Till the End: Poppet Finale

Till the End: Poppet Finale
Date	12/20/24
Storyteller	Doug [Jess]
Tier	Trainee
Player Characters	Braoin, Clementine, Patton, Peaches, Phyl
Rewards	350 exp, 2x Stones of Encouragement, Words of Wisdom tattoo
Result	Success
Author	Tire
Downtime	20 (0 for previous participation in A Wandering Poppet)

Associates help Kiara and Hippi take Hippi's friend on one final adventure.

Log

Our boat finally arrives and we're greeted by Hippi- a hippo poppet. The dock is creaky and unstable, but holds well enough for our group. As we head to her house to meet her 'person', she fills us in on the history of the island - about a hundred years ago, a merchant ship came to the island, and among the various goods and products they happened to have, the merchants also carried a plague, to which the inhabitants of the island had no defenses against. For the people of the island, it had no apparent ill effects, but it did ravage the wildlife of the island, practically removing predatory species. It took a few years until the impact of the plague became apparent: the disease rendered all the people infertile! Max - Hippi's person - happened to be the last child born on the island, and is the sole living humanoid who calls this place home. After his mother died when he was young, the stuffed hippo came to life and became Max's lifelong friend.

Hippi brings us to meet Max, and he definitely matches what I'd expect from a 97 year old man, except for his eagerness to follow along with Hippi's idea. She wants to recreate Max's first adventure one last time. Hippi and Kiara went off to do some preparations, and Max tells us their first adventure was a trip to a nearby island, to see some bright pink coral reefs. Braoin and I have some concerns, and it seems that Clem and Peaches had similar concerns, as we ended up coincidentally meeting back up at the docks. Braoin and I were going to patch up the docks, while Peaches and Clem were just going to simply drag up the boat onto shore. We stood around to discuss the plan and then we all realized that Hippi and Kiara were heading off to do preparations, and that we shouldn't really worry about the dock, especially if we're commandeering an old merchant vessel. So we ended up doing neither of our plans.

We head back to the tail end of Patton talking with Max, and not long after the Poppets return, and Hippi reveals that what Max thinks is their first adventure wasn't sailing to the pink reef, but was actually a hike up a hill called Giant's Head. Apparently, Poppets contain memories from before they "awaken". The concern we have now becomes "how do we get this old man up the hill?". Hippi really wants us to help Max recreate how he went up it as a kid, and it's our job to help him do that!

So we began our hike at the foot of the hill, with a preserved bit of fence - even though we could get around with the rest of the fence missing, this one is apparently the same one Max used to sneak out through, so I showed him how to really sneak around with some help from Peaches and Braoin. Next, Hippi wanted Max to jump in a pile of leaves, just like when he was a kid, so Patton and Clem helped him by making sure the leaves were safe to jump and helped him into the leaves. As we continued up the hill, we came across a cemetery, likely the final resting place of the rest of the inhabitants of the island. We figure out that the local shrine seems to be dedicated to Erastil, so I offer a short prayer in a way consistent with the practice of Old Deadeye. Along our journey, we come across a creek, which according to Max was once a much more ferocious river, and when he was young, he'd wanted to build a bridge. We thought about it for a second and realized that Max likely couldn't have built a bridge when he was young, but 90 years of taking care of Hippi should mean he has some wisdom with regards to putting things together, so instead of making a bridge for him, we encourage and help him with constructing a bridge of his own design. He's feeling great about the journey so far, and wants to see some wildlife, he'd always wanted to catch something, and we figure that the river likely was dammed up by beavers, so instead of hunting down some rodent, Peaches and Clementine slip away and make some beavers that waddle down for Max to approach and pet while Goldberry plays in the water. We approach some caves and Max really wants to make a really loud echo, like he was some kind of bear, so the mages do their thing and really enhance the old man's voice, creating a thunderous BOOM that probably scared whatever birds are in the area within a quarter mile. Next we have to climb some rocks, and Cress helps Max by climbing up with him. The next stop is an old campsite... or rather, it looks like it was a new site set up to look old. Hippi trips on some tripwire that she called a "hippo trap", so we work some magic on making a "Max trap" to safely entangle Max up in before moving along. We're nearly to the top of the hill, and Max tries to break away from the party and run up that hill with all his might, and he does it with aplomb after Patton gives some wonderful cheering.

However, this 45 minute hike took nearly everything out of Max, so Peaches carries him down, back to his house. It's getting dark so we set up shelter in some of the abandoned houses (honestly a better night sleep for me than the Hag's hut...). When we awoke in the morn, Hippi was there to greet us, and while it might have been difficult to read her expression, it was clear she was in a somber mood. It seems Max died peacefully in his sleep overnight. His last wish, according to Patton, was for Hippi to join us on the trip back to our city. She got us some keepsakes, and we all set sail on the boat, now with one extra poppet in tow. Kiara says that she's really proud of what we did, and happy that Max got to relive his childhood one last time, just the way he remembered, and vowed to send any other Poppets she finds towards Onadbyr, where she knows there will be people there that will care for them.