Session 42: The birds, the bees, and the googly eyes (March 14, 2024)
Last session, our heroes debated how to help Joerg, Maho’s father. They decided to drop by Mort to ask him for help. They traveled to The Free Ride, a cheap bar in Fischer’s Hearth that offers a complementary stay if a guest can remain 30 seconds on their mechanical bull. There they witnessed Spraus fall off the contraption, a similar fate soon after befalling Elias. Maho explained that she was banned from riding the bull, but Heph (with some help from Maho) managed to ride it to the end, earning a free stay for the night.
They got Mort to agree to transport both Joerg and his home to Ivalgo, a process that would take a couple days. Leaving Joerg there, they then headed to the Museum Arcanum, a stone-columned building back in Tuki. There they met Melvrin, the teenage guide who showed them the hall of unknown magical artifacts. Learning Melvrin is an ACE fan, Maho discussed her shared interest with him while Elias stole all the room’s artifacts, including a magic three-tailed whip. Melvrin noticed the theft, but Maho used a rune to make him docile as they headed out to the gnomish tinkering exhibit.
There, they saw a portrait of Leo the Grammarcist, who looked surprisingly similar to Heph, even down to the bracer he was wearing. Realizing Melvrin was more charmed than anticipated, they headed out. Heph and Maho packed up the large numbers of books and papers at her house, as well as Maho’s own personal effects. Elias picked up a now clear Jarles and headed to meet them. They then all went to The Free Ride for a well-earned rest.
- Heph works on the scroll while Elias works on his
project
- As Heph applies the solution, lines and shapes become visible, and it appears to be an arcane schematic
- It looks like a face at first, but then it seems to be a mask
- Elias looks over and says “Oh, like the hit Nicolas Cage film National Treasure!”
- Comparing the masks they have been carrying, Heph and Elias confirm it is a recipe to create the mask, a Lucien Blind
- Heph thinks that the schematic seems to be a fairly complete set of instructions, and looks like a hastily put together copy
- Heph realizes he can figure out how to remove them, by making a tool
- Heph wants to convert the mask he has to a removal tool, Elias gives him his mask as well to convert, after making the masks kiss
- Elias has finished his project, but chooses not to share
- Elias pulls out Jarles, to ask him about Leo the
Grammarcist
- He now has two googly eyes adorning his hilt, Elias explains that it makes him feel more like a person
- Elias shakes Jarles a bit to show off the eyes, which blink and Jarles yells “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME, WHAT ARE THESE”
- When he blinks, Elias drops him, and gets slightly stabbed in the foot
- Jarles is perplexed by being able to see clearly, it seems he wasn’t able to see colors through his previous means of perception
- Jarles doesn’t hate it, Elias says he can give him more, and Jarles seems excited for that
- Elias makes him promise to be good to get more eyes, and is very persuasive and Jarles agrees rather excitedly
- Elias points Jarles at Heph and asks him who he thinks Heph is, Jarles responds that he figured out Heph isn’t who he thought
- Heph confirms he doesn’t have any reason to dispel Jarles or melt him down
- Leo is a well known gnome with opinions, and Jarles’ previous owner was keeping him safe from Leo
- Heph informs Jarles that it’s been a thousand years, and Leo is dead, Jarles closes his fleshy eyelids, and wonders why Zilyana never came to get him
- Elias calls Heph ugly, a 3 or 4 at best, and Heph responds that that is the ratio of his height to normal people
- Jarles seems to laugh for the first time since he was bought by Rormir
- At this point Maho shows up and knocks at the door, and
Elias holds up Jarles using Mage Hand so he’s like a
new person in the room
- Maho asks how she can get her sword to talk, and Jarles says he doesn’t know, Heph might know better
