The early morning drinking session had produced different results depending on how you measured things. Certainly, in the short term the event was a complete success, and brushed aside the effects of the three long eared adventurers' and two lumberjacks' recent resurrections.

The women enjoyed seeing the inside of the workers' home, and were astounded that it had all been built since the start of the game. From the outside it looked like a fortress, but the living areas and workshops on the inside were showing the effects of putting that many craftsmen in one spot. Especially when they needed little sleep and many kept working into the wee hours of the morning.

Many of the workers had taken Ben and Suzette's advice on raising their skills and stats. Prodigy was very popular and many workers had picked up wood carving as a way to bring up their dexterity, or stone carving to increase their strength. The thousands of hours of work put into the building were turning it into a very comfortable place to live.

The bar had received a huge amount of attention. While some of the workers still liked the social atmosphere of the tavern, and talking to players, many preferred their private watering hole. Jon, Cham, and many other workers had put in a lot of long hours working on the area of the catacombs that they had claimed.

The stone walls that had originally looked like they belonged in a dungeon had been cleaned and polished. Loose mortar had been repaired and uneven flagstones were replaced. Three tree-trunks had been stripped of bark, cut, and brought down to support the ceiling. Support beams were added running from the wooden pillars to the walls, further strengthening the roof and adding to the decor. Lanterns hung from the beams in several places. All of the wood was carved. No one style was used. Norse runes, woodland scenes, monster battles or intricate braids all found a home.

And the bar served a second important function besides a place to relax. In case of some natural disaster, or huge monster rampage, the town needed a secure bunker. It only seemed sensible that this should be the bar. 'Disaster Drill' was a popular event on one night each week.

The bar itself was made from one huge log. The gigantic chunk of oak had been squared off at waist level, and was three feet wide. Instead of adding shelves, they had hollowed out one side to form storage for mugs and glasses. The top had been sanded smooth and given many coats of oil to make it shine.

Getting the log moved down two levels through the stone corridors had been an engineering feat in and of itself. But having a couple dozen very strong workers to move the thing, and Jorges yelling at them the correct way to move it along on rollers had finally got the job done. Only two people had been crushed and killed getting it downstairs, which was well within the expected casualty rate.

Around the walls hung trophies from bosses killed by the workers. They weren't dungeon bosses, mostly just Named and low Elites, but they had been won in hard fights by underpowered workers who were proud of their victories. A giant beaver's hide was on one wall, a mean looking beet was hanging from the rafters, the coat rack was made from a jackelope’s horns, and a stone fist three feet high was used to hold an assortment of alcohol bottles.

The bunny girls wanted to hear all the stories and Jon was happy to tell them all, in all of the exaggerated detail. This led to an accounting of the fight with the Angry Dire Squirrel. The boys encouraged them to bring in their trophy to add to the collection. The drinking had continued far past where they needed it to negate the de-buff from resurrecting.

At some point, Jon and Libby disappeared to raise their spirits in a different way.

This inspired Dot to make some mental notes for a new book. "Tall Timber" would feature a lonely female engineer who started playing a new online game only to be abandoned by her party in the deep woods, and somehow trapped in the game. She becomes hopelessly lost until a friendly lumberjack offers to take her back to his rustic cottage.

She goaded Cham until he gave them the story of how they ended up with bark and leaves growing on them. He refilled their flagons, and then leaned back in his chair.

"Come fair travelers and gather round. Hear the sad tale of two handsome lumberjacks who ventured into the darkest reaches of the dreaded Ironwood to pit their brawn against nature itself."

"And got their butts kicked."

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'Twas early dawn when we left, walking quickly through the lands where our axes had beaten the forest into submission. Though meadows had been cleared of the woody warriors, the stubborn druid trees never admitted defeat. They constantly tried to reclaim the fields we had cleared. But so fell had our axes become that in but a day we could lay waste to dozens of the mighty forest fiends. On this day, having earned the gratitude of our Baron and Baroness, we set out to explore the far woods beyond where no worker had gone before.'

