Ep. 17: Lunar Interlude 1 - Carnival Chaos

"I'm all jacked up on corn dogs and Dippin Dots! We're going to the carnival this week in... The Adventure Zone!"

Synopsis
''In this brief interlude between adventures, our heroes attend an office party — well, a carnival — at the Bureau of Balance’s lunar headquarters. They also hit up the Fantasy Costco, where they must match wits with their most fearsome mercantile foe yet. Taako makes a discrete trade. Merle tries on some cool-ass slippies. Magnus finally finds a friend.''

The Tres Horny Boys are celebrating with the rest of the Bureau of Balance at a carnival set up by The Director to celebrate the Midsummer Solstice, an event that is held every year. The highlight of the Midsummer Solstice is an eclipse that occurs every year at high noon, and which carries a spiritual importance to many religions. Griffin explains that everyone in the Bureau of Balance is wearing costumes, and he asks the boys what they're wearing for the celebration.


 * Magnus is dressed as Taako


 * Merle is dressed as Ursula from The Little Mermaid


 * Taako is dressed as Judge Lance Ito

They first stop by a food stand, where they meet Petrilda, a fried conjurer. She tells them she can fry up anything your heart desires, and Magnus orders an fried Unicorn horn and Unicorn dick to eat.

Petrilda holds out her hands in the air and a beautiful spiral ivory white unicorn horn appears in one hand, and, in the other, a unicorn penis. She dunks them both in a vat of golden oil, and she pulls out two cylindrical fried things in a little wire basket. She hands the fried horn and penis to Magnus on a styrofoam plate, and tells him to "mind the shards". Taako attempts to trick Petrilda into mentioning tortillas, thus furthering his attempts to discover tacos, but Griffin refuses to fall for Justin's tortilla trap.

Failing this, the boys leave the food cart to go play some carnival games. After playing a Toss-The-Little-Ring-Around-The-Bottle game, a carnival barker barks for the boys to come and see if they can knock down his cans.

The prize for knocking over these cans, the vendor says, is also 5000 gold pieces. However, seeing as the boys that don't have that much gold, the vendor gives them a freebie, but they'll owe him if they fail. He allows Merle a practice throw, and Merle manages to knock off the top three of the stack.

Merle demands another throw, double or nothing, and manages to knock over all the cans except one. Taako casts Mage Hand, and knocks over the last can. A alarm goes off, having detected magic, and the vendor calls the boys cheaters. Taako tries to rules lawyer by claiming that, technically, the only rule is that you knock over the cans, but the vendor doesn't listen and labels them cheaters by stamping 'cheater' on the boys' hands, banning them from all carnival games. Realizing they goofed up, Travis asks for Griffin to rewind time, so that they won't be labeled cheaters. Magnus steps up to the plate this time, and...he also fails to knock over all the cans. The vendor informs the boys that they now owe him twenty thousand gold pieces.

The boys wander back to the main part of the festival, where people are starting to get drunk and things are starting to get uncomfortable. Magnus gets his face painted to look like a kitty, and Taako asks "is there some adventure here or like are we just hanging?"

The Director's voice amplifies throughout the yard, and she calls for everyone's attention as the eclipse is about to start a minute or so from now. Leon walks around handing people, including the boys, special sunglasses so they can see the eclipse without hurting their eyes. Just as the sky begins to darken and the sun and the real moon align in the sky, the boys are blasted by a deafening shriek that immediately incapacitates everyone around them. Everyone falls to the ground limp, excluding the boys, and the sky turns pitch black. The boys are suddenly assaulted by a sonic blast, and Griffin has them roll constitution saving throws to see if they can withstand it. Travis rolls a 18, Justin rolls a 17, and Clint rolls a 20.

All three of them manage to withstand the blast, and retain their consciousness. Becuse they stayed conscious, the boys are able to distinguish some sounds in this calamity, and it sounds almost like twenty orchestras are all playing all at the same time around them. They also hear thousands, if not millions, of whispers, all happening at the same time as the orchestra. As the eclipse begins to blot out the sun, for a brief moment, the boys can see thousands of bright, white eyes fill the dark sky, all of them burning intensely.

Magnus heads over to the Director, and asks her if what just happened has happened before. Seeing that she's still a bit disoriented, Magnus tries to slap her awake. Now fully awake, the Director assures them that this has never happened before, and that they'll debrief about in her office later. The boys go around slapping everyone else awake, and, afterwards, head into the Director's office. She asks them what exactly they saw during the time she was unconscious. The boys tell her that they heard a cacophony of sounds, and thousands of white eyes staring at them. The Director informs them that no one on the surface has reported seeing what they just described, and that they were apparently the only ones who saw it. She commands the boys not to tell anybody else what they saw until they can figure out what they're up against, and that they must hasten their efforts to collect the Grand Relics.

[The Money Zone]

WIP

The Money Zone
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Featured NPCs

 * The Director
 * Leon the Artificer
 * Garfield the Deals Warlock

Featured Locations

 * Bureau of Balance

Quotes
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