Savage Tide: ECL 10 Guinet Westenwold gnome illusionist 3, master specialist 4, shadowcraft mage 3: Journal 3

Well, we're all warned about it.  Just one of many phenomenons in the sociology textbooks.  I'm talking about what's known as the "I'll show them!  I'll show them all!" moment we're prone to when we mix with the big folk.  What we don't ever actually intend to show them all is roughly half a minute of getting really good and ready, during which time the situation gets basically resolved without us, but more often than not, that's what happens.

Actually, I was really unimaginably lucky.  Lesser gnomes get eaten, crushed, or disbarred.  I just had to perform the Walk of Shame as a hydra, so, hey, that was new, although the winking and hooting from the surrounding buildings made it feel just like home.  Okay, so really it's less "hooting" and more "agonized whale calls", and do not mention the "winking".

And yes, technically in order for it to be a "Walk of Shame", it's implied that I helped make the beast-with-two-backs-and-even-more-heads as a hydra, which did not happen, although now that you mention it... aw, Hel, this is how we got owlbears, isn't it?  I think uncanny perversion must be an undocumented feature of polymorph, right?  It's not just me?  It must be because it was a male hydra.  I never realized they have as many heads down below as they do up above.  That kind of sudden unexpected sensory input would occupy anyone's attention for a couple dozen seconds, at least.

Wow, and how long ago was I criticizing these guys for exactly this sort of behavior?  Note to self: ask druid if these oh-so-cuddly building-critters might be emitting some kind of pheromones...or maybe ask the psion if there could be some kind of memetic compulsion related to that statue...  Second note to self: don't actually ask any of those things.  I mean, imagine the implications if they said no.  Or yes.

Hoo boy.  Is it fair to call that a digression?  More like an ethereal jaunt.  Anyway, we made it back to the artifact to have a very comfortable nap on the dried, moldy siliceous ooze of an ancient seabed, and I'm sure it's hard to believe that we learned there are reasons not to do that above and beyond what I've just described.  I've never been so thirsty.  The tiki head just has a tiki-typical expressionless grimace on its face, but I couldn't help but see it as a little bit derisive at the time.  A proper magic tiki head would at least have had the decency to offer me some rum in a novelty glass.

Oh, our psion died.  Not recently, though.  As far as we can tell, he's been dead as long as we've known him.  Only today, his body finally gave up the ghost when it was squeezed out of him by a copru.  We brought him back, if not good as new, at least as good as he was before.  I don't see a reason to make a big deal about it.  I'm sensitive to the needs of folks whose corpuses have different planar energy needs.  Some of them are kind of triggered by it.  Heck, the head of Necromancy back at school would hit you with a shivering touch just for saying the word "positive".  That was probably actionable, now that I think about it, but obviously, he had tenure.