Session 7b: Of Goblins and Girls

(In the last part of the Wysteria update, Sierra and Grace had been asked to participate in a magical tournament in Wysteria. I take full artistic license, because I'm sure you want to read something more interesting that a dry account of what happened in Wysteria. Also, I was enamored by the Winter Olympics, which are due to end in a week. Go USA! ^_^)

The place was crawling with evil goblins. We worked hard to kill as many of these fire using demons but they kept coming. In the end, we had to retreat. I met this Sorceress called Gabrielle Greenstone who helped us a bit, but it was just too much!

(I worked on getting the Goblin badges for Sierra, which is pretty hard considering how many goblins you have to kill, and how many health points you have to chew through. Fire enemies are nasty this early in the game as they spam Heckhound, Ash Bats and Link.)

Private O'Hare was happy to see us alive and told us that the gardener, Verne, had been last seen there, so we went and found the guy - a Satyr - who told us that strange plants had been seen in the vicinity. We collected a few and he promised to analyze them for us.

"Aha!" said the mermaid. "So there is something evil about that is summoning these creatures!"

"Ee," said Grace, nodding. "And the sooner we investigate this, the better."

We did investigate the situation with the help of the Pegasus trainer, Lupin, who cracked a joke and gave us some pet snacks. (You can also get these as rare drops from Wood Goblins or Bleys.) Verne also asked us to get his magic shears and then set us to do some landscaping with them! What a big...

At least he's lucky I'm a gardener! Speaking of which, I just got to Grandmaster Gardener rank and am starting a Couch Potato garden to give mega snacks to my pen pals as thanks for all their help. Amy was nice and gave me some cool treasure cards which worked wonders on killing the stink bugs that were harassing my snap dragons, and then took me to the Jade Palace to buy some stronger gardening spells that covered the entire garden.

(Someone had to help Sierra get to Mooshu so she could buy the Rank 4 gardening spells, and it cost her all her money and we still couldn't afford all of them! Amy also traded some gardening treasure cards, but all of these cost a ton of energy and I didn't realize that the Maelstrom Snap Dragon got Rank 3 pests. I'm grateful that Sierra can refill her energy every time she gets a level up, which is very useful as we won't have enough energy even with the Stinger Armor. The dragonflies treasure cards cost a lot of energy but it will get refilled fully before the card's effect wears off and it makes plants immune to pests up to Rank 3. I have a few more that replenish needs but Couch Potatoes don't need sun, pollination or magic, and the cards would be wasted on the two snap dragons. Once I get Evil Magma Peas, I'll work on that.)

My garden had some weird harvests - treasure cards that had the same type of magic that Bleys used against me. It was powerful and put an aura around me that increased the damage of my attacks. I think the spell was called "Amplify."

I also got a present from my pen pal Chris S.! It's a new pet which I adore, she looks like a winged cat and her name is Lady Kate; she gives me the power to cast a special upgraded Mythblade!

(I managed to get Chris to hatch with Mindy Goldheart and get the Strange Beast from her, which is going to be Mindy's ultimate pet. Once she gets the rest of the large area gardening spells, she will start working on alternating between Couch Potatoes and Prickly Bear Cacti to get a ton of Mega Snacks so she can start raising the ultimate Strange Beast, which is going to be based off of Zenmaster Blue's ultimate Mega Shadow Beast. Lady Kate is going to be the first generation.)

"So, this is the portal which is spitting out foul goblins," said the mermaid.

"Ee, Mma Penny," said Grace, revealing the name of her 'secretary.' "But I don't think we alone can close this portal. Let us see what Rra Verne has learned about those plants, maybe they can help."

"Yeah," I siad. "He did say the plants appeared around the same time as the goblins."

Turns out that the plants came from a place called "The Weirwood", and I remembered Dowager saying that Beatrice Wildwynd, one of our tournament contenders, was from there! We hurried there and asked about it and she admitted she knew about the plants.

"Those are wild viridian," said Beatrice. "Froudlings like the wood goblins enjoy it as an herb for their meals so they plant it whenever they invade a land."

She said she had a ritual which could close the portal, and gave use some shopping lists. We split up and tackled the grocery shopping for the ritual ingredients...

Which were weird, but then again, if you're talking about closing a powerful magical portal to another world, you're not shopping for eggs and flour, you need exotic magical items!

We went back to Beatrice to report our success only to be told by her that she didn't have the incantation and to check the Pigswick Library. We spoke politely to the curator but he said that only the Headmistress could allow the release of such powerful magic.

So we had to deal with the [k]itch again, which made my nerves grate as she panned our school once more, she makes me want to punch her glasses to bits! ARGH!!!

She then turned to Grace. "I understand from your Ravenwood transcripts that you're quite a detective, willing to help solve mysteries."

"Of course!" said Penny, puffing up her chest in pride. "We are the No. 1 Lady Wizard's Detective Agency!" I giggled at that showing off.

"Is there... a mystery you need help with?" asked Grace, cocking a brow in curiosity.

"Indeed there is," said Belladonna sourly. "We have had reports that several merchants were swindled with fool's gold, illusions cast on pebbles!"

"That's terrible," I said.

"I see," said Grace, her eyes lighting up in glee. I saw that this was indeed a sign that she was alert and willing to listen. "Perhaps we can help. If you could tell us the names of the merchants who were swindled, we shall question them and find out what we can. I cannot promise we can find an answer, but I will try."

I talked to them as they left. "Are you really pretending to be detectives?"

"Absolutely not!" scoffed Penny. "We are actually investigating a big case, Malistaire!"

I gasped. "You mean the former Death Professor? The one who is causing trouble in Krok-T?"

"Yes, we have learned a lot about his past," said Grace. "I will gladly invite you to my office after we are done here in Wysteria and explain it in detail. For now, you should focus on getting the portal closed while we investigate these thefts."

I sighed and agreed to deal with the goblin portal.

(Have to cut this one off as this one is getting a little long and using extra-large screenshots tends to grate on the length of the posts. Next time, we'll continue with the first boss fight in the game. I am taking a big risk by having these two take on Wysteria so early but they should be able to handle the bosses just fine.)

Oh, and the two hit Level 26 so they got their next school spells - Sierra got the bubble Time of Legend and Grace got Windstorm, a sort of minor area-of-effect Storm trap.)

[To be continued...]