Session 40 - The Burned Lands

General Summary

We’re tying up some loose ends in Cherianto. Ionessa and Kestor go shopping for looms (not spinning wheels) and livestock, and we put out advertisements for laborer positions. Kestor has a line on some antique looms that might be from a similar era to Rhene, but he’ll have to come back at night. Ionessa teaches Kestor to be positive and not assume the worst thing is going to happen at all times. Next we go buy some chickens and goats! They seem happy and healthy, but the hens hate another chicken called Fred who is very snooty apparently. We purchase 20 hens, 1 rooster, 2 nanny goats, and 1 billy goat.
Xanthos looks into his ring to see if he can learn more about the curse but nobody really knows about it. He asks Neo about his family and whether they will take issue with him being kind of a vampire, but Neo thinks they’ll be forgiving because he wants to cure himself. Neo would vouch for him anyway, though he’s a little worried about his family’s attitude in general. Plenty of laborers gather for the position, we hire a whole lot of them. We now have 10 farmers and 40 laborers for Sideris total, which will cost us 50gp for every day they are working.
We go to the loom sale, there is a suitable one on offer and we travel to their home to purchase it. On the way, a Vassic soldier on horseback races into the city. Ionessa and Xanthos go after him to hear the deal. The owners of the loom are a pair of humans, they don’t appear to be using it. It’s old, not quite the right era but that would be hard to come by anyway. He purchases it and then he and Neo head after the others. Meanwhile, Ionessa and Xanthos catch up to the rider at King Bion’s manor. A band of fire cultists have been contained by Alettes, a soldier, to the north; they don’t know how long they can be kept there. We head out immediately after buying 3 horses!
We meet with Alettes at his camp, the cultists are down in an encampment in a ravine below. We are allowed to go down and speak to them without accompaniment, Xanthos passes himself off as a Vassic soldier by the name of Stavros. The group here is small, cut off from the main one. Neo recognizes Idomeneus, one of the leaders of his family. We also meet Pylaeus, Hyrtius, and Monima. Everyone seems pretty happy to see Neo. Some of the family fled into the woods when the soldiers arrived and haven’t been heard from since. We need to get them out of there before more soldiers arrive, but they haven’t been detained yet so maybe they don’t know for sure they’re Fytanke cultists?
We discuss our options. We decide to convince the soldiers to let us extrajudicially execute the adults and take the children back to Cherianto, taking the cultists to Vas would be too dangerous. Alettes agrees but has a couple of conditions. His men must be within earshot at all times, if they hear anything unusual they will come check, and the children must make it to Vas after all of this. We agree and head down, sneaking the family out with invisibility and pass without trace and digging graves to leave as evidence of them being dead (and disrespected).
We learn that the other group of cultists has been captured, we need to save them before they reach Vas. Some of the group also were lost on the way here from the west, Neo’s leader and mother figure included, taken by soldiers of King Kymenon who once ruled a kingdom to the west. Idomeneus thinks they have been led east to meet Neo, that he is supposed to help their family, which makes Neo a little uncomfortable. Neo tells them about Sideris, Idomeneus has been receiving divine signs that he should be going where the sidero trees are.
We think about where we should go, there are two groups that are both in danger in different directions. In the end, we decide to head west to find the larger group. Neo casts a sending to his leader, Ardere, asking for where to find her. She responds, they’re in a fortress to the north, a place of broken cycles atop a barren peak, untouched by fire. We decide to track that force from where the cultists were taken and find the fortress. We let the Evlogimenos know that they should depart without us and send the cultists here to Sideris, we tell him to talk to Helia and not go near Leos.
We head north! We reach the burned lands, there is still ash after all this time, fewer critters are around probably because of the vampires. We enter into a more burned, barren land where soldiers held the line and died fighting the Fire-Eater, and where all the natural world has been incinerated. We take some time to contemplate the damage here and swear to find another way to defeat the rot. We take shelter in an old abandoned outpost and find two burned bodies, which is an upsetting sight for Kestor especially. We make plans to bury them in the morning, but find that one is actually a very new body smeared with ash, with armor hidden beneath its clothes.
Xanthos goes to inspect the body, its eyes fill with a foul light and it begins animating along with the sound of rattling bones from the rest of the building. Fight time! One of the undead claims this is his place, maybe where he died, he’ll defile it if he wants to. We take out most of the undead, but the big one knocks Kestor unconscious and takes him hostage. He wants revenge on the Fytanke cultists who burned him to death in that tower. He’s been killing cultists and King Kymenon’s forces when they come through because they’re not trying to fix anything, they left and didn’t protect anyone when the wild fire came, just hid and moved on.
Somehow this actually turns into us gaining an ally, the undead guy wants to go to the fortress and kill as many of Kymenon’s people as possible, so I guess we’ll just hang out with him? His name is Hiero the Unburied. Kestor gets revived! He’s not super thrilled about Hiero teaming up, but ultimately he manages to make peace with the guy, who then starts flying around the sky at mach speeds but in a non-threatening manner. I wonder whether Kestor passed through here on his way east, maybe he even met this guy in his life.
That night, Neo has a dream of endless dunes of ash, the final result of what some among his faith wish for the world. He sees Acheric who says, “well, is it worth it?” Neo says that if this was to save the world, he doesn’t see anything left that has been saved. “Then look more carefully.” Upon waking, he tells Ionessa of his vision. He doesn’t know why he’s seeing him, if it’s really Acheric or maybe Fytanke speaking through his visage. He’s concerned that he may be straying and falling out of Fytanke’s favor. He’s also concerned about Hiero, he’s outside of the cycle, but we are helping him to return to it.
Neo is very conscious of his family seeing him as a savior and putting him on such a high pedestal. Now is not a time for him to be wrong or to waver, there is a lot of pressure on him. But we’re all on this together! We’ll rescue his family first and then we can talk about all of that. Ionessa recommends telling the Fire Eater to get lost next time he shows up!
The end.

Notes

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Report Date

14 Aug 2023