OttL Session 10: Family Matters

General Summary

Hobbs and Memento Vitae are still on Barry the Airship. Bosgosho, Natsu, Izar, Memento Ipsum, and Ignacio Icarsus are all in the main cavern at the bar. Thaiva Phenol is face to face with her brother Caerbor Klaedris just outside a chamber where Haru is giving Kiri a simple meditation lesson.
Caerbor Klaedris first drinks a potion to help control himself and then says that he had been away from Montia for about six months, and in Moonbrook itself for about six weeks. Just before he can launch into a more thorough explanation, though, he grabs at his head. With apologies he leads Thaiva Phenol back into the main room. Introductions are exchanged, Thaiva Phenol explains how she got here, and Caerbor Klaedris briefly mentions a few residents of Moonbrook. Louie, their "Alpha", is a red deer. Caerbor describes him as "The nicest asshole he's ever met". Haru is the town doctor, and the same one that was guiding Kiri in her meditations earlier. He also refers to Memento Ipsum as "Knick Knack". When questioned, he says this is because she "gave a dog a bone". When the party mentions Lenora, Caerbor Klaedris says he just hopes her children are not any of the ones that they decided to "put down".
Once this is out of the way, Caerbor Klaedris says that he was chosen to escort two large gemstones, suitable for the spell True Resurrection, being sold by Ectraph Acdri, the king of Montia, to Lucileastil and Polaris. The deliveries in question were completed without incident, but shortly before he was set to return home he found that he had been turned into a frog. This was actually his first Moon Plague transformation, which is peculiar because he had not so much as seen a transformed Moon Plague patient in his entire time in Esma leading up to that. Caerbor Klaedris eventually found his way to Moonbrook and has been residing there ever since. He did send word of his predicament back home, but has not yet received a response.
Thaiva Phenol then shows him her wanted poster, which nearly triggers another episode before Caerbor Klaedris drowns it in alcohol. She asks him why this would happen, but Caerbor wasn't aware of the bounty until just now. They exchange ideas for a bit, but do not really come up with any solid ideas. The two suggestions from Caerbor Klaedris are that her parents want to wed her off to somebody or that they might just be trying to secure their children since they have recently had one son killed and another infected.
At this point, gunfire can be heard from the chamber Lenora was in. The party rushes in that direction, but are quickly stopped by Louie, who runs off and then returns with Kiri and Haru in tow. The three go back into the chamber, and after some time Louie begrudging allows the party to follow as well.
Inside, the party sees the aftermath of a brief, but dramatic confrontation. Lenora had been trying to calm one of her children, the one that had been turned into a blood stirge. The stirge has its proboscis embedding in Lenora's neck, and both have been turned to stone. The human guard in the room is equally petrified. Louie says that the stirge had knocked off her mask, and wound up becoming victim to the petrification gaze. While frantically trying to get free, Lenora inadvertantly looked at the guard in his shining armor, petrifying the guard and also herself, having seen her own face in the reflection. Amongst this entire mess was Louie firing a pistol into the stirge three times in an attempt to stop the attack.
Kiri smashes the petrified proboscis with her warhammer and then puts the mask back on Lenora and begins treating her. This takes considerable time, during which Haru also fixes up the guard. Once Lenora is finally coherent enough to speak, the party converses with her briefly. She thanks the party, and Thaiva Phenol in particular, for caring. She says it has been quite some time since anybody did. Louie says it is unlikely, but still technically possible, for her children to learn to control themselves. In the meantime, however, all three must remain in lockup. Lenora would likely have been infected in the attack.
The party leaves Moonbrook, with the exception of Izar who still has negotiations to do. Thaiva Phenol stops to bid farewell to her brother along the way, and Caerbor Klaedris assures her that the residents are good people and he will be just fine.
Back on the airship, Button has escaped his glass. He is currently climbing up Memento Vitae's leg, but Hobbs sees this and instead takes Button for a tour of the galley. The two begin cooking dinner, and after some time the rest of the party returns. They converse with Memento Ipsum a bit, mostly making small talk, but she assures the group that Kiri will be free to go if she demonstrates she can control her condition effectively. They also discuss the Moon Plague. Memento Ipsum is skeptical that the condition is actually a curse; instead she says that Haru has been theorizing it comes from the influence of an Avatar. She also says there is a succubus/incubus living in Moonbrook by the name of Penoris who claims that the Moon Plague has an effect on the soul.
Below decks, Hobbs, Natsu, and Button are engaging in a variety of shenanigans. They briefly discuss Hobbs trying to learn how to climb walls, and Button is very supportive of this plan. Hobbs also recommends letting Button watch the ship while the party is away. When Hobbs calls him an excellent watchperson, Button also mentions having seen a red-furred kitsune woman on the ship. This appears to be referring to Tsukiko, which briefly causes Natsu to be alarmed that her mother might still be on the ship. A high investigation roll convinces her that this is not actually the case.
After some more light shenanigans, Natsu uses Vecna's Orb to try and check on her mother. She sees a vision of Tsukiko playing cards in The church of Olidammara. Lenora then enters the room and whispers something to her After this, Tsukiko looks alarmed and runs out of the room. Natsu originally is concerned that this is a future event, but after some analytical assistance from Ignacio Icarsus and a reminder from the DM she realizes this was in fact a past event and proceeds to eat dinner instead.
The party talks with Izar upon his return, and he is clearly concerned. He apparently tried to provide the residents additional assistance, but his aid was refused. With some more small talk, the party gets Izar to reveal that he is working towards being able to resurrect somebody. He is about 10,000 gold short of his goal, after which he can buy a diamond from Penguin with which to perform the ritual. Normally he would buy this from Keridland, but they are currently closed up and refusing trade of any kind. He refuses to answer why he needs to resurrect someone, or who that is.
The party debates for a while what their next destination should be. Memento Vitae wants to stop by Kilead. Ignacio Icarsus wants to go to Stasterry to talk to Murdoch. Thaiva Phenol still wants to go back to see her family in Montia. Natsu wants to go to Avernus, which causes a lot of alarm for Izar. Izar is very nervous about this, and insists she needs to be careful. He also manages to wiggle out of her that she has Vecna's Orb, and that this belongs to Penguin, but she does not reveal its purpose.
After debating their options and staring at the map for a while, the party decides to go first to Stasterry. They are hoping that Murdoch will be able to help them get the Strange Prototype attached to the engine working and allow them to magically send themselves to Avernus directly from Stasterry. Along the way, however, they will stop by in Kilead since it is very close to their current location.
Along the way, Memento Vitae goes to Izar's office and asks him why he has been getting so much attention from the gods as of late. Izar thinks about this briefly, and asks a couple of follow-up questions before pulling out his copy of the Tikipedia and searching for Memento Vitae within its pages. Memento Vitae turns out to be a Hand of Fate, an individual who is likely to have a large part in controlling future events. Memento Vitae is shown in his cabin, being transformed into a medusa. The caption reads:

