Ghosts? In my binder of the dead? It’s more common than you think

While Abe and Hobbes were out slaying a vampire and while Nahk’s Binder of the Dead was being treated for an infestation of ghosts, Sora and Cas went on their own big adventure.

Learning about the Mineosi spy operations within the city, Sora and Casimir venture out together to pick up some intel. They head down to the fish market and after some light shopping, they spy a suspicious deal: someone slips a piece of paper into someone else’s pocket. Casimir slips it right back out. The note (in Orcish) informs the recipient to meet at the tree in Diana’s Park.

When the two head there the next day, they see a man sitting alone under a tree. Calantha Aran is declaiming the Triumvirate to any passerby who will listen, passing out pamphlets. Sora approaches the man under the tree at dusk (disguised as the man Cas pickpocketed earlier), but when the man greets her in Orcish, Sora walks back away and turns invisible.

The real rendezvous man arrives and passes over a package. Casimir, hiding in the tree as a cat, pounces on the recipient after the deliveryman departs. In the tussle, Sora yanks the package away and slips it into her bag.

The things I do for love

The man flees in a panic and Sora and Casimir give chase, keeping their distance. They track the man down to the New City South Ward and find him in an alley where Sora has a knife to his throat. She intimidates him enough to prevent him from calling out and asks what he is doing, who he works for, probably, you know, intel!

The guy says they have to get out of this alley right away or else they’ll be made and they’ll all be killed. He leads the pair to a door that he says is the residence of an old lady. But it ain’t! Casimir goes on ahead and finds a mysterious hooded man.

A fight ensues, during which the spy is killed after Sora stabs him in the back and the hooded man takes him out with a cut across the throat. After taking some deep slashes, Sora lights the room on fire but the man wipes Cas’s memory of the whole incident, leaving him in a stupor and begins to flee.

Sora slaps Cas out of the stupor and they pursue the man to a window. He conjures three imaginary boys and Cas takes two of them out before cutting the mysterious hooded man down, saying, “The things I do for love.”

Casimir loots the room, finding discs which they later determine correspond to the codenames of the spies in the town: Some flowers, some animals. Sora loots the man’s body, taking his signet ring (a Mineosi one) and a ledger he had on his person. The largest cash amounts are being paid out to people with the initials

• C.A.
• N.D.
• O.

Wonder who could those be?

That part of the movie where you show the same scene three different times from different perspectives goes here

Casimir delivers another fish to Nahk. The bugbear is thankful and whips up another fish feast for Natalya and Livius who are still hard at work with the weapon exorcism. The next day Abe and Hobbes return, covered in gore and needing a shower and some patching up after the encounter with the Bargainer, and meanwhile, Sora and Casimir study the package from the park:

It appears to be various notes on fortifications, stolen minutes from meetings of the Ten Generals. Sora determines that this information would have been useful to the Mineosi. Suspecting that the shadow triumvirate of Calantha Aran, Nestor Domorosi, and Odoacer may be guilty of sedition, Sora and Casimir decide to head to Leandro’s the next day as the others being their plan to break Mallory out of prison.

Is Sora the bad guy?

Late into the day, Sora convinces Casimir to follow behind the others up north. She decides that Casimir would be of more use if the others decided to fight Zulon or if Mallory did something crazy and if they decide to go up the Godsbody. Casimir sets off just a few hours behind the others while Sora walks up to Leandro’s door and has herself announced.

Sora is brought in an hour later (quite the snub), to a room full of the surviving Ten Generals and their partners. Not realizing this is what was going on, Sora claims to want to speak to Leandro about citizenship and Leandro advises her to set up an appointment with his butler. The butler hands her a note which reads “Stay. Hide.”

During the meeting, Leandro and the generals determine to use the last of the war chest to fortify four of the gates (all but the Stone Gate) and to secure the supply lines to allow for two more supply trains (for a total of four trains) to get to the city safely. Two units of resources are left over.

After the party, Leandro meets Sora in a darkened hallway off the servants’ entrance. “Citizenship? Really? That’s rich. After what I offered you?”

Sora provides him with the evidence of Calantha and the others’ sedition, but Leandro says, “Whatever this will amount to, it will end in violence. You understand that. So it must be airtight. I will try to do what I can. If the City Attorney is involved, our legal avenues are limited, so it is important that you get solid evidence of their betrayal.”

