Bamboozles

Potha has entered the realm of the Empress, the equatorial belt that the Lunar Gods only think they have contained. If she can cross the Isthmus of Larazel and chart a ship to Samvara, her arrival in Suwirsha will be unstoppable. But while the isthmus is theoretically uncorrupted territory, the vanguard of the Empress may be closer than they appear...

On the Road Again

Potha and friends were deposited by the Miutan warship at the town of Velokash, on the Southern side of the Isthmus. The group spent a moment there gathering supplies. Sarket considered buying an elephant, but the group decided against it; Potha and Temperance found and milked an extremely venomous tree viper for some weapon poison. And then, onwards, through the tropical and rocky terrain! While the isthmus is small equatorial rainforest makes for difficult travel at the best of times.
After a few days hiking through some hills, the group reached the central river valley of the isthmus. Where the two great lakes (Nao and Tasba - sorry I forgot their names during the session) nearly meet is the town of Bachira. Bachira was immediately striking, both for its natural beauty and its unusually large amounts of industry - large rubber fields along the lakesides were being harvested, and a fancy new half-tree tower had been built. Potha and friends dropped by the tavern, The Net-House, to grab a drink and a room for the night. The barkeep at the Net-House was a woman named Nissa, who told them that the tower belonged to Magus Erzel, a mage of some sort that had driven out the local priest and built the tower where the old temple to the lake spirits was. Erzel apparently was gathering the bodies of the town to safely cleanse of corruption, and was very close with the local prince (Prince Ibo Nessek, a party boy with a lot of loyal soldiers). Also, apparently something weird was going on with the lakes themselves.
Potha arranged a meeting with Magus Erzel, and then checked out the religious center of the town - the mosaic-covered shrine where the two lakes meet every wet season, only lately they haven't actually been meeting. Potha meditated here, searching for corruption, but only found memories of wonder at the world, of very many cats that met at the merging of the lakes, and of Kipilu. When Potha looked over the lakes at night, she did notice lights on the other end of the smaller lake (Tasba her falcon surveyed it and said that it was some camouflaged complex with lots of blue decor. A mystery was brewing!

The Magus Mystery

Over the night, Potha sent Sarket to do some social recon. Sarket found out that the Magus was a political force, that locals were suspicious of foreigners, and that he seemed to have lots of symbols of Orchid of Blue. The next morning, Potha met with Magus Erzel and their bodyguard, Tazu. The Magus was chipper and talkative, a charismatic man who enjoyed talking about "vibes". He seemed suspicious of the building complex over the lake, which professed to follow Orchid of Blue but were acting sketchy. Mid-meeting Potha, picked up guilty and fearful vibes from Tazu, the bodyguard, and decided to investigate further. She sent up her falcon and The Prison Rat to investigate the upper levels of the tower, while she distracted Erzel.

Potha found a few more minor red flags in the conversation, but mostly regarding Erzel's role in the changing community. He seemed more like a charismatic venture-capitalist and researcher than anything malevolent - that is, until the animals reported back. Having done an excellent sleuthing job, they reported that the upper levels contained many humans bones and several aberrant cocoons. Most venture capitalists aren't that kind of predatory!
Erzel was bad news. Thankfully, he was being useful even if he was being dangerous - during their final conversation, he provided an adventuring contact. Tazu brought this person to Potha's inn before the squad went investigating: a half-dryad fighter named Eada, who seemed eerily similar to both Orchid of Blue and Eora (Potha's childhood best friend). A weird vibe, but she seemed friendly and sincere and willing to help. Potha also had a side conversation with Tazu, where Tazu offered to take Potha down a special shortcut on their way out of town. It seemed that, whatever was happening here, Tazu was having some regrets and wanted to skip town with them.

