S11E19 - Zoqoi, At Last

The heroes’ voyage from Brasswake to Embermouth passes in a rush of storms, bargains, ruined ships, and strange warnings, with brief stops at Saffron Anchorage and Oakcrest along the way.

Early in the voyage, Lyra rescues Wavekeeper, a handsome fellow druid, from a sadistic gang of tattooed, ponytailed halflings. Wavekeeper is also bound for Zoqoi, though he keeps his reasons private. What he does share is bad: the chromatic dragons the party has been hearing about, and fighting, are called the Unseen Paw. They all want the same thing, to repair what is wrong with the world by finding and using the Wyrmspire, but the faction is not united. Some, like Xul’Gath, hunt the mythical artifact alone. Others are organized, intelligent infiltrators who have embedded themselves in human, dwarven, and elven society. A third faction descends from an ancient lineage that can corrupt divine magic at monasteries and holy sites. Instead of flowing outward across the world, that magic can be driven into the earth and used as a compass to triangulate the Wyrmspire.

Wavekeeper thanks Lyra for rescuing him, calls a pet dolphin, and disappears into the ocean.

While the group stops at Oakcrest, Brand befriends an old blind man whose sons recently died in an attack on the western city of Tynnar. They will be buried next week alongside many other soldiers, and the old man would give anything to see his sons one last time at their funeral. That night, Brand’s god speaks to him through his 101 Paladin Manual and offers to give the old man sight in exchange for Brand’s most cherished memory. Brand accepts the deal and gives up the memory of forging his first blade with his father. Before accepting, the cunning Brand writes the memory down. Afterward, the words remain, but, sadly, the feeling is gone. It’s hard to outsmart a god. In exchange for Brand’s help, the old man gifts him with his most precious belonging, an immovable rod that he acquired years ago.

At Saffron Anchorage, the danger turns infernal. Asmodeus speaks through a minion and offers Nemo one year of protection. In exchange, Nemo must travel to the Ninth Layer of Hell and submit to a ritual that will extract the soul inside him. The preliminary contract promises no physical harm and no death. Nemo studies the wording, trusts none of it, and tells the minion to tell Asmodeus to fuck off. The elder minion promises Nemo he will regret it and leaves.

Meanwhile, Soto faces his own dilemma: Klik and Klak are growing quickly, and so are their violent instincts. Giving up on them would be easier. But he chooses not to.

Near Oakcrest, another complication cuts across their route: a swift brigantine commanded by a broad-shouldered woman with the bearing of a warrior-priest. The woman welcomes the heroes and asks them for help misdirecting the Queen’s guards pursuing them. The party learns that the guards are chasing them because they stole something from the queen. Only Nemo commits. When the pursuing galleon reaches the party, he confirms it belongs to the royal army, then calmly and skillfully lies about where the thieves went.

Over the four-week voyage, the arcane engine becomes both solution and liability. First, it saves them from a storm that nearly drives their two ships into each other. Later, when a ship crewed by nudist pirates attacks, they choose to fight instead of turning it on, but Paco’s ship sinks in the skirmish. After Oakcrest, they find a drifting ship among the Severil Islands. Nemo explores the ship and finds nothing, so the party decides to claim it before anything else can happen to it. The drifting ship is not empty. A gibbering mouther has absorbed the crew, and the heroes’ arcane engine draws it. Before the creature can damage the ship, they activate the engine and vaporize the abomination, but this last use destabilizes the device. It explodes, and the ship goes down.

Paco has now lost his ship and the replacement the heroes promised him. The patient man turns furious. Despite his good-natured personality, he makes it clear that the party now owes him the original price for the journey to Zoqoi: 3,200 gp. The heroes ask him for patience while they find a solution to the problem and, grudgingly, Paco lets the matter rest for now.

