Ep. 1 - 10: The Great Gobbo Revolution Arc
WARNING: "That's for me to know, and you to find out!" This article contains spoilers for The Bannermanes, Episodes 1-10
SUMMARY
Ep.1 - The Door
Bleakburn - The Textile
It all began on New Year’s Day of Year 355, First Moon, when five Bannermanes, strangers to one another, found themselves summoned to The Textile, headquarters of the Bleakburn Bannermanes; the Sacred Skeins, by its Mainstitch: Dr. Amden Gressive Goose. He dispatches them to escort a local Shorthooves tavern keeper by the name of Elenaor Winthrop, from Camp Alverton located south of the town. She is reportedly is in possession of vital intelligence of great interest to the Bannermanes, threatening that failure will result in him personally kicking the party out of the organization.
Before the party leaves on their quest, Early Rise spends time with a mango seller brainstorming ideas on how to make better mangos and mango-related accessories, Dusty Trails unsuccessfully looks for a bounty board, and the rest of the party gets themselves in a little hot water when negotiations about buying two weeks of trail mix from sphinxes goes south because Cher was a little too eager for an excuse to try an intimidation spell and Cryptic Shard rolled a nat 20 intimidation before really thinking about what exactly they were even doing. Dayspring manages to talk sense into people and get them out of the situation before the party finally reconvenes to leave the city.
The original party as summoned by the enigmatic ‘Dr. A. Gressive’, a.k.a. Dr. Amden, Mainstitch of the Sacred Skeins
Between Bleakburn and Camp Alverton
On one night of travel, after the party has made camp near a weird door frame just standing in the middle of the road, Dusty overhears some kind of ‘chittering’ while he’s on watch duty. His initial investigation of a nearby bush only results in the silence of the noise, but he only gets a few steps before a party of gobbos appear in ambush. The fight is quickly over as while the gobbos have superiority in numbers, they are easily scared off by the party proving to be more than an easy target and knocking several of them unconscious. One is taken prisoner while the party scavenges the fallen assailants only to find little of value. The next day they make it to Camp Alverton, where they are promptly greeted by Elanor. After the party then spends some time arguing about what to do with their captured gobbo, including the discussion of what is defined as a warcrime in the country and the eyes of the gods of Astilon when it comes to selling a gobbo. They eventually settle on trying to cook the gobbo to see how it tastes before Elanor somehow manages to drag the party back on track to escorting her back to Bleakburn, abandoning the gobbo in the camp.Episode 2 - Bad Decisions
The next few days are relatively uneventful, the party encountering no trouble escorting Elenor back to her tavern in Bleakburn where she feeds them a promised meal that was a superior alternative to questionable gobbo meat. Following another night of rest, the party returns to The Textile whereupon a new member; the zebra Zander, joins them as they seek recompense from Dr. Amden. After he slams the door behind him, the party is reminded of what he’d told them just a few minutes ago regarding their new mission:Cryptic comforts a kirin mare who is in tears after Amden rejected her ‘stupid’ idea - namely, there’s another mountain range with few mines where there could potentially be a vein of Aetherstone. Then, after spending an inordinate amount of time in town fighting amongst themselves in trying to get supplies, the party finally gets on their way to the mountains near Brashville. They spend a night at Camp Alverton, where the gobbo they left there has acclimated to the settlement and preaches the word of the ‘Ringed One’ a.k.a. Dayspring. This further causes confusion when during their travels, the party encounters some gobbos holding up a pony with sticks and demanding that they hand over the ‘fireworks’. The party tries to be intimidating, but one look at Dayspring and her ring is enough for the gobbos to just start fleeing without question. The pony with the cart thanks them, and mentions that the fireworks are bound for Bleakburn as an order for Founder’s day celebrations, before he and the party head their separate ways.“Alright, ladies, going to make this simple; traveling around Astilon has long plagued us with long travel times and danger. I have been organizing efforts with the Mainstitch in Kalidai and Dakilai to start setting up a teleportation circle for faster travel. I’m not sure how many of you are good with spells but we’re going to need some good minds to put towards that effort and, brutish as they are, anyone who can help out with guarding our squishy little members that don’t know how to properly defend themselves. Be nice to them, they aren’t complete idiots, some parts are clearly just missing. In any case, we need the necessary components and such for those which are rare in their own respects - ever hear of Aetherstone? Well, most people haven’t, either. We need it for proper teleportation links to be made and the only place where we know it exists is in the mines under mount ashborn. Getting there lately, however, been quite a pain ever since things started to go haywire when the liberation of slaves in Bati happened. All ears for any ideas - and may I emphasize ideas that are not stupid, come to me with a stupid idea and we’re going to have a problem. Thank you.”
