In which we return to DnD Adventure Club and helping one of our local farmers leads to adventure in The Nimbus Trilogy.

Story

Trish, Sasha, and Grumpy were walking by Haley’s farm when they heard her cry out for help. They saw 5 thugs in her barn trying to shake her down and tearing the place apart looking for something. Once the team showed up 3 of the thugs attacked the players while 2 others kept Haley restrained. The adventures made quick work of those three. The other two tried to set fire to the barn, but Triss brought the water trough over and put it out.

When there was only one ruffian left, Haley asked for help intimidating him to get some answers. Triss held her blade to his throat and he confessed that the governor sent him to find Haley’s ring because she owed back taxes. Grumpy wanted to go confront the governor, but after Haley told them about Dodger, and that he might have run off to Nimbus, the cloud city, they decided to pursue him. Haley said that she had some special beanstalks that would grow up to Nimbus. Triss asked what they should do about the final ruffian and Haley asked if they could help tie him up so she could get justice.

When they arrived at the beanstalk, there was a kobold wizard climbing up. He cast a spell to fill the area with a fog as 20 kobolds attacked from the forest. While the girls took care of the kobolds from the forest, Grumpy climbed up to deal with the kobold wizard. After a couple gauntlet punches, he was able to knock the kobold off the beanstalk to his…death? Unconsciousness?

The beanstalk led to a series of switchbacked stairs. Since there was no real hurry, the team took a long rest. When they reached the top they were greeted by a general store proprietor who explained that anyone who falls off the clouds is caught by a cloud and comes back within a few days. Unfortunately they usually come back tired, hungry, and grumpy. Just as he says that, a goblin brute is deposited by one of those clouds. He is in a bit of a rage due to his situation and the party has to knock him out.

The proprietor lets the party know that there’s a silver mine and tavern on the next cloud over. They go to cross the bridge, which is in disrepair, and Grumpy falls off. The party waits for him. Three days later he arrives and Sasha crosses the bridge to repair it. They are attacked by harpies. One of them charms Grumpy and he falls off again as he mindlessly walks towards it. After dispatching the harpies, the group goes to the public house.

There they interrogate a few tables of patrons to get information about Dodger. This involves Sasha playing games of chance and Triss singing along with another table. The group decides to go directly to the jail to save Dodger. Some members of a gnome gang come to fight them for the ring (they think the party has it for some reason), but Sasha throws a fake ring at them, feigning a feeling of intimidation by the gang. The group runs off for the jail before the gang members can figure out it wasn’t the ring they wanted.

On the way to the jail, Sasha buys a magic bean from a vendor. The vendor explains that if it’s planted on the ground it will grow up to Nimbus. If it’s planted in Nimbus it grows down to the ground. At the jail, Triss sings the same song from the bar to distract the guards while Sasha and Grumpy head up to find Dodger. Grumpy tries to get him to give the ring over. Dodger is happy to hand it over, because he believes it’s cursed, but he wants to be let out first. Sasha opens the cell door and gets the ring. Then Grumpy pushes Dodger back into the cell and locks it back up, leaving him behind because he doesn’t trust Dodger. When they get outside the jail, someone comes to attack them for the ring, but Grumpy has the idea to jump off the cloud to the smaller cloud that catches you. Once there they plant the bean and climb down.

They talk to Haley and now everything is great for her because she’s not in possession of the ring. The back taxes were just an error, for example.

Triss sells the ring to someone passing through town to rid the party of the curse.

GM Notes

Sam was insistent throughout the whole trilogy that they should go deal with the governor and maybe intimidate him into not making Haley pay her taxes. The authors of the trilogy did NOT account for that possibility. I started thinking about what I would do if the party went for that course of action.

Regular D&D and Tales of the Valiant have “ruined” the kids. DnD Adventure Club, being for kids, has enemies fall unconscious; Stella kept saying she wanted to kill the enemies.

The kids’ decisions led them to skip at least 3 boss battles, causing us to finish this DnD Adventure Club trilogy in record time. It was funny to just be leafing past pages and pages of activities because the kids went left when the game expected them to go right. In particular, the writers of the adventure expected the kids to try and fight at the end and Dodger (who the part was SUPPOSED to save from jail) was supposed to suggest they jump down and plant the bean. But Sam just had that idea on his own (which was great since they didn’t have Dodger!)

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