As the party prepares to compete in the tournament's individual events, the social world surrounding the party continued to develop. Salt had his sparring match against Penelope, who (once her masquerade mask was removed) turned out to be a perfect 10. The two agreed they would spar to the first hit, and Duke Nicholas started the match. Though he didn't go all out, Salt should have absolutely wiped the floor with the young noblewoman, but he whiffed all three of his punches in the first round of combat.
Though she failed to hit him on her attack, she was close, and the only reason Salt was able to beat her on the second round is that he had three attacks per turn vs. Penelope's one. Salt's interactions with the young woman remained fairly awkward, but Salt still pulled things out without making things awkward, even if he was a bit disappointed by how weak Penelope was in their fight.
Moving on to the individual events of the tournament, Beggar's Hole came out absolutely dominant. Before the Archery Competition could start, Inej and Salt caught another contestant cheating and got them disqualified. Inej went on to win the competition handily, while the other contestants were nowhere close to her performance.
Up next was the Boasting Competition, which Lucifer competed in. Rather than boast in a traditional way, Lucifer mostly emphasized how goth and cool she was. What her opponents did was less important than the fact that Laura's flock spent the rest of the competition shitting on every other competitor to boost Lucifer's performance. Nevertheless, the competitor from Shestan, covered in shit, still managed to come out ahead, leaving Lucifer with second place.
The wrestling competition was next on the docket, and Salt signed on to take all comers. In the first round, he trounced his opponent, a massive barbarian from Kroll. In the second round, it was more of a fight against a cool pirate from the Spice Islands, but Salt beat them too. The final round was against Poivre, the parent-loving monk from Ciloria. Unfortunately, though Poivre was the strongest of Salt's opponents, he absolutely got crushed mercilessly.
Laura came to bat for the first combat event: The Arena Fight. While her competitors all picked a fairly conservative number of animals to fight, Laura signed up to fight 15 bears, which she ended up slaughtering effortlessly by casting Moon Beam and turning into a bird. With that, the bears couldn't reach her, and she simply blasted every single one of them. With that cheesy response to my otherwise fairly interesting mini-game, Laura took home the gold and it didn't really matter what anyone else did.
Back to Salt, the single combat bracket began. First, he beat up a human knave, whose voice was cracking the entire time. It is worth mentioning (though I won't reproduce it in the recap) that around the table, this marked the point where the rest of the tournament started to be described in double-entendre, mostly because Adam kept accidentally describing Salt's moves in the fight in ways that sounded sexual. Up next, Salt fought a wild-looking half-orc whose eyes glowed with fire. The half-orc kept calling Salt "sweet meat" until Salt offended him and started to be called "rancid meat". The half-orc hit hard, but Salt managed to stun-lock him well enough that he only got one hit in. Finally, Salt was up against everyone's favorite shithead: Sir Raoul "the Heartbreaker". It wasn't even a fight, Salt kept him stunned and killed him with no effort.
Moving back to Laura, her second competition was a cooking contest. Though this was perhaps the mechanically simplest of the contests, I would say it ended up being the most engaging narratively, with Laura baking Sherbet, a magical salad, and an also magical cheesecake. Though her opponents tried, there was only one round where Laura was not far and away the winner. The losers of each round, though, faced the wrath of the powerful being "Rordan Gamsey", thick of ass and invested with the power of three of the "stars of Michelin". While he merely slapped the worst competitor in the first round before disqualifying them, he struck the second round's loser with lightning until they died, and the third round's loser was dropped into the bowels of the Earth before the medics forced Rordan to bring them back. Truly, he was a force of nature.
Lucifer was back for the Mage Contest, wherein she used fancy spellwork to bring her opponents to their knees. Mostly, Lucifer used her magic to evoke a very creepy atmosphere, but that proved more than enough to crush her opponents, especially Barbie, the hot-pink clad sorcerer from Ciloria.
Finally, the most anticipated and beloved event of the tournament: The Drunken Joust. Completely sloshed, Inej was signed up to ride against her Cilorian opponent: Raoul. The team buffed her up, Lucifer casting a spell, Salt handing Inej a potion of haste, and Laura turning into a steed for her to ride on. In the first round, Inej and Raoul clashed, with their weapons shattering and neither falling. However, on the second round, Inej unseated Raoul, bringing the contest to an end with Beggar's Hole victorious.
As the festivities continued through the night (and after a few hours to sober up), Raoul found Inej and invited her on a walk along the riverside. Though the two would be facing each other in the tournament's finale tomorrow, they had a nice walk and connected with each other. Eventually, things went back to Raoul's place, and the two had a nice night before turning in to rest up for the competition.
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