Mombarian - Unionizing the Red Light District

So honestly alot has happened since the last time I did a storytime on Nakon. It would be too much of an info dump to try and get ya'll all caught up BUT I am going to tell a story from my notes that I think you all will enjoy. That being the same internet I yeet all of these posts into I'm assuming at some point you were, or perhaps will suddenly become, infatuated enough with my Mom Friend Barbarian that you'll know about her earlier stories to try and set up the characters in this group some.

With that assumption out of the way here are the basics - former work game now only 1/3 still work there. Our group is made up of a Tiefling Rogue, Human Ranger, Dwarf Cleric, newly gained Gnome Warlock/Bard, are no longer having a face Elf Fighter and myself the Goliath Barbarian (because I have to live out the fantasy of ever being tall somehow). Will I be explaining how we got the Gnome Warlock/Bard in this post? Probably not. Or maybe just why our faceless Elf Fighter is sans that face thing? Also no. So what will I be telling the tale of this time?

Now last we talked about Nakon they had just dealt with a not so fun house of many undead hands and other horribleness [see 'Mombarian - Not So Fun House Part 1'] then got yanked into a side adventure with my great great great great great great grandpa [family drama~ an elf with purple eyes] then back to the creepy AF house to round things out. All that was around Session 12 so August 2019 if we speed forward to past blackmailing a mayor to unionizing sex workers instead of doing the actual plot put before us in Session 18 May 2020. In true fashion of any good adult adventuring party the first thing we did when we hit a big city as find a decent cheapish place to crash then hit the party distract. This is where we forced our DM to come u with a red light district on the fly and I think he did rather well. Multiple establishments of varying cost and attractions, one even added magic to the mix for an extra fee. Our dear Tiefling Rogue Isle even got asked if they needed to make a little extra money because Tieflings weren't common in city but they definitely attracted clientele.

After being discerning patrons and visiting each establishment first we circled back around to one we thought reasonable for the price that we wouldn't walk away from with a magical STD [I wouldn't put it past the DM, you'll understand when we get to mister no-face Elf Fighter]. Now Isle and I had been curious about how much the workers made especially since she'd been approached about making some extra money doing it. When she talked to the two she'd contracted for the night and found out how little of the gold she'd paid they'd get she tipped them very well to make up for it. Then in the morning when she and Nakon met up again she kept having a brain worm about it till Nakon told her to either start a union over it or let it go. Whelp~ you can see where that leads.

Before we continue I want to make a few things clear - everyone at the table for this game is an adult. We have all done the work to be comfortable drawing lines and veils at the table when needed or fading to black. The partying in the red light district started on a lark as did forcing the DM to come up with the businesses there. But character-wise it made the most sense that Isle and Nakon were the ones to actually participate in one of these establishments. Isle is pretty chaotic and carefree seeming BUT they did recently have a massive trauma around killing the girl they were courting thanks to mind control nonsense by this Goddess we are now all kind of vowed to have revenge on for various also traumatic reasons. Its not a completely healthy response to turn emotion off and just have fun but this is the first time that Isle has even thought of fun since that incident happened so Nakon didn't want to discourage it, but knew someone needed to keep an eye on Isle. For Nakon she is very confident when it comes to fighting or stepping in to take care of her group when they go a little too chaotic monkey with a flame thrower on things and dials them back rather easily. But she is extremely lacking confidence when it comes to anyone possibly liking her that way and is in fact a bumbling gangly teenager around anyone she likes. Though she is mostly also dense in that area as you'll see if I ever get to the story about how we started a sex cult in a small town unintentionally by the DM 'yes anding' our joking at the table as players. For a night Nakon just didn't want to feel like she was going to break anything or worry about what someone thought - it was a win/win for the Goliath and the Tiefling.

Now Isle has this bee in her bonnet about starting a union for the sex workers of the city but isn't sure where to start. Immediately jumping to going to intimidate and strong-arm the owners into better pay without establishing a system for the workers to take control of that. IRL I go down many research rabbit holes for various reasons which often includes boredom or deadline avoidance, one of those had recently been unions I forget why except that probably because my partner at the time was very involved with a teacher union or that maybe my dad had mentioned something going on with the nurse's union. So I asked the DM if I could roll to see how helpful Nakon would be at this union thing with Isle, turns out very helpful. I pointed out that we first need to make flyers to get out the word of a possible union to the workers because we don't even know if they want our help or not. We also suspected we'd get push back about this so we decided to use our newly found secret base in the city as a kind of union HQ in case we needed to hide any of the workers. So of course that meant a secret sign as well as a call and response, I don't remember for what but at some point Nakon talked Isle out of doing a super chaotic thing in exchange for carving her wooden tokens that union members could use to show who they were.

After all was said and done we finally got a packed room in our underground HQ full of workers ready to at least listen about unionizing. They were ready for Isle to take the stage and talk to them, the rest of us were loosely hanging out in the back because it was our HQ so it made sense. She gave an opening spiel to get the riled up and ready to go and then as I'm doodling in my campaign notes I hear 'And Nakon will take it from here' as the player for Isle got up to go get another drink from the beers in the fridge. Very deer in the headlights I give a generic 'together you have power' quote and then asked if everyone could form 3 lines so we could take attendance and collect grievances so we'd know where to start as a union. At this point it was pretty clear that it would be happening like it was packed in there and everyone seemed eager for the changing. Tons of grievances and tons of signatures.

But there was this one NPC named Pearl that I'm pretty sure has become Nakon's nemesis. She would not shut up and was the Karen of Karen's. The DM did too good of a job playing her because both myself and Nakon just wanted to rage and off with her head. I'm pretty sure that when Isle's player came back they were ready to sneak attack them as well. Literally, all she has done the whole campaign since we've met her is complain, tell us we are useless and not doing enough (its been like a week in game since that first union meeting), and causing problems with rumors all over the city. We will probably come back to Pearl because of our group's burning hate of her. Random side fact she apparently writes terrible dime romance novels that she tried to sell at the meeting as well.

That's kind of where this part of the story ends, we finally let the DM distract us with actual plot stuff for awhile. Also kind of saved the city from being burned to the ground by the Tapestry and then had to hide out cause they kind of control the city through a puppet king at the moment. I feel like that's an important thing to go over buuuuuuuut~ you'll have to wait till next time for it. Anyways its been about a week in game but tons of stuff happened so keep an eye out for the next installment of Mombarian!

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.