Session 70: Recap and Downtime thread
Session 70: Recap and Downtime thread
This session marked the party’s first trip to Zyan Above! After negotiations with the Chatelaine, a bit of intelligence gathering, and some preparations, the party opened a shimmering priaduct from the childhood memories of Ulantanu, their one time captive (from the Catacombs of the Fleischguild in Session 6) and now willing convert to Cletus’ syncretistic faith.
He took the party to an abandoned mill in Volish Hill, where he played as a child when visiting cousins. It was a great redoubt of their imaginary worlds: the secret hideout of their band of pirates, or the jungle base camp for their safari expeditions, depending on the mood of a summer afternoon.
Stepping from the pod at the end of the priaduct, the place smelled of damp decay, the broken floorboards rotting underfoot. A dim light coming through cracks in the millhouse fell on the ruins of the threshing apparatus. In the dim light a body could be seen. It’s mask—a face with puffed cheeks blowing wind—belonged to one of the clans of fishers. The corpse was drenched in its own bloody vomit, one leg mauled by claws and dainty fangs that Ulantanu and Lori (another native of the city) said belonged to the hated cats of Zyan. Old habits die hard, so Salinger deftly searched its stained pockets. In addition to hooks, lures, fishing line, and the like, he turned up a purse with a couple of Zyanese coins in it. The party decided to leave the children in the mill with Unasi to guard them.
Emerging from the mill, the party found themselves in a small, dimly lit hollow, standing in shallow fouled water that had collected in the basin around the old mill. At the top a patch of brilliant azure sky was visible, and the air had a bite to it, the nip of late autumn. A nearly vertical set of narrow metal steps led up to the South pasts strange clinging weeds—at the top of the hollow a narrow street could be seen with a row of dilapidated houses perched back from the hollows’ edge. A slightly less harrowing set up steps led up to the North to a street a little less high. Ultanu pointed the party in that direction, and off they headed towards the Sky Goose Inn, where the party hoped to locate the home of Leonasha, the now grown child of the shade Elsa. Long ago the party promised her mother’s shade that they would return a family heirloom to her daughter, now doubtless a grown woman, a great hollowed pearl with a crank, that projects colored shadows from a tiny aperture and plays a melody, never the same twice. All the party knew is that Leonasha’s family home is “the house with a red door, near the Sky Goose”.
Emerging from the hollow, the neighborhood had tilted streets meeting at strange angles, precipitous stairs, and narrow covered footbridges. The houses looked very old, mostly townhouses with a falling down charm, some tucked on ledges with rickety wooden stairs, or clinging impossibly to the hillside. From their creaking eaves, painted charms hung spinning over peeling wooden porches. From the lighted windows there was a rich and earthy smell of some bubbling pot that wafted into streets. The denizens spoke to one another in a sing song accent, mostly falling silent as the party passed—a strange bunch even by the standards of Zyan. The party went in disguise: all wore the mask of some clan or other, mostly merchants; some had shaved their beards and wore long white wigs, others had covered their tanned skin with pale makeup. Some were simply too strange to hide, like the Giant with a braided red beard, or the tiny gnome, and Dozar’s great girth was striking contrast to the lithe form of most of the Zyanese. These three wore the masks of freaks and circus performers.
Rounding the corner of a curving street the party was approached by a woman in a mask like a blurred face. Her clothes were faded and stained. She offered to read the party’s fortune, and the gnome took her up on it, asking after her method of divining. She explained that she was a haruspex and, drawing a queer red knife, told her that she would read the entrails of her patron’s shadows. The gnome was a little alarmed at this, asking if her shadow would be all right, and the woman assured not to worry that “since shadows are hardy things”. With the shadow cast by her knife she made an expert incision, at which the monk’s shadow doubled in agony, and with the shadow of the haruspex’s hand, she pulled from the shadows guts long entrails, which she spread before her. Some of her predictions were of the “telling you things you already know about yourself variety”, like that the gnome was an interloper who “came from beyond and would return to beyond”. But others were more ominous if vague, like that “the errand you are on will prove more complicated than you hope”, and “you will be beset by perils, for the mad divinities oppose your purpose”. Paying her handsomely for her predictions, the party moved on, arriving at the Sky Goose.
