Chapterish Sectionoid 1

The town of Trelvet is being plagued by monster attacks, and holds a convention calling all able-bodied fighters and/or mystery solvers to help stave off the monsters and/or find out why they are attacking. A great many warriors assemble in the Golden Crown Tavern & Inn, and after a night of discussion, the last four to rise the next morning are a kid named Miles Burgess, a steppenhyäne (an anthropomorphic hyena) named Jay, a strange mummy man named Rammen, and a mysterious woman who (reluctantly) gives her name as Levan. They meet over morning drinks (the underage Miles sticking to non-alcoholic items) and decide to form a monster-hunting team, despite the fact that their team will include two monsters, Jay and Rammen. Hearing their decision, the Barman suggests that they see his acquaintance on the roof of the building, and they proceed to climb the stairs and raid his crates for items. Distracted by the keg room, a friendly Napkin Ghost reminds the group of the doorway leading outside, and they exit to the roof and climb a ladder to find a creepy man in a robe. He sells them a Book of Monsters, which will surely aid them in their quest, and they jump off the roof, managing to only kill one chicken in the process. Rammen quickly cooks the chicken into a questionable snack and, after a peek at the town statue depicting a Knight called Sir Abram and his Pegasus Knight ward named Pidenski, they leave Trelvet through its southern archway and venture into monster country.

Immediately, a group of insectoid monsters draws our heroes' attention, as the beasts appear to be feasting on human remains. After disposing of the ninja-like Slaying Mantis, the bouncing Tumblebee, and the cowardly Deadbeatle, they discover the supposed corpse to be still on the edge of life, and revive the woman with Levan's Dried Pasta. The woman, Cassima, proves to be a ripoff of Zess T. who offers to cook for the heroes when they return to town. They decide to explore further, however, and are ambushed by a squad of Slaying Mantises while ruffling through some bushes, but defeat them and find a Koopa Leaf or two. Cassima heads back home, and our heroes, after getting their bearings, walk around a T-shaped bottomless pit, passing by a lake to head toward a strange hill. The hill proves to have the shape of a three-tiered wedding cake, but just as they are about to scale it, the four are distracted by movement in the cave found in the bottom of the hill. They enter, and are lured toward a light which turns out to be a lantern-carrying vampire, accompanied by a not-so-friendly Napkin Ghost and a Werehyena. Our heroes dispose of these monsters, as well as some ever-present bats, and find treasure in the form of a whip hanging on the wall. Grabbing this and the accompanying fedora, Rammen is now as well-armed his his companions, but the urge for movie references proves too much, and in the ensuing flight from a giant boulder, Rammen's newfound fedora is lost. Nevertheless, the group finds the will to climb the hill, noting on the way up the giant beehive at the top, which seems to be expelling some kind of exhaust. Floating on the wind, climbing trees, and riding rising, weight-sensitive platforms, the team arrives at the beehive.

Inside the huge, round, yellow hive, our heroes are attacked by more Tumblebees, but dispose of them easily. They then have some trouble crossing a honey-covered floor, but Miles cleverly uses the honey to stick to the wall, and Levan helps Jay out of a sticky situation. Ascending to the next floor of the hive, the team encounters large rocks carved into the likeness of Tumblebees, but finds no more live bugs. Fiddling with some confusing weight-sensitive pads on the ground, they unlock a doorway and acquire some handy 1-Up Mushrooms, but behind the next doorway find a team of mages. The magic users at first consider attacking Jay and Rammen, but after Rammen employs his mysterious psychic powers to sway their moods, Miles realizes that the Wind Mage is his old teacher, Al-Hazrid. Happy to find familiarity, the mages offer our heroes some new weapons, after which the creepy Shaman in the mage party throws some Warp Powder on the ground, transporting the mages out of the hive. Bemused but offensively upgraded, the group solves the weight puzzle and climbs to the third floor, where they take out a group of Tumblebee Drones, which are more durable than the other bees they have encountered. Finding a telltale antechamber containing Heal and Save Blocks, the heroes refresh themselves and progress into the next room. There they find a large Queen Tumblebee sticking out of the floor of the hive, and upon closer examination they realize that the entire hive is actually her huge, round Tumblebee body. The Queen attacks, and in a ferocious battle, our heroes fight off her spawned children and take her down, Jay's newly-emerged immunity to her poisonous stings making up for Levan's and Miles' weaknesses against poison. After delivering the fatal blow to the Queen, they realize they have made a mistake, as they are trapped inside the hive as it rolls around. Jay's ability to understand monster communication allows him to ask the surviving Tumblebee Drone what to do, and, taking its ominous advice, Miles revives the Queen with his 1-Up Mushroom. Upon revival, the Queen reveals to Jay that she had been under the control of a strange pulse that came from the direction of the forest, and she promises to stop her bees from attacking in the future.

