Aersalus B-Team: Season 1, Session 5 – Road Agents and Shadowed Paths

Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

Trapper, who has spent most of his time during the early morning repairing the crossbows he broke the previous day after shooting them out of the hands of the bandits. Rhum wants to interrogate the bandits that were captured, looking around seeing only the skeleton sitting there.

Spirit-Communing

Listens-to-Ocean
Just Outside of Wolftrap/Wolftrap
Metalsday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 10th hour of the Moon
Wolftrap, Western Span

Listens-to-Ocean does his early morning rituals trying not to have the spirits ticked at him. There’s a, for lack of a better word, a fish covered with feathers floating in the air. Listens tries to greet it and it floats up to Listens, staring at the halfling with three eyes. Listens asks if he can be of assistance to the spirit who declines and asks if it can be of any assistance to the shen. It tells the shen that the stars were very bright last night. Listens isn’t sure if it’s a water spirit or a wind spirit or a hybrid of the two. Pleasantries ensue between the two and then suddenly it’s no longer in front of Listens, but instead right by his ear speaking to Listens. Speaking shennic, like putting a shell up to Listens’ ear and hearing the ocean, like someone is trying to speak to him from across the bay. When Listens gets up to leave, so does the spirit. Listens feels like there’s something on the tip of his tongue, like he just remembered something that someone had told him, but forgot about as he didn’t pay attention.

Who Is Dogskull?

Rhum and Trapper
The Constabulary
Metalsday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 1st hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Rhum requests the skeleton to look menacing for him, using the minotaur tongue, only for the skeleton to be rather confused. All the prisoners seem to be rather reluctant to speak so far as Rhum can tell, so he decides to start the interrogation from most injured to least injured, who isn’t able to get much from them as they laugh at his attempts to interrogate them, saying he’s not near as scary as someone called Dogskull is. While the prisoner may seem to be scared of Rhum, he seems far more terrified of whomever Dogskull is.

Trapper stares at the criminals inside the cell, his old thief-taker skills taking over as he observes them, feeling the emotion of guilt washing from the cell. His eyes picking out a tall, waifish looking boy inside the cell, far too young for being with the rest of the group. Trapper points him out to Rhum, telling him to pull the kid out and take him down to the basement. Rhum asks if he’s allowed to eat the kid, causing most of the group to go catatonic, except for the kid who has his head wrapped by Rhum’s hands. He’s taken downstairs and squares he shoulders, telling the group to do their worst. Trapper asks if he wants something to eat while Rhum starts chewing jerky. He calls himself Serveri and born in Ironhaul. Rhum empties Trapper’s pot of food from the boiler into his tankard to give it to the boy who stares at it suspiciously. Rhum starts demanding the location of the bandit base in return for the food, the boy refuses to give it to Rhum. However Rhum’s talk about the desecrated shrine does trigger some information from the boy, who first devours all of Trapper’s food in Rhum’s tankard and the jerky that Rhum gives him afterwards. The boy denies knowing where the main base is, saying he can’t tell us that but he does know where the gang stashes things. Severi makes a deal with Rhum that he’ll lead them to the stashhouse, there’s something there he wants and that the crystal from the shrine that the bandits desecrated should be there, so he gets his thing and we get our thing.

Rhum wants to shove Severi into a sack and get going immediately which Trapper questions. Rhum points out he’s on limited time due to the blood oath he swore with the spirits, which Trapper points out is a Rhum problem and Trapper has a Trapper problem, namely that he’s got a deal going down with Meiri that he can’t miss. Rhum reluctantly accepts it since he was the one that made a blood oath with spirits. Rhum informs the magistrate what is going on and the deal he made with the kid. He grumpily storms out of the constabulary as he knows that he’ll have to wait. Listens scales the constabulary wall to get onto one of the temporary beams for the future roof to get a quiet spot to do things. Outside, Rhum is being angry and throwing axes into piles of garbage and the earth.

