Session 015 ❖ July 12, 2020
| Name | Title | Class | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aeris | Knight of No House | Fighter | Has no memory of their past. |
| Caenn | the Mage | Wizard | Well-educated and curious. |
| Gallows | Herald of the Wheel | Bard | Betrayed by one he loved. |
| Garviel | of House Ibis | Cleric | Cast out for breaking his vows. |
| Marus Kiwa | Faithful of Mananan | Cleric | Priest of the Sea-God. |
| Rhea | the Small | Thief | Grew up on the streets. |
The party return to the White Jungle.
Gallows defeats the statue of Jurra Surashari via trickery, and wins her magical talking sabre, which agrees to act as a guide to the ship.
They pass the plinth where Espi and her ‘sister’ once stood and enter the brig, which is now the dwelling place of the Collective of Poetic Apes. Once normal specimens of the ferocious white jungle ape, these creatures have feasted upon the honey of white jungle bees which, having certain wasp-like characteristics, have chewed upon books of poetry brought from far-off Terra in the library of the Parapraxis. They introduce themselves - Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, names taken from the words that now swirl within their abruptly erudite simian brains.
They greet the party politely and offer them tea. They invite them to return to Bar Saturn, where they might find more genteel company than here in the jungle depths.
After this interlude, they approach the prow, and the bridge of the great and ruined craft. The way is barred by sturdy doors, into which Garviel slots the gemstones they recovered from the more violent apes. They enter, to find a spherical chamber with seats for the crew - now long-dead.
One figure still stands, wide-eyed and frantic beneath his leonine helm. He shouts a warning, as the dead crewmen rise to a malevolent half-life. Once they are despatched, the stranger introduces himself as Kasparan the Navigator, whose solemn duty it was to guide the Parapraxis. He relates the melancholy tale of how he failed in this duty.
The Archivists laid siege to Zyan from their redoubt on another world, the Alkaline Wastes, the very air and soil there caustic from millenia of alien industry. Kasparan’s love Liishinoru led a party to this dreadful place to find the gate the Archivists used to send their war machines into the realm of dreams.
At her signal, Kasparan was to fly to her on wings of love, recover her party, and destroy the gate. The Parapraxis, after all, travels always to wherever its navigator’s heart most desires.
But Kasparan had fallen for the lamia Veshoorida the Sultry, who dwelled in her palace in the White Jungle, and so the vessel found itself not raining death upon the Archivist’s gate but floundering amid the boughs, in the midst of the siege, and was quickly cut down by the Archivist machines.
The siege ended, so Liishinoru must have destroyed the gate, but she never returned from the Wastes, nor has her ghost entered the Hinterlands. Kasparan speaks of his guilt and his century of regret, and admits he cannot move on until he learns what has become of her.
The ghost approaches his own corpse, seated at the helm, and hands his insignia to Caenn, telling him that while he carries it he can haunt him, and travel with him if they can find a way to the Wastes.
The party finish gathering the last treasures aboard the ship, and then Caenn proposes a more ambitious act of looting: He seeks to take the great vessel itself.
Carpenters are hired and escorted on the perilous journey from Rastingdrung. They build scaffolding to connect the two halves of the vessel, and hire a dry dock by Lake Wooling. When all is in readiness, Caenn sits at the helm and covets the vessel as hard as he can.
And with a rush of air, a terrible creaking of strained wood, the collapse of half the scaffolding - it is done. The ship has quit the fragrant Valley of Flowers and now rests amid the equally, though less agreeably, fragrant docks of Rastingdrung.
The Chatelaine - a fell sorceress rumoured to have a heart of ice, and ruler of the city - has got wind of the scheme, and is in attendance, her raven locks whipping at the outrush of displaced air. She tosses them back as Caenn approaches.
“What a fabulous gift you have brought me!”
It’s fun to say "yes, and..." The PCs (well, mostly Caenn, and this would become a pattern and one that added a great deal to the campaign) decided to steal the WHOLE DUNGEON. I let them pull it off without much difficulty, but then they're faced with the problem of needing a drydock, and having to deal with the authorities, which means of course the Chatelaine is going to show up and take it for herself.
The Chatelaine is endlessly fun to play, and you don't really have to do much to play her - just call everyone darlings a couple of times and act like nobody else matters and the players' imagination will fill in the blanks. It's so much fun to be incredibly petty but also cunning, driven and ruthless..
I also never let her become an actual obstacle to the point where the PCs might try to fight her. She has just enough genre awareness to understand that you need to keep PCs inside the tent. Keep them pointed at your enemies and they'll either ruin your rival’s day or die trying. Getting into a fight with your own PC minions is a sign of incompetence.
We also have the tale of Kasparan and Liishinoru, which is one of the first bits of lore I come up with for myself, having previously leaned mostly on published works. This story pays off nicely later on!
This felt like a turning point in the campaign, so at this point I asked the players for backgrounds on their characters - family, friends, enemies, objectives both in and out of character. It was once I had these, and started thinking about how to fit them together into a grand narrative, that the campaign really got underway.