Chapter 52: Punting Womb Gremlins (1/2)

Anansi spirits me away to Gleann Bheatha, a forest on the opposite side of Gael.

Before I can ask why we needed to travel hundreds of kilometers when inter-city teleportation hasn't been activated yet, the Spider-God gives me a mysterious wink and Poof! He ditches my ass in a grove of birch trees.

And this is why I hate dealing with Trickster Gods.

Sigh.

I open my Quest Log, hoping for more information. Or, any information, for that matter.

{Investigate the Tumult in the Realms, Part I: Gael}

|| Anansi travels all across the World Tree, collecting tales and secrets. Lately, all the stories he hears have an undercurrent of unease and fear. Dark murmurings fill the Realm; peace is elusive. A malignancy grows from within Gael, and he has tasked you to uncover its source.||

Well that's ominous.

Not even slightly helpful, but full marks for mood, game story writers!

There's a good way to deal with a vague ”Investigate” quest when you're relatively sure you're in the right-ish location: wander around hoping something interesting happens.

So that's what I do.

It's not as much of a chore as it might be in other open-world games. I'm legit jogging around a fae forest, with towering moss-covered trees, rushing waterfalls, and a decent assortment of Lvl 15-18 woodland mobs.

It's like hiking IRL, except better because you don't get sweaty and there's no bugs.

In what seems like no time, I've grinded to the cusp of Lvl 14 and stumbled across an NPC named Biróg sitting by a pond, bawling her eyes out.

Oho, a clue.

Seems she's lost her baby, and she's convinced he's been snatched by an Unseelie (dark) fae.

Not sure how baby-napping fits into the grand Tumult scheme, but I accept her quest {Find Baby Lugh} anyway.

Biróg may be disguised as a rando peasant, but the teardrop gem dangling from her forehead band looks an awful lot like an emerald, and I'm pretty sure the custom pin holding her raggedy cloak closed is solid gold.

I can practically see the glittering rewards filling my inventory already.

But, like, I'm also doing this to save her baby, for sure.

-----

”Fuck this game and its fucking obsession with babies,” I grumble savagely, an hour later.

Using the smattering of clues from Biróg, I manage to locate her kid in a cave hidden behind a waterfall. But what she failed to mention was that her baby is a slobbery, constantly crying mess of a tiny human, and I'm unconvinced it's worth saving.

As if that weren't enough, the bastard baby-snatcher is a Changeling, and once it realized I could kick its ass, it decided to Change into a carbon copy of Biróg's brat.

So now I'm covering my over-sensitive ears, staring at two screaming, crying babies, trying to figure out which one is the sniveling womb gremlin, and which one is the Changeling.

It's not a perfect Change; one baby Lugh has a triskele (triple spiral) birthmark on its right foot, and the other has it on the left.

But since I was too busy beating on a Changeling to check the baby's feet when I first arrived, this knowledge is exactly meaningless to me.

Ughhh fuck a duck. I can't remember any other way to detect a Changeling. I'm tempted to just bring them both back and let Biróg figure it out, but I think that'll dock me points, and if this quest is related to the Tumult, I need to score an A rating so the guys can rejoin me.

The wailing is driving me insane, so I give up and search the forums. Unsurprisingly, the consensus is to look for the subtle differences, or cast a Moonbeam anti-shapeshift spell, neither of which are helpful to me. But one beta user had a different take:

Ivan the Tolerable: You can always just punch them. They don't like that.

Hm.

---

Lawful Good Erebus: Don't do it. Punching babies = bad.

Lawful Evil Erebus: But you've already punched a baby, right? That oil-licking baby.

Lawful Good Erebus: Once is already too many times!

Lawful Evil Erebus: Then once more won't make a difference. Besides, creepy ghost baby deserved it, and so does this Changeling. They're not real babies. It's fine.

Lawful Good Erebus: We're going to hell.

Lawful Evil Erebus: Then the devs who designed this fucked up game are coming with us.

--

So anyway, that's how I ended up punching a baby for the second time in one day.

To be clear, I punched an evil kidnapper Changeling who just happened to *look* like a baby, so it doesn't even count, probably.

Both babies were in the same cradle, so I pulled my arm way back and then released a battle cry as I brought my fist hurtling down toward the crying monsters. Right-foot tattoo boy just kept on crying and being a menace; left-foot triskele baby's cries cut off for a second as he flinched.

Bingo.

I pulled the punch a lot, actually, so I wouldn't accidentally injure Real Baby, but it was more than enough to convince the Changeling to revert back to its fae form.

Two minutes later, I'm walking out of a cave with a baby in one arm and my crossbow ready to shoot dangerous mobs on the other.

Twenty minutes later, I'm standing in a clearing, strongly considering shooting the baby with the crossbow.

Or maybe shooting him *from* the crossbow?