Hepisod Date IRL 10/12/2025

Dates Spanned On Ilia Khah: M04W3D9-10, Year Restriction 446

Events Summary

The party finalizes ownership of their ship, The Ruthless, after navigating bureaucratic chaos with magical charm, legal threats, and an unexpected quantity of yogurt. They rescue a mysterious young sailor who gifts them a magical matchbox, prompting debate about interference with shipwrecks and potential hidden dangers of lording one's morality over the dominion of the sea. Returning to an old cave dungeon site, they find it replaced by marigolds planted by verdant Seers, who await the return of a mysterious "Her" tied to vague world-shaping powers. Firnas recalls a vanished couple’s quest for magical ice, leading the party to their home and uncovering old diaries linking enchanted glass, waterfalls, and ancient lore, giving them their next two travel destinations. As tensions rise around Fisk’s strange sailor rituals, the party prepares to sail toward Prismere.

The Hepisod Anatomy, in Detail, by 'Stage'

Stage No. 1 ~ Titular Heroes

• Ver Rismol and Tina Johnson board the Ruthless, greeting our waiting party of heroes. Though she is apparently angry with Ms. Amater for spilling the beans on her identity as V.R. and other life details, the price of a major politician's silence favors the party. Tina has haggled our brave adventurers a lifetime guarantee of major ship supplies, repairs, and upgrades, courtesy of the Rismol Estate.
• Deeming V.R. a bit cranky, they decide not to ask her to buy them a fancy table for on-deck diplomacy then and there. The captain's desk should do nicely.
• After a brief discussion initiated by Violetta, the party is happy to agree to equal shares of ownership. That should simplify paperwork.
• Before too long, the initial paperwork is ready to take to a Counting & Taxation branch office. As Ver Rismol prepares emotionally and otherwise to take the party there, Tina grabs Hanea's attention.
• 1100gp get! The party's backpay from their odd jobs. The money is theirs, since V.R. so kindly offered to pay off their boat in full.
• At the city office, they are greeted by two clerks. One, Terry, is on his lunch break, attempting to eat yogurt with the tip of his quill. Fisk insults him. Louis, known good person, gives the poor guy a spoon and then asks Fisk if the disturbance was truly necessary.
• The party talks to the other clerk, Dave. They explain their situation, and Dave seems to find an issue as he combs a book of procedure. Since Ver Rismol resides in Applebrandy, the Office of Verdantial Affairs will need to handle the case. Apparently incompetence is to be feared there, especially from the supervisor, Martin. The party prevents Fisk from speaking up at this time at the inconvenience.
• At Verdantial Affairs, Hanea approaches the woman at the counter, who is quick to explain how Dave was incorrect on many of the case subtleties and the necessary procedures. Because of fucking course. Hanea requests a written set of procedures, codes, and explanations to take back to Dave.
• Fisk, never one to be muzzled for long, approaches and charms the woman at the counter with magic. Eventually, he talks her into taking unofficial supervisor duty in Martin's absence due to illness. She signs some paperwork that could expedite Dave's work.
• On their way back to Counting & Taxation, Fisk buys yogurt.
• The party presents Dave with the doubly-unofficial Verdantial approval. Though Dave is quick to point out the flaws in this unique take on policy, Fisk is quick to point out this could land Martin in trouble and have him removed from his post. He asks Terry for some more paperwork from his side of the office, which is paper airplaned over to him.
• Stature notwithstanding, Ver Rismol does not short change the city. With Dave's signature that the amount received is correctthe Ruthless is officially one stop from being the party's!
• On their way out, Fisk talks to Terry. Though it has been roughly two hours, he is still enjoying his twenty minutes for lunch. Fisk claims to want to apologize, handing him some yogurt. Instead, he takes a cheap opportunity to insult the man once again for his choice of utensil.
