Chapter II: With Sadness In My Heart
General Summary
- We settle in, clean up Har, and check in with Gan; she shows Cecil a book with a picture of gezgraze, an antibacterial root that Gan has been mistaking fiber root for
- We offer to transport Gan to Kier with us before we set off for the next link in the chain in the amber supply line
- We spend the night in Cecil's magical tower and the spare house
- In the morning, Loro attempts to cook breakfast. It does not go well (poor guy), but Vivian still eats it and Cecil teaches him how to properly make pancakes
- Gan begins to carve Old Yaol's walking stick in preparation, and Thaw sits with her
- We set off, walking across the water along the shore to Kier
- The first night, we stay in the Tower and Vivian talks to Gan about constellations while Vergil teaches Thaw to write his name in Hai
- The next day, a giant secretary bird ancient one emerges from the forest, dropping dead spiders all around us
- We manage to evade it and reach Har, where (eventually) someone drops a series of ropes to pull us up
- He struggles to climb up, and eventually Cecil levitates him up; we finally set down back in Kier
- Theron meets us and leads us back to the Tai'Jei building, dismissing the guards
- We report to Commissioner Toma; he tells us to report to the Tai'Jei company in Tathur in Pol via ferry in a few days
- We shop around for warmer clothing and winter gear
- Outside of the walls of Kier, refugees from Endsland have gathered in a city of tents; Cecil donates a pair of shoes
- As Cecil and Gan go to deliver the shoes, Thaw, Vergil, and Vivian go to a bookstore and buys some books
- We spend the next day reading, learning languages, and wandering the city
- The next day, Theron leads us to the cliffs, where the ferry will arrive; Vivian lowers his opinion of us with a "friendly" greeting
- Theron tells us that Toma says the Commissioner there is difficult to work with, but Toma does outrank him
- Sin Tho approaches Vergil in disguise, teary-eyed, and tells us that we need to do well, because lives are at stake
- We climb down the rope ladder to find a makeshift pier with a ferry captained by Captain Dav
- We set sail for Tathur; Cecil teaches Gan about IDing plants, Thawsayer and Loro are seasick
- We dock in Tathur in Pol within a few days; the buildings are taller and spikier, and everything is covered in snow
- As we walk through the city, we see some armored individuals patrolling; all of the buildings look the same
- We find the Tai'Jei building and attempt to make our way inside; we don't have an appointment, so we lie and say we are with Riss Nil Fan, who does
- The clerk at the front, a white goblin named Greysin, seems very afraid of something as he reluctantly leads us downstairs to wait for the Subcommissioner
- We wait for an hour, but they don't show up, so Greysin tells us to take our chances with the door
- No one answers, so Vergil picks the lock; the office is a mess of stained papers and alcohol
- There is a man passed out at his desk; Cecil forcibly sobers him and Vivian tries to cure his hangover
- Subcommissioner Warui Hito is a 5'10", lean blood elf with dark red skin and slicked down black hair, mid 20s equiv
- He is disoriented and crabby, and keeps trying to send us away, but eventually he tells us to go to Ourha and gives us money
- As we leave, we make his door glow brightly and the intermittent sound of crickets chirping
- Greysin tells us we need a sleigh pulled by icerunners to get to Ourha
- He warns us of wolves, bears, blaze ants (found near glaciers), and vishaps
- We go to the stables and purchase a sleigh and an icerunner from two orcs who talk in tandem
- We name our icerunner Double Force and stay the night in town (Vivian and Vergil with Cpt Dav, the others in Cecil's tower)
- In the morning, Loro attempts to make breakfast and starts another fire; Cecil does damage control and tries to keep teaching him how to cook
- Vergil wakes to find Vivian and Dav flopped out on the deck of the ship surrounded by cards, game pieces, and bottles
- Dav is groggy until hydrated, then pops up and offers them hardtack and unidentified leaves
- Once everyone has had breakfast (for better or worse), the cousins enter Cecil's tower and scare the shit out of Gan and Double Force
- Eventually, we calm everyone down and set off on our sleigh towards Ourha
- We make camp on the edge of the forest and read books, investigate plants, and do crafts outside the sauna
- When we set off in the morning, we are approached by a great horned owl with one hurt wing dragging itself through the snow
- In its mind, Cecil hears static, but it's interspersed by bouts of silence
- When he probes deeper, he sees the purple eyes staring back, before the owl dies and dissolves into black mist at a touch
