Session 40: The Real Riverside Blues (8/10/25)

Desnova 21

The PCs manage to fight back an entire village of the vile amphibians, or at least the male warriors and their ginormous 'pets', while the females and children flee or curl up in their muddy domiciles. Afterwards, they search through the area and recover some of the water lilies needed for Condor's ritual, at the same time destroying some of the egg clusters in the same pond they found the plants. They proceed on a course that will lead them back to the Skorbi river and encounter a strange shack high up in a tree on the bank. The place is littered with ropes and strings, bait and tackle, serviced by a single dock by which a small toy boat is moored.

The PCs climb to the shack, but Aldren notices something unusual on the signage, that this 'Kozmo's' unusual shop might be a front for something else. They purchase a 'river serpents' egg, another component they need to find the Lost Isle. Bjork fiddles with the toy boat, offending the crotchety human shopkeep, who shuts down his business and arms a bunch of traps, one of which sends several PCs crashing down to the docks. Most of the group decides to leave and float on further down the river, while Aldren stays behind to try and make amends. The ranger manages to exchange a few words with Kozmo, who is indeed operated a dispatch the Brotherhood of the Hovering Skull, a cabal of deadly assassins the world wide, with several contracts out, at least one of which Aldren recognizes. Kozmo says the PCs can get in his order's good graces by fulfilling one of them, but if they interfere any more he will add them to the list!



Aldren heads out along the shoreline, but in the wrong direction, mistaking where he thought the PCs would shove off in the folding boat. He ends up traveling through the dark night, miles back towards the Jaggerhead, before realizing the error. He sees an electric storm approaching from that direction. Meanwhile, the others have decided to set up camp on the riverbank opposite, further inland, away from the Northeast region. They meet a curious, strange-eyed young girl named Elka who lives in a nearby farming community, and whose land the PCs are setting up their leomund's tiny hut on. She manages to bilk them into buying her silence for around 50gp. The PCs turn to sleep, except Rucia who decides to travel along the river for a spell and locate missing Aldren, who should have caught up with them hours earlier.

Desnova 22

Having realized his mistake, Aldren has doubled back along the riverside, using his stealth and passing without trace to make haste back to the cover where they found the remains o the Slack Mallard. The electric storm he spied earlier continues to creep forward across the river and Tzarswald, but he sets up to rest for a few hours in a covered spot where he can see out to the river. Across the waters, he notices another of the violet magical typhoons which spawned the bat-like creatures the PCs fought at the cemetery off the Jaggerhead Lake. He believes he avoids detection, but there is an instant where one of the eyed things is definitely staring into the cove. It returns through the vortex, meanwhile Rucia has given up and hitches a ride with a night fisherman named Marhli that returns him to the others, while warning that there might be some stormy weather rushing on. Aldren notices the fisherman's boat and they are rejoined.

After getting some rest, they set out again with the folding boat, noting that the sky is darkening even after dawn, that storm unceasing and nearly upon them. Nebol'shoy summons up a water elemental from which they draw 'blood' to use as the final component for Condor's ritual. The Captain takes on a more authoritative air than the PCs expect of the lush, and recants an invocation after consuming a broth of the three components. At first, nothing happens, and the PCs believe that the whole thing was a farce, not too surprisingly, but soon...the river seems to warp around them, its waters churn, and then they find themselves hurtling through a tube of multi-colored water. Most of the PCs manage to grip onto the boat, but Rucia slips and falls into the watery void to an unknown fate!

The boat finally collapses from this 'wormhole' into a strange void full of river-floes, ponds and lakes. Ethereal apparitions of great whales and jellyfish loom off in vast distances, providing a sort of 'starlight', though rays of some unknown sun also filter about. This is The Place All Rivers Run, the home plane of St. Flume (and gods know what else), and the PCs have been deposited into a sunny lake upon which sits a strange island surrounded by a few rocky barrier islets. Judging by the well-armed galleon, The Maiden Voyager, which sits a few hundred yards off the shore of the primary island, a colossal parrot scouting about it in the air...they are not the first to arrive...

PCs: Aldren, Bjork, Nebol'shoy, Rickardt

NPCs

Elka (human female): A petulant child with a mop of unkempt blond hair, dirt-stained clothing and a large gap between her teeth. Quite curious about the world beyond the borders of her Pa's plot, south of the village of Bolkyn. Manages to acquire 50gp off of Nebol'shoy.

Kozmo of the Kray (human male): A middle-aged man wearing a fur coat with its arms cut off to reveal muscular arms, and its buttons popped to allow a view of a chiseled, gray-haired chest. His knuckles and hands are heavily tattooed with strange markings, and he puffs at a cigar with a thick smell of clover and honeydew. His disheveled beard and coat are smeared with worm guts and other artifacts of his trade, his hair is greased back in a topknot and his gray eyes are full of wisdom and distrust.

Marhli (human male): A gaunt fisherman in his 60s, trawls the banks of the Skorbi for his catches, wears a drooping rain-hat and coat, practical but always willing to help out those in need.