Millstone
The party makes it to Millstone, where the guards mention in passing that there is a possible problem with werewolves. Upon getting to the local tavern to spend the night, the tavern keeper lets everybody except Cher and Early Rise get cheap rooms, while Cher is forced to fork over an exponentially greater amount for being rude, and Early Rise antagonizes the tavern keeper so much that he decides to challenge her to a duel (making this the third time the party has needlessly tried to start trouble with working people for no reason). He loses initiative and is effortlessly taken out by the tavern keeper before he even gets the chance to attack, his unconscious body thrown out to spend the night in the outdoor stables.Ep. 3 - The Invitation
The party begins a new day by having Early Rise, Dusty Trails, and Zander take their leave of the party to handle their own affairs. Waiting in the tavern, however, are more Bannermanes who are interested in joining the party; a well supplied looking bat pony named Moon Planter and a strange Kirin who only seems to communicate with a trumpet and as such is known as ‘Doot’. Moon Planter immediately gets down to business and is informed about the Autumn Tips being a potential site for Aetherstone speculation. After getting some supplies from a local farm, Moon Planter quickly takes charge of the dysfunctional group, leading them in the direction of Trappersville.
On the way, Doot decides to try sneaking up on Moon Planter and blaring her trumpet in his sensitive ears, having completely ignored the watch duties she was supposed to have and as such lands the party in a brief scuffle against a trio of lions who have taken advantage of the linguistically-challenged kirin. They are effortlessly dispatched and Moon Planter takes the opportunity to skin the two surviving corpses for their pelts.
The Party vs three lions
Trappersville
In Trappersville, a barkeep tells the party that the Fireworks come from Dailai. But then the Bannermanes, once again, antagonize a shop keeper, resulting in an antean cook telling Moon Planter to just eat the waffles he finds below par, but Cryptic scarfs them down to try and defuse the situation. Moon Planter then ‘apologizes’ with thinly veiled obvious insults. Somehow, this ends up working. Later, when the party is back on the road, Moon Planter is approached by a gobbo who hands him an ‘invitation’ which he is instructed is to be read only by ‘The Ringed One’ (Dayspring) and that she is both feared by gobbos, but also is ‘needed’ by them. The contents of the letter are an invitation for her to join ‘The Revolution’ at Bleakburn, with the note giving the staging/meeting ground just outside Camp Alverton. Despite Moon Planter’s criticism of the move that would effectively be backtracking, the party as a group decides to investigate the situation.Ep. 4 - The Revolution
Having received a clue about the location of the friend they were searching for, Cryptic Shard takes leave of the party after they pass back through Trapersville.
As the party heads back to Bleakburn, they pass through Camp Alverton where they are introduced to Tangent Field, a Suncat Warpriest.
They also learn from a guard that the gobbo who they left at the camp previously; Grot, had departed to presumably try and rejoin the gobbos for ‘The Revolution’. Later, they investigate the abandoned attempted gobbo house construction, finding evidence the gobbos were attacked while carrying a payload of fireworks, with an abandoned cache of three sparklers.
]The Party meets Tangent Field
Episode 5: Warboss
The following morning, after the guards retrieve the stolen goods and seal off the smuggler routes, the Bannermanes find themselves joined by Grot who is already waiting for them at Elenaor’s tavern; The Merchant’s Meadery. Additionally, a new recruit to the Sacred Skeins; a gryphon by the name of Fayrock, happens to be in the tavern and quickly throws his lot in with the existing party.
Moon Planter manages to get Grot to behave herself through the incentive of raw chicken, which leads to him obtaining a very healthy supply of what becomes of ‘Friend Chicken,’ being dubbed by Grot as ‘The Great Giver, The One Who Holds The Chicken.”
The party heads to the town jail, where Grot manages to rather easily sway the captive Gobbo to believing she is in fact now the boss of all the ponies, promising chicken and freedom. This devolves from trying to get information about the so-called Revolution to the imprisoned Gobbo declaring The Ringed one as the leader of the Revolution and swearing allegiance to Dayspring - much to Dayspring’s confusion. This continues after Grot exploits the general apathy of the jail guards into letting the captive gobbo - who the part learns is named ‘Grop’ - go free, as the captive gobbo wants Dayspring to drag him with the party to go see Dr. Amden. Whereupon Grot immediately asks of the ‘Bannermane Warboss’ wants to join the Revolution. Dr. Amden is not amused.
