Session 30 (November 8, 2023)
Last session, our heroes were awoken from their short rest by the horrible screeches of a desert leviathan, the much foretold (but as it turns out not especially uncommon) Sand Kraken! The party battled its slimy tentacles with a combination of ballista and bludgeoning. Rormir, ever the creative combatant, located the beast’s head beneath the sand at the rear of the Dune Skimmer and cast Speak with Animals, goading it on and drawing its attack. He however managed to convince the creature that this particular prey wasn’t worth the effort and it retreated back into the sands of the Haden Desert.
The party spent the remainder of that day and the entirety of the next day completing various tasks and conversing. Heph failed twice to repair Rormir’s ring, which in addition to Jarles’ attitude towards Heph spawned a degree of distrust for the gnome. Heph also called his parents, tipping off to his father Spraus that he was aware of the item he sold to Farley in Kolonie. And the appearance of Bloody Mary in the reflective sapphire of Jarles got Heph thinking of the nature of mirrors, spending a long time staring into one on the ship while Isabella snooped in the background.
Rormir talked with Jarles for a bit, who seemed to be reluctantly opening up to him. The sword mentioned he was left behind by a Zilyana Valric what felt like a few years previously, and that he’s sure something must have happened to her for her to leave him like that. Some more questions revealed that nearly one thousand years had passed since Jarles’ memory of these events.
As the sun set on the second day of travel, Elias pulled the brass cylinder out from his pocket and joined a silently-watching Ana up on the mast. There they continued the ongoing conversation of Elias’ reticence to open up to the party. Ana revealed that she used to travel with a group, and that secrets and mistrust had torn them apart. Elias talked about Ash, an individual whose name appears in the cylinder who he said he saw out in the desert. He said the cylinder is the only thing he has left from his home, but that he’s trying to start over, to be someone else. To the shock of Ana, he threw the cylinder overboard into the quickly passing sand below. At this, Ana vanished, leaving Elias alone above the deck of the ship.
- In the morning, Heph and Elias wake up and see that we
are quickly approaching an interesting formation
- It appears to be two mesas standing close together, with the glint of
various lights and metals on top of a mesa
- A city
- At the base of the mesas is a stone-walled city
- Elias looks for guard towers, but it is too far away to tell
- It appears to be two mesas standing close together, with the glint of
various lights and metals on top of a mesa
- Rormir heads up onto the deck with Heph, and they converse about Rormir having had slept a night, and actually dreamed
- Elias checks the distance for any further threats to the Skimmer
- Doesn’t appear to be any more threats looming
- No tentacles coming out of the sand
- Heph spends the day fiddling with his gun
- He produces a snub-nosed musket pistol thing that uses air pressure to force out pellets
- The air is pressurized by a small magical flame that superheats the air when a trigger is pressed
- Elias talks to various members of the crew to ask about
Wildeport
- He seeks out Captain Helga Burt first, she is above deck, hanging out by the front looking out into the distance with a spyglass
- Elias asks what Wildeport is like, the Captain asks where he’s been to compare
- She tells him Wildeport is about the same size as Ivalgo, but has a very different vibe and economy and culture
- Fort Bush is a major military installation at Wildeport
- The citizens are rather loose and frivolous to try to keep a contrast to the military installation
- The citizens want to “keep Wildeport weird”
- Elias asks about criminal activity, and the Captain says she cannot speak in too much detail about such things, but I will not report your interest to anyone in power
- She says there is a lot of agriculture, it being at the end of a river, and it’s unusually green for the desert
- Meanwhile Heph is thinking about how weird it is that the river
flows backwards up into the mountains while making his gun
- Nat 1 history man
- The Captain tells Elias about an inn where the workers try a
little too hard to make it a friendly welcoming environment
- Friendly’s Inn
- Kinda unsettling honestly
- On the other end of the spectrum is The Floating Teeth, near the river
- They give a gallon when you order a pint
- The Captain informs Elias that there is a port in the north of Wildeport that will head upstream, then you travel up the side of the cavern to get there
- Elias then looks for the shiftiest looking crew member on board,
and notices Pegleg Steve
- Steve tried to sell Elias drugs, but he wasn’t interested
- “Are you looking to get high, or get low, or go on a trip, or get flush, or get juice?”