'The druid wood was a tangled thing in some parts. It was as if the mighty hand of the city has pushed the trees far back from its walls and then taken the land for its own. The trees pushed against the walls of Gadobhra, but the city merely laughed. Frustrated, the forest was becoming angry. '

'Any lumberjack can tell when a tree is angry. You have to be careful around them. Some just give up and fall over when you lay an axe to them. But the angry ones want to get revenge. Many a fine lad has died when the trunk splits and kicks them into the air with broken limbs, or twists as it falls, sending him running for safety where no safety can be found. Trees are evil and malicious, mark my words. '

'So it was with caution that we moved through the trunks that were too close to each other, tangled limbs blocking our path and reaching out to do us harm! After a time, it became so slow, that we climbed a tall oak to look out over the forest and find a clear path. We saw a curious sight. To the North was a cleared area of forest, a vast circular meadow with a small lake in the center. We were determined to seek out this oasis of clear land in the tangle mass of angry oaks. Ah, if only we had known what foul curse waited for us, (and were a little smarter,) we would have turned back at once!'

'We pushed forward, and noticed something curious: the trees themselves seemed to be pushing in the same direction. The tall oaks were marching almost trunk to trunk and leaning in the direction of the clearing. It became harder and harder to move between them.

'And then we noticed the squirrels. Dozens of them, cheeks full of acorns moving through the trees. Some stopped to chitter at us, upset with our presence. I casually picked up a large acorn and threw it at one. The squirrel dodged and raced away, and my hard-thrown projectile sailed far over the forest. For an instant there was silence, and then a path opened for us between two oaks. Curious about this, we picked up more acorns. Experimenting showed that hitting a squirrel was not a good outcome. The fuzzy-tailed rodents glared at us with red eyes and any path disappeared. It was the act of throwing acorns as far as we could towards the meadow that opened a path for us.'

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

'We progressed easily after that as the oaks cleared a path as we moved forward throwing acorns into the meadow. Finally, we came to the edge, and found that a war was going on. A slow war to be sure, but a war nevertheless. The meadow had defenders. Tall, straight trees with-dull silver bark. My Forest Lore is better than John's. While he could only identify the trees as a type of Hickory, I could see that they were a special type of tree.

Ironwood Hickory (tier 2, slow-growing, long-lived, hard bark and strong wood.)

The woods creaked as the army of oaks pressed against the defending Ironwood. The Hickory were vastly out-numbered, but much stronger. They circled the meadow's outer edge, protecting the center. We moved along the gap and finally found a way into the meadow. A small gap between two Ironwood trees let us scamper quickly in. Behind us we heard mutterings from the trees: the oaks urged us on, the Ironwood were angry but wasted no energy on us.'

'What from a distance had looked like a lush meadow was instead a boggy area of thick grass and moss growing on top of thick layers of peat. Stagnant, oily looking water was everywhere in small pools. What had once been an area of forest was now a ghost wood. Dead stumps and tumbled trunks of huge Ironwood trees lay everywhere, with thick patches of a reddish-brown lichen growing over most areas.'

'As we explored, we saw squirrels move among the trunks, looking for solid ground to plant their acorns. We also saw quite a few acorns laying in an area, most likely our own work. Oak saplings and ironwood saplings were growing throughout the meadow, often competing with each other. The Ironwood saplings also had a natural predator in the bands of roving squirrels. We watched as three of them worked together to uproot a sapling. The tree made a piteous wail as it was pulled from the ground, its roots tangled with dark rocks and mud.'

'The squirrels ran away, and I moved to the fallen sapling, curious. I put it in my pouch, thinking I could possibly plant it near the town. Such thoughts were abruptly scattered away by the angry voice of a creature near us. What we had thought was a large Ironwood snag was instead a treant. A few branches still held leaves, but the truck was broken and charred as if from lightning. Still, it was a large creature, nearly twenty foot tall.'

