Session 26

Fact Sheet: goodbye captain, hello captain

Players present: Ecchima, Marty, Meinhart, Tuur and Vinnie. Dins was our GM.

Date: 02-08-23

Date in-universe: it's still Friday

Major developments:

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Previously: session 25 : Worlds collide, with Virgil and Eluviel and Körperwelten

Next: session 27

Notes

1. Hali, still grappled by the vein blight, struggles to get free. Alas, she fails, so her starry arrow goes wide when she aims at Körperwelten

2. Körperwelten roars in rage. As it lumbers back to the cart, the alchemist fire finally overwhelms it. The fluid in its veins swells and pops till the entire shape disintegrates

3. Relieved, Ezra manages to rip free from the veins and puts their hunter's mark on a new vein blight

4. El takes aim at the same vein blight, but the Eldrin's Blast misses. With sword in hand, El takes a new position, ordering the monsters to step away from their friends!

5. the vein blights attack El, Hali and Chalcedony. As El gets grappled, they unleash a hellish rebuke, and despite the veins' resistance to fire, it's a damaging hit.

The ancient druid groans we need to be careful with all that fire, this ecosystem is so fragile! Ezra snaps back we're also quite fragile!

Hali is grappled, but Chalcedony dances out of the way

Thanks to the vein blights' attacks, Ezra can choose a new position

6. Gladiola starts a new concentration, drawing fresh sigils in the air with her diamond pendant. As she warns Ezra that this is the last spell she has in the tank, she sends a hastened enchantment to Ezra, granting extra armour and extra attacks

7. Chalcedony tries to both guard the entrance to the cart & attack, so the attack misses

8. Storm thanks the old druid for his help, who confirms he's alone and no more help is coming. Storm shoots under the cart, piercing the legs of the vein blight harassing Chalcedony. The plant creature slumps a little, as if its circulation is interrupted… but it remains upright

9. Fyllion viciously mocks a vein blight, who cringes away despite its lack of ears. With healing word, he also helps out Hali

Lutiel the druid assesses the battlefield. He waves his staff overhead and causes a green mist to rise like dew from the ground. The enchantment "wither and bloom" causes the vein blights in front of the cart lose some of their vitality, while Hali regains some energy. Seeing how Lutiel trembles while casting, Storm grabs his shoulder to lend some strength

1. Hali shouts out "this one is for you, Aqueel" as she unleashes a tiny tidal wave on the vein blights next to El. They're pushed back a distance. Though they don't take damage from being slammed into the rubbery ground, their hold over Hali does break. Angry over the unpleasantly veiny grips, she follows up with a starry arrow & obliterates the vein blight who'd been strangling her all this time

2. Ezra picks up their bow & takes up a new position. They shoot the vein blight with their hunter's mark & kills the second to last vein blight

They thank Gladiola with "wow, that hastened enchantment would be so useful to make dresses much faster". Gladiola raises a snooty eyebrow and wonders why Ezra would dream a capitalist dream of hastened sweatshops, to which our tiger responds that they were merely thinking of increasing their hobby!

3. El takes up a new position & with their hex, they kill the last vein blight

Since the fight is over, the bear totem vanishes, while most of the new veins slink back into the soil. We hear the alchemist fire fizzle and pop in the pool of Körperwelten's viscera.

Aqueel pops out of the cart, eager to ascertain we're all safe after the battle. Hali and Ezra praise him for his bravery and his help (including by keeping out of the way when necessary). Gladiola and Fyllion futz around with the carpet, what's its head and its arse? When they figure out they should be more polite, they eventually manage to land, just as Lapis and Madonna also re-join the cart.

As we take inventory of our wounds, we decide to take a short rest here: we need to recover quite a bit, and there are many questions to be answered.

We turn to the old druid who aided us. Lutiel, "lover of trees" in Sylvan, is the arch druid of Yaruda, the last to return from their guard duty in The Vale. Upon his arrival in Yaruda, he realised the village was empty and his colleagues gone:

he doesn't know where the other druids are
other travellers have perished, although he's warned as many as possible to turn around
flying is currently the only option, but that's not feasible (when El wonders if we could deconstruct the cart, have the carpet fly it over the blockage piece by piece and then reconstruct it, even our carpet gapes at them in stupefaction)
the hole Gladiola cut is barely 5 feet into a 40 feet clump of vines and roots. It will grow closed in a few hours, and each new hole will attract more bramble monsters and vein blights
when Storm mentions Baaloo, who had been fighting very ferociously against the veins, Ezra does notice Baaloo doesn't really warm to Lutiel, like a cat who was served duck instead of tuna. Do they favour different gods, are their priorities too different, or what's going on here?

During the conversation,

El takes offence at several swearwords, both about fools bumbling about and about innocents getting in over their head
Fyllion makes several grand declarations about chivalrously helping those in need (see Images), which Storm backs up by explaining that sometimes the needs of the few do align with the needs of the many
Ezra is proud of Fyllion's new leaf

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We decide to

leave Gladiola and Aqueel in the cart: during the day she'll use the arcane lock, during the night she's got a tiny magical tent that'll function as a barrier. They promise they won't disturb any more plants
travel to the heart of the forest with Lutiel, Chalcedony and the carpet, since that’s where Baaloo is pointing & where Lutiel hasn’t yet been able to explore

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As El instructs Gladiola on the care and maintenance of Madonna, we start to realise she's got no clue about doing chores, she’s so used to servants, magic or hired help in taverns and inns. In his new spirit of openness, Fyllion confesses he always used minor illusion when he had to swab the deck aboard the Young Kraken. We groan in disgust!

