Prequel: Maggy's Very Best and Authentic Country Apple Pie

Fact Sheet

Date: 28-09-22

Date in game: prequel to the main campaign, unspecified

Players present: Dins, Marty, Meinhart, Vinnie. Ecchima was our GM. Tuur was excused.

Major developments:

after a few encounters with a bugbear, dryads and goblins, we brought back Maggy's secret recipe for her delicious country apple pie
we built a solid contact in Lindenvale : Vorondil the restaurateur
after the dryads' apple attack, we were obligated to add a clause to our pirate code about the playing of bagpipes
Hali was able to record in her compendium
- the runes needed for a cone of cold (useful for food storage), thanks to Storm's quick thinking
- a note about apple tree dryads and their custom of demanding gifts
- a note about a subtype of goblin who prefer baking to war making

Notes

The port of Lindenvale

The Young Kraken has dropped anchor in Lindenvale, to the south-west of Royal Rosaria, aiming to sell her loot to some merchant captain Magpie knows well. The landing party consists of:

Captain Magpie, a tiny 200-year-old gnome with a beautiful tricorn hat (played by Dins)
Archibald, a 44-year-old human who’s been with the crew for a long time (played by Vinnie)
Hali, a water genasi looking to travel and explore the seas to the south (played by Marty)
Storm, a 28-year-old polecat and the very newest member of the Young Kraken’s crew (played by Meinhart).

On our way through town, Gunther, a rattish looking half elf man beckons us... Captain Magpie knows he also has a store, but his reputation is ambiguous: half of the time he scams his customers, half of the time his wares are fantastic beyond fantasy.

He propositions us with a map to the forgotten shop where Maggy sold her fabled apple pies (captain Magpie confirms these pies more than earned their legendary reputation). Gunther offers us this deal:

we buy the map for 30 gold
we go to the old shop & see if there's a recipe
we sell him the recipe for 200 gold

There are many odd legends about her shop: was it protected by a kraken? Did a dragon hide it? Why did she stop selling pies & why did everyone forget where her shop used to be?

Captain Magpie tries to haggle with a NATURAL ONE, so that doesn't work... Hali and Archibald persuade Gunther to sell us the map for 14 gold. Upon inspection of the map, we see:

the road is fully on land; it’ll take about 2 hours to walk there
there appears to be a zone in the woods where we might encounter a wolf or a bear or some beast
the shop is overrun by monsters, but no one really knows what

We're all eager for the adventure: if we keep the recipe, we can bake our own pies & sell them whenever we board another ship, under the slogan "buy our pies or die". It'll be a new age of PIE-racy.

Captain Magpie sells our goods, while Archibald organizes our equipment. Storm is a little nervous: he's only recently joined the crew, and this will be his first mission on land.

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The map is clear, so it's easy to follow. While walking through the woods, we hear a bugbear some distance off. Magpie wants us to stealth past & Hali casts a fog to help up but as a new crew member Storm doesn't manage! While he does try to crouch next to the captain, his butt sticks out beyond the wispy layers of fog Hali made. Archibald tries to mislead the bugbear with the riddle about a tree falling in a forest without anyone near to hear it fall... but that doesn't work!

our captain starts off with a NATURAL TWENTY & throws ball bearings in the bugbear's path
the bugbear avoids the ball bearings & without provocation attacks Storm’s butt sticking out. He inflicts a horrifying 16 points of damage!
Archibald scolds Storm, but then hits the bugbear with a NATURAL TWENTY with his scimitar & also with his rapier. The bugbear looks almost as bad as Storm. Archibald screams "leave our baby alone"
Hali uses a small gem to launch a guiding bolt, but it misses
Storm sways on his feet in a most elegant and beguiling way & then attacks the bugbear with his whip, and kills him

Hali holds her gem to cast cure wounds & Storm has 11 HP in total now.

Magpie looks through the bugbear's pockets before we hide the corpse on the side of the road. All he has on him, is his morningstar & a delicious-smelling apple.

Can we find the orchard where he found that apple? Quality ingredients are important in baking! Hali tries tracking, but it doesn't work very well. Storm sniffs the air with a polecat’s intensity & smells more apples in the same direction we were headed.

Storm sort of misunderstands part of the discussion on how to proceed, so he decides to put the bugbear's head in a bag, so we can use it to intimidate someone if necessary.

