<p>Blavin provides you with a multibeast for your excursion. “Courtesy of the Benefactor!” You pack it up with food and supplies, and trek into the Tammineaux Forest in search of the first Ginnarak Crystal.</p>
<p>The forest is lush, thick, and green. You have to hack your way through the vines and the brush. There are stinging insects, squawking birds, and dangerous forest creatures a plenty. It is hot and sticky.</p>
<p>How will you ever find your way through this wilderness to the dig site?</p>
<p>“Shouldn’t be too hard,” you remember Blavin saying back at Lucy’s, gesturing carelessly and sloshing a little bit of his fourth drink. “They’re gnomes, after all! Just follow the sound of explosions and screaming.”</p>
<p>Sure enough, before long you hear a mechanical droning and some blasting up ahead, punctuated now and then by high pitched screams, and you guide the multibeast in that direction.</p>
<p>Suddenly you are ambushed by a troop of blahoblins! Awful looking things. Taut rubbery gray skin. Long flat noses stick out way far from their faces. And so do their protruding, lipless mouths full of sharp pointy teeth. You didn’t hear them over the noise of the shrieking parrots and, in the distance, the shrieking gnomes.</p>
<p>“SHOE SHINE!!” the first one yells. It is wearing a gold ring on each finger (minus the three fingers it is missing), two in each ear, and one in its nose. It is dragging a vat of black polish nearly as tall as it is.</p>
<p>“SHOE SHINE!!” a second one agrees. It is wearing a nice waistcoat with large gaudy buttons, and a nice looking pocket watch on a gold chain. It is dragging a comfy looking chair stuffed with bits of fluff and leaves and fur.</p>
<p>A third one screams, “SHOE SHINE SHOE SHINE!” It has several gold teeth and carries a huge block of cheese secured to its back with long loops of hempen rope.</p>
<p>The fourth and final one is wearing what looks like freshly painted red shoes and is carrying a lit torch. “SHOE SHIIIIINE!” it screams. It is wearing a gold medallion on a gold necklace.</p>
<p>“SHOE SHINE!” Bellows Tea, with a full bodied laugh!</p>
<p>With a well practiced move, faster than one would think giant like Tea could move, Tea removes an object from their satchel.</p>
<p>…at first glance it appears to be a flail without a handle, but is actually a spare pair of giant boots, held by their laces.</p>
<p>“These could indeed use a good shining.”</p>
<p>The boot are spectacularly large, probably a 1/2 size too large, in all honest, for even Tea’s feet.</p>
<p>The boots have gold eyelets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Earrings greedily snatches the boots and start washing, drying, and polishing them to a shine. Waistcoat eagerly tugs on Tea’s wrist and guides him to the comfy chair, which is decidedly too small for his bulky frame. Teeth graciously offers him a wedge of cheese.</p>
<p>Depending on how observant Tea is, he may or may not notice that the boots are returned to him with 1 - 3 fewer eyelets.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bending down, Inky sniffs the bottles carefully, mumbling, “Creosote, shellac, hopweed … ou, wild cherry liquorice.” Then, a little louder to one of the blahoblins, though it came out not much more than a squeak, “Might I ask from where did you get these?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Shoe Polish! We Make! Roots and ash!” shouts Waistcoat. They seem to only have the one volume.</p>
<p>Suddenly three anthropomorphic gophers come crashing through the trees behind you into the dig site. The first is wearing a sash of many pockets. The second is wearing cargo shorts of many pockets. The third is wearing a vest of many pockets. Each wears a pair of goggles with thick smokey black lenses, and a floppy checkered hat that looks like a waffle.</p>
<p>They march up to the zip-line.</p>
<p>“Out of the way, losers!” Sash cries. It grabs the zip-line trolley, and immediately dives off the side of the cliff and zooms down into the deep, deep hole.</p>
<p>Vest introduces itself, “Retrieval Team 70 here! We are here to recover the Ginnarak Crystal that is reported to be at this location. After we collect all five, then it will be <em>us</em> who get to hang out in the Benefactor’s hot tub! Not you! Ha!”</p>
