a similarly wrapped package to his chest. After being threatened with arrows and swords, he comes out peacefully, and hands over the package. He is rambling about how they are doomed to fail and that they will not harm the cows. Reaching into the bag, Marva pulls out a familiar and unwelcome book; the Book of Emmental Evil.8 They establish that the man is a cultist of the Cult of Vey’Gahan, and that he recieved the book from the same trio of Halflings who caused all the trouble 2 years ago, and they send him back to Steepfield to be locked up, keeping hold of the book. The group then continues Northward, with Skye asking them all questions the entire time.
At the end of the day’s travel, the Halflings start preparing a base of operations on the edge of the grasslands - making corrals for the cattle, and establishing how to search for the herd. The majority of people here are to facilitate the herding of the cows back to Steepfield, and in the end 3 groups are sent out to find the cows - the party and Skye, accompanied by a herder, and 2 groups of halfling herders.
The party heads out, skirting the forest to the East of the grasslands, and they make a grim discovery - a dead and emaciated wolf, whose ribcage looked like it has burst open from inside. They find another similar animal - this time a bear - further along, looking equally starved and burst open. The party are contemplating why this would be, but cannot work it out.
Further travels North sees them find 2 more exploded, emaciated wolves, and the party starts getting worried. Some of the players start to get a little metagamey, discussing that it might be Slaad, and then they crest a hill, and they see the herd of cattle for the first time. I describe it as being on a similar scale to the mass migration of wildebeest, except that the wildebeest in this case are the size of elephants, and they pause to work out just what they are supposed to do.
The herder steps in (I forget his name) and says that he’s never seen the herd this big before, and that it doesn’t make sense. Then he says that they need to find the Matriarch, and get her to lead the herd back toward Steepfield. The Matriarch, he explains, will be the biggest and most aggresive of the cows, and she has a big ring in her nose, to help guide her.
The party tells Skye to stay with the herder, and they go to investigate the herd. The cows are huge, and vary between docile and defensive. They eventually find a cluster where there are three cows of about the same size - which is to say, colossal - which look the same - they even have the same markings, which is odd. One of them has a ring in her nose, and they establish that this must be the Matriarch.
They decide their best tactic is to scare her into running toward the town, and proceed to get behind her, and jab her in the rump with a glaive, I believe. The glaive hit, and she jumped away, and a splash of blood came out of the wound, and then something very strange happened.
The wound healed.
And then something even more strange happened.
The blood, bubbling up like the Thing from that John Carpenter movie9, suddenly grows rapidly outwards into a new Matriarch.
The party is flabbergasted. They are also persistent, and Miradan (the Monk) vaunts onto the back of the Matriarch and tries a few different damage types to see what happens, using his flurry of blows.
Acid? New Cow.
Fire? New Cow.
Cold? New Cow.
There is anow a cluster of 7 Matriarchs, tumbling about as they grow spontaneously from the wounds. The repeat blows to her rump also sets the Matriarch in motion, in a big way, and the party become involved in a stampede of huge cattle.
They mostly manage to either clumb on board the cows or ride alongside, and the Monk manages to get a rope onto the Matriarch’s horns to try and get her to steer where he wants her to go. The party tries to herd the cows together, resulting in the cows crashing into one another with sharp horns, which leads to the discovery that it’s not just the Matriarch who’s multiplying, as a sudden burst of huge cattle erupts from the middle of the throng.
Grizz, the Barbarian, has the sudden realisation that the exploded wolves and bears they had been seeing along the way must have been trying to eat the cows, and suffered the results of taking a bite!
The party, through several strength and animal handling checks, manages to get the Matriarch to slow down and stop trying to trample them, and they realise that they can’t bring the cows back like this, and they put two-and-two together to realise they need to talk to the cultist they caught earlier to see what he did.
They begin their journey back to Steepfield, and there ended the session!
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Thankyou all and farewell!
At the time of writing, this was correct. It has since dropped to 19 - and I’m glad that I have people actively choosing, not idly following, and I hope that everyone here is content to be so!
I would, however, absolutely love to make money. But it’s not “why” I’m here!
Except for my Wife, whose email I used at the start to make my “mailing list” and who hasn’t opened a single one 🤣
This was the Steepfield Cheese Chase, which I thoroughly recommend!
My apologies to anyone who has a great dislike for the concepts of slaughtehouses or meat in general, the initial arc of this story may upset you a little. Please rest assured that this is entirely fictitious, and is simply “what the world of Arenstar is like” and not any form of social or political commentary of the state of the world (for more information on “the state of the world”, consider that I felt the need to write this to avoid backlash, then weep for it, for it is already dead).
Might want to keep a note of that one.
Side note - I never anticipated publishing or writing about this, so yeah, it contains a few p*sstakes which might upset those who are attuned to becoming upset at jokes they read on the internet.
Once again, I stress the importance of running the Steepfield Cheese Chase!
I forget the name.