Into the Gray

Session Summary

Elzira writes home for money, Star and Pharèl train together and Pharèl meets Tatiana. Pharèl begins making relationships with the local eateries. Wash has reported the damaged tree an the Umber Hulk at the Gendry Town Hall, and tells us we are wanted there to give our accounts. Once there, the clerk Tasha asks about our experience and questions us about our goblin encounter in Valdethirsk. Star tells her the real problem is the Owlbears. It turns out the issue is whether to maintain Valdethirsk at all. We finally meet Kai, a drow elf, who then offers us work with the organization he and Wash work for to investigate the possible portal somewhere north in Gendry and possibly do more adventuring. We all sign a contract to work for a mysterious organization which is funded by people up north, presumably somewhere in Kelderheim.

Log

Elzira is writing a letter home, asking for money. #letters

Around 3am, early morning clowns wake up. #bathtime

Star and I are outside training. He’s helping me figure out how to make evasive attacks. 

He’s complaining about his goddess Tatiana, “Do you want to meet her?”

He casts Dancing Lights and it takes the form of a woman. “Say hi,” he says to her. The form waves.

Star asks for help to improve magic, that’s what she’s been asking. I give some tips on focusing on magic. We agree that we will each help each other with mobility and magic.

In the morning, I ask where to pick up breakfast. She recommends the bacon and eggs after I ask for advice on the best meal. #relationships

I buy my parchment, write the letter, and run down to the caravan area to send it off. #shopping #letters

I’m a half hour late for breakfast. I chat up the waiter and send my compliments to the chef, because I’ll be interested in shifts here later. I buy a modest meal (-1sp). Meta: I roll 23 Performance. #relationships

I allude to loving cooking and that I’d be interested in any openings.

Food is hot, everything is clearly in much better abundance than Valdethirsk.

Wash arrives on the scene as we’re wrapping up breakfast. He burps majestically. He lets us know to meet him in front of the inn after we’re done.

I’m nearly done eating, everyone else has been chatting up a storm while I finish. On my way out I stick my head into the kitchen to give a grin and a wave to say “See you later!” The chef chuckles to herself and says “I guess we will then!” She is charmed by my naive optimistic behavior. #relationships

At around 9:20am we are back in front of the inn.

Wash tells us he reported the damaged tree and Umber at the town hall last night.

He’ll be hanging out at Casa Del Kai-Yo Taye where we can discuss our plans. He tells us where it is so we can find him later, on the west side of town. We’re meant to first go hang out at the town hall to answer any questions.

As we enter the town center, a disheveled tired looking woman works on paperwork. She’s talking to a man, saying “They should be at the inn right over there, if you could go over and ask them to come over here, we need to know what they have to say about it.” 

He looks up and says “Looks like you have guests.” 

We introduce ourselves as the people who rode in on the caravan. 

She explains she’s been up all night, and is pretty over everything. We wait in some chairs for 15 minutes.

Finally, she has gathered a group of town patrol, druids, and some of our caravan traveling partners.

She first asks about the tree, did we see anything unusual or special about it? We did not.

Then she asks about the Umber. Who all remembers? Twinkletoes says “I remember!” Arachne partially raises her hand, Elzara raises her hand.

She wants to know if there was evidence of another Umber anywhere.

So far, everyone says we only saw the one.

She sighs, saying she expected not to get any useful information.

She turns the conversation over to Valdethirsk. “It sounds like there were problems with goblins?”

Star corrects her to say the problem was rampant owlbears.

“But you dealt with the goblin problem?”

“We arranged a deal with them,” Star says.

“Do you think there will be further issues with the goblins?” 

Star says no.

“You never know with goblins, but things were fine when we left, I guess,” Elzira grumbles.

She asks for everyone’s name. We’re all a little surprised to hear Twinkletoes has a real name (Feleyna Foote). Then, same for Star (Enra).

She wants to know if we took care of all the owlbears. 

Star explains that Wash identified there were some caves. He thinks there might have been more owlbears in there.

I talk about the fire a bit. There was incidental fire. She wants to know if we were using magic. “Are you magic users?” I answer yes and reiterate the fire wasn’t until later so it was unlikely it was related to us. 

Star finally asks what all this information is for. 

