The Adventurers were joined by a new player, but her first character died during creation (via a delightful Playtest rule).
There was a French woman named Edith, who traveled to Khirima. There was another too, named Meredith, who had also come to Khirima. She had come for the same reasons that Edith had, she was drawn by rumors of the forbidden temple, and a fortune in silver to be taken from within it. The two would never meet, however, as Meredith was torn apart by an unseen beast on the Savanna before she had ever laid eyes upon the city.
Edith was alone. She had arrived with a small group of companions, but these had been taken from her quite shortly after their arrival in the marketplace. After all but she had been caught gawking at a particular contingent of armed men, a distinct out one of the many moving through the city, they were taken away to an unknown but presumably grisly fate for violating this most important taboo.
After some wandering directionless through the marketplace Edith laid eyes on a much more horrible sight than the sudden loss of her companions, dragged away by surly guardsmen. A great and grotesque slug creature that stood 9 feet tall with a toothy shark like maw seemed to be holding court in the marketplace. Despite its indisputable loathsomeness it was surrounded by a significant line women and men, some clutching large sacks of what seemed to be grains and other dried goods.
Both nauseated and intrigued, she crept closer to listen in on what these people could possibly be saying to this nasty beast. She overheard as it negotiated sale prices, of all things, in a gurgling voice. Strangely enough, though she heard the people around it speaking in the various native tongues, the creature seemed to respond to them in eloquent French, with a perfect accent. After brief negotiations with each person who had gathered it then directed some nearby servants to pay them for their various goods, and these were then carried over and set next to a pen of very well-fed cattle.
Edoni, Gerald, and Dietrich walked the streets of the marketplace, towards the hated slug, but noticed something unusual once they arrived at its tent. They had noted a precipitous drop in the population of outsiders in the city of Khirima in the weeks since they had arrived, so a certain woman in the crowd was most conspicuous. She spoke French when they approached her, and they asked if she might join them as a translator. She agreed to this, and now the four of them turned their attention to the mutuyally despised thing before them. Gerald boldly walked up, ignoring the waiting line, and tried to speak with it. Before he had scarcely opened his mouth the creature shifted its shiny black eyes towards him and croaked at him, asking if he could please, kindly wait his turn with the others. He could do nothing to refuse this simple request.
Dietrich had grown tired of the slugs legal and social dominance, and then approached the waiting cattle. He thought he might withdraw his rapier and pierce the heart of one as a sacrifice to the powers of darkness, so he might summon forth a creature to do his bidding and slaughter the stupid, ugly beast before him. While Dietrich could imagine all this quite vividly he could not compel his body to move to do this, and so violate the property of another.
The laws of Khirima did not comment so directly upon the mere act of casting a spell, however. Dietrich spat out the secret words and then out of the sky descended a tiny speck at great speed, which as it grew closer was seen to be a pair of filthy, stinking clamshells, and when these opened there was a tremendous growl of thunder and a lingering mildew stink that bellowed out of them. A searing jagged line of lightning appeared, shooting into the earth from between those two shells. It remained there, connecting a spot on the earth to the interior of the clam like a rippling line of white hot glass in the roasting afternoon sun. The cattle immediately began to panic, and the crowds scattered, and ran off in every direction away from this bizarre sight.
Dietrich had with this summoning at long last called up something over which in this universe he had influence and a distinct authority. With great satisfaction he told it to go forth and kill the wretched slug beneath the canopy. Yet it would not move to violate the prohibition of murder.
After gazing upon the clam and electricity the slug approached Dietrich, somewhat bemused.
“Ah, how very different! Is that thing yours?”
Gerald had not fled, once he was certain Dietrich had achieved control over the demon from the sky. He approached the slug once again and tried to get its attention a second time. The slug turned to face him now, and at this moment Dietrich then quickly pulled out the forbidden book of Necromancy given to him by the Edo priest, intended for use in a different scam, and then stuck it on the slugs lower body. It was held there by slime. The slug then turned back to him and brushed it off with disdain. Dietrich then asked a question of his own: Is that book yours? The slug denied it.
Drawn by the sudden chaos of the crowds a group of guards arrived with their spears drawn and pointed. They walked towards the hideous nine foot slug, preternatural levitating clam, and supremely irritated German and were wholly unsure of what precisely ought to be done, although all were quite sure some sort of crime must have been committed by at least one of the things which was there. Edoni moved closer to them, and then whispered “Look, it dropped that book!”, while pointing towards the slug. The guards then moved in, eager to investigate the most despised slug. It continued protesting the accusation Dietrich had thrown at it.
