Olkedo Session 5

General Summary

Our adventurers decide to visit Croatoan next. They travel outside of the Scar, and stop at a town called Cross Corners on the way to take shelter during the Thrice Full Moon. The governor of Cross Corners asks them for help discovering what happened to some townsfolk who have disappeared recently. While looking for clues about the disappearances, they discover that some one went missing last year too, after a strange binder lady visited town. Our protagonists suspect that this binder lady was Akari Oshiro. The adventurers eventually track down those responsible for the disappearances in a cave outside of town and prepare for battle.

Detailed Summary

Rasputia, Brick, Nieve Powell, Jebedaiah Bateman, and Toshi Ryoko start in Green Valley. They decide to follow the Gilead River east on their way to Croatoan. They want to stay outside The Scar. The Thrice Full Moon is 4 days away. There is a settlement that they could get to before the Thrice Full Moon called Cross Corners. With the day approaching, the group shares stories of Thrice Full Moons past. Jebedaiah tells of a Thrice Full Moon when he and his dad Horace Bateman crossed the desert to get to Olkedo. They came across some monsters with flames in their eyes that swarmed them. They managed to get away and hid in a cave until morning. Outside they found scorch marks. Nieve tells of the customs of Faversham on the Thrice Full Moon. They call it the Majimonster Festival. Children dress in costumes and travel from house to house to receive candy. One night a Majimonster made of candy chased the kids around until they gave it their candy. The last time Brick saw his mother Jade was on a Thrice Full Moon. Before she left, his mother started going on more and more walks. Brick started going with her. Bismuth is not a superstitious place, so his mother thought nothing of going out on the Thrice Full Moon. On that night a monster appeared before them, wrapped its arms around his mother and poofed the way Majimonsters do when defeated in battle, taking his mother with it. He waited for a while hoping for her to return but eventually he went back to town. No trace of her was found ever found. Toshi’s family stays in on the Thrice Full Moon and eats popcorn. They hang up allspice to ward off monsters. Rasputia’s farm carves gourds. At this point players decide to try to find some allspice. They search the wilderness and find some, along with other rations. They make it to Cross Corners one day before the Thrice Full Moon. The guards at the gate let them into town and recommend that they speak with Evelyn Delacroix the governor. They say she might have a job for them regarding some disappearances. The group asks about what they can find in town and the guards tell them the main export in town is lumber and they also have a pretty good blacksmith. The woodcutter has gone missing. The guards mention that the captain of the guard Gabe Tanner has been looking into the disappearances with no luck. They decide to go see Evelyn. Jebedaiah notices that the governor's mansion has no guards. A butler ( Horace Neal ) opens the door and takes them to where Evelyn is eating supper. Evelyn welcomes them to town and tells them she’s glad to have more binders in town for the Thrice Full Moon. Evelyn asks for help looking into the disappearances. She says she suspects that someone from town is responsible for them so she things outsiders without biases might be better able to solve the mystery. She says its hard to suspect your neighbor when you’ve known them your whole life. When asked why she has no guards, she mentions that she is a binder so she doesn't feel the need for additional protection. She offers a reward of 500 suls. She says people started disappearing a month ago. Four people have disappeared so far: the woodcutter Jamie Barnes, a guard Saul Guerrero, a traveling merchant Homer Fleming, and a tavern server Todd Clayton. The woodcutter and merchant were binders. The woodcutter was female the others male. The woodcutter and merchant had work that took them outside the walls on a regular basis. The server and guard stayed in town. She tells them where to find the guard barracks and the woodcutter’s shack to start their investigation. The group departs Evelyn's and goes to the guard barracks. They are greeted by a guard with an eye-patch who introduces himself as Lieutenant Mark Coleson. He takes them to see the Guard Captain. They ask him if there is a pattern in the dates of the disappearances, but there doesn’t seem to be one. The woodcutter was last seen the morning of the day she disappeared. She was seen at the market before leaving town to do her woodcutting for the day. She did not return from the forest. The server was last seen at the Spitting Skite Tavern. He left to take out some garbage and didn’t return. The merchant was an outsider but frequently stopped in town to do business. He usually set up at the market for a few days before moving on. He left before selling anything so they suspect he is missing too. The missing people all knew each other but were not connected in any obvious way. The woodcutter bought things from the merchant. The guard didn’t show up for his shift. He had