[WotMK: Hexcrawl] Session Seventeen
Dramatis Personae:
In a driving rain, with Shining Star nursing her wounds and the Green Knight and Bonnie slumped listlessly over their mounts, the party climbed the scaffolding around the pipe in the center of town, and entered the pipe. They emerged on a hillside under a cloudy sky, and spread out below and ahead of them was the Scarlet City.
It was bigger, and more consistent, than tower town. Inside the crimson walls ringed with cannons were dozens of tall towers topped with turnip-shaped domes, slender walkways spread between them like a web. Some of the walkways were even thinner, and the party was confused about their function until they saw some kind of car going between them. And above it all, anchored by ropes to the highest towers, was a giant floating balloon with some kind of cabin beneath it that they could see, faintly, movement on it as Silent Ones swarmed over the scaffolding.
The Scarlet City was order, but there was a riotous collection of buildings outside, and that's where the party went. After a bit of asking around, mostly done by Shining Star, they found their way to the Floral Quarter, where Shining Star visibly relaxed as she was surrounded by the clean stone lines and intricate metal grillwork of Floral architecture and as the amanita cast their eyes down and the mandragora nodded to her as she passed. She knows how Floral towns are built, and so she followed the roads to the center, where the temple of the goddesses is. Elaphe waited outside while they entered.
In the center was a pool surrounded by three statues of the goddesses. To the left was Diang, her long hair bound in braids around her head and her arms bare and she forged a blade on an anvil made of solid rock. To the right was Tharu, crowned in lightning, and her statue had been designed so that it was crying, and the water flowed down her cheeks into a bowl, which overflowed onto a small plot of rice and then into the pool. And in the back was Nyahré, robed and masked so no part of her was visible, and bearing a closed book in her left hand and a dagger in her right hand.
Shining Star spoke to the acolyte, who started and then bowed when she saw Shining Star's eyes. She said there was no priest of Tharu there on duty, but that she would go get one, and she came back later with an older mandragora man with a long light-green beard who walked with a cane. Shining Star explained their situation and then man agreed to look over Bonnie and the Green Knight. He couldn't diagnose their illness immediately, and so asked them to come back the next day after he had some time to research the symptoms.
The party took a room at the Inn of the Blooming Rose and settled down to heal and recuperate. Elaphe sent out some feelings to sell Kurome's black sword, eventually finding a Silent One who was willing to buy it, no questions asked, for a sum of money that was less than it was worth but with less trouble than selling the probably-cursed sword of a warlock would normally bring. Bonnie took a trip to the local outpost of the mandarinate in the Chaian Quarter, reported in and signed the forms in triplicate. The Green Knight grumbled about civilization. Shining Star sought out another doctor to treat her own wounds, allowing the priest of Tharu to treat her friends' Void Sickness without any distractions. And Amos wandered around the outskirts of the city, looking at the sheer variety of people. The kremling venomancer and his yojimbo, and the enormous, mutated kremling they had with them, almost twice as tall as the others and bearing a mace even taller than it was. The party of Veiled Ones from Sarasa, who had left their grasslands on an unknown purpose. The people from Makai, pale and hunched over, who spoke in low tones and kept to themselves. And, despite his searching, no other humans.
One day, the party bought day passes into the Scarlet City and passed through the gates under the watchful eye of the Silent Ones. Inside was the whirring of gears, the hiss of steam, and slow shuffle of robes, and...silence. The Silent Ones went about their business in complete silence, and the only voices were those who had bought day passes. They looked around, finding a few stores they didn't enter, and a library with a place to leave word if they wanted to hire the services of the Somnambulant Calculators, the Silent Ones' strange oneiromantic sorcerer-engineers. They left without buying anything.
After a week and a half, the party had fully recovered their strength and made to leave to return to Fontina and investigate the plague of walking dead. The temple of the goddesses threw a feast for them the day they left, with vegetarian Floral cuisine and wine aplenty, and then the next morning they took a pipe they had learned about that led to B'rabt, and which wasn't far from the pipe in the square in Rockfort, capital city of Fontina.
B'rabt was blazing hot in the morning and almost unendurable during the day. Shining Star took off her robes, Amos removed his armor, and Bonnie suffered in her fur, but the party rode north on the rode by the shores of the Kintai, with the Berha desert off to their left and boats going up and down the river and travelers on the road. They passed through several towns and villages along the way, and after nightfall, just as the temperature started getting very cold, they reached the next pipe they were going for and entered it, emerging in Rockfort.
And we ended there.
This session was mostly recovery from the battles in Greenwall and people healing, spending XP, and buying new items. The party still made out with a net gain in wealth with even after spending more money than a peasant family would make in three years on a private room at an inn and stabling and feed for their horses and Elaphe's claw strider--owning mounts is expensive and also peasants are very poor--and on training in hedge magic. A couple people are thinking of picking up hedge sorcery for their characters. They thought their characters had to be sorcerers to learn it, but that was a mistaken impression, so they might add cursing people and summoning spirits to their repertoire.
I'm also really happy I got to play the Temple of Time Theme when the party went into the temple of the goddesses.
But next session, we'll see what's happened in Fontina in the almost three weeks since they were there last!
- Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyarhé.
