STATIC 2: Of the Market & the Glow
General Summary
Wherein our heroes prove themselves as market material and find themselves Displaced in the Glow
Of the Market
After their resounding victory against the giant centipedes, our heroes--who are in need of a codified name for their group--continued their quest to prove themselves to the vendors and entertainers of The Greenshale Market and become Of the Market. Next up was Pyre's Pepper Contest. This contest, unsurprisingly, consists of each participant eating hot peppers. The last one to give up or reach for a tasty glass of centipede milk is the winner. Seems straightforward enough, but there's a twist: potential pepper eaters will be blindfolded and choose their pepper at random (and there's quite the assortment there). Interesting! Anticipating a fair deal of fantasy Pepcid in the future, our adventurers bellied up to the proverbial pepper bar. Nero Rubicant, worrying about his stomach from the very beginning, found himself laid low by the Perpetual Pepper. Corinna Himmelswander made a brave showing of it, but the continued pepper onslaught had her reach for the milk as well. Tridge survived consuming Da Bomb (which led to visions for her and was totally her jam) but was eliminated soon after that experience. That left Hypatia as the winner, with a combination of pepper luck and cool rationale bringing her this victory and the lion's share of market respect. The final trial Of the Market lay before them--make the notorious sourpuss Khadan Drassol laugh at a joke. This was no mean feat. The combined talents of our four would-be jokesters--slapstick comedy & dad jokes--eventually brought a sensible chuckle to Khadan's lips and, thus, earning our heroes the title Of the Market--a high honor, indeed. They got the sense, at the end of the "trial", that it wasn't so much about how well they fared in each contest, but rather a willingness to do them--to engage in Greenshale cultural aspects--that earned them that respect. Great! Now to put that respect to good use and end this feud. They did so by leveraging their keen insight and awareness of the affection between Shandala Brightdoom and Farzi Volmir. The plan is to combine the talents of both families and show them how much stronger they could be together. The object lesson of this plan was to make a delicious addition to Brightdoom's already tasty centipede ramen--the midnight gourds of the family Volmir. By doing so, they created fantasy umami. It took some convincing--and the ardent help of Shandala and Farzi--but the beef between these two families was finally quashed. This event will likely be sealed with a partnership--in more ways than one--between Shandala and Farzi. Nice work for the "'souper' squad." Later, our heroes will discover that Lonnam Beshori, tailor and owner of Lonnam's Luxuries, has fomented this feud from the very start, hoping to move into the power vacuum that would be created in the market if one family left. Better if both families were to leave. It didn't work out that way for Lonnam, though, as the families are now unified. Perhaps it is Lonnam that should do the leaving.Strangeness Abounds in New Carydam
Our heroes couldn't even get cross-town to tell Frugameer the good news without a couple bizarre encounters. First, they came face-to-face with danger. Four brown bears, upset at their current confines in a caged wagon, decided to break free and make their grievances known to the closest sentient beings available--namely, our adventurers. These bears were dispatched, of course. Also unsurprisingly, the folks aboard the wagon were nowhere to be found. Oh well. Best to leave this in the hands of the Minders. Stranger still is the old man they encountered lumbering towards them only to fall dead at their feet. There is something strange about that, something in the way he looked at our heroes, Perhaps this was more than an unfortunate incident? Little time to ponder that as Frugameer and their just reward awaited.In the Glow
Frugameer was particularly pleased with how our heroes solved this personal problem and provided them both with a substantial sum of gold as well as the information promised about The Displacement. It turns out that Frugameer's information was a place--an abandoned warehouse that used to serve as a nightclub--and a key to open those magically locked doors. There are rumors of some sort of disturbance emanating from the shuttered club's interior. That might be something interesting for our adventurers to investigate, no? So investigate they did. Opening the doors of the warehouse confronted our explorers with a sort of shimmering wall, as if reality was slowly being torn asunder here and something new, something different was bleeding in. Bleeding out? Bleeding through? Of course that was not much time to think about that as our crew was rapidly Displaced. They came to themselves in the middle of a glowing dance floor, music pulsating and neon skeleton heads bobbing rhythmically to the beat. A giant illuminated sign revealed this as the Glow. A booming voice then proclaimed "NEW CHALLENGERS APPEAR!" before then commanding them to "DANCE." So dance they did.And That's Where We Left It
We'll see what this strange glowing realm has in store for our heroes during our next session.Varied & Sundry Details
- Corinna bought the Centipede's Eye--an amulet made from centipede vertebrae and a presumably preserved centipede eye--from Gothric's Auspicious Amulets in Greenshale. Who knows what fortunes this may bring her?
- Speaking of Greenshale, Tridge bought some centipede taffy from Boomer. It was exactly as described. Who knows what fortune this may bring her?
Character(s) interacted with
- Shandala Brightdoom, ramen merchant, paramour of Farzi Volmir
- Fazri Volmir, midnight gourd expert, paramor of Shandala Brightdoom
- Pyre, tiefling and pepper seller
- Khandan Drassol, a famously dour potter
- Frugameer Brightdoom, wealthy and estranged son of the family Brightdoom
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