Feathers, Eggs, and Shin Things

Listens-to-Ocean, Rhum, and Trapper
The Three Arrows Inn
Metalsday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 4th hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Trapper, meantime, goes to the inn where Meiri is. There’s a weird looking horse outside, one that’s very, very bright red and very large with white markings on the top of its ears, almost like a white horse that was painted red. It’s something that doesn’t belong on this side of the Span, it’s one of the Mongar’s blood horses with a medicine hat, basically the platonic ideal of what a horse should look like. Trapper gets the idea that the horse would probably want some grain in its saddle bags, but that’d require Trapper to climb onto the horse and rummage through bags he doesn’t own. Inside the inn, Meiri greets Trapper and sets him out a dish of bread, honey, and cheese. Meiri tries to be nice to Trapper by giving him some butter as, who is a bit awkward as Trapper asks what’s going on. She leans in saying she’s trying to be nice.

As Trapper tries to eat, getting honey stuck in his beard and otherwise while Meiri gets the other party of the deal. A few minutes later, she calls Trapper to the back room, where she introduces Trapper to a Skraelinger named Tayang who sizes up the Gremian. They make a common greeting gesture and they sit down at the table in the back, Trapper getting the booster seat. She pulls a hard leather basket from underneath the table, the cold emanating from it, the eggs sitting inside along with parts of the bird and the largest feathers. Tayang pulls things out and listens to them, humming a toneless tune as they move things around. They come to an agreeable amount for both of them, at least until Trapper asks if Tayang was planning on raising the fertilized egg, which causes Meiri to get greedy and heads out to get something while Tayang pulls out another pouch, with some unprocessed large rubies in them.

While they wait for Meiri, Trapper asks a few questions. Namely where the horse came from, Tayang saying it came from their mother, delighted to see how much Trapper knows about blood horses. Meiri comes back, complaining about having to feed a large bovine customer while putting a leather warming pouch on the table, her eyes shining on the rubies and gold on the table as Trapper hands her the fertilized egg. There’s a moo from the front room which Meiri goes to investigate and tell Rhum to stop making the angry snorts and noises. Rhum stares at Meiri and tells her as she wishes. She heads into the kitchen and comes back out with a platter of steaming meats and charred tomatoes.

Trapper negotiates another gold coin for the cold pouches and incubation pouches from Tayang before asking her if she gets around the local area to which Tayang looks Trapper up and down and tells him that he’s too small. Trapper corrects himself and Tayang admits that she does come around the area and that she has encountered the bandits as well, and come out on top. She directs Trapper to go to a spirit oracle, giving Trapper a wooden cylinder before she leaves. Trapper asks where the other items from the nest are, to which Meiri brings out yet another box full of the rest of the items, the shiny stuff and the kani crystal knife. He has Meiri divy the payment and the other items into five different groups, with Trapper being allowed to choose first for his 80%. Trapper immediately takes the kani crystal knife, some of the unprocessed rubies, and some of the leftover feathers since he remembered Tessikai braiding them into her hair, he gives the rest of his share to Meiri, telling her to consider it a down payment for the future.

Aftermath

Out in the inn, the miller Molomo greets Rhum and sits down to eat with him. Greeting each other like old friends. He orders a small beer from Meiri who brings it out, he slaps her ass and she slaps his face before both bursting out in laughter, it apparently a normal thing between them as Molomo explains that back in the day, him and Meiri nearly got married. Molomo also explains that he just came in on a goods wagon bringing in stuff. He explains that one of the kids that would work for him has disappeared, he thought it might be because the kid got lazy since he didn’t have to get the flour back. Molomo notes that Rhum looks angry, and Rhum explains that it’s because he’s being forced to wait before he can track down those who desecrated a shrine and that the people that did so must pay for it. With the deal done, they can go back to the magistrate and head out for the bandit stash.

After Action Report (GM)

This was an interesting session where previous things that had been brought up before were finished or concluded and in general that makes me a happy GM. Rory (Listens player) got a bit of a short shrift this time, but Rory is an excellent gamer and trusts me to make sure he gets his sunshine too. We did have to reiterate something important: Listens-to-Ocean is in-world the boss and Rory out-world is to listen to the other players and consider their thoughts on the situation at least. Everyone was good with that (I have such good players).

We were missing Brice this session due to his cursed productive to society gainful employment. So Seven just sort of spent time staring off into the distance.

Other Notes

Bonus Report from Rory.

Soundtrack

None

Aersalus B-Team: Season 1, Session 7 – Secrets, Snakes, and Stashes