EooD Session 4: The Fine Art of Dealmaking
General Summary
10/1/900
The session started on a chilly fall day at Scherazad Academy in the Rakkan city of Rel-Odar. Students filled Tashtego's, the popular cafe and coffee shop on the edge of campus, studying for midterms and trying out the store's new seasonal ciders. Two weeks had passed since nearly every acitve-duty member of the adventuring party Rakka's Heroes was killed in a brutal attack at sea, and the organization's director arranged a meeting here with the next generation of adventurers. After the death of Rakka's favorite son Mickal Irakosk, Director Astara Hadad was willing to expand the application pool and recruit fighters from more questionable backgrounds to serve in the nation's fledgling adventuring group. Eight active-duty members had died in just two months, and she vowed to avoid future massacres from ravaging her party.
Over the course of the afternoon the new adventurers began trickling into the cafe, ordering a variety of drinks and liquors. Cig showed up first, scouting out the building and taking a seat at the bar before ordering a glass of Joseph Daniels. Kipp Vala and Damon Kovel showed up a few minutes later, making awkward small talk about their homeland of Myltev. They quickly realized that they came from two very different versions of Myltev, and Kipp took a seat at the bar near Cig while Damon kicked his feet up on a nearby table. Damon took some Joseph as well, Kipp refused to pay for a drink. The Director was nowhere to be seen.
Several minutes passed before a fairy walked through the doors and flew up to the counter to lecture the barista on the importance of natural foods and beverages. A white-haired tiefling showed up a few minutes later, stealing drinks from the bar before playing music for the bored students and throwing up in the alley outside. Kirby, the tiefling performer, looked around at the other odd characters in the cafe and asked when the meeting would start. Finally, more than half an hour after Cig first showed, Director Astara walked into Tashtego's with a winged tiefling who looked bored and tired. Astara ordered an espresso, Zherxik the winged tiefling ordered his with a shot of Joseph thrown in.
Once the party was assembled around the cafe's bar, Director Astara explained the gravity of the situation and their responsibilities as adventurers for Rakka's Heroes. She told the party about the eight adventurers who had died in the past few weeks, explaining how this new batch of fighters were chosen for their sturdiness in the face of danger. She handed out dossiers on previous RH adventurers, explaining how earlier party members were investigating a pack of gnolls north of Qilthani as well as a mysterious aasimar woman named Hedera traveling west towards Rel-Kadrar. The party would be allowed to pursue whichever mission they deemed most important, but in return the party would have to stay in frequent communication with the Director. She placed a strange disc-shaped device on the bar with strange markings along its edges and a primitive microphone in its center. Damon pocketed the item and went outside to talk to a skull he kept inside his pack.
Once the party agreed to Director Astara's expectations, they headed over to Scherazad Academy's Requisitions Building to stock up on weapons and supplies. Everybody in the group perked up at the sound of 400GP for clearing out a pack of gnolls, so they decided to get everything they'd need to get the job done while weapons were free. A young student named Jezebeth Rahal ran the office near the center of campus, writing down the requests from every party member before wandering through the vast rows of equipment for the next half-hour. In the meantime Damon harassed students walking through the campus courtyard about the horrors of war, and Kirby tried flirting with a student nearly ten years younger than him. Zherxik ignored the rest of the party and picked up 30 lbs worth of metal from the school's foundry, imagining a gun of terrible size and power to be assembled later. Finally, Cig walked out of the Requisitions Office with an armful of weapons and supplies: a light crossbow, a shortbow, a lance, a pack of thieves' tools, a ball of twine, and a pouch of ball-bearings. Sadly for Kipp, Jezebeth was unable to find any apples in the supply room.
The party debated whether they should head out to Qilthani that night or not, but Kirby raced over to the group saying he'd found a merchant who would escort them to the port city. A few minutes later Kirby introduced the group to Sniffles, a goblin merchant and employee at the kitchenware store Spit and Sparkle in Qilthani. The carriage was only large enough to fit a couple of people at any given time, but the party was simply relieved to travel in some kind of comfort.
By carriage it took about a week to make it from Rel-Odar to Qilthani, Zherxik spending most of the journey sleeping on a pile of crudely-designed pots and pans. Kipp and Damon were fine with walking, Cedar could fly, Kirby sat up front next to Sniffles, and Cig was small enough to find room squeezed between pieces of kitchenware in the back of the cart. Along the rocky trail into town the party came across a lone kenku, struggling to replace a broken wheel by the side of the road. Damon and Kirby walked over to investigate, but as they leaned in to help the kenku blew a whistle to summon four of his allies. The party had just walked into an ambush.
The fight took a bit of time to resolve, but Rakka's Heroes proved their worth by slaughtering every kenku in sight. Kirby cast 'Hideous Laughter' on the one that lured them away from the wagon, Damon chopped the head off another one with his projected echo fighter, Cig bashed one of the kenku's skulls in from the safety of the carriage, and Zherxik flew above the battlefield to blast several of the kenku into oblivion. Kipp and Cedar made a capable pair as Cedar distracted the kenku bandit leader while the stoic tiefling landed a few powerful blows, but she needed Cig's 'Lay On Hands' after a well-placed blow left her unconscious in the back of the wagon.
