Mushroom Mushroom

A Pleasant Day in the Forest

In the morning there is a note from Danang, saying he would be happy to speak with us once we have eaten. And there is a note from Ambassador Strong (the troll from the court of Her Majesty), requesting our presence for lunch.

Danang has tea ready. He gives us a briefing! We are somewhat surprised. He manages to give us a briefing just by chatting, rather than as a formal briefing. He drops during the conversation that the Drow did escape; it looks like he used Green to get out of the castle, and then something divine to get out of the country, probably demonic rather than Broken. Searching their rooms hasn’t revealed a large amount, but they did get a list of targets for the Spider:

• Kir Manu, the bureaucrat. who was Got.
• Hieronymus, the Centaur’s representative in the Delegation
• Linden di Sandori, a Guild rep from Orange

In exchange for getting some control over those people from the Spiders, the half-orcs were supposed to eliminate:

• the Arbae, who was Got
• the ambassador from the Plains;
• the Admiral in the King’s Court.

All three of them were/are moderately skilled in dealing with Spirits (shamans). The targets of the Spiders were all non-divine. It’s not clear how the half-orc’s master planned to retain control of the Spider’s targets– would the Spider just work for them?

There are no theories as to the identities of the Drow’s mistress or the half-orc’s master. They were clearly representative organizations or cults, or something. There were no obvious tattoos or anything. The implication from the half-orc’s notes are they are mostly half-orcs but they do have full orcs and full humans in the group, and that they have branches who are not assassins; assassination is one thing that they do fairly well. The Drow’s notes were less available for review, in that he was in the King’s service rather than Danang’s.

Diomarche tries to meet Hieronymus, who is busy but will see him later.

Scout tries to get info about the Drow; there is definitely indication that they were in the same group as Silenalania and Futeau; there are presumably others in place, given that there were redcaps in His Majesty’s organization. They have identified and dealt with two smaller goblins that the Drow was in touch with here in the city. There weren’t any notes about other goblins around, whether in His Majesty’s or the other realms. But there seem to be a number of goblins who have infiltrated. He doesn’t seem to have been actively sabotaging his government functions, but was presumably reporting on them. The biggest issue there: it will require re-vamping some security procedures in some places. He seems to have mostly followed the King’s political actions rather than subverting them. He seems to be a skilled High Elf with a bunch of politics schticks and an Alchemist Green mage (not much if any Nature or Essence). Had at least some shamanic ability that was undisclosed at the court. The escape from Green was facilitated by some kind of shadow demon. They’ve passed that on to Stellantro, a sluagh priest of Tem, since the Court doesn’t have a lot of Divine power.

Gale goes shopping, but only gets 1 Fortune, so she finds some decent fabrics and things but no weird sluagh shops of Curiosities or anything. She looks around for figureheads or something. She finds someone willing to make a bird-shaped figurehead and leaves the boat with him for a couple of days.

Lunch with Ambassador Strong

We’re not at the Palace, the Ambassador has his own building, which stands out since it’s made out of stone. Servants show us in. A lovely meal is provided, with a fairly eclectic set of food. He definitely has stuff from most of our homelands, and some things that we don’t recognize. Maybe nothing solidly Jabaran, but good Red, Orange. (Saurien food has more bugs in it. Hmm,)

It’s a perfectly chatty lunch with us, though he doesn’t seem to be interrogating us. “Have we met?” asks Managaratha. No, though Her Majesty is familiar with him.

At the end, he has someone bring out a box full of stuff! With her Majesty’s compliments for our assistance of ridding her court of one who meant trouble.

Elven Rope

• Diomarche: Golden Horseshoes: 100 Hexes of otherwise untraversable surfaces– lava, soap bubbles, illusionary bridges. Not climbing, so not up a cliff. Standing still costs 1 Hex per action. You don’t have to actually be wearing them
• Stella: Golden mortar and pestle: Medicine prepared with this will double successes of a Medicine roll, up to 100 successes.
• Scout: 5 Golden Arrows: 20 Fire damage, through toughness, one use each.
• Managaratha: Golden Spellbook: Re-use up to 50 skill points of colors you have otherwise flushed (once)
• Nesh: A flask (this one has Divine inside it). Twice you can pour the water from this Flask to drive off the Oasis; it will dispel any Oasis miracles, and push the Oasis away. Poured at Middlesea, it would probably destroy the miracle at Middlesea, but it probably wouldn’t break the miracle on us if we
• Gale: A golden staff that allows 20 Blue wild spells to be cast without risking Burnout (use before you roll).
• Vidan: A golden quill: this will double successes for written documents, up to 100 successes.