Orchid's Unethical Girlboss Moment

First thing was still first: to investigate the weird buildings on the other side of lake Tasba. The crew (now with Eada) acquired a boat and sailed down to the facility over the day. They sailed over the lake to the facility, which was easier to identify now as a dam and reservoir, surrounded by walled farms - it was like a disguised prison. The guards were initially threatening but let Potha in after a bit, and escorted her to the facility's head: an old and tired paladin of Orchid named Shumesha. Shumesha talked about how she had fallen from grace in the Empire of Miuta, and how she had been sent to go do the dirty work of the empire to atone. Twenty years ago, she had built the original outpost here to start farming rubber and manipulating politics from behind the scenes; over those decades, she had been isolated, ruthless, and paranoid. She had a bone to pick with Magus Erzel, who she felt was too vague about his past to trust, but she was losing political influence to him quickly. Furthermore, she felt like she was periodically detecting traces of otherworldly evil, but they were too vague too pin down and track - she was overwhelmed and losing her clear connection to Orchid. She felt like Orchid was telling her to take control of the town, or to burn it down, and she was leaning towards the latter - burn it down, kill all she could, and try to build out of the rubble.
Potha convinced her to not attack the town or cause problems, and also to stop hoarding water and disturbing the ecosystem of the lake. The Orchidian outpost was making the situation worse, not better, and the paladin was not thinking clearly. Potha revealed what she had learned about Erzel's tower to the outpost and the team. As they sailed back in the fishing boat, Eada seemed deeply disturbed and asked if Potha and her could perform The Divine Contact for guidance (it was something that had already been discussed and mentioned as an option). It was a worrying option, after all that talk of Lunar disturbance, but worth a shot.

Falsehoods and Fires

Potha and Eada called up Lily of Red for an update. Lily listened intently and asked Potha what her plans were moving forward - Potha told her that the plan was to go to Suwirsha, then to Theia the Liberator, and then maybe to the Empire of Calazen depending on everyone's feelings. Eventually, it became clear that something was wrong with Lily - that this wasn't Lily at all. It was just Safia, poking at Potha and messing with her. The call ended, and Eada seemed to have been tortured like the last mortal brought in to call Safia.
The plan: enter the tower, destroy Erzel's threat, then confront Erzel. Eada was too weak to help in combat, but offered to talk with Tazu and get her to help them distract Erzel. Eada left, got Tazu, and confirmed that Erzel was out for a few hours at the palace. The tower was unlocked, and the team could investigate safely. Inside, they found the preparation area for the town's bodies, though they seemed to have butcher's cuts taken out of them. Further up, the team found a feasting area covered in scraps of undigestable humanoid material. Nearby were three cocoons, fashioned from corpses and swelling with monstrous life.
Potha made the torch into a fire elemental, and then opened the most active and mature of the cocoons. Inside was a dryad, who cried to them to rescue her. She said she was from Sumaren, that she needed to escape. On further interrogation, she said she had been turned into a monster back at her home village, then died fighting soldiers, and then gone to a tortuous afterlife ruled by Safia. Then, suddenly, she reawakened here, in a new body. Despite her promises that she wouldn't turn, she turned into a monster and had to be killed. The other cocoons were not mature enough to spawn people, but were working on it; Potha quickly destroyed these cocoons. Terribly, the organic parts of the tower seemed to be infested with corruption, and Potha set the fire elemental to Arson Mode. They evacuated the tower as it burned in brilliant rainbow flames. The warriors of the town saw Potha emerge from the burning tower, and saw her stop the firefighting efforts, and went back to the palace for reinforcements.

Exiting Stage Right

Tazu returned with a squadron of warriors. Erzil was nowhere in sight, and apparently had vanished for an unknown amount of time. Tazu told them to leave; Potha asked her to join them, and wanted to know what Erzil had over her. Tazu revealed that she was corrupted, a Willing of Safia who wanted to stop but was too scared of Safia's torments to. Tazu explained that the whole "skip town with Potha" idea was a ruse - all paladins and do-gooders who entered town were taken down that path and pushed into a pit trap to die. Tazu was going to stay and continue the wicked work, but allowed Potha to leave town with the crew.
A few days after leaving Bachira, Potha confronted Eada and asked her if she was also lying to her - Eada said no, but she accidentally over-adjusted her disguise and her eyes flickered from Eora's eyes to someone else's. Eada wasn't who or what she said she was, but Potha decided to not confront her about it. Sarket was also suspicious of Eada, though the Zeshem seemed fine with her. Potha did ask Eada about her backstory, though, and found out that Eada came from the Empire of Runeva, defected, and was saved by a mysterious traveler that helped her become an adventurer.

