At the Four Winds Bar, The Celestial Plane of the Oyster

Well, this isn’t so bad.  I know they teach us that the afterlife is where we get our final reward as servants of the Blue Oyster, but I wasn’t expecting a bar, you know?  This is pretty nice.  The music is pretty awesome here.  It almost makes up for the shit way that I died.

Where’s my ninety-nine groupies?  What?  I have to tell you how I died first?  Blue Oyster, I just died!  Don’t you think I would rather not talk about it?

Okay, fine.  I’ll have you know that I died fighting the infernal forces of some squid God. 

See, a bunch of my fellow Acolytes had been dying lately and the Vicar told me that I had to investigate it.  So me, Bill the Fighter and some Halfling burglar go looking for these assholes that had been killing acolytes.  We broke into a sewer hideout, stole some important paperwork and came back to the temple.

Now the paperwork was in some foul language that we couldn’t understand.  We went to the Tower of Secrets where the demon humping mages live and we solicited their advice.   That give us a runaround but I am impress them with the power of the Blue Oyster and they gave us a tip.  The writing is in some code that a local potion maker uses. 

I lead our party to the potion shop and tell the counter woman that now would be a good time to confess to her crimes.  She tries to tell us that her boss was out of town which might have worked except our burglar who was casing the place saw the guy upstairs.  I call her out on her crap and she leads us upstairs.

Here is where the sand hits the oyster.  The door opens and there is this evil mage sitting behind a desk.  He’s got the robes, he’s got the cackling laugh and he got the wicked goatee thing that evil folks have.  I figured out it was a trap right away but my party members figured it out when two guys as big as ogres flank us.

Shit got hairy.  I stunned one guard with my mace and the burglar Halfling back stabs him.  That’s one down.  That is when the freaking demon humping mage threw a spell at us.

Bill the fighter hits the ground snoring.  The burglar hits the ground snoring.  Even the freaking henchman of the mage starts snoring.  It’s just me and the mage.

What did I do?  Look, this wasn’t my first adventure.  It was my second.  I knew I had to get the party up and ready to fight.  I gave Bill a savage kick to try to wake him up.

The mage tosses a dagger at me.  It goes right into my throat like a chicken bone.  I’m spitting blood through a second mouth and every thing starts to go dark.   I feel my legs begin to go and I can see my blood spurting out to the ground.

With my dying action, I turn my head so my blood will land on Bill’s face.  Now the fighter wakes up.  He’s up and I’m dead.

My spirit stands by my body and the party keeps fighting but I am not paying attention.  I’m dead.  I felt this incredible lightness.  I could also hear a cowbell ringing with this fast pace beat.  The Reaper was coming and I did not fear the Reaper.

Now someone show me where I go to pick up my ninety-nine groupies.     

The Sermon of Yars

So, you want to know about my adventure last night?  Well keep the beer coming and I’ll tell you.  Seriously, buy me another beer.

It all began when the Vicar of the Blue Oyster Cult summoned his bravest Acolytes.  There was me, another acolyte named Fagin and some Halfling named Harry Bigfeet or something.  The Halfling followed some other sea creature God; I think it was a Holy Shrimp.  The Halfling said he was here because of trouble back home.  I figured he ate the wrong apple pie and was most likely a burglar.

Anyway, the Vicar said he had a vision concerning all the dead acolytes we’ve have lately.  The vision said, “The dirty trough breeds misfortune.”  That was it.  I mean, dirty places of water usually breeds a lifetime in the outhouse in my experience so I didn’t think that was a rather enlightening bit of wisdom.

Then the burglar says “Oh I know that place.  That is bar by the river.”  And I was like, it was a literal vision.  Well alright then.

The three of us high-tailed it to the Dirty Trough.  We left in such a hurry that we forgot to wait for Fagin’s cousin, Bill, and we also forgot our lantern.  But hey, it’s a bar so I figured they had their own lighting.

We get there and the place is a total dump.  It looks like it imports drunks and exports dead bodies.  It was a total shit hole.  I wisely whispered to my companions not to let on that we are clerics on a holy mission.

Now, considering how literal the vision had been so far, I decided to be direct.  I went right up that bartender, I looked him in the eye and I said, “Where is your misfortune?”

The bartender asks “Who wants to know?”

Well I am wise to the world.  Thanks for the extra beer by the way.  I reach in my pocket and I pull out a silver piece.  I say, “Mr. Silver is asking.”  That’s another metaphor by the way.

That bartender gets all sneaky.  He says “The river Yem brings great misfortune.”  Some sort of code shit that I got to answer back with.

