Session 23 (July 31, 2023)
Last session, our heroes left the magpie cave and continued on to Kolonie. Before leaving, Rormir saw a new intelligence in the eyes of the magpie he had spoken to before, giving a fresh insight into how his magic affects animals in this world. After Ana Cardi offered them a magpie she had killed and cooked, he also decided to go vegan.
During the day, the party made and received a series of communications. Bloody Mary called and asked for a group name she could use for the ACE roster. Rormir suggested Anonymous after Elias said he liked anonymity, and the party quickly agreed. Mortimer called back to answer some of the party’s questions, revealing that the two captured agents were previously criminals who as part of their imprisonment were sold to Lucien Dynastic. He also was unfamiliar with the spell used in the masks, and thinks it was probably invented by Sentin Thornwillow. Finally, Mort told Elias that their smuggling shipments were being attacked by unknown ships in the Shivered Sea.
Heph received word from his parents that Mort was taking good care of the agents, and that he gave the parents a bag of gold. And Elias continued his training with Ana in the art of Disguise. Before the party slept, Heph noted the large number of stars visible in the sky far from the big city of Ivalgo, and couldn’t quite shake the idea that there were more stars than there should be as he drifted off to sleep.
The party arrived at Kolonie early evening the next day. They immediately stabled their horses and set about shopping and finding accommodations for the evening. Heph learned from the owner of the stables that the Dune Port was currently closed due to an unusually early and unusually large migration of carapskit which were giving off a strange turquoise glow. The Port was sponsoring an expedition the next day to attempt to rid the travel routes of the odd incursion.
The party decided to head to the town center to do some shopping before sleep. There they saw a large statue of a man with the hat Mort had teleported atop its head. A small crowd of blue-robed individuals surrounded the statue chanting. After an altercation between Rormir and Elias which damaged the hat but convinced the crowd that Elias was the “Bearer of the Heavenly Cap”, the party headed to Barbat’s General Store, the establishment owned by the leader of the group who Heph had both knocked out and revived from unconsciousness.
- Piki talks to Elias, and Elias sorts out discounts for
everyone in some fashion
- Elias will get half off
- Heph also gets half off
- Rormir (The Bearer of the Fiendish Bowler) gets double price on stuff he wants, half off on stuff he doesn’t
- Elias tells of the Sand Kraken that will attack the world, and he will defeat it
- They are all convinced he’s a great leader and bow to him
- Heph picks out a small shield that was fashioned from the top of a barrel
- Elias picks out a piece of studded leather armor
- Elias sells back his old leather armor, and Heph sells back his scale mail
- One of the followers notices Heph playing with his shield and asks if he wants to try it out
- One of the other follows approaches Elias, taking a wide berth
around Rormir
- He asks if the party knows about the creatures that have invaded the port, and he gives them some background information about them
- He’s a bit of an expert in carapskit
- He says The Devotees of the Heavenly Cap will be forming a party to investigate the carapskit the next day
- This follower’s name is Fruto Bupbop
- Isabella Isabelli is the one training with Heph
- The remaining dude is Captain Backbend
- And of course Piki Barbat, the leader
- Elias introduces himself as Zacharias the Great
- He introduces Heph as Apprentice Pancake, and Rormir as his great nemesis Rormir the Betrayer
- He introduces Ana as Ana the Invisible, and they get confused because they can still see her
- She then disappears in front of their eyes when they blink
- Rormir upgrades his armor as well to studded leather
- Elias gives Rormir his arrows, and buys 10 crossbow bolts
- Elias and Heph head to the alchemist shop
- The party walks into the shop, and Heph greets his fellow alchemist
and shows him his guild membership card
- A sign above the door simply reads “Alchemist”
- Heph explains they are headed to Hexicon, Elias tries to tell the story about the Sand Kraken
- Heph shushes him and he wanders off
- Rormir is outside trying to be stealthy, but the shopkeeper also sees him
