From the Journal of Cormac: The Mad Apprentice (One-Shot)
Sometimes you just want a drink, and where do you go to get a drink? Why a tavern of course! I was traveling through a small village miles and miles away from anything remotely interesting, so I stopped in, as I was parched from the Summer’s heat. For being in the middle of nowhere this tavern was filled to the brim with travelers and adventurers.
“Around on me for the whole tavern!” Someone shouts the whole tavern erupts in cheers. Excellent timing I think as a barmaid walks by with an overflowing tray of ales, I grab one and find a seat up at the end of the bar. A bard starts up a tune some other patrons join in the song, it's one that it seems lots of people know because before long the whole tavern was singing along. Or at least some form of singing, to be honest, some of the people needed to maybe take a nap, but everyone was enjoying themselves.
A loud though echos through the tavern as the door is thrown open, we all turn to see what the big commotion is about when we just stare at what looks like a sheep. The sheep trots up to our section of the tavern. A druid leans over to pet it and realizes it has a scroll in its mouth. The noise from the tavern seems to die down as those around the sheep and druid are intrigued. The druid recites the scroll... it sounds like its suppose to be a spell, and that is confirmed when nothing happens. A very tipsy mage from the table behind me stands and wobbly walks over to examine the scroll. She squints her eyes as though trying to make the words stay still on the page, then recites them aloud just as the druid had done, but with a few more hiccups.
The sheep starts to talk which shocks all of us. The mage just shrugs “It must have been an animal speech spell” and wonders back to their ale.
“Indeed,” the sheep replies. “I am in dire need of some adventurers assistances! My apprentice has stolen my wand, taken over my tower, and turned me into this sheep! Please help me!”
“Where is your tower?” A ranger asks, setting down their ale.
“Just up the road, about three miles outside of the village, you can’t miss it.” The sheep says. And with that, we about 8 tipsy and/or drunken adventurers set down their ales and picked up with arms and set off down the road, vaguely in the direction the sheep had pointed us in.
The group is in good spirits the bard decided to come with us as well and we singing and playing their lute as we walked. By the looks of everyone, we have two druids, a rogue, a sorcerer, the bard, of course, a cleric, a paladin, and of course me, a barbarian.
We make it outside the village and see an orc coming up the road towards us. He spots us and calls “Have you seen a sheep come this way?” One of the druids moves awkwardly trying the shield the sheep from view. “Nooooooo,” We all drunkly reply. Needless to say, the Orc did not believe us and spotted the sheep, then attacked us. He also had some buddies behind him so we ended up taking on a group of Orcs and wolves. Everyone seems to sober up while in the battle, we manage to defeat each one, when we are on the final Orc we decide to take him prisoner and take him with us. During the fight the bard was very quick on their feet and lulled the wolves to sleep so we didn't actually have to fight them, we just tied them to trees so they couldn’t follow us if they woke up.
We continue down the road until we see the top of the wizard's tower. It’s here that we decide to break off from the main road, in case there are more Orcs, we didn’t want to fight if we didn’t have to. So we cut away from the main road and into the forest area surrounding the tower. As we make our way through the woods we encounter a couple of apes who appear to be playing dice. I cautiously walk up to them and ask if they know which way the front of the tower was, they are happy enough to give us directions. It was all very odd.
We make our way up to the tower without any other oddities or problems. We find the door to the tower unlocked and make our way inside. We explore all the rooms and eventually find the Wizards bedroom. It would appear his apprentice turned the bed into a dragon, though it looks as though the transformation didn’t go as well as expected, as the dragon was extremely sleepy and sluggish. It was a bed after all. We find the Apprentice yelling and screaming at the dragon, urging it to attack us. The dragon just goes back to sleep, the apprentice then turns to us wand at the ready, he starts screaming at us about how we're all spies.
The bard and one of the druids manage to talk down the apprentice and convince him not to use the wand on us. Through a bit of a struggle, we manage to disarm him and take control of the wand. The rouge takes hold of the wand and points it at the sheep with a look on her face of really just hoping for the best. A puff of blue smoke engulfs the sheep and left standing in front of us is a high elf wizard. The wizard is so grateful that he rewards us each with 500 gold pieces each.
The Wizard’s Apprentice apparently had a mental break, deeming that his master was not appreciative of his research and work. He was researching animal transfiguration and manipulation. He convinced the Orcs that worked for the Wizard to turn against him to be rewarded with gold, and thus the mutiny took place.
Having put in a good days work, we did as all good adventurers do, and headed back to the tavern to tell our tale of the days strange events. I cut back through the forest and find the apes, still playing dice, and invite them to come with us to the tavern. We play dice and drink ale and feast late into the night.
*This is Cormac for reference: Barbarian, Shield (Hill) Dwarf*