The party convened at the Beer Forge to meet with Zreet, their aarakocra resistance cell leader. She was busy playing on one of the stages with her band Bawk-apella (two kenku and another aarakocra). The Cicely Special was priced at 20gp, which meant they were free to speak openly about the Resistance.
Zreet joined the table after her set and asked if we thought Tyrel “The Sprocket Man” could be recruited for the resistance. GB was against it and others in the group cautioned that Tyrel’s motivations seemed singularly pointed toward revenge. The conversation didn’t go very far. Pesk proposed the Green Iron Village as a possible place to commission resources for the cause. Zreet agreed but indicated that Phoenix Dawn doesn’t have a lot of money to put into such things.
Skyroot Forest
The group headed into for Green Iron Village through the Banyan Forest, following marked trees that led the way. The village was a commune in a large clearing with several active forges, a kitchen, and a heavy, full canopy overhead.
The party members who had not met the goblins yet were introduced to Boss, the tallest goblin with a pompadour and a leather jacket, Patsy, wearing simple clothes, but for a vest with lots of pockets, and Tinker, who wore goggle and held a notepad with charcoal marks. Boss explained that they had developed some collapsible weapons to get around the city’s ban on weapons. The goblins showed off the means to conceal an axe, hammer, short sword, holy symbol, and bow staff.
Boss offered the party a trade for the weapons: the goblins were in need of sulfur so they could make black powder for their next project. It would require a trek up into the mountains, and potentially dealing with some dangerous creatures. Agreeing to the terms, the party headed back to town for mining supplies.
Temple District
On the way across town, the party walked through the Temple District and stopped at the memorial that Tyrel created for Imelda: concentric circles of bouquets of flowers at increasing levels of decay with an ever-burning candle at the center. The hourglass painting on the wall had only about a quarter of the sand left.
The party discussed whether they should stop to talk to Tyrel. Pesk and Cyl suggested trying to in order to try to recruit him, like Zreet wants. Saxi and GB agreed to go along despite reservations about what Tyrel did. Finkoo and Lark came along to support their comrades.
The party headed into the house Tyrel indicated he would stay in, only to find the bedroom door had a newly installed lock. Cyl peered under the door and saw a pair of boots against the wall, so she spoke through the door trying to reach Tyrel. She offered to help him bring Tybalt to justice, to help stop this sort of wrong from happening again, and to connect him with his former classmate Pinbol. There was no response. Cyl scribbled out a note telling Tyre that if he went to the Beer Forge wearing a purple flower, he would be contacted by the party and the resistance, and they would discuss how they could help each other.
Barrel Run
The party headed to the Beer Forge, which they found was packed. The Cecily Special was priced at 10gp, so it was not safe to speak to Zreet about the message to Tyrel, or the weapons they had bartered for with the goblins. Zreet suggested that they stay out in the mountains over night to avoid breaking curfew, and she promised to join them out there that night. She would find them if they lit a large fire for her around dusk.
The party equipped themselves with picks and other supplies for gathering and refine sulfur.
Mountains
Leaving through the Lakeside gate, the party trekked up to the mountains, and after a couple hours, they reached hot springs. The air became mildly sulfurous, salty, and warmer. They found a clear pool, mildly bubbling around the outside, building up salt, but the pool didn’t have a high enough concentration to refine effectively. GB suggested they head into a cave to try to find a denser source of sulfur.
The party gathered firewood, and then discovered the rocky opening to a cavern. Inspecting the cave, they found a pillar of rock that emitted reddish light with a slow rolling magma flow. It was very warm to the touch, and Cyl opened it with a pickaxe and was able to loosen several small chunks of sulfur from the formation. During her work, the party heard a loud splash from deeper inside the cave.
Finkoo noticed some dripping from some nearby liquid that had not been there before. The liquid appeared to be opaque. Finkoo dipped a dagger into it and when he pulled it back out, found that the dagger’s blade had been corrosively dulled. Suddenly, a black ooze dropped from the ceiling and attacked Finkoo, nearly dropping him. In the fight with the ooze, Cyl was badly wounded, and as she fell into some form of unconsciousness, she knelt into a frozen pose and the radiant light of her rage extinguished. Luckily she was revived immediately and leapt back in the fight.
GB was able to get several quickfire spells off but did little to injure the ooze due to its natural immunities. The party whittled the creature down but found their own weapons and safety in equal danger from the acidic ooze’s splash back. After Cyl’s entire body is doubled in size by GB’s reckless magic casting, she splattered the ooze flat with a swing of her now massive hammer.
The party was only able to rest for just a moment before a massive two-headed giant, an ettin, emerged from the cave and charged...
....The tale of how the party defeated this monster is told in the upcoming Downtime post.
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