Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session VI

Very short session, as far as events are concerned, because we went on some serious tangents for awhile there. I think next session I'm going to shoot for a getting a bit more on track. Not quite so bad this time, since were lacking Mary (again).

I discussed the possibility with Jon of switching to a different ruleset for the magic system for his character. Right now, all of Jon's faults (poor rolling and limited imagination) happen to be the most vital traits one needs in making his choice in character work. I don't want to force him to play a non-arcanist type, since that's what he wants, but I also don't want to try and fix the problem with something that could come back to bite me down the road; if I just give him a bonus to rolls, any turn in luck for him (someday...) could make him overpowered.



Just before hitting the road, they swiftly filleted the two land shark corpses to use as jerky/rations for the two week journey ahead of them; as they have 250 refugees to feed. Going at half speed to gather food, combined with the party's rations and shark jerky and what the refugees could carry from the logging camp, they had just enough food for half rations for everybody.

It was a common complaint of Adam's character at the horrific taste of shark meat (like mud for the land sharks) and how the party has been subsisting off of it for almost a month now. Nice bit of RP there.

While traveling, the land turned more craggy and stoney, with less plant life. Off in the distance was a merchant caravan that they greeted (near nightfall, so they camped roughly near each other). The head merchant was a 'portly' man in off-silk robes, and one of the wagons was holding a palaquin that the guards seemed to be nervous about. They were able to trade about 15 pounds of spices in exchange for one of the mauls of sequoia wood, and make the shark meat a little more palatable.

While they camped for the night, two of the refugees came up to the party to talk, mentioning how most of them were scared to get too friendly because of the innocence demon that stayed near the party. One of them wanted a knife to pick up whittling again (used to be a carpenter), while the other slowly revealed a large interest in learning the artsof magic from Jon's character, especially since he seems to be unique in not being heavily corrupted by it. Jon adamantly informed him of what a bad idea that was and subsequently refused.

Later that night, one of them heard a muffled whimper, followed by struggled dragging at the edge of the camp. Getting Jon to hold the torch, they began to work their way towards the sound and Adam guess which sqare it was coming from due to the sounds being emanated. They saw the edges of one of the refugee's feet at the tip of the torch light, as well bits of tentacles which dropped the body and a bit of it showed itself from the darkness. It ripped out the arrow in its hide, hissed, and backed back into the darkness while giving the entire party the willies.

They could barely see it, but Jon recognized it for what it was, a 'fihyr'. In his country, as well as Jharkhor (Adam's homeland), there's a technique of horrific torture that transforms the victim into an abomination that does nothing but create and feed on fear. It's also viciously susceptible to sunlight, which Jon then created the illusion of such and used his magic to make it partially real and begin to cause it to burn and boil. Adam then plugged it full of arrows, forcing it to recoil away, sending another wave of fear that sent Jon's character screaming into the darkness. Fortunately, there were enough lucky guesses as to where it was to plink it down from its remaining bits of life.

They buried the body of the killed refugee, checked on the nearby survivors who were near comatose for another minute or two before finally coming too from the fear. They made everyone set up fires for the rest of the night, and eventually went over to the caravan by morning to see if they knew anything. Through good skill checks and tracking ability, they managed to figure out that the caravan was holding the fihyr for some reason before it went over and attacked the camp. Since the mechant and the guards didn't seem to want to provoke anything, the party parted ways from them, and they went onward to the city.

Once there, they split up to get information. Pat looked for a merchant that sold expensive items called 'spyglasses' at Adam's behalf, while Adam & Jon searched for employers that needed/wanted over ten score low-skilled labourers. They found one at the temple of Goldarr (Lord fo Progress and Wealth in this setting), who basically acted like a 'pretty boy' who was employed as a recruiter for a jon in Vilmir (three month journey for the job, excellent pay) to basically build a single house. He was interested in the refugees, and was convinced to provide them a finder's fee for the convenience for getting him soo many so quickly (saved him months of time). The party was then given a very large sum of money.

While in the city, they watched a few cage matches, discovering that apparently the Yellow Night Guild (Analee's guild of assassins) technically own the city and one of the Nightshade caste was in the cage match. A member of the Black Lotus Eaters entered the match in open hostility, but got secretly poisoned by her. The party inquired a bit, and learned at hostilities between the two factions have been getting more and more violent; very likely precipitated almost solely by the party itself because of that vision the Lotus Eaters are so keen on.

Analee introduced them to one of her guild who was of the harvester caste (old woman in a florist shop), who inquired a bit on Adam, basically informing him the only reason the guild has any interest is because the Lotus Eaters have interest; and would leave them alone totally were they to agree to not give up whatever it was that the Lotus Eaters wanted. Since Adam basically said he didn't care what happened, the woman said that was of concern and she would likely have another operative go with the party to follow and ensure that the Black Lotus didn't get their hands on what they wanted.