This recap will be slightly abbreviated, as your beloved DM procrastinated writing it a little longer than memory prefers.
This session marks something of a homecoming--of a long-term variety for
Amanita Guttata and a short-term variety for
Khashayar Entezami, the former having been raised here but not returned in several years and the latter having found refuge here after leaving their adventuring party some months ago.
The party entered
The Endeavour, sprawling city of trees and tales, through the region of buds known for food, drink, baking, cooking, brewmaking, and all things yummy in your tummy.
Kitanya Evermoon immediately got stunlocked like a Sim receiving and cancelling commands over and over, spinning in a dizzying circle at all of the many,
many options for a cooking connoisseur. Eventually she was able to break free of her decision paralysis and sample many varieties of treats, ultimately ending up at a fellow Satyr devoting himself to the art of creating the perfect cookie. He and Kitanya never traded names but certainly traded any number of passionate exchanges about testing this ingredient or that, experimenting with different cooking methods and techniques. Our beloved bimbo walked away with a bag of miscellaneous cookies of all types for her time.
In the background, the audience watches
Amanita Guttata sneak off without a word, flying for parts unknown in their hometown.
Meanwhile,
L0L4 began sampling a tipple of as many kinds of alcohol as she could possibly be interested in, starting a small notebook "glassport" of the different items she tried and her thoughts on them. The budding brewmaster managed to hold her own despite imbibing 27 different drinks.
The other party members have a normal, sane amount of food and drink, sampling some yummies along the way.
Meanwhile, Amanita has zooped off to the Research quarter (the Bud Wiser, if you will) and returned to old haunts, specifically a library/research center perilously close to their parents' tree but, hey, it's got good books. There, Amanita reunites with Grizzfarb, an acerbic gnome librarian who somehow has always been very old to Amanita yet is no older than they remember. (On loan from Jackson's own campaign, thanks Jackson!)
Grizzfarb greets Amanita with the sort of grizzled warmth a tough old English teacher greets her favorite autistic queer come home for the holidays after graduation, if that isn't a solely-Salem-related analogy. All this to say, she gives Amanita a little shit but otherwise is helpful, kind, and glad to see the Owlin is all right. It seems, according to Grizzfarb, that folks in the Bud Wiser weren't actually sure whether Amanita was still alive or not. Oops.
Amanita requests a medley of topics, basically anything regarding necromancy or fungus. The research library they are visiting is beloved for the quality that makes it such an oddity; rather than being a library full of tomes you could find reproduced elsewhere, it is a collection of the works of people in this part of The Endeavour. Academic papers, treatises, speech transcripts, debate notes, symposium roundtables, capstone projects and graduation theses all find their way here--things that are new enough to not be published yet, oddball or absurd theories enough to not make it to publication, hot takes and controversial or conspiratorial rants that only the esoteric scholar would know contain a nugget of truth.
Grizzfarb delivers, rooting around with surprising alactrity in the large honeycomb walls of scrolls she tends to in order to find a few items to Amanita's specifications (which neither this author nor Jackson remembered to jot down but suffice to say they were of varying levels of "neat" and "wow" and "cool").
Amanita reads these for a while then, satisfied with their errant scholarship, returns to the Buds they'd left their buds at and finds them wrapping up meals and ready to find lodging for the night.
Khashayar Entezami shyly suggests a place back in the Nature-related Buds they'd been staying in, a well-known inn known as the Drifting Leaf.
The Drifting Leaf is tended to by one
Ann Naps in the Shade (known mostly to her patrons as simply Ann), a calico Tabaxi druid of some renown. Ann is widely regarded for her community activity and the strength of her necromantic ability (showcased by the Drifting Leaf itself, a tree suspended perfectly at a precise point in decomposition in order to be the perfect location and vibe for an inn without falling apart entirely). She is also revealed to be a) something of a hottie hot hottie and b) a sort of adopted motherly figure to Zami since their arrival, giving xem odd jobs and discounted lodging as well as fond maternal advise for a wayward soul she (lovingly) has deemed "dangerously naive."
Ann welcomes them into the Inn and grants them stay for free, happy to see Zami again but even more happy to see xem seemingly happy and in a group that will tend to them better. She scrutinizes the group, wise eyes of a tavern keeper watching them for shenanigans. (This means she also catches
ALEK51 completely flub an Insight check of his own and assume she's interested in his new rabbitkin party member as food and not as a maternal figure. She makes elaborate fun of this through food puns and fake-ominous double ententdres.)
The party retires to their rooms, three large side-by-sides in the cozy moss and trunk of this tree. They finally
properly fill Zami in on the nature of their mission, ask some questions about xes whereabouts and history (which Zami truly masterfully deflects with subject changes), and try to teach the youngling what a MILF is. The session ends with the party retiring to their respective mossy nests to sleep and dream, planning to set out for the
AHARRG Guild Hall of The Endeavour in the morning for supplies before departing for the
Mill of the Gods and their destinies.
