...and the adventurers Delle, Furn, Pappy, and Baja looked around the ruins with both confusion and curiosity. Where were they? There was little time to look around though , as Sparrow led them across the castle grounds into what appeared to be a posh modern throne room. The party introduced themselves one by one to a Drow woman claiming to be queen and a stoic Orc dressed in only bootcut jeans. In return for saving Sparrow, a key intelligence operative, the party was handsomely rewarded and for their skill were asked to join the Resistance. Their first job was to pick a new, less cliche name for the organization. The party wisely decided that the “Resistance” would be renamed The Focus Group and they now referred to themselves as The Focussed Group.
This first test was the easiest of the day. After, the party was ushered into a surprisingly modern classroom that had been set up and given the written portion of their entrance exam. Pappy, after receiving the lowest score of the group, got hit with a debuff potion as punishment in the next phase of the entrance exam, the combat trial.
The party was given another quick tour of the grounds as they made their way to the combat colosseum. The promise of a Fantasy Costco membership was enough to motivate and excite Pappy. In the colosseum, they were greeted by a human man in a ridiculous yet functional outfit who introduced himself as Mud Techno, a mercenary hired by The Focus Group to be a combat instructor. The party would be put up against the toughest creatures in the wildlands surrounding the kingdom: a bronze dragon Wyrmling (not a worm) and a chicken. The beasts put up a good fight (the chicken even managed to knock Delle out), but in the end they were no match for The Focussed Group!
The party was welcomed back to the throne room with warm smiles and gifts after passing all of their entrance exams. They were each given a bandana bearing an insignia of a hammer smashing a mountain, denoting them as Knights of the Wilds. Of course they were also issued their Fantasy Costco membership cards. They were officially part of The Focus Group! Unfortunately there is no rest for the weary.
Getting dabbed on was the last thing the party remembered before getting transported back out into the desert. Before their departure they had been briefed on the situation by Diana (Sparrow’s wife and chief of operations for TFG). The Kingdom of Petra was facing civil unrest and its ruler, Shin the Conqueror, was just ripe to be overthrown. The party’s goal would be to infiltrate the kingdom, defeat Shin, and secure the sustaining artifact of Petra. The artifact had many names throughout the centuries, and Shin wielded it as the Avalanche Glaive, a sparkling golden Thanos glove that gave him control over rock and earth. Back in the desert, the party mounted up and rode out of the desert and into the badlands. As they approached Petra, they could see that it rested on an enormous pillar of stone towering above the surrounding rock formations. The city itself was made of gleaming copper that almost hurt the eyes to look at under the desert sun. It seemed impenetrable.
The party’s quick thinking and observational skills led to them finding a secret, but slightly gross way in: the sewers. Furn was able to turn herself into a lizard and open the sewer grate for the rest of the party. Baja swiftly made his way up the sheer cliff face as well. It took Delle and Pappy a few tries to successfully climb the rope to the sewage tunnel.
After a brief but gross crawl through Petra’s sewer system, the party discovered an abandoned house they could sneak into without being noticed. Going unnoticed didn’t last long however as they busted out of the house and into the town square, and right in front of two guards. With some quick thinking and magic, Baja and Delle charmed the guards and made the guards escort the party to the royal palace. A few quick lies at the gate, aided by their escort Terry, and they were in and ready to kill a king.
The final showdown took place in the ornately decorated throne room. Shin had a formidable mastery of the Avalanche Glaive, throwing boulder missiles and dropping walls of earth on the party. Baja managed to wrench the glaive off of Shin’s hand, but still suffered the wrath of his punch when he got his glaive back. After easily blocking 3 Pappy Specials, it looked like Shin would cut our heroes’ journey short. Were it not for Baja using his primordial form to bind Shin, the party might have been done for. With one last rage-fueled Pappy Special, Shin was relieved of his head and his kingdom. The party snatched up the powerful magic artifact and Shin’s head (gross) and returned to their new home.
They were greeted with cheers and applause, quickly followed by disgust as they realized that they had brought a severed head back with them as well. The party decided they trusted the Queen enough to hand over the Glaive, for which she rewarded them by transforming it into four smaller magical artifacts so its full power could never be used for evil again. In the weeks following TFG’s victory, refugees from Petra began arriving in the wilds and setting up new dwellings and renovating the dilapidated kingdom. Our heroes also took some much needed time off. Delle worked on her streaming career, Furn hunted an impossibly large rabbit, Baja started a cult obsessed with finding the Florida Gator and named his new cult Gator AIDS, and finally Pappy attended fashion week and had his original design stolen and sold by a couple of male models he shared a night of passion with. But the time off can’t last forever.