Session 5 (07. 02. 2020)

The party awakes in the morning. Vasya copes with his hangover and loss of memory from the previous night, and Agis explains to him what had happened. Sophia and Cadfan talk, and Cadfan reveals that she is going to the Evergreen Forest, the vast wooded area adjacent to Vardona, to search for someone. John rises early to go over to the Landow barracks, giving a lengthy statement and fulfilling his promise to assist the Landow guard with the investigation into the attack on the vigilante camp. The rest of the group convenes for breakfast, freshly made with ingredients from the nearby fields. They discuss their plans for the day, deciding to leave John behind in Landow at midmorning so that they can make better progress towards Vardona. Maverick, Agis, and Vasya want to go shopping, while Sophia and Cadfan also go to the guardhouse for Sophia to give her promised statement. Maverick gives Vasya the woodcarver’s tools that he had recovered the previous night. The group sets out to accomplish their various tasks. Maverick, Agis, and Vasya head down the main street of Landow, coming across a large farmer selling wares. His name is Boros, and it is clear by his weight and actions that he prefers not to do any work himself, relying on his team of farmhands. He sells Vasya more apples than he probably needed to, and Maverick and Agis buy hay to feed the horses, as their current supply won’t last until Vardona. When Vasya inquires about buying a large piece of wood for carving, Boros directs him down the street to find Old Aimes, a craftsman. Maverick and Agis decide to do the farmer a favor and take Aimes’ order of horse feed over to him, hoping to earn a discount in the process. Sophia and Cadfan arrive at the guardhouse, waved in by the two door guards who lament losing Valdo from the force, as the vengeful bowman had left Landow earlier that morning, along with Klaus. Sophia gives her statement to the guard captain, initially being discovered to be lying about the reason that the squad had attacked the vigilantes, but getting away with it regardless due to her standing as a cleric of the Holy Covenant. Cadfan is ignored by the captain, who seems to be barely containing some racially prejudiced remark about her appearance. Statements properly given, and the captain promising to get anything else he needed from John, the pair go to walk around Landow, Sophia wanting to get a better feel for the townsfolk. Down the street at Old Aimes’ workshop, complete with a full forge and woodcarving table, Vasya greets the large bearded man cheerfully. Maverick and Agis deliver Aimes’ feed, and they all talk business. Vasya buys a large wooden log, and Maverick wants a sheet of metal that could be used to scare away birds on his farm back in Vardona. Aimes provides a circular piece of brass, that will work well enough. Agis notices the craftsman’s fine handiwork, that he could be doing much more with than supplying a town and repairing the beams of houses. After Aimes asks, Vasya reveals that he wants the wood to be able to carve a prosthetic that would actually be able to hold objects like a real hand, instead of just hanging things on his hook. Aimes gives him some tips for better crafting something like that, including an improved way to secure a strap around his shoulder, and helps Vasya write up some quick schematics. With most everything they needed, the boys head back onto the street. Maverick pulls Vasya aside, noticing a garden with herbs growing in it. After deciding against stealing them, he knocks on the door and is answered by a young woman with vibrant red hair. Her name is Brielle, and she grows herbs and makes incense for Landow’s temple. Maverick inquires about buying some of the said herbs, wanting to gift them to Vasya to burn in the censer, while the Ferryman marvels at the plants that Brielle has growing all over the inside of her home, as he had always wanted a garden. Brielle agrees to sell Maverick herbs, incense, and a small vial of scented oil. He uses his traveling wage from Vardona to pay for them, explaining to Vasya that if he didn’t spend all of it, the guardhouse back in his town would just give him less money the next time. They thank the gardener and take their leave. Everyone reconvenes in the Dancing Grape, except for John. The cart and horses are retrieved and prepared, and the group leaves Landow from the gate opposite that which they had entered, right on time. The road is blissfully silent on the way to the group’s next stop on the journey to Vardona, which is nearing its conclusion. Sophia gets to drive the cart for the first time, having observed John doing it in the previous days when she had sat beside him up front. In the evening, they arrive at the Left Traveller, a roadside inn and the last stop before reaching Vardona in two day’s time. Vasya comments on the irony of the left-hand symbol on the sign, as that is the hand that he is missing. The party enters to find the place rowdy and crowded with the night rush, some sort of fight going on in the inn’s lower level. This draws a lot of interest from Vasya and Agis, who both go right over to observe what’s happening, the rest following behind. In a makeshift fighting ring dug out of the basement floor, two figures are trading blows, a mountain of a man not dissimilar in build to Klaus drives huge hammering blows at a woman of average height, with long white hair in a long braid that extends all the way down past her knees. She is dodging almost all of his strikes, and countering with quick flurries of her own attacks. Vaysa and Sophia place bets on the fight with a bookmaker, both betting their gold on the woman, even though she isn’t favored to win. As the woman dances around the man, she locks eyes with Agis, seemingly recognizing him, before turning and blasting the guy across the ring with some kind of invisible force. Agis, recognizing her technique if not her face, immediately drops his pack and jumps down into the ring. The woman addresses him by name in a low voice, revealing herself to be Sister Jalena, another monk of the Holy Covenant like himself, who works with Agis’ master, Brother Ambrose, and has been sent to find Agis. First, she demands to see what he has learned and test his skill in combat, striking a defensive pose. Agis wonders why so many people who he’s had no contact with seem to keep recognizing him, as Sophia had as well, before launching into a series of punches and kicks against her. He gets