“That book is not mine! Perhaps it is yours, you are the one accompanied by floating monsters!”
One guard had approached that floating monster, and slowly moved his spear-point close to it, closer and closer, finally close enough to provoke it the electrical energy of its lightning tongue to dance off his spearpoint and onto every bit of metal on his body, and all through his flesh, blood, and other liquids. In a sudden flash the stench of burning hair and skin filled the air and the guard fell over, his skin cracked and crackling with burns, his eyeballs evaporated from the sockets, and his heart exploded inside of his ribcage. Edith ran up to him and plainly saw there would be no way to revive him. Dietrich dismissed the creature then: the lightning ceased, its shell snapped shut, and then continued to snap shut past closing causing it to vanish from the world.
The slug moaned.
“I know nothing of magic! Perhaps it is you who is the sorceror? I am a simple merchant! People will speak of my honesty!”
The remaining guards now pointed their spears towards at Dietrich, but also the slug as well, and began to close in. His plan not going as imagined, Dietrich then attempted to fling himself into the air, and away from trouble, using the a spell stolen from the cult leading Magic-User they had encountered recently on the savanna. Unfortunately he had not adequately prepared this spell for use, and it went terribly awry.
Instead of flinging Dietrich into the air his spell was drawn to another object that his magic had worked upon before: the great boat which had carried the slug and his servants through the sky. It launched upwards from the docks and hurtled towards the marketplace, its sudden shadow barely evacuated before it suddenly stopped mere inches from the ground and bobbed in place once again. With the guards once again bewildered and distracted, the slug slithered towards it and spoke again.
“Ah, how very interesting. I had thought this was depleted of all magic! I think I might leave this place after such rudeness, though I was becoming quite fond of it.”
Gerald then spoke up, and talked highly of the wondrous treasures of the land of Japan, perfect for hurling off the sides of ships, as well as their most intricate systems of law and etiquette. He could not be sure if this piqued the interest of the disgusting creature, however, as the guards gathered their wits once again, and marched the bastard slug. his retinue, and Dietrich also off to the judges, leaving Gerald and Edoni with the boat and fearful audience of onlookers.
The slug chuckled at Dietrich as they walked away, and gestured towards the Greeks who were bound to it by law.
“Oh, haven’t you got anyone to testify about your trustworthiness?”
Gerald saw that the Necromancer's book had been taken by the guards. He boarded the ship, but found it as empty as they had left it back at the docks with only a few scraps of seafaring equipment strewn about the deck. Edoni, meanwhile, observed the still-smoking corpse of the guard while Edith held his two dogs. He might be able use these remains as components in a spell of his own, but he instead had another plan.
Edoni had with him a canopic jar, a tool for use in his forbidden necromantic practices. He boarded the ship and then quietly placed this jar in a corner of the deck where it might be noticed easily, or at least pointed out with little difficulty at the right moment. The people of Khirima were too frightened of the mystical boat to board it, so he was able to do this without interference.
Dietrich and slug were stood before a tribunal of severe and humorless judges, one of which was familiar to Dietrich. Unsure of how to properly interact with the legal system Dietrich immediately harangued the slug, daring it to reveal its true name, speaking of how it dominated the Greeks with it through the use of magic, was certainly a demon, could not explain where it had even come from, and could not be trusted. Dietrich, however, was a champion of the Edo faith, and was covered in the scars to prove it!
The judges placed the two in cages once this ceased, and then convened among themselves before they returned and gave their judgement: No Outsider could be trusted after the discovery of a Necromantic tome. A quest must be performed, a wicked beast slain to prove their honesty and purity, and to reveal the identity of the wicked sorcerer through unwillingness to cooperate.
The weary and confused guards laid eyes on the jar as the slug began to board it's floating vessel, all too happy to cooperate by contributing use of the fine ship to the quest for innocence. With pure, cold hatred in their hearts and eyes they smiled as they surrounded it. It immediately began to blurt out, furious and scared.
“No, this is false! It is not mine! This is conspiracy! It is not true! No! no!”
It went along with them though, passive as a beaten down dog, as they lead it back to the same tribunal of judges. The jar was presented to the judges as the slug whined, then screamed in protest. The sentence was passed down immediately: death, and as soon as was possible. The familiar judge looked at Dietrich and smiled, after delivering the sentence.
The slug continued bellowing as it approached, and then lay down to lower its head onto the slab of execution, face up from the deeply axe carved surface stained with countless liters of spilled guilty blood.
“Lies! All lies!”, it cried out steadily and uselessly as the executioners approached.
