October 22nd, 973
Our heroes—displaying the elite detective instincts of people who have hardly ever mistaken mimics for furniture—approached The Broken Handle and immediately noticed that something was wrong.
Perhaps it was the tavern sign lying in shattered pieces.
Perhaps it was the crudely painted banner reading: “THE INDEPENDENT NATION OF RUMISTAN – NO HUMANS OR OTHER DOGS ALLOWED (Rum Gremlins Welcome. Bring Your You-Know-What.)”
Whatever it was, the party picked up on it immediately and slowed down to assess the situation further. Creeping from window to grimy window, squinting through layers of smudge, grease, and despair, they saw a 20-foot chalked sigil dominating the floor of the main room. Around it stood twenty mugs, each labeled in shaky handwriting – THE CUP OF BAD DECISIONS, THE CUP OF ETERNAL SLOSHING, THE CUP OF MIDNIGHT REGRET, and so on.
Around all of this, seven rum gremlins capered like drunk toddlers reenacting The Rite of Spring while, at the head of the circle sat a larger gremlin, perched on a pitifully improvised throne of debris and hubris, wearing a jagged crown made from the bottom of a bottle.
Across the room, the Hopsworths and six unfortunate patrons were tied to chairs, gagged, wide-eyed, and forced to witness the unfolding ritual.
The chanting provided no comfort whatsoever:
Keg to keg and cask to cask,
Hide your sins behind your flask!
Foam and fury, pour and roar—
Let the world fall on the floor!
Twist the bottle, break the seal,
Tell the gods just how you feel!
Raise the spirits, drown the sane,
Let sobriety know only pain!
Through some combination of concentration, intoxication, and sheer incompetence, none of the gremlins noticed the party watching. Neither, for that matter, did the prisoners. Gremlin Auras of Drunkenness are… potent.
The party withdrew to the tactical sanctuary of the outhouses, where Oban explained what they were seeing. “That sigil,” he whispered, “is the Threefold Keg, representing past booze, present booze, and future booze. All taps inward. All flowing into that chalked swirl in the center—The Funnels of Forever. That’s how they anchor eternal drunkenness from the dawn of creation to the heat death of the cosmos.”
“Each of the cups is a component of the spell. Without those? The ritual collapses. And trust me—we want that. Because if this finishes, everyone within miles will be smashed by noon and hungover every morning until the stars burn out.”
To their relief, however, Oban also came armed with magic,
- Shield of Faith over the entire party – “Now you’re protected by BOTH kinds of spirits!”
- A spell that spilled sticky enchanted wine to blur chalk sigils and glue gremlin feet to the floor.
- A vaporizing-rum spell that made a cloud of intoxicating mist.
With this and the spells of the party, there was more than enough available for a solid plan.
In the end, the party burst into the tavern through four entrances near simultaneously,
- Gareth and Merrythought, under the cover of Invisibility spells entered the northwest entrance to creep to the prisoners and free them quietly.
- Wolfgang and his newly acquired wolf charged in through the eastern entrance because subtlety is for wizards.
- Oban and Shamus entered from the western door, passed through the taproom, and emerged into the main hall in a central location, bringing Oban’s Aura of Sobriety as close as possible to the gremlins.
- Cassyndra, Laveleen, and their familiars entered through the south.
As planned, Oban opened the battle with his sticky-wine spell. The sigil smeared and the ritual stuttered and, just then, the entrance of the rest of the party put definitive end to any further thoughts of ritual casting. Instead of grabbing hostages, had been feared, the gremlins spun to fight the party. Badly.
Merrythought unleashed a devastating ballad about sobriety and Spillgut (the gremlin lord) that caused both psychic injury and profound personal offense. The rest of the party joined in with insults, spells, and injudicious bell-ringing. The gremlins hated the bells. Some verses echoed across the battlefield:
You wear a dirty loin cloth,
This halfling wears silk,
Your momma can’t hold her liquor,
So instead she drinks milk!
You have no lady gremlin,
No bitch or concubine
Perhaps it is because,
You get whisky-dicked from a sip of wine!
Oh hear them slurp, the gremlin horde –
They chew on filth they can’t afford!
They drink their weight, then drink some more –
Then puke it back – and drink some more!
It was devastating. It was poetic. It was cathartic. And it was all over in a less than a minute. Their self-esteem battered with artful rhyme, the rum gremlins flung themselves to the ground crying,
“We surrender! We surrender!”
“Parley! Parley! Parley! We looked it up — it means you can’t kill us!”
“Don’t stomp us! Oh, by the gods, PLEASE DON’T STOMP US! NO STOMP! NO STOMP! NO STOMP!”
The heroes tied them to a wall using the same ropes that had bound the prisoners and promptly arrived at the age-old question that has plagued civilizations since time immemorial,
What, exactly, do you do with creatures who absolutely refuse to follow the rules?
There were too many gremlins to assign each a dedicated babysitter, and since none of them had killed anyone (despite giving it a spirited try through alcohol poisoning), straight-up execution felt… morally queasy.
The party turned hopefully to Oban, who immediately threw up both hands.
“Oh no, no, no. These crimes are mortal crimes. Mortals must decide the punishment. My jurisdiction covers taverns, spilled drinks, and matters of extremely poor life choices—not jurisprudence.”
