Session 10: A Long Road Down and Much to Do

General Summary

The party sets off on their very first quest abroad, with the blessing of the Ad Hoc Adventurers Recruitment and Resettlement Guild. This blessing, practically speaking, includes a Hero's Feast by Oney, which grants the party certain boons for 24 hours:

The creature is cured of all diseases and poison, becomes immune to poison and being frightened, and makes all Wisdom saving throws with advantage. Its hit point maximum also increases by 2d10, and it gains the same number of hit points.
Note that increasing the hit point maximum works differently than temporary hit points, as a person can only have temporary HP from one source. Thus, this benefit can stack with temporary HP. For practicality's sake, most people just marked this in Roll20 in the temporary HP space but the rolls were as follows:

• Amanita: 16

• L0L4: 14

• Alek: 12

• Num: 13

• Kitanya: 13 rolled by DM in Mina's absence

• Tervik: 7

• Wynnie: 9

Additionally, The following babies stay behind: Bartleby, Reina, Albert, Paige, Tome, Kafka, & Bob. Tome is given Tomework to read up on mercantile law, Kafka left one of Wynnie's old notebooks for studying. This leaves Carl, Basil, & Reuben along for the ride...and maybe others if the DM is forgetting. Ya'll have a real menagerie here OTL

We also played catch up for Tervik Likkus at Dortlitt's Store, including:

• 325 GP down on some Plate armor, with Tervik adamant that he would not take it out before he paid for it fully as that would be a loan and he's trying to be responsible

• 2 Dispelling Fans

• An Alchemist Bandolier for potion slinging

Gleddy bequeaths to the group via Tervik two sealed envelopes on official stationary of the Guild, one for the people manning the portal between the City of Mercy & The Tryst to allow a shortcut there and one to allow them free rental of horses for the leg of the trip along Jona's Wall. And then, without further ado, they're off!
A quick jaunt via portal from the AHARRG Guild Hall portal to the City of Mercy, then through another to the Tryst, where Tervik tries to play it cool but is terribly unable to keep his poker face in proximity to a debtor's prison, a fate the party can't know how many times he narrowly avoided. Fortunately, however, the passage through the Tryst is brief and amounts to a walk across a courtyard.
Exiting the steep walled fortress of the Tryst, the party beholds the City Plateau Bridgeworks for the first time as a group and gets their first taste of dwarfing size that conveys how large their continent really is. The Bridgeworks (of which our party is taking Bridge C specifically) extent at a gentle but noticeable slope down toward Jona's Wall and the sweeping green blanket of Mother's Gift. Off in the distance to the north, the Shadowspires and to the sharp eyes of ALEK51 the bright lightning bursts of Burazaich hidden therein. North of Jona's Wall, the Arcane Heap and The Dredge send a small thrill of dread and fear through our warforged.
All of this, however, is lost on our party's Owlin, however, as Amanita Guttata rolls a Nat 1 on Perception and becomes so overwhelmed by vertigo. The concept of being so high up that even their flight couldn't save them, that they must face the rabid clutches of gravity the same as any other up here on this plateau, is dizzying to the birdfolk and they find themselves pretty much incapacitated for a few humbling, bumbling moments.

Amanita Guttata regains their composure. "Wow, mortality is a drag."

Once onto the Bridgeworks proper and making use of the handy magitech that lets them zoop down at about 1.5-2x the walking speed via Haste Stones, the party settles into their roadtrip activites.
L0L4 carouses with whatever fellow bards she encounters, writing a traveling song for the party, and encountering a young cotton-candy-skinned tiefling woman who wordlessly challenges her to a lute-off. The battle starts off with some pretty disasterous rolls for L0L4 (maybe lute just isn't her forte?) but ultimately ends in a draw thanks to the loving meddling of her party members, with Amanita distracting the tiefling with a Shape-Water-to-Make-You-Think-You-Peed-Yourself prank (classic) and Wynnie trying to mage hand untune her lute but instead accidentally groping a random passersby. (It's the thought that counts.) Tervik Likkus also tries his hand at drumming up some excitement for the bout, failing once but succeeding by the end and managing to pull in 62 SP (= 6 GP 2 SP) for L0L4's efforts.
Wynnie Bishop spends her time trying to find out a little more about her fellow magic users' Godcrafting experiences, something that she does by asking rather bluntly. Fortunately for her, her party members don't seem to take offense to this like some might; unfortunately for her, most of her party members are pretty much useless at giving data points.

