Jenny Be Good — Aldenheim

Day: 47

Summary

Malad Voltren, Tiny Elle, and Big Toe took a job from the Hatter of Hearthmere to recover hats stolen from inside his Hat of More Hats and rumored to be hidden aboard Jenny Be Good on Still Lake of the Vale. What followed was less a tidy retrieval than a first meeting under pressure: a near-disastrous boarding over a Corrupted Crocodile, a chaotic search that turned up a Mimic instead of cargo, and the deeply memorable decision by Big Toe to poop off the side of the boat at exactly the worst possible time, a choice that quickly became part of how the others understood him. After that came a delayed return to the dining hall, where the party chose to engage a strange passenger in his little gambling wager and eventually solved the ship's absurd dice game. In the end, the Hatter's lead proved true: the missing hats were aboard the vessel, and what began as a recovery mission became a practical problem of sorting, carrying, and returning an absurd quantity of stolen headwear.

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Players

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Timeline

The three first met in Stonebridge at the shop of the Hatter of Hearthmere, who explained with great embarrassment that several enchanted hats had once been stolen from inside his own Hat of More Hats. He wanted them recovered quietly from Jenny Be Good and stressed immediately that this was not about the Hat of Disguise. The introduction nearly went sideways on the spot when Big Toe's first instinct was to threaten the Hatter, forcing Malad Voltren to magically compel him to drop the idea and leave the shop with the others. After that, the road to Still Lake of the Vale gave the three strangers just enough time to become acquainted before the real trouble started.

Boarding the ship was the first problem. The gangplank lurched as a Corrupted Crocodile rolled against the hull, and both Malad Voltren and Big Toe ended up dangling from the plank before Tiny Elle and brute effort got everyone back up. Once aboard, Big Toe spent part of the aftermath trying to befriend or tame the crocodile before settling on a more practical answer: casting Find Familiar and conjuring a raven to accompany the group while they searched the vessel.

Instead of going straight to the dining hall, the party skipped ahead into a lower-deck search. The ship immediately began to feel less like a passenger steamer and more like a place for hidden storage and the wrong kind of business. An apparently promising trunk turned out to be a Mimic, which latched onto Malad Voltren and dragged the group into a long, improvised fight. Tiny Elle landed careful blowgun shots, Malad Voltren traded damage up close, and Big Toe contributed in the singular way only he could: first by wandering upstairs, discovering an eerily normal bartender and a strange wager host in the dining hall, trying and failing to smash through the floor from above, and then, before properly rejoining the battle, taking time to poop off the side of the boat. By the time he finally made it back through the actual door and into the room, that choice had become part of the encounter's chaos and part of his identity in the eyes of the rest of the party. The mimic finally died after a great deal of confusion, noise, smell, and persistence.

Only after that did they return to the dining hall. There, a bartender kept polishing glasses as though nothing aboard the ship were unusual while a narrow odd fellow beside three rune-etched jars invited them into a small gambling wager built around a puzzle door and a selection of dice. The upstairs characters had very much noticed Big Toe's earlier behavior, and the conversation made it clear his reputation had arrived before he had. Rather than ignore the man, the group took the wager and worked out, after some trial and error, that color was misdirection and number was the real clue, eventually choosing three different numbers that totaled ten and winning 50 GP. The Hatter's lead proved true: the missing hats were aboard Jenny Be Good, and once that was established the work ahead was less mystery than logistics.

People Met

Hatter of Hearthmere - embarrassed employer determined to recover his missing hats before the story spread any further
The bartender of Jenny Be Good - unnervingly calm host who behaved as though an abandoned ship and a monster downstairs were both ordinary inconveniences
The odd fellow with the rune jars - invited the party into a gambling wager in the dining hall and paid out once they solved his dice puzzle

Items Found

50 GP - won from the dining hall dice wager
The Hatter's missing hat cache - located aboard Jenny Be Good; recovering it fully became a matter of careful packing, carrying, and return

Unanswered Questions

Who stole the hats out of the Hat of More Hats in the first place, and who moved them onto Jenny Be Good?
Why was Jenny Be Good being used like a covert storehouse instead of an ordinary passenger vessel?
Who exactly were the bartender and the odd gambler upstairs, and why were they still calmly operating on a half-abandoned ship?
What else had been stored aboard the vessel besides the Hatter's missing hats?

Notes

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