<p>Sash has reached the bottom of the deep, deep hole. Shorts starts reeling in the pulley.</p>
<p>Vest leans in close and peers at you through its foggy lenses. “You must be the new Retrieval Team 43. Hmmph. Shame what happened to the previous Team 43. Hope you know what you’re doing! Would hate to see you end up like them!”</p>
<p>Shorts grabs the trolley and leaps down into the deep, deep hole. It sails all the way down, and joins Sash at the bottom.</p>
<p>“Welp!” Vest concludes with an air of finality. “No hard feelings, and all that! After we collect this crystal, we just need four more. And then we get to meet the Benefactor! Ha!”</p>
<p>It waddles off and starts reeling in the trolley.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, another gnome explodes behind you.</p>
<p>Basically, everybody currently has the skill “Do Anything 1”, which means if you want to ‘do anything’, you can roll 1 die.</p>
<p>On a 1 - 3, things go poorly. (And you gain 1 experience point. More on that in a bit.)</p>
<p>On a 4 - 5, you do the thing, but at a cost, or with a complication, or it’s just a partial success.</p>
<p>On a 6, full success!! Yay, you!!</p>
<p>(When rolling multiple dice, you read the single highest roll.)</p>
<p>Here’s where stuff gets fun. If you roll all sixes (so, 1 six on a 1d6 roll, 2 sixes on a 2d6 roll, etc.) then you ‘level up’ and get a new skill. The new skill A) is a subset of the skill/action you just performed and, B) increases that skill by one.</p>
<p>e.g.I challenge a mugwump to a pie eating contest and roll Do Anything 1. I roll a six, so I win the contest! And also I gain a new skill, Belly Of Steel 2.</p>
<p>Finally, every time you fail a roll (by rolling 1 - 3) you gain 1 experience point. You can spend 1 experience at any time to turn any one die into a six <em>for the purposes of advancement</em>.</p>
<p>SO WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN???</p>
<p>When you interact with the blahoblins, consider whether there is an element of risk. If so, roll the appropriate amount of dice (1, in this case) and include the result in your description. If it’s a success, describe the success. If it’s a partial success or a failure, just describe what you do, and I’ll describe the complication, or how things get worse.</p>
<p>As the blahoblins were packing up, Inky persuades Waistcoat to sell a few small bottles of shoe polish, a roughly round piece of broken glass and scraps of cheesecloth from the mountain of debris previously on the ground. Inky rolls Do Anything 1 and rolls a 4.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Inky successfully persuades Waistcoat to sell a few baubles and trinkets with the first roll of the game!</p>
<p>They haggle back and forth a little bit, and Inky ends up paying a little more than they wanted to, but they get all the stuff they wanted. Yay commerce!</p>
<p>Having concluded business, the blahoblins pack up and disappear into the bushes toting their chair, cheese, and vat of polish.</p>
<p>The sound of mechanical droning and periodic explosions compel you forward to the dig site.</p>
<p>It is easy to find.</p>
<p>It is a large hole blasted deep into the ground. There are drills, and conveyor belts, earth moving machines, and all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, the purpose of which is not always readily apparent. And there is a zip line that seems to be the only way down to the bottom.</p>
<p>The site is absolutely teeming with gnomes. Diminutive humanoids with bright red noses and long, long ears, and long, nimble fingers. All gnomes are compulsive tinkerers and mechanics, and build fantastic contraptions. All gnomes are women, and are all highly explosive. Which makes their combustion powered machines extremely dangerous, both for themselves and for any unfortunate bystanders close enough to get caught in the blast.</p>
<p>A gnome in a white hat comes running up to you. “You there! Hey! Yes, you!”</p>
<p>“Are you the retrieval team? We’ve been expecting you! The whole dig is halted because we accidentally blasted into a whole nest of Kobits, and they won’t let us get near to keep digging! They keep sabotaging our machines when we try!”</p>
<p>“They also stole the Ginnarak Crystal that we found! That thing could have powered such glorious new machines!” She pouts.</p>
