Rut ("Friend")

Rut introduced himself to Thom on the road to Phandalin as “Friend,” and the others kept calling him that. In Session 9 he told Sage his real name and allowed her to share it. She has not yet done so.

Notable deeds

• Enjoyed mulled earth with Thom on the party’s first night camping (Session 1).
• Got in Barnaby’s face over breakfast for reasons known only to himself (Session 2).
• Stole a piece of bread from the Gnomengarde kitchen (Session 2).
• Freed the crazed gnome Facktoré mid-argument, letting her screech off into the wild — she is still at large (Session 2).
• Spent his last spell slot on Goodberry to patch the party up after the manticore fight, and ripped a tail spike from a manticore corpse. He kept it. He hasn’t said why (Session 5).
• Absorbed a nasty acid hit with Absorb Elements, then Wild Shaped into a boar to tank the ochre jellies (Session 5).
• Fished a gold necklace out of a dead jelly’s acidic remains with the Pole of Collapsing. Its inscription reads “This is what happens to those who displease me.” He pocketed it. Nobody has flagged the risk (Session 5).
• Ran the rubble hallway as a rat, slipped past the last ochre jelly, and found the temple’s third secret door — then failed, repeatedly and audibly, to open it (Session 6).
• Bit a dwarf prospector’s ankle mid-argument while still a rat. Was not even noticed (Session 6).
• Dropped the rat shape at last and came back to himself still crouched on all fours and still squeaking, until the rest of the party stopped digging and stared at him (Session 6).
• Fought the orcs at the front line as a wolf, killed one outright with his teeth in its throat, and was knocked back out of the shape by an axe (Session 6).
• Spent everything he had left healing Barnaby off the floor — twice — and lay down beside him when it was over (Session 6).
• Sprang at the last orc’s face and split its eye open with a dagger (Session 6).
• Took the shape of a giant badger and burrowed through the rubble wall the party had given up on, opening the way into the hidden chamber (Session 7).
• Took the worst of the statue blast — 20 piercing — and was knocked out of the badger, coming apart back into himself in a spray of stone (Session 7).
• Answered Sage’s guilt over the dwarves with a parable: squirrels store nuts, he found the nuts, winter was cold, he ate them, and when they complained he was bigger, so they left (Session 7).
• Kept the orc eyeball Thom pulled for him — green, optic nerve attached — and showed it to everyone he met. Adabra Gwynn said it was very good work and patted him on the head; Norbus was the only one who didn’t recoil (Session 7).
• Opened the flower buds Sage gathered for Dazlyn’s body with Druidcraft (Session 7).
• Came to believe, on Dax’s authority, that Barnaby must be kept well fed or he will eat the party, and that the same now goes for Sage’s panther (Session 7).
• Took the shape of a weasel outside the Miner’s Exchange and went at the gap under the front door head first. His head and shoulders went through. The rest of him did not (Session 8).
• Stuck there, he had the best listening post in the party: his ears were inside the room, and he heard the whole of Dax’s negotiation with Guildmaster Thornton (Session 8).
• Was pulled out from under the door by Phantom, gently and without being eaten, on Sage’s instructions (Session 8).
• Had a knife thrown at him by a Zhentarim guard, who took him for vermin. It missed and went into the dirt beside him (Session 8).
• Ended the session still a weasel, riding on Dax’s shoulder — Sage had told Dax whose weasel it was (Session 8).
• Gave Thom ten Goodberries for his injury and slept on the floor behind their bedroom door after the searchers came to the inn (Session 9).
• Told Sage alone his name over breakfast, with permission to tell their friends. He was happy to keep being called Friend too (Session 9).
• Told Dax that Barnaby had called himself a fake dragon and promised not to eat them. Dax asked whether Rut could become a panther; he did not try. Sage reassured him that Phantom would not eat him (Session 9).
• Examined the six dead orcs with Bean and Hamish; their cold injuries looked like the white dragon’s work (Session 9).