CHARACTERS (and commentary)

Postachio- A purple-tinted "smurf" (all rights reserved, heh), complete with goofy white pants and a floppy white hat, who's a compulsive liar. He's very good at it, but it's become such a habit that he gets nauseous when he tells the truth. After talking with the player about the character, I allowed him to take a Magic Star Flaw (rules mechanic made up on the fly) that made him grow (according to GM discretion) every time he lied.

Puddlemerry - (inspired by "Puddleglum" from CS Lewis's "other" works) A tall and lanky humanoid (Marshwiggle) who's a talented archer but suffers from horrible pessimism and depression. This character also took a Magic Star Flaw of "Pessimistic", making it so that the GM could take storyline liberties everytime the character said something pessimistic. In other words, his pessimism caused magical effects that caused his statements to be self fulfilling prophecies. (This was a great deal of fun. Taken with a light heart, this feature was quite a story booster.)

Djeannie - (inspired by traditional tales of the Djinn with hints of "Aladdin" and a solid dose of "I Dream of Jeannie"...) A gossamer-clad cutie with an irresistable desire to grant wishes and a Magic Star Quality (Wishes*) that allows her to do so. Very naive about the true nature of people, taking everything purely at face value.

Fuzzy - (truly uninspired name, but interesting character inspired by Tom Bombadil from LotR) An ancient forest spirit with magical abilities (Animal Empathy*, Natural Growth*) allowing him to manipulate all things natural. His one flaw is that he doesn't take anything seriously. (Though this didn't play out much.)

Professor Hoot - A wise, English-speaking owl. (This one was played by my mother with absolutely ZERO RPG experience.) Hoot's biggest flaw is a weakness for food. (Bad, bad thing for Jerry, as you'll read later.)

SESSION (helps if you read the session notes, Land of Terra: Part One, available here.)

Jerry scurries in on-que and chatters to Puddlemerry excitedly in Mousish, which Fuzzy fails to interpret. We decide this is because Jerry is speaking a City Mouse dialect and Fuzzy only speaks Country Mouse. When Tom realizes that the group isn't understanding him, he switches to English, but is so excited that he's only slightly more coherent. Jerry tells them all about the warlock and the MILLION gremlins (or at least ten, he says) invading the school, but is chased off prematurely when Professor Hoot decides that the pudgy little guy looks more like a meal than an NPC. (The descriptions of the "chase scene" here had everyone rolling, since I'd already established that Jerry had such a belly that it dragged the floor when he walked.)

The group doesn't really take the threat seriously after Jerry scurries off, so Lexi comes into play. After a few near misses with heavy paperweights (one of which just about flattened our friendly [though not if you ask Jerry] owl), Fuzzy uses his abilities to talk to Lexi through the wood floor. Lexi reveals that all she wants is for them to leave the Library so as not to draw the bad guys here and make a mess. Fuzzy relays this to the party, so they leave with the intent of tracking down the warlock.

In the Universal Hall, they encounter Vegas Orbust (the haunted bust of Bald Billy Swordquaker, The Bard) who's calling for help (in a very proper voice, of course.) After dealing with his long complaints that they'd always ignored him in the past, they learn about the warlock and Professor Merryhat and Malice, the wraith in the dungeon. So they head off toward Merryhat's study, but there's a wrinkle...

I rolled randomly (d6) to see how long the Universal Hall was this time and I rolled a 6, so they had a long walk ahead of them. During this walk, good old Puddlemerry muses "we'll probably never find the end", causing a magical effect that makes the hall a never-ending loop. They walk on and on and Puddlemerry pops out another gem, "We'll probably collapse of exhaustion soon!" So a wave of sleepiness washes over the group, causing them to take a step penalty until they can get some rest.

Eventually, however, Fuzzy (and the player behind him) declares "I wish we'd get there already." Thus enacting Djeannie's inherent need to grant wishes. She succeeds and they find themselves standing at the door to Merryhat's Study.

Fuzzy tries to open the door, but finds it blocked (by the big lump of ice)... He also notes the floor's wet. He gets it open enough for Postachio (who's only a foot tall) to (theoretically) wiggle through the gap. Only problem is, halfway through the door, Postachio (who has to lie or he gets sick) says "I sure wish I was bigger." The immediate result, given his Magic Star Flaw, is that his feet baloon out, sticking him half-in and half-out of the room. But that's only the half of it, because our friend Djeannie, of course, MUST grant his wish... She succeeds at her Magic Star roll with a natural 12, causing Postachio to shoot up to 15' tall, shattering the door and knocking everyone but Professor Hoot back down the hallway abruptly.

Since no one's quite figured out yet (we kept it a secret as long as possible) how the wishes kept being granted, Postachio ended up having to spend Hero Points to modify the story and return himself to normal size. After that, they found themselves solidly within the scene in Merryhat's Study, complete with her and her hat in a solid block of ice.