She says this will be used to figure out whether Valdethirsk is worth maintaining. 

The settlement was made for mining but has become possibly too dangerous. 

She wants to know whether we can stay in town for a few weeks to give further testimony. 

Star wants to know what will happen. She explains they would likely be moved back to Gendry. 

Star argues that the technology trade with the goblins is likely beneficial. 

She finds that interesting.

We explain that we have business with Wash and don’t know whether we can stay for multiple weeks. Arachne blurts out, “Ma’am I can’t stay here for weeks.” 

Star mentions it’ll be better if we have our inn covered.

She declines to offer help in this regard.

I pocketed a biscuit at breakfast, and I slyly hand it to her on our way out the door to help her cause she’s so tired.

She mumbles “Thank you” and starts nibbling on it. 

She is discussing what should happen with the others in the room as we leave. I ask her name as we leave, “Oh, it’s Tasha. Ask for Tasha.”

11am and we head to meet Wash. I knock on the door.

A drow elf answers the door. Star puts his hood on and tries to be at the back of the group. It took him a hot minute to recognize this though and wasn’t very fast about it.

“We’re Wash’s friends?” I say.

“He did tell me about you, come in,” he turns.

Star is the last to enter the room, and does so warily. Wash is inside a lab, pushing around reddish powder. 

“Welcome in everybody,” Wash said. “So, Kai, did he try and jump into stealth?”

“No need to be rude to the man,” Kai laughs. “He did try to hide his face though.”

He offers us lunch. I accept, Star refuses.

He chats us up. He explains he works with Wash to find artifacts and see what they’re used for. It’s incredible the technology they’ve made.

Wash tells him half of us probably aren’t listening.

I ask who “they” is. The pre-war civilization, he explains. In the south in particular made magical doohickies over focusing on casting.

They’ve been trying leads and trying to figure out clues. 

I excitedly ask him about my staff to see what he knows. Kai asks first and takes the quarterstaff. “I believe I’ve heard of a couple of weapons like this. They have modular enhancements where adding them does something unique. An example would be a crystal with magical fire and then it would allow the staff to hurt people with the fire damage. There were more fancy ones, but those would be a lot harder to find.”

I ask where to find them, when Wash explains we’ll be exploring and we’ll probably run into them on our adventures.

Arachne is now interested, having heard about pre-war shenanigans, and asks if he knows about holy magic. “It’s not my specialty but maybe I can help.”

She takes out her holy symbol and asks if he recognizes it. He thinks he’s seen it before, but I couldn’t tell you anything meaningful about it. Generally speaking, if you end up searching ruins, in most places holy worship was put into one place so you should look for a building like this.” He pulls a book of the wall and flips through to find a picture of a religious building. “They’d look like this so you can recognize it. That’s usually where you’d find specific stuff for specific gods.”

Wash talks about the device we found in the ruins, he said that it started going off while he was walking around town. Seems there is a large portal in the north side of town. He invites us to go on a “stroll through a mansion.”

Kai says he is not officially recommending we break and enter but if we happen to come across anything interesting he would like to be made aware.

We are then given contracts for officially working with Kai.

It basically says that treasure is split at our discretion, with guidelines for how to split treasure if there is a disagreement.

Star and Arachne probe to learn more about the organization. 

Kai explains it’s about uncovering secrets from before the war.

Star asks, “Who is ‘we’?”

Kai laughs and says it’s mostly him and Wash. He has some financial support from people up North. They keep things running.

Wash points out that with the South and North tensions it’s better not to mention that.

I wonder whether expenses are covered in any way. Star wants advance payment. 

There doesn’t seem to be a good solution for this at the moment.

Arachne scowls, “Am I to understand that you’re claiming the rights to what we find?”

Wash reminds her that they only want a couple of specific things but they’re happy to let everyone have whatever else they want.

Arachne pulls out her device, “These are mine by divine right.” 

Wash says that’s no problem.

Arachne signs the contract quietly after this.

I sign as well. 

Wash is going to try and get us some work and lodging. I voice that I’m going to be applying to work with the restaurant but I’ll be flexible. 

Wash asks for scrap metal from the back so that Elzara can make him a shield. Kai gives him the go-ahead. 

Ending at 1pm on Wednesday in-game.