<p>In the background, a gnome who had crawled half way into a coal bin in the side of some kind of excavator suddenly scrambles quickly out, smoking, and runs around in circles in a panic. Nearby gnomes dive out of the way as she erupts in a small ball of fire. The gnomes wait for the smoke to clear and then immediately return to working on the contraption.</p>
<p>The foreman continues talking to you as though nothing happened. She leads you over to the edge of the hole and points to the bottom.</p>
<p>“The entrance to their cave is right down there! The zip line is the second fastest way down.”</p>
<p>“And jolly good polish too, it looks like,” Inky replies, squinting a bit at the ichor being smeared onto the boots in Earrings’ large calloused hands. “I hear there be some gnomes hereabouts? A camp? With your remarkable service, I bet they’d be coming to you all the time to get their boots cleaned.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“GNOMES!?” Earrings interrobangs loudly and questioningly. It brings its hands to the sides of its face, covering its ear holes, and wags its oversized head in dismay, squeezing its tiny eyes shut. In the process, it smears polish around its face.</p>
<p>“Gnomes there!” shouts Waistcoat. Its hands busy polishing, it tosses its head, gesturing with its prodigious proboscis in the direction you were heading. You continue to hear bangs and booms in the distance every once a while.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Glarg gurgles something to the effect of “gluggurguuuurglaaaachhhh?” Its stance is one of surprise as its disposition changes to that of inquisition as its head cranes down to look at the blahoblin carrying the smelly rock on its back.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Teeth looks questioningly up at Glarg and experimentally gargles back up at it. “GURGLE BURBLE GLUG GLUG?” It smiles apologetically (a fearsome sight, its protruding jaws full of tiny pointy teeth) and shrugs and asks, “Shoe shine?”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It attempts to pick that whole blahoblin up and bring the smelly rock to its face for a closer inspection.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“WAAAAAAH!” Teeth kicks its feet ineffectively and is quite helplessly tied to the big smelly rock when Glarg picks it up. The smelly rock smells pungent, sharp, earthy, moldy. Definitely could be food.</p>
<p>By this time the blahoblins have polished the shoes of everybody who has consented to it, and are packing up. Except for Teeth who is being detained by the earth elemental.</p>
<p>Red Shoes reappears from wherever they have been this whole time with a sly smile and rejoins its comrades.</p>
<p>Your pockets have successfully been picked while you were distracted with the shoe shine, but not of anything of particular value.</p>
<p>What small item(s) will you notice is missing in the hours and days to come? How will its absence be a minor inconvenience?</p>
<p>“Congratulations!” The slightly tipsy hobbit grins and salutes you with his martini. “On Retrieval Team 43’s inaugural mission! I’m so excited for you, I’m sure you’ll do fantastic!”</p>
<p>You are all seated around a table in the corner at Lucy’s Basement. It is dimly lit and fairly noisy. The walls are covered in red velvet curtains, and the tablecloths have little gold tassels. A cloud of purple smoke from candles, cigars, and pipes hangs in the air. Waiters bustle between tables refilling drinks.</p>
<p>“So to recap, the Benefactor has tasked you with retrieving the five fabled Ginnarak Crystals. I, Blavin Blandfoot, will be your case manager. You will be paid handsomely for each crystal you retrieve. And if you retrieve all 5, you’ll get to meet the Benefactor at be their guest at their <em>glorious mansion!</em>”</p>
<p>“The first crystal has been spotted near a Gnomish dig site in the Tammineaux Forest, just east of here.”</p>
<p>“I recommend getting started right away!” He polishes off his drink and squints at his empty glass. “Well, maybe first thing in the morning. Waiter!”</p>
<ul>
<li>Who are you?</li>
<li>What role do you think you will fill on the team?</li>
<li>What do you plan to do with your cut of the money?</li>
