Session 38 - Fish Out of Water

General Summary

We’re in Iroa! Being back on land is a huge drag, I hate gravity all my homies hate gravity. We’re in the temple of Thalakyma, where the Tidecaller leaves us to go find Pearl (he’ll keep us updated). We’re going to set up a trade deal for initial building materials and enough to build a ship so we can trade ourselves. Kestor yells at all the opportunistic bards trying to get attached to a hero group, guiding the group through on their way to Herokratis Ussat. Kestor buys 50gp worth of writing supplies on the way! Ussat is with Iros in the theater, so we go find him there. There’s a big line outside the theater, people are bringing designs for a new fleet with the purpose of withstanding a kraken, but Iros is dismissing them out of hand if they aren’t guaranteed kraken-proof. Her name is Auge.
We convince her to show us her designs, we have sidero trees that could create such a vessel! Ionessa identifies that her designs actually kind of rule, there’s a lot of redundancy built into the trireme design that would prevent it from sinking. Aesthetically it needs some work. We agree to help her give her pitch again with the benefit of the sidero trees, we drop Iros’ name and message him and he lets us in. We pitch him sidero trees, he’s never heard of them.
Neo offers his staff to demonstrate how tough the material is, it sounds almost like a tuning fork when he strikes it with his knee. He can’t break it, so he likes the idea! There’s definitely a war coming up, a for realsies conflict, he has probably been in contact with Parmenion. We even get up-front payment for the ship, which we can use to make sure the ship has been made. We agree to the deal, we’ll be paid in platinum and in raw materials for the town. We also have an open invitation to his manor at any time if we want to eat, drink, and be merry.
Ussat originally quotes us a 10% markup for transportation of the goods, but Kestor talks him down to 5%. After the deductions for the materials, we will be receiving ~28,000pp aka 280,000gp. The materials and transport comes to about 20,000gp, deducted from 300k. Kovu counts the platinum. There are 28,293pp, 7 gold pieces, 5 silver pieces.
We pay Auge 100,000gp for her share of the wages and all the money she’ll need to actually make the ship. We’ll need to hire 40-50 laborers for construction as well, so we hire em! Ionessa plans to use some of the money to purchase valuable goods to make sure our money is working for us! It all goes rather swimmingly, and we decide to go talk to Iros at his manor that night to see if we can get some information about this upcoming conflict. Kestor feels a little responsible for spurring Parmenion into thinking about war, and what we plan to do in Vas could create the perfect circumstances for an invasion in the power vacuum that follows. We want to avert war!
At the party, Ionessa looks into Castle Fidigos, Xanthos looks into Vas, and Neo looks into whether anyone matching the description of his people has been spotted nearby. Zenodoria is paying adventurers to clear out incredibly dangerous beasts from a cave near Castle Fidigos. It’s very good pay but not everyone comes back. Xanthos gets really drunk and somewhere along the line Ionessa goads an adventurer called Irene into arm wrestling Xanthos. They make a bet that if she wins, she gets Xanthos’ armor. If he wins, he gets to see her missive from Zenodoria. He wins despite being incredibly drunk!
Neo learns of a location in Vas that was having trouble with fires, a group of nomads came by to help them regrow the orchards. This took place in Prodendros! The cult of Fytanke may well be there. Kestor talks to Iros and tells him the story of what the party did beneath the waves, fighting the tentacled creatures and their tadpoles, but leaving out information about the dragon. Iros has seen this crust before, merrow in the Thalyn strait. He thought that they were just strange merrow, he didn’t know the full picture.
Kestor tries to make it clear that the moral of this story is that once again fighting each other and weakening ourselves is going to get us all killed by the rot. Iros believes that conflict makes stronger soldiers, he wants people like the Fire Eater who can carve through entire armies (kinda worrying). Kestor tries to convince him of his point of view, but they settle on fighting the right battles is the best way to go - grow through conflict, but conflict that does not doom us. That said, Iros isn’t the guy Kestor needs to convince. The warmongers in Vas, the leaders in Rheo too focussed on Vas to think about themselves, and Parmenion plotting to take advantage whichever way the wind turns.
Iros spoke with Parmenion, who said he had met with the Lion of Rheo and discussed things, and that Iros should be ready for conflict. The Lion wishes to offer things to Parmenion, Iros guesses they discussed removing Parmenion’s banishment from Rheo, something Parmenion is particular sore about it. Is that enough of a motivation for him though? Wouldn’t he want to seek retribution on the people who banished him? It’s not really getting out of Rheo’s shadow if he just goes and assimilates into their society again. Iros and Kestor return to the party, and eventually we all leave.
