The woods might not be recognisable as anywhere in particular, but they seem to be fairly normal woods with nothing exceptional about them. They have familiar-looking trees and so on. Nothing immediately accosts him as he wanders aimlessly through them. 

Up ahead, the trees thin out, and—oop, here's a cliff edge. Better not blindly walk off it. 

Elan stops and takes in the view! Fall damage is no laughing matter.

Looking out over the cliff, most of what he can see is...more trees. Seems like it's a pretty big forest. Away in the distance is a city, with some mountains beyond it, but it's pretty far away. Probably not plot-relevant just yet. 

As he's standing there heroically on a dramatic clifftop, a red dragon swoops into view.

It...looks like it's headed directly for him.

That might be more immediately plot-relevant. 

Yeah! And scary!

He almost turns to run back into the forest, but his dramatic instincts stop him. This doesn't feel like the beginning of a chase scene; if he was supposed to run he'd probably have heard distant rumblings or breaking branches right when he woke up. And it would be a pretty pointless story if the dragon just ate him five minutes after he showed up.

He's still pretty scared.

It gets closer...and closer...

...and there's someone on its back?

It doesn't seem to be interested in Elan at all, instead landing at the bottom of the cliff, which is conveniently exactly the right height for the rider on its back to just walk off onto the clifftop where Elan's standing. 

The rider is a woman in a hooded white robe. In her arms, she clutches an ornate black chest, carrying it as though the contents are both precious and breakable. 

Now that they're closer, Elan can see that she's accompanied by a small red creature with large ears, about the size of a human baby, or a small dog standing on its hind legs. They move with the confidence of an adult, and surprising speed, as they disembark.

"Hiyas!" they say brightly to Elan in a high-pitched voice. Turning to their companion, they call back to her, "The path is clear, Priestess!" 

1. That dragon is really big.
2. That creature is really cute!!!

"Oh my gosh, hiiii!"

The—priestess, apparently—joins the little red creature on solid ground, walking slowly and carefully to avoid jostling the chest she's carrying. 

"Please do pardon us, friend," she says, giving Elan an elegant nod. "We are merely passing through." 

"Where are you passing through to?"

Yeah, Elan's gonna tag along with the cleric and her sidekick.

"We're taking the Black Dragon Box to—"

"Twilly," she interrupts softly. 

"—um, I mean, nowhere! We are just going for a lovely walk in the woods. With a box that is definitely not the Black Dragon Box." 

"Sorry Priestess." 

"Oh, definitely! What's the Black Dragon Box? Since it's absolutely somewhere else right now, probably someplace super safe that nobody has to worry about."

As the priestess visibly casts about for Literally Anything Else to talk about, sounds of rustling leaves and snapping branches come from the undergrowth up ahead, getting closer. Something big is crashing through the trees towards them! 

"Oh my! Whatever could that be?" (Oh, good, a distraction!) 

"Probably the chase scene from earlier! We should probably escape on that red dragon you came in on!"

Elan turns around to head back towards the cliff.

Yeah no the red dragon is long gone. It's visible as a receding speck in the distance. Or maybe that's a pigeon. 

Behind Elan, the crashing noises get louder. 

"Oh noes! A gorillaphant! Don't worry, Priestess, I'll protect you!" 

A few seconds later, there's a loud POW! and Twilly goes sailing through the air. He lands in a heap on the ground next to Elan. 

"Owww..." 

Elan leans down.

"Oh no, do you need healing?"

Maybe that should wait until he deals with this gorilla-elephant and makes sure it doesn't smash the Black Dragon Box into pieces. But Twilly is the one who's in front of him right now.

"Oh, no, Twillies got it!" 

Twilly waves his stick, which summons a floating circle of glowy green runes around his head for a second. Then he bounces back to his feet, good as new. 

"RAAAGH!"

A gorillaphant apparently looks rather like an oversized grey gorilla, with the tusks and ears of an elephant. It seems to be enraged.  

Well shoot! Elan considers his options.

He decides to try Diplomacy first. He doesn't have any ranks in Handle Animal, but he can wave his arms to get its attention.

"Hey, big guy! Over here, yeah?"

It swings its head away from the priestess and towards Elan, beady eyes focusing on him.

"...Raaargh?" 

"Yeah, that's right. What's the matter, buddy?"

He really hopes it can understand his speech, even if it can't talk back. Which maybe it can; he's never seen one of these before but you never know.

It huffs and paws the ground, lowering its head ready to charge. 

If Elan is looking closely, though...there's a broken-off arrowhead stuck in its hind leg, and a trickle of blood running down.  

Elan's Spot skill continues to be what it is, but classics like this are pretty easy to catch.

"Oh no, somebody shot you… let's get that out, okay?"

He glances at Twilly.

"Do you have that magic hand spell?"

"Twillies doesn't have magic hands, just a magic stick! I could try healing it to see if that helps?" 

"I can heal too, I just don't want to startle him if I walk closer. I could probably do it slowly, though, and we can try just healing it if he doesn't like that?"

"Okies! Sounds good!" 

Then Elan, keeping his hands visible, will slowly and carefully approach the gorillaphant.

It objects strongly to this and tries to bash him with its fists!

Eep! Elan tumbles out of the way!

"Try healing him!"

Twilly circles around to come at the gorillaphant from the side while it's focused on Elan. The moment he's close enough (about 6 feet away), he summons his green healing magic. 

The arrowhead falls out as the wound closes up behind it. The gorillaphant makes a confused noise. 

"Yay!" 

...Twilly gets back out of melee range sharpish in case it gets over its confusion and decides to start bashing things again. 

Now that the gorillaphant is calmer, and the thing that was enraging it has been fixed, the priestess approaches slowly, leaving the Black Dragon Box on the ground out of its reach. 

She places a hand on its arm, as high up as she can reach. 

"Your wounds are healed. There is no danger here. Depart in peace, good beast." 

It huffs at her and turns to shamble away into the woods. 

Yay, teamwork!

Elan waits quietly for the gorillaphant to depart. And then:

"That was close! Do you think it's safe to keep going on a lovely walk in the woods now?"

"I think so. Thank you for your aid, brave young man. Might I know the name of my hero?" 

"But Priestess...you said his name was Elan and he is the one who is destined to—" 

"Twilly..." 

She sighs. 

Wow, Elan didn't realize he was in an adventure where there were ✨prophecies✨ about him!

"It's okay, I got a gold star in the Magical Destines workshop at Bard Camp!"

The workshop was more about the theory of magical destinies than about what to do if you yourself have come into the possession of one, but the important part is the smiley faces Elan got on his worksheets.

"Alas, we have no time to speak now. I must get the Black Dragon Box to its destination."

She retrieves the chest from the forest floor, brushing a leaf off it.

"I would ask an important favour of you. Would you please let Captain Rolith know that we're taking the shortcut? He's just ahead in Oaklore Keep." She points out the path. 

"Okay!" Elan says agreeably. This is apparently the kind of magic destiny where he isn't supposed to know too much ahead of time.

"Oaklore Keep, Captain Rolith, you guys are taking the shortcut. And it's just down this path?"

That all seems simple enough.

She gives him a warm smile. "That's right. Now, farewell—but I am certain we will cross paths again." 

She and Twilly head off into the woods with the Black Dragon Box. 

Twilly waves over his shoulder as he follows the priestess. 

"Byes, Elan! See you soon!" 

Elan waves at both of them, then:

To Oaklore Keep!

Once he gets far enough out of the woods to see it, Oaklore Keep is somewhat unmistakable. Set atop a small hill and built around a massive old oak tree, the small keep dominates the surrounding landscape. 

As the woods thin out, the path Elan is following meets a dirt road, wide enough for a cart, which goes right up to the keep and continues past it. There's a wooden signpost that says "Falconreach" pointing onwards, but the road past the keep is blocked by a wooden barricade that has a knight guarding it. There are other knights up on the walls of the keep itself. 

Banners hang on the walls, red with a golden dragon's head, but the symbol carved over the gates is different. It's a circle with a segment cut out, like a pie with one slice already eaten, and a small hole next to the missing slice, as though somebody stuck their finger in the pie. 

… Huh. Elan wonders why the symbols are different. And what the one with the circles means. Probably the golden dragon one has something to do with the part where the elfy priestess lady was riding a dragon.

Elan approaches the first knight he can, well, approach.

"Hi! I'm looking for Captain Rolith."

"Oh, he's in the main courtyard." He points. "He's the one with the dragon-wing pauldrons and the massive hammer, you can't miss him." 

That sounds super badass! Elan definitely wants to see it.

"Great, thanks!"

He goes into the main courtyard.

In the main courtyard, an armoured man with decorative dragon wings on his pauldrons stands at the eye of a storm of controlled chaos, barking orders as knights and servants hurry around him. At his side is an ornate warhammer that looks too big for Elan to even lift. 

Yup, badass.

Elan weaves his way through the crowd of busy people and gets the captain's attention.

"The knight outside said you were Captain Rolith?"

"That's me. And you are?" 

"I'm Elan! With a message from—"

He abruptly realizes that he never got the lady's name.

In that brief pause, a knight runs up to them, shouting, "Captain!" and Rolith turns to see what he needs. 

