Session 159: Just Say No (2/12/23)

Verget the 8th

The PCs land at the docks of Hobfast, then decide whether to travel through the village in disguise. Indrid and Finian decide to take the straightforward route, and pay Grandfather Hosspotch a visit, with the latter using the hat of disguise to appear as his old self, and Gary also wild shaping into a halfling that he can go unnoticed. They are admitted to see Grandfather by a pair of young roughs, but discover that the old man is rather ill with the 'Fall Haze', which the mysterious halfling Gary cures. The Hosspotch patriarch makes things right with Finian and Indrid, apologizing for Harley Hosspotch and his ambitions which might have inevitably turned into a coup for his own position. He does warn them that there might be some other bounty hunters or assassins that the late Harley paid off to deal with the pair, and he also lets them know that Brofous Bellowbroth has been serving as a missionary to help orc refugees in the Tooth Marsh.

Next they kill some time by visiting Boyl's Baubles, where they meet one Wesper Veks, who inherited the place from its former owner. He sells all manner of drug paraphernalia, pipeweed and other substances, as well as the baubles and charms from the old shop. Gary picks up a few that he detected were magical, and the three head over to go fishing by the docks and kill some time before meeting Lt. Keira Silverstrings for drinks. Gary takes one of the narcotics he acquired off Veks, and begins to feel strangely refreshed, but also paranoid, and hallucinates that everyone is watching him, including all the freshwater life beneath Udders Well, which he confirms in both a fish form, and a shark form, before Indrid wrestles him out of the beach with his metallic arm. Finian has some luck fishing, but not a lot are biting with the shark about...



Before deciding where to next, they visit with Captain Fowler for a friendly conversation, and then pick up Lt. Silverstrings for drinks. They grab a bottle at the Crimson Harpy, but Gary (understandably) doesn't want to go inside, since he was kidnapped and held captive beneath the tavern in his original half-elf days. So they end up at Finians' parents house, which it turns out has been ransacked numerous times, inside and out, presumably by rogue elements of the Hosspotches that were working for Harley. Finian cleans some of the mess and they take their cups. Keira retires to the barracks after a few hours, and the rest decide to get some sleep, though Gary wants to burn the midnight oil and spend some time working on his tome of wisdom. He hears a sound around midnight and senses someone nearby, but the culprit flees before he can get outside.

He wakes the others and they manage to track the prints to the large ash tree hanging across the waterway from Boyl's Baubles. They all find various means to climb it, and get inside to find that there is a stash of burglarized items in a hollow way up on one of the larger tree boughs, along with a corpse. Indrid leaves to round up the Eidolorn Guard, and brings back a Private while the other two watch over the goods, which Gary uses detect magic on, and discovers that a key on a twine bracelet around the skeleton's wrist glows. Unfortunately, he breaks the skeleton to get it, and they further demolish it as they lower the stash down to the marsh floor where the summoned Eidolorn Guard can bring it back to the barracks to return to the townsfolk. Before that, he interviews Veks, who seems innocent enough and himself claims to have heard footsteps up on the roof of his shop. The drug dealer goes back into his shop, and Indrid investigates the roof, to find little more than bird droppings and a torn package of weed.

Captain Fowler arrives, and once again questions Veks because they find the situation suspicious, and then they also find some of the shopkeep's ANSWERS suspicious, so he is taken 'for tea' to the barracks, and Fowler deputizes Indrid to search Boyl's Baubles thoroughly while the (now) dwarves stand watch. They find no records of anything shady, but some suits of leather armor, some thieves' tools in a drawer, the spot behind the service counter where Wesper stores the heavier narcotics, and a trap door below his wardrobe in the back room...It leads down into a crawlspace, full of old, forgotten goods, dusty and undisturbed. The main feature, however, is a large wooden square box, with a lock that glows magically, and the PCs manage to struggle it up through the trap door, and then use the key from the corpse in the tree to open it...

Within, they find an unusual, 9-layer swiveling 3D-map built of glass and stone...

PCs: Finian Redfoot, Gary Greasewax, Indrid Hosspotch

NPCs

Wesper Veks (human male): A reed-thin human in his middle years, he has slick black hair, tied back in braids, and a wrinkled brow above a pair of sea-green eyes that seem astonished at everything around him. His jerkin and breeches are fanciful, with lots of patterns dancing on the fabric, and his boots appear to have cleats on them for tramping about in the muck of the Tooth Marsh. A dagger and short sword, their pommels jeweled, are tucked neatly into sheathes at his waist, and he carries a satchel over his shoulder which seems to be made from the skin of a serpent or crocodile.