- Elias asks him where he can make some criminal friends in Wildeport, and Steve informs him that the military sometimes gets involved and gets their beaks wet (Steve is a Kenku)
- Elias asks for a tip which military people he should link up with to avoid getting into trouble
- There is a low-level operation run out of Frau Bino’s Excellent Casino
- Steve tells him to go back up to the back door and gives him the special knock, and you say “The moon rises in the day but when the butterfly sings fish will eat grass as if they were cows”
- Elias asks who a high-up person he could talk to is
- Steve doesn’t know anyone personally, but the casino is a great place to do it
- There is a person going by The Swordfish he can seek out
- Elias thanks him for the info, and flips him a silver piece
- Steve just looks at him for more, and Elias flips him 3 more
- Steve keeps looking, Elias gives him a shiny rock, Steve continues to look
- Elias says okay thanks and Steve informs him he was trying to see how far he could push it
- Steve will be on leave in Wildeport visiting his cousin for a few days while we are there
- Elias walks away awkwardly and Steve just watches him as he goes
- He goes back to sweeping a pile of dirt back and forth across the deck
- In the late afternoon, Heph has made great progress on the gun
- He decides to spend some time checking out the mirror in the berth again
- He doesn’t notice anyone watching him, and investigates the mirror
- Everything in the mirror reflects reality perfectly, and movement is perfectly matched
- Looking at it from a tight angle from the side, it again looks completely normal
- Suddenly from behind, Heph hears Rormir ask “What are you doing”
- Heph explains he is examining the mirror, and Rormir joins for a bit
- He says “this doesn’t seem to have any purpose” and turns and walks away
- A few more hours pass, and mid-evening, around 9pm, the Skimmer approaches the
walls of Wildeport
- Elias can now see a number of guard towers built into the walls around the city
- Elias literally drags Heph away from the mirror and on deck as we approach the city
- The Skimmer comes to a rest just outside the Southern gate of Wildeport
- We are in a loose collection of wooden structures that serve as a port of sorts for Dune Skimmers
- It’s similar in structure and function to the docks at Kolonie
- Before disembarking, Elias tries to steal the Captain’s spyglass with his Mage Hand
- She is still using the spyglass at the front of the ship, and she manages to keep hold of it as Elias tugs on it
- The spyglass swings and focuses directly on Elias, and she sees Elias mimicking the Mage Hand’s motions
- She lowers it, looks over the top with a frown on her face, and approaches Elias
- Elias quickly disembarks the ship trying to get away
- Heph sees Elias run away and the Captain approaching quickly, Heph steps aside to let the Captain chase after him
- The Captain watches Elias go, clearly a little upset about what happened, and signals to the guards to apprehend Elias
- Elias makes a show of flashing his cloak blue, and hides behind a corner
- The Captain spots him hiding, and tries to point out Elias to the guards but they can’t really see him
- Elias flips his cloak to desert tan while he is hiding, and leans against a post
- Heph disembarks with Isabella
- The guards are moving closer to Elias, but still do not see him
- The Captain still sees him and is pointing right at him, trying to help the guards
- Elias flips his cloak again to be sandy, but to look tattered and torn, and sits down looking out of it
- The guards finally approach and see Elias, and look up at the Captain confused, and address Elias
- Elias acts like a beggar asking for a copper piece
- The guards are slightly confused because they didn’t see him, but they buy it and suggests that Elias move along
- Elias says he doesn’t want to move, and the guards can keep chasing the blue cloaked guy
- The guards play rock-paper-scissors and the loser chases after the phantom Elias
- The guard forcefully encourages Elias to move along, and Elias takes the hint and moves along
- The guard tells Heph to check in at the gate as he passes by, and Heph thanks him and continues
- The guard talks to the Captain, but Elias is far away by this point
- We approach the doors of the city
- The guard asks who we are, and Heph explains that we are just passing through on our way to Hexicon
- Heph, Isabella and Rormir identify themselves, and Elias identifies himself as Jemenias
- Pegleg Steve speaks up and says that we are heroes from Kolonie who dealt with the travel problems, and that he is a crew member of the ship who can vouch for us
- Heph says good morning to the guards as the party passes them and head into the city
- Pegleg Steve says he’s going to get high with his cousin and saunters off
- Steve notices Jemenias looks a bit like Elias, and Jemenias says he’ll buy some drugs
- Steve pulls out a small vial of liquid and offers to sell the juice to Elias for 10gp
- Elias counter-offers 5gp, and Steve says he’ll drop to 5gp if they do it together
- Elias tires of this and casts sleep on Steve
- The guards are watching curiously, and Elias tries to discreetly pick up the vial of juice that Steve was holding out with Mage Hand
- The party walks away, leaving Steve asleep on the ground
- Heph nudges Elias and offers to examine the vial to see what is in it
- Once through the gates, Elias just starts to walk North through
the city
- Heph asks where Jemenias is going, and Jemenias just says “The Floating Teeth!”
- Heph and the rest of the party follow Jemenias North through the city
- Isabella asks Heph where Elias is, and Heph tells her Jemenias is Elias in disguise
- As we approach the river delta, we see fertile soil and farms and the buildings spread out, and we come across a particular building with an old sign, which although faded seems to say “The Floating Teeth” with a picture of a mug of ale with a tooth floating in it
- Elias/Jemenias puts a cloth over his eye to be like an eyepatch, and leads the way into the inn
- The inn is raucous and there is music coming from inside
- As Heph follows Elias in, he tells him his voice in this disguise in particularly annoying
- There is another more recently priced sign next to the door indicating it is ladies night and drinks are half-off
- There are two separate musical acts inside that seem to be facing off, creating an absolute mess of noise
- People are very loud, and a bartender with a dirty rag is wiping the counter over and over again
- Elias walks up to the bar and asks how much for a flagon and a
room for the night
- The bartender pauses for a minute, spits a giant ball of spit onto the floor behind the bar, and says “It’s gonna be 3 silver for a night, and 4 copper for a flagon, and 2 for the ladies”
- Heph hands the bartender 3 silver and asks for a room, the
bartender asks if we will be making a mess
- Rooms are more expensive if you do a murder in them
- The bartender says the bathroom is out back and motions to a bucket, and says we can come down for drinks
- The rooms don’t lock, and we can come down for drinks
- The bartender tells us to go 3 rooms down once we get upstairs
- He tells us we can take the murder room, but that seems to already have a murder in it
- Elias says we’ll go to the original room because it’s too much blood
- The room is tiny and we all crowd into it
- Rormir looks at this room and says “I think I’m going to sleep
outside”
- Elias is confused why Rormir wants to sleep, and Rormir says the accent is annoying
- Elias decides to drop the act, and Isabella acts shocked that Jemenias is Elias
- Isabella decides to get another room, and Rormir has headed outside
- After they leave, Heph pulls out his quarterstaff and smashes the mirror in the room
- As the quarterstaff comes into contact with the mirror, right before it shatters, Heph sees himself blink in the mirror