Hepisod Date IRL 06/29/2025

Dates Spanned On Ilia Khah: M04W3D8-9, Year Restriction 446

Events Summary

The party explores another cave filled with weak traps and skeletons, where Firnas and Fisk recover mysterious crystal orbs from an icy chest. Fisk mutters something cryptic, unsettling Firnas, and as the cave collapses, they narrowly escape. Outside, strange lack of tension arises between Kelzyr and Fisk, who remains evasive when questioned, though Kelzyr surprisingly defends him. Later, Firnas spies on Fisk discarding both an orb and his sword into the ocean. That afternoon, Tugg finishes the job early, and they sail home after lunch and a tour of the repairs. On the voyage home, Firnas encounters bizarre, rhyming creatures called schmuzzies, who deliver a peculiar message about nulliferene. Violetta helps partially decode it and suggests consulting a sorcerer she has read about. After returning to Mountport, Fisk is rewarded for buying a dinner with a polite interrogation. Fisk reveals his compulsions toward the caves and orbs feel as natural as breathing, though he admits he may not be in full control. The party remains skeptical, especially Firnas, while Kelzyr stays quiet. He meets privately with Fisk on the ship late that night. The next day, they perform the last of their ecological survey and consult Sil Eisenglare, a sorcerer, who knows nothing of nulliferene but suspects the orbs may relate to a legendary ancient ice. They leave with a borrowed book and more questions than answers as Fisk slips away briefly to the shore before rejoining the others.

The Hepisod Anatomy, in Detail, by 'Stage'

Stage No. 1 ~ Tattle Fail

• The party breezes their way past the ballista traps on the way into the cave ruins proper, and Firnas dodges the falling object as he opens the door. The skeletons inside put up a less than impressive fight.
• Firnas and Fisk make what is by now familiar progress to the left, though Firnas is recalled to open the door to the right, since it apparently only likes him.
• Inside, nothing is new compared to the last cave the party entered earlier that morning. So, the entire party joins Fisk in the throne room.
• As they make it inside, Fisk successfully pries open a prominent chest with his dagger. He opens the chest, finding a lone orb bearing one of the strange crystals as well as another empty set of three connected by white tethers. He pockets the crystal orb. Firnas joins him by the chest, pocketing his third set of three.
• As Fisk mutters something in a language nobody else can quite make out, Firnas looks alarmed and suddenly very nervous. Vaelin attempts his best translation.
• Fisk decides it is time to leave, and everyone follows him. On the way out, Firnas grabs two samples of a mystery potion in the hallway past the radiant and discriminatory door. In the room with the skeletons, they encounter Tina and Whipjack finishing off another wave. They push past them and all escape the shaking, collapsing, flooding cave.
• Near the cave mouth, a strange blur seems to grip Kelzyr and Fisk. What is certain is they looked at each other afterwards strangely. Though, the disturbance was transient.
• Kelzyr sputters his way out of the cave after whatever happened. He is the last one out, and the cave disappears behind him, leaving what looks like normal land and even vegetation. Haneastacia remarks that none of this seems natural.
• Whipjack, apparently able to translate Fisk's mutterings, asks him wh is so fixated on the saying he repeats. He claims her translation will not be quite right. Whipjack is seemingly willing to drop the issue, if he will answer her and Tina what the deal with the cave was.
• Firnas adds he claimed he was promised answers to that question as well. Fisk agrees things should be figured out better, to the dismay of the party, thinking the time to seek answers was two caves ago, and the time to receive them is right now. Kelzyr, to almost everyone's surprise, takes Fisk's side, encouraging Firnas to drop the matter.
• Fisk directs everyone's attention to the ship, wanting to go there. When he is reminded it is not done yet, Whipjack gladly announced Tugg is working ahead of schedule, and should be done in time for lunch, in about half an hour. So, they head that way.
• While Fisk marches ahead, most of the party follows him down the pier. Vaelin would rather enjoy some peace and quiet and personal space. Whipjack offers him a seat and pours him a glass of tea before beginning to work on lunch.
• Firnas interrogates Fisk a second time. Fisk defends himself by claiming he wishes to view the ocean, and claims further Firnas is a distraction and should go help Tugg instead of being a pest. Firnas disagrees with this assessment, until Kelzyr tells him a second time to leave Fisk be. Fisk has second thoughts about viewing the ocean from the end of the pier and walks back to await lunch.
• Hanea requests that they may board the ship. Tugg gives a tour of his handiwork. He very apparently spruced the place up something miraculous.
• During the tour, Firnas sets up to spy on Fisk. He catches him throwing the crystal orb from the cave and his own sword into the water.
• Firnas relays this to Vaelin. Vaelin relays that when he translated the mutterings, he recovered something about an abyss. They agree this is likely not good in the ultimate sense. Firnas then goes to his hammock to meditate.
• Fisk decides to board the ship and join the tour halfway through. He is impressed by Hanea's capacity to ask questions.
• They lunch. It is delicious. And they sail back a day early.

