The story begins with my party of 4 players plus a PC run by the DM. We were told to raid a gnoll hideout where my party member's home used to be before it was abandoned to ruin. After some clever sneaking and brutal fights, we got to the end of the dungeon. Normally the BBEG would show up and collect the dungeon boss corpse but he didn't show up this time around. Everyone wondered why but all our theories fell short of any confirmation.
My brother, the PC run by the DM, asked if we should talk. This happens after 3 levels of weird weird acting on my brother's part. I know my brother as a quirky and inspired young man who has a crush on Lady Olive, the player who now owns the former gnoll castle. We move into a room elsewhere away from the players and Sigurd begins to draw his sword and clean it, while I play with my dagger, Fang.
I say to Sigurd, "I don't know what happened to you, this isn't you,". He replies with his usual banter about the trickster god. He's a rogue/cleric multiclass. I interrupt and say, "I don't want the trickster's avatar to speak, I want to hear my brother."
"But I am your brother!" he replies.
"No," I say, "Here's an example. You used to be head over heels for Olive. You would fumble your words and I planned to have a talk with you about birds and bees. Then at the ball, you changed. You dropped Olive like a soiled rag, you were more confident, you could dance… You would trip over yourself in that situation. So where are you Sigurd?"
At this Sigurd smiled a smile that was a little wider than what was natural, "you know, we aren't too different from gnolls… We all get hungry." The DM paused and changed his voice to a deep gravelly voice, "I. Am. Hungry."
DM gives me a moment to react, he shows me a picture of what my "brother" really was. It was an image of a doppelganger. No mouth or nose, blank eyes, with a lithe, blue body. I said I panic and stab him with Fang, which I was toying with anyway.
Roll initiative.
After 2 rounds of combat, the party managed to get him down to a beaten level. A smoke erupts and we see two copies of our barbarian. After playing with the trope of questioning to find the real enemy, our monk, who didn't like the barbarian much, whacked our real barbarian to unconsciousness while the enemy started to run away. Olive chased him down but couldn't land a hit, I dashed towards him and land a sneak attack with Fang. Stabbing through his throat.
Combat over, my character, Galthin'ne sits by the doorframe and looks blankly out to the evening sky. Planning, putting together threads of knowledge, making a list of who might know more, and how I might find my lost brother. I make a plan to enter the thieves' guild using Sigurd's appearance (I'm an arcane trickster rogue) Thinking the guild had something to do with this as Sigurd and the guild have had tense relations recently. They could have put a hit on him. I make my plan and make ready for the journey to come.
[zombify_post]
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