3 The Past & The Festival: A Side Story

General Summary

The party arrives at Balgard once again. But this time, instead of the ghost town with bodies around, it's full of life and people. A clockwork tour guide tells them of a new wizard in town, whose tower is under construction. As they go towards the tower, they go past the Quells' magic shop and find Trarick and Tradysa Quell, not dead, loading up a wagon that they say they're taking to the Makers' Festival just outside town. The party then changes course to head towards the festival. On the way there, they see a young boy, Thiol Alkene trying to get a donkey to carry a ridiculously loaded cart. Wylandriah stands nearby and casts a spell on the donkey to make the cart-carrying easier, and the party learns that she and her intern, Thiol, are setting up their booth at the Makers' Festival as well. Wylandriah doesn't seem to recognize them, but says she's interested in trying to figure things out with them if they visit her booth at the festival. She tells Thiol to go have fun with these people and she'll set up the tent herself. There are a few games - underwater basket weaving, sheep shearing, rug roll racing, hat decorating, and hot sauce tasting, where Menti bravely tries the level 10 hottest sauce first but it doesn't work out very well for him. While entering the festival, the party runs into Justus, high off his ass and convinced he's on a trip right now, while some guards try to calm him down, saying he should just spend the day in the drunk tank to come down from whatever he's on. The party talks him out of it. They then visit the booth of the Quells, and end up asking them where their kid is (they haven't had a kid they say) and telling them that they're going to die and need to get out of here (they don't take kindly to this). Eventually guards are called, and Trarick decides this is a great time to show off his invention of clockwork guardians to the guards (hoping for a contract with the city). Rokandi gets KO'd and carted off after threatening to kill a guard and trying to solo them. Soon after, there's another commotion. A wizardy-looking dude is starting shit and yelling at the guards about how he doesn't belong here. The party convinces the guards to take this guy, Ulenor, to Wylandriah's tent with them instead of straight to jail. They go there and talk with Ulenor and Wylandriah, and Solana gives Ulenor some advice, though he continues to be uncooperative and say someone needs to pay for this great injustice. They work with Wylandriah to get both Ulenor and Rokandi sent to the Church of Aki instead of jail, since they have a interplanar problem rather than just being lawbreakers. Afterward they go to the church where Solana and Justus talk about being weirded out by churches, and Rokandi talks about his PTSD.

Report Date

23 Mar 2021

Primary Location

Balgard