The Spicy Rat Caper

The Spicy Rat Caper is the 1st Oxventure episode, in which the the Guild unite for their first adventure.

Synopsis
In this first episode we meet the party: a ragtag group of adventurers brought together by their desire to make a quick buck.

Prudence (Jane Douglas) is a Tiefling Warlock with an uncomfortable devotion to Cthulhu; Dob (Luke Westaway) is a half-Orc Bard armed with the soothing lullabies of the Venga Boys; Merilwen (Ellen Rose) is a Wood Elf Druid with an affinity for nature and chatting with animals.

Meanwhile the dread pirate Corazón de León (Andy Farrant) is a Human Rogue who has always been a fearsome pirate, why wouldn’t he have been, there's no secret backstory here, stop asking.

Summary
In the town of Casterfalls in the kingdom of G'eth four lone adventures find themselves in front of a notice board as a new job request is placed upon it. Prudence, Merilwen, Dob and Corazón reluctantly decide to team up and take this on, they head over to the Mayweather residence and are chosen by a servant from the crowd outside to get details from Arlo Mayweather about the job.

Arlo begins to describe to the group how his son has gone missing and will offer a reward if they can find him alive. He takes the group up to his son's room, upon opening the door a rat is seen to scurry away. Arlo beings to explain the details and fears someone may of kidnapped his son. Corazón believing the rat to be a witness successfully tracks down the rat and bring it back to Merilwen so that she might communicate with the rat. She uses Speak with Animals, and upon completion of the spell Merilwen soon learns that the son has now become the rat. Mayweather refusing to believe this sends them all away.

Once outside the estate a woman on the street approaches the group and ask if they are looking for the missing Mayweather child and if they can also help her out, as it turns out that her husband has also disappeared and she asks the group if they can help her out as well. Upon arriving at the Woman's house they notice a pile of clothes, a chicken and a vile of some kind of elixir. One of the chickens pecks Corazón, annoying him to the point Corazón kicks the chicken across the room causing Merilwen to be very upset with Corazón. Checking over the Elixir it was marketed as a Cure-all from M. Channail. Using all the information they have obtained Merilwen casts Speak With Animals again to speaks with the chicken to confirm he is the husband and that the elixir has turned him into this form.

Learning of the location of the seller the group plan to have Merilwen pretend to drink some of the elixir in front of the seller and uses Wild Shape to turn herself into a cat and the rest of them confront the seller over it. The plan goes off successfully leading to details of where the elixir was being produced and upon hiring some horses they group take the sellers cart back to the hideout of M. Channail which turns out to be a crypt.

Along the way the group discuss plans of entry, eventually setting on Dob using a disguise kit to make him look like the seller stating they are all sold out and are back for more to gain entry. After not full being able to convince the guard Dob makes mention of a boy turned into a rat and needs to see Channail about this, paying his way in the group were able to make it inside.

Once inside Dob uses Hideous Laughter to make one guard laugh uncountable and Corazón quickly moves to tie this guard up. Dob then attempts to knock out another guard not causing enough damage to do so, joining it to help Merilwen fires an arrow but it goes wide of the mark leaving Prudence to fire a bolt of Eldritch Blast and killing the guard in the process. Corazón is a little concerned the death of this guard will ruin his pirate standard while Prudence becomes huffy.

Acquiring information from the now tied up guard, they learn that Channail and two men are downstairs, before proceed downstairs they notice a door down the end of a corridor and discover a treasure chest filled with gold, they take some each and load the rest of the cart to take away with them. Before making their way down the stairs Corazón states he would prefer to not kill them, Prudence stating she doesn't do non lethal Dob informs the group he has a magic song capable of putting people to sleep. Corazón stealthily checks out the room belong reporting his findings to the group.

Dob reminds the group they need proof and they will need to get Channail to make a cure. Moving in Corazón sneaks up and hold Channail in a grapple while Dob successfully puts the other two men to sleep, Merilwen ties up the guards before they can awake while Corazón ties up Channail. To their surprise, Channail claims he was unaware that his potions where causing people to turn into animals, saying that just because he was bad at being a druid why should he have to stop doing what he was doing. This is very upsetting to Merilwen, as a druid herself she does not like it when people mess around in this nature.

Under the fear of being blasted by Prudence's eldritch magic, Channail begins to make a cure, the group turn one of the tied up men into an animal with the elixir and apply the antidote one of them, however it fails to work. Channail attempts to make a second antidote being told that is this one fail the next one will be tested out on him. After the completion of the antidote and application of it to the other man that had been tied up it successfully turn the man back into a human, they then apply the antidote to the first guard who also returns to his human form.

The group decide that it would be best to turn to the son back into a human at the Mayweather estate as proof they had been telling the truth all along, bottle up some of the antidote to take back with them. They allow Channail to go free, not wanting to leave all the potions around they decide they need to blow up all the elixirs, testing the properties with some flame they discover it has an explosive property and lay a trail of the potion from the front of the hideout.

Upon arriving back at the front, the horses are nowhere to be seen and neither is the gold they had loading onto the cart, as Channail had ran off with them. Corazón makes sure that all the workers had gotten out of the hideout then Prudence fires and Eldritch Blast that causes an explosion. They then walk back to Casterfalls antidote in hand.

Arriving back at the Mayweather estate speaking with the servant at the front door they are able to speak with Arlo once more. Dob feeds the antidote to the rat and he transforms back into his human form as the son, just and they had said. Each member is given 92 gold pieces. Merilwen decides to turn herself into a cat once more as they leave the Mayweather estate, and they decide to distribute the antidote to other people effected by M. Channail's elixir.

They decide to make the group official and decide to keep working with each other.

Notable Events

 * The founding of the Guild.
 * M. Channail is established as the Guild's running nemesis.

Guild Hijinks

 * Dob makes the rat boy smell spicy, hence naming the adventure.

Behind The Scenes Trivia

 * Because this is the very first campaign they had done, there are a few moments of error either in remembering each others character names, or names of locations. Though, in the case for Corazón, it's appropriate.
 * Mike was unavailable during the filming of this episode, and as such Egbert was not present during this adventure, making his official appearance in the second campaign, A Spot of Bother.
 * The first iterations of what their characters looked like is remarkably different than the more recent episodes, as after this, they approached artist Bendix to make their D&D character portraits.
 * The names of the episode parts on YouTube are "Meet The Party", "Showdown at The Crypt" and "Exciting Conclusions: Gnome Fight".
 * Andy accidentally skipped the boss fight with M. Channail. Johnny didn't realise that all of M. Channail's attacks involved using his hands when he allowed to grapple and restrain the gnome, and as such was unable to make him retaliate and had to improvise.
 * The entirety of the Oxventure was supposed to be a one-shot wouldn't it be "faintly amusing to see people who don't understand how D&D works play D&D" (which is why it wasn't a major issue that Mike wasn't available).