Back at it again!
Dramatis Personae
- Kestrel (they), 3rd Renown Deviant
- Gemini (he/they), 3rd Renown Violent
- Ottavi (they/it), 2nd Renown Violent
Loot + New Tools
- 1 Healer's Kit (1 slot)
- 1 Vial of Swine Sedative (1/4 slot)
- 1 occulith chip (fingernail sized, 400cp, 1/4 slot)
- 1 silver tomb ribbon (200cp, 1/4 slot)
Developments
- The Company agreed to harvest valuable cysts from the Feathered Swine to clear their debt with the Vermomancers.
- Fearsome 'mirror men' now stalk the halls of Murkvey's Rock.
RECAP - 1st of Firstmonth, 1V39
A WHORMY OPPORTUNITY
The Company found themselves on the first of the month in Scarlet Town, hungover and broke as shit with 7,549cp in debt to the vermomancers. The vermomancers mentioned there was a special opportunity available to clear their debt, though it was specialty work, not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. The Company considered their options--including tailing a caravan that went missing--and then resolved to meet with the vermomancers to hear them out.
Ottavi led them back to the vermomancers' yurt complex south of Scarlet Town. Their leader, Symanthe, was overjoyed to discuss the opportunity. Over tea Symanthe enthusiastically relayed the details, which I have copied and pasted from the module below (for real, they're gross):
Before hibernating, the Feathered Swine pulls most of the feathers from its pale pink skin to make a nest, which decays over the coming weeks and attracts strange mites.
The mites don’t live long, but where their bites infest the Feathered Swine’s skin with their own parasites, cysts begin to form full of a vibrant green fluid. Each cyst forms a digestive sac full of ever-repopulating microscopic Ensorcelled Whorms, copulating in the green liquid even as it dissolves them, feeding the Feathered Swine while it sleeps.
The Feathered Swine sleeps with its head retracted into the plump folds of its fatty flesh on a bed of rotting feathers.
The proper method for extraction is to slice through the subcutaneous fat under the cyst, and tie off the feeding tubes connected to it before severing them. Never take more than half of the cysts, or the Feathered Swine might die of starvation.
Symanthe told the Company that the Ensorcelled Whorms were of great value to the vermomancers, and she would happily pay them 1,000cp for each Whorm Cyst that they were able to recover. Thus bringing 7 or 8 of them could easily wipe out their debt. Her hooded and chained associate Jreengus provided the tools necessary to perform the extraction along with a dose of a powerful sedative.
The Company was quite amenable to the opportunity and took the job. Symanthe provided a map to the Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine, a cave at the foot of a mountain on the edge of the Yellow Lands. They set off northeast towards the rising desert sun.
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TRAVEL
On the way the party resolved to pass by Murkvey's Rock and recover the opulent crown that Kestrel had stashed there many, many moons ago... though the best laid plans of mice and men and etc.
As they rode on their bikes with their iron mule Mischief in tow they passed by the scorched wreckage of a wagon. Combing through the hot ashes and glassed sand Ottavi uncovered a single fingernail-sized piece of occulith (magic crystal gemstone).
After several more hours of travel they encountered a group of strange men clad in heavy black armor piling into a massive strange mosquito-helicopter machine whose mirrored wings beat the air mercilessly. Around them stretched more scorched wreckage. One of the soldiers called out to the approaching Company that there were "slim pickings left for you vultures, after Green Hive has been through with them." The Company sized them up and considered laying waste to them but noting their superior numbers and armament they let them go on their way, the strange machine taking flight to the southeast.
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| Ornithopter from Vaults of Vaarn |
MURKVEY'S ROCK
The party rolled into Murkvey's Rock in the afternoon and noted a scent of cooked spiced meat on the wind, like barbeque. As they approached a familiar hoarse drawl called out. "Kestrel, you ol' kid of a gun. Is that you?"
Murkvey and his men seemed to be in bad shape. He spoke with a rasp and had a corpse's pallor, glassy eyes, jagged crystal protrusions erupting from his flesh. In conversation he drawled and repeated himself and lost the thread regularly. Despite his condition he warmly welcomed the Company to join for supper in their "base of operations" -- bits of shattered wooden furniture half-covered by a tent flap, the "supper" a whole man that one of his associates was roasting on a spit over an open flame, "some goatherd who went stickin' his nose where it don't belong."
Murkvey had feared the worst after the Company had left them behind without handing over the Orb of the King and were shortly followed by intrusions led by Adipose Mab, but they assured him they had no connections to Mab and had returned to bring him the Orb once and for all, which he greatly appreciated.
He told them they had bravely fought off Mab's expeditions but were driven out of the tomb by an onslaught of what Murkvey called "mirror men" - horrible creatures woven of glass that attacked with greater and greater numbers following the Company's departure. In response Murkvey and his men collapsed the tomb's entrance, through which the Company had previously conducted their delves on behalf of Adipose Mab, but that there was another way in he would happily show them to. The Company obliged.
THE DELVE
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| Map from Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier |
The Company picked their way down a twisting crystal tunnel and found themselves in a chamber covered in feathers and stinking of animal. In one corner sat a pile of tar-soaked broken bones. Kestrel took a fragment of one. They found that the southern door was stuck, and Ottavi bashed it down with their greatmace, causing a ruckus that echoed throughout the silent Crystal Tomb, and incurring Ottavi a point of Exhaustion.
On the other side stood a hall with various niches in its walls. In one stood a massive silver statue with its upraised hand hacked off. In another rested two coffins made of Tomb Crystal. On closer inspection the Company found that each coffin was wrapped about with a loop of silver, like a ribbon on a present. Despite copious joking about "this being the Dragon's Dogma coffin with the guy in it that gets you," Ottavi proceeded to remove the silver. Immediately a mummified figure burst through the coffin's lid, sending toxic Tomb Crystal dust everywhere. It grabbed Ottavi by the forearm with its cold cold hands and a strange light seeped into Ottavi's eyes.
Springing into action Kestrel and Gemini struck at the creature, Kestrel with a gout of flame from their new sword-hand-cannon and Gemini with a runed emerald spear, both of which made contact with the strangely phantasmal creature.
Under the revenant's curse, Ottavi was filled with the inclination that Kestrel and Gemini had taken it their to kill it and steal its treasures, and that it would be best to do it to them first. It first whiffed dramatically but then struck a mighty blow against Gemini, shortly after which the creature was dispatched and the compulsion dispelled.
Licking their wounds and plotting their way forward to recover the King's Crown -- and perhaps the Orb of the King Itself ?? -- we left behind the Company as the session concluded.
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