Maggy's bakery shop & home

After some further walking, we reach a charming stone building

it’s got a ground floor and an upper floor
there are 2 ancient doors barely holding together, barring the entrance of what appears to be the shop
the smell of delicious apples is now noticeably coming from an orchard in the back
there’s a solitary apple tree next to the front door. Funnily enough, the knots and whirls in the bark appear to make a face…

The face grumbles at us: why are we trespassing in the garden? Are we more apple thieves? Hali offers the apple we found on the bugbear, but Mackintosh the tree rejects it as not one of his. He does talk to us some more:

He just wants peace and quiet, and respect for surrounding nature. He mentions there's goblins living in Maggy's shop, ever since she died. He doesn't bother with them, as long as they don't bother him
Maggy used to talk to the dryads in the orchard

Mackintosh wants to sleep some more so we go on our way.

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Hali peeks through a crack in the double doors:

there's a lot of overturned furniture
a lot of it is jammed against the door as a barricade

We also see a path to the back, towards the orchard. Magpie and Archibald circle the building to continue the inspection of the lay of the land:

the doors at the back are just wide open
behind the backdoors there's a loading dock
there’re some vague noises coming from inside: there are creatures there
the path leads to a beautiful orchard where we suspect the presence of dryads

At Storm’s suggestion, we decide to go talk to the dryads, to see if they've got advice. At Archibald's instigation, Storm figures he should march into the orchard, so he does, accompanied by Hali.

old trees are neatly aligned
younger trees and sprouts are everywhere, Maggy must have kept order
with a giggle in the wind, someone lobs an apple, just missing Magpie's head

Three dryads present themselves with a charming, if vacuous smile. In conversation with Hali, they mention a present is needed to start the conversation. Hali offers the bugbear's apple, which they gracefully accept. Storm had planned to throw the bugbear's head at them, but now reverses course, though his hand is sticky with blood.

The dryads reveal:

there are several goblins in the house who come and steal apples
the dryads don't care about the house, but they don't want the goblins to come to the orchard anymore
they know the recipe consists of 2 pieces: one in Maggy's apartment, one in the front shop

Archibald offers Storm a handkerchief to deal with the blood. After wiping his hand, Storm tries to clean the overspill from the grass, but it only makes a mess. The dryads titter in disgust & Archibald rolls his eyes in exasperation.

Hali promises to return after the adventure, to play a song on her bagpipes. Archibald spots wild parsley & makes a note to jam it in his ears as soon as Hali starts playing.

.We start sneaking towards the house and enter through the loading dock.

the sliding wooden doors are open
the space has bare stone walls and floor, it’s clearly just functional
in the middle there's a wagon, gathering dust. From here, Maggy exported her pies for her pie emporium all over the region
there are pallets and sacks, ready to be loaded
there's a patrol of 2 goblins, oblivious to our presence

Magpie shoots at the patrol with a NATURAL TWENTY & kills one goblin. His death rattle activates wails of the grave, so the second goblin is also affected!

As Magpie slinks back into the shadows, Hali readies her scimitar, but misses. Hali flanks the goblin
Archibald runs up & his scimitar hits with NATURAL TWENTY! He knocks the goblin unconscious, so the captain can interrogate her

Archibald guards the door to the bakery floor & Magpie keeps an ear open for voices from within the building. Storm is allowed to start the interrogation & clumsily tortures the goblin to get this information:

there are about 8 to 12 goblins: she can't really count, so Storm asks for the names of her friends in the building... but her babbling is quite confusing à la "oh no, that's my cousin who doesn't live here"
there is 1 bugbear the goblins don't like, so they send him away on patrols (oops, we killed him already)
when the patrol notices trouble, they should raise the alarm

Remembering her mission with regards to raising the alarm, the goblin realizes she should escape. She scrambles away, so our captain kills her!

Since we now must go into the next space blind, Archibald will lead us & Magpie will sneak around as support. Though Archibald doesn't like the unilaterally decision he should mentor Storm, Storm will closely follow Archibald in battle.

The next space is the bakery floor, from where Magpie hears kitchen noises: the chopping of apples, whisking sounds, the clacking of oven doors...

Now we wonder: are these evil goblins, or just entrepreneurial bakers?? Hali reminds us the dryads don't like the goblins. Storm points out the dryads are pretty stuck up, demanding a present before they'll even talk to you? Can we rely on their opinion?