There were three of them, all very large men carrying equally large and wickedly sharp axes. They arranged themselves around it very carefully, two on one side and one on the other. They stood so that they would each have ample room to get in strong swings on a similar area of the beasts body decided to be the neck, a spot just a bit below the mouth. The slugs voice was interrupted then by the beginning of a then nearly ceaseless rain of axe blows, its’ words turning into wordless squeals and screams as its head was gradually removed over the next quarter of an hour, falling into the dust with a wet thud. After this its body was chopped into pieces and burnt, the crowd jubilant to see it be finally destroyed.
The judge found Dietrich, and thanked him profusely.
“The letter of the law has been truly followed this day! You are one of the good ones!”
Dietrich then implored him to return the book that had been found, as he had sworn to destroy it for the Edo temple. It was delivered to him in a satchel shortly thereafter, much to his relief.
Gerald and Edith returned to the market, hoping to perhaps claim the fallen slugs orphaned goods for themselves. When they arrived they were disappointed to see a number of guards gathering up everything once known to be the slugs as the conquest and property of the King. They also saw that the slugs boat had begun to slowly rise upwards into the air, and was now too high to be boarded.
In an attempt to provide a distraction for thievery Edith began making eyes at one of the guards, who was then quite taken by her exotic personality. He offered her a chance to meet with him by the mysterious watery Tomb of an Unknown Sorcerer later that day, but Edoni interrupted this invitation to a tryst with the fact that the Tomb had been destroyed. Unshaken, the guard offered instead a chance to gaze upon the most wondrous Fountain of Ants instead, but Edoni dispirited him by describing how that too had been destroyed. Remarking on the prevalence of bad omens this represented, the guard was then hurried away by his captain. Edith then tried to snatch a bag of silver from the cart, but as soon as she lay her hands on it the guard swatted her hand away with scorn, angrily spitting out that he felt foolish to have ever trusted an Outsider.
The streets had a more jubilant air than had been common lately, due to the slaying of the universally disliked slug, making the walk towards the Merchants Guild a very pleasant one. Odafin quite happily received them, and gave a healthy portion of silver as a clear token of his appreciation. After these pleasantries he sternly told them that they must soon be taken to the Temple as he had promised, as even the usual things were becoming more difficult in Khirima with every passing day. They must leave in the morning, he said, or not at all.
Some of them hurried to the market, and they gathered mules and carts and rations. They acquired weaponry, and numerous goods and tools to attempt to ensure safe travel to an unknown place. At the inn, meanwhile, Gerald experimented with the strange liquids he had recovered from the slime pits in the world of Vilnid.
He had five semi-permeable spheres before him, and each was filled with a strange liquid. Each of them smelled of something, and looked different from the other.
There was the amber-colored sphere that smelled like the world after a much needed rain, there were red droplets suspended throughout it. He tasted it, and he felt sentimental for the comforts of hearth and home.
Next was the cinnamon smelling one, made of a swirling green and red. When he tasted it he was unsure of what it did, but when he spoke this aloud Edith swore his voice had emerged from a few feet before him instead of his mouth.
He mixed these two together, this new liquid creating a smell like wet cinnamon. It was now a suspension of red and green marble droplets in amber. He tasted this, and when he spoke his voice echoed out from where he stood just a moment before.
After this was an orange liquid with the perfume of fresh, ripe strawberries. After a quick taste Edith saw his face rearrange, his nose on his forehead, eyes askew with his mouth near an ear. He added this to the pinkish slime that was covered in a brown crust. It smelled of chalk, and when he tasted it his lips went numb. Edith saw this was because they had turned to stone for but an instant. The resulting mixture was a gradient of pink and orange beneath a brown layer of crust.
He drank up the last one, a metallic smelling blue liquid that sloshed about like it were much heavier than it was. It drizzled slowly down his throat like cold syrup, nearly causing him to cough. For the next half hour or so he was physically unable to move even one inch from the place he was, except for some limited vertical movement of his feet along a perfectly straight vertical path. Once this had passed he was satisfied with his experimentation, and turned to the scrolls they had gathered from the Living Library, and once Edoni and Dietrich had returned they devoted their last waking hours to them.
After many hours of study it seemed to be all mostly useless trivia, however. There catalogues of ephemera, manuals of floral astrology, directions on fashionable eldritch attire, and mystical architectural follies. They had found the most useful portion before, a method to make a Salve of Invulnerability. This required materials they could not acquire, and processes they could not perform, and with such little time left before they would depart to the Temple they instead opted to finally lay down for rest, prepared as best they could for their long awaited departure at dawn.
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