• Louis lags behind to apologize on Fisk's behalf while everyone else heads to Verdantial affairs. Him and Terry talk yogurt for a short while, and then Louis takes his leave. He buys a rocking chair on his way back to the ship to wait for everyone.
• The party arrives at Verdantial Affairs to find them closed, but not vacant of employees. Hanea knocks, and a voice inside confirms they are closed. Fisk requests a chance to try, and Hanea nods a hesitant approval.
• Fisk breaks in. When recommended to leave, he instead threatens to report their illegal approval. The mock-supervisor folds immediately, sighing that it was done wrong but they should accept it is done. The ship is theirs.
• Firnas, studying her emotions, learns of some of her family troubles, assuming her sister is having a rough divorce. He reminds her to support her sister, and she seems unsettled at the remark.
• Ver Rismol hands them a business card, including a home address to send all bills to.
• Party eventually finds Louis, rocking on the deck of the ship. Kelzyr, whose brain is really struggling to compute, comments the paperwork seemed like so much effort. Nobody disagrees. They discuss next steps, agreeing with Hanea's suggestion to check out the site of their first Blue Lathander symbol cave. She wishes to talk with some plants there. The party agrees, but they are also tired. Nothing that cannot wait until morning.
• It is evening still, enough light that dinner at a tavern seems worth it. The party (minus Hanea) find a little inn with a taproom in the lobby, and theorize over Shepherd's pie. Violetta brings to the table her findings from Eisenglare's book. It isn't much. The book seems to think that a certain "charmed fallen seawater" is an essential ingredient, to be added to other seawater in a ritual which creates the ice with its strange properties. Could it be from a waterfall? Louis does not seem to recall anything like that at the table. Could it be that charmed is a location named in code, and seawater is nearby?
• Back to the ship for everyone except Hanea, who is still enjoying food, drink, and conversation with Mayor Johnson. Violetta suggests taking the ship out to sea and setting up a night watch rotation, what should be a simple practice for them keeping safe at sea.
• Fisk takes first watch, producing his sword and examining it. He gets bored and wakes Kelzyr for a turn. Kelzyr immediately notices a heavily damaged fishing vessel holding a rough position near their bow. It appears derelict, just sitting there. He keeps an eye on it.
• Eventually, Fisk comes to the deck, citing trouble sleeping. He notices the small, frail vessel, and asks Kelzyr how long it has been there. Kelzyr explains it must have been there since before the shift change. Fisk notices a wounded sailor clinging to life and a broken piece of the hull, and points it out to Kelzyr.
• Fisk only stares at the injured sailor, muttering in a tongue Kelzyr does not know. Fisk claims it is nothing but words of hope for sailors. Fisk then escalates to yelling at the man in this foreign tongue, waking Vaelin and several others.
• Fisk stop Kelzyr from jumping. Vaelin asks about the situation, and Fisk tries to claim he is dead. Kelzyr and Vaelin express intent to fetch their Cleric with his healing magic. Fisk remains an advocate for non-interference.
• Kelzyr jumps, literally, to the rescue, and is successful. Louis checks him out and begins the healing process. The boy stops him, requesting a chance to hand an item, a sopping wet matchbox, to Kelzyr. "Light it when you need someone to show you the way," he explains. He cites a longstanding tradition that the item must be passed from ship to ship. Lantern of Maps get!
• They decide to head for shore prematurely, so Louis can get the boy to the Temple to see a very good team of healers.
• Fisk keeps Kelzyr on deck a moment longer for a private talk. He believes Kelzyr should have let it alone, as the boy wasn't his. Kelzyr thinks this is about ownership of people at first, but Fisk explains this is not that. That stealing from shipwrecks simply isn't smart. Implores him to remember what he saw.
• Come morning, the party fills Hanea in. She asks VSL for the concession that these exercises never be a last minute decision. Everyone seems on the same page that would be for the best.