The tavern is on a precipitous incline, supported by metal stilts of differing heights. The first room is a long dark bar of ancient wood. Against the back wall, behind the bar, sits the wooden Sky Goose, the painted statue of a multi-headed beast, with long intertwining blue necks twisting up to clustered beaked heads almost like petals of some numinous feathered plant. There is a dizzying array of liquors in smudged, old glass bottles at its feet. The masked clientele seated at the bar are, as Ulantanu tells you, mainly fishers, and dumpling wrappers—old drunks mixed with a few hellraising youths covered in mercury drip tattoos. You can see a long corridor that leads back to a room where men with copper masks are playing at some sort of billiard table.
The bartender wears an avian mask, covering only his eyes, with pale blue feathers, and strings of beads that hang about his cheeks. He introduces himself as Tarushizar (“Taru”). He pours drinks for the group of a black liquor that tastes like a bitter ouzo. When questioned about the house with red door, he tells the party where to find it, but says that it is now empty. For Leonasha fell into debt to the Guild of Horoscops, and was taken as a slave. When questioned about what this entails, Ulantanu tells the party that she might only be working in the Observatory at the top of Volish hill, but the worst case scenario is that she might be serving as “A tender of the Temporal Maenads. A fate from which none return.”
Taru offers to ply the party with more drinks of Zyan. And if anyone is hungry, Taru points them towards a menu, drawn in pink chalk, which reads
Fried lilies 2 cp
Squid Dumpling Soup 5 cp
Roast Cat 1 SP
Tell me if you want to buy food or drink, or fraternize with the locals, or check out the back room, or ask Taru about something else.
Relevant to Pete Segreti Eric Boyd Maxime Golubchik Nick Kuntz Shoe Skogen Aleksandr Revzin Shemek hiTankolel Evlyn M (maybe) Chris P. (maybe)
This session marked the party’s first trip to Zyan Above! After negotiations with the Chatelaine, a bit of intelligence gathering, and some preparations, the party opened a shimmering priaduct from the childhood memories of Ulantanu, their one time captive (from the Catacombs of the Fleischguild in Session 6) and now willing convert to Cletus’ syncretistic faith.
He took the party to an abandoned mill in Volish Hill, where he played as a child when visiting cousins. It was a great redoubt of their imaginary worlds: the secret hideout of their band of pirates, or the jungle base camp for their safari expeditions, depending on the mood of a summer afternoon.
Stepping from the pod at the end of the priaduct, the place smelled of damp decay, the broken floorboards rotting underfoot. A dim light coming through cracks in the millhouse fell on the ruins of the threshing apparatus. In the dim light a body could be seen. It’s mask—a face with puffed cheeks blowing wind—belonged to one of the clans of fishers. The corpse was drenched in its own bloody vomit, one leg mauled by claws and dainty fangs that Ulantanu and Lori (another native of the city) said belonged to the hated cats of Zyan. Old habits die hard, so Salinger deftly searched its stained pockets. In addition to hooks, lures, fishing line, and the like, he turned up a purse with a couple of Zyanese coins in it. The party decided to leave the children in the mill with Unasi to guard them.
Emerging from the mill, the party found themselves in a small, dimly lit hollow, standing in shallow fouled water that had collected in the basin around the old mill. At the top a patch of brilliant azure sky was visible, and the air had a bite to it, the nip of late autumn. A nearly vertical set of narrow metal steps led up to the South pasts strange clinging weeds—at the top of the hollow a narrow street could be seen with a row of dilapidated houses perched back from the hollows’ edge. A slightly less harrowing set up steps led up to the North to a street a little less high. Ultanu pointed the party in that direction, and off they headed towards the Sky Goose Inn, where the party hoped to locate the home of Leonasha, the now grown child of the shade Elsa. Long ago the party promised her mother’s shade that they would return a family heirloom to her daughter, now doubtless a grown woman, a great hollowed pearl with a crank, that projects colored shadows from a tiny aperture and plays a melody, never the same twice. All the party knew is that Leonasha’s family home is “the house with a red door, near the Sky Goose”.
