I lost my horse in Gattungsmäßigburg – Chapter 7, Act 3, Strip 38

Our friends faced many, many more encounters on the road to Gattungsmäßigburg, of course, but thankfully, Mopey restricts herself to the mere handful of representative ones she mentioned last time, and carries on with the gist of her story.

Their arrival in Gattungsmäßigburg was a moment of triumph and tragedy in equal parts. On the one hand, they had at long last reached the (stage) goal of their quest, after traveling a long, winding road of hardships and dangers. But on the other hand, Uni was impounded and quarantined by customs officers immediately upon their arrival. You see, unicorns aren’t native to his part of the continent, and the local government is very keen on protecting their wildlife from invasive species. Naturally so, since their local wildlife is lethal enough without any worse monsters creeping in from even more disfavoured parts of the map.

It goes without saying that our heroes were overcome with great grief at the loss of their loyal quadruped friend, even if the later never served any purpose or got any focus in the plot. I would have dedicated a panel to that moment of grieving…but it was just a fraction of a second, really. Went by much too fast to capture. ._. Of course, this doesn’t have to mean farewell for ever, as our friends are free to retrieve Uni when they pass through Gattungsmäßigburg again on their journey back.
…but, given the typical plot for this kind of stories, our heroes are unlikely to actually ever pass this way again. That, plus Mopey lost the receipt before she had made it half a block from the customs office. >_> Carelessness, I’m sure, not callousness…

Having rallied their spirits, the party splits up to gather information on the (censored) of Vecna. They met again to compare notes a while later, and refined their procedures in light of new experiences. Experiences which had been particularly painful for Snuka and Gregory, who had frequently encountered averse reactions when asking random strangers whether they had seen a certain famous (censored). Female strangers reacted universally negative, and male strangers predominately so. Though luck, that would never had happened if not every more readily mentionable body part of Vecna’s had already been spoken for. >_>

Not meeting any success with this approach, the party turned toward the time-honored backstop for this kind of situation: purchasing the required information from a commercial information broker. These are easy enough to find in this sort of setting, since they naturally gravitate towards the seediest watering hole in the vicinity. Upon entering that, just look for people sitting with their backs to the wall and wearing a hooded cloak. Bingo! That’s your information broker. Prices will depend entirely upon the DM’s assessment of whether you’ve got too much money for their taste. The quality of the information will depend on whether you’re following the track the DM has planned, or trying to veer away from it. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for our friends…

More on Thurs…uh, Monday.