Receding Floodwaters

General Summary

Chapter 1:

Receding

Floodwaters

1. an entire cauldron full of nourishing soup;
2. half an hour of oversight in the Rusty Dragon Inn while all other adult humanoids gather rescue supplies elsewhere;
3. a sturdy, thickly constructed soup ladle, with which he can bonk the goblin boy on the forehead until Dacio complies.

Hmm. Looking at this thigh bone, I'm thinking about scavengers. Did anything gnaw on one end of it?

— the party finds out that something tried to bite this thigh bones using extremely sharp canines. Or possibly needle-type teeth?

Chef has bigger mouth! MORE TEETH!

— Chef is one extremely pleased reptile

{scowl}
Chef has MORE TEETH

— Chef sulks over the discovery that Bruthazmus has a larger bite

A selection of clues gleaned via expert investigation:

Studies of the NATURAL

• While scouting ahead, before the party had crested the eastern ridge to see the Bicchieri Caravan campsite, Wrong Way the Giant Bee found a useful piece of information.
  Rather literally.
  (Wrong Way is a literal-minded bee, after all!)
  Wrong Way made his forward scouting loop. When he swooped back, onto Jesse's lap he dropped a bloody rabbit ear.

1. This is in fact a Grassland jackrabbit ear, not a domestic bunny.
2. This is an ear whose fur has been slow-smoked with a mix of eleven herbs and spices.
3. This ear was chewed off by something with only needle-style fangs and/or teeth.
4. The only blood is on the outside.
5. It does not SMELL like undead flesh!
6. It is not as muddy as it should have been if it got left behind during the storm.

• The animal companions of rangers and druid
  
• Rowtag
• Wrong Way
• Xifeng
were at varyingly strong levels of adamant that their chosen humanoid stay right here on the campsite. Or go south, that's okay. Or go east, that's probably okay. None of the animals wanted to go north, or have their people go north. None could communicate the shape of their unease. Xifeng was particularly disturbed to the point of nipping her Harpy's shoulder if Sephia so much as took a step too close to the northern grass.
• Although it surely rained at least as hard in this area over the past several weeks as it rained in Aquitaine, this area did not flood. It should have. It should still be three feet of sloshy mud. The area south of here is a better match for a naturalist's expectations of natural phenomena than north of here, which is still a better match than right here at the caravan camp.
• According to Sephia's expertise on land that has survived the passage of a hurricane, and Jesse's expertise on living the fine line between chaos and order: Most of the debris from this area should be to the north, but the tallest items and the lightest items might have gone *south* instead. Any person searching this area would have already looked north.
• Bruthazmus, casting a little wider into the grass, thinks someone was trying to take advantage of the thicker grass. He found strangely heavy hoof marks from the north-northwest; but only back hooves. Never forehooves. They're too heavy to be what he would expect of unicorns. Maybe they were fat unicorns? Even stranger: lurch-and-drag marks to the west, coming and wandering around through the wreckage and then going again, as if whatever their foot shapes, they had wrapped themselves in loose sackcloth and stuffed it with wads of whatever they could find.
• Searching the eastern edge of the campground for shallow graves, or a note in a bottle, or anywhere else sentients deliberately buried something, Jesse finds crates stamped "Bicchieri Caravan" and buried partially under the edges of the trail, each crate packed with mostly intact glassware containing balls of dried wicks, or jam, or liquor, or cigars, or seeds, or herbs.
• While checking the grass for wagon tracks (and discouraging further nips from Xifeng), Sephia continues to check the debris strewn to the north. She sees some debris up here. she spots see bits of cloth draped over bushes. The last dying sunlight of the day glints off tumbleweeds with bottles wedged into them. She notices a crossbow in one shrub, and some busted axes in another area. She even finds a half keg. (Used to be a whole keg, probably smashed after rolling and bouncing several time.)

Studies of the SUPERNATURAL

• Based on the residual magic still -- even now, more than a week afterward -- gently fading in the surface dirt of the campsite, this was the eye of the hurricane!
Miro Teague, Stormborn, knows hurricanes.
• The eye of the hurricane was too small by an order of magnitude -- a thousand yards or less instead of twenty nautical miles. That is not how hurricanes work. Also it was stationary for days, driving a visible mark into the world at its perimeter. That is NOT how hurricanes work!
• Yup, the eastern edge of the eye of the storm was here at the caravan camp for a long time. Look how the soil is fluffed upward from the low pressure! Look how the rock face around the edges is raw and scored, as if that part of the ancient river bed was carved out of what has been flat dirt for a long time! And just outside the perimeter -- this is an oval about half a mile across -- the ground is scoured away to a depth of several feet, the grass and shrubbery and few trees have been ripped up, the only stuff to stay rooted in the soil is that patch over there of cabbages, which are growing more or less at random.

