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Meetings and Prologues
The town of Jigow is a collection of villages formed of predominately orcs and goblins that grew and grew, merging together until they were all virtually one place. It was a highly competitive culture and every year there was a festival among the elite of the town to decide who would be hailed as the Champions of the town for that year. It was little more than an excuse to have a big party and get a chance to show off in front of everybody. Adventurers, soldiers, scholars, and more came every year to Jigow for a chance to take part. This year, however, destiny had brought two groups of great potential to the town.
The Second Rounds and the Rivals of Destiny would meet for the first time in this place and it would start with a pie-eating competition.
Agathe Silverspoon made the best meat pieces in the Jumble, the chaotic jumble of buildings most of the town lived in. Every year, she set up a stage out front of the Unbroken Tusk, her tavern and inn, to bake seemingly endless meat pies to supply the competition. Esoh Vhan and Imvenda Bladewing stepped up to take her challenge on along with a smug halfling woman, a cocky drow man, and a lanky, youthful human with scruffy hair. The pies got the better of Esoh who bundled off to try to get some proper digestion done as Imvenda went on to win the challenge.The lanky human walked over to congratulate Esoh in an aggressively friendly way that, for all her attempts otherwise, her overfilled stomach wasn't best able to deal with. Fortunately some advice from Elara helped settle her stomach sped up her recovery well enough before the young man loped off into the crowds. From there, all the team save one moved on toward the booth showing riddles to challenge the mind. Imvenda, Elara, and Esoh all quickly figured out the riddles of which key went to which dragon, what heavenly body was relevant, and which bottle was the proper one to drink. In the course of it, they impressed a drow wizard by the name of Galsariad.
Meanwhile, Snype went off to a paddock filled with young horizonback turtles, massive creatures that would eventually bear small buildings for the nomadic goblins and orcs of the reason. Here the kobold would be instructed along with many others in the task of riding the turtles so that they would all get to the proper place for their next stage of life, now that they were outgrowing the paddock. Snype had an early upset, falling off her turtle and having to rush to catch up but then laying into the massive creature with a drill sergeant's tongue to the amusement of the onlookers.
In the wake of Snype's performance, she saw a drow woman covered in places with black scales and numerous scars and bruises. The woman was hesitantly trying to get a word in as an orc man assured her that she no longer had any debt to his family and that she should go live her life. There was clearly no real concern or interest in the woman as he set her meager belongings down and simply walked into the tavern and shut the door in her face. Snype approached her, learning her name was Tarre and dragged her along to see if she could find something for the confused girl.
The rest of the group had come on down to the docks now, finding a small group of angry people, upset about the limits of only one person per team on the swimming competition. Esoh gathered herself up, ready to start the race, and then froze the other participants solid before diving into the water to start swimming. Of the two that escaped her ice, one was swept aside by the current and the other wasn't naturally aquatic. Esoh struggled against the current herself, but reached the spear and pulled it free before setting forth to return as two sharks rose up to worry one of the participants.
As the sharks were driven off, Esoh managed to return to the dock between letting the current pull her along and a bit of magic, though she was barely standing when she hit the dock. A genasi woman, one of the ones that Esoh had frozen helped drive off the sharks along with Imvenda and bring the goblin swimmer back for medical aid. After making sure the goblin was fine, she proceeded to get into Esoh's face about her use of magic, but was won over by the fact that Esoh was clearly wiped out and had made a serious effort and hadn't been taking the contest lightly or insulting it.
Snype along with Tarre met up with the group soon after. Something about the drow woman's scars bothered Elara, but she couldn't find anything specific and dismissed it for the moment. They walked to the maze contest and discussed matters of accessibility with the ogre Maggie Keeneyes and her goblin friend before attempting the maze. After studying the maze, Esoh, Elara, and Snype all managed to get through the maze. Imvenda got a bit lost but before the judge could swoop in to remove her, she flew out herself, and then set a speed record on her second attempt. Dermot and Tarre meanwhile, each got lost and pulled out.
From there the lot of them walked together to where three soldiers of the Aurora Watch had set up an arm-wrestling contest. Maryl Bronzefang and her drow partners Wigren and Aebae were a bit bemused and uncertain at the site of the noodly pallid elf and vedalken coming to challenge them, especially given that Esoh was still exhausted from her swim, but gave them respect for the attempt. Elara went in with a bit of misplaced confidence due to some of her other life memories and took the loss a bit hard. But Snype almost managed to defeat one of the drow women to earn a shot at Maryl. Maggie defeated Maryl after a dramatic struggle while her goblin friend sat it out.
As Tarre struggled with social anxiety and Aebae, the party watched as a merchant of drow and hobgoblin blood tried to get a bugbear to follow through on an agreement that they had made. Suddenly finding herself with too many goods and not enough ability to lift and move them around, she was uncertain what to do. Which was when Tarre slammed Maryl's hand down hard and won the competition. Elara introduced Tarre to the merchant, Anaalch Gramemist (we give you a gram with every dram) and with the support of the soldiers and Maggie got Tarre hired on to help the young hob-drow make the trip to meet her with her mothers at the Emerald Loop caravan site.
Maggie inquired about the team's name and Elara gave the name "The Second Round", a name referring to the fact that most of the party had been reincarnated. Maggie nodded, noting it sounded like a pubcall, but at least it was less bland than her friend Ayo registering them as "The Rivals". Regardless, at this point, the two parties split and the Second Round headed to the rice fields where Elara and Esoh's familiar, Quoth the raven, formed one team and Imvenda and Snype formed a second. They competed against a pair of drow siblings and an orc mother and son team. In the end, every team completed things simultaneously... except the drow siblings who got into a fight and got into everybody else's way.
Then as Snype took the local kids on a vast "Snype Hunt" around town, Imvenda and Esoh tried their hands at riding horizonback turtles. Fortunately, Anaa had given Esoh a vigor potion to clear her exhaustion and Esoh got Quoth's help to guide her turtle while Imvenda had an early difficulty but both completed the course regardless.
Finally, they gathered upon the basalt islands out in the water to hear the elders determine who would be going on to compete in the final competition. After some deliberation, they announced that the final race would be between The Rivals and The Second Round.
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