To be fair, it does sound pretty urgent: Rolith seems to be trying to manage at least 3 simultaneous crises. The nearby woods have a serious bandit problem, and they're also dealing with some sort of "vermin" problem in the area that sounds almost as serious. Meanwhile, something like a tenth of their men are in the infirmary because of...bee stings? 

It's several minutes before Rolith has a moment to spare for Elan again. "Sorry, you said something about a message? Can it wait? As you can see, I'm a little busy here." 

Even though he wants to talk to the bee stings guys, Elan manages to wait until Rolith is free.

"Probably! It's from the elfy dragon priestess lady. And Twilly! Also I can cast Mass Cure Light Wounds and Neutralize Poison. That wasn't the message, though."

As soon as Elan says it can probably wait, Rolith stops giving this his full attention, because his attention is a scarce resource right now. Something about an elf, and...Twilly? What's the little furball doing in Oaklore? Eh, it's probably not urgent. 

"You're a healer? Great! Would you mind helping out in the infirmary while you wait? Hey, you—" (he snags a passing pageboy) "—show this man the way to the infirmary." 

"Yeah!"

Elan lets himself be led to the infirmary. This is so great. He can already imagine the cutaway panels to Belkar and Roy expressing disbelief. He wonders if Durkon would be proud…

He's able to entertain himself with thoughts along this line until they reach the infirmary.

The infirmary is bustling: nearly every bed is full, and the healer in charge is nearly as harried as Rolith. He looks up from tending to a patient and gives Elan a quick once-over, checking for visible signs of illness or injury and finding none. 

"Looking for work? I could use the help, things have been busy in here." 

"Yeah, I can cast Neutralize Poison three times a day! I can also do Mass Cure Light Wounds once. Or the other Cure spells three times."

"—does Neutralize Poison work on bee stings? How about allergic reactions to those bee stings?" 

"Ummmm… I think it works on the stings but not the allergies."

"You said you can do it...three times? I have mana potions if mana is the problem, but you can start with..." 

He points out the three people who seem to him like they'd benefit the most from No Longer Taking Ongoing Poison Damage. 

Ohhhhh, this is an alternate magic system. Like psionics!

"I don't use mana, I just get three fourth-level spells a day. I guess we could check, but I don't wanna waste your potion."

What he does want to do is help out the indicated people! This consists of touching them and saying the words "neutralize poison." Doing all three takes eighteen seconds.

That doesn't look or sound at all like the kind of magic the healer is familiar with!

He bends over one of the beds to check the effects of Elan's spell. The swelling in their body doesn't disappear immediately, but it's started going down. 

"Well, whatever you did, it seems to have helped! Do you have anything that can alleviate the symptoms, for the others? If not, we've got some more mundanely injured people who could use any Healing you can spare." 

There are five other people in the infirmary with bee stings, not quite so badly swollen but still in danger of anaphylactic shock. Besides them, there are about a dozen men with bandaged arms, legs, or heads. Nobody looks close to death, but if this place has magical healing, it's not keeping up with demand. 

Elan thinks.

"I don't have anything else for poison but I can get thirteen people at once with Cure Light Wounds. That's the only one that does more than one person. Should I do the lightest wounded people or the seriousest wounded people first?"

"Hmm. How many times can you do that one, and what will you have left after that?"

"One time, and then three times for serious, moderate, and light."

(He counts on his fingers.)

"Once I do those ten I'll be out of everything except cantrips. I guess if you have anything that needs Mending I can do that three times too."

"So effectively sixteen 'light' and three each of the other two? Show me a Cure Light Wounds on...this man here?" (A man with burns all up one leg; Elan would probably guess it to take a Cure Moderate to get him to full health.) 

Elan pokes the burn victim for 1d8+5 healed damage!

This heals some but not all of the burn damage! The local healer watches, visibly does some mental math, and then tells Elan which thirteen people he wants to get with the mass Cure Light. The list includes the same guy he just healed, one of the bee-sting victims he did the Neutralize Poison on, and one he didn't. 

Does Elan need his thirteen targets to be arranged in any particular way? They can get the less-injured patients to stand and move to different spots if it would make things easier. 

As long as no two of them are farther than thirty feet from each other, Elan's spell will cover them all just fine.

Mass light wounds: are cured.

And then he would like one Cure Moderate and one Cure Serious, on two of the people who weren't on that list. (A head wound and more extensive burns, respectively, both of which heal up fine.) 

"You should probably keep your remaining healing spells in reserve for now in case there's another emergency today. When do they all refresh?" 

Yay, he's participating!

"After I sleep for eight hours. Do you not have bards around here?"

"I thought a bard was just another word for a minstrel; I've never heard of them having healing magic. I'm certainly not complaining, though. Are you planning on staying in the keep overnight?" 

Okay, so this is a place that has bards but not bards.

"I can also give people bonuses to skill checks and saves! And… I'm not sure yet. I came here to give Rolith a message, but he was busy and sent me here. Do you think he's still busy? I don't know how soon he needs to know."

"Well, getting more than a dozen men back into fighting shape will help make him less busy, that's for sure! Beyond that, I really couldn't say. What was the message, or is it confidential?" 

"… You know, she didn't say to keep it a secret or anything. It's from the elfy priestess lady who rides a red dragon. She wanted him to know she was taking a shortcut. There was also a box that is supposed to be secret I think."

Oops, that part probably should have stayed in his head.

"Uh, do you know her name? She had a friend named Twilly who was little and red and had bat ears, but he only called her Priestess."

"I know Twilly, and...'priestess lady who rides dragons' sounds kind of like Lady Celestia, but she's not an elf. Was she dressed in white?" 

"Yeah, and a hood! It covered her ears so I wasn't sure, but she had the look that elves do, where they turn out to be a hundred even though they don't look old at all."

"Well, that could be Lady Celestia. If not, I have no idea who it is, but Captain Rolith probably will."

He frowns. "This seems likely to be urgent enough that you shouldn't wait for evening. I'll go with you to talk to him; he'll be more impressed with you if I tell him you've practically cleared out the infirmary for us." 

"Wow, thanks!"

Elan cheerfully goes along with the doctor.

"Is there something big going on right now that's making everyone be busy?"

"It's less any one thing and more that there are five things going on at once," he explains. "Bandit activity is higher than normal, the vurrmen are unusually aggressive and so are the sneevils, and one of our patrols disturbed a bees' nest and landed eight of them in the infirmary. Meanwhile, a herd of tuskmongers broke through the fence into the garden, and our usual supply route to Falconreach is cut off by a hydra, of all things. So I'm short on potions, can't get any more, and can't pick fresh herbs from the garden to top up my supply of remedies either." 

"Wow, that does sound really tough."

And like a whole lot of monsters Elan's never heard of!

"A friend of mine found out that if you keep cutting off hydra heads, eventually the hydra can't stay awake because it has too many heads. That… might be kinda mean to the hydra, though, now that I think about it…"

"It's certainly innovative! Maybe you can suggest it to Captain Rolith and see what he thinks." 

Speaking of Rolith, here he is.

Dismay flashes over his face when he sees the healer, but he papers over it with a frown. 

"Junn? I'm hoping you've got good news for me." And not another emergency. 

"I do, actually. This man here just saved four patients in critical condition and got a dozen people back in fighting shape—practically cleared out my infirmary. If you haven't given him the recruitment pitch yet, you should—after you listen to the message he came here to give you." 

There are exactly 2 people in Oaklore Keep who can tell Captain Rolith what to do and get away with it. Junn is one of them. 

Rolith actually smiles, looking like his face doesn't do that very often. He's far too disciplined to sag with relief, but he looks like he wants to. 

"Thank you, Elan. We are in your debt; the least I can do is hear the message you're here to deliver." 

Elan beams as Rolith and Junn say nice things about him. He was for-real useful! That feels good.

"The message is from Lady Celestia. She wanted me to tell you that she's taking the shortcut. I hope that has a secret meaning you know about because if it doesn't then this feels kinda anticlimactic."

"WHAT!? The Priestess sent you? You should have told me that to begin with!" Now Elan has Rolith's full attention. It's kind of intense.  

"...and she isn't going to stop at the keep?"

His face pales. "The forest is crawling with bandits that are looking for her. She's in grave danger—we must go after her! Can you show me which way she went?" 

Awww, Elan should have known that his mistake quota was coming up.

"I'm sorry! She seemed like she knew what she was doing! She went… umm… I don't know, but we were talking close to a cliff that was that way."

He points down the path he came to Oaklore by.

Rolith looks around at his...complete absence of knights to send on a rescue mission, actually, they're all busy. "Junn, who's fighting fit that wasn't ten minutes ago?"

Junn rattles off a list.  

He nods, strides over to the infirmary door, and starts calling out names. "Jer! Norre! Gear up and meet me at the gates, we've got to rescue Lady Celestia from bandits!" 

(Sir Norre, who was clearly asleep, jolts upright in his bed and scrambles for his gear.) 

Rolith turns back to Elan. "So, you can heal. You any good in a fight?" 

"I'm okay!"

As of pretty recently.

"Especially if I can make a joke or a pun when I land a hit on someone."

Rolith smirks. "Oh, you'll fit right in. I don't suppose your surname makes a pun when put after 'Sir'?" 

