We find out where Yul is being held, bullshit the people there into us being clerics here to cure Yul of being a demon
Turns out this cult, The Dawn, follows Fraltari (true name Felix), who took credit for the subjugation of Duessel Sarde and has been frozen in ice for about 150 years.
The praty makes Felix admit his mistakes as just the storyteller not the actual hero, and then make Bloo the head of the cult
The shopkeeper we sold Jeice’s gauntlet to was killed by The Order of the Fish, we follow them through the arcane gate to place something we can later use Locate Object with, finding out it is very deep underground
Bloo reports it to VAC HQ
Sarah’s oath of vengeance is against the weird human on horse with chain monster
04.20.0347 Morning | Vasara
One day before depart
Yul wakes up, tied up, with a dim fire in front of her
Two short men are looking at her
“I think we got a spy on our hands”
Yul calls them short
Men: “Ah, a spy who is racist”
They’re halflings
Man: “Who do you serve?”
Yul: “Am I supposed to know that?”
Man: “I know who you are”
Yul: “I don’t”
Man: “Tf you know”
Yul: “I woke up without memories”
Man: “Ah, bring the club”
Man: “Why are you here, in our town messing in our alley”
Yul: “I don’t remember, I just remember going after a shiny rock and wanting to eat it”
Man: “This isn’t working, bring in the club”
Man: “I want to know why you serve that freaky ass god”
Yul: “What god”
Man: “The fucken dead one, we saw what happened all the way over.. in Novis castle? We heard about that we know why you’re here”
Pulls out a bubble with Theodore’s head in his person
Man: “Why do you have this?”
Yul: “Why not??”
Man: “Man you know nothing”
Man points his dagger at Yul’s neck
Yul asks if she can bite the dagger
Man: !?
Man: “tell me why” *snaps his finger* “why might you be housing these”
Yul: “I woke up with those”
Man: “Do you know what the shards are for?”
Yul: “Nah just don’t lick em”
Confused halflings
Man: “Ima rip the shards out of you”
Yul: “don’t do that”
Man: “Hm? why? Who told you”
Yul: “I.. I forgot.. lady- lady uhm”
The man plunges the dagger into Yul’s neck
Man: “The dagger is poisoned”
Man: “If you don’t talk I’ll just let the poison kill you and then extract the shards”
2 halflings knows the shards, knows what happened at Novis castle, wants the shards??
Man: “Why are you here, looking through our trash?”
Yul: “I like trash!”
“You can’t eat the knife it’s in your neck!”
Yul: loses consciousness
Sees halfling cracking his knuckles and pulling out another blade, it looks like a surgical knife
Sarah’s locate object is pointing towards the alleyway, so we all return to it
There are two shady looking figures, arms crossed, leaning in the alley
Trail of trash, some spit, and a shining rock in the middle of the street
Nim: “Alright fuckers you took smth that’s mine gimme it back”
The dudes: clear throat intensely, they look at each other, nod, look at Nim, nod
Nim picks up the rock on her way in
We follow the trail of Yul’s saliva, it leads into the dumpster
Bloo notices a weird metal rod sticking out but isn’t budging
Look into the pipe, see something red on the bottom
Bloo blows into the tube, hear a sound transmitted into my head “incorrect”
Bloo casts “detect thoughts” on one of them, Nim yells at them for the password and chucks garbage at them
Hear: The guards don’t know the password
Sarah gets out
Bloo says: “Of course never beats sipping wine to the scent of the salty sea”
Nim and Bloo are inside, all Sarah hears is a weird thud and some metal shifting around
Nim and Bloo fall down a chute
Bloo uses Sending to tell Sarah
Now we are all in a trash pile, Sarah is much closer to the severed hand
Narrow hallway, 2 doors to left, 1 door to right, thick steel door at the back
The hand is coming from the furthest non-steel door, door on the left at far end
Big echo-y steps, hear voices, take a step, the stone sinks down, hear a click, and nothing else
It’s a wooden door
Sarah cuts it down, it splinters
See someone holding a club with rusty nails, no Yul
Sarah: “Who the FUCK are you?!”
The hand is on a table next to Theodore’s head
Sarah: “She’s a demon who contracted brain damage, but we’re gonna cure her and turn her back into a human”
Halfling: “wholeheartedly believes him”
“You’re the clerics, oh the boss will be very happy to hear this”
Sarah just bullshits him
The halfling grabs stuff from the desk, reactivates the bubble seal, hands it to Sarah
The demon is in the interrogation room, the boss is.. uh.. tried
He had to sedate her
“We are in a holy place, under the protection of our savior”
Sarah: “whomst?”