And we are invited to Her Majesty’s court when we have time to visit, although she does not expect that there is anything pressing to draw us there (although he notes our arrival usually presages Events happening).

Managaratha asks if there’s anything Breaker-related that Her Majesty thinks we should keep our eyes on? His plans in Green seem to be about goblins and Demons, and while Her Majesty is not a shaman, she is good at rooting at Goblins so she’s working on that. Managaratha warns about half-orc assassins; we give him an updated Tarn evidence packet.

Let A Thousand Mushrooms Bloom

Outside of the Capital, the Forest becomes spookier– it clearly has Secrets, and is obvious it has secrets in a weird way..

Gale looks at all the spooky things, but makes her Will save so doesn’t run off anywhere.

After a few hours we get to a large-ish clearing, which has a mushroom ring, and inside the mushroom ring is another mushroom ring, and inside that ring is a Spirit, maybe 15 DI. The Arbae’s notes didn’t mention a second ring or a Spirit here. Scout thinks it’s an Essence Spell telling him that there’s a Spirit here. Detect Broken tells him that there’s an Essence Spell telling him there’s a Demon here. Okay that’s weird. Recursion?

Managaratha casts "detect magic" and gets that there is something green (probably Essence). Probably a ritual or something? The mushrooms in the outer ring are of three different kinds, arranged in a deliberate pattern rotating through the types. A is poisonous, the other two are not particularly interesting eating wise.

It’s hard to see the inner Mushroom ring. Hmm.

Gale instantiates a battlemap - the inner ring is Broken, and it's five successes for each of the rings (she only rolls 9 on Lore is a Battlefield).

Scout talks to the outer mushroom ring, which is either not very smart or just good at not giving anything away. It has to stop him from going in and might explode.

Much waffling later, Nesh decides to try to get in, and with his area-effect suppress up, steps over some mushrooms. The ones on either side of him explode.

We’re in combat time. Gale makes it through; Stella heals Diomarche’s damage.

Diomarche gets Nesh inside to the inner circle which is made of mushrooms from the Broken Lands; inside there seems to be a terrible Mushroom thing with teeth.

At the bottom of 1, the Mushroom Demon attacks Diomarche, who blocks 5. He takes 18 damage and a Toughness roll which means 20 additional damage no toughness.

Scout drops DI to convince the Mushrooms to let him in. Managaratha teleports straight ahead– and overshoots the mark.

“The fact is that our plan was not good.” – Diomarche

Stella puts some mushrooms in Time Out and walks through safely

Scout gets us permission to go inside. It’s the Broken Lands in there, and Holy to Demons. This was set up by a ritual of some sort,. Analysis says it’s Green, mostly Alchemy and Essence, but there’s some DI involved? That’s hard, harder than using opposed colors in the same ritual. The mushroom ring is the anchor; destroying them would help.

The Admiral shows up eventually (being in the Suppress field slows things down a bit), who is confident that she can deal with it. She examines it with shaman schticks to get a feel for what it is and how big it is, and can get it back to the castle. (Admiral Ludmilla.)

Stella looks at the mushroomed equipment– Diomarche’s sword is gone. The shield and Nesh’s sword are fixable, but would take a forge etc. Stella works on them.

Take Me To the River

The next day we go to check out the River. Scout thinks upstream is the way to go, so we head upstream for a while. After half an hour, the riverbed is dry. But there’s still water coming out of it. That’s not right.

We run some experiments; it seems to be a Purple effect, a ritual, created by more than one Mage. It’s about a 10 minute walk to the top of the river where there’s a waterfall.

We prep– buffs and everyone but Scout is small and he carries everyone and Flies through.

We’re in the Broken Lands. There’s a dry river bed above us that looks remarkably like the one we just left. There’s a Fortress about a mile away.

We ponder our choices, and then the run fades to black…

Loot

• +10 EPs
• +8 SPs