Surrounded by the corpses of five dead kenkus, the party set about to investigating the wagon left on the side of the road by the flightless bandits. Among several wooden barrels and crates Zherxik and Cedar found a leatherbound box, studded along the edges with a large latch bolting it shut. Cig unlatched the box in a matter of seconds with his thieves' tools, revealing several dozen books crammed into this leatherbound traveling bookcase. Zherxik picked up several tomes and skimmed through the incomprehensible writing until Cedar revealed that the books were written in Elven, indicating that the box possibly came from drow agents working for The Verschow in Rakka's wilderness. Most of the books discussed interesting subjects like wildlife in Rakka or the past century of Verschow political intrigue, but at first glance none of the books looked like they contained any useful information or power.
The party was just about to tell Sniffles to get the cart moving when Cedar came across a book with two blue-colored horns on its cover. Struggling to open the book and skim its pages, she quickly realized that this was a book giving advice on how to make deals with devils. A specific section of the book was highlighted and marked over with several notes in the margins, describing the kind of deals that would require contacting a devil from Malgebolge. Cedar became so engrossed in the book that she didn't notice when blue smoke starting circling around the chest and a devil covered in spiky scales stepped forth from the mist.
Telepathically, the devil asked Zherxik and Cedar what they'd be interested in negotiating for. Zherxik stepped back and moved over towards the carriage to make a getaway, Kirby already at the carriage's front ready to set the horses at a gallop. Kipp was resting atop the pots and pans, and Cig was staying low inside the carriage. Despite the hasty retreat, Cedar walked up to the devil and negotiated with him like a pro, convincing the devil to leave the party alone in return for a single soul. Which soul? Damon stepped forward and offered his own, on the condition that he'd be receiving some infernal powers in return. The devil looked amused by the offer, explaining to Cedar how in return for Damon's soul he just wanted the fighter to do nothing for five minutes. The devil would give a signal and the fighter would just have to stand there until the five minutes passed, and in return Damon would have access to power from the Nine Hells and his party would move towards Qilthani in peace. Damon shook on the deal, one of the devil's barbs poking him in the palm and causing a profuse amount of blood to fall onto the dirt path beneath their feet. The blood coalesced into a legible contract while the dirt turned into a rugged-looking parchment, which the devil pocketed before vanishing into the bluish mist with a bow to Cedar and Damon. The rest of the party were several hundred feet away after Kirby kicked the horses into high gear to escape the devil's bargain.
It took Cedar and Damon a bit of time to catch up with the rest of the party, but Damon had made no friends by striking a literal deal with a devil. The arm he used to shake hands with the devil radiated energy from a bluish tattoo, and his glaive rippled with magic energy after the deal was sealed. Zherxik and Kirby warned Damon that they'd be reporting his ass to Mayor Proserpine Hafiz in Qilthani, but Damon didn't seem to care.
10/2/900
The party finally arrived at the port city of Qilthani, immediately splitting ways into groups of three. Cedar, Damon, and Kipp went to The Laughing Gnoll for drinks while Cig, Kirby, and Zherxik trekked over to City Hall to meet with the mayor about Damon's deal with the devil. Cedar lectured Decarabia Goldeneye on the importance of carrying more natural drinks and foods while Damon and Kipp had an intense conversation about the implications of Damon's deal with the devil. Refusing to go into details, Kipp warned Damon that his deal would have far more implications than he could ever fathom. Damon kept his nonchalant attitude during the conversation, explaining to Kipp that he knew what he was getting into.
Meanwhile Cig and the others were having glasses of Joseph with Mayor Proserpine about Damon's recent deal with the devil. Proserpine reiterated her position that the well-dressed gnolls outside Qilthani were her greatest concern, especially as they started to raid nearby farms and villages for livestock and bodies to bet in their sick poker games. If the party was so concerned about this supposed infernal contract, then Proserpine would have her secretary Naamah host a trial to hear the party's testimony against Damon. Kirby tried to convince the mayor to pay them more for the gnoll contract, but she was adamant that the reward was still 400GP.
Later the party reunited at the Laughing Gnoll to order drinks and plan out their attack on the gnolls north of town. Kirby bought a terrible bottle of wine from Decarabia (Elflands, 897 vintage), but with a quick 'Prestidigitation' he spruced it up into a sweet glass of wine which he planned on giving to a tavern patron in exchange for intel on the gnolls outside of town. Cig and Kirby found a kenku in a corner of a tavern sipping from a glass of whiskey, but after tasting the wine the kenku opened up about the viciousness and peculiarity of the gnolls. They dressed in red and blue suits, spoke passing Common, and they had killed at least three members of Rakka's Heroes a few weeks earlier. Their pack were based somewhere over near the Galban River, and anybody foolish enough to pursue them was asking for a death sentence. Pleased with the intel gained, Kirby started flirting with a woman on a date at a nearby booth.
Character(s) interacted with
- Astara Hadad - Director of Rakka's Heroes
- Jezebeth Rahal - student at Scherazad Academy tasked with overseeing the campus' requisitions office
- Sniffles - Goblin merchant and employee at Spit and Sparkle in Qilthani
- Naamah - Mayor Proserpine's secretary at city hall
- Proserpine Hafiz - Mayor of Qilthani
- Decarabia Goldeneye - owner of The Laughing Gnoll, a popular tavern for travelers in downtown Qilthani
- Guang Chirp - a kenku 'sailor' who Cig and Kirby sweet-talked for info on the gnolls outside of town
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