Session 93: The one where Eden saves Potion Pitstop (October 30, 2025)
Last session, our heroes walked in on Joerg as he finished making a late evening snack. Maho expressed concern for his health, and said that she’d be back later that night. The party then headed off to Potion Pitstop to talk some with Amble. On the way, Heph gave Maho and Eden a tour of Ivalgo, passing by the Alchemist Guild, University, and other areas. Eden sent her owl up to scout out the area, seeing the fleet of ships some distance off the coast, and arcane flashes punctuating the darkness in the direction of Arkos.
Heph let them into Potion Pitstop, alerting his mom with a Message. Amble, who seemed to have been struggling with the recent revelation about her husband, offered Eden a potion she had been working on to reduce the effects of hunger she was feeling, and the result was miraculous, removing a lot of the pain and fuzziness that had been dominating her mind since waking up. While Amble left to make the party a nice vegetarian meal, the party met with Tal Overstream and Gurt Pelor, the two agents they had freed and left with Amble and Spraus some time before. They learned that these two had separately been imprisoned and given to Sentin, Tal in Barkspring, Gurt in Holden. Tal was nervously cordial to the group, while Gurt communicated mainly in grunts.
When the conversation on criminality and Sentin got too uncomfortable, the party settled in for a late meal and continued to have a conversation on criminality and Sentin. Maho and Heph recapped their adventures, the lives they had taken, the fires they had set (on purpose), the souls they had trapped in an enchanted katana, as they tried to decide how to deal with this new traveling companion. Eden revealed that Sentin was helping her learn to control her powers, and that before meeting him she had studied at a school called Ms. Mildred’s Academy for Magically Gifted Girls. Heph thought that Eden would come to the same understanding as them after learning more about Sentin, while Maho was distrustful, both of her eagerness to defend Sentin, as well as her fancy educated background, seeing in Eden a similarity with the “nerds” at the artificer meetup.
The conversation ended and the party went their separate ways for the night. Heph slept on his couch, Eden went into Heph’s room and freshened it up with some Counter Smell using the Ring of the Grammarian, and Maho left to wander the city. She headed over to Ivalgo City University. It was quiet there. No students could be seen wandering the campus, although she did see glowing painted-over lettering on a building reading “The Mortimer Slaan Memorial School of Cool Wizard Shit”. Maho looked off at the motionless buildings, said “Yeah, well my dad wanted me to have a good education, too”, and headed back towards her home. There she found her father asleep in the kitchen, having waited up for her. She tucked him into bed, hearing him murmur that he was going to stay healthy and be around for a long time. Then, from her new cliff-side property, she looked out into the ocean, and saw as one-by-one lanterns lit on the invading fleet and they moved closer to shore. She rushed to Potion Pitstop to wake up Heph, who sent out Karrl. Through his eyes he saw the quiet tension in the city suddenly break as numerous individuals, guards, University students, ordinary citizens, emerging from hiding at the docks. They wheeled out haphazardly-made siege weapons and invoked rudimentary spell craft, preparing to defend the city of Ivalgo.