Sir Jer and Sir Norre join him, still strapping on their scabbards and tightening their greaves. 

"You're not under my command, Elan, and I already owe you for healing my men, but would you come with us and help rescue the Priestess? You were the last person to see her, and your help would be invaluable." 

Vaarsuvius has explained it to Elan that "invaluable" and "inflammable" mean "valuable" and "flammable" enough times that he knows what Rolith means right away.

"Sir Elan… no, I don't think so. I have a brother named Nale, though, and Sir Nale sounds sort of like snail?"

Headshake.

"I'd be happy to help, though!"

"Great! Let's go. You there, go tell Sir Preem he has command of the keep until I return!" (The servant so addressed runs inside to do that.) 

Rolith swings his warhammer onto his shoulder with apparent ease and strides out of the gates, the two knights falling in behind. Can Elan take them to where he last saw the priestess?

He sure can!

"Okay, this is where we helped the gorillaphant," he says when he recognizes the scuffs on the ground. "And I think she went… that way."

He thinks.

"—aha, she meant that shortcut. Right, this way!" 

He forges off confidently into the trees at a quick march, leaving the others to follow. 

Hooray for people knowing things!

Elan follows. He's got good Dexterity and isn't wearing any armor, and probably Rolith isn't going so fast that the others who are wearing armor will be left behind.

Rolith is one of the people in armour, which doesn't seem to be slowing him down much. The knights keep up pretty well. 

After a while, there are voices up ahead, too deep to be Lady Celestia or Twilly. 

Rolith pauses, gestures for quiet, and starts to move slowly and carefully closer, hammer raised. 

"Sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak, quietly through the forest…"

Rolith turns around and gives him an incredulous glare. "Shhh!" 

Yeah, Roy tends to feel the same way.

Elan shuts up though, hoping that he's gonna get higher than a four.

The bandits aren't listening out for approaching knights—which, it soon becomes apparent, is because they're focused on a softer target. 

"Well well well, what have we here? How foolish of you, Priestess, to travel through these woods—MY woods—with only a moglin for escort!" 

On the bright side, it sounds like they've found the bandits!

Elan rushes forward to get a better look.

A band of masked, leather-clad ruffians have surrounded Lady Celestia and are brandishing miscellaneous weapons threateningly at her. The guy doing the talking is the only one not wearing a mask; he also has a purple cape and a fancy sword, just in case Elan was in doubt about who the important characters are. 

"My men have you surrounded. You have nowhere to run, and no one is coming to save you. Now, hand over the Black Dragon Box." 

If Roy was here, he'd probably want to think about a plan for confronting these guys. But this isn't Roy's story.

"Not so fast, you big meanie!"

Elan steps into view, rapier in hand.

"You should leave the nice lady alone! Why do you want that box, anyway?"

Dramatic villain monologue: unlocked! 

"Who do you think you are, talking to me like that? I am Drakath, the rightful ruler of this land! The Black Dragon Box is the key to my throne, and there's no way I'm letting a peasant like you keep it from me. Stand down, or like the trash that you are, you will be blown away by the winds of my great destiny!" 

Oh good.

"I'm Elan! If you're so rightful, why are you banditing in the woods instead of ruling the land?"

"Do you know nothing, peasant? My father, the late King Slugwrath, was overthrown many years ago by the vile usurper Alteon." He spits to the side. "With that box and what's inside it, I will finally have the power to avenge my father and reclaim the throne!" 

(As Elan keeps Drakath monologuing, the knights are sneaking around to flanking positions, ready to turn the tables on the bandits.) 

"Oh, does your dad's ghost appear to you and tell you what to do? That happened a lot to my friend Roy. His ghost dad was a huge jerk."

Elan shakes his head.

"It's still mean to steal, though, even if it's what your jerky ghost dad wants! You should have asked Lady Celestia nicely instead!"

.....what??? 

"First you insult me, and now my father as well? Prepare to die for your words, you low-born simpleton!" 

Roll initiative. 

"Pfft, if I was gonna die for saying dumb stuff I wouldn't have made it to Bard Camp."

He gets into a ready position, prepared to parry.

And sticks out his tongue.

With a yell, Drakath attacks. 

He might have a big fancy sword, but it's clear that he isn't used to fighting opponents with any real skill. Shock flashes across his face when Elan successfully parries his powerful swings, and his own defence is clumsy. 

Around them, Rolith and his knights take their cue to engage the rest of Drakath's bandits, keeping them from coming to their leader's aid. 

Yay, being a distraction worked!

"Is this the part you blow me away with your destiny? 'Cause to be honest, I'm more worried about all that hot air."

Swordthrust!

"You—!" 

He attacks harder and faster, raining down a flurry of sword blows in an attempt to make Elan shut up. 

Whew, he hit a nerve there! Elan dodges as best he can; he's not sure if this ends with Drakath exhausting himself from how hard he's attacking or with Elan waking up in the infirmary with Sir Junn or maybe even Captain Rolith telling him off for being reckless and provoking him too hard.

Well, he can do his best to be exhausting to fight.

"What about me?"

(Elan tries to get a sense of what's going on in the rest of the fight without getting too distracted from Drakath. Getting too distracted because your ally looks like they're in danger is how you turn into the ally who's in danger.)

Sir Norre and Sir Jer are working together to keep three of the bandits busy. 

Rolith is handling the rest.

His warhammer is a blur of motion as he takes on three bandits at once. Two more are already on the ground, clutching their heads and whimpering.

Seeing Elan's divided focus, Drakath seizes the moment to press the attack, trying to drive Elan backwards and send him off balance. He's stepping up his game now, recognising that he's facing a genuine threat. 

Elan's fought better swordsmen. 

Oh, cool, this is the first kind of fight.

And it's probably about time to wrap it up! Elan doesn't actually want to kill this guy, so he'll need to end things another way. Such as with a disarming technique that he hasn't actually done himself before, but that looked really badass when Julio was teaching it to him.

And it is narratively appropriate for Elan to defeat this guy but leave him alive to be a recurring villain later, so: this works! Drakath's sword is knocked from his hand, much to his shock and displeasure. 

"Impossible!" He clutches his stinging, empty hand and scowls at Elan. "You got lucky this time, peasant!" 

(Around them, the few bandits still on their feet see that their leader's been defeated and flee into the woods.)

"A hero makes his own luck! Or her own luck, if she's a girl hero!"

Elan sees the rest of the bandits fleeing.

"Well, it looks like we got what we came here for. You should look after your guys. Oh, that reminds me, my girlfriend once said that trying to make a living as a bandit gang isn't a good idea, because you gotta take huge risks just to break even! So maybe you should talk to them about finding a different job."

He waves, then rejoins the group of knights.

"Lady Celestia. I'm glad we got to you in time." 

(Unspoken: and if you'd stopped at the keep instead of taking a shortcut, you'd have had a knightly escort to begin with, and we wouldn't have had such a panicked scramble to save you.) 

"Thank you. I am grateful for the rescue. Alas, while you were bravely fighting off the bandits, a sneevil ran off with the box." She seems quite calm about this. 

… Elan's going to be annoyed if she turns out to be a twist villain. She was so nice!

Well, if she is a twist villain he won't gain anything from treating her like one, and if she isn't it would be mean.

"What's a sneevil? Are they really good at taking care of black dragon boxes?"

Sir Jer answers. "Little green guys with big ears, about so tall"—he gestures about waist height—"that love stealing boxes, build whole forts out of them. They'll be taking the box to one of those forts, most likely." 

"Elan, you must recover the Black Dragon Box before it falls into the wrong hands. Twilly will—" 

She looks around.

"Where is Twilly?" 

Twilly is nowhere in sight, but there's muffled shouting coming from the bushes over there! Investigation reveals a rotten tree stump with two little fuzzy red legs sticking out the top, waving frantically. 

Elan follows the shouting.

"Need a hand?"

He reaches in to Rescue the little guy.

Out pops Twilly! 

"Thanks, Elan!" He looks around. "Oh, yay, you chased away the bad guys who stuffed me in there! ...wait, where's the box?" 

"Lady Celestia says that it got stolen by a sneevil for its fort. We're gonna go rescue it!"

His ears droop. "Oh noes! I'll help however I can, Elan! Do we know which fort it was going to?" 

"Could be any of the ones in the area, I'd guess. You should talk to Sir Valance, back at the keep. He's the authority on all things sneevil, and he'll be able to point you in the right direction to start looking." 

Yeah, this guy definitely sounds like the man for the job.

"Sounds like a good idea to me! Let's go!"

"—Priestess. Please allow my knights to escort you the rest of the way to your destination, to prevent a repeat of this incident." Please. 

"Well, actually...if Elan and Twilly are going after the Black Dragon Box, then...I am going to teleport back home and have some tea. Thank you for your help, all of you. Goodbye—until we meet again, Elan!" 

There's a flash of light that blinds everyone for a second, and when it clears she's gone. 

Rolith sighs. "She could have done that the whole time...?" 

Not the whole time, only when it was funny.

Elan waves!

"Maybe she forgot she could do that. It happens to the best of us! And also to me."

Back at the keep, Rolith is greeted by a barrage of knights and squires who all urgently need to report to him.

