Dragonslayer

Monsieur Frangelico

On the morning of Desnus 1st, the party gathered at the fishery to finish what they had started, and found Franz Frangelico waiting for them. He seemed genuinely surprised they had shown up at all. He left his white stallion tethered above ground and followed them down into the dark, laying out his terms on the way: if he was going to help slay a dragon, he expected half its hoard.

Ja-ja agreed before anyone else could open their mouth.

For all his bluster, Franz turned out to be exactly as good as he claimed. The juvenile horned dragon that had sent the party fleeing a day earlier met a master monster hunter in his element, and he killed it with nearly no need for help.

While blades and claws flew, Beans made straight for the hoard, unseen by anyone, and slipped an emerald into his bag.

When the dragon was slain, Franz carved it up with practised efficiency and handed out pieces: Ja-ja took a fang, Herald took a heart and blood, and Rygel a handful of scales, vivid green and shot through with electric blue. Then Franz turned to the hoard: 429 cp, 63 sp, and 18 gp. He took half the gold, as agreed, and left the other 9 gp for the party, along with every last silver and copper piece. Peasant money, he called it.

A Day in Otari

With the dragon dead and the fishery safe, the party scattered across town.

Shiro sought out Worliwynn and expressed a certain regret about all the killing that had happened the last few days. Rats, spiders, cinder rats, and now a dragon: so much unnecessary bloodshed. He asked whether she had noticed anything out of balance lately. She had. At night, the old lighthouse in the swamp has been glowing blue. Shiro took this in, then wandered over to the Crook's Nook and bought a weighted coin.

Ja-ja traded in his padded armor for a suit of scale mail from Carman Rajani at Blades for Glades, then went to the Farmers' Guild for vegetables. There was a soup to make.

Corpi also dropped in on Carman, hoping to build the sort of rapport that leads to better prices down the line. Unfortunately, Corpi talks with his hands. One wild gesture sent a whole rack of swords clattering to the floor, and Carman's expression went from glowering to something worse. Corpi left to purchase a crystal ball and an assortment of ritual trappings and began setting up a fortune-telling stall for the festival.

Rygel strolled into Odd Stories and told Carl Morlibint how he had very nearly slain the dragon single-handedly. Carl, thrilled, talked him into joining his Founder's Day play as a stagehand. Rygel mentioned that Vega would be great to play a bigger role, and Carl was delighted to oblige. Rygel then worked a shift at the bookstore, not especially well, and was paid a princely 4 cp for it. Afterward he found Corpi and helped him hammer the fortune-telling stall together.

Herald paid a visit to Magiloy, the tengu proprietor of the Crow's Cask and an eccentric alchemist, to buy a recipe for dragon blood pudding. Magiloy reminisced fondly about her pirate days, when she kept a baby dragon aboard ship so she could drink its blood. Herald sold her the dragon's heart and offered her a taste of the finished pudding in exchange for a discount on an Inflammation Flask. Then he hurried back to the Thirsty Alpaca to start cooking. He kept his word: the next morning, before the party set out, Magiloy got her taste of pudding.

Beans treated himself to a quick makeover and headed for the Rowdy Rockfish, the glummest bar in town. He ordered a beer and sat through Brelda lamenting her dead husband and her missing son before remembering that it was the Crook's Nook he had meant to visit.

Finn had made it to the Crook's Nook already. Yinyasmera somehow knew the dragon was dead before he said a word; Finn assured her it had been mostly his doing. He knew she would be hosting the obstacle course at Founder's Day and fished for details, and she obliged. Runners start on the milled-wood conveyor belt, ride it down to the water, and swim across to the dock. From there it's a sprint down the dock, a climb up the side of the fishery, a leap from rooftop to rooftop down into the market, and a final scramble up the cliff. All of it is in honour of Otari himself, the legendary rogue the town is named after, who once ran the rooftops of the slums of Absalom.

Then Finn asked what else she knew. A couple of days ago, she said, some members of the Osprey Club, her thieves' guild, went into the swamp to search the old lighthouse for treasure. They never came back.

Finn brought the news to the others. Between the missing Ospreys and Worliwynn's blue light, the decision made itself.

Legitimate Jack

On Desnus 2nd, the party set out into the Fogfen to find the lost Ospreys.

Deep in the mists, Shiro heard heavy footsteps ahead. Out of the fog came a troll with an entire wardrobe strapped to her back, and, strutting along beside her, a small goblin in a top hat and a blue bowtie. He introduced himself as Legitimate Jack and launched straight into his pitch. Among his wares: an aeon stone, an amulet of speak to trees, and a chicken.

Jack also had a bit of gossip to throw in for free. A couple of months back, he'd watched a dwarf trudging through the fog toward the old lighthouse, alongside a cloaked figure. From his description, the dwarf sounded a great deal like Lasda, Brelda's missing son.

Ja-ja walked away with a bag of weasels, a sack in which anything you put has a chance of turning into a weasel. While Jack was busy closing the sale, Beans relieved him of a cloak of billowing and a bottle of Shiver, a highly addictive sedative known for its hallucinations.

Gauntlight

The croak of frogs and the whine of mosquitos mixed with the slosh of water against muddy banks, all of it muffled by the ever-present mists. As the fog thinned, a shadow loomed out of the swamp: a sprawling ruin of stone and wood squatting on an island in the marsh. Its upper floors had mostly collapsed, leaving only the stone walls of the ground floor standing. And above them rose something that did not belong: a colossal lighthouse, its painted walls and iron-cased crown untouched by the rot that had claimed everything else.

Shiro sent Pazuzu to scout ahead. The spirit found a watchtower at the front, linked by a bridge to the main keep on its island.

The Fairies in the Rafters

Ja-ja knocked on the watchtower door. A high, squeaky voice answered from the next room in Undercommon, which only Rygel understood. Whoever it was sounded surprised to have visitors, but bade them enter.

The room inside was coated in mildew and a disgusting grey slime. The voices drifted down from above, introduced themselves as fairies, and urged the party to eat the grey stuff.

Beans flew up into the rafters for a closer look. The fairies were mitflits: small, blue, goblin-like creatures who very much want you to believe they are fey. They kept insisting the party try the grey stuff, right up until one of them let slip that it was poop.

Corpi took it personally and answered with a divine lance. The party piled in after him. Two of the mitflits were killed before they could react. The third fled across a vine bridge toward the keep, and on the way it cut the vines and hurled a giant maggot into the muddy water below.

Something in the water woke up: a frog the size of a bear, with tusks. A slurk.

The Bridge

The only way forward was a very rickety bridge to the keep. Half the party made it across. Vega was still halfway over when Ja-ja stepped on behind him, and the bridge gave way under their combined weight. Both went into the murk.

The slurk came for them, spitting globs of slime from its mouth. Every one of them missed.

Shiro thought fast and conjured a ladder to pull them out of the water. Once Vega was clear, he swung the ladder across the gap to make a new bridge for everyone still behind. Meanwhile the party rained shots down on the slurk, and very nearly killed it. Shiro had an opportunity to land a final killing blow, but refrained, allowing it to sink back beneath the surface. It is still down there somewhere.

Dripping, slimed, and one bridge poorer, the party now stands inside the ruins of Gauntlight Keep.