We sneak onto the bakery floor, a nice tall room with wooden beams on the ceiling & chimneys for several ovens:

6 long benches where cooking equipment remains at work automatically: rusted knives keep chopping, oven timers keep pinging causing the oven doors to open automatically, etc.
2 barred doors leading to storerooms
a glass cabinet in between with a mallet on the chain between the barred doors
2 closed doors on the other side

It’s a total mess with old and newer ingredients thrown everywhere, as if someone has ineptly been trying to bake pies with and around these implements.

In the glass cabinet, Magpie finds 2 healing potions & spices for the pies. Archibald & Storm get a healing potion.

Magpie attempts to break the locks leading to the storerooms. They’re for cold storage, one for ingredients (where we find some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves for 5 gold each)) and one is for pie storage (where we find only crumbs), until Maggy could load them on the cart in the next room.

We spot some runes on the walls. Unfortunately, Hali only recognizes one rune, meaning "cold". Storm suggests Hali transcribe all these runes for "cone of cold" into her compendium so we can have cold storage for our food aboard the Young Kraken.

Magpie doesn't hear anything from the remaining door on the other side of the bakery floor. Sneakily he pushes it open, to look inside... it's the shop, the room we could see from the outside. There's litter everywhere, someone ransacked it for the pies. We see another door as well as many signs of goblin infestation.

After we walk through the shop, Hali quietly opens the door: it leads to the office! We spot:

expensive mahogany furniture & luxurious velvet curtains
an overturned desk with many drawers
overthrown chairs & filing cabinets
bookshelves with bookkeeping records

Hali searches the desk for the first part of the recipe. When she opens a drawer, there's a click and a poisonous dart shoots out at her! Pushing through the pain & the poison, Hali finds:

the first part of the recipe
pens and papers etc.
a heavy silver signet ring

Magpie notices Hali is looking a bit sea green instead of her usual blue! He starts searching for an antidote and finds with a NATURAL TWENTY:

a secret safe with 75 gold 50 silver 25 copper, and an antidote for Hali!
notes in the bookkeeping records, about guards Maggy hired, apparently offering jobs to people who need them, more than she needed guards
the curtains and furniture are very fancy and expensive, even in their current raggedy condition we could sell them for a lot of money

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We go back through the shop & return to the bakery floor to explore the last door. As Hali mentions we should be careful because the goblins are bound to be there... we hear whispering! Tracing the whispers to the ceiling, we notice there are 3 goblins clinging to the beams overhead! As soon as they see we saw them, they drop down: we don't want to fight, we just want to make pies!

Hali snaps they're stealing apples to do it! They promise to in future thank the trees for the apples.

They are the only ones who want to make pies: Maggy died, so they found the shop full of pies! After eating them all, they tried to make their own pies... but seeing they can't read & didn't see any drawings, their pies are abominations!

Archibald and Magpie trick the goblins into walking into the storeroom & lock them up there! They discuss the feasibility of employing these goblins to make pies as a side-branch of our empire, but that doesn’t seem very plausible: it’s a pirate’s life for us, none of us want to retire (yet) to bake pies with goblins.

Archibald, Magpie and Hali go outside to see if there're stairs there. Archibald orders Storm to guard the goblins & don't be an idiot about it. However, the piteous wails of the little creatures in the cold break his heart, so Storm lets them out. When the others return from an unsuccessful search, Storm casually leans against the fridge door, but the goblins scream from the ceiling, so the jig is up! Luckily the goblins are determined to stay on their beams, so the rest of the crew doesn’t mind their escape too much.

.Turning our attention to the last door, Magpie opens the lock & Archibald kicks the door in. It's the guard room. It used to be a cozy space for the people Maggy employed to help them out. Now, however, it’s in shambles, like the other spaces:

a broken table & remnants of a few chairs
several weapons on the floor & on the walls, incl 3 quarterstaffs
a locked chest
another door

Storm pokes the chest with a staff from the floor. It's similar to the one in the office, and it’s a chest, not a mimic. Magpie doesn't find any traps, so he opens it: 3 bottles of shillelagh oil to put the spell of shillelagh (HTML) on any wooden weapon. Maggy really spoilt the people she hired for a job she didn't even really need!

Archibald opens the last door, stealthily. It's Maggy's apartment, now turned into a true goblin hovel. Two goblins and their leader, a goblin chief are standing in the middle of the room, staring in amazement at the slowly opening door.

