The Council of Loathing thanked its two guests and dismissed them after promising to help. "Come back in four hours," they'd said.

Well, here it was four hours later and they'd found themselves sitting in the waiting room for a good hour or two. The first of the two men who'd come to the Council of Loathing looked like an athletic monk. His face was painted a dark blue meant to obscure it through magical means. He seemed a suspicious man, though not a nervous man. The next man, dressed in a pinstripe made of the finest brown demonsheep hair, stood out only by the fact that he would blend in with wood, and could probably be easily lost in a crowd of four, possibly less. And no, it's not Ozzie Whelk.

The Council members sat at a round table, filling nine of the twelve spots. Their guests were forced to stand. Dewey, Cheetham and Howe, the stolen joke which is more relevant than ever thanks to that one new movie, gathered around the table, obviously plotting something devious and underhanded. Possibly the management career of Don Muracco.

Gorgonzola, Shifty and Gunther sat around the table. The three leaders of the local guilds (and part time Council members) practiced their ancient religion by arguing and fighting with each other like children.

Council members and super hero wannabes Jilla, Mendy and Zake sat around the table. Mendy was all but in in Zake's lap. Warvin made his way to the table, making a motoring noise, with the Council Friends beasthount mascot Glee the Wonder Monkey on his shoulder. He took his seat. The puny primate hopped into one of the two empty chairs.

"And Glee the Wonder pilot sticks the perfect landing off of his B-52 bomber plane!" Warvin announced in a mock announcer voice. "And the crowd goes crazy."

Glee did a championship win pose as Warvin did a bad imitation of a crowd cheering.

"Oh, stop quoting sci-fi stories and grow up, you two!" Mendy chastised both, causing them to behave themselves.

The final member, the Nice Sorceress, appeared in the final empty seat in a puff of, er, niceness, I guess. "Ah good, you're all here. I see there's three factions here with representatives. Hopefully, more clans will be interested in aiding us here. First, let's take a look at the Kingdom of KOL representatives. Delfey the Oracle, along with her guardian Slayer and Royal guard Grillhamo."

KOKOL's representatives might have been the oddest of the three factions. Along side Grilhamo stood a demonic looking Nephilim. At over nine feet tall, he dwarfed the companion he had vowed to protect. She was a user of light magic, and simply existing as a light mage earned her many enemies. Delfey looked to be a preteen. She simply nodded and smiled at the introduction.

The Nice Sorceress continued. "Representing the Feline Empire are Snow White, Blake and Raw Hide."

Raw Hide stood, shirtless, at a solid seven feet tall. Snow White and bounty hunter Blake stood with him. None of the three acknowledged their introduction. He glared at Grillhamo.

"And we have a third faction here," Sorceress said. "The former KOKOL outpost is represented by Scaros of the Fumblies Command and the Centaur brothers."

Despite their name, the brothers were in human form. Scaros was also present and spoke on their behalf. "The Fumblies command and Konall look forward to being of assistance."

"Thank you all for representing your clans," Nice Sorceress said. "We're asking for assistance with two situations here. We've invited a representative for each of the two villages who'll require our assistance. We'll give each one their time on the floor."

(Note that as listed in mission notes, each player character picks one of the two missions to participate in. See Mission notes for more information.)

 
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QUEST: NINJAS

"Pay close attention, heroes!" Jilla said in an overly excited voice. "Whomever contributes the most to this rockin' mission is gonna get a major favor from the Council! Just about anything you want. To be determined later, of course! Now, kind sir, we give you the floor."

She pointed towards the ninja like monk, who stepped forward into the view of the others.

"Thank you. I am known as Flashmask."

He had a balance and quiet intensity that might remind a haiku poet of the calm in the storm's center.

"I come from Ninja Village. We are a quiet, mostly peaceful village which shrouds itself in secrecy on the edge of the regions you would call The Nearby Plains and The Distant Woods."

"What do you call it?"

"We refer to the adjoining areas as Northland and Southwoods."

"That's not very clever."

The ninja monk glared at the council member. "We shall take that criticism under advisement. Returning to our request. Despite all efforts to the contrary, a group of thugs have invaded and taken over much of the ninja village. We were able to fall back to the woods and reorganize. Nevertheless, they appear to be quite well armed, though not well groomed. They also seemed quite interested in revenge. I suspect a party at this gathering could offer some insight on that. Several of them reflected bitterly on an incident which saw Felines and other adventurers invade the cave, freeing several slaves and defeating the slavekeepers soundly. Not once but twice."

Grillhamo leaned against the wall. "From what you're saying, it's the same slavers we drove out right around St. Boris Day's Feast. We thought we drove them out anyway; we decimated their numbers. And I don't mean killed one in every ten, either."

"This brings us," the ninja-monk said in a calm, serene tone, "to the second issue. There is a reason they've chosen to challenge our ninja might directly. They have pillaged our village to complete a device which lets them revive their recently dead. We know very little about it despite our best efforts, but it seems to be more insidious than a life saving machine."

Raw Hide snorted. "So we kill 'em again. What's the big deal?"

Grillhamo argued the point. "The 'big deal' is the machine, not the slave traders, genius."

Raw growled but it was the ninja-monk who spoke. "Correct. We've gathered they intend to seek revenge on the factions, although their first priority will be gathering slaves as originally planned."

Defley leaned forward a bit. "As disgusting a concept as it is, they can reanimate their dead?"