He scans the crowd and spots the one he's looking for. "Valance! Report, then I've got someone for you to meet." 

A knight with a dark-coloured cloak emerges from the throng and salutes. 

"Captain, the sneevils grow ever bolder in their thefts! We must remain vigilant. I recommend we increase the guard on all our supply caravans." 

With What Men. "I'll keep that in mind."

Rolith beckons Elan forward.

"Valance, this is Elan, an adventurer. He's on a quest to find a box stolen by a sneevil. Elan, this is Sir Valance, our sneevil expert. I'm hoping you can help each other out." And get both of your problems off my plate.

"Nice to meet you!"

Once they're away from the pestering-Rolith crowd:

"The captain says that you know where all the sneevil forts are around here. Which is good, because I don't know where any of them are!"

"I know where there are some sneevil boxforts. I don't know where all of them are. At least, I don't know that I know that." 

"That makes sense! If you knew where all of them were you probably wouldn't have room to know anything else. Uh, the area we're looking at is…"

Elan realizes that he probably wouldn't be able to point it out on a map.

"We were nearly to the river, I think? But that sneevil could have gone anywhere!" 

"Well, I can give you a map of all the ones I know about in Oaklore Forest, if you'll do us the favour of collecting any usable box contents you find while you're searching the forts. Sneevils don't care about what's in the boxes, you see, so they either dump them out somewhere or just leave the contents in there to rot." 

"That sounds good to me! Should we bring an empty box to trade with?"

"You can try it if you like, but sneevils aren't much for trading. They're more likely to try and rob you for the box you've brought so they can keep both boxes."

He pauses. "This is where I'd offer to lend you a spare empty box, but I don't think we have any. Because the sneevils keep stealing them." 

Elan nods sagely.

"Sounds like a pretty serious problem. Hopefully we'll be able to get the box back without too many issues."

"Well, I wish you luck." Map! (Oaklore Keep itself is marked, as are the road going east-west, the river going north-south, the bridge where the two meet, and the cliff Elan found earlier.)

"Stop back here any time you need to rest or heal, or if you want to offload some of the stuff you've picked up. I'll talk to the captain about making sure you get paid for anything we can use." 

Yay, map!

"Thank you! I'm gonna do my best!"

When he and Twilly are on their way:

"So… what is the Black Dragon Box? Does it do something? Does it have a black dragon inside it? Is it taken from a black dragon? My friends fought a black dragon last year. It didn't have any boxes but I think things are different here. It did have a really big hoard…"

Twilly giggles. "It's not a black dragon's box, silly! It's—" He claps his paws over his mouth, looking dismayed. "Oops! Lady Celestia says you're not supposed to know yet!" 

"Oh, okay!"

Elan's a little disappointed, but he can… probably wait.

"When do I get to know? Is it like a surprise party?"

"When you open it, I think! But we gots to find it first!" 

"Oh boy! I wonder if I should open it as soon as I find it, or wait until I'm in a safe place, or wait until I'm in danger… there are so many possibilities!"

"Hmmmmmmmm...Twillies thinks as soon as you find it!" 

As Elan and Twilly get close to the first sneevil hideout on Sir Valance's map, they begin to see increasing numbers of boxes, crates, and barrels stacked beside the path. Many of them are broken, rotting, or otherwise look like they might be unsuitable for use. 

"Oh, cool, I think we're getting close!"

Elan does quick checks for whether there's stuff inside like Sir Valance asked for, though he's got a suspicion that this is more of a dumping ground for boxes that don't work anymore and there won't be anything until they get closer to the fort.

Most of them are, indeed, empty. There are one or two crates full of...some kind of fruit, probably? But it's so brown and rotten that it's difficult to say what kind it used to be.

Oooh, this barrel has mushrooms growing inside it!

"Oooh, mushrooms!"

"I dunno what kind they are, though. And I think that you're supposed to treat any mushroom that you don't know for sure what it is like it's poison."

"Oh, can I see? I might know what kind they are!" 

Twilly comes over to look and...discovers that he's not tall enough to see into the barrel. Maybe if he stands riiiiight on his tippy-toes...yeah, still nope. 

"Need a lift?"

Twilly's ears droop. "Yes please." 

Lift! It's a shame that Elan doesn't have a Ring of Jumping like Belkar's.

(Twilly is warm and fuzzy and very very soft.)

He peers over the rim of the barrel.

"Those look like tog's nose mushrooms! They're no good to eat, they taste icky and give you a tummyache. But they're not the dangerous kind of mushroom, so we're okay!"

"Cool!"

He sets Twilly back down.

"Okay, it looks like that's all the interesting stuff here. What's the difference between a dangerous mushroom and one that makes you sick if you eat it?"

"The dangerous kinds try to eat you back! Usually not till they're bigger than those ones in there, though. I saw one once that was as tall as Captain Rolith!" 

"That does sound pretty dangerous! How strong are they?"

Twilly shrugs. "It depends!" 

It's around this point that Elan might (if he passes the Spot check) notice a small green creature watching them from behind a tree. 

The creature has childlike proportions, big pointy ears, a sharp-featured little face, and beady eyes, and generally meets the description of a goblin apart from very obviously not being a goblin of the kind Elan is familiar with. 

It takes a minute, but soon enough the feeling of Being Watched catches up to him and gives him enough of a bonus that he successfully Spots the creature. It looks… well, yeah, it looks like how he thought goblins looked before he actually saw one.

Time to pretend he didn't notice a thing!

"Don't look now, but there's a green guy watching us."

Twilly sneaks a glimpse, not very sneakily. 

"Oh noes! I mean, oh noes! A sneevil!" 

The sneevil runs off. 

(Elan does not judge Twilly for alerting the sneevil to their location. Sometimes things like this just happen!)

"Well, now that that guy knows we're here, we should probably follow him."

"Okies!"

Unencumbered by armour or even shoes, Twilly moves through the woods as easily as a fish through water. Those little legs can keep up surprisingly well, at least so far. 

The sneevil leads Elan and Twilly on a bit of a chase, changing direction frequently and doubling back to try and shake them. Not being particularly strategic about this, admittedly, but taking advantage of the local geography in a way that suggests this sneevil knows the area quite well. 

"I hope we aren't being led in circles," Elan huffs. "Or into a sneevil trap."

Sneevil trap, did he say? 

Two more sneevils jump out of the bushes just ahead and turn to meet them, brandishing daggers. 

"Halt!" says one. 

"Who goez thar?!" says the other. 

Their voices are squeaky and childish, matching their small stature. 

Dangit!

Okay, this probably isn't actually like the orc island, where getting caught in a trap was the thing that was supposed to happen to advance the plot. These guys just seem… silly.

"We're the box inspectors! Our supervisor told us that they got an anonymous tipoff that a fort in this area was built with a box that's bad building material."

The sneevils are horror-struck. 

"Box inspecshun?" 

      "Bad boxes?!"

"Oh no! We bettar go tell da boss!" 

      "Follow uz! Dis wai!" 

They hurry off, beckoning for the "box inspectors" to follow. 

Yay, that went well!

Elan maintains an air of businesslike dignity as the sneevils lead the way. As much of one as he can actually manage, anyway.

The sneevils lead him to the box-fort proper, a palisade of crates and barrels surrounding a ramshackle box tower. The entrance to the palisade is guarded by a pair of sneevils with upturned metal buckets on their heads and spears taller than they are, who—

("Box inspecshun!"

      "Box emerjensy!" 

"Comin thru!")

—step aside to let the box inspectors pass. 

"Good afternoon, sirs!"

Elan takes care to not make a terrible mess of the boxes he inspects. He's a little distracted—he knows he's only going to take one box, and that it's really important, but it also kinda feels like tricking and stealing from a bunch of little kids.

Maybe if he sees someone who looks In Charge he'll ask if there's anything the fort needs—well, other than boxes, which it sounds like everyone in the area is short on.

The boxes in the fort are all empty, except for the occasional useless scrap the sneevils must have missed. They're mostly made of wood, sometimes with iron bands. The distinctive Black Dragon Box is nowhere to be found, even when Twilly squeezes under a pile of boxes in the corner to check the ones on the inside. 

Nearly all the sneevils are dressed in ragged, ill-fitting clothes. They look to have cut down and adapted clothes sized for adult humans: one's wearing a cut-up pair of socks as gloves, and another is wearing a man's shirt as a tunic, with the sleeves cut off. Most of them are armed, with a mixture of good-quality daggers and spears (also sized for bigger people) and makeshift improvised weapons cobbled together from parts, such as this stick with some nails hammered into the end. 

One of the first two sneevils drags another one over to talk to Elan. The new one is wearing a cape (made out of a shirt; the sleeves are tied around his neck) and has a box for a hat. The other sneevils get out of his way like they did for the "box inspectors". 

"Hooman! I iz Boxlord Nibbler. You iz box inspectur?" 

Elan nods.

"Good day, Boxlord Nibbler! I am a box inspector, yes, and so is my colleague. We're investigating a report of… improper boxitude. And also checking to see if there are any supplies you're low on.”

Boxlord Nibbler draws himself up to his full (unimpressive) height. 

"We iz only using da best boxes!" he protests. "And we no need stupid supplies." 