Stage No. 2 ~ Glaringly Dubious

• As they sail, Firnas enjoys solitude in the crows nest for a while, until a flock of strange, fuzzy, colorful creatures greet him with a less-than-welcome "Schmello!" and begin to climb him. Seeing their fixation with his cave orb arrangements and believing they are mugging him, he tries to shoo them, to no avail. This includes an attempt to throw a green one overboard that seems only to make it teleport behind him and also very very sad. Rude, but ok.
• Violetta joins him in his struggle, curious as to how the mythos of schmuzzies has escaped him. Apparently, that's what these creatures are. She tells him they are very helpful and love to rhyme.
• Firnas engages the one he tried to throw in a rhyming game: Table; Stable; Fable; Mabel; Gable; Cable; Schmable; Label; Zable; Able. Happy with their game, the green schmuzzy has its friends join and relay a message. "Nulliferene Schmelts Schmackawas!" they shout, words unfamiliar to both Firnas and VSL.
• VSL tells Firnas she once met a scholar of Schmuzzish, the language of schmuzzies. She still carries an early prototype translation book he gave her, and she runs off to fetch it. She is able to recover the message "Nulliferene melts backwards," but does not know what nulliferene means.
• Firnas connects this to the caves and chests with ice and orbs. Violetta recommends they definitely go see a sorcerer who, for a fee, tells you about strange magic you bring in with you.
• Kelzyr finds Fisk, asks for a chance to speak privately, when an opportunity presents itself.
• Arriving in mountport, it is about two hours to midnight. Violetta proudly announces she needs to get rest after a long day. "Early to bed and early to rise keeps a cat curious, graceful, and spry," she incorrectly claims the party will have heard people say.
• Fisk is not ready for bed. Fisk is hungry. He agrees to pay for everyone's meal somewhere nice nearby. They find a tavern and sit at the large table in the back corner. Good food. Good wine. And Firnas has surprisingly lucid questions about how older models of chemistry account for hard drinks.
• During their meal, Vaelin presses Fisk for a proper explanation about the caves, objects he has been picking up, and his purpose with them and the ocean. This becomes an open interrogation and Fisk seems unusually willing to entertain a dialogue and give as much context as he can.
• Fisk is not sure why the caves all look the same. Hanea can tell he carries some genuine confusion, but also knows he prevaricates what he can of it away. Fisk further claims to know little about Firnas's sets of orbs or even exactly what he loves about his own. He calls them a treasure with personal value not unlike a holy symbol.
• Vaelin explains he is not after treasure. But with strange magics at every turn, he wants certainty that Fisk is not leading them the way of unreasonable danger.
• Firnas asks Fisk why he gave his sword and the orb to the ocean. Fisk freezes, eventually explaining it away that they're only symbolically valuable. In doing so, he lets slip the claim they are fakes, landing him caught in an inconsistency he then maneuvers around by hinting there are some of these objects which are not fake he truly seeks.
• At this point, Fisk is frustrated. He accuses Firnas of racism. Firnas accuses him of recruiting Kelzyr to defend him somehow. Fisk explains that Kelzyr knows the truth now because he needs to, implying the rest of the party does not. As anyone could predict, the party is not fond of this answer, but they redirect their attention, sensing a wall that will not wear down just yet.
• They ask him about the nature of his bizarre and sudden compulsions toward these caves, and Fisk is somewhat more receptive to this topic. He asserts he is in control of the danger that gets introduced following his compulsions. He is also plain in that he cannot be certain the danger will never rise out of his control, but clings to the claim such an event would be unlikely.
• The party is ready to end their questioning and pay for their meal. Fisk encourages them, in the name of transparency, to ask anything else on their minds. Hanea asks where his compulsions come from, and he says he does not know, but obeying them feels the same as obeying the compulsion to breathe. It is natural.