- Vivian talks to the trees, who don't know about the Megalio, but say that their nymph is "elsewhere"
- One morning, there is a small tiff where Cecil throws a book at Vivian and Vivian mildly poisons Cecil's breakfast
- Finally, we reach Ourha
- Ourha is a small coastal village, between the size of Har and Tathur, (~40-60 buildings), with a river running through it and mountains to the north
- On the shore lays a large half-butchered porpoise-like creature
- Thaw ties Double Force and the sled up in the stables
- Cecil shouts for help until some white goblin people comes to greet us; one woman asks if we brought medicine and takes us to the priest
- When we enter the priest's house, we find Son Yao Jin, who greets us warmly
- He tells us about a disease called the withering which has been running through the town; he says it's a problem with the town itself, not spread between people
- Only recently has it really began killing people at a significant rate
- The symptoms are fatigue, blurry/impaired vision, and then a withering or decay of patches of skin (and eventually organs)
- Previously, people only died when their organ withered (living as long as decades), but now people are passing away in their sleep in as short a time as a year after showing signs of the withering
- Son Yao Jin tells us that he needs more needles, and he would appreciate it if we could harvest the stingers from the blaze ants up in the mountains to make more resilient ones
- We drop Loro off in an empty house and head up the left side of the river towards the ants
- Along the river, we encounter some blaze ants and fight them and kill them
- Gan uses magic to heal Vivian!
- Then a glacial antlion appears and we narrowly manage to defeat that too
- Vivian saves Cecil's life
- We harvest the stingers from the blaze ants and an insectoid lure sac from the antlion
- When we give the stingers to Son Yao Jin, he asks us to retrieve a flower called duskbloom from further up the mountain, which we do the next day
- We meet up with Loro, eat dinner, and hang out before going to sleep
- Loro appears to have given himself mild pyrophobia (Cecil assists in this)
- In the morning, we leave Loro and bring Gan as we head up the treacherous glacier to find the flower
- Thaw (and Gan) slip over the edge, dragging Cecil down with him, but we catch ourselves and fly over the rest of the gap
- Deep in the crevasse, we see a pulsing, swampy green light
- Once we get to solid ground, we continue on through a gorge, where Vergil notices a cave hidden behind the ice
- The cliff comes to an abrupt, sheer edge, and we find the duskbloom flowers just below
- It appears in Cecil's medicinal plant journal, though it's labelled as a direbloom, a type of poison used in euthanization
- We collect some and start to leave before we find ourselves cornered by two large ice bears; we push one off of the cliff and scare the other one away
- We return to the village and rest, going to confront Son Yao Jin in the morning
- Son Yao Jin admits to killing people in order to disrupt the amber supply line; he is the Martyr in the Order of the Phoenix and will face us in combat in a field near the refinery
- After convening with Gan and Loro, we head to the refinery; inside, the air is warm and stale, but moving slightly
- We pass a room with a strange shape and lime-green eyes with horizontal pupils that says "A'Ell, you are marked. Do not fear; I do not mean to harm you." It says it can't leave because it needs to finish its task.
- Vivian approaches it, discovering a bronze vishap dragon perched upon a pile of luminescent orange gems
- They say that most Alds shouldn't be able to leave their domains, so we should be safe from them if we don't go back to the Megalio; we must not let his eyes gaze upon us
- They tell us that amber is dragon's blood and mortals are not to acquire it
- Only Vivian's mark has appeared so far; a black diamond shape on the back of her left hand
- This is good; it means we have time left
- We exit the refinery and start to fight Son Yao Jin
- Vivian kills Son Yao Jin, and with his final words, he tells us that the withering is caused by the amber, and not to judge "Dancer" too harshly, as he's led a rough life
- We loot the body and head back home to Gan and Loro (Vivian has a moral crisis on the way, and no one is very helpful)
- In the morning, we tell the townspeople about how the amber is causing the withering and about the direblooms (we lie about what happened to Son Yao Jin the people already knew about the amber, but they have no choice
- We head back to Tathur
Report Date
18 Jul 2022
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Related Characters
