The IRS Session 28: Happy Birthday Cal! Report
General Summary
A few hours' journey from its outskirts, we join the IRS as they travel the coastline of the Azur Gulf for a couple of days and collect plenty of valuable materials on the way! (Including 2 whole Raakatite for Riz 'O and a couple of +2 quality items for Nessa and Riz 'O)
On their way to the Jewel of Promaticous, Cal is busy working away on his potions and learns the recipes for Giant's Protein and Time Out Juice
Right upon waking up, Nessa tries her hardest to contain her excitement about Cal's birthday being today, however she ends up spilling the not-well-kept secret out to the whole group
As they pull up to The Outskirts, Nessa warns the group to cover their mouths as they travel underneath the red-maple canopies filling the air with GSPM mushroom spores
Gen, feeling under the weather, takes a stop at a bar in the outskirts where instead of taking part in the "Fungi-Run", she drinks away her sorrows
A goblinoid pirate bearing a large rifle offers her a drink and attempts to pry into Gen's issues, but all the walls have been put up between them, driving the man away
As Gen spends the next 4 hours sipping on her 3 ginger beers, the rest of the IRS arrive at the lowest level of proper Mercommernaut, that being the Bazaar
Noting that they should visit the Bazaar later for the swap-meet being run there, the party make their way to wall of The Acropolis wherein they are stopped by its guards
These tough guards immediately go white-in-the-face however when they realize they stopped THE Nessa Sarkas, and embarrasedly step aside as they're allowed through to the hoity-toity district
The IRS then direct themselves towards Collegium Citharoedorum as Cal and Riz 'O are insistent on her visiting the school and remedying her dire situation at the school's administrative office
After the group pull up to campus, they're let in by more guards and make their way over to the library as Farma finds a place for Dain to get his wounds patched up
The party then go into Nessa's dorm room finding both her mailbox and door stuffed to the brim with overdue library fees, letters from administration, and most importantly, letters from her family
Nessa makes her way into her room and talks about what she will do while at the school with Cal and Kharaal, meanwhile Riz 'O begins taking the valuable textbooks and opening letters to take the money out of them
Nessa then opens up a letter which seems to her to be a bunch of redacted text, however Cal reads through it and it appears to be a vandalized letter from Willow
As Nessa smiles over the pleasant letter from Willow, catching her up to speed with her journeys, Cal's face begins to drop as the letter's subtext seems to be from someone making threats and wanting her to meet at "Notos" alone
The group leave the apartment as they split off, half (Riz 'O and Cal) to the library and the other half going to the Administrative Building
Riz 'O tries his best to get another picture for Cal's calendar together as the two of them clear out the library thanks to the easily-bribed (with alcohol) librarian, who even manages to locate "The Day I fell In-Love with a Lycanthrope", a book which she says all the airheads of the college enjoy
Taking a few pictures of Cal at Nessa's favorite reading desk in a pile of weapon books and smut books, the two satisfied artists leave the llibrary as soon as Nessa enters
Confused at their detour, Nessa is harrassed by the librarians to pay her fees, which she does so begrudgingly, in before the library staff go out for their smoke break upon Nessa wanting to check out more books
With no other options, Cal drags Nessa into the administrative building where she heads to the back room to speak with the college's headmaster
The long-bearded headmaster gladly welcomes Nessa in before she almost spills the beans about wanting to drop out of the school
Needing time to discuss, the headmaster talks a bit with Riz 'O in the hall about the Sarkas's and their importance to the school, making them fully aware that they have been going there for as long as her can remember, and that flexing their high wealth will not tempt the decisions of the school
Heading back to his office, the headmaster hears Nessa explain that she will be temporarily leaving the school in order to continue her travels around Aekko
The headmaster asks if she is sure of this, and upon a yes, he allows Nessa to drop out if her parental guardian can provide a signature on a provided form
Heading out with mixed emotions, the crew begin heading to the Smither's Belt before bumping into Gen at the gate to the Acropolis