Ionessa speaks with Irene, the missive she has is incredibly fancy. It was left for them in their rooms, like something was watching them and delivered the missive. “The adventuring party of X has their presence formally requested by Demarchos Zenodoria at the earliest convenience, the adventuring party can report to Castle Fidigos. There is a delve of exquisite danger but also a possible reward. More information available at Castle Fidigos should the offer be accepted.” Anyone who comes back comes back loaded. There was a scarred minotaur with a cool sword who said his party had gone out to an island and killed a big monster and when they came back they got a whole bunch of stuff. He said he wasn’t allowed to say more than that, no specifics. Zenodoria used magic to ensure their silence. Ionessa tries to convince Irene not to take on this job, but doesn’t have a lot of work.
The next morning, everyone is hungover. We meet the other adventurers who are all doomed to die tragically in Castle Fidigos, they cannot be swayed from their mission. One of them, Iobates. Kestor asks if he can contact them via sending, but apparently that’s not allowed because Zenodoria casts spells to make sure nobody talks about her domain. The missive they received was on parchment that appeared to be made from the night sky itself! But they won’t show it to Kestor, what the heck.
Kestor takes everyone to his room to speak his mad conspiracy theories. He talks about Iros’ information and about Tegissa using the rot for her own purposes. Ionessa corrects him and says that Tegissa still got corrupted by that power, even if she did not get completely controlled by it. Kestor states that this information has given him some hope, if the rot can be overcome without burning everyone alive, then maybe there’s a way to save everyone. Indeed, there may be hope for him personally given his contact with the play. Ionessa adds that there’s hope because we’re standing together, getting things out in the open, especially powerful against our enemy that hides in the shadows and infects hidden places in the world.
Neo tells us that he heard of the Fytanke cultists in Prodendros helping the area regrow. He believes they are moving east, so they may reach Sideris eventually. He doesn’t know how they would react to hearing from him, they may already be looking for him. He doesn’t think they would want to hurt him, but he was wrong about them before. He offers to reach out to them and tell them they can find him in Sideris, but he’ll need to think about the wording first.
Xanthos gets in trouble talking about how had he lost the arm wrestling competition, that he might have attacked Irene to keep his armor. This disturbs Ionessa considerably, she doesn’t want to be responsible for his violence behavior, and also he should honor his promises and bets! Xanthos feels he should be judged for his actions, not his thoughts. He is capable of self-restraint.
Zenodoria is pretty spooky! The stuff happening on Castle Fidigos is suspicious as hell, people go there in search of treasure and some claim that they survived and made it rich but we never see their full group and also there’s no way to confirm their story because they’re magically compelled to be vague!? We’re pretty sure that nobody is actually making it out alive, or that survivors are being magically compelled to lie so there’s no way to be sure. While we’re talking, Ionessa spots a missive that has appeared on Kestor’s pillow. She tries to hide it from them but unfortunately we spot it and Kestor asks to read it. It reads thusly, then prompts a wisdom save.
“To the Heroic Company of Kestor, Ionessa, Xanthos, Neo, Ophia, and Kovu. This parchment represents and consists of a formal summons to Castle Fidigos on behalf of Dimarchos Zenodoria of House Fidigos. Word of your actions and pursuits has reached the Dimarchos, and your cooperation with and elucidation of the Dimarchos will be richly rewarded. Bring this missive to Castle Fidigos, as arrival without the missive is ill-advised. It would be in the best interest of the Heroic Company and their interests to accept the summons forthwith, and failure to do so would be deemed by the Dimarchos as an unwise and unacceptable course of action. This missive cordially received from the desk of the Dimarchos Zenodoria.”
Kestor gets charmed by the scroll and tries his best to convince everyone to go to Castle Fidigos, but eventually the charm is dispelled by Neo. Ionessa collects two other scrolls left in our rooms. Kestor burns his scroll, and it acts strangely, like the black parchment is sucking in the flame and ends up billowing horrid black smoke out from it until it is destroyed. This probably means all the other adventurers are charmed as well! We get on the ship, we can use the time aboard to save them. We cure the cleric first, and he’s able to dispel the rest of his party! They agree not to go to the Castle after all.
Kestor sings a song!
The end.

Report Date

31 Jul 2023