- The Green Knight, mandragora briarwitch.
- Bonnie, kong Auspicious Orator.
- Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
- Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.
In a driving rain, with Shining Star nursing her wounds and the Green Knight and Bonnie slumped listlessly over their mounts, the party climbed the scaffolding around the pipe in the center of town, and entered the pipe. They emerged on a hillside under a cloudy sky, and spread out below and ahead of them was the Scarlet City.
It was bigger, and more consistent, than tower town. Inside the crimson walls ringed with cannons were dozens of tall towers topped with turnip-shaped domes, slender walkways spread between them like a web. Some of the walkways were even thinner, and the party was confused about their function until they saw some kind of car going between them. And above it all, anchored by ropes to the highest towers, was a giant floating balloon with some kind of cabin beneath it that they could see, faintly, movement on it as Silent Ones swarmed over the scaffolding.
The Scarlet City was order, but there was a riotous collection of buildings outside, and that's where the party went. After a bit of asking around, mostly done by Shining Star, they found their way to the Floral Quarter, where Shining Star visibly relaxed as she was surrounded by the clean stone lines and intricate metal grillwork of Floral architecture and as the amanita cast their eyes down and the mandragora nodded to her as she passed. She knows how Floral towns are built, and so she followed the roads to the center, where the temple of the goddesses is. Elaphe waited outside while they entered.
In the center was a pool surrounded by three statues of the goddesses. To the left was Diang, her long hair bound in braids around her head and her arms bare and she forged a blade on an anvil made of solid rock. To the right was Tharu, crowned in lightning, and her statue had been designed so that it was crying, and the water flowed down her cheeks into a bowl, which overflowed onto a small plot of rice and then into the pool. And in the back was Nyahré, robed and masked so no part of her was visible, and bearing a closed book in her left hand and a dagger in her right hand.
Shining Star spoke to the acolyte, who started and then bowed when she saw Shining Star's eyes. She said there was no priest of Tharu there on duty, but that she would go get one, and she came back later with an older mandragora man with a long light-green beard who walked with a cane. Shining Star explained their situation and then man agreed to look over Bonnie and the Green Knight. He couldn't diagnose their illness immediately, and so asked them to come back the next day after he had some time to research the symptoms.
The party took a room at the Inn of the Blooming Rose and settled down to heal and recuperate. Elaphe sent out some feelings to sell Kurome's black sword, eventually finding a Silent One who was willing to buy it, no questions asked, for a sum of money that was less than it was worth but with less trouble than selling the probably-cursed sword of a warlock would normally bring. Bonnie took a trip to the local outpost of the mandarinate in the Chaian Quarter, reported in and signed the forms in triplicate. The Green Knight grumbled about civilization. Shining Star sought out another doctor to treat her own wounds, allowing the priest of Tharu to treat her friends' Void Sickness without any distractions. And Amos wandered around the outskirts of the city, looking at the sheer variety of people. The kremling venomancer and his yojimbo, and the enormous, mutated kremling they had with them, almost twice as tall as the others and bearing a mace even taller than it was. The party of Veiled Ones from Sarasa, who had left their grasslands on an unknown purpose. The people from Makai, pale and hunched over, who spoke in low tones and kept to themselves. And, despite his searching, no other humans.
One day, the party bought day passes into the Scarlet City and passed through the gates under the watchful eye of the Silent Ones. Inside was the whirring of gears, the hiss of steam, and slow shuffle of robes, and...silence. The Silent Ones went about their business in complete silence, and the only voices were those who had bought day passes. They looked around, finding a few stores they didn't enter, and a library with a place to leave word if they wanted to hire the services of the Somnambulant Calculators, the Silent Ones' strange oneiromantic sorcerer-engineers. They left without buying anything.
After a week and a half, the party had fully recovered their strength and made to leave to return to Fontina and investigate the plague of walking dead. The temple of the goddesses threw a feast for them the day they left, with vegetarian Floral cuisine and wine aplenty, and then the next morning they took a pipe they had learned about that led to B'rabt, and which wasn't far from the pipe in the square in Rockfort, capital city of Fontina.
B'rabt was blazing hot in the morning and almost unendurable during the day. Shining Star took off her robes, Amos removed his armor, and Bonnie suffered in her fur, but the party rode north on the rode by the shores of the Kintai, with the Berha desert off to their left and boats going up and down the river and travelers on the road. They passed through several towns and villages along the way, and after nightfall, just as the temperature started getting very cold, they reached the next pipe they were going for and entered it, emerging in Rockfort.
And we ended there.
This session was mostly recovery from the battles in Greenwall and people healing, spending XP, and buying new items. The party still made out with a net gain in wealth with even after spending more money than a peasant family would make in three years on a private room at an inn and stabling and feed for their horses and Elaphe's claw strider--owning mounts is expensive and also peasants are very poor--and on training in hedge magic. A couple people are thinking of picking up hedge sorcery for their characters. They thought their characters had to be sorcerers to learn it, but that was a mistaken impression, so they might add cursing people and summoning spirits to their repertoire.
I'm also really happy I got to play the Temple of Time Theme when the party went into the temple of the goddesses.
But next session, we'll see what's happened in Fontina in the almost three weeks since they were there last!