“The boss will be happy to get more converts!”
The halflings takes us
Nim thinks it may not be an actual god they’re following
Man: “Boss the clerics are here!”
Boss: “Wow they work fast”
The boss debriefs us, it has mirror shards, I know the legends, but we haven’t seen it since the great hero has split the mirror and hid them all over the land
Nim asks for bookkeeping, for information
Boss: “we have proof right here” right behind Yul is a human frozen in a block of ice
Boss: “that is our savior!!! the one true god, the namesake of our land”
From Nim’s studies
Some weirdo who tried to take credit for the subjugation of duessel sarde
He is now frozen in ice
Based off his forged legacy, it seems to have spread beyond Dagdra
His name: Fraltari, but is fake name for publicity purposes, tried to steal legacy of three hidden heroes, tried to take credit since their bodies weren’t found
The ice is not magical
Boss: “Are you here to bless him??”
Sarah: “yeah fs fs”
Nim: “We have secret holy symbols”
Sarah carves a dick into the ice
Sarah takes out the knife, and then casts “Lay on Hands” and cures the poison
Nim puts the magic rock back in her pocket
Sarah tells them that they can handle the “demon purification” from here
Nim asks “you wouldn’t happen to know where the shards are”
Boss: “Assuming they haven’t been moved around, our savior, he’s the one who split them”
Bloo attempts to telepathic speech to him, only hear a stream of consciousness
Just talks about “get me out of here” “they’re gonna kill me”
“They found out who I am”
Fearing for his life because someone found out his identity
He is unresponsive
Sarah and Nim try to slash him out of the ice
Sarah casts Lay on Hands, heals a poison or smth, he wakes up and starts breathing it up
Nim expose his face so he can breath
The dude kicking around, kicks his shoe and it flies into the back of Yul’s head, who wakes up
Nim: “Why are you pretending to be a god”
Dude: “Oh god, are you with the fusillan government”
The dude seems incredibly scared of Yul
Dude: “My name is Felix” “my stage name is Fraltari”
Felix: “i’ve been in that ice for like, 150 years”
Felix: “The last thing I remember is the coronation of the emperor at dagdra”
Bloo: “You’re like, 130 years off”
Felix: “After the coronation I kept telling everyone I killed Duessel, and that thing, Yul, reeks of duessel”
Bloo stabs him in the foot, for tarnishing the memories of the heroes
Felix was being hunted down by assassins, bounty hunters? For falsifying historical records, probs assassins sent by the council of archmages
Felix: the only body we saw was duessel
Sarah: let’s bring the cultists back
Nim: you pretend to be the god
Sarah unties Yul
Yul: can I have my head back?
Sarah: will you promise to be good?
Yul: Yeeeessss
Felix thinks “I can’t believe I’m scared of this possible incarnation of duessel and it wants to eat rocks??!”
Bring the cultists back in, who immediately bows down to Felix “oh great wise Fraltari, our salvation, and our answers”
Felix: snaps his finger and turns his clothes into theater clothes, he snaps his finger and makes him shine, and then Nim uses minor illusion to turn him back into rags
Cultists: “Will you help us against the god?”
Nim: It’s N it’s N
Felix: aight?? You get protection from N
Yul: balls
Felix: if you ever need my holy protection, just loudly yell, “Balls!”
The cultists: “Balls!”
The plan: Make Felix admit his mistakes as just the storyteller not the actual hero, and then make Bloo the head of the cult
Felix: You two are sinners!!! You do not know the true god of your religion, I am just the messenger!!
Felix casts testicular torsion
Felix: I will release you when you recognize your true god (points to Bloo) my last wish is that you give this true hero your offerings of strawberry yogurt
FELIX INVENTED THE SPELL TESTICULAR TORSION
Bloo busts open all the door, one has a crate and a bunch of papers, one has a big hole in the ceiling
Among the papers, callsign for the league of larcenists, for something they used to have
Bloo demands the cultists to have better infrastructure, more people, better base
We all walk to the resurfacing room, stand under the indent to the ceiling, we vwoop up, we gently float up to be right next to the trashcan
04.20.0347 Evening | Vasara
We go the vasara adventuring guild hq, get dinner, today is serving roast muttons and potatoes
Nim sends the notes about Felix to Hugo Starling
04.21.0347 Morning | Vasara
Need to go pickup scrolls with the alchemist and blacksmith
Serving all sorts of eggs for breakfast
We go to the magic shop, all the lights are out
The door is unlocked, hear glass shattering, smell metallic with smoke, someone’s been busy
The shopkeeper: “Oh hello! Wasn’t expecting customers this early”
Requested divination and teleportation circle scrolls
The shopkeeper finally remembers
The shopkeeper starts running into his store, “I got it! I remember now!”
