The Party talks with an upset Thrai. We mysteriously gain the deed to the Regular Inn in Quadroads. After teleporting to the Woven Council to pick up some potions and say hi to Ren, we fload downriver to Riverbend, and thence to Greyharbor.
We went to a party, where the party was attacked. Dirius almost died, but we saved her. "What does that make us?" she asks?
The Party Aftermath
We're standing in a cracked and blasted courtyard, among a lot of bodies, and the remains of a fancy party. Many partygoers have fled into Gilliwig's mansion, and are now beginning to look out. A clatter comes from the courtyard as a massive rush of guards enter.
Dirius collects herself, asks, "So what does that make us?"
"Hopefully research partners, sometime. You know you can count on us," says Ryltar.
The conversation is interrupted by the guards, who ask pertinent questions like "who did what" and "where are the bodies". Thrai takes charge, but wants to talk to each of us individually to compile a story of what happened.
Thrai and Ryltar
Thrai asks Ryltar to come with her, into the mansion, into a storeroom that has been hastily cleared, and is guarded by two guards. He follows her in; she grapples him immediately, and pushes him into the wall.
He shrugs, and says, "Well, I thought you were a woman of the cloth."
"This was your doing! This wouldn't have happened without you! You know who sent them!"
He says that he doesn't agree; he's been attacked by assassins quite often recently. In fact, he blames Kerjes.
But Thrai thinks that they were there for Dirius. "No good can come from deals with devils."
He says he doesn't think that he's responsible for the deaths that the assassins caused.
She thinks that the Ascendants are also somewhat responsible, for choosing the Party.
But Ryltar says that he's tried to protect the city, and has.
Thrai is barely satisfied. "It is my duty to protect the city. And it seems to me that your dealings with devils and dragons have become a liability. But I owe this responsibility to you, as well. I swore I won't talk about your deal. But if I hear someone suspect you, I will tell the Ascendants."
"The message is received. There is nothing to be gained from harming civilians. We're just settling in for a long year."
She dismisses him; he staggers out the door with all one of his HP. He really hadn't had time to heal up. As he leaves, Thrai tells him to send Jerry back in.
Jerry
Jerry goes in and closes the door behind her. Thrai asks if "it" will happen again. Jerry asks what "it" Thrai is asking about. Thrai wants to know if her city will be endangered by the Party's actions again. And Jerry can't promise her that. "I won't take that action consciously, but things have side effects."
Jerry goes out, congratulating Thrai on her promotion to captain, and finds Salris, who's doing a bottle of wine.
Salris
Thrai threatens him. "Don't do business with that devil; don't take contract with the devil, or Selun help me, we'll come for you and we don't come quietly." Salris readily agrees, swigging from a glass which he pours for himself. Thrai continues, questioning for details about the devil. She asks whether he knows of any other assassins in the group; he does not. She asks who else he's been asked to kill: Boris Highhelm, Zelrathi, Thalia, ("wait."), Guy, my father, "Wait, stop. Thalia?", that halfling dude that I was asked to kill — I'm not gonna kill him; he's a nice dude, we had a chat — yeah, so, I've told you you the story?
"But you say it with no weight behind it."
"My father deserved it; I never killed Highhelm or Guy, Thalia asked me to kill her, and Zelrathi is cool. There is one person I know who is connected to this; I can give you his name: Rezzik. I don't know his last name. A dwarf. Kind of a cunt. Anything else you want to know?" He says with a smile.
"Ugh, you've been very helpful. Bring in Vurguron?"
"Do you want the last of this?" He offers her the bottle. She shakes her head.
Vurguron
Salris tells Vurguron to go talk to the Big Giant Goliath Lady. She asks, "Are there any other persons of interest who can danger the city who are entangled with you?"
"I don't think so; other than the longstanding multigenerational conflict between —" he begins to explain his family's lineage and all their conflicts.
Thrai cuts him off at some point, and asks, "I never asked this before, but why did you all contract to have Dirius killed? They're a highstanding member of academic society; what have they done to you to make you want to kill them so badly?"
Vurguron explains that Dirius seems to be responsible for all these assassinations.
"So what started this feud?"
Vurguron begins talking about how the heretics stole Bahamut's silver scale, going back into the family history.
"Why does she want you specifically killed?"
"I dunno; seems rather impersonal. Not at all like the passionate hate I have for whomever stole the scale."
She massages her face, and dismisses him, asking him to send Dirius in.