Sora asks Leandro what he thinks of letting the Pontia Legion into the city and Leandro remains unconvinced. “The citizens will not abide by it.”

Disappointed but not deterred, Sora hands over the evidence and promises more.

Murdered in cold blood but I guess let’s resurrect Paloma

The next day Sora stakes out Calantha’s villa in the New City South Ward. She sees a young woman who seems to be making deliveries for Calantha. Sora interrupts her, disguised as Odoacer, she takes her to an alley and interrogates her: “Who did you make deliveries to?” The young woman, who introduces herself as Shirley, tells Sora who she believes is Odoacer and who she has seen speaking to her mistress many times, tells Sora, “I delivered packages to Chrysanthemum, Badger, and Otter.”

Sora recalls that these names correspond to the spy network’s discs from the wall, tying Calantha to the Mineosi even more. Sora tells the girl to lean in, to speak something in her ear, and cuts her throat. Shirley stares up at Sora, her eyes wide in confusion, terror, and her final words are lost in the pool of blood she spits up onto Sora’s robes and on her own clothes.

Sora lets Shirley drop, the young woman slumped and dead on the floor, and drags the body into a niche in the apartment block, strips her, and steals the clothes. Sora then magics away Shirley’s blood and takes her face.

I ran all the way downstairs to get the Ambassador monster stat block I printed out three years ago on January 6 (sus), 2019, at 2:17pm

Sora disguised as Shirley walks past the guards at Calantha’s villa. She flips on the kenku chatterbox. As she enters the courtyard, she sees Calantha taking tea with a Mineosi Ambassador. Sora looks on, surprised, calculating her next steps and wondering if the Ambassadors have truesight. Calantha reads the expression as troubled and takes Sora as Shirley aside.

“What’s wrong, my girl? Are you well? You seemed startled.”

Sora says, “I delivered the package to Chrysanthemum, but they were dead.”

“Oh my dear, you must have had such a fright. I know you are sensitive and afraid of blood. But do not trouble yourself and remember Chrysanthemum as a patriot who died for this country. They did their duty. Did you see who did it? Any clues?”

“No, my lady, I am sorry.”

“I am just glad you returned safely.”

“My lady, are you sure that we should be working with the Mineosi?”

Calantha stares at her in confusion, “Why of course. They have the city’s best interest at heart. It is what is right for the country.”

The Ambassador approaches, hearing the word Mineosi, and at 60 feet distance, they cry out, “Intruder! That is a dragonborn, Calantha! Get away from her!”

Calantha backs away and Sora begins to flee, Calantha’s guards in hot pursuit.

“A dragonborn spy has attacked me! Stop her!”

Sora hides and blends into the crowd, disguising herself as, well, so, just a note here: The dogs were magically summoned using a Kodama charm, not purchased from someone on Iskos. There is a guy who had dogs. His name was Bill and he came with you into the snow, and his dogs were Minder, Finder, Grinder, and Hinder. But I’m gonna say maybe Sora turned into Saralee, who sells novelty dog booties.

You Gransom, you lose some

The next day, Casimir catches up to the others just past Zulon’s encampment, watching as General Beren and his tortured Argoti troops who were captured during Phase 4 - The Fall of Kalens and the Arrival of Zulon - Day 31-36 begin their march home. . What Sora does on this day, we still don’t know. It has been six days since you returned to Argot.

The gang walks towards the Godsbody, the calcified deity who crashed into the mountains centuries ago. On the way the heroes run into a guy called Gransom. The Third. He’s always been called Gransom. And then the heroes were like, but where are you from and what’s your dad’s name and your surname, and actually Gransom does have all that information because he’s from the Grimewater in Meretesk which is 8 days away by road and there’s a whole adventure module and I guess Gransom’s grandfather is has to be in the other game now too, so take that, haters.

Anyway Gransom is super nice because he was spared by Zulon’s court! Which is still in session, keep in mind, he never agreed to stop. He offers the heroes a nice ale from a big keg he carries on his back while he herds his goats. Smell that bouquet, baby! Gransom offers the heroes a growler for the road and presents them with three approaches to the Godsbody, and you just so happen to pick the one that takes you right to the liminal arrow so fuck me I guess. But what else is in the dungeon, huh? It’s a whole ass dungeon, so who knows! Don’t worry, it’s also in the other game, so they’ll see the whole thing probably. Hope they don’t grab the liminal arrow because that game is set in the past. If they do, it’s in the past of the other aborted Argot game, you know, the one with Lenny and Fway and Helen and Diseem, who also appeared in your game. That’s right, Argot’s had a multiverse from the very beginning!