• Both Warforged more or less shrug (Alek with a brief musing on the difference between magic and technology, L0L4 simply because she can't remember).

• Kitanya Evermoon says something about the moons, as per usual, but confirms she didn't have to cut off any fingers to get her powers which, hey, that's something?

• Amanita provides some useful lore tidbits via some journal entries for Wynnie (and Annie) to read over later, but declines to get into the real trauma of it beyond academic notes.

• Tervik and Num, both technically magic users of one kind or another as well, don't get the question asked...yet

Alek is bumped into by a nervous-looking half-Orc who drops the stone tablets he's carrying and disappears into the crowd. Alek mends the tablets and does what good librarian-bots do: read the thing you just found...only to find it's Orcish smut! And not even particularly good stuff, if Alek is to be believed (though honestly, if this humble DM were asking party members for their smut reviews, Alek would be low on the priority list). He offloads the tablets to Wynnie for safekeeping.

Amanita Guttata: "Meh. It's too anatomically feasible to be interesting. Not a single cloaca tingle." Salem: "The cloaca? Positively arid."

Alek is also able to pull off a bitchin' Mage Hand to snag a young Firbolg child's ball before it causes a terrible traffic jam or worse, rewarded a pretty little trinket in return. Num Erik Al spends his time doing what he does best: eavesdropping for excellent knowledge tidbits (see Notes/Extra Material).
Kitanya spends her time chatting with other cooks, bakers, soup-makers, and various culinary afficianatos. She comes out of this endeavour with one or two recipes, some clever ideas for using spices, and most excitedly, a mixed bag of ingredients swapped from others that include roots, herbs, seasonings, and other components from all over Ostelliach.
She also meets a priest devoted to wanderlust, travel, curiosity, and exploration who makes his living by the kindness of donations. Kitanya donates some coin to him and in exchange receives a blessing that grants her advantage on her next 3 saving throws. (She Blesses him right back because she's all heart, no brain.)
The party reaches the end of their half-day jaunt downwards and arrives at The Bread Basket, a bustling inn full of travelers and fieldworkers looking for a respite. A skald is set up on stage telling epic stories of heroes of old set to a band's accompaniment (L0L4 taking notes of the tales while she listens), delicious salads and carnivore-friendly meat plates await order at the counter, and comfy chairs welcome butts tired from the somewhat awkward pacing of scooching downhill for 4 hours on a medieval escalator.
From here, the party will proceed on through the rolling farmlands of Mother's Gift and descend into the gloam and cool shade of the Grove of the Cat before alighting in The Endeavour for one last rest before entering the belly of the beast.

Rewards Granted

• Wynnie: 3 tablets of tepid Orcish smut

• Alek: 1 Iridite (magical permaice often used in art from the Sphinx's Claw peninusla) trinket

Notes

• Tervik knows of a traveling merchant often setting up shop at The Bread Basket (the inn at the bottom of the bridge our party is on) and one in The Endeavour

• A young sorceress somewhere between Mother's Gift and the Endeavour is having trouble controlling her new powers, to funny and sometimes scary results.

• A trio of women living off the main road along Jona's Wall is rumored to be witches or worse, blamed for everything from bad hair days to dying sheep.

• Local mothers fret over warning their young ones to never follow the sound of crying children in the woods, lest they be devoured by some terrible beast.

Campaign

Ostelliach Campaign

Protagonists

L0L4

Neutral Good Warforged (Entertainer)
Bard 4

29 / 29 HP

STR
15

DEX
10

CON
13

INT
11

WIS
11

CHA
15

ALEK51

NG/CG Warforged (Cloistered Scholar (Sage))
Artificer 5

43 / 43 HP

STR
7

DEX
18

CON
8

INT
17

WIS
14

CHA
16

Amanita Guttata

True Neutral Owlin (Hermit)
Druid - Circle of Spores 3

25 / 25 HP

STR
8

DEX
16

CON
14

INT
12

WIS
16

CHA
8

Num Erik Al

()

8 / 8 HP

STR

DEX

CON

INT

WIS

CHA

Wynnie Bishop

Kitanya Evermoon

Neutral Good Satyr ()
Cleric 1
Stars Druid 1

15 / 15 HP

STR
14

DEX
8

CON
13

INT
8

WIS
18

CHA
11

Report Date

29 May 2024

Primary Location

City Plateau Bridgeworks