The Party
The Party are left, pretty much alone, in the courtyard. People are cleaning up the bodies, interviewing the survivors. There's a somber moment, where we ask what we're doing. We decide to investigate the corpses of the assassins. There's not iconography, but there's a familiar chain shirt with barbs. The archer wears it. It's the same pattern of cursed armor that Salris had to remove the curse from. Ryltar examines the chain shirt for runes, but sees none.
The only member of the assassins that really had weapons is the Arcane Archer, whose quiver was destroyed in the final attack.
Salris notices that the harp, which had been Fiendish, is dead, and still in the shape of a harp.
"So in the last minute, before Dirius gets back, do we want to draw the Teleportation Circle and get out of here?" asks Ryltar. "We'd have to leave most of our stuff, though."
"We'd lose our stuff, though," says Salris.
So we decide not to leave. We try to predict our public perception, and come up with lots of ideas.
Dirius and Thrai are taking a while. It's been two minutes, three. Finally we see Dirius leave the mansion, followed by Thrai. Thrai tells the crowd, "People, go home and rest. There will be an announcement in the morning. The Knights of the Summer Court have, once again, thwarted evil." The tired denizens clap mutedly, and we leave. We grab our stuff from the Regular Inn.
We decide to sleep in the Coinflip Inn that night.
The main room is as lively as ever. The barkeep asks us our business; we buy two rooms for the night and Salris buys a 12gp bottle of wine for us to relax over. Much laughing happens, as we keep an eye on the door in case any assassins come in.
Exhaustion takes us; we go to bed and sleep.
The next morning, we wake up well rested, still in our tattered fine clothes. The Party change back into their traveling clothes and armor.
We meet for breakfast in the main hall, and discuss our path. And who should sit at our table but that person who we've met before, Percival! Percival has been studying archaeology, and would be interested in joining us for our trip to the desert, to gain significant field experience.
The Regular Inn?
The barkeep waves us down, and hands us a note and a package. The note says that we're being given the title of the Regular Inn. And in the package is the knife that Ryltar left behind in the room: covered in silver blood that cannot be cleaned. Salris shrugs when Ryltar tries to clean it, and fails. And we have the keys to the Regular Inn.
Percival is very interested in learning about property management, when we discuss this fact, so we go over to the Regular Inn. It's closed and locked, and empty of staff. But there's still supplies, and Salris finds the booze.
What do we do with this place? Let Thrai crash here? Zelrathi, who is on the mountain? Moon, who is in the convent? Ockoh, who is petrified but might be good to sell some oosah? We're not sure.
Jerry climbs the facade to pull down the sign, which said "The Inn" under boards which said "The Regular Inn". We go look for someone to make a new sign, saying "The Irregular Inn". We leave him with the old sign and 5 gold to pay for a new one, and 1 gold to pay for hiring a kid to do installation. He's only got one foot, so he won't climb the ladder himself. Salris swaps the bloody dagger for a clean one.
Shopping
There's new items for sale in the shop, including two swords and a mace, and a helm.
Jerry asks after the helm. It's a little bit of armor, and the ability to see things that cannot normally be seen, but it requires attunement, and so Jerry does not buy it.
The mace is a Mace of Disruption, great for killing the undead. Jerry asks about whether it can be made into a long mace, like the long hammer. Apparently not.
A sword which bursts into flames, a Flametongue. Salris lusts after it. With his Pact of the Blade, he can transfer his pact bond to the flame weapon. He deattunes from the Ring of the Arcamag. He takes the keys to the Regular Inn and goes to meditate for an hour, to move the pact around: bonus action to speak a command word to make it light up. The Flamepesh.
A magically-infused sword of +2.
We go back into the Regular Inn, and see Salris making the swords kiss. He's being weird about it.
So we wait for that to finish, so that he can go sell the Ring of the Arcamag, so that we won't be dangerously low on money in case Rezzik Brazzik shows up demanding payment. Dee Goodbarrel appraises the ring, and the cruel sword which Salris no longer needs. She offers 1500 gold for the set; Salris haggles for 2200, but she doesn't want the sword. 1500 for the ring, though. We go back to the blacksmith to sell the cruel sword, and he's appreciative.
After that, we decide to go to Ren's teleportation in the Woven Council's territory, to pick up the potions and give us a shorter walk to the desert.
The Woven Council
We draw a circle, and arrive in Ren's back room. He's there to welcome us.
"Oh, right, you're a divination wizard," says Salris, after he's done barfing into the bucket that Ren had waiting.