- Heph says he doesn’t know much, but it’s apparently a bad deal for the sword
- Jarles asks about gnomish history, he mentions oragasts and soul blades, and oragast is a term Heph has seen in historical references and books
- There is a history of creating living objects, but gnomish society outlawed it about a thousand years ago, with strong support from Leo
- Heph says Jarles should probably be safe, as long as he keeps quiet, and he asks Elias to stop stabbing him into people so he could stop screaming
- Jarles seems to be coming around to the group, and agrees to help out Elias if he encounters the lord that he’s at odds with
- Zilyana’s name sounds familiar to Maho, like she’s heard it in a story
- Heph suggests that we hit up a library the next day, and Maho suggests the Eken Institute
- Maho wants to leave her sword with Jarles to see if it gets magical, and Elias offers to put googly eyes on her sword to try that
- Elias does that, and it seems to have no effect, Heph watching, rather bemused
- Elias casts Prestidigitation to shoot sparks at it, but that also doesn’t help
- Elias grabs Jarles out of the air and lays him down on the bed and tucks him in, and Jarles eventually figures out how to close his eyes to sleep
- Elias says, “okay goodnight!” and climbs out the window and meditates through the night on the roof
- Maho returns to her room, has a brief conversation with Joerg, then
goes to sleep
- Joerg clarifies that the plan is for him to stick with the wizard until he moves the house, and Maho confirms it
- Joerg has never been to Ivalgo, but is excited for the
adventure
- Maybe he and Maho can go see ACE Gladiomania together
- Maho apologizes for making him move, but he is happy to do it
- Joerg asks Maho to stay safe, and Maho asks him to as well
- Joerg thinks he’ll probably be okay, Morty seems powerful
- They both drift off to sleep
- Elias wakes up, feeling a presence next to him
- He looks over, and Isabella is sitting there with him
- She is upset we left without her, so she followed us to Eken and found Elias on the roof
- She seems to be lying about just being in her room, but she is well practiced at hiding the truth
- Elias just rolls with it, and says it’s time to gather up the party
- She seems very eager to join the group and head to Bad Zamdorf to find her family
- Elias says let’s go, jumps off the roof, grabs the windowsill and pulls himself into the room, Isabella following
- Isabella asks where Rormir is, Elias was hoping she could tell us
- Maho enters the room, and Elias introduces her to Isabella
- Heph messages Elias and asks “where the fuck did she come from” and Elias responds “don’t trust her”
- Isabella asks Maho how she came to be in the Bearer’s retinue, Heph messages her “just go along with it”, and Maho responds yes
- Isabella says well it’s good that the Betrayer Rormir is gone
- Maho looks Isabella over, she looks to be a human woman, wearing
roughly-made robes that seem to emulate wizard’s robes
- Isabella seems eager to get to Bad Zamdorf, but Elias tells her we are going to the library first
- Elias tells her he has written some of the books, and Heph and Maho want to read up on some of his teachings
- Maho picks up her sword, and is briefly fooled by the googly eyes, but then realizes it was just her movement that made them move, but weirdly the sword feels a little warm
- The sword which was sitting by the crystal ball is slightly warm, though
- Elias picks up Jarles, and pointing him in the air declares “let’s go to the library!”
- Elias barges into Mort and Spraus’s room, Mort is sleeping on the bed and Spraus is sleeping away from the bed on the floor
- Elias yells that they are going to the library and safe travels, then heads back out
- Batman transition with Elias and Jarles’ faces to the
library
- Altstadt has a bunch of old buildings, lots of new shops in old buildings, some businesses that can trace all the way back, etc.