someone change shifts with him recently to run an errand but Gabe doesn’t know what the errand was. He changed shifts with Peggy Jenkins. They then go to the market to look for clues. They go in to Laverne’s Bakery and Apothecary. The clerk Wilson Wright greets them and says Laverne Castellani, the owner, is in the back of the store if they wish to talk to her. Toshi asks if the traveling merchant ever stopped in. Wilson says yes, they often bought alchemical ingredients from him. Wilson calls Laverne out so she can talk to them. Laverne walks with a slight limp. Nieve finds a scrap of paper on the floor with a symbol drawn on it. Laverne says a customer must have dropped it and that she can keep it in case they return, but Nieve decides to hold on to it. They ask if Laverne knew Saul, the guard that went missing. She did and she is quite worried that so many have gone missing. Jebedaiah asks about her basement (thinking of what happened at Green Valley), but Laverne has no basement. After leaving the bakery, they stroll through the market square and overhear 2 children whispering to each other. It seems one of them heard a voice in the woods, but is afraid to tell his parents because they didn’t believe him when he told them about a voice he heard last year. Brick frightens them and they run away but he is able to catch them and bring them back. Toshi calms the kids down and asks about the voice they heard. The kid says the voice was talking to Todd, the tavern server. They say the voice was deep and scary and coming from outside the walls while Todd was inside. The voice told Todd that if he came outside the walls then the voice would make Todd a binder. The kid then says that this voice was different than the one he heard last year. Apparently the librarian, Andre Bridges went missing last year too. Last year this kid heard someone talking to him from outside the walls but it was a woman’s voice. Some in town said he left with the binder lady that was in town a few days before. The voice sounded a lot like the binder lady’s. Jebedaiah asks if the voice this year had Mr. Bridges voice but it didn’t. The kid says the lady’s voice was scarier, because is made him want to got outside too, like it was magical. The lady asked Mr. Bridges to bring some books outside with him. After speaking with the kid they go to the woodcutter’s house. The door is locked. No one answers when they knock so Toshi and Ripley the Stranac knock it down. The woodcutter has many woodworking tools and projects around her house. She also has lots of empty bottles of booze around. They read her journal and learn that the woodcutter had arguments with the blacksmith and that Evelyn is magically sensitive and that she has been sensing some impeding doom and seemed nervous lately. They flip a year back and find the woodcutter’s account of the last Thrice Full Moon. Apparently, many corpse-like monsters attacked the town. The woodcutter thinks they came from a forest grotto with soft soil that was hard to get to. They also find a wooden prosthetic finger that was meant to go to Evelyn. They go see Evelyn. It’s late. They ask what happened to her finger. She says a tree fell on her and she lost her pinkie that way. They ask about grottoes around town. She says there are 2 to the north and one to the west. They ask her about Bridges and about his dalliances. Evelyn says that people say he was attracted to the wandering binder woman but Evelyn thinks they just spent a lot of time together over their shared passion for books. The binder was very pretty, with long black hair. She had never seen her before or since. The ask her if anyone in town has a big booming voice and she mentions some guards and the blacksmith. Next they visit the blacksmith, Floyd Hunt. He is still working even though it is late. They ask if he travels outside of town but he doesn't. He says he would go drinking with the woodcutter but they would sometimes argue because they were in competition over certain things they produced. The blacksmith says the binder last year was named Ashley or Akachi or Akari. He says she bore a certain resemblance to Toshi and asks if he knew her. The group starts to suspect this binder lady is the emperor’s daughter Akari Oshiro. The blacksmith mentions a strange order he made for the guard that went missing. He made three 3-edged daggers for him. He gave him these a few days before he disappeared. He was the second to disappear. The next lead they want to investigate is the grotto mentioned in the woodcutter’s journal. They go find Lieutenant Coleson and ask him to take them to the grottoes around town. They ask about his eye and Coleson tells them lost his eye in a sword training accident. As they go out a little way into the woods Lieutenant Coleson hears something and wanders off. A mass of snakes appears and attacks the party. They capture most of them and are victorious. After the battle they look around the grotto. Jebedaiah sends Shiftspore to look for the Lieutenant. Jebedaiah notices a depression in the soil in an oblong shape. They dig it up and find a decayed corpse. It has a monocle. Shiftspore comes back with Coleson. He recognizes Bridges’ monocle. They send the Rottenmouth and Wurmdra they