Well fine then he won't keep an eye out for anything like better clothes!

Elan takes a deep breath.

"Your fort does look pretty awesome. Maybe there are other forts nearby that use less awesome boxes? The report I got said that the box was, uh… black…"

He glances meaningfully at Twilly.

"It's black 'n' gold and it has a picture of a dragon head on it!" Twilly fills in. 

The Boxlord is placated. "I not seen ANY box liek that. But bad boxes iz bad for sneevils. We shud ask ALL box collectors!" 

He starts shouting orders. A brief period of chaos ensues, as the other sneevils somewhat haphazardly attempt to follow them, but he does indeed seem to be asking his underlings if any of them have seen a black and gold box with a picture of a dragon's head on it. 

Elan waits patiently. Hopefully at least one of these guys saw it, or knows a guy who did. And hopefully whichever fort has it hasn't gotten particularly attached…

Eventually, someone has something more substantive than "not me, boss!"

"I hurd dey had fancy black box at da Tree Fort!"

"Great, thanks!"

Is the Tree Fort on the map?

Yep! It's not too far from here. 

Oh cool.

"Thanks for showing us your awesome fort!"

And then they can be off!

Once he’s pretty sure they're out of sneevil earshot:

"I feel kinda… bad for these guys. It looks like they don't make anything for themselves. Do you know why?"

Maybe they… like it better that way? That would probably make Elan feel better.

Twilly thinks about it. "Well, they steal boxes because they like boxes, but then I guess they take the things inside the boxes, too, and use them if they can!" 

Elan nods thoughtfully.

"That makes sense. Maybe if everyone was less busy all the time, someone could have a job making boxes for them as presents. Except the Boxlord didn't seem to like the idea when I offered… maybe they feel embarrassed about getting presents? Ugh, this is complicated."

"Sorry, I doesn't know very much about sneevils, Elan. Maybe we should ask Sir Valance when we gets back? He seemed to know a lot!" 

"It's okay. I bet if you asked me questions about the hobgoblins back home I wouldn't know a lot either."

Asking Sir Valance is a good idea, though. Elan ruminates on sneevils until they reach their destination. Or encounter another sneevil, going off how things went earlier.

Twilly hums a little nonsense tune to himself as they walk. 

"Hmm hmm hmm hm—EEK!" 

This last as a viny tendril grabs Twilly by the ankle and yoinks him off the path. 

Or that!

Is Twilly in a position where Elan can disentangle him?

For now! A plant that looks like a giant Venus flytrap, complete with a toothy maw, is dragging Twilly along the ground towards itself. 

"Nonono Twillies not tasty! Elan, help!" 

Elan draws his sword.

"You better leaf my friend alone!"

The vine snaps easily, the cut ends recoiling from the release of tension. The plant hisses. 

Twilly collapses to the ground in relief. 

"Oww..." 

But it's not over yet! The plant rears back, puckers its lips, and spits a small, hard projectile in Elan's direction. 

Elan's unfortunately not paying attention to the plant. Well, until it shoots him.

"Ow! Aw man, I already used up my best plant pun…"

He can still attack the flytrap without a pun, at least.

The plant continues to spit pellets at him, tries to hit him with its whiplike tendrils, and will bite him if he gets close enough, but it's not doing much damage. He can keep stabbing it, and eventually it will stop moving. 

Having bounced back to his feet, Twilly helps by alternately thwacking the plant with his stick and using his healing magic to vanish Elan's cuts and bruises. 

Oh, good. It's not the most exciting way to spend his time, but when it comes to fighting enemies exciting means dangerous.

"Thanks for the help," he says when the plant stops attacking. "Are there lots of plant monsters like that around here?"

He'd best pay attention to the surroundings in case the answer is yes for an immediate value of here.

Twilly dusts himself off. He doesn't seem injured; maybe the bursts of healing got him as well as Elan. 

"Yep! That was a seed spitter; they're pretty common in Oaklore Forest. They like to eat small animals...like moglins..." He shivers. "Thanks for saving me, Elan!" 

There don't seem to be any more in the immediate vicinity, at least.

"I'm just glad I could help!"

The path might seem clear, but Elan's learned his lesson. He tries to avoid getting lost in thought… or at least to remember that he should be paying attention when he gets lost in thought anyway.

Maybe talking about plant monsters will help.

"What else is common around here?"

"Hmm...well, you've seen sneevils and gorillaphants and bandits...other than those, the most common is bears and wolves, but I thinks there's also forest furies around here—oh, and vurrmen! I hears the knights from Oaklore complaining about the vurrmen in the ruins near the Keep." 

Elan nods.

"I think I heard someone mention vurrmen before, yeah. What are those?"

"Okies, ummm...do you know what a rat is?" 

"Yeah!"

He makes an illusion, just in case “rat” means a kind of snail or something here.

"Yep, that looks like a rat! So, vurrmen are really really BIG rats, bigger than you. Bigger than Captain Rolith! And they steal things, and make weapons that go BOOM!" 

"That's pretty big! How big are the explosions? Could they wreck a house? A castle?"

"Hmmm...maybe if it was a small house and not built very well? They's not fun to stand near when they goes boom, though!" He flattens his ears down against his head. 

Elan nods. Sounds like one of V's fireballs, maybe.

(He's still starting to feel a little out of his depth. Hopefully the magical destiny box will help with that.)

"Yeah. I wonder why there's so many types of monster that like to steal stuff. We got that back home, too, with goblins that raided places."

"Twillies not sure! Stealing isn't very nice..." 

After a bit more walking, they start to see signs of sneevil occupation again in the form of scattered boxes and barrels. 

Heading towards the highest density of boxes quickly brings them to the foot of a large oak tree. There's a sneevil-sized opening leading into the hollow trunk, and a couple of guards outside. 

"Yeah! Well, my girlfriend steals. I guess nowadays she steals a lot less than she used to when it was her job. And the people she worked for were really mean. So yeah, it's not very nice."

Oh, good, sneevil guards. Elan can address them.

"We're box inspectors following up on a report of improper building materials! Don't worry, nobody's in trouble, we just wanna make sure nothing bad happens."

One of the guards gasps in horror. 

The other guard squints. "Iz dis a trick so you can steel sneevils' boxes?" 

A direct question! Oh no!

Okay, Elan can do this.

"No, definitely not! We don't want to steal anything from sneevils. But I have it on good authority that there's a box here that shouldn't be used in forts. Or else there might be… oh, shoot, what was the kind of thing that might happen again? It's only my first day on the job, I don't remember!"

He glances at Twilly.

"Umm...oh, yep, yep! This box...is an EVIL box! That destroys other boxes!" 

The sneevils gasp. 

"Box... destroys uvver boxes?!" 

      "Das bad."

"Das very very bad."

     "What's da ebil box look liek?" 

Elan remembers this one!

"It's black! And gold. And has a picture of a dragon head."

"Black an' gold wif dragon hed..." 

The two sneevils look at each other. 

      "Has you seed a box liek dat?"

"No. Has you?" 

      "Nuh-uh." 

One of them runs inside the tree and up through the interior, shouting as they go. "BAD BOX! We gotta find da EBIL BLACK BOX and get it outta heer!"

"Thanks for your help," Elan tells the guard who stayed behind.

These guys seem pretty nice, honestly. Or at least not too hard to deal with! It might be because he's talking to them one-on-one and has smaller demands (in a way) than "stop stealing all our stuff," but it still makes him hope that there's some way of dealing fairly with sneevils without getting boxes and other stuff stolen.

Oh, it's easy to get sneevils not to steal from you! You just have to not have any boxes for them to steal. (Is what the sneevils might say if he asked them.) 

Twilly's lie about the "evil box" seems to have really stirred up the ants' nest. Sneevils are shouting up in the branches, running along rope bridges to neighbouring trees, and generally raising a ruckus all over the tree fort. 

Eventually, the guard returns with some friends, each of them carrying a box which...sort of matches the description? One is black with a big gold lock on it but no dragon symbol, one is unpainted wood with a dragon symbol painted on it in white, and one has a gold lock in the shape of a dragon's head. 

"Iz any of deez teh evil box?" 

Elan… thinks that maybe it's the last one? He points at it.

"Can we take a look at that one?"

The sneevil carrying box #3 sets it on the ground so Elan and Twilly can get a better look at it. 

Twilly doesn't even need a full second before his ears droop. "Nope, not this one. Our box—I means, the evil box—was black, and this one is brown. Elan, I doesn't think the box we's looking for is here." 

Aw shoot.

"Man, finding evil boxes is hard! At least your guys' boxes will all be safe now."

He taps his foot.

"Before we move onto the next fort, do you guys have someplace we could rest for a couple minutes?"

There's a collective "???" from the sneevils present. 

"Why stoopid hooman need place to rest? Just rest here!" 

"…"

He can't actually think of a good explanation.

"Okay, I'm going to sit down then."

He… does that… and closes his eyes.

Consulting one's dramatic instincts is a bit of a crapshoot, for several reasons. First, it can be hard to tell the difference between a dramatically-significant Hunch and a wild guess that one's brain spits out because it wants to have some answer. There's also the issue of internal logic: in general, stories are better when the heroes act on information they get within the story, rather than just doing what the author knows will happen next. And finally, if the story involves a wild goose chase or other obstacle, checking the story logic won't circumvent that! Instead, one will find that one gets a very confident feeling pointing them directly at the obstacle they were trying to avoid.