'Tree-Killers! Ax-Murderers! Minions of the Oaks! You will not live to kill another of my children!

'We didn't have time to dispute the last accusation, and we knew the first two to be pretty accurate. We had certainly cut down many trees. And we had also killed a LOT of treants. Where a goblin warrior might cause of to quake in fear, a treant was simply more experience for us to gather. We readied our axes for battle'

'But it was a short fight. Our axes could barely chip the bark of the great tree and its branches hit like the weapon of a giant. fell to the pounding of a branch, while I took a stunning shot to my skull from a hard flung hickory nut of unusual size. In the moment I was stunned, a root from the ground punctured my chest. As I died, I managed to identify our killer.'

Barkroar, Defender of the Irongrove, Protector of Saplings, General of the Army of Irongrove.

Level 13 Elite Boss (Massive Armor, Strong Branches, Big Nuts)

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"And that's the story. We died, then woke up next to you fine looking ladies, and found that we were cursed." Cham downed the rest of his beer, thirsty from the story."

Dot was looking at the small sapling in a pot of dirt. "Cute tree, it almost looks like the roots are moving around in the soil and it’s growing already. Cham had found it in his pouch when he resurrected. He carefully removed the two large rocks that were bound up in the roots and put it into a large metal beer pitcher filled with dirt from garden behind the tavern. With any luck he could save it.

Charlene looked over at Dot. "I think they have the better story. We just died to a fat corpse of a bunny with bad breath."

Dot's eyes got huge. "OMG, that's it! That's how to beat him. The magic carrots don't just heal, they also prevent bad breath. We shouldn't trade them off or eat them. We need the boss to eat them. Then he can't use his breath weapon."

and Libby came walking back into the room slowly, arm and arm. The other two bunny girls ran up and grabbed her, excitedly telling her the plan. "We need to go back into the dungeon! Let's go kill the bastard!"

Libby smiled over at John. "Sure, and if it doesn't work, we'll come back and...drink...some more."

gestured to the bar. "Right, always lots to drink here for a thirsty bunny girl."

Charlene asked the lumberjacks their plans. Cham patted his axe. "We'll have to go make an attempt to kill the boss, otherwise I think we turn into trees. But damn that thing is tough." He shared the notification with them.

CURSED!

You have died to an angry tree and will suffer from a curse until that anger has died.

Serve the forest: One way or another, you will serve the Ironwood. If your debt to the wood is not paid, you will become part of the wood!

Current Effects: -2 AGI, -2 DEX. +5 physical mitigation as your skin hardens to bark. Increased damage from fire and beavers.

Jon took out his own axe and spun it in the air. "Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to chop and die. Or something like that."

Cham nodded solemnly. "When all you have is an axe, then everything looks like a tree. Luckily, this actually is a tree."

The three bunny-girls rolled their eyes. Libby stroked a leaf on the small sapling. It was definitely looking better. As they watched, a sharp root punched through the bottom of the metal pitcher. "I think you might be on the wrong side of the war. If those stories you tell about chopping down whole forest aren't just exaggerations, maybe you should fight on this little guy’s side."

As the three long-eared adventurers left, Jon stroked his chin, considering. "Was she hinting we should use our brains, and not our axes?"

Cham shrugged. "I've never understood women, but I know they're smarter than me. I've got beauty, they have the brains. But might be worth a try."

As they spent a minute considering the thought, Jorges and his crew of construction workers came down to the bar and began pouring beer and taking long drinks.

Jorges walked over to the lumberjack's table. "Cute. Is one of you a daddy now? I told you to be careful if you found a dryad, I see she left you with the kid."

Then he picked up the two small, dark rocks that had been bound into the sapling's roots. The rock was heavy and had a porous look to it.

Jorges stared hard then cursed. "Where did you two idiots get this? This is dark iron from an iron bog! "

Cham looked at John. shrugged. "We are but poor, clueless tree-killers. Perhaps you could tell us what the hell an 'iron bog' is, and we'll tell you where we got this."