Emerging from the hollow, the neighborhood had tilted streets meeting at strange angles, precipitous stairs, and narrow covered footbridges. The houses looked very old, mostly townhouses with a falling down charm, some tucked on ledges with rickety wooden stairs, or clinging impossibly to the hillside. From their creaking eaves, painted charms hung spinning over peeling wooden porches. From the lighted windows there was a rich and earthy smell of some bubbling pot that wafted into streets. The denizens spoke to one another in a sing song accent, mostly falling silent as the party passed—a strange bunch even by the standards of Zyan. The party went in disguise: all wore the mask of some clan or other, mostly merchants; some had shaved their beards and wore long white wigs, others had covered their tanned skin with pale makeup. Some were simply too strange to hide, like the Giant with a braided red beard, or the tiny gnome, and Dozar’s great girth was striking contrast to the lithe form of most of the Zyanese. These three wore the masks of freaks and circus performers.
Rounding the corner of a curving street the party was approached by a woman in a mask like a blurred face. Her clothes were faded and stained. She offered to read the party’s fortune, and the gnome took her up on it, asking after her method of divining. She explained that she was a haruspex and, drawing a queer red knife, told her that she would read the entrails of her patron’s shadows. The gnome was a little alarmed at this, asking if her shadow would be all right, and the woman assured not to worry that “since shadows are hardy things”. With the shadow cast by her knife she made an expert incision, at which the monk’s shadow doubled in agony, and with the shadow of the haruspex’s hand, she pulled from the shadows guts long entrails, which she spread before her. Some of her predictions were of the “telling you things you already know about yourself variety”, like that the gnome was an interloper who “came from beyond and would return to beyond”. But others were more ominous if vague, like that “the errand you are on will prove more complicated than you hope”, and “you will be beset by perils, for the mad divinities oppose your purpose”. Paying her handsomely for her predictions, the party moved on, arriving at the Sky Goose.
The tavern is on a precipitous incline, supported by metal stilts of differing heights. The first room is a long dark bar of ancient wood. Against the back wall, behind the bar, sits the wooden Sky Goose, the painted statue of a multi-headed beast, with long intertwining blue necks twisting up to clustered beaked heads almost like petals of some numinous feathered plant. There is a dizzying array of liquors in smudged, old glass bottles at its feet. The masked clientele seated at the bar are, as Ulantanu tells you, mainly fishers, and dumpling wrappers—old drunks mixed with a few hellraising youths covered in mercury drip tattoos. You can see a long corridor that leads back to a room where men with copper masks are playing at some sort of billiard table.
The bartender wears an avian mask, covering only his eyes, with pale blue feathers, and strings of beads that hang about his cheeks. He introduces himself as Tarushizar (“Taru”). He pours drinks for the group of a black liquor that tastes like a bitter ouzo. When questioned about the house with red door, he tells the party where to find it, but says that it is now empty. For Leonasha fell into debt to the Guild of Horoscops, and was taken as a slave. When questioned about what this entails, Ulantanu tells the party that she might only be working in the Observatory at the top of Volish hill, but the worst case scenario is that she might be serving as “A tender of the Temporal Maenads. A fate from which none return.”
Taru offers to ply the party with more drinks of Zyan. And if anyone is hungry, Taru points them towards a menu, drawn in pink chalk, which reads
Fried lilies 2 cp
Squid Dumpling Soup 5 cp
Roast Cat 1 SP
Tell me if you want to buy food or drink, or fraternize with the locals, or check out the back room, or ask Taru about something else.
Relevant to Pete Segreti Eric Boyd Maxime Golubchik Nick Kuntz Shoe Skogen Aleksandr Revzin Shemek hiTankolel Evlyn M (maybe) Chris P. (maybe)
Shemek hiTankolel all right, I think I have some idea of what you're meaning. Let's work a play dynamic out as we go along. For my part, when things are ambiguous or confusing for you, I'll try to put things in terms of facilitating the Chailtelaine's interests or getting us to the next adventure, so you'll have something more to latch onto for your character in the quickest amount of time possible.
ReplyDeleteShemek hiTankolel If you are worried about surrendering your arms when we go to a place such as the Horoscops' guild, that gives you ever the more reason to seek the Aether blades with clovis!
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting, and something that might appeal to T'kar.
ReplyDelete