Paid Disrespects

Discovery, Exploration

Myska's Menagerie return to the Timberbank to bring Mr. Tengral to greater aid to find the horror enhanced.

With plenty of information gain, Myska's Menagerie set their attention on two goals: Mount Fohkala and the Timberbank. Mount Fohkala was the primary goal in hopes to acquire a Temperance Shard left their long ago before Scizzord could get it. They would divert to the Timberbank first to attempt to give aid to Crush's father beforehand. Crush had untapped a greater healing power than he had ever had before and wished to attempt to use it. If not that, they could at least bring him back to Bactran to get help from the Jatri'nin Hastanesi, the hospital Chupta had conned his mother into. The party determined to rest before heading out to ensure they were fully prepared should Scizzord return. And by fully prepared, I mean Chupta got distracted with an aggressive side project.
  On the look out for invisible Scrying sensors, he witnesses a thief invisibly stealing from a shop. The smuggler teleported behind the man, spooked him, sent him running down an allyway and then magically conjured a bunch of bear-traps from his ring to obliterate the thief. Chupta then strong armed the man back to the Goznis to get him set up in the guilded business to make money off of the arcanist tricksters early jobs.
  The next handful of days we a slow flight back to the Timberbank under which Chupta slowly taught Astrid the beginning specifics of the airship's technicalities. Crush and Millie took care of some magical training and secretarial work on their upkeep. Millie also fixed his ear problem. Approaching the Timberbank, the initial day of travel overtop was fine. Later travels near the destination showed dead trees that finally continued into a horrid replica of the Pyrewood Mounds corruption all around Crush's old home.
  Lowering into the hermitage, an absolute horror awaited the party. In place of the cottage was a slimy husk of a giant turtle hollowed out like a home. The agape mouth was the door and the eyesockets formed windows. On a rock out front where Crush's father used to sit was a small, rubber replica of the cottage like a doll house. It warped and bent, hobbling off the stone like an animated piece of furniture and cracked. The panneling creaked and water sprung from the windows as if a pipe had burst. The abhorent entity snapped a leg and careened to the side spilling open. Crush attempted to break the unnatural effect but failed to do so. Astrid attempted to break any active enchantment on the two but found no continuous effect there. Millie moved up once to break the supernatural curse as he done so on his own ears and on Astrid's bloating and failed despite putting a bit of effort in. The gnome tried a second time with everything he had, both skill as well as effort and luck. He managed to break the austere contorsion from reality and snapped the house back to house and the tortle back to tortle.
  The house snapped and crumbled in disrepair on the return. Mr. Tengral was worse. His limbs were stripped of most tissues, his plastron was basically cartilage, he was barely alive and would not be so for much longer. Despite this, Crush pushed on and called on the greatest magic available to him to use his spores to regrow his father's flesh itself. The regeneration would be slow but it would not only save him but fix the irrepairable damage from last time along with this.
  Investigating the area, the companions found the core area dotted with deep speech glyphs of the alphasyllabic portions of the name Xanicksaroon. These plate-and-tray sized sigils were emblazoned into ground and wood in mutated matter. A few inches thick, the very substance of the earth or floor was transmuted into a rubber, semistiff substance like molding them out of silicone. They seemed to be the core of how Scizzord had brought the Pyrewood's corruption aesthetic to the Timberbank. After long discourse, it became decided that this place should be forsaken and burned to the ground. With the the snow blanketing the surroundings, they would burn the place down and let it spread as far nature (or it's servants) would let it.
  Conversations with Mr. Tengral made it known that he would rather not be inside urban walls and did not wish to delay the heroes quest. While weak and no where near what Crush now was, he would glady stay aboard the vessel to lend a healing hand should it be necessary. With no one's objection, the companions turned their flight south west towards Mount Fohkala.