S1 E27: Bathed in Mud

General Summary

In which the gang putters for a few weeks and begins the trip to Marleven, meeting several interesting people on the road.

• The items looted from Ildaban are identified by Willow: A cloak of protection, a ring of evasion, and a ring of psychic resistance (jade). Some discussion with Willow about Quindarin's work leaves the party uncertain whether Willow simply doesn't accept that the wizard, her lifelong obsession, is dead, or if everyone has just assumed he's been dead all this time. Willow is devastated and traumatized by the loss of so much of Quindarin's knowledge to Ildaban's jealous destruction, leaving them with little to show from his notes other than five mangled book covers and a few handfuls of diced paper scraps. She says there's a quirky bookseller in Marleven who sometimes plies her wares from a cart on the route between Marleven and the Keep road that may have intact copies of some of these, and other books besides. But she seems deeply shaken, and rather than the brash and bold personality they knew, she becomes progressively more withdrawn and bitter. 
• The party lays low for a few weeks, getting some hard-earned rest and avoiding entanglements while gearing up to make a long-term departure from the Keep, heading west to the city of Marleven. Lorfel does his research, which is in-depth, and expansive across several topics. He casts a divination about the upcoming trip as well, and receives a cryptic but mostly encouraging response: "The way is safe, but the travelers may be dangerous; and omens may be found along the trip."
• Blizzard and Zalock train in friendly competition, and Blizzard indulges when possible in his salted soak bath while Zalock volunteers around the Keep for some of the common folk and keeps up on correspondence with his knightly order. 
• Mae spends a great deal of her time laughing and dancing with Montague Ford, brightening the Silver Spade Tavern even more than before. But Keebler, still troubled by witnessing Lorfel's temporary death so quickly after the temporary death of the Castellan departs the party, pursuing details of his family's history and the mysteries of popcorn. Xi Shi and Zeffirelli continue their complicated interplay of flirting and fawning in which he's smitten, says something that displeases her, but adds just enough poetic flair and libertine charm to keep Xi Shi from getting too terribly bored, and the cycle repeats. She may not love him but she loves to make him jump and he seems to love to be made to. Still, he's put down roots here, and won't follow her to Marleven. He won't make any promises of fidelity; she doesn't for an instant think he's worth staying for.
• They meet a new friend, of a very odd sort, off-putting at first but clearly a helpful and friendly fellow who likely has met with some ill treatment in the past due to the fact that he's literally a human-shaped blob of slime. His name is Yoxi, and he's a rogue - convenient, as Keebler was one as well.
• They head west on the High Trade Road on an auspicious day in good weather, coming to a burnt-out circle of wagons not far from the Keep, but elect to let that be someone else's problem.
• Heading further west they encounter a wagon pacing them from behind, made of burnished metal and imprinted with a stylized diamond logo and the words 'Kannet Colonial'. Moving at a fast clip it passes them by, and Lorfel investigates with magic, finding it filled with crates as well as a briefcase and some papers. The full name of the company is visible on the materials inside - Kannet Colonial Mining. The wagon is guarded by 4 mounted men at arms in plate and driven by a grizzled, humorless-looking dwarf. They decide against stealing some of his hair for use in obscure scrying rituals. Eventually the metal cart moves far ahead on the road and they let it go, for now.
• The book wagon pulled by a creaky old gnome woman named Wigo comes down the road a short time later, laden with crates of books of various kinds - mystic tomes, reprinted grimoires, how-to books, and romance novels. They are able to replace each of the books and find a few more as well. Lorfel stocks up and Mae cycles some of her existing romance novels for a fresh set. The books acquired:
  • The Aerial Domain of Dagezuu - about an Air Elemental Vizier ruling his own principality in the Plane of Air
  • The Vortex of the Infinite Deep - about the world-ocean and its relationship to the ocean of blackness surrounding this world, and theoretically surrounding many others - hundreds or thousands of similar worlds like ours
  • The Undercaverns of Camazotl - about the Dread Domain of Camazotl, which contends that he is an outcast Demon not permitted back in the Hells due to his betrayal of an unspecified Devil Prince and therefore more unwilling to risk being slain on any other plane as he would reform in the hells and become a plaything of Orcus for eternity. Interestingly the book also describes eleven hells, not the usual nine.
  • Bhazzaru's Fiery City - a story strikingly similar to the Aerial Domain, but concerning a Fire Elemental called an Efreet who rules a blazing principality in the elemental plane of fire
  • The Plane of Inverse Symmetry - a math book, not a planar treatise; here 'plane' is a geometry term. This deep-dives into the odd phenomenon of bisectal symmetry found in most living things and nearly all manufactured things, that a plane can be imagined to bisect such objects and creatures into two perfect mirror images of each other. This book goes deep and long on the subject. It posits an extraplanar origin for this symmetry and asserts that this need to create symmetrical objects found in sentient beings is some level of proof of divine influence in the world.
  • Yuan-Ti Transformations II - a relatively common book describing some of the supposed rites of the Yuan-ti and the creatures that comprise the race. Part of a series popular a hundred years ago, the language is sensational and archaic rather than scholarly.
• Heading further on, Mae in giant eagle form hears and then sees some suspicious humans, about 50 yards off the road in a muddy clearing, wearing strange brown open-torso robes, their skin streaked with mud. One of them is pouring boiling mud on a restrained captive - which is all the prompting the gang needs to come to the rescue.
• Roll for initiative! The fight breaks out fierce and literally hot; several of the cultists get sucked into their own portal, replaced by hideous grinning humanoid monster-creatures with far too many long thin teeth in their weird rubbery mouths. They shriek and giggle incessantly while the Cultists drone of 'Borem - Murk- Gorgasuul' seems to continue as a bass tone underneath the disjointed jibber-sounds despite the fact that the clearing is rapidly being depleted of cultists. Several more cultists are cut down by the party and two more get sucked into their own portal after the first. A moment later two even worse creatures than the first come out; these are crinkled blue humanoids with a long head and elongated body, with six human-ish arms at odd angles along the side of the torso and eight scrabbling insect-legs grasping the air from the front of the torso. Whatever these putrid creatures are, it's safe to say these aren't local boys.

Rewards Granted

• Cloak of Protection (Ildaban)
• Ring of Psychic Resistance (Ildaban)
• Ring of Evasion (Ildaban)

Missions/Quests Completed

• "Wigo where you go"

Report Date

04 Oct 2022

Primary Location

The Borderland Marches