Episode 7 Part 1 "Hungry Vines"

Session #12: 8/31/2019

11 Torul 2350 of the 5th Age

Recap

 * The session began the next day. The Good Samaritans awoke to the common room of the Autumn's Song in an uproar as people madly dashed out the door.
 * Liosynth called to one of the patrons hurrying and he told them that the city guard were hanging some of their own in the city's public square.
 * The party followed the crowds to the main square of Thrinn where they had participated in the city's Brekkan festival only days before. It was there that they found a gallows erected, and three city guardsmen with nooses around their necks.
 * The party recognized these guards as the ones they had snuck past to get into the warehouse where they found the stash of illegal magic items.
 * Lord Cresthill strode up onto the gallows and proclaimed that the guards were being put to death for aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy to steal emergency supplies from the city of Thrinn.
 * The party lept into action: Zevah climbed a roof across the square and nocked an arrow in her bow, Kandra shifted to the edge of the crowd and used her Minor Illusion to heckle Cresthill to distract him, and Thokk, Lio, and Vendrin strode up to the gallows to face Cresthill.
 * Cresthill recognized Vendrin as a noble and his guards wouldn't let him up onto the gallows, so Vendrin strode to stand in front of the gallows and address the crowd. With the help of Lio and Kandra, Vendrin managed to turn the opinion of the crowd against Cresthill. But Cresthill was unmoved and made ready to execute the guards anyway.
 * When Vendrin demanded proof of these men's guilt, Cresthill called the commander of the guard to come before the crowd and give his account of their court-martial.
 * Kandra used her Dust of Disappearance to make herself invisible and snuck up onto the gallows behind Creshill. She jammed the mechanism in the gallows that would allow the men to drop, and then slipped behind Cresthill and put her rapier to his throat.
 * Kandra demanded that Cresthill release the men, but he refused. So Kandra forced him to drink one of the Potions of Mind Control, but she misunderstood that if she wanted to control him, she should drink it. He tried to control her mind, but she resisted. When she realized her mistake, she drank a potion herself, but in casting the mind control spell, her invisibility wore off, and she could be seen by a stunned crowd, holding a sword to the lord's throat.
 * Kandra dusted herself again and fled. Meanwhile, Vendrin played his trump card, admitting that he and his comrades were the ones who broke into the warehouse, and that the guards had nothing to do with it.
 * The commander had his men detain Vendrin and Liosynth, but Thokk dusted himself as Kandra did, and fled.
 * Vendrin and Lio were taken to the city jail, a large stone building with bars on the windows and several iron gates, and were brought within. They were disarmed and brought to a cell deep in the center of the jail.
 * Kandra, still invisible, followed closely behind, managing to slip in with them. She planned to release them, but Vendrin and Lio were playing the long game, hoping to catch Cresthill off his guard.
 * Meanwhile, Thokk and Zevah met back up outside the jail and prepared to liberate their friends. Thokk drew three animals from his bag of tricks and had them lay siege to the jail.
 * While the animals were assaulting the jail, Cresthill came down to threaten Vendrin and Lio. He told them that he had total control in that jail and he could simply shoot them in their cells if he didn't get what he wants. But, he said he would release them if they would simply return his Deck of Many Things.
 * Upon hearing Cresthill threaten her friends, Kandra drank another potion of mind control. This time though, she succeeded in seizing control of Cresthill's mind.
 * She forced him to release Lio and Vendrin and accompany her back to the university to admit his crimes to Lewin Macedo, the headmaster who sits on the city council.
 * Vendrin, however, did not want to leave. He decided to wait until he was released in an official capacity, so he could avoid any red in his ledger and keep his family name clear.
 * Kandra and Lio left out the front, accompanied by a dominated Daylen Cresthill. They met back up with Zevah and Thokk and hurried to the university.
 * Lewin Macedo was concerned that Cresthill had been dominated by mind control, but set his men to investigate the Good Samaritans accusations. When they were found to be true, Lewin apprehended Cresthill officially, putting an end to his reign. Macedo also sent a runner with a writ freeing Vendrin from his cell.
 * With Vendrin freed and Cresthill ruined, Kandra went to her guest lecture at the Magical Animals class. Her and Hermes put on quite a show, and took questions from the students and the professor, a tortle named Jappa.
 * After the lecture, Macedo took Kandra and the rest of the party to the Enchanting department to discuss Kandra's payment: A magical collar to change Hermes size.
 * On the way, they bumped into a metal man serving as a janitor. His name was Church.
