Salty Pirate Lads
The party debates what they want to do, Gary is in favor of dealing with the giant ominous storm cloud, Nahala points out with some fairness that last time they did that it tried to murder him (admittedly after he taunted it) and Elmer wants to go looking for pretzel salt. After some debate while Gary pounds Bloody Mary’s made with real blood, they set off the for the coastline where they found the giant river with boats and a small town visible on it last time.
They make it to the swamp where they fought the Vegepygmy Chief and look around for any sign of the corpse, but it’s been some time and there doesn’t appear to be anything left, either due to decomposition (they are made of black bean burger, according to Gary) or scavengers (see also, made of black bean burger) or whatever.
They reach the riverback and spend some time discussing options for getting across, including Gary carrying everyone, trying to build a raft, everyone swimming for themselves but Nahala can’t swim. After some time Elmer declares that they can swim it themselves and Gary can follow towing Nahala. Somehow Elmer manages to swim the full river while wearing their armor and Gary and Nahala follow easily.
On the other bank they can see the town in the distance, more a collection of shacks with a ramshackle sort of docks with a couple small one or two master ships moored. None of the party knows anything about ships so they classify them tentatively as “boats”. They debate approaches to the town then end up just walking up to town and into the local tavern, such as it is. It’s a wide, one story building with the bar at the back and a fire on either short wall, full of slapped together tables and chairs and about half full of patrons, all humans and all looking pretty rough and unwashed. It’s dark, smelly and dirty, just like a bar should be.
Nahala walks up to the bar and orders “The strongest shot you have” and the bartender gives her a look, reaches into a bucket of water under the bar with a pair of tongs and pull out of a bottle that he pours into a stoneware shot glass and pushes across the bar. Nahala takes the shot and just stands there looking dazed for a minute.
Elmer orders a bear, Gary orders meat. Once Elmer gets their beer they start trying to convert all the patrons to Dwarfoe and manages a pair of quick conversions with some folks just standing around at the bar. When they agree to convert to Dwarfoe, Elmer accidentally invents the high five or, as they call it, the two person prayer hands.
Gary wanders over to the biggest guy in the bar and challenges him to arm wrestle, Nahala tries to follow to provide moral support and finds that she has to hop everywhere because her right leg has stopped working and also she’s extremely drunk. She tells Gary to eat some snail jerky before he arm wrestles because “Snails are incredibly powerful for their size.” Words to live by.
Gary wins the arm wrestling match against Bob (the big guy) and after failing to find any other takers, suggests a two on one tug of war instead, which he also wins, against Bob and his friend. The party makes about 40G off side bets, 13XP a piece. He loses the second tug of war against three people but he buys the whole tavern a round of drinks to show there’s no hard feelings.
When the cheering dies down, Elmer gives a speech about the many blessings of Dwarfoe and how Dwarfoe is the God of Beer and you all like beer, don’t you? Yaaaaaaaaaaah! There’s a certain amount of enthusiasm and a few converts so Elmer passes their helmet around for tithes and rakes in one gold and about twenty copper, the gold coming from what Bob won by finally beating Gary in tug of war. This comes to 6/15ths of an XP per person.
The party sits down with Bob and his friends Tobin and Squee to discuss what this town is and it turns out it’s something between a pirate port and a wreckers village, they sail out, maybe find a ship that looks like it’s got a nice cargo, maybe board it and take their stuff, if anyone fights back there might be a bit of light maiming. If they’re aggressively refusing to surrender, maybe someone ends up a little dead. But it’s all in good fun. Elmer asks about salt and Bob mentions that they find it in cargoes on ships occasionally but don’t think much of it since there’s a place on the shore where you can just find it lying around on the ground and gives the party some directions to that place.
The party finds a tidal pool surrounded by sea salt left over from evaporation and Elmer scoops up two bottles worth of it, about 300G or 100G a piece and they head back to town.