But Elan's stumped and a little frustrated. He really liked the box inspector plan! And it's worked, since the sneevils aren't mad at him and Twilly. But it also hasn't found them the box they're looking for. And he's starting to worry that maybe he's supposed to fail here, that maybe the way this ends is with the Black Dragon Box falling into the wrong hands.

That's no way to think, though. Even if the Black Dragon Box falls into the wrong hands, Elan can't fall into the trap of thinking that all is lost. He's not supposed to fail, it's just supposed to look like he's going to fail until he doesn't.

He's not sure if it's his dramatic instincts or his optimism telling him that.

He feels a little better, though. Does he have a sense for where to go next?

Twilly plops down in the grass next to Elan. It's been a lot of walking for little legs! 

"I hopes we don't have to check ALL the sneevil hideouts on Sir Valance's map. How many more are there?" 

The map has 6 little X markings representing sneevil hideouts; they've already searched 2. Elan's dramatic instincts don't think he'll have to check all of them; that would be way too repetitive.  

...actually, on closer inspection, 3 of these X markings are tentative locations for the same hideout, so there are only 2 left to search. The label for this one says "Sneenja Dojo?" with arrows and question marks pointing in various directions. It seems the "sneenjas" are too stealthy for Sir Valance's surveillance. 

Elan shows Twilly the map.

"Looks like two… but we don't know for sure where one of them is…"

He hums.

"We could ask these guys, but that might be too suspicious," he says quietly. "Since if we were official inspectors we'd probably already know where the dojo is. We could… maybe try to get captured on purpose? I'm pretty good at getting myself untied."

Headscratch, headscratch.

"… I guess I don't have any reason to assume it's at the dojo, it just seems more likely because the dojo is super mysterious. Maybe we should go to the other fort first."

He points, then lowers his voice even further to a whisper.

"And maybe we should drop the inspector act and try telling the truth? Or at least the part where we lost something important to us. Except then maybe they won't care, or they'll wanna trade for something we don't have."

"Hmm...I don't know, Elan."

He sighs. "Maybe we should go back to Oaklore Keep for now and see if Sir Valance has any ideas what to do next?" 

Elan laughs, relieved.

"Oh, right! I kinda forgot that we could ask for help…"

This sounds like a really good idea, honestly… but probably he should think of ways it could go wrong first.

"Does the black dragon box have a spell on it so it can only be opened at the right time or by the right person? Or is there a risk that something bad might happen if the sneevils get curious… or someone else finds it first?"

"I doesn't know about any spells, but I's pretty sure it would be really bad if Drakath found the box first!" Twilly says. "But Sir Valance knows more about sneevils than anybody, so I bet Drakath doesn't have any idea where to look. And going back to ask for help might be faster than trying to find the ninjas ourselves anyways?" 

Elan nods.

"That's a good point. Do you know if magic that lets you look at people, places, or things that are far away exists? And if it does, would we be able to call someone who knew how to do it? Or maybe the box is shielded against that anyway…"

Probably a good thing, since an evil wizard wouldn't be able to scry on it.

"Hmm, I think Lady Celestia knows how to do that? Or Warlic, but he lives way up north and that would take even longer...and you're right, the box might be shielded. Hmmmm..." 

"We can ask when we get to the keep!"

Okay, this makes it sound like going back is a solid plan. The biggest risk Elan can think of is that someone else might steal it from the sneevils, or it might be moved… but if that's the case, they'll basically be working from the same information state they have now. So there's nowhere to go but up, really.

One last, important question:

"… they won't be mad at us for coming back emptyhanded, right?"

"No, I doesn't think so! Although maybe we should just check these boxes right here to see if there's anything we can take back..." 

Twilly thumps the box they're leaning on. It rattles like there's something inside it. 

Elan—

—remembers that there might be something dangerous inside—

—and cautiously opens the box.

Looks like a shipment of weapons! There's a whole array of swords in here, no two alike, and even a few staffs and daggers. 

"Oooo. These might have been going to Oaklore Keep, for the knights! Do you think the sneevils would mind if we took them? They don't seem to be using them..." 

"… Well, they might mind if they knew. But if this was for Oaklore Keep anyway, then taking it there would be un-stealing and the right thing to do. We should probably leave the box, though."

Twilly nods seriously. "Yeah, I think the sneevils would notice a missing box. But it's okay, you can just put everything in your backpack!" 

It's so great to never have to think about encumbrance.

Elan slings the backpack that was definitely there the whole time off his shoulder and gets to work packing. Sword, sword, sword… Elan wonders if the differences mean they were custom ordered. If so, it'll be nice to get them to the people who asked for them!

Once the last dagger is safely tucked away, Elan replaces the lid and puts his backpack back on his back. It feels suitably weightier in a satisfying, not strenuous, way.

Time to check the other boxes?

Sure, they can check the other boxes that are lying around outside the entrance. Sadly, most of them seem to be empty.

Twilly hoists himself up on his paws to look inside one of the boxes.

"Oooo, Twillies sees someth—oop!"

He tumbles head-over-heels into the box, but pops up barely a second later. "I'm okay! And look, I found a ring!" He holds it up for Elan's inspection. It's a plain loop of brass, and doesn't look especially valuable as rings go. 

Elan leans forward to look.

"I wonder if it's a magic ring!"

He probably shouldn't put it on to check, because sometimes magic items are actually cursed items.

Twilly nods. "It feels a little bit magic to me! I's not sure what kind, though, it isn't any of the really obvious ones." He offers it out for Elan to take. 

Elan turns it over in his hand. He can definitely tell what Twilly means about it feeling magic in a nonobvious way, although maybe his brain is playing tricks on him.

Probably the smart thing to do would be to wait until they can ask a wizard before doing anything.

Elan tries it on.

Nothing immediately obvious happens! He doesn't feel particularly different. If he tries the next obvious test, which is "taking it back off again", it works fine. 

"Well, it isn't cursed in the specific way that means I can't take it off!"

Elan takes some string out of his pocket and makes it into a little necklace.

"Oh, do you want help out of the box?"

"Hmm..." Twilly pushes on the side of the box. Since it's empty, it topples over onto its side without too much effort, letting him escape. 

"Nope, all good! Let's go!" 

Let's go!!

Elan thinks of things to talk about on the way back to the keep. Mostly he's asked Twilly questions about this new world…

"Do you wanna hear about my friends?"

Twilly's ears are very big and very expressive, so it's extremely visible when he's excited about something, because they literally perk up. 

"I'd love to! Are they heroes like you?" 

"Yeah! Roy is the most heroic one. He's the party leader, and he's super smart. I bet he could come up with really good plans if he was here. He's also really brave—one time he jumped on the back of a zombie dragon to fight an evil lich! The lich killed him, though, and it took like five months to bring him back to life."

Twilly makes appropriate awed noises as Elan talks. "Woooow, bringing dead people all the way back to life is super duper powerful legendary magic!" 

"Back where I live it's more common, but it's pretty expensive! It uses up a diamond that's like this big."

He gestures to indicate the size of the diamond.

"Most of the time was because everyone in the party who could do magic—that's Durkon our cleric, Vaarsuvius our wizard, and me—got split up from Haley and Belkar, who had Roy's body. And there was a spell over the place they were stuck in that meant that our communication spells couldn't reach them. Eventually they were able to find a cleric who could send to us, and once we knew where they were we used Wind Walk to get there. Aw, man, that was so fun."

"Whoa! What's a cleric?" 

On the one hand, Elan probably should have been able to guess that the world where resurrection magic was epic-level wouldn't have clerics in the same way as he's used to. On the other, it's deeply weird to be confronted with this fact!

"Um… a cleric is a caster that gets their magic from the gods. Do you have gods here? Maybe if you don't have clerics it's because you don't have gods. Anyway, they're kind of like wizards because they need to prepare spells every morning, except they cast from wisdom instead of intelligence and their spell list is mostly stuff like healing and spells that make you stronger or protection or stuff like that. Oh, except there's domains, which are… uh, all of our gods are about something, and there are themed spells that go with that? Like there's domains for Good and Evil and Chaos and Law, and also the four elements, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember."

"Oh, yeah, we have those! We call them the Avatars. There's one for each of the...eight main elements. Does your world only have four of those?" 

"Yeah, we've got air, water, fire, and earth. There's this guy who can summon weird elementals that have square signs with letters and numbers on them? But Vaarsuvius said that those are distasteful and obnoxious, and the numbers go up way higher than four, so maybe they're a different thing with the same name?"

"Hmm, Twillies never heard of those! We have Air, Water, Fire, Earth, aaaaand...Ice, Energy, Light, and Darkness. And there's other ones too, that are sorta elements but don't have Avatars! We have Good and Evil, like you said earlier, but I's never heard of...what were the other two?" 

