Journey to Hommlet – Day One: Of Prayer and Pseudopods

With the last echoes of the city bells behind them and morning mists clinging to the cobbled streets of Greyhawk, the party rolled forth onto the River Road, wheels creaking beneath their modest wagon. The open sky greeted them like a forgotten friend—vast, blue, and unknowable.

As they passed the final gatehouse, Joffrey Bellweather sat quietly beside Sir Cedric Mournvale, clutching the frayed edges of his prayer book. A curious tension stirred in his chest. He thumbed open a weathered page, and from somewhere deep within—perhaps from the road itself—a prayer rose unbidden to his lips:

“Watch our steps, even the ones we do not mean to make.
I don’t know exactly where we are going, but I think going is the point.
Keep our feet from blistering, our satchels from tearing,
and if we get lost, at least let it be somewhere interesting.”

As the final word was spoken, something shifted—a warmth in his chest, a breeze that carried more than wind. Spells whispered into his mind, unasked for and unmistakably divine. When they made camp that evening near the quiet banks just outside Two Ford, Joff found a small wooden token nestled at the bottom of his pouch—a wheel carved in ancient style. The symbol of Fharlanghn, the Dweller on the Far Horizon. Had he found a god? Or had a god found him?

Sir Cedric took the reins, armor clanking with each rut in the road. He insisted on driving the entire day himself—stoic, upright, and very much refusing rest. The wagon groaned under its load of DiGiorno provisions, the smell of herbs and flour mingling with Cedric’s polished steel and the dust of the road.

Mouse, the boyish ranger from Greyhawk’s alleyways, lounged atop a stack of crates in the rear, his ferret companion Pepperjack curled at his feet. Wide-eyed and eager, Mouse pointed at every bird, bush, and oddly shaped rock with confident exclamations.

“That’s a southern hawk-wren! Dangerous beak. Or maybe a forest peacock. Or an owlbear hatchling!”

Every other thing, much to the party’s growing dismay, was declared an owlbear in disguise.

Fizz Starpetal, the eccentric warlock with starlight in his veins, couldn’t sit still. His eyes sparkled with whimsy and suspicion in equal measure. Halfway through the day, he leapt from the wagon, claiming to have spotted a sprite’s hovel nestled beneath a willow.

“Hold! There may be poetry nearby,” he announced, vanishing into the brush.

Cedric reined in the wagon. Joff sighed but couldn’t help smiling. They watched as Fizz knelt by a hollow of vines and whispered a eulogy in Sylvan for the absent Brownies. As he prayed, the vines stirred. Lavender blossoms bloomed before his eyes. The fey had heard him. Fizz returned in silence, a single tear cutting through the dust on his cheek.

Cedric sniffed. “The world smells strange,” he muttered. “Like wet moss and secrets.”

As dusk draped the sky in purple and gold, the party made camp. Cedric took first watch beside the wagon, polishing his dented gauntlets in solemn silence. Hunger gnawed at them despite the rations, and the conversation turned—inevitably—to pizza.

Fizz, still emotionally raw, leapt into the back of the wagon with theatrical flourish. “Behold! Ye blessed crust!” he declared, reaching for one of the DiGiorno boxes.

But the box shifted.

It pulsed.

It growled.

Before anyone could react, the box surged open, revealing rows of jagged, cheese-slicked teeth and an eye rolling atop the lid. A Mimic. Fizz cried out as a slimy pseudopod lashed around his chest, searing his robe with acid. Chaos erupted.

Cedric drew his blade with a shout of “Back, creature! In the name of valor and mozzarella!” and drove forward. Joff, channeling his newfound divine spark, cast healing into Fizz’s limp form, reviving the elf seconds before the creature snapped again. Mouse, from atop a crate, loosed arrow after arrow, each one finding its mark with uncanny precision. The final bolt pierced the mimic’s central eye, ending the ambush in a gory collapse of doughy flesh and acidic ichor.

As they caught their breath, Fizz sat dazed in the grass, steam rising from the acid burns across his sleeve. Joff bound the wounds and muttered a new prayer: “Bless this crust no more.”

And then—quiet.

Mouse, ever alert, turned his gaze to the tree line. Something moved there. A flicker. A glint. Something he had sensed before.

Fizz called out in Sylvan, but no reply came. Joff stood beside him, eyes narrowed.

“It’s moving away.” His voice was a whisper. “But it was listening.”

They were not alone on the road to Hommlet.

And the road had only just begun.

NPC Roster

Lady Orlana of the Rose-Mist Court: A minor Archfey with a flair for drama and a fondness for mortal snacks. Fizz’s patron

Fharlanghn - The Dweller on the Far Horizon, Greyhawk Deity, patron of Horizons, Distance, Travel, Roads