Fuzzy made short work of the ice block, using his *Natural Growth Quality to cause a root to shoot up through the floor and grow through the ice to fracture it and make it fall away. They had a brief talk with Merryhat about the problem and how it occurred, during which she continually forgot the context of the discussion (until they got a little frustrated and I decided to move it along in the interests of fun)... When she offered to lend them Merryhat for the rest of the adventure, Postachio (ever the liar) popped off with "I certainly want it" and ended up wearing it for the rest of the adventure (the significance of which we'll get to in a moment.)

At one point in Merryhat's study (though I don't exactly recall the context), someone wished that Puddlemerry's magical pessimism would stop getting them in so much trouble. So, of course, Djeannie tried to use her *Wishes to make that happen. Since Puddlemerry wanted to resist the effect, I treated it as a Conflict Situation and had Djeannie roll against her *Wishes and Puddlemerry roll against his Toughness. Puddlemerry gained an Upshift by declaring that he was going to "wiggle vigorously" to help "shake off" the magic. When Puddlemerry's roll greatly exceeded Djeannie's, I described that a red, magical glow descended upon him but his wiggling shook it off like paint, covering everything around him (the group was all in the study, which is very small) in ooky red. He capped it off by musing "Uh, oh, that'll probably never come out", thus turning it into a magical red pigment and permanently turning everything (including the white snow owl Professor Hoot) red.

As they went through the door, back to the Universal Hall, good old Puddlemerry mused again "I bet we never do find this warlock". So, rather than stepping into a one-way hall with an obvious path to their destination, they stepped into the middle of an 8-way intersection with all paths looking alike. They muddled around a little bit and started to get frustrated again, so I inserted Vegas Orbust and had him crying for help again down one of the hall branches. Fuzzy spoke to him and learned the way to the Dungeons.

When they get to the Dungeons, the steps down are wet and icy, so Fuzzy decides to grow some moss on them to prevent slipping. He fails his roll (badly) and, instead, the moss grows to fill the entire hallway and block their passage. By this time, they're figuring out the "wishes" thing and someone vocally wishes there was a way through the moss. It's successfully granted, creating a circular slide (complete with seams where the plastic screws together) through the moss and onto the landing below.

Everyone slides down. Most of them narrowly miss Guard Christopher until Djeannie slides down last and smashes right unti him, sending them both sprawling. As they collect themselves and help each other up, true love is instantly born (creating a story hook for next time).

But there are more important things at hand, so the group rushes down the hallway to help the guardsmen being attacked by gremlins. As scripted, they arrive just as the last guardsman falls and find themselves facing 20+ gremlins all on their own.

Fuzzy makes short work again, causing a gremlin-eating vine to shoot up from the floor and consume ALL of them... I set a TN of 13 for this one. His Qualitiy was Expert (+4) and he rolled a 10, so he made it happen and the vine stuck around for later.

After this, Postachio (the liar) says "I sure wish you'd left some for me!" This generates a mock argument between he and Fuzzy, which Djeannie takes at face value, and wishes aloud that the two of them would be friends. Now, Djeannie can't grant her own wishes, but Postachio, being smart-mouth (and a liar), retorts, "Oh yes, I wish he was my BEST friend." (The player realizes only after it's out of his mouth what he's just done.)

Djeannie tries to make the wish happen, but she fails the roll. I decide (for the sake of hilarity) that this means the wish hit Merryhat instead. So now Merryhat decides that Pistachio is his best
friend ever and starts gushing all of his hatly hopes and dreams, which of course only Pistachio can hear.

They walk down the hall a bit further toward the warlock and the next scene. I'm just about to transition to the finale when Postachio bursts out (in an otherwise quiet room) with "Please keep singing the happy hat song. I want to hear it! I want to hear it!" (We take a 15-minute game pause while everyone tries to control their laughter. I admit you had to be there, but this is the exact kind of moment that made the game work so well.)

So we move on to the finale. It was a challenge to keep the combat portion as smooth and on-pace as the rest of the game, but we managed to do it by having everyone describe their actions and inserting a lot of descriptive detail as we went.

The way it turned out, Guard Christopher (whom I'd handed over to a player to run as a party member) delivers the killing blow to the warlock. Combined with the "love at first sight" between he and Djeannie, this made for a great story hook as Christopher was promoted to a major NPC. This was also the first scene in which anyone took damage, so we also generated story hooks based on Fuzzy's *Animal Empathy and Merryhat's (new) Best Friend of Postachio flaw.

In addition, Puddlemerry had avoided a couple of magical effects during the session with his Tough Quality, so he decided to turn this into a Magic Star Quality with the Learning Points and Hero Points he got from the session.

So our story hooks ended up being:

> True love between Djeannie and Guard Christopher (NPC)
> Guard Christopher (NPC) delivers killing blow to Warlock
> Fuzzy's Animal Empathy
> Merryhat's Best Friend of Postachio flaw
> Puddlemerry's Tough Quality