Now I got this.  I’ve sat through more theology classes than you can imagine.  I can fake this shit with the best of them.  I said with perfect confidence, “But there is great fortune to make on the river of misfortune,” or some shit.  I don’t really remember.

And it works!  The bartender tells us to go in the back and seek the 3rd cask.  This adventurer stuff is fucking easy.

We go to the back and Fagin, my well armored colleague goes in first.  He’s got plate mail on so he is going in first.  We find a chair that is used to strap people down in and beat them.  In my wisdom, I fucked that chair up.  If they want to capture and beat us up, they’ll have to get another chair. 

The cask is some sort of secret door and Fagin, my well armored colleague goes in and gets his fucking ass killed by some monster.

Holy Oyster, right?  I bravely tossed my torch at the monster and the burglar nicked it with an arrow.  I the flickering light of its burning arm hair, I notice it is a zombie. 

Well check this shit out, I’m a cleric.  I take my holy symbol and say “The power of the cowbell compels you to back the fuck off,” or something.  The motherfucking zombie backs off with bits of Fagin’s throat still in his mouth.  Then the burglar chops it up.

Ah good, I needed another beer.  So while I was administering last rites and checking my well armored colleague’s pockets, Bill shows up.  And he brought the lantern!  And best of all, he’s got plate mail armor too! 

We have a quick consultation and we then we start exploring the place.  There was a tunnel where things got complicated with a fucking sewer and some sort of drawbridge.  We needed to swing the Halfling over to the other side and he can lower the drawbridge.  Easy as the night, right? 

So we sling the Halfling and the dumb shit just splashes right in the water.  What the fuck?  Worse burglar ever!  The little barefoot fuck climbs out of the water stinking of shit and squishing everywhere he walks.  He did get the drawbridge down though.

So we keep going.  There are all sorts of weird shit down there.  There are rooms filled with skeletons who don’t move.  There were some doors that Bill had to break down.  There was sort of clever gas trap aimed at killing the most pious and of course I nearly died because no one can question my fucking piety and humility. 

At one point we find some crates and we’re like, oh, this is a smuggler hideout.  But all we find inside are candles and curtains.  Oyster damn, these guys are less smugglers and more like interior decorators. 

Just as I am about to give up on this place being important at all, we get jumped by some weird fuck in a robe.  We heroically wailed on him and he died.  The guy was carrying a weird unholy symbol of an octopus as well as carrying 71 gold pieces.

That is the fucking jackpot.  Most acolytes come home from adventures with fucking nothing to show for it.  Some retard brought back pots and pans.  Can you believe that shit?  So I’m ready to call it a night and celebrate our good fortune.

But no, the crazy dude had an office.  There was this big ass map with X’s on it.  Get this, the X’s were where other acolytes had died!  This asshole must be doing some sort of secret jihad on us. 

Then Bill says “Oh, don’t octopuses eat oysters?” and I am like, holy shit.   We got to get this map back home.

Thanks for the beer.  So I grab the map and I tell the others to grab any other papers they find in that office.  We stuff every scrap of paper we find and we get the hell out of there.

Now, we picked up some robes and were wearing them so we could do some clever bluffing and lying shit.  On our way out, we encounter some robed thugs dragging some poor guy in a hood to where we fucked up that chair.  We could have easily bluffed our way out.

The lead thug says “Misfortune greets …” You know to be honest; I forget what the fuck he said.  Some sort of metaphor riddle again.

I said, “The power of the Blue Oyster will hit you upside the head!”  And threw a sling stone at them.

Now my companions were not ready for a fight but fuck, they did pretty well.  Bill stonecold kills a thug like he was nothing.  I mortally wound one thug with a sling stone and the burglar finished him off with an arrow.

But that 3rd bastard ran and got up the stairs.  He’s yelling for help and we can hear the bar upstairs getting ready for a fight.  The hooded guy is crying and stumbling around and we really should of helped him but we were busy.

I’m shooting sling stones at the running thug and the burglar is filling the air with arrows and Bill is chasing him but that bastard is getting away.  I’m seeing my life flash before my eyes.  I’m going to die with a backpack full of gold and a shit load of paperwork.  No one at the Cult will ever know that I got more treasure than they have ever seen.  Fuck.

So what happened?  Bill noticed there was another way out that led into the street.  The burglar grabbed the hooded guy and dragged him along. I threw one of my flasks of oil behind us to cover our escape.  Nothing disturbs murderous scum like falling on oil that might light up at any moment.  I really wished I had remembered to bring a tinderbox.

So, we got away.  What was in those papers?  Who was the hooded man we rescued?  Who were these octopus worshiping bastards?  Well since the beer seems to have dried up, I guess I’ll save it for next time.