Dungeon & Dragons & Expansion (BE, TF, MB, FMG)

[SoylentOrange]

Hey guys, this is a new project I'm working on, just a medium-size vignette with some illustrations. They're mostly just linework now, but they'll get color treatments soon enough.
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Standard Minor Move

"Rosefield... We're up in the hills, and I haven't seen flowers in a fortnight," Jillian said, idly tilting her wine glass from side to side, a finger on the rim as she held her cheek in the other hand. "Who comes up with these dumb names?"
Celia looked at the sorceress, holding her own cup of water in her hands. "W-well, maybe they wanted to cultivate flowers here when they founded the town," She offered, pulling her bangs back behind her elfin ear with a hand, "and the weather just wasn't agreeable for it."
The human rolled her eyes and sat back, straightening her bosom-cupping robes. "And why must we always begin these things in a tavern," She asked, looking around with barely-disguised disgust. "They're so... seedy."
"Because that's where they keep the hard stuff!" a half-orc bellowed as she set three tankards of ale down on the table hard enough for some of the contents to slosh out the top.
"I have to agree with the meathead on that one!" A halfling said from below as she set her own drink on the table and hopped up on the seat opposite Jillian.
Celia smiled, but noticed a familiar twinkle in the halfling's eye and sighed. "Rena, if you would, please..." She said, gesturing to the halfling.
"What? ...Oh, right!" She said, smiling and reaching over to the halfling.
"Wait, Rena, no, I swear I didn't- Aw..." Copperpot said, her complaints cut short as the half-orc lifted her off her seat with one hand by the scruff of her jerkin.
"You- guys- this- isn't- fun-ny-" She said, trying to look irritated as the half-orc shook her up and down, three cut purses falling out of her tunic and into Celia's waiting hands.
"You know the rules," Celia admonished, "No pickpocketing when we're on a quest, unless it's from the bad guys."
"C'mooon," Copperpot whined as Rena set her down. "Use Detect Evil in here, I dare you!"
Celia simply said nothing and took the purses up to the barman, reporting them as 'lost'.

"Finding a loose purse in a tavern and giving it away," The barman said through his enormous, scraggly beard. "You must be adventurers."
"Occasionally," The elven cleric said, blushing as she smoothed her white robe. She just liked helping people; 'Adventurer' sounded so boastful.
"Well, here you go, then," He said, pulling a sheet of parchment out from behind the bar and laying it down between them.
"What's this?" She asked, leaning down to look at it.
"You're here for Iin's Maag, aren't you?" He asked. "The item of incredible power?"
"Um, I suppose?" She replied. The notice had been rather vague, she recalled, but between her desire to help, Rena's love of things she could swing an axe into without getting in trouble, and Jillian and Copperpot's respective thirsts for power and wealth, it hadn't taken much convincing.
"Well, then here you go," He said, gesturing to the parchment. "Every good quest needs a one-sheet."
"Erm, thank you...?" Celia said, picking it up and making her way back to their table.
"So what've we got?" Rena said, burping as she put her now-empty tankard down and going for the next.
"It's apparently some evil tomb or dungeon, holding an artifact of great power."
Jillian's eyebrows perked up as she looked over to the cleric. "Power?" She asked. "Magical power?"
"It seems so," she nodded, still reading as she sat. "Power to grant wishes, as though unto a deity."
"Reeeally..." Copperpot said, grinning slyly. "Wishes like, perhaps, conjuring a pile of gold only slightly larger than the pyramids'?"
Rena snorted. "And then what? You'd spend it!" She chided. "Gold is no sort of thing to wish for," She said, clapping her tankard down on the table. "Wish for something no one could steal from you! Long life! Strong muscles! A heart that never tires!" She continued, pounding a fist against the battered steel of her breastplate.
"Um, well, in any case, apparently the vault where it is kept is a den of evil with many traps and terrible monsters inside."
"Pfft," Copperpot scoffed. "Traps. Whatever."
"Aye, and there's no creature around that's stronger than my axe!" Rena shouted.
"And anything Rena's impressive bulk can't handle, *I've* certainly got well in hand," Jillian added, taking a sip of her wine.
"Well, so should we set off while it's still light out?" Celia asked.
"Why not?" Rena said, taking another gulp of her second tankard. "Lemme finish this one down and we'll be on our way to riches and glory in no time!"
"Cheers to that!" Copperpot said, raising her mug in toast before taking a long swig of ale herself.

Celia took another sip of her water, wondering for not the first time how she wound up in this band of misfits. She'd met Rena first, in perhaps the only scenario where a half-orc wouldn't have sent the petite elf running for a hiding spot: half-dead on the side of the road. Celia had healed her wounds and nursed the warrior back to health, and since then it hadn't been clear whether Celia was following Rena around to keep the headstrong half-orc from getting herself killed or Rena was following Celia around to protect her as a means of paying off her debt, and eventually the two lost track and just kept traveling together as if they had intended it. Jillian had come next, or rather Rena had come to her, following up on a tale she'd heard in a tavern one night of a sorceress looking for some muscle. It was clear Jillian had been expecting men, but Rena's power and the celestial resilience Celia had offered on top of it made an argument Jillian couldn't help but be convinced by. She'd already hired on Copperpot, in a sense; Copperpot had stolen some items from Jillian earlier, and Jillian, being a sorceress of not inconsiderate power, had tracked Copperpot down and offered her a choice. First choice was that Copperpot could keep the items she'd stolen and work for Jillian, using her considerable talents at thievery to assist Jillian's search for arcane power. second choice was that Jillian could turn Copperpot to stone and have her dropped in a lake. Copperpot took the first choice.

Over the following months it became less about Jillian's salaries and contracts as it was just about finding new places to explore and artifacts to discover. Celia still liked helping people wherever she could, and Rena was happy so long as there was something she could test her prowess against. Jillian's search for magical artifacts and other powerful arcana was never satiated, and whatever she couldn't find a use for Copperpot could fence. They had become almost as siblings, perhaps not always agreeing but inseparable nonetheless.

"Ahh!" Rena breathed as she clapped her empty tankard down on the table, a broad smile exposing her large orcish fangs. "All right, ready to go?"
"I suppose..." Celia said, bending down and picking up her adventuring pack.
"Yes, let's," Jillian agreed, picking up her own, much smaller pack. "If this artifact is as powerful as this suggests," She said, rolling up the sheet, "Then we'd best hurry before some other magic-user gets to it first. Surely we can't be the only ones after such an amazing artifact, if its location is known by some bumpkin bartender."