- In the morning, the group meets up at Potion Pitstop for
breakfast and to convene a war council
- Heph grabs a map and some small models of ships and other things to place on the map to help visualize the situation
- Karrl and Eden’s owl scout out the invading fleet, and see some sharks, but no giant ones, as they are the sneaky ones
- The invading fleet clearly didn’t expect any resistance, and have been stalled a bit by the defenders launching debris and flaming objects at them
- There are some smaller ships that can move quickly, that are possibly scouting from the warehouse district of Ivalgo
- There are dozens of ships, and it’s not clear which of them is a flagship
- The two previously masked individuals have joined Heph, Maho and Eden for breakfast as Maho and Heph plan for the day
- We decide to head down to the docks and try to stop firing, to bait the enemies in closer, and then see if we can pick out the flagship
- Heph switches his armor to the infiltrator model, and imbues Maho’s weapon with invisibility
- Amble brings out omelets during this discussion, to make sure we are fueled
- Heph asks the two guys if they are going to join, and Tal is hesitant to join (he’s more “a lover than a fighter”), but Gurt decides to help when he finds out winning this fight will help us get to Sentin faster and jumps out the window
- Eden looks out and notes a bear running away, and sees that he’s something like a druid, but not quite
- We hear glass breaking downstairs and Heph says “not again” and
runs downstairs to see what is going on
- Peeking through the door, Heph spots a number of looters who appear to be taking advantage of the chaos
- The leaders tells Heph to go away and leave them be, and Heph responds for them to leave, and the Leader marches towards Heph, telling him to sit down next to the wall and let them finish
- The looters move in to start looting, and the Ruffian starts to approach
- Eden steps past Heph into the room, and the leaders say “oh, okay, he’s got a pet”, and Eden looks at the leader and says “Take your crew out of here, go home, and rethink your life” and casts suggestion, which she manages to just make work
- The leader pauses for a second, then says “You know, I always wanted to learn to play backgammon. Alright boys, we’re going!”, but the rest of the crew seems confused and isn’t ready to leave
- Eden says “I trained to be a diplomat” as she walks back into the other room
- The hexer says “I know magic when I see it” and casts a spell at
Heph, which doesn’t manage to hit him
- Then also fails Blindness/Deafness
- Heph steps out into the room and blasts the Hexer to half health, then heads further into the room and yells “GET OUT OF MY SHOP”
- Maho steps out from the back room and asks Heph what’s going on, and when Heph explains they are looting the shop, Maho pulls out her axe, drops it to the ground, and asks them if they are planning to pay for all of that, which seems to worry the Ruffian
- He doesn’t immediately seem ready to flee, and Maho walks up to him, seeming to intimidate him enough that he freezes in place, and then tells the guy not to die immediately as she swings at him, missing the first hit but landing two critical hits immediately after, followed by one more final hit, taking him down to one knee and pushing him back 10 feet
- The leader, successfully suggested to leave, continues to walk away whistling
to herself
- The looters close in on Maho to swarm her, Heph attempting but failing to grab one as they walk by, and a couple of them land hits on Maho, but she redirects the critical hit back to the Ruffian
- The Ruffian is emboldened and charges in, landing a critical hit on Maho
- Eden is pressed up against the wall, scared at all the battle noises, but she peeks out, and seeing Maho surrounded she shoots out a burst of sorcerous energy, absolutely destroying the Ruffian and Looter 4, and Looter 1 seems ready to flee
- Eden stands in the doorway, stunned at how powerful the attack was, and Heph calls out “nice shot Eden!”
- The Hexer realizes they are in trouble and tells everyone to run while she holds us off, she misses the shot but a blast of grease shoots out and causes Heph to fall prone
- Heph gets up and flies over the grease, taking the Hexer down non-lethally with a Fire Bolt, and then turns to the rest of the Looters and tells them to leave, but they aren’t quite intimidated
- Maho takes Looter 3 down with 3 hits, and seems to terrify Looter 2 enough that they also turn to leave, and Maho lands one last hit on Looter 2, just to teach them a lesson, and slows both Looter 1 and 2
- The leader is fully gone, whistling in the distance, and the remaining Looters
disengage and start to work their way out of the building
- Eden moves out into the room and pushes Looter 2 a few feet, yelling “begone Looter!”