They all head together to the Smither's Belt where Nessa knows the perfect place to get their Mythic Weapons forged, that being Old Man Leon's Legendary Forge
On their way to the forge, Gen sends a message to Lenore of The Precipice Vallation, who confirms that she had just seen Gen the other day supposedly, and hoped that she was doing better than the gloom-and-doom she was supposedly in
Meeting the wheelchair-bound Duergar, he begins examining their artifacts as he falls out of his chair in shock at the vision of the Duality shortsword
Thankfully Leon is fine as he is helped back into his chair, and excitedly agrees to help the party with forging their weapons (Duality and the Satyr's Flute), meanwhile Gen helps Leon out as he explains the supposed origins (being widely-believed concepts manifest into objects) of Memory Stones to her while receiving barely any responses due to Gen still moping
The rest of the party heads to the swap meet with Gen's Phantasmal Steed (now appearing as a horse made of sand), resulting in a couple of exchanges of +3 materials, allowing Cal to obtain some very luckily-found Giant's Leather for his sling and for Riz 'O to get an Undead Bone for his scimitar
As Riz 'O talks with the grizzly eyepatched monster-part shopkeep, he is told that he may be able to get Misimi Bronze for 15G, or he could fish some out of the Azur Gulf itself
Looking forward to diving, Riz 'O thanks the man for his advice as they head back to Gen a couple of hours later through a set of alleyways familiar to Nessa
The group are stopped in their tracks as soon as they pass a particularly empty alley full of a line of books which soon fall in a domino fashion
Finding the books extremely ominous, Nessa warns nobody to touch these books as their curiosity nearly gets the best of the,
The group almost entirely pass these books until Gen's horse Knightmare picks the first book up and meets the party back at Leon's
Leon expels more lore about the Memory Stones and how many there supposedly are, in before the group finally read the book in Knightmare's mouth being simply titled "Lou's Brew Crew; And other Nursery Rhymes" showing a picture of three witches around a cauldron on the front
Upon opening the book to its first page, a crazenly-scrawled message reads: "
The group immediately go back to the alleyway and find the books to be missing, meanwhile Cal follows the path they took around the alleyway's corner to find a trail of blood leading to an axe ominously stuck in a piece of wood (filled with blood) at the alley's end
Seeing the stack of books lined up at the alley's end, Cal begins to flip through the old storybooks about witches, however he finds that every place in which "witches" or "hags" are mentioned, they are crossed out in the same scratchy writing
Lastly, Cal finds a note on the piece of wood reading "How cute, but someone has to fix the mistakes"
After hearing all of this, Gen arrives on the scene in-person and begins to begrudgingly explain what the messages could mean
Gen first starts by revealing the scars all over her body from the horrific treatment from her mother, much to Cal and Nessa's shock and horror
Next, Gen when prompted, begins to explain that her mother tried murdering her on Cal's birthday four years ago, the circumstances of her birth and the hag deal, as well the identity of Gen's "other self" being the result of a half-completed Lich which must have somehow been triggered after she was rescued from the rubble of her house
After explaining all of this, with much more weight off her shoulders, Gen feels that a few more secrets need to be revealed, and she starts by removing her head entirely
Gen's head decapitated, she shows that her true form is a flame underneath where her head used to be, and explains that not only was she decapitated by her mother, but she made a deal with Visku to come back to life if under her servitude
After agreeing to the deal, Gen caught her mother off-guard and actually vanquishes her instead, and upon the end of the explanation being reached, Gen seems to be in a much better mood
Gen ends off the whole interaction by taking the dull end of the axe and smashing the whole thing to smithereens, relieving an immense amount of stress
The crew then head in for the night before celebrating at the Knights Inne's food court, wherein they eat a huge surf and turf dinner as they celebrate Cal's birthday proper while a minstrel and his band play privately for the group
The IRS then go to their rooms, where Nessa springs a surprise on Cal, that being a bracelet to remember her by
As Nessa agrees to make the bracelet bigger so that it doesn't get damaged, the party finally get their day's rest in...
Report Date
04 Mar 2025
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