• He also admits to Vaelin he cannot explain the urgency of his compulsions. From this, Firnas is unsure that his ultimate goals are not against the party and would not bring them great harm.
• Notably, during this entire interrogation, Kelzyr chooses to sit and sip his ale in silence.
• They return to the ship to sleep, save for Hanea, who stays with Tina.
• During the night, Kelzyr sneaks past Firnas to Fisk for a conversation. They go above deck for it.
• On the way back, Fisk trips over some of the finest woodwork he has ever had the privilege to inaccurately set foot on (thanks, Tugg!), waking Firnas as he falls. Firnas asks him what he is doing, he counters by asking Firnas if he wants the answer. Firnas claims he does not, and he just wants to go back to sleep. Fisk proceeds past him, quietly allowing him to do so.
• Fisk is second to rise, and he finds VSL reading a book on deck. They wonder what should be for breakfast, and VSL suggests a cafe she used to like that takes the party in the area of their last sector of the city for the purposes of the survey. Louis politely declines to join them, citing business at the temple.
• Everyone else enjoys muffins before their final day of counting trees, concluding early in the afternoon. Hanea agrees to write up their actual report and turn it in for the money.
• Violetta offers to show Firnas and the rest of the party to Eisenglare's, to have the orbs properly investigated.
• They head to the small, secluded property, and catch 'Sil Eisenglare: Sorc for Hire' returning from lunch, complaining about how expensive the city of Mountport is becoming.
• The party is invited inside, and Eisenglare spends the next several minutes investigating the orbs and reading a couple volumes from a shelf upstairs. They learn nothing, and know nothing.
• Eisenglare encourages the party to say more about the object's origins. Fisk interrupts Firnas as he tries to do so. Eisenglare shakes their head and offers up their own skeletons in the closet in fair trade. They are apparently a servant of Kostarra, who they found faith in through a relative who, before a career in the Ilian Public Senate, was a high ranking Kostarran Paladin, and whose allegiance to Kostarra ultimately persists in their governmental career. A sensitive secret indeed.
• Fisk considers this sufficient to give up they are found in caves. Eisenglare asks more about these caves. From a few minutes of discussion headed by a reference book on caves of cults, Druids, and the like, it is clear these caves are of a similar layout to nothing Eisenglare knows about.
• Fisk is worried about basic information security and privacy in saying more, since information on new magic is ultimately a valuable thing. This inspires Sil Eisenglare to give a rant which does not paint their business model in the best light, but insists they will not sell off any information.
• Fisk gives in. He claims the caves have near identical layout, are guarded by nothing more interesting than traps and skeletons, and the orbs are found in chests filled with ice.
• Eisenglare pushes further on the ice detail, until Firnas and VSL point out the hint from the schmuzzies. Eisenglare does not know the word nulliferene, and a magical scan of their impressive library of the arcane reveals the word is not written in any volume Sil Eisenglare has ever encountered.
• However, Eisenglare knows a myth of an ancient and powerful ice, the magic of which could be like the party described in the chests. Firnas seems to recognize this legend. Eisenglare hands them a book containing some assembled lore of the ice. Though not the recipe, it is a starting point.
• Then, it is time to haggle the price of their brief visit. Apparently, ten minutes of service, borrowing a book, and no answers costs 26gp. The party talks Sil Eisenglare down to 11gp plus 5gp for each additional day (past M04W3D10) the book is not returned.
• Before they leave, Kelzyr asks Hanea if having bones in one's wardrobe is truly common. Hanea takes a second, then explains the metaphor to him.
• Fisk walks toward the nearest shore, and the rest of the party goes straight to the ship. After a few minutes alone on the sandy shore, Fisk returns to the ship also.
• Hypothetically, Tina should be stopping by with the paperwork to sign the Ruthless over to the party sometime that afternoon.