Play Report 25 — Market Plazas

The party, now in the Valley Collaboration, pays for rooms for the night, and sleeps until they are woken up by a trumpeter playing a mournful tune as the town around them comes to life. They set out to pursue their various ends.

Hant, still on the trail of the counterfeit books, begins following a lead he got from Ensi in the Thickets Collaboration: asking after the fates of the royalists who would have been involved in the printing press there before they were ousted. He learns that some of them did wind up here, but that lacking a proper printing industry, they ended up scattered across various other jobs. Some of the more artistically inclined got hired by Lionel, the governor of the town, to create signage and propaganda. The mechanically competent found work repairing carts for the smugglers, among whom many dispersed. Lionel seems as good a lead as Hant has, so he considers how to get close to him.

Hant also learns that, if he’s looking for printing and papercraft, there is an abandoned market plaza that he could visit where people can find goods that are otherwise hard to get or not available. He resolves to visit this later.

I turn my attention to Akela and Almuund. They are going together to follow up on Cleo’s rumored airship information. The first stop is the Hare House lodge — they hope that Cleo has not poisoned the waters against them. The two members of the cult outside the lodge are baffled by this request. “We know much of the beasts of the air, not machines people put there.” This is genuine — Cleo’s lead was a spy that she knew personally, not a lodge wide secret. The conversation turns contemptuous when the Hare House members question Almuund’s feline appearance and Akela accuses them of knowing nothing of humans due to too much time spent among animals. Almuund draws Akela away before things escalate further.

The two spend some time in the markets asking less contentious people about who might know about airships. They learn about the Occult-Futurist Ambassador Sala and decide to try to get an audience with him — Akela hopes that her return of the helmet and the commotion it caused in the north can be spun as services rendered, worth repaying. While learning of the ambassador, the two also pick up on the fact that this town has freshly milled flour which seems to be produced locally.

Visiting the house that the ambassador rents from the governor, the two are once again confronted by two others at a door. “State your business,” says a helmeted and flight-suited Occult-Futurist. Akela and Almuund describe themselves as enthusiasts of airship history hoping for an interview, and one of the guards goes inside to relay the request. I roll to see if the ambassador would recognize Akela’s identity, and again to see if he would entertain meeting with her. He does, and is — I decide to interpret this as a situation where the lie is intriguing to him and he wants to humor her to measure her worth as an asset without revealing his own hand. An appointment is made for tomorrow.

Hant approaches the abandoned market plaza and begins to investigate it. This is a mildly modified for the setting version of the dungeon City of Poison, which I highly recommend — specifically approached via the Abandoned Market section. He observes the debris and smells from the entrance, and cautiously prepares to proceed, when an out of game event intervenes — Hant’s player must go and remove a trapped mouse from their home with little time remaining allotted to the game. We will begin next session with them returning to Hant’s delve. (glad to report that the mouse was removed successfully)

Before we end the session, Akela’s player has the fighter make one preparation for tomorrow’s meeting: she buys a pistol.