The Cursed

Upon further investigation, the rest of the party is present in the book also.

• Hobbs, pictured atop a mountain being struck by lightning, is "The Amnesiac"
• Natsu, "The Conduit"
• Thaiva Phenol, "The Mourner"
• Bosgosho, depicted as a baby, is "The Chosen"
• Ignacio Icarsus, depicted retrieving his Triangle, is "The ÆϢͶ"

This last title is particularly confusing, because Izar does not recognize it. He doesn't even know what language it is, and the book is normally 100% common. Ignacio Icarsus himself is called in to have a look, but he does not recognize them either. The entire party is then called in, but nobody on board the ship can even recognize the language. Natsu and Thaiva Phenol take this as an opportunity to reveal what happened when they talked to Plato in Session 8.5B: Natsu and Thaiva talk to Plato.
In Kilead, Memento Vitae decides to go visit his mother. Natsu, Hobbs, and Bosgosho join in. Once at Solstice Florist, the party sees a dead deer on the counter. There are no wounds on the body, however there are blue flowers growing out of it, resembling the blue hemlock that Memento Caritate had previously found along the Virlem River. The party goes upstairs to discuss this with her, and there is immediate panic when she sees what had happened to Memento Vitae. Memento Vitae shrugs this off, going back to the deer topic, and so she explains that the plant was completely unidentified and so she fed some to a deer in order to test the effects. The deer seemed fine at first, then later had flowers grow out of its head. Even at that point it showed no other symptoms until a day or so later when it dropped dead. She showed this to Druid Kaiser, who reports seeing similar flowers growing out of the Baduhenna.
After this conversation is done, Memento Caritate goes back to the medusa conversation. What follows is increasingly frantic conversation whereby he tries to explain his actions. Hobbs says this is their fault for not keeping Memento Vitae tied to the mast long enough, which causes Memento Caritate to go into a full-on mom tirade. The party fails a long string of social rolls trying to calm her down, and proceeds to escalate the situation multiple times.

• Hobbs mentions that something happened to Memento Ipsum
• Memento Vitae says she is just having "boyfriend trouble", and fails his deception check, which causes Memento Caritate to realize something serious is going on.
• Memento Caritate asks if Memento Ipsum got knocked up, and the party frantically screams "No", followed by a brief pause, and then Natsu goes "well... maybe"
• Memento Caritate decides to go to Polaris and see for herself what is happening. She even starts packing during the conversation.
• The party tries to talk her out of it, largely unsuccessfully. While this is happening Hobbs tries to complement Memento Ipsum

  ..No I'm just saying the quality of your daughter is very high...

• Memento Caritate becomes convinced that Hobbs has slept with Memento Ipsum. This is not aided by Hobbs answering "I don't remember" when asked this exact question.
• Memento Caritate retrieves a large paddle and chases the party out the door.
• Natsu botches athletics, so Hobbs slows down to make sure he does not outpace her.
• Hobbs tries to explain himself:

On her birthday, she gave me a lovely present! And then later on, I gave her a -- No, Memento Vitae wouldn't let me give it to her. But I found a way to sneak it to her later!

• As these two fail persuasion rolls to convince Memento Caritate that they are actually talking about beer, Bosgosho (who had been attempting to speak up over the chaos of voice chat for some time) is finally able to cast calm emotions on the group. Memento Caritate botches her save so this does manage to calm her down
• Memento Caritate asks one more time, calmly now, what happened to Memento Ipsum. Hobbs helpfully chimes in again:

We all gave her a ride! With Barry!

• Natsu and Bosgosho explain that they were just taking her to visit her boyfriend Amadeus. This seems to placate her until Hobbs says:

Oh, Right! That fella that we broke out of jail!

• Memento Vitae tries to explain that they had not actually broken him out of jail. The party fails to actually calm her down, but she pretends to believe them and walks away. Natsu can tell she is lying, but does not pursue the matter or share this information with anyone.

Once the chaos is over, Natsu goes shopping to buy a tank and proper accommodations for Button. Memento Vitae and Bosgosho also go find a little hemlock, which Memento Vitae offers up to lolth in prayer.

Report Date

11 Jul 2020