"Chaos and Law! Chaos is, um… well, I'm Chaotic Good and Roy is Lawful Good. So that means that he cares a lot about things being done the way they're supposed to, and not breaking rules, and… I dunno, do you have paladins here? They're super Lawful Good. Except when they go crazy and lose their powers. And you can be Lawful but not good, like my evil twin is Lawful Evil. But Chaos is doing what feels right and being open to lots of possibilities, even if someone told you not to or if you said you were going to do something different before, which kinda sounds bad but it's more about how maybe when you said you were going to do one thing you didn't know something important that would change everything, or about how the person who made the rules might want something that's wrong."

Pause for breath.

"Wow, explaining alignment to people from different worlds is hard! I almost forgot to mention that you can be in between Good and Evil or Law and Chaos or both, but there aren't planes of Neutrality. I think."

He shakes his head.

"It probably isn't super important anyway. Your other four elements sound cool! What makes Ice different from Water? Is it, like, the opposite of Energy?"

"Nope, it's the opposite of Fire! And then Energy and Water are opposites, I think. Ice is...oh, wow, explaining things to people from other worlds is hard. Ice is...ice? Does your world have—wait, wait, you knew it was related to water! So you must have ice!" 

"Oh, that makes sense! Yeah, but maybe our ice is less magic or something than your ice. Our ice is really cold water? Oh, and I think snow is a kind of ice. And there's ice cream! Which you don't actually make by mixing ice and cream. I can't even remember the last time I had ice cream…"

Hopefully they have ice cream here.

"Is energy just… the thing that makes things go? I think we have planes of positive and negative energy but I don't think we have a plane of just energy. Oh, positive energy is the thing that heals alive people and hurts undead, and negative energy is the opposite. Do you have undead?"

"Yep, we have undead! And paladins! I forgot about that question. Paladins fight undead! Energy is like, umm...lightning? It goes bzzzap!" 

"Cool! We've got lightning too, both when it rains and as part of wizard spells."

This is lots of fun!

"Are Light and Darkness special or are they just lights and shadows?"

"I think Darkness might be like what you called, ummm, negative energy? It's the thing that powers undead, and Light hurts them. Light doesn't heal people, though, Health is its own kind of energy. Moglins like me are really really good at healing magic!" 

"Huh, neat… I wonder why that is. The Darkness/Light thing, I mean. Also why you're good at healing magic! Oh, were the first moglins from a healing plane? And if Water is the opposite of Energy can you use it to make antimagic fields?"

"Twillies doesn't know where the first moglins came from! We's been around for hundreds and thousands of years, just like humans. I's not sure about any of the rest of that stuff, either...you should ask Lady Celestia! Or Warlic!" 

"Warlic's one of the magic people, right? Yeah, asking someone smart sounds like a good idea."

They round a corner, and Oaklore Keep comes into view up ahead. 

Wow, the walk back hardly felt like any time at all!

"Yay, we're here! Okay, we've got those weapons that probably Captain Rolith will know more about, and we wanna ask Sir Valance our sneevil questions, and we should probably find someone to look at the ring and see what kind of magic it is. What should we do first?"

The guard at the gate lets them through without a challenge, clearly recognising them from earlier. 

When they get into the main courtyard, however, Rolith doesn't actually seem to be around. Sir Valance is, though.

"Elan! How did you get on with the sneevils? Tricky little rascals, aren't they!" 

Elan waves at Valance.

"Hi! It went kinda good and kinda bad. We weren't able to find the box but we're pretty sure it's either at a regular fort or the sneenja dojo. But on the good side we were able to look at two forts without anyone getting hurt! We had to lie to them and pretend to be box inspectors, though. Twilly thought that coming back and asking for more help would be a good idea, since he says you're, like, the biggest sneevil expert. And I had some general questions about them, too…"

"Box inspectors, hmm? Nice cover story, I'll have to remember that one. What did you need my help with?" 

"We mostly wanted to see what you thought would be better to try the normal fort first, since we know where it is, or the dojo, since it's more mysterious and they might take the important things there. Also…"

Elan takes a second to put the words together.

"It seemed weird and kinda sad to me, that they don't seem to make anything for themselves and have to use stuff that they stole and that was made for bigger people. But when I asked one of their boxlords if we should bring anything to the fort in exchange for their help, he said no and that he didn't need any stupid supplies! So maybe they wanna live like that, but… I dunno, I still want to help them somehow. But not in a way that makes things worse."

"For people who don't need supplies, they're certainly fond of stealing ours! They're almost like children, really—if they want something, they just take it, with no thought to the consequences and certainly no understanding of the cost. To be honest, I doubt they'd have the patience to learn how to forge their own tools or make their own clothes, and I can't think of any job I'd hire them for if they wanted anything to do with money."

A clanking shrug. "They seem happy enough as they are, though." 

Elan nods.

"I… guess it's good for them if they're happy like that. But it sucks that for the sneevils to be happy they have to steal everyone else's stuff!"

There's something else bugging him, he thinks, but he can't put it into words and doesn't want to turn this into an argument. He should think about it later, though, and maybe bring it up when everything has calmed down.

"How do you track down where their forts are?"

"We run regular patrols throughout Oaklore Forest, which stumble across some of them. The rest I track down by following sneevils after a raid." 

(So, in other words, surveillance.) 

"That makes sense! Do you have a special sneevil-tracking technique? Oh, and do you think the dojo or the regular fort would be smarter to try?"

"Patience and vigilance, my friend, patience and vigilance!" 

Sir Valance adopts a thoughtful pose, and asks Elan to show him which locations on the map he's already tried. 

"As you may have noticed from this map, I haven't yet pinned down the precise location of the sneenja dojo. You might have better luck than I, and obviously I'd be indebted to you for finding it. As for the other, I wouldn't call the Boxopolis a regular fort, exactly. It's much larger, and its ruler styles himself a King rather than a mere Lord. You may find it a tougher nut to crack than the smaller forts you've already visited—I'm not sure your 'box inspector' gambit would meet with success there. I can't say for certain which one is likelier to have the box you're after, but if I were forced to take a gamble, I'd bet on the Boxopolis simply because a greater number of boxes wind up there or pass through there." 

Oh, that changes everything!

"Yeah, I think you're right. Thanks for telling me about that, Sir Valance!"

He bounces a little.

"Okay, we have a couple things to do before we head out again… do you know if Captain Rolith is around? Or someone who takes care of mail and packages? While we were at the Tree Fort, we found a box full of swords that Twilly thinks might belong to the keep. Oh, and we also found a ring we think is magic but don't know what it does."

Elan tugs illustratively on his impromptu necklace.

"You can take the swords to the armory, over there." He points to a door just across the courtyard that has a helpful sign above it with a picture of a sword. 

"Sir Pluss and Sir Lee can have a look at what you've picked up and see if it matches one of the missing shipments we were expecting. They might be able to figure out your ring, too, but if they can't, try asking Maya—she's our very own Loremaster! She's usually in the library, but if not, ask around and someone will know." He points at the book sign above the door next to him. 

Elan nods.

"Thanks for all your help!"

He decides to go to the library first, since it's right here.

The library is a single small room, with bookshelves on two walls. A young woman wearing glasses is sat writing at the large desk in the centre of the room; she looks up when Elan comes in. 

"Hello!" 

"Hi! Are you Maya the loremaster?"

"That's me! How can I help you?" 

"Hi Maya, I'm Elan! Twilly and I were investigating some things in a sneevil fort and we found this ring in a box."

He pulls it over his head and holds it out.

"Sir Valance said you'd probably be able to tell what it does."

"Ooo, let me have a look!" 

Maya takes the ring from Elan and holds it up to the light for a moment, then pulls off one of her white gloves and puts it on her bare palm to stare at it. 

"As I expected, it's a basic protection ring. Rings like this are fairly common and easy to make, but precisely because the magic is so weak and generic, they can be difficult for laypeople to identify," she explains. "If you wear it, it'll boost your physical and magical defences a little, making you slightly harder to hit with melee weapons or spells. It won't do anything about arrows, though!"

"Cool!"

Elan looks at Twilly.

"Do you want it? You did find it…"

"I doesn't think it would fit me very well, Elan..." Twilly holds up his tiny paws.

"And moglins are pretty tough anyways! You should have it—unless you already have a better ring?" 

"I do, actually… is there anyone around here who would want it? Or maybe we could offer it as a trade when we talk to the sneevil king guy."

Kind of a lopsided trade, though…

"If you're looking to sell it, I'd give you a couple of gold," Maya offers. "That's about the best rate you'll get around here; it really is quite a basic enchantment. You can always hold onto it for now and come and find me later, though, there's no pressure." 

"I think I'll hold onto it, then. Thanks!"

He gives her a wave.

"Oh, actually, before I leave, what kinda books do you have here? And what other stuff are you good at?"

Maya bounces up from her seat to give him a tour of the library.

"Well, over on that shelf I have the records of the Pactagonal Knights—mostly inventories and financial accounts, but there are some histories in there too! This chest here has architectural plans for every expansion and remodelling of Oaklore Keep going right back to when it was first built, and that one there has maps of the Oaklore region going back five centuries, as well as a few larger-scale maps of the whole kingdom. And then over here on these shelves, I have books about the history, folklore, flora and fauna of the Oaklore region. I'm always looking to expand my collection, so if you find any interesting books in your travels, bring them back here and I'll buy them from you!"

