Session 20220310 Report
General Summary
Marsday 10 Resplendent Wood 768, Calendar
Yacht sails north through the bay, reaching a fishing village Copper Scorpion thinks is in the right area. Marag-ang buys ingredients to cast a summon animal ritual for a fur seal while Mathias Stormcrow questions the locals in the guise of looking for cheap medicines. An old man is repairing nets on the shore and is the best source of information, mentions that a sure sign of danger in the bay is an area that cormorants avoid, using his supernatural vision Stormcrow spotted that some of the cormorants he can see appear slightly silvery.
The fur seal whose name begins with a G is summoned and bound using Spirit-Tied Pet, adding what he knows to what they already have the characters think they know where to search. Heading out into the bay they find a small low lying island that somehow contains an area that cannot see through (mostly "coincidental" foam sprays from the waves whenever they look that way), and the weird cormorants they saw earlier appear and disappear from view as they fly over the island.
Deciding they might be facing ghosts they take the difficult decision to sacrifice Rudolph the Gull so that Copper Scorpion can wield Gravesplitter. Leaving the crew on the yacht just offshore they head inland, when they pass through the edge of the visibility effect they see the Foam-Shrouded Palace in front of them, a roughly three storey building with walls apparently made of foaming sea water that cannot be seen through and is strong as stone. Searching around it the only possible way in they find is a small circular tower on the roof that looks like a dove-cote but sized for the strange ghost cormorants. Marag jumps up and determines that the holes do go all the way through the structure so there must be access to the Manse proper inside it. As he gets too close one of the birds launches itself at him, but he not only avoids its attack he manages to catch and restrain it, at which point they begin a dialogue. Convincing the perhaps not too bright supernatural cormorant that they are there to see what happened to "their friend" Melisandre and get the stuff she left for them the birds escort the three Solars inside (at least partially so they can keep an eye on them in case they were lying).
The top floor is small rooms in which any furnishings have long gone to dust, the middle has the hearthstone-room, an internal room with stone walls and thick wooden doors (most of the others have always been empty doorways), warned by his ability to sense danger Mathias avoids a trap that causes an intense flash of heat in the room (from a glass sphere that stored it before breaking open) that burns out the doors but does not injure any of the characters. The only item remaining in the room is the hearthstone (a fist sized drop of water in stasis) which has dropped onto the floor from whatever it was resting on before the flames. Worried it might be required to maintain the stability of the Manse Mathias leaves it alone. One of the other rooms coming off this one is the "Mistress Bedroom" which remains intact right down to fresh silk sheets (and some recreational shackles) on the huge bed. Downstairs is a large dining room with a table set for 20. In each room a channel of water in the floor flows in and out. In a basement lies a stone coffin surrounded by kneeling stick figure mannequins.
The coffin
In the semi-mummified body’s left hand is a woman-high staff of white jade, gnarled and sweeping by turns, in her right is the decayed remains of a bow for playing a stringed instrument. At her feet lies the skeleton of a large dog, around its neck a collar the size of a bracelet (that could never have fit over the throat in life) made of faintly sparkling starmetal. Melisandre (if that is truly who is entombed here) is lying on a brilliantly coloured translucent aquamarine cloak unaffected by the ravages of time. Hooked through the remnants of her belt are a pair of sturdy long gloves of red lizard skin, set with plates of red jade and orichalcum wire, which Copper Scorpion expresses a desire to possess through a series of undignified meeping sounds.