Session 35 - The Cure for the Common Rot

General Summary

It’s the next day! Ionessa goes to arrange a writing lesson for Kestor so that he can better understand their kelp language and also have a leg up in deciphering the Fathomkeeper’s code. Meanwhile, Neo goes to help out the family with wrangling the children for Maiana and Xanthos goes with him because he’s trying to stay out of trouble. Neo tells an enchanting story about Fytanke and fire burning down the trees and giving them new life. The kids are excited to hear about fire, trees, surface animals, and the concept of burning! This gives Maiana a break, and Ionessa asks if there are any lessons on the docket today. There’s no lesson planned for today because they’ll be working on the String of Wishes later in the day, a pre-wedding tradition where you write down your wishes and hopes for the happy couple. Ionessa convinces her to let us in on this writing though so we can learn better.
Ionessa goes to help her parents, they have noticed that Xanthos looks a little lost. She goes to request his help with some chores so that he stops being a LOUT! As they go to move things from a cart, they find Celandia and Akatios doing the same. Akatios is putting himself forward and helping out without even needing someone to come get him. Celandia is concerned to hear that something bad was happening at the temple, but Akatios is thankful the merrow have been combated, in fact there hasn’t been an attack since we did that!
Celandia has a bit of a freakout about the merrow and both Ionessa and Xanthos fail to calm her down, she leaves and rejects both Akatios and Xanthos’ offers to accompany her, though Xanthos offering scores him some points. He looks around for someone to help out and goes to talk with Thrysos and Akatios. They offer to have Gelon, the other groom, take him hunting. Gelon seems overwhelmed by the attention he’s receiving as someone who’s about to become part of the family. They go hunting!
Kestor hangs back and reads the information on the southern continent that he got from the library. It is from a Triton explorer called Ixerias written around a decade ago detailing the nearby waters and sealife as well as some cultural information. There aren’t a lot of subaquatic settlements near the southern continent and lots of superstition about it, stories about horrible fates befalling people who take things from shipwrecks from that continent (particularly gold coins?) On the continent itself there are large buildings that seem to contain entire towns, great castles made of stone. The people are less friendly, mandatory golden mask culture, robes, lots of gold used in their construction of buildings. Culture of necromancy, the dead doing menial labor, and in a future book he plans to return and do a better dive into the culture.
Xanthos is hunting with Gelon and manages to spear a tuna! They talk about who joins which family, Gelon is a little less close with his clan so he’s okay joining Thrysos’. Celandia comes back and Ionessa hangs out with her, and later we get to the String of Wishes, giving an opportunity to learn the language and give the grooms our blessings. Ionessa helps Xanthos to give his sentiments, and the two of them are harassed by Celandia over getting married and Akatios being single and all sorts of family pressure. Ionessa makes it clear she’s not getting back together with him, and that she’s seeing someone else!
Xanthos has been outed as an Ionessa dater! Celandia thinks this is the end of the world, he’s a filthy violent orphan and she hates him! She’s quite insulting and the two of them leave to give the parents space to argue. Kestor and Neo do a pretty good job writing their wishes, Neo Fytanke sentiments about rebirth and tries to avoid fire and baby talk. Kestor tricks Maiana into helping him interpret the cipher by using words from the coded knots in his sentiments to the couple. Kestor learns that the syllables in the code might be the key, and that it might actually be meshing with another language that he does not speak!
We reconvene and Xanthos passes on the difficulties with Ionessa’s parents. She needs a bit of a break from things, Kestor reveals his findings and together they work out that he’ll need to prepare tongues to understand the syllables as the code is spoken rather than written. It’s not any language that Ionessa speaks (it’s definitely deep speech). In the meantime, Ionessa says that usually people will play games or sports when the family is together, so we arrange a game of Koxilima (pronounced koh-HEE-lee-mah), which is kind of like rugby/basketball with a shell filled with metal to make it heavier. You have to bring it to the other end of the field and put it in a basket while the other team tries to stop you. It’s too heavy to throw, so you can pass it to someone below you or someone can swim up to you and grab it. If you grab someone for long enough by wrapping around them and stopping them from passing the shell, possession goes to the enemy team.
We play five-aside, we’re all on the same team except for Xanthos who is swapped out for Thyrsos due to random picks. Ionessa, Xanthos, and Ophia all do pretty well! In the end Xanthos’ team wins. Halina challenges Ionessa to a 1v1 and Ionessa wins. During the bout, Akatios comes over and talks to us. Kestor is left to talk to him without interruption, which means that he starts talking about how Ionessa is dating Xanthos and curses and all kinds of strange topics. He seems surprised that she’s dating and is upset by that news, he was clearly looking to get back together with her. He leaves and Kestor tells Ionessa that he did a bad, she heads after Akatios to console him.