The queen drops our heroes off at the bottom of the hill, and they decide to head toward the lake first. As soon as they float down the dropoff and land on the beach, a group of humans ambushes them from the cliffside behind, and a lengthy battle ensues. The team fights off a Mercenary, a Fighter, a Soldier, a Thief, and a Priest, who attacked because of the monsters in the party. The spoils of this battle include some new weapons and armor. After a lengthy break between sessions in real time, our heroes walk along the beach, heading back toward Trelvet; on the way, they find a bottle of Chuckola Cola buried in the sand, followed by a sand castle with a decorative shell. Leaving the castle alone, they are attacked by some more bugs but squash them without breaking a sweat. They run along the beach, feeling warm and fuzzy due to their increased Support Levels, and find an Inn Coupon buried in the coarser sand. Deciding to use this to take a nap back at the Golden Crown, they are only briefly hampered by a zombie ambush, again having gained enough strength to avoid getting a scratch. Rammen pulls a Turnip out of the grave soil, and the group heads back to town.

Reentering Trelvet, they immediately return to the Golden Crown Tavern and Inn. Miles thumps the Inn Coupon on the counter and tumbles into bed, while the other three enjoy a free round of booze, the Barman's thanks for saving Cassima. Eventually teetering off to sleep as well, the sun sets on a chapter of their adventure. The next chapter is unsettlingly turnip-themed.

The group first visits Cassima and has her cook a few things out of some of their items, and then at her suggestion heads to the marketplace. Exploring, like, a dozen stands, they make many purchases; Jay must not have slept well, however, as he remains drowsy throughout most of the shopping. More than a dozen bizarre turnip jokes later, they note a house with a spinning roof beyond the market area, and strike the Save Block in front. Venturing inside, they meet a strange oracle named Lewot who gives them a largely useless slew of words apparently related to their futures. His theatrics last for some time, but after leaving his place, the party promptly takes off for the forest.

They take the quickest path, but Miles finds himself unexpectedly incapacitated after falling through a leafy floor. Rammen revives him with his Dried Shroom, and the oracle returns with a convenient plate of pasta that brings Miles back to full health. Levan then uses her powers to reduce the party's weight and allow them to walk across the thin layer of leaves. After a refreshing Quicksave, Jay finally perks up, and the party meets Sir Abram and Pidenski, who were depicted in the statue back in Trelvet. Together, they enter the Seraph Woods.

Their path is shortly blocked by a strange tree that looks like a brain. Speaking with the rustle of its leaves and calling itself the Tree of Knowledge, it uses its roots to read the different characters' Knowledge stats, and says that they must take different paths through the forest based on these. It sends Sir Abram alone off to the left, Pidenski and Levan behind itself, and the other three to the right. Levan finds herself in the midst of rainbow-colored trees of unimaginable splendor, while the guys are faced with another leaf-covered pit which Miles promptly falls into. Pidenski chases a butterfly into the next "room," and after some deliberation, Jay revives Miles with his Shroom Steak. After more deliberation, the party finally solves the complicated vine puzzle, transferring Levan's field ability through a vine to allow the others to cross the leaf pit. Once there, they discover that standing on a tree root opens up a path to allow Levan to join them, but they decide to deliberate more before reuniting. When they finally do, their combined Weight stats on the root open the way forward, and five horse-mounted soldiers immediately ride through and attack them.

