Once a week, in the glimmering light of candles crafted from residual pierce-grease, the mightiest and most mystical of Kenyon faculty gather in the bell tower of the Church of the Holy Spirit (who else didn’t know it was called that) for what is bureaucratically referred to as “staff meetings.” They sit, stand, and kneel, becloaked and smoking really long pipes and sipping mulled wine. Before them, levitating an eighteenth of an inch off his gold-tasseled cushion, with his feline avatar Moxie seated serenely behind the all-knowing campaign screen, the most esteemed Dungeon Master in all of central Ohio with a degree in biophysical chemistry—Sean Decatur.

This is your weekly Dungeons and Decat update.

The players:

Christopher Smith: Cristof Smithycraft—human cleric

Tristan Neviska: Tryst Naevi—halfling… with unspecified bachelor’s degree

Meredith Harper Bonham: Meréd Bonbôn—half-elf wizard

Brett Worsham: Brett Worsham—goliath barbarian

Our Kenyon College Faculty adventurers suffered a crushing loss this week. When we last left our heroes, under the able guidance of Tryst Naevi and Cristof Smithycraft, they were in pursuit of the potion of the Great Alchemist… um… Johnson (& his hunchbacked, wooden-toothed assistant… also named Johnson), a potion to defend the exorbitantly taxed but fantastically literate peasants of the kingdom from the wildly inconvenient Plague of the Bat. Peasants who, if required to continue having the village druid-healer extract mucus samples by forcing wads of wool up their nostrils on a weekly basis, might just sew all their bodily apertures shut and be done with it.

But as they came in sight of their destination—the castle of the Dread Queen Gwyneth Paltrow, guarded by her not technically undead but soon to be disproportionately dead army of anti-potioners—Tryst Naevi and Cristof Smithycraft said farewell to one of their most loyal allies: Meréd Bonbôn. Assistant Head of Peasant Affairs under the Feline-God-King Moxie. As the noble company prepared to storm the castle and cut down the army of anti-potioners (who, I’d like to reiterate, were kind of toying with their own mortality anyways), the Dragon of Beecher Hill Executive Firm in Columbus tore through the toxic reek of Queen Gwyneth Paltrow’s sorcerous goop-candles and snatched our brave Assistant Head of Peasant Affairs away to the realm of high-income and existential depravity that is corporate America.

To make matters worse, the kidnapping of Meréd Bonbôn just so happened to correspond with a local uprising of peasantry calling for labor rights that sound suspiciously like dirty communist propaganda to the traditionally minded Feline-God-King Moxie, who has always been partial to the idea of a Smithian invisible hand controlling the economy, as he doesn’t have any hands of his own with which to do so. Messengers from King Moxie to the heroes report that many of the most productive peasantry have stopped farming and are instead spending their days sitting in the fields and looking very politically enlightened… for peasants, anyway. They have even been making a lot of signs and sending a lot of demanding letters to King Moxie, which is rather embarrassing, seeing as he can’t read. 

The Feline-God-King Moxie (blessed be He) has demanded, in no uncertain terms, that Tryst Naevi, Cristof Smithycraft, and their companions return immediately to put down this medievo-marxist peasant revolt. Will our heroes abandon the assault on the castle of the Dread Queen Gwyneth Paltrow, or submit to the will of their god and king and favorite furred friend in whom to divulge their emotional turmoil when they encounter him on Middle Path?

(unless that’s just me)

Alas, Tryst Naevi and Cristof Smithycraft were overcome by the terrible responsibility of their quest, the plight of the peasantry who are desperate to resume social functions in a kingdom where there really isn’t much to do anyway that you can’t just discreetly carry out in your own hovel without King Moxie’s guards noticing. But, you know, somebody might get sick, I guess. Nobody wants to get sent to the Comfort Dungeon.

Thanks in no small part to their formidable goliath barbarian companion Brett Worsham, the company managed to capture and cast a memory modification spell on King Moxie’s messenger before he could carry back word of their insubordination. 

Cristof Smithycraft was busy preparing an animal messenger spell to inform the rebellious peasants of the situation, and to suggest that they keep King Moxie busy while they retrieve Johnson’s and also Johnson’s potion, but then D.M. Decatur interrupted the campaign to deliver an extended and impromptu lecture on the mechanics, advantages, and potential side effects of the respective COVID vaccines, making full and mighty usage of his biophysical chemical expertise…

(someone please explain to me what biophysical chemistry is, because I’m starting to suspect that Decat made it up)