We lounge around for the rest of Day 3 of the festival, aside from Tittlin showing off his new bag of tricks to me outside of the CCMB. Before I’m able to get any grasp over how it works, he pulls several fuzzy objects from the bag which turn into a panther, badger, and GIANT badger, and they all begin chasing me by his command… After dealing with that nonsense, I get a wonderful night’s rest (now that I’m no longer a dinosaur).
I wake up to Tittlin having spawned three new creatures - a dire wolf, giant badger, and giant rat. Praying that he doesn’t cause too much trouble, we all head over to the Jerky Joust. The Reeve introduces each of the competitors - including himself - and the competition proceeds with the Cedar Combe Cafe coming up victorious. I head over to the victor and purchase a pack of the classic jerky and extra spicy jerky - damn good! I’ll be keeping these to myself.
Momen brings us along to the Nerwora enrollment presentation a little bit later, and Flickercrank Tiddlywink whom he’s familiar with, gives an elaborate presentation that draws quite the crowd.
We all head to the dance in the evening to finish off the day and drift off to sleep.
Day 5 of the festival, we sleep in and lazily start our day in the afternoon, attending the Salad Showdown. Only one of the contenders seems to be a professional, who comes up with some real creative stuff that lands them the favour of the judges. I don’t care much for trying these, but it’s interesting to see what people are making anyways. After that, we attend the Burning of Warlord Griebiog (an effigy looking like Clobdocs), which, given its size, takes a while to get burning. A lot of people end up throwing various items like alcohol to get it burning quicker, and it promptly turns into a rather impressive bonfire.
Tittlin does some stretching and limbers up for the freestyle dance competition following the burning. He effortlessly makes it through the preliminary and secondary rounds, showing himself as the most nimble on his feet out of everyone. In the final round, however, his performance seems a bit lackluster in the artistic and creative department, still landing him a solid third place finish and a small bag of gold.
On to the next day!
We get ourselves out of bed at a reasonable time to attend the Blessing from Duke Oberstein. He literally flies in, performs the blessing with no introduction, marries 15 couples, and flies away without another word. Quite the schedule he must be on!
It’s my time to shine once again in the PIE EATING CONTEST! The competition doesn’t look nearly as stiff as the drinking competition, but I still unfortunately only make it to the second round due to my lack of pie-eating experience. We laze around for the rest of the day.
Day 7, the final day of the festival. We make our way to the Ice Cream Showdown and cheer on Franklin, the chef who we supplied with the Rime Worm parts. Unfortunately, he doesn’t win, but still lands a third place finish. We go up and talk to him, trying to lift his spirits and asking to try the ice cream. It actually tastes pretty good, and not just that, but I feel a fascinating warmth flow through me that feels incredible. He also notes that he completely sold out of the rest of his ice cream over the course of the week, handing us a massive bag of gold for our share of the profits.
Tittlin joins me up on stage last minute for the jerky eating competition. I struggle through the preliminaries but hold my ground as the dwarf next to me drops out. In the second round, Tittlin momentarily looks like he’s going to keel over but manages to settle his stomach. I notice a distinctly bitter taste in the jerky, reminiscent of… poison…
I tap out right at the end, losing to another half-orc, bagging me second place. I bring up the poison taste with the Reeve off-stage, and suggest that the guards keep tabs on the competitors to make sure they’re doing fine as the day goes on. It also doesn’t make much sense that the fine folks at the Cedar Combe Cafe would poison their own food for an eating competition.
We attend the final event in the town square, the band playing “Melisenda’s Light”, marking the end of the festivities.
We head back to the CCMB and head off to bed. However, I do NOT get a good sleep.
I jolt awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and throw up some half-digested jerky onto the floor. Something was DEFINITELY wrong with that jerky. I spring out of bed and burst through Tittlin’s door, finding him on the floor in a pool of vomit. I hoist him over my shoulder and begin calling out to Momen and Merric, yelling that the jerky was poisoned. Merric casts cure wounds on Tittlin to get him back on his feet.
I sprint out of the door with Tittlin and Momen close behind, arriving in the town square to find the Reeve and three of the other contestants already there. The guards have been sent to the houses of the other contestants, and they bring back Glukhund Foehammer, who is notably NOT covered in vomit. He’s incredibly surprised and disgusted to see everyone standing around covered in vomit, and we suspect that his natural resistance to poison (as a dwarf) coupled with the fact that he dropped out the earliest in the competition means that he wasn’t affected whatsoever by the poison. Dyver Tinkertonk, the final competitor, arrives quite confused with a guard. He’s also covered in vomit and looks quite disheveled, although he claims that he threw up several hours ago (not at midnight as the rest of us did) simply from drinking. We all bicker for a bit as a couple accusations are made, and then the Reeve signals to the guards to fetch the proprietors of the Cedar Combe Cafe.
We chat with Edwan Devix, the man who I purchased the jerky from earlier in the day. He defends himself and his wife, naming two of the other jerky makers (Boldog Draak and Valira Blackstrand) as possibly suspects given their highly competitive nature. Valira has been know to cheat in past competitions. The Reeve promptly produces a search warrant for Valira’s Jerky and we head off to investigate.
Tittlin sneakily enters the shop and lets Momen in while I keep watch for any movement on the upper floor. Despite a thorough investigation, they come out empty-handed aside from a note from Valira bribing one of the judges. We all report back to the town square and provide this information to the Reeve, requesting a second search warrant for Boldog’s Beef and repeating the same procedure. They once again return empty-handed and we discuss next steps, considering investigating the Cedar Combe Cafe and the route taken to transport the jerky between the cafe and the competition.