It was a very short session this week. People were late, and I was onboarding a new player, so the entire session was like 40 minutes. That's fine, it was still fun and I was happy to at least have the opportunity to introduce the new characters.
Ah well, nonetheless. Here's the link to the last Post-Session Report.
***
The Cast:
John Dole of Bisque, Firlish Stew Captain, Just barely was unable to keep a perpetual stew, due to the efforts of hungry vermin children.
Dwayne Ottleson of Fir Reach, Firlish Ironmonger. Good with creatures of the Other, very bad with children .
Padre Faustino Calderon Capard del Monte Rubito, Algóran Venturesome Priest, he may be a drunken sot and a tar-eater, but he's the resident medic and babysitter of the crew.
The Mysterious Woman with a Head Wound, a revenant, newly risen from an early grave, perhaps a former worker on the Lamrey's farm, perhaps from a prior wave of cutters sent in to investigate their sudden disappearance... who knows?
"Vinkle," or is it "Winkle?" Whatever he is, he's a Lothrmensch Moonshiner. With his best customers dead, he's looking for new places to peddle his poison, and boy, has he found a crew that's willing to run up a tab
***
It's a somber day, turning quickly to evening. Ever since Vinkle moved from his still in that forest out of Dunnfarr, his luck has gone from bad to worse. It seems like every client of his has suffered some tremendous setback or other: crops burnt, bad harvest, ragwretch attack, Other incursion. In fact, he's down to his last jar of swill, and if he can't sell this... well, he doesn't want to think about what might happen if he can't.
Vinkle climes another hill, and sees the thick black smoke over the Lamrey homestead. A bad omen, but there's a small chance that someone over there needs something to cheer them up... or to blot out the day, at least.
***
The crew returns to the house as raindrops begin to fall, and they are surprised to find a short woman sitting in front of the stove, filling up a bowl with stew. Her face is caked in dried blood and dirt, and her right hand is pinned to her forehead with a fléchette. As the crew stomps in, she turns around to greet them.
"Hi!" She tries to wave with the hand pinned to her forehead, and grimaces with pain.
The crew attempts to interrogate her as to her name and origins, and despite the fact that that she answers every question with an "I don't know" through a mouthful of stew, the crew decides that they can trust her, seeing as there's an obvious reason that she has no answer. The Padre, in his attempt to remedy the poor stranger's situation, soaks some bandages in brandy and carefully snaps the fléchette in twain, allowing him to remove the haft from her hand and bandage it, and, with the hand free, pull the pointy bit out of the skull. It takes a hearty yank, but eventually the dart is free and the woman's head is bandaged as well.
As the Padre tends to the strange woman, John Dole notices something scurrying in the loft above them. He quietly alerts the crew, and once the fléchette is free, the woman volunteers. The crew picks up a ladder from the floor and places it up against the loft, finding several notches that fit the poles perfectly. Feeling bold, the newest member ascends.
Right away, she can see that many chests and crates are open, and there is a small, relatively messy bed with a small "fort" made up of boxes, crates, and chests, with one situated in the center. She flings the lid open and finds two small faces, wet and pale with fear. After a second, the larger one croaks out a question, voice dry and hoarse. "Are you going to kill us?"
"You shouldn't be afraid of dying. I did and I came back better!" the strange woman responds, terrorizing the children. Hearing this the Padre flings himself up the ladder and elbows his former patient out of the way before she terrorizes the children further. After the kids are encouraged out of the toy chest with a bowl of stew and several biscuits, the older one becomes much more talkative. She is Lottie, and she and her four year old brother Pater remember that about a week ago, one of the farmhands told their mother that their father had found something in the fields, and that he would be late for dinner. Sometime later, when they were playing in the loft, a monster attacked their mother while she was preparing dinner, and after she killed it, she warned them to hide and not come out until she came back. They have been hiding ever since, and have noticed the new plants that took root in front of the house, but they have been too scared to leave the house, and because they are worried that that their mother will come back, and she will not be able to find them.
"You don't have to worry about that," John Dole informs the children matter-of-factly, "The mandrakes got her, and we got the mandrakes. You're eating the one carved from her head right now!"
This, quite reasonably, did very little to comfort the children, and it was about this time that Vinkle banged on what little remained of the front door.
"Opening" the door, the crew engaged in another round of introductions, and the crew began to decide on the next course of action. Everyone agreed that they should deliver the children to Walfried and Esme at the Lamb & Boar, but Dwayne Ottleson pointed out that the crew definitely needed to check out the pit in the fields, to see what ever could have released the plague of mandrakes. While the crew discussed this, the strange woman, Vinkle and the Padre went through the house, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on, including a set of nice silverware, needles and thread, and a copy of Ferring’s Last March from a broken bookshelf.
John Dole was infuriated when he found where Almy Lamrey kept his gunspring, only to find out that Almy's leverette used 220 gr, when he used 330 gr, so the five boxes of ammunition he found in the loft were completely worthless to him.
***
The Gang's as geared up as they're going to get. The question for the next session is "do they value a gold crown enough to take an extra day to walk the kids back before they investigate the pit? "
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