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As we're resting and recovering, Lutiel keeps wandering around, slowly inspecting and caressing the natural plants of the forest. It’s hard to tell if he’s infusing the bark and leaves he touches with magic but the oppressive atmosphere seems to lighten due to his efforts.

Storm hears exhausted but excited rustling of swan wings: it's Bella Swan! Proudly, she shows off a letter attached around her neck. It's a letter from Captain John Magpie (see Images).

Storm reads it out loud, after which Ezra confirms it's the captain's handwriting. As we debate if we should follow his new orders, El destroys the letter. El and Storm nominate Ezra to become our new captain: after a short vote, Ezra accepts.

We wonder which letter we should send:

Ezra's letter to their meemaw, written in code to learn more about the war 50 years ago
a new letter to the Wandering Isle, filled with lies or pleas, or the announcement of our new captain.

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Eventually we decide to just explore the heart of the forest and the origin of the veins. At Lutiel's insistence, we leave any flammable things behind. Before we set out, Lutiel glares at us: your reasons to travel north are quite confused, and it’s only at your friend El’s insistence I won’t call them foolish (given your former captain’s orders), so let me be blunt: are you sure your motivations for this upcoming battle are good? You might die. Ezra assures him that Fyllion and Storm weren’t wrong (this time): the good of the few will also be the good of the many, in this instance.

As we leave Gladiola and Aqueel on the road, Lutiel casts pass without trace, so everyone can march forward as silently as Storm usually manages. There's no path, we just forge ahead through the old-as-balls trees and wild forest. It's very different from the well-maintained forests Storm is used to around Royal Rosaria. Veins are everywhere, sucking the normal trees dry. They're still very impressive, Fyllion recognizes the influence of the Fey Wild. Fyllion hums a Sylvan rhyme under his breath, blessing those walking through the forest reminding him of home.

Lutiel keeps caressing leaves and bark as he goes, clearly encouraging the plants to bear up. Sometimes the veins and rubbery roots cause such dense clumps of viscera, forcing us to deviate from our path.

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Lutiel gently interrogates Fyllion in Sylvan (which no one else speaks): is he looking for a way north, or for access to the portal of The Vale?

Fyllion explains he knows his own portal, so north it is. Lutiel looks reassured because the portal in The Vale has been closed for a while now. Did the dryads guarding it close it, or did something else happen...? At any rate, the Fey creatures in this plane are very riled up, as evidenced all around us. Opening the portal again, that'll take a lot of power, probably from an Arch Fey. As Fyllion's grin grows wider, Lutiel meditates that the Eladrin he knows, are wild and weird personalities, not the most trustworthy people.

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Bella Swan flies overhead, but it's quite hard for us to coordinate our relative positions. She winds loops of about 100 feet around us. As soon as there's a break in the canopy, we check in with each other. Suddenly Storm and Lutiel notice she flies ahead. She hears crashing, roaring and hooting, it sounds pained and panicked. At his request, Bella Swan risks a swan dive to break through the canopy. As Lutiel supports Storm's insensate body, Storm makes telepathic contact with Bella Swan and reports to the others:

there's another barrier blocking a path
on top of this secondary barrier, an owlbear struggles, getting ever more entangled in the veins and vines, with the spikes jamming ever deeper in the flesh of its hindleg.

Lutiel reacts sombrely: owlbears aren't natural inhabitants of the forest, since they're a mixture of an owl and a bear the size of an elephant. Still, it's an innocent animal being harmed. Though Baaloo doesn't really seems eager to help out this creature outside of Taurillon's domain, the sand snake does concur it's noble to help the helpless.

We decide to follow Bella Swan and assess the situation. Hali and Lutiel can calm the owlbear a little, though it remains skittish and in pain from the wounds, the spiky veins burrowing into those wounds and now potential hunters... El makes clucking noises like a mother hen to aid the effort.

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We notice that the owlbear's struggles are sending ripples through the veins and roots. We recognize this pattern as the call for the bramble monsters like Körperwelten.

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El convinces Fyllion to use misty step to magick the owlbear away from the snare. Fyllion laughs in the face of the danger of getting ensnared himself and/or getting slashed by the owlbear. Lutiel gestures for permission and casts stoneskin on Fyllion. Hali just punches Fyllion on the shoulder and casts guidance.

Fyllion kneels at the owlbear's hindquarters and taunts the brambles to ensnare him. They immediately start growing towards him, though they're not releasing the owlbear. It seems to be more of an instinctual seeking of nutrition, rather than an active attack or any sort of reaction to Fyllion’s words. Fyllion gingerly starts pulling away the vines from the owlbear's trapped leg. He manages to pull back the spikes and free the owlbear, without taking any damage! None of the vines have been broken, so no rippling alarm has been triggered to conjure the bramble beasts like Körperwelten.

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Hali leads the trapped owlbear away from the barrier, back to the group. The owlbear remains frightened, but we focus on Fyllion who now needs to break away from the vines. Fyllion manages, what a relief! Hali comforts and heals the owlbear. Fyllion asks if the owlbear would kindly spread the word he was saved by Fyllion Springcrest. Clearly, the animal isn't smart enough to figure Fyllion contributed more than Hali really did. Also, we're not sure it even understands Common or Syvlan.

With a last hoot, the owlbear shambles off into the darkness under the dense canopy.

Images


Fyllion is a gifted liar, even when no one doubts him	via Bella Swan, Captain Magpie sent a reply to our note to Eluviel