MAL Ep. 35

In this session, the party finished gathering information in Kiratas and set sail on what turned out to be a NOT AT ALL UNEVENTFUL journey to Ellenun. ;-)

1) Big Frank was unable to host a concert at his brothel, whose lobby was only about 20'x15', but he talked to his friend Kaz at the bar who accepted Jon's offer of a free concert that night, offering free drinks for the party and a free half-hour with a hooker for Jon in appreciation. Jon tried to get Frank to send some girls to the bar with him. Frank seemed confused by this suggestion, and told Jon to just come back after the concert was over.

2) Red, Adriel, and Zadkiel went to the steam bath, which despite first appearances was actually relaxing and did not involve anyone sacrificing them to the demons of the cenote. They met a spice merchant there named Sarjan, who had six fingers--which the three PCs failed to remember was a racial trait of the Tenarri. Zadkiel decided to purchase some spices as a gift for Khirg, and inquired about the spices used to make the fish dish Red had enjoyed, puchasing a few gold pieces worth of local spices.

3) The PCs went to Jon's concert, along with a crowd of locals. After some humorous musical banter with half-orc hecklers and a dance performance by Vanima Kaimelar and Syla the owl, Jon began playing wild music, a bardic specialty of his the party has seen him play a few times previously (it has aphrodisiac effects on onlookers and can sometimes cause them to dance uncontrollably.) This time, though, Khirg's bow began vibrating and glowing and Jon lost control of the wild magic, finding himself unable to stop playing despite repeated attempts. The audience became unruly, especially one angry duergar barbarian who attacked Vanima Kaimelar and yelled to the other patrons that she was a fairy and Jon was messing with their minds.

4) Zadkiel rescued Vanima Kaimelar and the party refrained from escalating the conflict by kicking the asses of the duergar who were in their faces; however their attempts to stop the wild music by physically pulling the pipes away from Jon and casting Break Enchantment were unsuccessful. In the fracas, Aler revealed his fluency in Undercommon and Zadkiel assumed angel shape. Finally Thrane Do'Ezzen entered the bar and cast Silence, ending the performance.

5) When normalcy had been restored, the duergar continued to complain loudly to Kaz and Thrane about Jon targeting them with magic spells, considered assault in their culture. Jon tried to claim that he didn't know his bard songs were magic, which Kaz was skeptical of, but for still-unknown reasons, Thrane lied and told Kaz and the duergar Jon was telling the truth and must have accidentally summoned the wild music without intending to. The crowd dispersed, though the duergar barbarian was still looking daggers at Jon. Aler overheard Thrane tell Kaz in Undercommon to meet him at his quarters above the inn to discuss a "breach."

6) A bit shaken by the unexpected experience, Jon returned to Big Frank's and was admitted to the underground apartment of a prostitute named Tina. Jon learned that the girls in the brothel were slaves, which explains why they weren't going out to concerts. Tina didn't know many things about the city, on account of never leaving the brothel. She did know Thrane Do'Ezzen, telling Jon that he had apparently drained some of her life force during an encounter last week. Jon was moved by Tina's plight and decided to buy her freedom, talking to Fenny at the Happy Caver about securing passage to the surface for her. Red expressed puzzlement at Jon's determination, and Jon explained that something about the girl's circumstances reminded him of Piper.

7) After a brief discussion, the party decided Thrane Do'Ezzen would be a good person to sell the sacrificial dagger to. Three visits with Thrane and a whole bunch of opposed Bluff/Sense Motive checks later, the party had sold him the dagger for 9000 gp, inquired about the "breach" they had heard him talking about and been rebuffed, told Do'Ezzen about the illithid attack on Jon's brain, and asked for his help with Piper's Conundrum. Thrane agreed that it might be possible to use necromancy to switch Piper's life force with another victim's in the moments before her death, thus allowing Piper's consciousness to survive while the other victim is irrevocably destroyed instead. However, his asking price for this was the "head of Aler Vel'Sharren." The party pretended not to know who that was and exited, then Zadkiel discreetly let Aler know what had transpired.

8) Aler had tried some of the tangy bread the other PCs had encountered earlier, which the barmaid identified as mushroom bread, and it gave him powerful flashbacks to his childhood. That night in the inn, Aler and Bay took out the mirror that showed his family and looked into it while eating some more of the bread, provoking an image of Aler's mother feeding him bread as a toddler.

9) In the morning, the party collected their lizardman guide Aishek and boarded the boat to Ellenun. En route, a talkative drow sailor from House De'Afin (Vanessa's clan) chatted up Adriel, asking a number of questions about where the party was going--most of which Adriel answered evasively--and offering some general information about the city of Ellenun. Meanwhile, Red questioned Aishek about the local ecosystem, learning a number of things about the local flora, fauna, and light sources. Khirg charmed his way into the ship's galley and got the cook to show him how to cook with the new spices Zadkiel had gotten him. Zadkiel tried to share his bowl of maggots with some sailors, who were cool with the idea of eating maggots but grossed out by the idea of eating something from the same bowl as someone else. ("Your mouth has been on that!") Jon sang sea songs with some of the drow sailors and asked them about the civil war, getting confirmation from them that Aler's House, Vel'sharren, is considered extinct. Aler, meanwhile, noticed glittering lights miles overhead in the expansive cavern reminiscent of stars, and felt a sudden connection to the Darklands that he had not felt in the mostly-Duergar city of Kiratas.

10) Finally, after about 10 hours of travel, an illithid skyship suddenly appeared in an apparent attack, and there we broke off for the day!

Onward, Laura