Magic Shop Owners Session 2

Session Notes

Calendar Date: 3-3-569

After the defeat from Acman and the stealing of most of the stock of the magic shop the most of the party woke up and went to do various things about the village. Maia and Geog overslept and then decided to look after the shop.

Stinkcat met Sphonyx, an illusionist in the Terrible Toad Tavern who had also come to claim the inheritance while the others were down in the keep below Stagbrook. She was agreeing to take a job for the town baker, Sam the Slow. A tortoise man. His spice shipment had not arrived, and he believed the merchant must have been ambushed on his way from Whiterock. The two set off down the road in that direction.

Breadwig and Jatumal had taken the magic boat they had managed to keep from the magic items in the shop down the path a short way. They were assessing whether they were going to try it in the stream or go further down to a pond. Sphonyx and Stinkcat caught up with them and explained that they were looking for this shipment. Since there was a pond in the direction they were travelling, and Jatumal and Breadwig wanted to try the boat, they all went together.

Along the road, two bandits began shooting arrows at the party from a cliff above. Jatumal took a harsh shot to the shoulder, but the others managed to avoid getting hit. A few shots were made at the bandits that missed before Sphonyx hypnotised them to believe they were friends. The two bandits then agreed to climb down to meet everyone. Stinkcat hid in the shadows below an outcropping, while Breadwig met them at the bottom, diverting their attention. Breadwig then stabbed one in the neck while Stinkcat backstabbed the other. The bandits were dead.

Upon reaching the pond, Stinkcat chased, caught, stroked and then killed a duck while Jatumal quickly tapped the button on the boat, causing it to grow to about twice its size. He repeated this process until it could fit four people in and was about a quarter of the size of the pond. Then invited the others on board. Only Breadwig joined him. At this point, Sphonyx began to slowly walk away.

A shell was slightly exposed above the water, and Jatumal decided to shoot an arrow at it, bitter from his wound. The arrow ineffectively bounced off. The creature whose shell it was then emerged from the water. It was humanoid with a shell on its back, a beak, and a bowl-like indent in its head containing water. It greeted Jatumal and the others in a jolly fashion. Saying it was nice to meet them and that they were at the pond of foresight.

Hearing about the pond, Sphonyx stopped her retreat. The creature explained that if you drank the water, you would see a snippet of the future. Jatumal retrieved the chalice he had found in the keep the day before and used it to gather and drink some water, seeing a vision of a dark tunnel with fire at the end. Breadwig then drank some, seeing himself walking down the mountain pass, and Stinkcat saw the cackling of Acman the wizard, but Sphonyx refused to drink and began to leave once again.

After these visions, they began asking the creature, who said his name was Zuchi, about the pond. He explained that he needed to keep some water in his head to maintain his lifeforce and that the pond saw the future. He always saw himself swimming in the pond, but often couldn't distinguish what was a vision and what was not because he was always in the same place.

Jatumal and Breadwig attempted to shrink the boat again, but made it even bigger by pressing the button. Then they pulled it, causing it to shrink, and were left with the model boat sitting in the water. Zuchi thanked them for sharing a drink with him and healed Jatumal a little. Jatumal topped up his waterskin with some pond of foresight water, and they left, catching up with Sphonyx.

At the mouth of the cliff path, they found a wrecked cart with spilt supplies but no spices. Footprints were leading between a wood which the winds howled through and the mountain edge. The party made their way along this route, hearing laughing and chatter behind a large cliff outcropping. Jatumal snuck through the wood to get a better view, spotting two bandits on the cliffs and three in a camp below.

He returned and conveyed this to the others. They made a plan where Jatumal and Breadwig would climb onto the cliff to take shots at the others up there while they were unaware, and Stinkcat and Sphonyx would take the three below. Jatumal and Breadwig easily climbed atop the cliff, and Breadwig cast a sleep spell that caused the entire camp to fall asleep. Shocked by the effectiveness of the spell, they all ran in and began looting as quickly as they could before the others took things. When they had done that, and Sphonyx had the spice, most of the party began messing with the bandits while Sphonyx left to go back to Stagbrook.

They killed the two bandits on the cliff, took the weapons from the others and tied them up. Then woke them and forced them to drink the water from the pond of foresight. Each briefly went blind. When asked why they were robbing people, they said they were just trying to provide for their families, and Breadwig let them go. They walked into the Howling Wood defenceless while the others picked up the pace to try to catch up to Sphonyx.

Sphonyx had encountered two cultists attempting to tie a woman up and was hidden behind a rock. The others met her and his with her. Stinkcat and Jatumal both took aim at the cultist holding the woman down, and with a shot to the shoulder and eye, he collapsed. Breadwig and Sphonyx threw daggers at the other. One missed and the other felled the Cultist. Jatumal took full robes from a cultist who had the same symbol Acman had on his robes, while Sphonyx took a cape from the other. The woman who was shaken up thanked them, and they offered to escort her back to Stagbrook, where she wanted to buy gems from the miners.

Back in Stagbrook, they gave the spice to Sam, and Sphonyx snorted a little, which caused her nose to burn. Sam paid her, but she refused to split the money evenly and only gave half to Stinkcat. Sam also offered a free batch of his popovers to them, no he had the spice to make them when they were done.

After this, Sphonyx went to the Terrible Toad Tavern for a drink while the others looked around the shop for anything they had missed. There they found a mirror that showed a hand on the shoulder of whoever looked in it that grew the longer you looked, some money and lots of maps and notes about the keep below. Lucinda, the previous owner of the shop, had been going down into the keep to find items to sell. She believed it was the keep of a mad wizard who was long dead, who had used it for his experiments and to protect magic items he had collected from across the map.

They took what they found to the tavern, where they met Sphonyx and looked through what they had found. They all worked out that Sphonyx had the same inheritance but had arrived on the right day, so legally could claim it. Shortly after, a band of four others entered, who were upset that they had arrived too late to claim it. The group decided to ignore them.

Another very old man approached them wanting to buy magic items. He said he used to buy from Lucinda and hoped to buy from the new owners. At first, the party were reluctant, and Sphonyx tried to con him into buying a bow she had picked up, but he had a discerning eye. Then they sold him the mirror, and he explained that if you looked into it too long, you would become a lich's thrall. He said they could let Havana, the barmaid, know when they found more magic items, and he would wait to buy them or identify them when he was in Stagbrook.

Finally, the adventurers went and spoke to the group of miners in the tavern. They were gambling in a dice game. Stinkcat managed to double their money and then lost some, so they had just more than they started with, while Sphonyx lost some. The miners explained that there were no gems or other items from the mine to sell because they had dug into the lair of a fire beast, and it now roamed the mines. They wouldn't return until it was dealt with. Jatumal believed this was the vision he saw. One of the miners was particularly shaken and dazed during the conversation, ignoring practically everything that was said. The miners couldn't offer anything for the mine being cleared, but said there was a huge crystal in the chamber where the beast was first discovered and that Titus Pick, the mine supervisor, might be able to pay. The party returned to the shop to rest.

XP

kappa 100xp
Bandits Cliff 20xp
Bandit camp 70xp
Cultists 20xp
Treasure 700xp
Total 910xp
Divided by 4 people 327.5xp each

Published Content Used

• OSE (Classic and Advanced)