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Old 08-02-2021, 01:26 PM   #191
coronatiger
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
Default Session 61 (2021-07-28)

19th of Ratanu, year 412 (continued)

“Don’t do anything rash, or at least not violent,” Yana begged. “I’m sure they have a good reason for letting him go. We should stop by the Tivito cart to see if there is anything useful left there. I’m sure the others have taken their pick as well.” I allowed Yana to change the subject. The cart was already looted, but both Yana and I grabbed a blanket of high quality, since going into the mountains to find a lost city had been discussed, and it could get cold there, especially in the coming months of Tityra and Azura.

When we found the others digging up our buried luggage, Xipil and Wolfram were discussing whether we should hide the bodies before we left. I pointed out that we already had a hole in the ground, but they were too preoccupied with their discussion to hear. Wolfram said it was no point trying to hide what had happened, since one of the cultists had escaped. I cleared my throat and said that the cultist wouldn’t be talking to anyone; he was with Ashtar now. Admittedly, he had talked to some of the king’s soldiers, but I didn’t get the impression that he had revealed anything to them about what had happened here. The owls had escaped, though, and both Xipil and Wolfram believed that Tivito could extract some information from them, using magic. Yana urged us to get going before any soldiers arrived that we felt we had to kill. Guilt wrenched my heart, but I hid it from my companions. You had condoned the killing of the lieutenant, but I wished I hadn’t had to resort to violence.

Xipil took Grogg and Hylda to deal with the corpses, and Wolfram began to pack our stuff on the horse. He was obviously new to that task, and I nudged Yana to give him some advice. I also asked her to see if the horse was marked in any way. She held up a lantern and examined the beast. There were Larma markings on the saddle and other accoutrements, Yana reported, as well as a tattoo in the horse’s right ear. She wasn’t familiar with the tattoo; Amrosh uses burn marks, and not with that design.

Yana saw me struggling to find room for my new blanket in my backpack. She had just thrown away her old, worn blanket to make room for her new one, even though her pack was far less stuffed than mine. She transferred the tent from my backpack to hers, despite my protests about burdening her with my stuff. “I’m using this tent as much as you do, so it’s only fair that I carry it for a while,” she concluded.

Xipil, Grogg and Hylda came back, but without any corpses. They had put them all inside the stable and set fire to the building. I hoped it wouldn’t spread. Yana was desperate to leave. Fire might be the only thing that would make the locals defy the order not to go near that farm. Xipil wanted very much to go south, even though I pointed out that Byblos was to the north-west, and suggested we go west, since anyone coming from there would take the road first east and then south to the farm. Going south would just waste our time. However, Xipil didn’t look likely to budge, so I let him have it his way instead of wasting even more time arguing.

Yana and I walked in front. Yana held the packhorse with one hand and me with the other. I was the only one who could see into the night. Xipil followed the party, hiding tracks as best he could.

After a while, we came upon a crossing in the road, and Xipil agreed to turn west. We sat down to rest not long after, having walked for about an hour. Xipil asked where I found the Tivito guy. “At the inn in the village on the main road, where he was treated for a headache,” I replied. That headache had baffled both the cultist and the doctor, but I had my suspicions. “Can I taste your frog venom?” I asked. Xipil lamented that he didn’t have any left, but I had seen him dose it out on his arrow-heads, and doubted that he had shot away all those arrows. I got to lick one of the arrow-heads. I had the equipment to do a proper analysis, but I couldn’t set it up on the road, so I settled for a preliminary test. The venom had no effect on me, of course, but I found it likely to be the source of the headache. Xipil confirmed that he had hit the man with an arrow, early in the fight.

On a later rest stop, I retrieved my water skin and washed my hands. Wolfram and Grogg had water of their own, so they didn’t need mine. We got off the worst of the blood and mud, but decided we should head for the river and take a proper bath before going through the Byblos gates. Grogg found a bar of perfumed soap in his sack. It had to be Lunari’s. Or perhaps Hylda’s. Anyway, Wolfram said he shouldn’t waste it now, since we were bathing again in a couple of hours.

The sky had begun to lighten behind us when we first spotted lights ahead. It was the village on the south road from Byblos, and ships on the river, I informed the others. Farmers started to wake and came out to the fields, but they ignored our passing.

Xipil asked where we should shack up in Byblos. He was convinced that my kills would be attributed to You, if not to me directly, and didn’t want to go back to the bounty hunter guild. I had admitted to being witnessed by the doctor, but I didn’t think he got a good look at me. Xipil refused to stay at a place with someone with Tivito sympathies. He was talking about the young chapel guard, whom I had seen at the temple at the Terrace of the Evening Sun. I didn’t think we’d get in trouble for staying at the guild, but Wolfram agreed with Xipil; an inn would be best.

Coming up on the village, Wolfram told us to meet him on the other side. There were too many people up and about for him to comfortably cross through with the rest of us.

We bathed in the river, cleaning off the rest of the blood, muck and soot. A merchant’s party was having a bath nearby, but out of earshot. After we were all clean, we debated what to do with the horse. It was too fine for us, although Yana opined that it could be taken for Wolfram’s war horse. Xipil wanted to chase it away. I offered to go back to the village to see if I could find some criminal to take it off our hands for a cheap price; it would still be a considerable sum. Yana thought the harbor outside Byblos would be better suited than a village with a garrison. Someone suggested killing the horse and sinking it in the river, filled with stones, but that was a bad idea. There were too many people around for us to try something suspicious-looking like that. In the end, we decided to just leave the horse. Some of the others had run off, too, so if Tivito found their horse here, they would probably not think too much about it.

Walking towards Byblos, Grogg had to carry his own luggage, and he was slowing us down. Hylda offered to help, and was overwhelmed with emotion when he allowed her to carry his maul.

When we came closer to the city, Wolfram noticed the crowd at the gate and asked if I had another dose of the wonder medicine. “I’m sorry, I’ve used it all,” I apologized. Wolfram had to settle for liquor and a smoke of mountain mint that Grogg provided. Mountain mint is a relaxant when smoked like that, but I was uncertain how it would mix with the alcohol. Wolfram forced down half the bottle before returning it to Grogg, and he became drunk as a skunk. We had eaten a little on the way, but that was a while ago, so he was drinking on an almost empty stomach. The smoke may have contributed as well. I was more worried that Wolfram would make a scene in his drunkenness than I was that he should refuse to enter the crowd.
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You don't need to spend 100 CP on Status 5 [25] and Multimillionaire [75] to feel like a princess, when Delusion [-10] will do.

Character sheet: Google Drive link (See this thread for details.)

Campaign logs: Chaotic Pioneering / Confessions of a Forked Tongue
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