We introduce Percival and Ren to each other.
Not much is new in the Woven Council; politics are still gridlocked with Thalia's successor missing. They might be moving towards a resolution.
We catch Ren up on all the recent happenings: spiders, Kerjes' assassins, the Drow assassins, the devil's assassins, going to visit Jerry's daughter in the jungles north of the desert. So really we're just passing through, picking up the depetrification potions.
Ren smiles faintly, as he hears us bickering over the characterization Dirius. But when the conversation turns to the dagger that Salris had, and got rid of, Ren asks, "Dagger?" Salris says, "I only have one dagger now; I got rid of the other." He pulls out his lone dagger and … it's the silver-blooded dagger. Again.
He offers it to Ren, who casts Identify, and goes, "Hm." He says that the dagger is a conduit of the thing that is bound to Salris. We wonder whether Rezzik Brazzik is his second pact, if this dagger is a second pact weapon!
"This is Celestial," says Ren. "I don't think it's going to leave your side."
"I never met a Celestial! I don't know how this happened." Salris hands the dagger to Ryltar, who puts it in the Handy Haversack. Ryltar gives him his dagger, and we agree to wait to see when it swaps back.
Jerry gives Ren a piece of Obsidian pumice to Ren, who "will look into it."
Ren tells us that the Roc has been flying around, pilfering, more of late. We tell him the Roc is the child of Kerjes.
He suggests that we use the Folding Boat to go downriver, as trade on the river is hopping and there aren't likely to be any berths for us.
The apothecary gives us 5 of the 6 depetrification potions we had ordered; one had been sold to another party that came through. We get 6 regular and 2 greater healing potions for 500 gold.
We leave the Woven Council, walking through the gate, and head on the road northeast to the river. The road is well-traveled, and we travel at good speed.
At the River
The day passes without incident, and we arrive at a riverbank settlement with docks. It's a transshipment hub. There's a little inn called The Overflowing Chalice, where the pours are heavy.
The Elvish staff greet and welcome us, and we buy five beds (three rooms) for the night. We overpay a little, and get meals in exchange.
Tonight's entertainment is a water dancer, who dances around the fountain in the middle of the great room, bending the water as she dances.
The next morning, the daggers are in the bags where we left them, without having mysteriously swapped at night.
At the docks, we ask if any of the docked boats or barges have berths available. Most are overflowing with cargo; but there's a passenger barge going downriver. Can we get on? It's 15 gold apiece.
On the River
We decide to go our own way, and unfold the folding boat into its 24-foot, 15-person configuration. We float downriver.
Ryltar, Percival, and Salris try their Mage Hands at fishing. Percival lands a small salmon, and with potatoes from Ryltar's cube, we eat well for lunch.
Salris pilots the boat, as a charlatan with a nautical background, and does a natural-20 job of piloting the boat. Evening comes, and discussion turns to piloting the boat at night, and the effects of antimagic-field spiders, so we decide to pull over for the night and set up camp.
Morning comes, and we get back on the river. The river comes to the confluence of the stream that comes from the direction of Renewal and Barehold, where the mummy is. The water from that fork is greener, and murky.
Nothing happens on the river this day; Salris continues ably captaining the vessel. We eat well.
The third day, Salris continues excellently piloting the boat.
The fourth day, Jerry spends a lot of time fending off rocks with her poles. Salris is falling asleep at the steering oar.
The fifth day, we're almost to Riverbend. And we make it there without incident.
Riverbend
It's an inland port, with more transshipment, the stop on the trade route between Grey Harbor and West Haven. We debate whether to go inland or downriver to Grey Harbor. Salris has backstory in Grey Harbor, and, well, we're on the river anyhow.
So we decide to go to Grey Harbor. Salris will disguise himself.
To Grey Harbor
The first day is great.
Salris spends the second day woolgathering, so again Jerry must fend off the rocks and snags and shore.
Next session
We're going to Grey Harbor, to encounter Salris' backstory. Maybe talk to Rezzik Brazzik about calling off the assassination.
Also, what's up with Salris' Celestial dagger?
We know how to trap the Jester, with Magic Circle
What's going on with the stars? Are Ryltar's theories about colors and significant plot-relevant things' colors correct?
How can the Mummy Lord be defeated?
Determine how to resolve the Eta'el-Kerjes plot
Remember to un-petrify Ockoh in the Ice Lord Wint's Lair
Is Salris' brother also a bearer of the curse that afflicts Salris? Or is he just part of Rezzik Brazzik now?