- He tries to make ambiance by knocking the sign against the wall whenever the Sand Kraken is mentioned, the shopkeeper mutters about street performers and curses the local theater
- Rormir tries to start panhandling as a street performer
- There is nobody on the street, so he is just performing for no one
- Heph asks for some health potions, and
anything else he might have
- He has a Potion of Hill Giant Strength, for 250gp
- He will discount it to 200gp on account of Heph being a fellow guild member
- Elias is coy about being able to pay, but Heph says “I can hear you clink when you walk”
- Elias goes up to the alchemy dude, who says you can call him Farley
- Heph agrees to chip in for some, and calls out to Rormir to see if he can contribute
- Rormir asks for some glass bottles, he buys 5 for 2gp each
- He also asks for poison, at which point the shopkeeper asks everyone to leave
- The party picks up two health potions and the Potion of Hill Giant Strength and then leaves
- Heph heads to the Blue Barrel Inn and pays 5 silver for a room
- Rormir heads off to the desert to look for snakes
- He finds a nest of rattlesnakes and casts Speak with Animals
- He asks the snake for some poison, and the snake asks whether he can get him small rodents in exchange
- Rormir offers a frog from his Hat of Vermin, and the rattlesnake eats it happily
- The snakes all line up and empty venom into the bottles
- Rormir feeds them one more rat before he leaves, and the snakes, like the magpies, have been touched by Rormir’s plane
- Elias climbs a 50ft tall wall up to a guard tower to get a better view of the Dune Port
- He manages to climb it successfully, although the guard in the watchtower at the top notices him when he gets there
- Elias Misty Steps onto the roof of the watchtower, but the guard hears him up there
- Elias sees the ships in the Port, moored to docks in the sand, their sails folded but some threads noticeably shinier than others
- In the distance he sees fog, very unusual for the desert
- In the fog, which is glowing turquoise, he sees the shadows of structures far larger than the stone pillars which dot the Haden Desert
- They seem to be large stone pillars, maybe maybe made up of multiple smaller stones like cairns
- He can also see shapes moving on the ground who are giving off some amount of glow
- He is reminded of the glow around the sirens
- The guard knows Elias is still on top of the tower
- Rormir shows up at the Inn, says he’s with the gnome, and the guy
gives him the room number
- They don’t really seem to have standards of privacy here
- Heph sends a message to his parents, updating them and asking how things are
- They tell him Toddle’s funeral will be soon and things are good
- Rormir starts performing some sort of ritual over the vials which are now full of liquid, while looking at the moon out the window
- On a nat 20 religion check, he feels the warm, constricting embrace of Urobor in the room and feels confident that it contributed in some way to the vials
- He now has snake tattoos on his arms, that appear to be moving around in a figure eight pattern
- Heph sees this all happening on a nat 20, and notices out of the corner of his eye that there was something else in the room briefly during this prayer, thick coils filling the corners of the space when he wasn’t looking directly at them
- It is a comforting, supportive presence
- Heph realizes that Rormir was not bullshitting about the snake spirit, and that something bigger is real and exists and was in the room briefly
- Heph deduces that the liquid in the vials is likely a snake venom of some kind
- Rormir comes out of the prayer, looks around, leaves a “do not touch” note by the vials, and enters his nightly trance
- Heph pretends to be asleep before Rormir is looking around
- Elias, over on the tower, feels some sort of presence, and calls out is there anyone there?
- The sky just stares coldly back, and Elias just grunts and says “Rude”
- Not a good enough religion check lol
- Before drifting off to sleep, Heph thinks back to that night in the
desert thinking that there are more stars than there should be
- There is a common belief that the sky is a giant cloth spread over the world, and provides a barrier between this world and what lies beyond
- Stars are holes in the fabric, and each time something travels between the worlds a new star or hole is created in the fabric
- As Heph drifts off to sleep, he thinks about what the implications might be of a night time sky with many more stars than there used to be, and what might have come to this world to make the stars