Stage No. 2 ~ A Message from St. Pollen to the Florinthians

• It is ultimately a philosophical question of whether the party successfully made it to the cave site. They reached the correct location without fuss, but found no cave. Simply a field of very mature looking marigolds in place of a cave entrance. Marigolds that should not be so lively and in bloom for being less than a week old.
• Hanea casts the spell to speak with the flowers. They claim to have been there a long, long time. Waiting. Waiting for a mysterious and seemingly nameless "Her" figure. They have never met her, but they know she will come back.
• Pressing further, the flowers seem to believe it was not her directly, but a group known as the "Seers" who planted them and constructed the cave. She knew the Seers, however, or so they claim. She knew everyone.
• Flowers claim not to know names, but that they have seen many things. The Seers sang wordless songs and were green. They went away too quickly to know where they went, but she will come back.
• Apparently, the cave had a mission that has since been completed. The mission was to keep things safe. When the party took the crystal, the cave had nothing else that needed keeping safe. Now, the flowers have a purpose in waiting. Waiting for her to come back. She will come back.
• They believe she will come back to move the islands and make things right again, the way they used to be.
• In addition to the Seers, Hanea learns there were also groups known as Sentinels, Sorores, and Sages.
• The flowers implore the party aid in bringing her back.
• Hanea slowly backs away after all this, and the party follows suit. As Hanea sums up the conversation, she and Firnas look to Fisk, judging this information is legitimately new to him.
• The party wonders if this information corroborates Ver Rismol's story about the end of the world. Fisk suggests they kill the flowers. Vaelin finds the ordeal creepy. Hanea and Firnas assert the flowers should be allowed to live and keep waiting. Everyone wants to know what Louis thinks.
• On the way to the Temple, they end up in a part of town Firnas recognizes. Some adventurers he used to know lived nearby, and he recalls their quest for an ice much like the legend in Eisenglare's book. He just assumed they were crazy. Hanea sees the merit in seeking them out.
• On their way, Firnas gives the party the proper backstory. They were a nice, older couple and he stayed with them a while. They went on their quest, intending to be back in a month, asking him to keep an eye on the house. Months went by. Guards and other city officials started showing up and asking questions, so he left.
• Firnas notes the house is in prettier shape than ever before, and knocks. A lizardfolk gentleman in his twenties opens the door, definitely not Robecca or Lebovici. He claims to be called Braknar, and is excited to invite them all in for tea. Asks them not to mind his dog Maylee napping in the corner.
• Fisk is quick to believe this is a waste of time. Braknar explains the previous owners died at sea not far from Marisse. He got the house pretty soon after the incident, and since they had no family their stuff is still in his basement. He tells Firnas, Fisk, and VSL they are welcome to look at and take just about whatever they want. Everyone else enjoys tea in the main room.
• The basement party learns of the connection between Prismere and Marisse's Port Minor. How Robecca and Lebovici learned that makers of Crystalisian glass often reinforce their product with something that could be described as having strange and hard to explain temperature sensitivities.
• They also believed that certain descriptions of the ice in texts they borrowed aligned with their experience with the glass made at Prismere in certain lighting conditions. Most glass makers in Prismere are secretive about their ways, but eventually Robecca and Lebovici thought the connection between these facts and a waterfall that carries strange, twinkling sands with it. That waterfall's sands were apparently added to some makers' recipes, and apparently was the final nail in their coffin on Keira somewhere, to die on the way to Port Minor.
• They mentally prepare to sail to Marisse, agreeing to stop in Prismere first. They take the relevant pages, and Firnas grabs some other memories and journal entries. They then join the tea party.
• Firnas thanks their host, who is glad to give up a piece of the old trove to someone who knew Robecca and Lebovici personally.
• They collect Louis at the temple and exchange updates this way or that. Louis better explains the nature of the magical gift from the sailor they rescued, apparently named Beaut. He did some level of waterfall research in the library, finding nothing compelling.
• Louis does share, reflecting on their experience with the flowers, an interesting fact from the history of the depiction of his goddess and Kostarra. Originally, Kostarra was depicted in green. Only around 4,000 years ago did we start to see more contemporary depictions of Eldath in green. First her form adorned with vines before the color made its way to cloth both in the temples and what she wore in her murals. Kostarra's following naturally transitioned in style away from green only a century or two later. But, he notes, her followers always wore black, blue, and purple.
• Firnas can tell it's all news to Fisk, whose knowledge on these matters is admittedly small.
• Louis also remarks that he knows of a similar waterfall near port minor, which a temple to Eldath near there has noted, but does not actively pursue usage of.
• Fisk approaches the stairway to Beaut's room, and Feoria stops him. He explains there is a custom he wishes to perform, for sailors, and she lets him pass. He approaches the sleeping boy and produces a blade, cutting his thumb to draw a symbol in blood and salt water on the forehead of the recovering person. He says a quiet incantation, then takes his leave.
• Vaelin looks Fisk over when he comes back. Body language not alarming. Louis stops by to check on the boy one last time. The rest of the party gets ready to make preparations to the ship, except for Fisk, who goes to the library, and Hanea, explaining their plan for the next five or so days to Tina.
• Louis is horrified to discover the blood rune and towels it off. He asks Feoria who the last person in was, and she explains it was Fisk. He quickly replicates the symbol on parchment with a charcoal pencil.
• Louis speedwalks to the temple library, and he finds Fisk at a table with a few books, from a history of Hiloth's ocean churches to a chaplains guide to adapting religious rites for their crews at sea. Louis walks in on Fisk attempting to donate 5gp to the temple.
• Louis asks him what he put on the patient's head. Fisk explains it is not a blessing, but a customary mark of luck among sailors, for the boy to be seen again soon. He is not invoking a deity. The blood is simply a custom he learned in a village up north, near the Seasborel Cove, where he lived and worked before finding his way to Mountport. Louis asks him not to do it to someone in a hospital next time.
• Louis asks Salvatore to give the religious history of green a second look, hoping to find a more solid lead with the belief system held by the cave guardian flowers Hanea talked to. Specifically, he wants to know about female figures with a following who wore green. He also hands over the parchment bearing the symbol Fisk drew. He is hoping Salvatore can determine if Fisk is being truthful, citing how bizarre Mister Fisk's mind can be.
• Then, Louis offers Fisk help carrying his books to the ship. As they walk, he gives a hearty lecture about taking care of the temple's books, and Fisk agrees to the content of the spiel.
• Late morning D10, and everyone is getting ready to depart for Prismere, a stop for supplies and asking questions before Keira.