Arc 5 - New Horizons
Ptolemy Henkel, THE epnoymous bard of ‘Soup’ fame, falls into a trap and wakes to find himself simmering in a giant’s cauldron. To distract his captor, a Giant called Klarb, Ptolemy decides to tell a story - one of friendship, revenge, love and hatred, death, and a shocking amount of rodent-based misconduct. His story, like all good stories, begins with three rowdy freaks and their quest to save a missing princess.
Smash cut to a bustling city. Glimki Treefellow, a gnomish paladin from the town of Dwells, arrives in the great city of Erdiniiin, where he is immediatly run over by a carriage. Faunalyn Vaydark, an elven noblewoman, pays him 5gp for his trouble and returns her attention to a far more exciting issue than flattened peasants - the shocking news of Princess Kallista’s kidnapping. Glimki peels himself off the pavement and shortly befriends Clay Campbell, a Tiefling Cleric. Clay seems really, really nice and normal… right up until they let slip that they helped kidnap the princess. The tricksy lady known as Chance brings the three together again, and they decide to work together for their own ends. They adopt the codenames “rumpus”, “rumpus,” and “rumpus.” And thus, the Rumptrio is born.
Pursuing their own ends leads them to look for one of Clay’s criminal colleagues. They find him. And he is very, very dead. The crime scene is gnarly (shout out to Katseye for inventing that word). In fact, ALL of Clay’s accomplices are found slaughtered at the hand of something unseen and very, very powerful. The plot, like roux-based soup, thickens! Thankfully, theres little time to linger at the crime scene - the entire city is summoned to an announcement by the King of Erdiniin, who declares that whoever finds his daughter will recieve whatever they wish from the kingdom. This is, obviously, somewhat exciting to a trio of complicated and nuanced characters with motivations spanning the entire benevolence-to-bloody-vengeance spectrum (a spectrum very similar to the spectrum of sexualities, with “un-kidnapping a princess” being the rough equivalent of bisexual). This is also, obviously, the call to adventure. Will they answer it? Yes, clearly! Otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a show.
‘Welcome to Xav’ begins with Chapter 1 and ends with Chapter 4. Listen to it anywhere you listen to podcasts (if you do, fate will know that you are pure of heart, and the stars shall grant you one wish).