Session 5: "Ragpicker's Square"

General Summary

The Ka-Tet headed to the NW region of The Hive.

There they encountered One Ear who told them aggressively to move on.

Nearby was a man covered in tattooed black and red lines, performing kata movements. Dak’kon felt he was potent warrior.
He speaks in Gith to Dak’kon and greets him as a fellow warrior. His voice has a musical character and when he speaks the lines on his face move to form circular patterns.
He told us he is Porphiron and is part of the order of Erit Agge who train for the final days, when the demons rise up to defeat the heavens ( The Dusk War ). It is prophesied that the primordials will rise up to again control the multiverse.
He tells that he was set upon by three men, and that he lost his prayer beads to them. He let them take the beads rather than fighting and risking killing them, as he is bound by a vow of non-violence. We offered to reclaim his beads, and he tells us the three were near the Smouldering Corpse Bar.
Porphiron tells us One Ear is a man with no ‘order’ and knows only violence.

We headed back to the SE to find the thugs. They refuse to comply so a fight ensues. We took the hard way about it but overcome the thugs and returned to Porphiron. He thanked us in return.

We met and had discussions with a man named Fleece. When The Nameless One noticed he had started to rob Esmae of the Flowers. TNO smacked his wrist with his staff, and he ran off squealing 'injustice'.

At Arlo’s Flop House there is a fat man, Arlo, who offers us a rug on the floor for 5cp per night. Also within there was a man talking to himself, and a Bariaur (a deer-like centaur creature).
Arlo asked us to remove the raving man, Nestor ( Convince Nestor to Leave ). When we approached him to speak with him he cast Color Spray on the party with Esmae and TNO falling asleep. TNO dreamed of defeating six devils when sleeping. Nestor told us that that his fork was stolen by the One Eared Man, and that he wanted it back.

Upon challenging One Ear he attacked us, wielding a massive great axe. His a berserker and takes big chunks out of us each round, but eventually we prevailed. We took his axe and the mad man's fork. We returned the fork to him and he magically gives us a 'long rest' and portals away.
We entered Ragpicker's Square and see a young man, named Marrow Fiend, wearing a weird necklace that consisted of a human finger being chewed by a devilish ring. He seems to instantly know TNO, Dak’kon, and Morte.
The Nameless One and Marrow Fiend agreed to ‘swap’ fingers, so TNO dipped one of his pinkies in embalming fluid and held it out. Marrow Fiend promptly chewed it off, as TNO grabbed the finger and ring from around his neck. Holding the old finger to TNO's stump had it magically re-attached. Mempa’s Biting ring - +2 to AC and can’t be removed.

The party explore further and encounter Yellow Fingers. He points at Morte and claims he was his skull. Morte is adamant that he is not his. He gets agitated and fronted up to us. TNO punches him and he yells ‘thieves’ and saunters off.
Behind is his house, and it is not locked. We obviously entered, and found it to be infested with Cranium Rats. This was a dangerous situation that the Ka-Tet managed to survive by killing eight of them.

The party returned to Ragpicker’s square and met Ratbone, whittling a piece of wood and dressed as a thug. He claimed to be a lieutenant in Sharegrave’s collector crew, and declared himself a thief for hire. We asked to see Sharegrave and he pointed us inside a nearby building.

Sharegrave tells us he dislikes Pharod. He has something he wanted to discover and asked us if we can determine where all of Pharod’s, seemingly endless, supply bodies come from then he will reward us ( Find Pharod's source of bodies ).
He tells us that Pharod has magical abilities, and that he had made a pact with dark powers. He knows no mercy.

Nodd, another collector, we pass wandering in the Ragpicker’s square. We asked him about Pharod, and he looked frightened in response. He told us he is aligned with Sharegrave.
He also mentioned he is worried about his sister, Amarysse, and that if we find her we are to tell her that he is concerned.
He tells us that he has heard voices since a child, and that his parents had him taken away to a ‘winged’ tower, where he was tortured. He then remembers waking up in Ragpicker’s square.

We found Amarysse working as a prostitute near the Smouldering Corpse Bar, and we passed on Nodd’s message. She thought he was dead, and asked us to take him a bag of coins, which we did.

Mebbeth, was a very grey and very old woman who had set up a shop as a midwife and healer. She offered us healing, and her efforts polished Morte up fresh and white.
After some discussions and some convincing, she offered to also teach us magic. TNO thought it might be useful for him to understand the mystery of himself.
She sent us to the market to shop for herbs that arose from a spiked seed. The local vendors knew of no one that would sell what we needed, but directed us back to Mourns for Trees. He suggested it might grow if we cared enough to encourage it to do so. TNO therefore concentrated on the seed and willed it to grow, and it sprouted barbed twigs that encircled my wrist.
When I asked Mebbeth to remove the vine from my wrist, she told me to “will” it off, and this worked, plus a bit more concentration was enough to form the spiked vines into a frame for a picture.
Mebbeth also asked us to find Giscorl, to get some cloth for washing. He was spindly and man with arms and hands that looked as if they had been terribly burned. He handed over a pile of rags starched stiff with a greenish lime.
Finally she asked us to retrieve inks from a merchant called Kossah-Jai. She was an old crone with a stench of fish, and in fact that was what she sold. Fish, and fish heads. She told TNO the ink he sought could be obtained from the gills of a brogota-fin, and directed him to the fish merchant Meir’am.
Returning to Mebbeth again, she was peeling the rags apart, into a parchment like page, then fixed it on the barbed vine frame. She copied odd text onto the page and presented it to The Nameless One, along with a few other pieces of text for him to copy. She explained this was his Spell Book, and that he could memorise spells each night from its pages.
As the party was set to leave, she gave TNO a pair of Amber Earrings, that increased his AC by +2 and granted him two wizard cantrips.

In the Square, there was another house that the Ka-Tet approached, but suddenly found themselves transported within, but with no apparent way out.
A mage and three thugs appeared and said they will only release the party if they give him all of their treasure and coin. They offered him the Ruby-encrusted box, but he refused. He vanished through a portat, leaving the party to ponder their choices for 24 hrs.
When he returned they attacked him. A difficult battle ensued, with Morte and TNO having their own dust-naps, but eventually were victorious. The party dusted themelves off and rested briefly to recover.
End of Session

Cant Dictionary

Report Date

10 Jun 2023

Primary Location

The Hive - Northwest

Secondary Location

Ragpickers Square

• Quests - Sigil
  • Find The Nameless One's Journal
  • Help Reekwind
  • Ignis - Return him to life
  • Unlock the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon
  • Obtain Decanter's Password
• Completed Quests - Sigil
  • Find Pharod
  • Find and Bring Pharod to Justice
  • Help Ingress
  • Kill Starved Dogs Barking
  • Find Craddock
  • Clear the Mausoleum
  • Purchase the Eye
  • Free Angyar from the Dustman Contract
  • Iron Nall's Secret
  • Free Esmae from Moridors box
  • Find Former Drunk Companion of TNO
  • Find Eliath
  • Who is Killing the Barmys
  • Return the Prayer Beads to Porphiron
  • Convince Nestor to Leave
  • Find Pharod's source of bodies
  • Find Amarysse
  • Learn Magic
  • Return his Name
  • Retrieve Knife
  • Find Necklace
  • Kill Rotten William
  • Kill or Drive off Blackrose
  • Bring His Body to the Surface
  • Retrieve Bronze Sphere
  • Obtain the Decanter from Drowned Nations
  • Discover where Annah found The Nameless One