shifty louts

Shifty Louts Session 42 - The Wet & Wild Wizard

Players

Summary

Aftermath

The 28th of Kelen

The group leaves the Moleryn caravan commons and finally leaves the relative safety of the Thardic Republic. Finding the once-paved road becoming a simple rutted trail as they push through the muddy rivulets and wet ground of the Teb Marshes, on the watch for Ramali Gozyda.

At night, incessant drumming is heard and distant fire light seen upon the moor. In the morning, the guard Meirchoin is missing.

The guards, Mostyn, and the Dwarves stay with the wagon, while Orlandus and Vast spend the early morning hours tracking southward. They see the guards' footprints leave the campsite while six or so sets of differing prints head towards it from out of the deeper marsh

As the morning sun arises, the two louts find the remains of a great bonfire with the dismembered body parts of their guard Meirchoin upon the fire next to a gnarled, wind-swept tree.

Vast the Tulywn knows this not Gozyda nor Tulwyn, rather something else entirely. A disconcerting prospect, as both Orlandus and Vast discuss that perhaps it was some sort of magical incantation or perhaps a siren song that led their armsman to his death.

A flattened ring of stamped earth is clearly seen around the remains of the still-warm bonfire. The smell of burned human fat carried upon the air.

The two prod the charred wood and return with a charred piece of clothing worn by Meirchoin, and the guards utter prayers to Peoni, Helea, and oaths of vengeance in the name of Agrik against the fiends.

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The rest of the day’s travels are easy going, although their armsman’s death weighs heavily. The Salt Route takes the weak.

The 29th of Kelen

Like the day before it, the day is clear and dry until the afternoon, when a summer rain storm makes difficult work of navigating through the Teb Marshes.

The dwarfs and Orlandus stay in the cart, their bright blue and purple clothing not wanting to be muddied, as the armsman and Vast lash the horses to the wagon to pull the heavy wagon through the thick mud.

The group finally finds the ground begins to gently rise and dip as Mostyn comments they are finally entering the Mimea Hills, a place notorious for waylays and ambushes by the Ramali Gozyda. The group cannot shake the sense that they are being watched.

Eventually, the group finds the remnants of a camp and pulls off the main trail to rest for the evening. Sleep doesn’t come easily as the incessant drumming is heard again at night alongside what sounds like the distant yowling of a house cat or cackling laugh of a fox.

The caravan guards Suluc, Res, and Gwyn, alongside the youngest dwarf Wid, volunteer with Vast and Orlandus to potentially track them down, only to realize that would put the journey two days behind schedule.

A vote is cast to see what the course of action should be. Suluc, Res, and Tugdual vote in favor of finding the killers of their compatriot, while Gwyn is more superstitious and opts for a vote of no. Wid’s willingness to find the killers was more so trying to save face after the afternoon rainstorm, and to prove dwarf resolve, as the cohort of Dwarf brothers voted no and pressed for a more judicious exercise of caution in an unknown place.

Both Orlandus and Vast agree with the Dwarfs, reality and logistical challenges preventing the proper application of justice for the fallen Meirchoin.

The decision is made not to seek out the drumming and have two people on guard duty while taking watch during the night.

The 30th of Kelen

The Acrobat Akos and Corliss Hawlande’s Threat

We smash cut back into the city of Coranan as Akos within the Temple of Peoni. After a week of a variety of unguents, pastes, salves, and a battery of emetics, nothing prevailed in staunching the corruption.

The Brothers and Sisters of Peoni were left with no choice but to remove his hand to prevent the mummy rot and corruption from spreading.

As Akos is healing, he is visited by Corliss Hawlande, the Fyvrian Shek-Pvar at the Temple of Peoni, and threatened into silence. Corliss seeks the whereabouts of the lia-kavair Nicophorus and the “wild girl” Posy.

Corliss grabs the still-healing stump of a hand. From Corliss’s hand, barbed thorny roots grow and bury themselves into the wound to intimidate Akos, who promises not to tell the larger world of the wild magics of the “renegades,” divulging that both Nico and Posy died within the middens of the city as they attempted to sneak back into Coranan’s walls.

With the “loop closed”, Corliss promises that if Akos brings unwanted attention to any House of Lore or Chantry, the vengeance of the Shek-Pvar will find him wherever he lays his head.

Akos utters a hushed and hurried prayer to Helea as his mind wanders as to the whereabouts of the Khuzud gold. The church bells of the Peonian Temple ring in the hour.

The Caravan Presses Onward

The day is much like the past two, dry and clear, as the Mimea Hills offer cover for potential barbarian attacks. Mostyn urges them to keep their eyes sharp, but the day sees them through, and another prior caravan camp is found off the trail as evening falls.

Orlandus opts for guard duty, potentially feeling guilty for staying dry and clean during the prior day’s rainstorm. Orlandus takes his elaborate bow and arrow and keeps a watch against the tree line in the darkness.

A crashing sound and a sudden form emerge from the darkness as a wet man, adorned in cerulean robes, falls and slips, yelling to know where he is!?

Orlandus alerts the rest of his sleeping compatriots as he draws his bow back. The cerulean-robbed figure looks as if he had been dunked into a river. The man only carries a sheathed dagger and an ornate blue ceramic bowl.

The group learns the man is from Cherafir, another large city on the eastern coast of the island, more than one hundred days from their current location.

The man woops with hearty delight, proudly proclaiming his spell worked!

Orlandus tells the wet man he is currently along the Salt Route in the Thardic Republic as the man begs for water.

Sensing not an overt threat, Orlandus gave him some water, to which the man filled his ceramic bowl and began uttering words regarding form and specific incantations as he drew moisture and water from the air itself before finally exclaiming the words

Reformulate The Substantial Hypostasis!

Crystalline Aperture of Astral Sensation!

Ezra Thoon’s Transcendent Ambulation!

And dives headfirst into the bowl. The man disappears, and the bowl implodes within itself, both winking out of existence to the befuddled group. All that is left is a puddle where the man and bowl once were.

Without much else beyond the shock of it all, the group bunks down to rest after the stranger and his magikal glamour and bewitchments.

odivshe wizard

The 1st of Nolus

The new month arrives as the group awakes and heads further through the slopes of the Mimea Hills, hoping to reach Fort Taztos, the last beacon of the Thardic Republic to the east before the setting of the sun.

Treasure Found:

Foes Encountered:

Rumors:

Deaths:

XP Awarded:

Notes