S11E03 - Mail Interceptors

The woman that Lyra is talking to reveals her name, Azaernara. She’s the woman that Ike saw making love to the Magistrate when the party tried to infiltrate the house hours earlier.

In response to Lyra’s requests to learn how to communicate with animals, Azaernara hands her a small crystal container with a deep blue liquid. Lyra notices a force compelling her to drink it right there, but she resists it and saves it for later.

Azaernara then offers Lyra that she and the rest of the party inspect all mail coming into Ironwound from the kingdom’s capital, Kingspire, and intercept any mail addressed to the leader of the town’s guard, Sister Gloria. Azaernara shares that she’s working undercover for a secret organization that believes the killer nun is involved with dangerous draconic forces. Lyra is non-committal about the mission and, after the raven leaves Azaernara’s arm, apparently on her command, the two women part ways.

Back at the farm, Lyra asks Jinu, who’s still reading a necromancy book to Ike, if she knows anything about Azaernara, but the name doesn’t ring a bell.

The next morning, the party wakes up as Jinu is back at the farm from buying food. He asks them about their activities because there are now “Wanted” posters about most of the party throughout town. The heroes are evasive and ambiguous, but Jinu doesn’t press the issue.

Jinu also shares news about another sabotage attack that happened overnight. Someone has thrown dead animals into several water wells, rendering them unusable for days. There are rumors that the massive warforged that recently arrived in town is behind them.

After eating breakfast, the heroes discuss their options and end up accepting Azaernara’s mission because Gray and Ike still really need to get into Kragthar’s house.

Once on the eastern road, they find a good ambush spot and hide, waiting for incoming carriages.

The first one is led by a man accompanied by two mastiffs. The heroes simulate being attacked by Lyra, a monstrous humanoid. Ike and Gray jump on the road and run towards the cart, screaming “Help!”, followed by Lyra, who’s a few meters behind them. While the distraction is running, Nemo enters the cart from behind, finds and grabs the bag of letters, and then leaves unseen.

On the front, the merchant, instead of panicking or running away, grabs a quarterstaff, jumps out of the cart, and, along with his dogs, attacks Lyra, knocking her unconscious and throwing her off the cliffside. Gray shouts “I will finish her!” and slides down the cliff after her before the unconscious druid dies from more fall damage. As the paladin secretly stabilizes her instead of finishing her, the merchant, happy with the secured area, leaves.

The heroes regroup, give Lyra some energy bars, and get back to their hiding spots. While waiting for the next cart, the heroes read the mail and find a letter addressed to a certain M with incriminating talk of illegally traded metals, but no Ironwound names. The heroes suspect it’s addressed to Kragthar.

A few hours later, another merchant chart arrives. As the cart approaches, Lyra also spots a group of goblins slowly descending down the mountain near the heroes. The goblins don’t see them and, once the male merchant driving the cart is within reach of their bows, they fire at him, nearly killing him on the spot.

The heroes switch to attacking the goblins while the one-hit-away-from-dying merchant switches on his panic mode and kicks his horse’s flanks to speed up and get out of danger. Sadly for the merchant, Ike prioritizes their mission and shoots one of his three magic missiles at the driver, killing him. The horse, startled by everything that’s going on, sprints too close to the cliffside, slips on the edge, and flies straight down the cliff.

Meanwhile, the goblins, who are returning the heroes’ attacks, knock Gray and Lyra unconscious. Nemo and Ike are luckier and kill most of the goblins, saving the day. After stabilizing Gray and Lyra, Nemo and Gray go to inspect the cart remnants and find some mail, but nothing for Sister Gloria.

While Lyra is unconscious, Ike gets bored, braids her hair, and swaps her dirty, ragged clothes with the merchant’s clothes. Nemo and Gray, on their part, loot the dead goblins, pile their corpses blocking the road, and then loot the destroyed cart, but other than one bottle of wine that miraculously survived the fall, they don’t find anything of value, including any letters.

After the sun sets without any other carts, the heroes return to Jinu’s farm, tired from a hard day of highway robbery work.

During dinner, Ike sips Azaernara’s potion, and soon starts feeling tingling sensations. After dinner, Jinu offers the heroes a massage for their sore muscles, to be delivered by the zombie he calls Uncle Bob, but they politely refuse. Then Ike and Jinu continue reading the necromancy book about raising strong zombies, and once they’re done, Jinu, who had flirted with Nemo since they got back, goes to the bedroom with the gnome.

Also that night, Ike dreams, not about wood and trees, but about a deep, gutural voice that tells him: “I know your hunger for the world’s secrets. Let me feed it.” Ike thinks an innocent and curious “Ok” response back.

The next morning, the heroes see the innocent merchant that Ike had killed with a magic missile, farming outside as a fresh-looking zombie. The party, not needing to ask Jinu about it, walks back to the previous day’s ambush spot to intercept more merchant carts.

The first cart to arrive is driven by a happy-looking female halfling and her daughter. Ike jumps on the road and stays still, looking like a puppet. The little girl, whom her mom calls Nana, makes her mom stop the cart, gets off to grab Ike, gets back into the cart, and they take off again. Suddenly realizing they had an incomplete plan, Ike improvises and starts talking startling the two women. He first successfully charms the mother. Then persuades her to stop the cart to enjoy the scenery for a moment, but fails when he tries to persuade her to hand him the mule’s reins.

While Ike is distracting the halflings, Nemo stealthily crawls first, underneath and then inside the cart, and starts looking for the mail.

Gray, from his hiding place, casts Sacred Flame on one of the front wheels, stopping the now damaged cart. The surprised mother grabs some tools and starts trying to hack a fix.

Nemo eventually finds the mailbag, grabs it, signals the party with a bird song signal they had agreed to, and then leaves the cart.

Before Nemo’s signal, though, Lyra and Gray try to make more time for Nemo, and they howl like a wolf and bandits respectively. The howling scares the mule, who violently starts off, trips over a rock, and falls off the cliff. Nemo and Ike, who were still in the cart, jump out just in time, but the little girl doesn’t, and she falls with the cart.

Gray, with guilty, jumps off the cliff side and reaches the bottom of the valley, almost knocking himself unconscious in the process. He then finds the little girl, stabilizes her, but then gets bitten by a nearby viper, falling unconscious. Lyra tries to help by jumping off the cliff side too, but trips over the steep cliff and knocks herself unconscious halfway through the fall. Nemo follows her steps but luckily lands unharmed, scares the snake away, stabilizes Gray, and finds the mailbag among the debris with an expensively sealed letter addressed to “S. Gloria.” Ike in the meantime climbs down to the hanging rock where Lyra lies unconscious and also stabilizes her.

Nemo and Ike then try to calm the mother, who had gone berserk when the little girl fell off the cliff. They eventually manage to do so after the mom failed to throw Ike off the cliff, and commit to helping them by hiding the halflings’ goods, now splattered over the valley floor, until they find a new cart, a new mule, and can come to pick their wares.

With their mission accomplished despite the collateral damage on humanoids and animals, the heroes return to Jinu’s house.