Grot starts causing trouble in the bar while Fayrock- the character directly below the fireplace - overhears the commotion
The wilds east of Bleakburn
A few days later, the party reaches the area around the shipwreck, while Moon Planter finds they are being pursued by unidentified bipedal creatures. His careful placing of traps leads to what is identified as a kelpie being trapped, and it is summarily killed by Warboss Ringed One out of concern it could rally others of its kind if it is set free. As it happens, the party finds it had a pack that contained not much of interest, but at the same time a strange necklace with a stone that is positively identified as aetherstone - the resource that they are supposed to be looking for.Episode 6 - Clutch
After Grot loses track of time, she returns to camp to find Grob running around screaming his head off after deciding it was a good idea to dump hot coffee on his head, with Tangent trying to douse him with water. After gathering more resources, Grot explains that their raid on the be kelpies to retrieve the aetherstone will take them into an underwater cave. She also suggests that the party go visit her tribe; the Fatknee tribe, and recruit more ‘boys’ under their Ringed Warboss. Grop, however, explains that the tribe would be over near Bleakburn in preparation for the Revolution that happens in five days, so the party goes to investigate the Kelpies with their existing numbers.The Shipwreck
The party encounters a large group of kelpies milling about the shipwreck, more than the party feels can be taken on in a straight fight. However, Moon Planter decides to try using Grop as a decoy, wearing the skin of a kelpie that was killed earlier, and have him lead the kelpies through traps he’s set up, and the party then can descend and wrap up the remainder.
The plan does not entirely go to plan when Grop fails to draw the kelpies into the treeline and becomes enraptured by the songs of the kelpies. Resorting to plan B, the party goes full murderhobo and charges. Unfortunately, the Kelpies prove to be more of a challenge than the Bannermanes can handle in terms of outright killing them, so through smart use of Tangent’s Silence spell they are able to instead nullify the siren songs of the aquatic creatures. The threat gone, the party runs in to grab a chest of aetherstone from the shipwreck and running.
The risk taken was worth it, netting the party a bounty of some treasures, some magic scrolls, and most importantly: fifty pounds of Aetherstone. The chest itself also was of interest - written on it in Draconic was the name ‘Heatfang’.
The Kelpie-Infested Shipwreck
Episode 7: Snitch
The party managed to make it back to Bleakburn just in time for the Founders Day activities, though the gobbo Grop was not allowed into the city due to lacking any kind of official Bannermanes iconography upon their person. As they wake up in the Textile, they overhear Dr. Amden berating another Bannermane for getting into the town late. However, when shown the Aetherstone in the salvaged chest, the goose gryphon’s demeanor changes to being almost respectful and impressed that the mission was, in fact, successful.
However, he notices the scrawled name on the box and immediately transfers all the contents of it into another container, instructing the Bannermanes that if they find anything else with ‘Heatfang’ written on it in Draconic, they are to report it immediately. He then dismisses all present, including the ‘newbie’ from earlier. As the party leaves, the newcomer introduces herself as the unicorn Lyla.
The party makes a visit to the Sphinx wizard Ankh to deliver the Aetherstone for the teleportation network project. However, while the initial setup of the teleportation circle seems to go well, almost immediately afterward there is a breach of extradimensional entities that appear and must be dispatched.
The Party meets Lyla. Also, the debut of Dr. Amden’s new redesign.