just caught to help them search. Rottenmouth seems to only detect decay from the body they already found and Wurmdra doesn’t dig up anything. They go to the northern most grotto. The next grotto is too rocky to bury anything. Brick finds one of the 3 edged daggers next to a place in the leaf litter where it looks like something skidded. They follow the skid marks to some tracks that lead to a tree. The tree has low branches and looks like it could be easily climbed. They suspect that someone climbed recently and slipped coming down, dropping the dagger. Nieve climbs the tree and notices that she can see the other grotto from here. There is nothing in the West grotto. They take the corpse back to Captain Tanner. He recognizes Bridges. He asks how they knew where to find him and they tell him about the woodcutter’s journal. They show the dagger and ask about what Saul would want with it. He doesn’t know. They head to the tavern to rest for the night. The innkeeper Sonja Weaver gets them some food and water. They ask about all the missing people. About Saul, she tells them he was a bit of a kiss ass. Todd she says, went to take out the trash one day and never returned. They ask about the woodcutter and if she left abruptly. The innkeeper says she always paid her tab on time and seemed happy. She also says she heard that Coleson and Evelyn were seeing each other. They go up to bed and Jebedaiah sneaks out of his room (Nieve put Capra to guard the door) and into Toshi’s room. He gives Toshi the Sunlight Ankh, almost but not quite admitting that he took it from the tree where they found his mother’s journal. Jebedaiah can’t get back into his room so he goes to sleep on Toshi’s floor. They awaken the next morning and have breakfast at the inn. It is the day of the Thrice Full Moon. Then they go to library. They show the new librarian Wilma Hicks the monocle. She recognizes it as Mr. Bridges' and is surprised to see it. She asks if he is alright and they inform her he is dead and was likely murdered. They also tell her they suspect Bridges’ lover, the binder lady. She says she didn’t think they were romantically involved they just like to talk books. They ask if she knows anything about the 3-sided dagger. She says she remembers reading about something like that but it was used as a key to a mechanical device in a slab of stone. They ask about any books that went missing when Bridges disappeared. She says The Tales of Captain Preston and The History of the Old Empire went missing. They go back to the Guard Captain. They ask if there are any stony places and mountains around town. He says there are stony places north of town and some mountains to the east. He mentions the tallest mountain Vultheryol Peak. He says the monsters there are very tough and people have seen some giant flying lizards at the top. He says there used to be 2 of them but lately they have only seen one. They go back to Evelyn’s house and knock on the door but no one answers. It seems no one is home so Nieve breaks in. They start snooping around. Jebedaiah first looks in the basement, which appears to be a normal storage basement. Nieve goes upstairs where there is a bedroom, servant’s quarters, and a study. Brick goes to the kitchen. Nothing is left out so it appears no one left in a hurry like at Green Valley. Toshi goes to the study. The desk drawer is locked. Toshi asks Nieve to help him pick it. They can’t pick it or break it themselves so they have Capra break it. They find another 3-edged dagger and Evelyn's journal. Evelyn writes about noticing a surge in magical occurrences lately. She says it feels ominous and dangerous. She talks about needing to stop it before it destroys everything. She mentions someone named Scratch and making a deal with them. She also writes about a snake charming ritual she learned. The players start speculating about how Evelyn probably gave her finger to Scratch and Coleson probably gave his eye. But who is the 3rd person with a key? They check Evelyn’s bookshelves. They don’t find The Tales of Captain Preston but they do find a book about the old empire. They also find a book titled Old Maji Ruins of Magical Power. They take both. Between Cross Corners and Bismuth there is a drajule alter from old Maji times. Jebedaiah steals 25% of Evelyn's silverware which is 7 pieces. There are 45 suls in the desk and a silver ring with a stone in it and 3 amethyst gems. There is also a strange coin in the desk that they have never seen before. It has bricks on one side and scales on the other. It feels magical. They then go north of town to the rocky area in the woods which is near the northern most grotto. There is a stony ridge here. They find a 3 pronged slit in the rock that would fit the keys they found. They insert a key and a slab of stone starts sliding upwards. They enter what appears to be a stone cave. In the next chamber there are tiles on the floor. Eventually they realize the parchment that Nieve picked up in the bakery had a grid pattern with a symbol over the grid so they make that symbol walking on the tiles and a door opens. In the next chamber they see 3 robed figures chanting. They confront Evelyn, Coleson, and Laverne and ready themselves for a Majimonster battle.