She deflates a little. "I'm much better with books than I am with swords, sadly, so I can't do a lot of adventuring myself." 

"Wow, your library is really good!"

Elan looks at her seriously.

"Aw, man, that's totally what being a wizard is for! My friend Vaarsuvius can't use like any weapons at all but they're really smart and good at magic. I guess you'd need to find a party to help protect you, and even then it can still be dangerous. And if you like doing library things better, then you should keep it up, because you're doing a really good job! I can definitely look for fun books, too."

"I don't have a natural aptitude for magic, either, unfortunately. Being a mage might have been interesting! But being a loremaster suits me just fine too," she assures Elan. "I just sometimes wish I could do everything at once! But I have to pick one, and I picked my beloved books." She pets the spine of the nearest one with a gloved hand. 

Huh, maybe you can only be a spellcaster here if you would have been a sorcerer back home. That would explain why there aren't clerics and why there seem to be fewer wizards around…

"Okay! I'm glad that you have your books, then."

He waves goodbye for real this time and leaves. To the armory!

The armory contains three knights, and a lot of swords, polearms, daggers, staffs, and so on. 

"Hello there!" one of the knights says cheerfully. "I'm Sir Pluss. Here for a new weapon?" 

"Hi, Sir Pluss! I actually have some weapons on me that Twilly found while we were at a sneevil fort. Twilly said they looked like they might belong to you guys, and Sir Valance said that you would know for sure!"

He takes off his backpack and starts setting the loot on the counter.

A plain metal sword. A wooden sword. A fancy-looking sword that's been broken in half! A sword with a gem-encrusted hilt. A sword with a wavy blade and a hilt styled to look like a cobra. A strangely blackened sword that crackles with static electricity when Elan touches it. 

There are also a few daggers, including one with a golden blade, alongside a spear with a spearhead of some green mineral and a staff that's strangely warm to the touch and has a large gemstone at the top. 

One of the other knights gets out a stack of papers and leafs through them. "Huh! This looks like the stuff from a shipment we were supposed to get six weeks ago, but it never arrived. Honestly, I'd given up on ever seeing it." He shows the paper to the other two knights, and between them they check what Elan's got against what's listed. 

"Serpent's Fang, Static Sword, Nature's Call...yep, it's all here!" Sir Pluss confirms. "See, Lee, I told you the shipment from Falconreach would get here eventually! Don't be such a pessimist." 

(Sir Lee grumbles under his breath.)

"Anyway, thank you for bringing us our lost shipment! What was the reward set at, again, Sir Rated?" 

"A hundred gold. Or, if you see anything you'd like to keep, you could take one of these weapons as part of your reward instead! Are you a sword man or more of a dagger man?" 

Well, it's not surprising that Sir Lee would feel pessimistic. Elan thinks seriously about Sir Rated's offer.

"I use a rapier that I got from my mentor Julio…"

He sets the rapier down on the counter.

"What do all these do? Oh, and did specific people want them?"

They probably wouldn't be offering if that was the case, but it doesn't hurt to check.

"Oh, no, these would just be going into our general stock," Sir Pluss assures him. "Looks like you've got a pretty good Metal weapon there, so you probably don't need another." He moves the plain metal sword and the gem-encrusted one to the side, along with the daggers and staves. "The wooden one is just a training sword, really, nothing special. So you're looking at Fang, Nature damage, higher chance to crit—" (he points to the wavy snake-hilt sword) "—or Static, Energy damage, bonus to dodging." (This is, of course, the blackened sword that gave Elan a static shock a minute ago.) 

"Static will hit a bit harder in general," Sir Rated adds. "It's hardly top-of-the-line, but it's the best quality sword out of this lot for sure. Whichever one of these you don't take now, though, you'll be able to buy one direct from Yulgar in Falconreach, who makes all of these and more." 

Hmmm…

These swords aren't bad, but Elan's getting kind of a low-level vibe from this place. Maybe even a level one vibe. Maybe that means he should try using the stuff that's here? After all, he's already noticed some differences in how magic works, so it might be better if he gets some practice thinking in this system.

But he likes the rapier he got from Julio. It's special! And besides, he has a magical destiny of some kind. If he was supposed to not use his 14th-level stuff, the magical destiny could have been about him when he was fresh out of bard college.

Nothing wrong with a backup, though. Although all his money is back-home money, so he should probably get some local money…

"If I take Static as part of my reward, how much gold is left over?"

"Fifty. And I hear you healed our sick and wounded earlier; you should talk to Junn or Rolith about a reward for that as well." 

The possibility that the sword might be worth less than fifty gold does not enter Elan's mind at all.

"That sounds like a good deal to me! Do you think it would be better to ask Rolith or Junn? Rolith's pretty busy, and I don't know where he is right now, but I don't wanna act like I'm shaking Junn down."

"Oh, I think Rolith's out walking his togs!" Sir Pluss says. "He should be back soon, and you can catch him then. Here's your sword and your 50 gold, and thanks again for your help!" 

"Thanks!"

Static goes into the backpack; gold goes into the backpack's coin pocket.

"Have a nice day!" he says as he leaves. Once he's out, he says to Twilly:

"I had an idea for talking to the sneevil king earlier."

"You did? What was it?" 

"I have a spell called Mending I can cast three times a day. If there are any broken boxes lying around here, or if we can find broken boxes on our way there, I could trade those and the magic ring for the Black Dragon Box!"

"Wow, that's a super cool idea, Elan! Wait, but didn't Sir Valance say sneevils don't do trading?" 

"Awwwww, he totally did. Do you think that means no trade at all? Even stuff like 'I got an apple with my lunch but I don't like apples, and you got a banana with your lunch but you don't like bananas'? That would be sad. I wonder if they understand presents. Because then maybe we could say that it would be really nice if they helped us out, and also here's some boxes because we're thankful?"

"I thinks we should try it! It would be nicer than lying to them, anyways."

Twilly yawns a tiny yawn. "But maybe we should do that tomorrow." (The sky above is starting to darken, turning pink and orange over in what's probably the west.)

It is getting pretty late…

"Good idea. I hope the Black Dragon Box will stay safe while we sleep…"

Speaking of which, he's not sure where that's going to happen. Well, Sir Pluss said that Captain Rolith will be back soon, and Elan was waiting for him anyway because of the payment thing. He can ask him about both those things!

Before too long, there's a chorus of barking from outside the gates. A noisy pack of creatures, that look like if a crocodile was a dog, come bounding into the courtyard, barking at everything and jumping up at everyone with muddy paws. 

(Twilly hides behind Elan. Nobody else seems alarmed, only mildly irritated.) 

Elan's startled too, but he notices everyone else's reactions and decides that these guys probably aren't too dangerous. To him personally, anyway.

He still lets Twilly hide behind him, obviously.

They are not menaced with anything worse than muddy paws and slobbery tongues: nothing dangerous to Elan, but without the shelter of his legs to hide behind it's easy to imagine that Twilly would be bowled over by their enthusiasm. 

Rolith arrives after a moment, calling the pack back to him with a sharp whistle, which they...mostly obey. Some of them more promptly than others. With the help of a few servants, he shepherds the barking horde into a kennel building and makes his escape, shutting the door behind him on the second try. 

"Elan, Twilly, welcome back! Are you staying here for the night? You're both more than welcome." 

Yeah, no kidding. Elan refrains from trying to pet them, in case they'd react poorly, and makes sure that they don't knock Twilly over.

He gives Rolith a wave.

"Hi! Yeah, we'll both be doing that. Where will that be? Oh, also I was talking to Sir Rated earlier and he reminded me that helping out in the infirmary earlier might be something that you wanna pay me for."

"—yes, absolutely. I'll talk to Junn and Maya this evening, and we'll work out an amount that fairly compensates you for your help. But first, come with me to the mess hall for dinner, and then I'll ask Sir Cull to find you somewhere to sleep for the night." 

If not discouraged, Rolith will sling a friendly (albeit armoured) arm around Elan's shoulders and steer him in the direction of the mess hall. 

Wow, Rolith is super nice! Elan doesn't discourage this at all and is happy to be steered.

"Thanks, Rolith! I wonder what's for dinner tonight. I was talking about ice cream with Twilly earlier but that's more of a dessert food. Oh no, now I made myself want ice cream again! I haven't had any in a while. There was a place in Cliffport that I wanted to go to but we didn't have time, and then I got framed for like four hundred murders. That sucked. What kind of food do you have around here? I have a feeling that the food will be a lot like what I ate back home, because most of the people look Northern like me, and the trees in the forest look a lot like the trees at home. But maybe you have different farm animals, like instead of cows you have… something that's a lot like cows but isn't one. Ooh, do you have a chef named Sir Loin or something?"

Rolith stops walking for a second in surprise.

"—well, yes!" He shakes himself and keeps walking. "How did you guess? People who aren't from one of the old knightly families themselves aren't usually quite so fluent with the nomenclature." 

It's so nice to have his bardic talents appreciated.

"You mentioned the pun thing earlier today! I took a prestige class a few months ago that lets me use my Charisma bonus instead of my Strength bonus when attacking as long as I make a pun or relevant quip. I guess pun-thinking has a bunch of benefits!"