In a confusing but epic battle, the party drifts in and out of sleep and the Arbiter makes a number of mathematical errors, but the players push through these difficulties and defeat the Wind Knight, the Sword Knight, the Axe Knight, the Lance Knight, and the well-equipped Valkyrie. Jay grabs a Knight Robe and Miles grabs the Wind Tome, and the party solves another weight-based puzzle in order to get their first glimpse of the evil assassin, Travis Turnip. Miles acquires a Spring Pad and Travis disappears into a trapdoor, and the party proceeds. A bit worn out, time seems to swim a bit as they figure out that Jay must use his Strength to hold two trees apart for them to pass. In the clearing beyond this, the players encounter three new enemy monsters, a Kung Fu Panda, a Fissile Dragon, and a Seti. With Miles' Sleepy Sheep incapacitating the Panda, the group pushes through the monsters' strength and receives a veritable smörgåsbord of food items from the Kung Fu Panda. Using the previously acquired Spring Pad, Miles jumps up the cliff and steps on another root pad to create root stairs for the others to climb up. The party follows the pathway, which makes a 180 degree turn, and encounters a strange tree with a face. After waking it up and attempting to communicate with it using the glass powder that Miles had scavenged from the shattered glass tree, the Tree of Knowledge finally intervenes and instructs Rammen to use his special field ability to manipulate the tree's emotions. Rammen makes the tree feel sad, causing it to cry and water a beanstalk that had apparently been planted underneath our heroes' feet. This lifts them above the emotional tree, and Rammen makes the tree happy, causing it to dance; its roots are apparently intertwined with the beanstalk's, and the players are flung safely to the other side.

After another lengthy hiatus in real life, fake life makes a dramatic reentrance with a marathon session like none seen before it. Our heroes are first attacked by some fiendish folk, a Pirate, a Shaman, and a Thief. Knocking these goons aside, they come upon a huge, looming bottomless pit, but are distracted by a mysterious golden apple. Trying many different strategies involving taking bites of the respawning fruit, Miles finally uses it to strike three trees across the pit which provide root- and vine-based methods of traversal for the party. Glimpsing Travis Turnip, they move on and participate in a curious battle that references mafia games. After this, they encounter some initially friendly Fire Emblem enemies who turn on them when a pulse of red energy speeds through the forest. Fighting through, they level up enough to learn new attacks, and Miles gets his hands on some stronger arrows.

Ahead they find a talking tree and converse with it for a long time, eventually persuading it to let them pass using their joint Charisma stats. Beyond this tree they come to a wall of transparent glass trees similar to the one behind which Travis Turnip was first spotted, and they see him sitting behind these as well. Once more, he disappears down a trapdoor, but after some debate about how the root switch works, Rammen hops over a sunken glass tree and steps on another root to shatter it, allowing the party passage. Nervous about jumping down the pit after Travis, they have Levan lighten their descent; they are further spared damage by one of the bouncy trees such as grow under Raphael Raven's giant tree home. Down the path, they find a Heal Block and a Save Block, and the giant wooden Turnip Mech looms ahead.

With a stumbling start but a strong finish, the players defeat the Turnip Mech by beating down its forcefields and then hurling Tommy and Terry Turnip at it. Travis Turnip emerges from the destroyed Mech and is soundly defeated, finally putting an end to the Turnip Saga(?!). Travis drops a Tree Key, but it does not appear to fit in any of the trees in his lair, so the players attempt to climb back out of the pit down which they fell. Taking a while to articulate their plans, they find a clever way to escape without using up any resources, and proceed to open a new path with the Tree Key. They sprint down the path while being assailed by Ballista Bills, the medieval equivalent of Bullet Bills, and beat down the Bill Ballistae firing them after using Levan's new Raccoon State attack to fly up onto the cliff where they are stationed. Beyond this point, they reunite with Sir Abram and his ward Pidenski, and strike the nearby Save Block, fully expecting the next encounter to be a challenging one. Before moving on, Pidenski offers the party a Tea Party to heal them.

They open the path ahead and move on. In the back of the Seraph Woods, they encounter four persons, three apparently under the magical control of the fourth, who brandishes a Blood Orb. As our heroes try to assess the situation, a mysterious man dressed in white appears and has a paralyzing effect on Levan. He observes the battle as the hypnotized minions block all attacks for a few turns. The Summoner Griselda summons many different spirits to assist her, including the ghost of Travis Turnip, but the mysterious scientist (who Levan reveals created her in an experiment by extracting her from another person) thinks her a lost cause and leaves, escaping her inescapable forcefield. After this, the battle quickly turns against her favor, and she only manages to stay alive because of her two Life Shrooms. Going kamikaze, she causes her Blood Orb to explode, sucking the players and Abram and Pidenski into a red vortex. Unfortunately for the late Griselda, this strange realm gives them their first permanent stat increases and drops them, in relative safety, back at the forest entrance.