Hali dashes in & casts tiny tidal wave

One goblin is washed away and smashes against the back wall. He’s dead
The chief takes the brunt of the wave and is also washed against the back wall, shocked at this aggression
The last goblin chuckles nervously in the middle of the room at the death and carnage all around him

Magpie dashes around the room in a frenzy, to be able to attack from a surprising angle. He shoots at the chief, but the chief's armor protects him
the goblin screeches he wants to live & doesn't want to fight, they only want pies

During a tense pause, Storm lobs the bugbear's head at their feet. Archibald hisses Storm’s an idiot, but the goblins cower even more. The chief Stevie points Magpie towards a desk, where he might find some human writing. Hali looks for traps in the desk, it's exactly the same trap as the first trap! Magpie tries to disarm it, but it doesn't work. He triggers the mechanism & knows to dodge, so it's okay. Hali finds the second half of the recipe: it's complicated with many steps, but no heinous ingredients or steps.

The drawer also contains a small book with all the spells Maggy knew:

druid craft (which she used to animate her atelier and her storerooms)
entangle
purify food and drink
speak with plants, looks like she didn't just commune with Mackintosh and the dryads

Magpie bargains for the desks & the cart. The goblins are all too happy to oblige: they really truly only want pies.

.

Storm suggests we introduce them to the dryads. Hali convinces the goblins & explains the resolution to the dryads. Hali plays a diddle on the bagpipes, but

the dryads hate to it & throw rotten apples at us
the goblins come running, looking for the dying beast they heard. They’re amazed to learn some people call this music
Archibald has the parsley in his ears and glares at Hali.

We agree Hali can practice in order to get better, but only on Saturdays. Her current “music” is welcome during raids or other intimidation campaigns.

.We prepare to leave & gather:

the mahogany desk and the velvet curtains
half of the spices, so the goblins still have some for their future pies (although we overhear them planning to add mushrooms... at least it's not dead babies)
the coin we found

We manage to repair the cart sufficiently to get back to town. Just before we leave, Archibald takes a last look around, with a NATURAL TWENTY: in the shop he finds a locked cash box & hands it over to Magpie. In order to let him practice, Storm gets a try, but neither he nor Magpie manage to open it. Archibald hacks at it with his scimitar & reveals 8 gold, 11 silver and 21 copper.

We show the goblins how to make a basic pie. They were doing okay with the dough, but the prep for the apples had eluded them completely, so they're amazed at our instructions. They're very happy. Also, they were cooking with the heat of a fire snake hiding in the oven, so we teach them to maintain a fire. We insist they don't chop trees down willy-nilly for the fire. They should consult Mackintosh and the dryads. We say goodbye to Stevie the chief and his little tribe (now a little smaller, oops) & head back to town.

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On the way back, Magpie has a heart-to-heart with Archibald: he stresses the crew is a family, where lost souls get space to grow. Archibald should be a little softer on Storm, this isn't the army; Magpie left that life behind for a reason 40 years ago, in the bay of beasts where he was stationed. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but he wants radically different choices now.

Archibald goes to compliment Storm. Storm is completely delighted!

Hali creates a copy of the recipe, with some fucked up instructions. That way we have the famous fabulous recipe & can pull a prank on Gunther. He'll have the recipe for a good pie, but not as wonderful as Maggy's.

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Ecchima's drawing of Vorondil, Lindenvale's top chef and restauranteur

Gunther wants to make the recipe before he pays us: he fetches his client, a wood elf with a mullet. Magpie recognizes Vorondil, the owner of the best restaurant in town. We give him the recipe with only one secret recipe missing.

We all eat Vorondil’s pie together. It's very nice. Gunther nods that he agrees to the original deal: 200 gold for our recipe. Vorondil immediately doubles the offer: 400 gold! Gunther is enraged.

Archibald proposes we propose an exclusivity deal. Storm gets the opportunity to negotiate it. Our offer is 4000 gold for exclusivity, meaning we won’t sell the recipe to anyone else. Vorondil counteroffers 200 gold for each party member, plus a free meal for everyone on the Young Kraken whenever we come to port. Gunther is cut out of the deal. We accept & give him the real recipe. Vorondil leaves, already planning how to improve it.

With immeasurable grace, Hali fixes a consolation for Gunther: she asks him for a necklace to carry her star chart gem, rather than carry it in her hand all the time. Gunther is pleased with his day’s efforts.

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Magpie asks where Gunther found the map, but Gunther just slinks back into the darkness of his shop.