The ninja-monk just nodded. "This is true. It would seem less effort was spent on the grunts, which are now little more than mindless zombies. They move with exceptional speed, are immune to pain and take orders from their superiors with an obsession. These minions have a high resistance to spooky damage, but are vulnerable to fire. We find it likely these level of living undead would continue their last orders, even if the rest of their gang should fall.

"They were.. kinder.. to many of the higher ranked officials whom they revived, however. Some are akin to vampires, although like all of the revived, they feed not on brains nor blood but on photosynthesis, as if they were a plant." He paused. "We believe the machine provides additional nutrients for the newly revived. With it, they're all but immortal."

"You've gathered a good deal of information, from the sounds of it," noted Scaros.

The monk raised his eyebrow, as if surprised by the obviousness of the statement. "We are ninja."

"Blah, blah blah," one of the three- Dewey, I think- said. "So destroy the machine, take out these slaves."

"Sounds easy," Grillhamo said confidently. "We've done it before."

"They'll be tougher this time," the monk responded. "More prepared. Less rash, I suspect. And they wish to expand their ability to revive their own dead to revive their fallen foes. Right now, they're severely limited to the recently dead, and thus, those who rise maintain a semblance of their original loyalties. I suspect this may change, and if it does, may our ancestors help us all."

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QUEST: FOREST

 
As the ninja monk took his spot at the side of the room, Fledge Flynling fidgeted nervously as he stood before the Council of Loathing, the Guild representatives and the odd monk with the face paint. He wasn't really proficient at public speaking.

"Ah, yes, quite," he started off nervously. "It would seem, I guess you could say, that we find ourselves in a similar bind."

Grillhamo raised his eyebrow slightly. "We?"

"Oh, yes, quite. I'm from the Forest Village. It's a village known for its accounting services as well as its local polka population. In fact, I work for a store which specializes in tree byproducts. Accordions, guitars, office supplies. You've probably heard of it. Sapples. 'Yeah, we want that.'"

"So we're supposed to make the place less boring?" Raw Hide said before laughing loudly.

"Er.." Being smartly afraid of the sadistic Raw Hide, Fledge ignored him meekly. "Recently, we've been somewhat overtaken by a.. oh I talked with one of you earlier. You seemed to know what they were."

"Sounds like the 'bosses' from Hey Daze," Grillhamo said. "KOKOL tangled with them on at least a couple occasions. We'll have to find out which of them are involved. And what exciting new tricks they are likely to have up their sleeves."

One of the Centaur brothers tilted his head slightly. "So for this job, we just have a village to protect?"

"Sounds boring," Raw Hide said. "I'd rather tear something down than protect it."

"Keep it up," Scaros said, tired of his mouth. "And you might get that fight you desire right now."

"Bring it, scrawny!" Raw Hide stepped forward but Snow White Blake stepped forward to stop an incident.

"Of course," Snow coo'ed softly. "We'll be more than happy to assist out of the goodness of our hearts, although I suspect the other clans and our accountants would be more receptive to a prize here as well."

"The winner of this one," the Nice Sorceress replied. "Gets a brand new just trained and leveled up golden cocoabo! It can do it all! Steal meat from your enemies, restore your mana, fly short distances over mountains, and glide long distances over the water! Use it to learn about round knights, or simply when you need motivation to fight off those two goblins."

Grillhamo hmph'ed in protest but the Sorceress ignored it and continued speaking. "It's perfect for racing, your casino, or building into a cute franchise. Purestock stuff here, folks."

"There is one more concern," said Fledge. "There is a 'life machine,' as I call it, which is being kept from their attention."

"Life machine?" Blake sounded confused. "What exactly would a 'life machine' be?"

"It brings purity to soul and life to all around it." Fledge paused. "It can be used to 'purify' souls, at least, well, at least in theory. It also encourages and enhances the vitality and fertility of life around it. Mainly plant life. It has lead to some ahhhh, shall we say, 'wild office parties.' Yes, I shall say that. I should also note, the undead might be weak to it. At least, the freshly undead. In theory. We wish to keep the Hey Daze spawn from becoming aware of its existence."

"Sounds like a powerful device," Defley noted. "What powers this amazing machine?"

"I'm not sure," Fledge admitted. "At least, not totally sure. I know it's powered by ambient energy and mana. There's been.. incidents.. of it drawing life energies of those nearby, but we've mostly worked those little bugs out. Which reminds me. It's got a nasty habit of drawing in the local undead, which has, needless to say, tampered with our ability to keep it reliably hidden. We could use help removing the threats from our village."

"Of course, we'll be delighted to help!" Snow White said. She would later, when asked, say she cared nothing for the village, but saw it as an opportunity to either win the prestigious reward, or gain possession of the machines to help the Feline Empire cause. But that was later.

"There are your tasks, ladies and gentlemen," the Nice Sorceress said. "Goodluck in accomplishing both. You'll have the eternal thanks of the Council of Loathing, should you defy the odds and succeed."

With that, Centaur brothers, the ninja monk, Delfey the Oracle, Scaros Raw Hide, Blake, Slayer, Snow White, Fledge Flynling and Grillhamo filed out of the Council hall, one at a time.

Meanwhile to the south, Degrassi Knoll was finding the weather thrown into whack after the recent incident between Kadlin Bearsmasher and representatives of each of AiL’s three major factions? Would the storms pass without harm, or would our heroes and anti heroes be dealing with full blown tornadoes hitting Degrassi Knoll?!

We've got stories covering over a full dozen characters and two separate quests to cover. But before we get to the individual quest stories, we've got a trio of crossover stories to cover first!