Ep. 8 - Mango’d
Tangent decides that as an apology, the best solution is to get a cake that says ‘I’m sorry’ on it. After realizing this might be a bad idea because she hasn’t seen Amden actually eat anything, the party tries to make an apology card with a ‘note of credit’ to Bond Aids instead. After they manage to get the card signed and prevent Grot from eating it due to her fanatical hatred of any form of written language, the rest of the party departs to start their assigned guard duties while Moon Planter goes to see Dr. Amden and ask for him to lift the punishment. Dr. Amden is surprisingly amicable, telling Moon Planter that he’ll reduce the sentence of duty to be one day but that’s all he’ll allow, before he departs for the guard tower for Bleakburn. Meanwhile, the rest of the party gets their marching orders from the guard captain, who tasks them with recovering illegal fireworks. He mentions in passing they need to be on the lookout for one particular pony by the name of Mango, who has a reputation of making dangerous fireworks bearing his signature that somehow always end up in the wrong hooves during Founder’s Day. Dr. Amden then appears with Moon Planter, telling the party he is reducing their sentence, but that they are not to ever lie to him again, before departing. As the party makes their way through the various festival stalls, the party realizes that the mango seller they met back in the first campaign session is, in fact, the same Mango as the one the guard warned them about. Cher, however, ends up yet again antagonizing a shop keeper - this time a zebra whose unusual dragon eye is concealed by an eyepatch - and the party tries to avoid a public brawl, doubly so given they’re supposed to be on guard duty. Doot somehow manages to make seductive advances towards the zebra shopkeeper, noticing something illegal behind his shop counter, and gets a location to visit that night out of the zebra, but due to illiteracy is unable to divulge this information to the party. Time having been sufficiently wasted, the party then gets back on track and visits the abode of Mango. Whereupon they find he is not at home, with most of the party bickering about trying to throw a rock into a window to break in. Not wanting any part of the trouble, Fayrock stands off to the side where he ends up encountering a bat pony dressed like Robbie Rotten expressing a desire for a rock to actually be thrown. Eventually, Grot throws a rock, but it bounces off the window and is returned quite painfully to sender. And in true Gobbo form, she learns nothing and throws more rocks, which results in the house scoring a critical on the gobbo, and even after the party is made aware that Mango himself is literally standing amongst them, she still wants to resort to burning the house down.
Instead, Doot decides that trying seduction for the sake of Bard stereotypes is the right play, and ends up being brought inside the house by Mango, leaving the rest of the party outside.
Moon Planter, meanwhile, makes the most of his day off buying ingredients and making supply preparations for the next trip they have been assigned to which will involve airship travel.
What Moon Planter has been doing on his day off while the rest of the party are making fools of themselves in front of Mango
Having finished his errands, Moon Planter goes to track down the party as he figures they should be coming to the end of their shift. He ends up at Mango’s house just in time to find Doot after what appears to have been some very intimate sexy times, as well as witness a negotiation she makes on a layaway plan with Mango in return for a very powerful headband item that involves money and more future intimacy.
Things don’t immediately improve when Moon Planter and Doot get to the tavern, where they find half of the party are now inexplicably kirins and things are generally chaotic. Moon Planter chews them out again, stating if Dr. Amden ever found out they were daydrinking on guard duty after getting their sentence reduced, the mainstitch would surely get them fired. It is at that point the party notices Ankh, the sphinx wizard from the previous day who promised to pay them in return for lying about nothing going wrong with the teleportation circle ritual, and successfully intimidates him into giving up a hefty sum as promised.
Ankh tries to flee while the party argues over money, but Moon Planter perseus him out to the latrines as he’s suspicious about the payout which was well over one hundred platinum. The confrontation continues with a bathroom door between them, as Ankh tries to threaten Moon Planter to leave him alone while continuously dodging questions about the money’s origins, while the bat thinks it’s a trick. However, after failing to scare of Moon Planter with threats of magic retribution, a blue light flashes under the door and Ankh stops talking - the reason quickly being discovered that he teleported himself away.
Moon Planter won’t let a simple latrine door stop his questioning of Ankh about the nature of the bribe’s origins. Also, a drunk Cher is about to get a most unwelcome visitor
Ep 9 - Chaotic Good