Between these adventures, the heroes piece together what lies ahead:

Oakcrest

• King Flora Margarina on high alert: several attempted murders

Embermouth

• Ruled by King Eldermore, trading hotspot, rule of law
• Southernmost bastion of the Mace of Pelor (name of the region).
• Ambivalent towards slavery → tensions with Mace of Pelor neighboring kingdoms

Zoqoi

• Northernmost point of Aquis (continent)
• Ruled by six slave lords and ladies, institutionalized slavery
• Seen as barbarians by the northern continent, and as civilization by people who made it south of Zoqoi and survived to describe it
• Rich and powerful: important N-S and E-W trade routes

Red Sea

• Dangerous, vast desert: heat, sandstorms, monsters, and nomadic tribes
• Travel via defended caravans and from oasis to oasis
• Water is a matter of life and death
• White elves: a handful of nomadic tribes spread through the desert
• Treasure hunters scour the dunes for old cities swallowed by the desert

Beyond the Red Sea

• High mountains and jungle
• Cannibal halflings, dwarven kingdoms

Misc

• Severance Protocol less active on Aquis
• Increased dragon and cultist activity everywhere the party stopped
• Common to see creatures from Hell roam the desert

The fast-forward finally catches up with them at Embermouth, a city of massive red cliffs.

At the inn, the party overhears a half-ogre monk discussing a martial arts tournament in Zoqoi, where the winner can easily earn more than 700 gp. Soto immediately pictures himself taking the prize, and the party starts treating the money as already theirs. The heroes also convince the half-ogre and his companion to use Paco’s ship to get to Zoqoi, to placate Paco.

The next day becomes a scramble for money. Brand and Ike sell what the party can spare and recover 800 gp at Embermouth’s market. Nemo also leaves an ad in Thieves’ Cant on a prominent street, offering a potion that can “drive your enemies mad” and inviting buyers to meet at a certain alley that night.

Late that day, the party splits. Nemo and Soto go to the alley to meet any buyers, while the others go to the market and perform a very effective musical pitch: Ike dances on stilts, Brand sings in his Pavarotti voice, and Lyra contributes as best she can. The performance is a success, and their “Go to Zoqoi” hit earns them six more travelers. Under their agreement with Paco, each passenger will lower the party’s debt.

In the alley, a buyer shows up, but he turns out to be a veteran officer accompanied by four guards. Soto drops from his rooftop hiding place, grabs Nemo, scrambles back up, and the two flee across the rooftops. The guards chase them for several minutes, but the heroes shake them off with cunning, stealth, magic, and the help of being two floors above their pursuers. Then, carefully, they make their way to the port to wait until the morning.

That night, the inn door explodes inward. Two bearded devils storm the room while Lyra is on watch and Brand, Ike, Klik, and Klak are asleep. They bark something in Infernal. No one understands, and the conversation becomes violence.

In the first round, the devils bring Lyra down to two hit points, though she avoids the worst of the attacks’ side effects. The heroes realize they’re outgunned and flee. Klik and Klak grab Lyra, hoist her over their heads, bounce onto the bed, and crash through the window, landing on their feet one story below. Brand follows with three backpacks and his heavy armor, throwing the gear out before jumping after it. Last, Ike climbs onto the bed and faces the devils. A cultist behind the devils demands to know where Nemo is. Ike answers with an up-leveled Thunderwave, hurling the devils through the opposite wall and knocking them prone. Then he jumps. Brand fails to catch him, but Ike lands unharmed.

The devils glare through the broken window. Nemo isn’t there, the kidnapping has failed, and the heroes are already halfway out of reach, so the devils retreat.

The party meets at the docks and hides in a warehouse until it’s time to leave.

While they wait at the docks, Lyra’s raven appears again and drops another mysterious card: The Fates. The raven tells Lyra something is wrong in the North. The wind currents are too strong; he can no longer reach the Ice Kingdoms. Lyra asks why the raven was flying so far away, where he keeps finding these powerful cards, and how he can track her over such long distances. The raven responds by cocking his head and changing the subject.

At the appointed time, the heroes leave Embermouth with Paco, his crew, the half-ogre, and the rest of the new passengers. After the chaos of Embermouth, the next week is pleasantly quiet. Soto gets more information about the martial arts tournament and the mysterious Master Wei. Lyra tries to get more details about the card, but none of the passengers seem able to help with it. Nemo deciphers more of Sister Gloria’s notes and finds that several of Zoqoi’s ruling lords and ladies are believed to be polymorphed dragons of the Unseen Paw. Nemo also has a panic attack when their ship passes a slower ship also heading for Zoqoi. His friends ask him about it, but he sternly refuses to give any details, for the sake of everybody involved.

The session ends as Zoqoi comes into view.