Session 4.12

1629, Sea Season, Death Week, Fireday

Dramatis Personae

Events

As the night wore on, the newly freed spirits talked and exchanged stories with Varanis and Mellia listening in. The troll spirit spoke, in rhyming couplets, of all the people he’d killed. It was… long.

The Tusk Rider was some hundreds of years old and also apparently an Orlanthi shaman. In the darkness of the night, Varanis decided he was trouble, but when she confronted him he invoked the Lightbringers’ call, stopping the argument before it happened. He said he had to send several of the party members out to deal with trouble that he felt still lingering in the area. Atop this hill, with Don’t Ask waking, he had enough power to send them to help.

Varanis armoured and woaded up. Lenta, who was already painted in green, did not have to do more than touch it up. Berra went out scouting physically, after Urdar ya-Mugrim said that the physical world was likely to be more dangerous. Berra wanted to be alone because she was a scout.¹And because she was GMing. She melted into the night.²A dead waste of a Critical Hide.

They gathered in the spirit world, where Varanis was a whirlwind, Lenta became a Snake Daughter, and Mellia was wrapped in a moth-wing cloak. Together, the three of them went looking for the problem.

They found the problem relatively quickly. In the Spirit World it looked like large slabs of Ernalda’s flesh had been cut out and piled up to make a basic fort, with gates of meat and bone. Outside was a small, determined honey badger, walking around and ignoring them. They attacked the gates, which opened to the rage of a snake daughter and the shoving of several others. Within, they were attacked by dripping and pustulent spirits. Mellia was hurt by one, but Lenta crushed it within her scaled embrace, faster than Varanis tore apart the one she was facing.

The area was injured and as Mellia set to heal it, a honey badger aided her, tugging things physically. Lenta added to the spiritual attempt to break down the walls, and with Mellia, pushed them down and away. In the meantime, Varanis became distracted by an injured alynx, which she healed. She noticed the honey badger and nearly fought it, but when she started to form herself to do it, the thing turned out to be a representation of Berra. The alynx spirit took to following Varanis about.

Returning to the mountain was tricky, and Varanis and her new friend got lost and brought everyone else with them. The pair ended up chasing a flock of cloud sheep, with Mellia and Lenta trying to find a way back. Eventually, Mellia spotted a river of swords, which she persuaded people to follow uphill, and so finally they made their way back. It seemed that Berra was also the river of swords, sent out by Urdar the shaman to bring people back. She seemed perplexed by that.

They arrived back to where Urdar awaited them. Upon learning that he is ancient and therefore probably not someone to hate despite his people later killing her father, Varanis agreed to learn how to bind the alynx to her properly as an allied spirit. Thus it was that the sometimes impulsive and flighty Vingan ended up with a kitten called Dezar in her sword and in her head.³What could possibly go wrong? Berra reported about the physical parts of the scouting – there was a broo camp and an altar, which was now freed of horror, and she had made safe most of the traps around the area.

Mellia could tell that she had been affected by the disease that the broo-summoned spirits had both carried and represented, and while she and Maalira could both do things to help, they could not cure her. The group made plans to go back to the Nunnery.

• 1
  And because she was GMing.
• 2
  A dead waste of a Critical Hide.
• 3
  What could possibly go wrong?