in a few good hits, but his offensive is shut down when she knocks him clean out in two hits, ending their fight as well. She heals him with a magical prayer bead, and tells him to come find her in a bit, before climbing out of the pit and collecting her winnings from the previous bout and walking off. Sophia and Vasya collect their bet money as well, marveling at how skilled the Sister was. Vasya resolves to fight in the pit as well, which will reopen in an hour to let the patrons calm down after the exciting match and surprise fight. The group gets a table back on the main floor, and Vasya buys rooms with his winnings for everyone but Sophia, who pays for her own. Agis goes upstairs to his without a word, and the rest sit down around their table for dinner. Sophia notices the recently appeared symbol on Vasya’s spear, which he really doesn’t see as anything important, chalking it up to a scratch in the metal. She recognizes it as the symbol of one of the Seven Founders of the Holy Covenant, but keeps it to herself. Before his fight, Vasya goes to see Agis in his room, finding the elf with both body and pride bruised. He asks for tips on close combat, which Agis provides, and heads back downstairs. As Agis watches him go, Sister Jalena beckons to him from the outside of a second story window. She opens it, and tells him to follow her. They climb down from the roof, and head into the nearby section of the Evergreen Forest. Back downstairs, Vasya narrowly wins his fight against a burly farmer, earning Sophia some more money off of betting. The group hangs around for a bit longer, Vasya taking a late-night walk to cool off after his bout, before all heading to sleep. Sister Jalena leads Agis out to a clearing among the trees, before rounding on him. She reveals that she was sent by Brother Ambrose to retrieve a book that Agis had stolen from the archives in the Ancestor’s Sanctum, one containing forbidden techniques designed to harness elemental energies. The temple monks don’t want to see Agis destroy himself or those around him by using techniques he is not ready for, and Jalena reminds him of the devastation caused by elemental storms from the neighboring country of Al’Qaro. She has personally seen the fallout from those storms in the area known as the Badlands, barely contained by the Last Bastion of Narizim, and agrees to train Agis to prepare him for using the more advanced moves if he gives her the book to return to Brother Ambrose. He agrees, and the two fight until the early hours of the morning. Agis stumbles back to his room in the Left Traveller, exhausted. The group awakens in the morning, and once again convenes for breakfast, minus Agis. Sophia and Vasya talk about hair for longer then necessary, and the rest of the group is saved from relative boredom by the arrival of John. He had ridden through the night from Landow to catch up with them, and is also very tired. He wants to get back on the road as soon as possible, though, agreeing to sleep in the cart so that they can make more progress towards Vardona. John goes to wake Agis, enlisting Maverick to open the lock on his door and preparing to play his bagpipes. After a few difficulties with the lock, and Vasya getting help from the twin owners of the Left Traveller to open the door, Agis is unceremoniously awakened with the whole group standing over him. They leave to allow him to get ready, and John quickly checks in to make sure that the group didn’t do anything too irresponsible while he was gone. The cart is prepared for travel, with John and Agis resting in the back, and they leave the Left Traveller to continue travelling. The day passes without incident, and the squad begins to look for a place to bed down for the night. Now having passed into a part of the Evergreen Forest that intersects the Sanguine Road, the light is fading even faster. They spy some sort of building, a shack or cottage up on a small rise, and stop the cart to investigate. John and Sophie are against going inside, even as a search reveals that no one is home and the place is coated with dust, because the owner could return at any time. While searching more around the immediate area, the sun goes down and night falls on the forest. Sophia magically lights up Vasya’s shirt so that the party can see, casting long shadows around them. Before the group can begin their search again, however, they notice that several extra shadows are extending over the ground, where there should be nothing making the shadows. The shadows sprung from the ground, attacking the party, each attached to a different member and ripping at them with dark claws. Sophia, immediately recognizing the creatures as hating light, channeled the power of Kalash to banish them with a burst of radiant energy. The first wave was instantly defeated, torn apart by the bright wave, but another was not far behind. More shadows sprung up, the group ready for them from Sophia’s warning. Vasya tried to lead away a couple who attached to him, while the rest, tactically directed by John, arranged themselves and their new shadows so that Sophia could summon more holy fire. Vasya doesn’t manage to get out of the way, and is knocked out by the blast, but everyone else is fine and the shadows are destroyed. Grouping up after the fight, the party discussed what had just happened. Sophia reveals that she recognized the shadows- usually spirits bound by the Holy Covenant to carry out assassination orders on their enemies, but questions whether they would send them after one of their clerics without any previous warnings of it. She also says that technically anyone with enough money and influence or magical ability could bind spirits like those as well. John gets paranoid, perhaps rightly convinced by her explanation that someone is out to get them. He goes around the group, trying to determine who it was that might want to kill any of them. Vasya reveals that the bandits who hijacked his boat would have a lot of riches from the theft, but that they probably assumed he was dead already. No one else thinks of any explanation. The group continues on into the night, deciding after a lengthy argument about trust and openness that they should not stop to rest; should more shadows come while they did so, they would likely all be killed. Vardona was another half day’s travel away, if they rode through the night they would arrive early the next morning. The argument eventually dies down, and the mostly silent cart rolls on through the dark forest.