- Heph takes down Looter 2 and tells Looter 1 to surrender, and he puts his hands in the air, and Maho comes up behind him and tackles him to the ground, and he starts apologizing profusely, and Maho suggests we could use some extra hands to infiltrate the ships
- Maho asks Heph what to do with Looter 1, and Heph tells the looter he can either help us with the ships or go to jail, and he chooses to join us, and helps us bind his friends and start to clean up the place
- Amble comes down and Heph explains a bit of what happened, and she gets Maho a health potion
- Heph and Eden use prestidigitation to clean up the blood and grease, Heph noticing Eden is a bit squeamish about the blood, and suggesting she go clean up the grease
- Maho collects the daggers, Heph getting some ideas from her playing around with wolverine claws
- On our way to docks, we stop by a guard station, sending some help to Potion Pitstop to help clean up the criminals
- As we approach the docks, the sounds of battle get louder, as projectiles fly
back and forth between the docks and the ships
- On the way, Heph checks in with Eden, and she is a bit shaken
- Eden is still reluctant to get involved, but is going to go along to keep Maho alive so she can get back to Sentin
- Heph spots the Constable seeming to lead the resistance, and the groups heads towards her
- As we approach she acknowledges us, and Heph quickly explains what was going on with the wedding, the new attack on Potion Pitstop, and the plan to draw in the ships and find the flagship
- The Constable thinks they can hold out on ammunition for the rest of the day, so Heph suggests that he help reinforce the siege weaponry, and Maho go to the warehouses to get whatever intel Elias’s people have on the fleet
- Heph heads out into the siege weaponry, helping repair some of the
damage, and increasing their range and accuracy
- Heph also sets up one of the siege weapons to be a sacrificial weapon that will break apart on the next use, to really sell the illusion that the weaponry has been pushed past its limits
- Maho and Eden approach the warehouse district, getting further away from the fight, and see smaller ships heading in and out of the smaller warehouse docks
- Most of the warehouses have movement of people trying to get away from the fight, but one warehouse has purposeful movement, but no goods moving in or out
- Eden points that one out to Maho, and Maho decides to head right for it, and Eden seems a little panicked that there isn’t any plan yet
- As they approach, a thin short man starts walking towards them, telling them it’s a dangerous area and they should get out, they aren’t taking any merchants
- Maho cuts right to the chase and asks the guy if they are part of Anonymous, to which he replies no, and Eden notes no recognition on his face
- Eden asks Maho if Anonymous is related to her friend Elias, and at the mention of that name, the man seems to perk up
- Maho asks if they work for Elias, and the man leans in asking “what is it to you?”, and Maho replies that Elias is our buddy and she was in the wedding party for his recent wedding
- The man, who is Fruto Bupbop, but neither Eden or Maho would know him, and he is surprised that the Bearer is wed
- He asks “How do I know this isn’t a trick? How do I know you aren’t followers of the Fiendish Bowler?” and Eden, tired of the questions, casts Friends, saying “we were at the wedding, how would Elias feel if you didn’t help us”
- Eden is very persuasive, and Fruto leads them into the warehouse, saying they can’t talk outside
- Inside, he introduces himself, saying the Bearer must have talked about him,
and he reveals that the Bearer isn’t here right now, he is out investigating
and figuring out the best things they can do to help Ivalgo as
“upstanding citizens”
- Elias took a few folks out to investigate, leaving Fruto with Jimmy to hold things down, but Fruto explains that he expects the Wizard Slaan is being held captive on one of these ships
- Fruto goes on to say they aren’t 100% sure which ship, but they’ve narrowed it down to four ships that are most likely
- Eden asks if there is a ship they can spare to go join Elias, and Fruto says they have a smaller sloop we could use
- Maho asks if the fleet is letting them get close, but they haven’t really since Morty first went out to parley with them
- Maho asks Fruto to prepare the ship for us in about an hour, at which point the friends spell drops, and he seems to not be too upset that magic was used on him, since it’s like something Elias would do
- Maho reveals that Heph, the butler, is also in town, and they are going to go meet up with him and be back later
- Maho and Eden walk away, Eden noting that the phrase “Slaan is being kept with The Brig” could be some “Fey Bullshit”
- Eden sends her owl out to fly over the 4 ships, trying to investigate, and sees that on each ship there is a captain, 10 sailor types, 5 heavily armed soldiers, and 15 lightly armed soldiers
- In addition, on some of the ships there are satyrs wandering around playing music, and one ship seems to have a figure in regalia that doesn’t exist on any other ship
- Some of the ships have prisoners bound on the decks who have maybe been captured from other islands or skirmishes