With the decision to wait for the warboss to bring himself to them, the party continues its guard duty through the evening and are on the lookout for anything illegal, fireworks or otherwise. They run into Mango again, who advises the party to stay out of the clockwork pony section of Bleakburn. They also learn that their are some potentially raunchy parties happening near the magic academy where the party fought off the demons. Arriving on scene, they find students partying in the science building where they’re not supposed to be, but the party is not necessarily predisposed to be the fun police and just keep watch over the proceedings to make sure nothing explicitly illegal happens. However, Grot ends up encountering a trio of science-focused shorthooves who, in return for Grot setting off an illegal firework of her own in the headmaster’s office, promise her a supply of ‘studs’ - saying that they could be seen as food in a way, when asked by the ever hungry Grot. Grot immediately starts rushing to the fourth floor. Tangent, seeing Grot running off with obvious purpose, chases after her, with Moon Planter then running after Tangent and Dayspring following close behind. Much to everyone except Grot’s horror - the headmaster’s office is listed as being owned by none other than Dr. Amden himself. Grot does not care and charges in, while Tangent realizes what’s about to happen and immediately leaves. Moon Planter moves up to intercept, but not before Grot opens the door and reveals a sleeping goose - Gander, Dr. Amden’s familiar - sleeping on top of the desk. The bat pony manages to defuse the situation, closing the door without waking the goose and then bribing Grot with chicken to take him to ‘meet’ the shorthooves who put her up to this, convincing her to turn the tables and prank them instead. Under his instruction, Grot lights the firework (which is so dangerous that one of its type was used offensively against the demons the day prior and actually blew one of them up) and throws it into the lab before the would-be pranksters know what’s going on. Using the pretext of a ‘terror plot’ of the explosion, Moon Planter shouts for everybody to evacuate, but magical locks on the doors and windows prevent a now panicked crowd from escaping. To make matters worse, a familiar goose honk can be heard from the upper levels. After Cher and Doot waste everybody’s time playing keep away with the sphinx who has the key, the honks of the goose are heard and the sphinx takes the initiative to finally open the door. Meanwhile, Tangent literally has done nothing wrong, having had no involvement with the situation, but merely being there is enough for her to be harassed by Amden's goose familiar regardless. Shortly afterward; Dr. Amden arrives, clearly very pissed and making no secret that he suspects Tangent is responsible, even though he barely has any evidence aside from his familiar's witness testemony placing her at the scene. Fortunately, Moon Planter gives the half-true version of the story about it being a foiled plot to bomb Amden’s college office, lying through omission and poetically protecting his party in contrast to how he snitched on them earlier. Genuinely impressed with Moon Planter’s succinct recap, Dr. Amden is momentarily left speechless. The students 'responsible' for the incident are taken to the sherrif's office, with Amden making a point of stripping the sphinx of his Bannermanes badge for having allowed an illegal party in the first place. He then briefly departs only to return and promote Grot her to a full fledged Bannermane of the Sacred Skeins chapter, with a legitimate badge and all. He then turns to the rest of the party, complementing them on being a massive party buzzkill then subsequently dismissing them from guard duty.EP 10: Mano a Mano
The party, having slept late following a long night of enjoying the festival’s first night, are woken in the late afternoon by Grot screaming her head off from getting a weird voice in her head. Then everybody gets this voice - Dr. Amden having used Sending - that requests all of them to gather in the main drinking hall of The Textile.
Finding it is an all-hooves meeting of Bannermanes in general, Amden informs everyone that the Goldenport airship is due to arrive at some point later that day, and that everyone is to be on their best behavior. He specially singles out Grot on this last point. However as he departs, Tangent follows him out the door and asks if the gryphon will teach her a spell. He asks her to say ‘psych’, to which she does and then returns into The Textile, leaving Amden to continue on his way like nothing happened.
Back on track, the party continues discussing the plan to deal with the Warboss - the sheer trouble with the logistics and needing to get high ranking figures to agree to the endeavor have the party decide to instead head out and bring the fight to the gobbos. Moon Planter suggests staging an ambush Viet Cong style, but is shouted out by Cher who pushes the straight one on one. However, a backup plan involving traps and staging a retreat if necessary is enough to win Planter over, and with a consensus reached the party begins preparations.
“Can you teach me a spell” - one of, if not the, first scenes in Bannermanes to get an artistic depiction
With the guard generously providing two archers, the team forms their battle line and heads out of the gate. They are wholly unprepared, however, to find the gobbos that are in front of them are small in number, but have a gigantic rocket aimed dead ahead at the town. And astride this WGD (Weapon of Gobbo Destruction) is a stout gobbo who has the fattest knees of any gobbo the party has yet seen.
This is Warboss Fatknee, and through his own translator he challenges the Ringed One to single combat, before dismounting the rocket, wielding a bomb and a mace.
Battle begins, and almost immediately Grot realizes there are gobbos flanking from the side. So, in true gobbo fashion, she decides the logical action is to light the giant fireworks-powered rocket aimed at Bleakburn, because Warboss Fatknee is standing right in front of it. The fact Dayspring (Grot’s own warboss), Doot, and Tangent are standing in the line of fire is of no concern to her short track mind.
During the chaotic battle, the party (with help from gobbos who turn to Warboss Dayspring’s side) manages to push the rocket off its launch platform enough that it will fire wide of Bleakburn, but happen to be aimed directly at the Goldenport airship that happens to be arriving at that very moment. Without any way to stop it, Doot willingly embraces her inner Major Kong and assumes riding position upon the explosive.
“The party comes face to face with Warboss Fatknee, of the Fatknee Tribe, and The Big One(TM)”
The rocket’s countdown reaches zero, and with it the story of Night “Doot” Poutine blasts off into legend