Akatios is unnerved by Kestor and by the news that Ionessa is dating someone else. She tells him she’s sorry, a lot has changed in her life since she left Oiakis. She did miss him, but she had to be a totally different person on the surface and now things can’t go back to the way they were. He wishes he could be there for her and help her with the dangers she’s facing, but she can’t stay here, there are things she needs to do. There is also some resentment there from when her family turned their backs on her when she was banished, and now they’re just happy things have been settled with the elders. Akatios reveals that her parents actually got into a pretty huge fight when she was banished. She’ll need to talk to them about that, and she leaves while crying ;w;
Kovu asks her what’s going on. There’s a lot going on! Her family abandoned her and her life hasn’t been the same since. Kovu tells her that she’s his family and he would never ask her to leave, and they hug! She asks him if he remembers his father, thinking about him makes him uneasy, especially since returning to the water. The smell on the merrow reminds him of his father. He needs help, but neither of them are exactly looking forward to seeing him again. Kovu wants to investigate further.
The next morning, Kestor leaves a little sorry shell with a sad mustache man painted on it, and the next morning we convene to break this code. Kestor prepares the tongues spell and uses it to understand the syllables in the coded language, which speak thusly: A process is beginning, soon they will be able to begin inducting others, there is some risk of interlopers but they believe it is being taken care of. They had discovered some sort of prize that would be delivered soon. She wrote this and did not remember what she was writing, suggesting these words were put in her head to transcribe.
Ionessa brings up wanting to help Kovu’s father, he’s trapped and crusty. This comes with all kinds of complications, including the possibility of getting banished and not actually knowing how we would cleanse a dragon of the tadpole. We decide we need to look into a bunch of stuff. Find out how to cleanse the tadpoles, find out if Idressi has been infected, and maybe look into the matter of dreams that the tentacle guys are using to communicate with devotees.
We go ask the clerics who were involved with cleansing the Fathomkeeper and Idressi what they did and what they diagnosed them with. They performed rites to remove curses and ailments, the one that worked was a powerful abjuration spell that cleansed the influence of whatever was infecting the Fathomkeeper’s mind, greater restoration. They did not notice any issues with Idressi, and didn’t notice any tadpoles. We deduce that greater restoration wouldn’t really do the job, we’d need some way to kill the tadpole itself because it is a creature. Theoretically something like Neo’s radiance of the dawn ability could do the job. Neo is reminded of Helia talking about burning away the rot, and that his fire from Fytanke was actually designed to do this exactly. This is what Fytanke was fighting, and this is what radiance of the dawn is for.
We find the Fathomkeeper and perform the rite on her to ensure there is no lingering infection. She’s clean! She has been researching how the creatures escape into dreams but has not been having a lot of luck, maybe we can look into that on the surface. The only mythological discussion of dreams she’s aware of involves Thalakyma observing a trespass into her domain by Nypoilita and Kairemos over the matter of dreams. She felt dreams were her domain, and when people beneath the waves dreamed they traveled somewhere beyond her reach and that surface gods were able to reach them. It is unclear whether this resulted in a compromise or whether Thalakyma was powerless to exert her will on this topic. The Fathomkeeper believes that dreams are beyond Thalakyma’s domain.
Nypoilita is the god of rest and shepherds people into dreams, but she is not the god of dreams and she does not control the dreams themselves. So who does!? We may need to seek out Kairemos’ aid and the cult that worships them, as they may have some more understanding of this rot from the previous cycle. We also need to be super careful approaching this dragon, he’s HUGE and has the potential to kill everyone if he’s freed. Xanthos feels like maybe we should give him a chance, has he really done anything bad yet? Ionessa is willing to do the same but thinks it’s likely a good idea he remains trapped.
Neo brings up his trial with Ektikori when he saw the Fire Eater. Someone was approaching in the vision, and Neo’s first instinct was to side with him against whatever was there. He finds it disturbing that he might side with people like him in the future. He expected the Fire Eater to be a raving madman who could never possibly convince Neo of his agenda, but we tell him that we trust his judgment and that the fact he is worried about falling prey to such people shows a strength of character. We have faith in Neo!
We set out to find Idressi. Xanthos promises to be a good boy.
The end!

Notes

(⊙_⊙)

Report Date

10 Jul 2023