 * The head of the enchanting department was an Air Genasi named Breeze. She was excited to enchant the collar and discussed what types of things Kandra was wanting. Ultimately, they settled on a collar with a dial, that could shrink Hermes down to the size of a tiny creature, or anywhere in between that and his full size. She would also enchant a sort of remote that could release the enchantment and have him immediately return to his full size.
 * Kandra plans to pick up the collar on the way back to Gath after they deal with Nedan.
 * Zevah was infatuated by Breeze and her airy demeanor, and so stayed to watch her work, while the rest of the party went to look in on the engineering department and hire an engineer for their ship.
 * After a brief discussion, the party had three choices for engineer: They could hire the professor, a gnome named Fonk who was the original creator of the engines, his protege Niamh, or the artifial man named Church, who runs on the same principle as the engines.
 * The party ultimately decided on Church. They had to purchase him from the university, as he was technically property, by paying off the rest of his debt for being created. He had already made some headway in that regard, so he was not very expensive. The party then told him to come with them and agreed to pay him a wage of a gold a day.
 * Church was ecstatic about being hired and getting to explore the world.
 * The party spent another night at the Autumn's Song before heading off on the road to Alkori the next day.
 * The party set out into the fog, heading north. On the way to Alkori, they ran into the ruins of a destroyed farm and had their first encounter with one of the creatures that had been kidnapping people. They found it trapped beneath the ruins of a collapsed barn along with a halfling who had been driven half-mad by being so near the creature.
 * The party pulled the halfling, named Fern, out of the wreckage and did away with the monster. Upon examining it, they found that it seemed to be an undead creature whose musculature and nervous system had been replaced by vines and plants. This creature was formidable and deadly, able to use its vines to pull a victim to its waiting jaw.
 * The party questioned Fern who told them that the creatures had come out of the fog and dragged away all the farmhands. They'd killed all the children and the farms elderly owners. He had only survived because he was trapped beneath the wreckage.
 * Liosynth put Fern on her horse Violet, and sent him packing back to Thrinn to give his account of the creatures to Lewin Macedo, while the Good Samaritans continued north to Alkori.
 * Zevah did her best to track the creatures who had kidnapped the farmhands, but their tracks joined the main road, and between busy road and the heavy snow, it was impossible to keep the trail.
 * The party stopped for the night at the base of a cliff. While on watch, Thokk hear music and laughter and saw flickering firelight from higher up the cliff. Thokk used his Boots of Spiderclimb to walk up the cliff and peer into the hole in the side of the cliff face.
 * He found himself looking into a bustling inn. And as he cleared his throat, every face turned to him. The innkeeper hobbled over and invited him in for a drink, but Thokk declined and hurried back down to rejoin his friends.
 * The next day, the hole in the cliff was gone without a trace and Thokk found himself feeling uneasy.
 * On the road they passed a travelling merchants caravan led by a tabaxi. Lio and Thokk asked if they had heard anything about a strange inn set into the cliff. And the elderly tabaxi said it sounded like the myths of Dolos, the god of trickery. He said Thokk was lucky that he wasn't claimed by the trickster.
 * The party made it the rest of the way to Alkori and found that it was a city surrounded by a wall of living wood that moved to allow passage. Zevah was unnerved by the moving foliage.
 * Into the city, the party found their way to Nedan's Garden. A small garden in the center of the city, where Nedan lives and sleeps beneath the open sky.
 * The party met with Nedan who seemed exhausted and somewhat distant. But Nedan agreed to meet with the party the next morning, and allowed Zevah, Hermes, and Tennebris to sleep in his garden, so they could escape the atmosphere of the city.
 * Nedan left the party for a personal meeting. Kandra followed him, invisible, and found him enter a run down and boarded up house. But when she entered through the back door, Nedan was nowhere to be seen.
 * The rest of the party headed to a fine inn called the Druid's Rest. They stayed the night in the inn.
 * In the morning they returned for their meeting with Nedan, but he was nowhere to be found, instead they were met by Lotra Dov, the leader of the Earthen Fist, who Nedan had asked to meet with him as well.
 * Lotra confided in the Good Samaritans that Nedan had been distant and missing many meetings lately. She was very concerned about Nedan, who she counted as a trusted friend. She asked the party to look into it and promised to reward them.