- The Eken Institute is bustling with life, people wandering around, discussing, sitting under trees reading
- The group walks into the library, which appears similar to the museum, like the museum is imitating this building style
- There is an information desk, and a woman sitting behind it
- Elias cups his hands and yells “echo!” up into the ceiling, it echoes and the woman behind the desk rolls her eyes at him
- Elias asks Maho where the library is, she doesn’t know so Heph asks the lady at the desk, using his utility seatbelt to make a high chair so he can see over the top
- The lady informs Heph that we will need a student ID or pass to get in, Heph thanks her and climbs down from his chair
- Elias thanks her by looking at the name on her desk, she seems surprised he knows her name
- The group convenes down the hallway, Elias wants to make a small bomb with some oil as a distraction, but Heph convinces him that’s a bad idea
- Heph tucks a scroll under his arm, holds Maho’s orb, which is cold, puts on his Thor cape, and pulls out the carapskit staff
- Elias pulls out his complete moron’s guide to magic, but hides the title, puts on glasses from his disguise kit, and transforms his cloak to look like an academic
- Maho’s role in this is the grunt who can carry stacks of books
- Isabella asks what her job is, Heph tells her she gets to be the distraction and go talk to Frenk the guard
- Elias notices she is very charismatic, but is purposely acting super awkward, but she keeps scratching her ear absentmindedly
- There is a man (Frenk) standing by large double doors, and waits patiently for
us to arrive
- Isabella walks up to him and start talking about weather and goes on a whole rant about desert climates, which seems to really excite Frenk, and he lights up an engages in a conversation with her
- Elias, Heph, and Maho manage to sneak past the two of them and head into the library without any issues
- The library smells strongly of bound leather and old parchment, there are thousands and thousands of books in the library
- The library is quiet, the books are dampening echoes and nobody is talking
- Elias says, a bit too loudly, “wow, neat place”, and a few people give him a stink eye and someone shushes him
- Heph explains to Elias that you should be quiet in a library, and Elias starts to ask why and then stops caring
- He walks right up to a shelf, and picks up a book called “How To Use the Dewey Decimal System”, says “this is useless” and throws it over his shoulder
- Heph puts away the pieces of his disguise, and gives Maho back the crystal ball
- Heph walks up to the history section, finds the section with Homeburr history, and finds a biography of Leo the Grammarcist
- The biography is a couple of hundred years old
- Oragasts are created with a new soul, but had a bad life because people
tended to not connect with them, and would leave them in closets, and
because their life is tied to the whims of the owner
- They don’t really have agency
- Leo didn’t start the movement to stop the creation
of oragasts, but he was a significant player in pushing it forward
- He also helped develop humane ways of terminating existing ones who had lived full lives
- Even after they were outlawed, soul blades would still pass back and forth between The Morenwald and Homeburr
- Heph also looks for mentions of the bracer, it is one of Leo’s earlier inventions, meant as a fashion accessory and as a functional thing
- The bracer may have had more nuance and functionality beyond just modifying magic being cast, some sort of magical multi-tool
- He was not buried with the bracer, it was passed to his daughter Gwen, and at the time the book was written it was believed to no longer be in the hands of direct descendants, but the location is unknown
- It does list a bit of his family tree, and Heph recognizes some family names from about 200 years ago near the end of the tree, names from his mom’s side of the family
- Elias wanders through the kid’s section and pockets a book called
“Morphemoles: Book 1”
- He makes his way to the Elvish section, and finds a book on Zilyana
- She is from Duin, which is a large elven city, and lived about 1200 years ago
- Not much is known about her early life, but she came to be know for her spell work, specifically the artistic spellcrafting that elves are known for
- She was able to craft metal using her voice alone, and was best known for the magical items she created, especially soul blades
- Elias, reading this, asks Jarles if he has siblings, but he never met any or was told about any of them by Zilyana, but Elias reassures him that he shouldn’t read too much into it
- Zilyana was a bit of a wild spirit, and never stayed on one thing for too long, and in her later life she traveled through the Haden Desert, doing adventurer shit
- The last thing know about her is she had traveled up around Mavern
- Maho looks for a book on basic fortunetelling and any book with
pictures of legendary weapons
- Maho first finds a section of stuff by Ami Hojo, in a weird section that isn’t properly categorized because it’s not clear how to categorize them
- Maho gets a bit separated from the group, and ends up on the second floor, and sees Isabella looking at some books upstairs
- Isabella is reading a book on binding spells, and she looks up and sees Maho, briefly looking much more serious and focused than Maho has seen her, before her expression softens into the happy-go-lucky she’s had so far
- She seems to have been distracted, her robe is slightly open, and there is a bit of paper sticking out of an inner pocket, with writing on it in black ink with symbols and other writings scrawled in red ink, and towards the edge a signature
- Maho is able to make out an “He” but the rest isn’t super clear
- Isabella looks at Maho and says “I didn’t expect to see you up here”, and Maho says that’s surprising because she isn’t exactly small and subtle
- Isabella tells Maho she needs to talk about what she saw, and Maho can see a coldness in her eyes