Shopkeeper: gives us envelope, with blood stained fingerprint, and it says “The Order shall prevail”
Shopkeeper goes into his back room, and locks it
It’s a metal door
Sarah hits the door, and blasts right through it
The only person in the room is a familiar looking corpse with his finger cut off, the gauntlet is nowhere to be found
The gauntlet is not within 1000 feet, but we hear some weird noises in the back, a hallway out the back of the lab
Down the hallway, past all the papers, hear some whooshes, see some light, it’s an arcane gate
The shopkeeper wasn’t super freshly killed, within the last 24 hours
Arcane gate has 8 minutes left
In a place deep underground, smell a bit of smoke, smell something very metallic, see some drops of blood that have been dried
A disembodied index finger is lying down, in front of us
There is magical darkness around us
Rachel tries dispel magic on the darkness, the darkness is still there but you might’ve dispelled something
Nim leaves her weird broken drumstick behind, and she hid it in a corner somewhere
And then we leave via the arcane gate, back in the lab, see some papers on his desk, research notes on the gauntlet, see some blood
His hand is clutching a paper, but it is the finished teleport circle scroll, the last thing he did before he died
Sarah casts locate object on the drumstick, it is extremely deep underground, deeper than yul’s time
Bloo runs to the HQ, reports the Order crime to the VAC, gives them the envelope for evidence, she’s super stressed about this information
Nim walks into the blacksmith shop, “Seliph still hasn’t arrived” Nim stares at them suspiciously
“Your order is ready!”
Nim: “Okay phew at least you know about my order”
Blacksmith: “Huh??”
Got 3 different potions
A deep black tonic with glowing white strands that glitter, looks like a spiderweb, smells like burning hair, has no idea what it does
You don’t need to ingest it, you can apply it on skin, or coat your weapon
She called it the essence of the spider dragon
2 doses worth, 20% chance of smth going wrong
Presents a thick viscous black liquid, looks like tar, it’s a potion of spider climbing, have to have at least 2 appendages touching a surface, works for about an hour, 2 doses
Glittery swirly blue liquid in a small vial, very small dose, this should cure any illness relating to decay, disease, poison, etc. make you temporarily more resistant to poisons, but only works on the living, 1 dose
The blacksmith pulls out studded leather armor, studded with dragon scales
Gives a little acid resistance
Seliph trots up on a horse
We tell them about the Order and the magic shop dude
Seliph: For sarah’s sake, I hope we get this monster slain
We get to the boats
We board the ship, sent to our quarters
Each have our own room
Yul examines Theodore’s head, for the first time in her life, a thought entered her head, see a vision, see Theodore alive, see this shadow-y figure, Yul can’t see who it is, feel a weird emotion, pride, in him, also sees other people, familiar people, thru Theodore, sees Jeice and the count, they’re talking, nothing audible, suddenly you can tell you’re somewhat important, in fact, you weren’t supposed to die there, was theodore
Yul licks the rock of judgement, hear a voice in your head, “now why would you lick a rock”
Nim talks to Sarah, “would you like to tell us what this weird mythical creature is”
“And tell us why you hate it?”
Sarah: I just know it’s a creepy ass mf, kinda looks like a human hunched over like a horse with a chain, makes a terrible sound
Sarah: This thing, I’ve encountered it before, I mean, I wasn’t able to defeat it then I’m hoping to fix my mistakes
Sarah: this is from before I became a paladin, wasn’t really a warrior, this thing, i dunno, I wasn’t really involved in defense at the time
Sarah: I was lucky to get out alive, I dunno, I just have a responsibility to deal with it now
Sarah: I dropped out of school, became a paladin, swore an oath of vengeance against it
The ship floats out to sea
First mate, a silver dragonborn, she has perfect posture, a clipboard and pen, checking in on everyone
The captains says there is a bar! A fancy ship chartered by the guild
Children onboard the ship, two little gnomes
Nim goes to the bar, gets mead, sits and watches
Sailing quite smoothly
Sarah walks to the bar, can I get a “water on the rocks with a twist”