Session 23: Drowning in the Past

General Summary

Also known as "An Eye for an Eye."

Note that Bri couldn't make it so we'll say L0L4 was just vibing by the stage and then doing her own thing until The Night, when she's off running errands or something. It'll be fun to catch her up next session!

This session picked up right where the last left off at the Striptorium, where Num Erik Al was a turtle on a barstool, Khashayar Entezami was off chasing a hallucinated will-of-the-wisp, ALEK51 was feeling gooood from his drink, Kitanya Evermoon was feeling goooood from her date, Amanita Guttata was bemusedly drinking (and even able to enjoy the taste of something, if I remember correctly?!), and Wynnie Bishop was having a full-blown panic attack from a particularly ominous Arcanum Portentia card.
Zami wandered xier way over to a corner where a very pretty boy winged Aasimar named Modsra. The flowy-pirate-shirted sex worker mercifully "catches" the will-o-wisp the jackalope had been chasing (producing one with Light) because everyone knows it can be kind to play into the trip your friend is having to make them feel better. Zami is flustered but surprised and loaves themself onto a cushion across from Modsra. The two banter the rest of the night, with Zami slowly inching into allowing xemself to be slightly bold and flirty and generally enjoying not having to worry. Modsra, a consummate professional (heh), asks nothing of the Alqurun as far as personal details and Zami is able to enjoy making up silly lies instead of worrying about getting caught in a real one.
We do some time skippage from here, with the team working through different personal projects along the next few weeks. Namely, Wynnie Bishop's Arcanum Portentia card (which we will now call The Abyss for sake of ease) has her sheepishly (heh) requesting swimming lessons from Zami and ALEK51 architecting some sort of swim-tech for both his chair and L0L4 , fellow cursed-to-be-made-of-very-heavy-metals Warforged, in case of some sort of water-related catastrophe. Num Erik Al also joins in the swim lessons. Amanita Guttata for their part takes up the habitual role of trickster, literally catfishing Wynnie via Wildshape and generally enjoying being a nuisance.
(This serves two fun character points. 1: We see a more relaxed, social, silly Amanita. 2: We see a vehemently protective and surprisingly firm Zami, who takes to yeeting Amanita-fish whenever possible.)
It is a few weeks later, then, when the quiet stillness of the night is broken in the camp by the keening scream of a rabbitkin in distress (before quickly being stifled). Cye Veisi, the mysterious figure from their past who had sent the ominous spore-bouquet and promise/threat of coming around had made good on said promise/threat.
Slipping into the cracked window of the Alqurun's quarters, Cye had loomed over Zami until xey woke up and understandably screamed when a winged, multi-armed demon draped in darkness loomed over them. Cye, however, shushed her childhood friend and told Zami that they at least owed her a few minutes of quiet before calling for help. (Help had already been summoned, but at least this stilled the rabbitkin for now.)
Cye spends the next few minutes ominously monologing while Zami fails checks to get out of their hammock with any sort of speed or grace. It seems that once Zami left...whereever, Cye had to pay the price for their departure, with whatever group they both had reported to taking the siren-like Aasimar's right eye as payment for perceived aiding and abetting a perceived thief. Zami drops to xier knees in front of Cye in the moonlit room and sobs, a tableau of surrender and apology, saying that of course they didn't expect that would happen and of course Cye could take xier eye as repayment.
It is in the middle of this prostration that the rest of the party (sans L0L4 who is out at the moment) has assembled in the hall, with Num Erik Al loosing a bolt into Cye's shoulder while the Aasimar hovered their knife over Zami's own right eye. Zami tries to call off their party members but the party sanely points out that this intruder has a knife to Zami's face and did indeed seem to be threatening to kill them. Even with the bolt in their arm and Amanita Guttata's Chill Touch spell coming their way, however, Cye executes the retributive eye removal.
In a poetic roll of the die, Zami takes exactly enough damage to go unconscious and the party jumps into initiative. Cye, for her part however, drops the knife (though of course she hints that she doesn't need it to do damage) and makes no move of aggression against the party, using her turn instead to heal Zami with a Healing Hands ability. Zami comes to with a gasp (hit points recovered but eye not) and talks the party down from further aggression.
A reluctantly non-violent but definitely still hostile household retreats to give the pair some time after jokes and not-so-jokes clarify that this is the person Zami may or may not have been potentially engaged to??? (Although, most of them only pretend to not listen and instead are intently nosily listening in, including Wynnie Bishop straight up doing the cup-to-the-wall trick.)
Cye and Zami have a very tender, raw, vulnerable heart to heart about how much they missed each other and how Cye came to be on the mainland. It is revealed to the party (and players) that both are from the remote island of Pascal's Omen (a place so mysterious that even a nat-20-total-28 role on lore doesn't get them a ton of info). Cye reassures Zami that their family is safe and that she doesn't think they'll face any retribution since she's already taken it all but does sadly say that she can't tell Zami if they will ever see their family again. She paints a story of pain, isolation, and confusion in the time after Zami left, when her entire worldview was shattered (thus causing her to become a Fallen Aasimar subtype). She left for the mainland and went in search of Zami because they were really her only tie and the only idea they had on what to do next.
After a while, the couple shuffle out to the rest of the party (who pretend they weren't eavesdropping while making 4 am breakfast) and Zami shyly requests Cye be allowed to stay at the settlement for a while, given that they have nowhere else to go and mean a lot to Zami still. The party is overall torn on how they feel about this since, you know, she did just take your eye out my dude, but eventually they concede to it for now...especially after Cye offers to dish gossip on not just Zami but also the island of Pascal's Omen. (Num Erik Al grumpily tasks Cye with shoring up security after she was able to just waltz into the place and Amanita Guttata insists they hate Cye but the others are a range of curious to infatuated with the romance of the whole thing.)
We start to pull away from the scene here, but end with a slight cliffhanger/introduction to the next Arc of play: Gleddy Goodvine reaches out, saying that she's got a potential lead on a new Rift. She describes a geographical feature appearing out of nowhere in Saint Hira's Sea that reminds Wynnie far too much of her Arcanum Portentia: a Blue Hole (a vast sinkhole in the ocean floor). She says the team will have to gather intel, resources, and contacts in another aquatic area first, however: the floating anarchist city of Expatria.
It seems it was a good thing folks started learning how to swim, after all.

Report Date

25 Sep 2024

Related Characters

• ALEK51
• Amanita Guttata
• Cye Veisi
• Khashayar Entezami
• Kitanya Evermoon
• Num Erik Al
• Wynnie Bishop