To Samvara!

Finally, the group reached the town of Alokwi, a selkie outpost on the Northern coast. Two selkie ships were in port, and had some beef between them: one was run by a painter, the other was run by an adventurer transporting Zeshem mercenaries. Potha chose the adventurer, paying 25 gold for a safe voyage to Shirpatra (with a small detour to drop the mercenaries off in the Kingdom of Empria). This was Captain Rima, paladin of Emesh and explorer. Rima was friendly enough, though her mercenaries soon butted heads with Keen - as a Hunter of Norinar, he didn't approve of their Zarazukan mercenary ways. They didn't much like his policing or Southern-Zeshem elitism. Potha tried to get him to stop over-performing being a full Hunter.
Finally, they reached the first port of Samvara, the city of Dimasui in the March Kingdom of Arashoka. Eada asked Potha for a drink in port, and the two got wine and nice food in a seaside establishment. Eada asked Potha what the group policy was on dating, romance, sex, etc within the party - and then asked what Potha's relationship status was. Potha said she couldn't seriously pursue anyone since she had two almost-girlfriends back home, but Eada flirted a bit and hinted at being interested in a more casual relationship. She may be a little sus... but can love bloom on the battlefield? Are there any among us who wouldn't follow their hearts, when the great expanse of the world awaits? Is it legal to be gay with shapeshifters? Find out next time, on Potha's cocoro dream, Samvara edition!

Components

Goals

QUEST GOALS

• Reach the Empire of Shirpatra
• Meet up with the other Architects

Relations

Allies

Coco and Cobi: Potha's moa and falcon respectively. Coco is a moa with a sweet tooth that is unusually friendly for a moa; Cobi is a falcon with a sense of determination.
Keen/Parsem: A Hunters of Norinar , who was sent with his master, Virtue, to liberate Loanua. Keen has a history of being aggressive, volatile, xenophobic, and panicky when dealing with foreign places and people, but has been slowly becoming less like that. Traumatized by his Hunter training. Born in the village of Ellagel.
Sarket of Sosella: A human cultist of Hiku who is paying off family's sin-debts in service to Potha; a "gift" from the cult to her. Professional and skilled in many areas - a tinkerer, a musician, an artist - he is the butler of butlers. He is also an adequate swordsman. He is both paladin and bard, which makes him a perfect conduit for the Muse.
Temperance/Sinya: A Hunter of Norinar assassin, who is apprenticed formally to the Hunter Certainty. Was from a well-off family, shamed them, and was sent to the Hunters. A master poisoner and handy with a saber. A friend of Parsem. Generally fascinated with foreign things.

Neutrals/Bystanders

Eada the Sellsword: An adventurer who looks similar to both Eora of Loanua (childhood friend of Potha) and Orchid of Blue. A defector from the Empire of Runeva, who was taken in by a powerful mage named Zadasa - the perfect adventurer and carer of misfits. Came to fall in love with the town of Bachera. Talkative and charming. Something is incredibly wrong with her?
Shumesha of Kalturi: An old paladin of Orchid of Blue who was disgraced, and is now earning atonement running a secret orchid cult complex near Bachera. Ruthless, callous, and imperious.

Adversaries

Magus Erzel: A talkative and charming man who was accumulating power in Bachera. Took the town by storm, claimed to be an Orchid of Blue cultist, but ultimately proved to be working for Safia. Vanished into the night. 
Tezu: Erzel's bodyguard, a Dhampire from Sumaren. Terse, bad with people, and not enthusiastic about working for Safia.

Plot type

QUEST

Parent Plot

Birds Versus Evil

Subplots

• Last Stop

Related Characters

• Orchid of Blue