Which meant the heroes had to debate among themselves, while the tied-up gremlins chimed in freely with suggestions, personal grievances, and unsolicited Yelp reviews of the party’s combat performance. Most of these contributions were wisely ignored.
The discussion began with the obvious question, “could rum gremlins be rehabilitated to the point where they could be (mostly) trusted?”
Oban’s answer was categorical, “No one has ever succeeded! Not even once! Not even accidentally!”
This encouraged Wolfgang—who was, at that moment, wearing a necklace of gremlin ears—to advocate for simple execution. He argued that leaving them alive only guaranteed they’d bring chaos to some other tavern. The gremlins were, unsurprisingly, opposed to this proposal on both philosophical and practical grounds.
Gareth, equally pessimistic, proposed amputating their hands to “limit the damage they can do in the future.” The gremlins were again unenthusiastic, and some began loudly insisting that this constituted “cruel and unusual punishment,” despite displaying no clear understanding of what either “cruel” or “unusual” meant.
Oban then explained the traditional clurichaun approach to rum gremlins, “Administer a solid thumping, send them on their way, and warn them that if they ever return, they’ll get a bigger thumping.” It was invariably effective for the tavern in question… though, he admitted, the gremlins often simply relocated their nonsense to the next establishment down the road.
The party was willing to consider this—but only if no better option arose.
Another suggestion was to take the rum gremlins to the nearest large town and turn them over to the Crown’s magistrate for punishment and then it occurred to Cassyndra that, instead of being surrendered to the Crown, they should be inflicted upon the Crown. “The trouble with rum gremlins is that they are, by nature, incorrigible. So… what if we encourage them to be incorrigible in a useful direction?”
For reasons that entirely escape the understanding of this humble GM, the party instantly fixated on the hardworking, totally blameless Governor of Cambria, Governor Kanwal, as the ideal target.
With bright enthusiasm, the players built an elaborate plan to seal the gremlins inside casks of alcohol, ship them to the Governor as a “gift”, and wait for the casks to be opened in his wine cellar. They would then sit back as the gremlins overran everything and unleashed chaos everlasting.
Logistical complications—transport to Manchester, Crown inspection protocols, the likelihood of the casks being opened anywhere except the Governor’s private spaces—were thoughtfully considered. Ultimately the plan was deemed impractical.
But the party was not deterred.
Instead, they redirected their scheme toward the Northmarch Correctional Bastion, a newly constructed facility some 20 miles north of Manchester, currently housing Cassyndra’s unfortunate aunt, Grelda.
The idea – deliver chaos to the Crown’s own penal system, where it arguably belonged.
The plan received broad approval from most of the group—and quieter, more ambivalent approval from Wolfgang so Cassyndra approached the gremlins with an invitation to engage in what she termed a bit of “bureaucratic terrorism”. While it’s arguable as to whether either party had a clear understanding as to what those words meant, exactly, there’s no question that the gremlins understood this to be something other than “off with their heads” or “off with their hands” so they agreed enthusiastically.
The heroes, therefore, set about drafting a formal contract for the rum gremlins to swear upon in exchange for their continued survival. It read,
“Part the First:
Stay north and east of the circle of Manchester
The bargain your body now owns
We’ll enforce it the same
With the sword and the flame
And seal it down with your bones.
Part the Second:
You’ll travel with us to the Bastion,
Wherever, however, we go.
You’ll never seek to avoid us,
Or our ire you surely will know.
Part the Third:
Once arrived at the Bastion,
You’ll claim it as a well-deserved home,
As long as there’s beer, wine, or liquor
From there you’ll never roam.
Part the Fourth:
Party Hearty.
Part the Fifth:
Know that our powers are many,
You’ll do all that we say,
And whatever this law leaveth open,
To Cassyndra’s word, you’ll obey.”
Standing as one, the gremlins solemnly swore—hands raised, eyes wide, already arguing about which one of them had technically sworn first. The magic of the oath settled over them like a hangover you knew was going to be terrible but hadn’t quite started yet.
Oban Bryne stared at the group for a long moment and then he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“In all my centuries,” he said slowly, “I have seen mortals make many questionable decisions. Most of them involve alcohol. Some involve contracts. A few manage to incorporate both simultaneously. None, however, have ever involved weaponizing rum gremlins against a sovereign government.”
He looked at the bound, grinning fey. He looked back at the party. “…This is new.”
He sighed, adjusted his scarf, and shook his head—not in anger, not even in disbelief, but with the weary acceptance of someone who has lived long enough to know how stories like this tend to go off the rails.
“Well. You’ve saved a tavern. You’ve prevented a ritual catastrophe. And you’ve definitely created a problem for later.”
He gestured at the gremlins, who were already arguing about whether Northmarch would have a wine cellar or merely a wine-adjacent holding area.
“Sometimes,” Oban continued, “you do everything right… and the consequences simply haven’t caught up yet.” He smiled, just a little. “Let’s get them on the road before they start singing again.”
And so the heroes of Miley—having liberated the Broken Handle, restored a clurichaun’s purpose, and drafted the most alarming contract anyone in the tavern had ever seen—prepared to set out.
With bells.
With oaths.
With a wagon full of rum gremlins.
Toward a Crown facility absolutely unprepared for what was coming.