Studies of the Campsite Rubble

• The people of this caravan removed their stock from the wagons at one point in the siege. They moved the glassware to the eastern edge, to either side of the road, and buried it -- not deep enough to truly hide it, but perhaps their intention was to keep the glassware from being shattered and added to the storm winds?
• The people of this caravan either died or were captured once their defenses were exhausted. For Dacio's sake, Chef hopes most of them were captured. It is never safe to be a lone reptile with no Clan at all. In either case, Chef expected to find some bodies not far away, and possibly some of their smashed wares. But Chef finds only more of these thigh bones from cows and donkeys. And the donkey skull, which will maybe make okay broth but is not going to be much good for any other use.
And for that matter: what happened to the caravan animals? Where are the donkeys? Where are the caravan guard dogs? These were conscientious people, they would have done something for their creatures.
• Meanwhile, between inquiries doled out to the others and reports received, Lee examines the pattern of the debris within the campsite. He searches for a hidden note from the lost Bicchieri Caravan. He determines that the debris has been disturbed more than once since this caravan was destroyed. Perhaps five times in all before the SNAFU Guild arrived. If Dacio Bicchieri truly traveled for nine or ten days to get help and his people were alive enough to put up a ruckus of a distraction as he fled, and it took the Snafu Guild seven days to hurry here, that means this campsite has been investigated approximately once per two days since the earliest it could have been breached? Which suggests more than one "someone" is still looking for something important! And maybe they found a note. Or ... maybe Lee Chung should dig somewhere else?

mroooooOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo

• Birds and bees don't wear hats.
• Miro, busy using his Stormborn talents to mend the hat by pretending that it is sailcloth in need of magical patching, does not mention the beanie-with-propeller that may be in one of his pockets.
• Lee wears a sarok along with the rest of his monk's outfit.
• Chef wears of course! the Hat of Chef. Always. Chef hat, maybe chef apron, probably also Chef Belt of Tool Holding. Occasionally also wears "Oven Mitt of +3 No Burn Talons Nor Drop Pie", which is an important Tool of Becoming a Master Chef.
• Jesse has an excellent leather hat.
• Sephia notes that she is a woman of taste and distinction, and this object which has been well-mended by Miro continues to be a spotted, stained, and above all mud-brown hat.

And then I reach into my pocket, and I get a natural 20 on my Sleight of Hand skill, which means my roll result is a six....

— Miro's player cheats to make Sephia wear the hat

Where have you been all this time?!?

— Lee and Jesse and probably Chef to Bruthazmus

Someone was spyin' on us, part of the night. Shooed the vampire cabbages away to the northwest.

— Bruthazmus to the party

• a very well-maintained, colorfully decorated, remarkably clean store
• across the street from one another: Purgatory Schoolhouse and Purgatory Saloon
• Purgatory Gulch General Store
• Oat Livery caps off the western end of the street.

split up

Rewards Granted

• One muddy brown Oatman Hat, found by Lee, repaired by Miro's sailor's magic, worn by Sephia Zhang despite the fact that it is stained and smelly and absolutely does not go with her outfit. Its hat band has a wavy pattern inherent to whatever this material may be.

• Each Player Character and each Companion (Chef y Los Tres Amigos Voladores ) receives 640 XP for defeating 1 Hell Bovine.

Character(s) interacted with

Aquitaine

• Sheriff Belor Hemlock
• Ranger Shalelu Adosana of Falcon's Rangers
• Minstrel Darly Quince of SNAFU Guild
• Goblin teenager Dacio Bicchieri, who comes to Aquitaine seeking rescuers to save the Bicchieri Caravan and most particularly Dacio's "Pa"

On the Longgrass Plains, heading west:

• one Hell Bovine
• assorted blood-sucking cabbage looking things
• something with person-like behavior watched the visitors for a while in the night

Purgatory Gulch

• Frederico Bianchi

Notes

Join us next episode!

• Lee Chung paces back down the street to pay his respects at the church!
• Jesse Devonshire visits the Purgatory Saloon!
• Miro Teague sets out to find the inappropriately silent blacksmithy ... and anything else he might discover as he explores the town!
• Team Ranger goes to the Purgatory Gulch General Store.