Natalya makes fun of Gransom for being inbred or whatever, and the heroes climb up the path that takes them to the legs.

Boner alert (sorry)

Natalya, interested in bones (the lady loves bones, loves bein’ bones, loves checking them out), goes up to the giant skeletons to examine them and finds that they are, whoops, all animated. Two more giant skeletons pop up, and the heroes kill them all. At one point, Livius says something sarcastic about not needing any help over here when a skeleton pops up and tries to grab him and Nahk takes him seriously.

“No more sarcasm during combat,” Natalya chides Livius. “It confuses Nahk.”

Anyway, Casimir does some light scouting, Owlicious does some heavy scouting, and Abraham does some heavy scouting, and by heavy scouting I mean his armor is so loud (how loud is it) a cave of trolls heard him and came out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Oh Livius puts together a skeleton spider out of the giant bones. Nice.

Diabeedeez nuts (sorry again)

Owlicious flies down a long corridor full of frosted salamanders (which you have seen on Dorost but not quite so blue) and black veins covering this corridor. Then Owlicious goes over to a cobwebby portal and goes through and sees seven cocoons twenty feet tall and also an arrow! It looks important! Owlicious yanks the arrow out of one of the cocoon, awakening the gigantic creature within, who swipes the owl dead.

I have “get some crab cakes after this” written down, and I don’t know what it means.

The trolls kind of jeer at Abraham as Abe tries to diffuse the situation. The others decide to head over to the room with the arrow, but the trolls have come around the corner to where the heroes have begun plotting and Nahk and Casimir translate saying, “They finna eat us,” because they are in fact fixing to.

Shit pops off and Nahk says actually I’m gonna get the arrow. Hobbes follows with Nat coming into the antechamber to the arrow room, granting Nahk haste. One of Hobbes’s attacks goes wide and he wakes up another coccooned giant monster! Diabeedeez nuts indeed.

Livius tries to send his skeleton to retrieve the arrow but it’s no use! But one thing that is use is Livius’s fireball scaring the trolls away because they’re like, “Fuck, we hate fire and we were just looking for an easy meal but there’s a fucking wizard here, we’re good, bye!”

Casimir raises his scimitars in triumph and Abe, per usual, can’t let it go, so pursues them! Classic.

Casimir runs to join the battle with the monsters and walks into a real fucking mess. Nahk whiffs two of his attacks and wakes up two more of the seven monsters! By the way they are twenty feet tall, made of black dust and sparkles, and look like giants, and their fists reach 15 feet, and that’s 15 feet too many for Nahk as he books it.

Casimir and Hobbes get out of there too as Livius summons a demon to grab the arrow. The demon grabs the arrow, tosses it over his head just as Hobbes rushes out of the room. Livius drops a sickening radiance down and his demon rips into one of the monster’s necks, spilling its silvery white blood all over the ground. As the sickening radiance goes off, the demon explodes in a fiery mess and the monsters all awaken, all seven of them, all crying out in pain as the radiance energy engulfs them.

Natalya, staring into the room, and considering the anatomy of the Godsbody, realizes that this room with the monsters may be a womb.

Travel Quests

• Parley with Zulon ☑
• Free Mallory ☑
• The Liminal Arrow

Skill Challenge Per Day Quests

• Counterintelligence ☑
• Undermine Calantha
• Disrupt Mineosi Operations
• Kill the Bargainer ☑
• Exorcise the Binder of the Dead ☑

Single Moment Quests

• Casino Heist
• Kill Hespero and Armand
• Kill the Duchess

It is day 51 (and 50) since the Battle of Aurochs Island, the first engagement of the Argoti-Mineosi War.

The Argotnauts are in the Godsbody, in an antechamber beside the womb, having retrieved a magical-looking arrow of unknown provenance. It is the dead of night on the 51st night since the Battle of Aurochs Island.

Sora Nemmonis is hiding in the New City South Ward, disguised as a civilian, on the 50th night since the Battle of Aurochs Island.

You have two solid cubes and a ring of seven keys:

• One of the pine wood cubes is on the floor of the ship
• Livius Anastasius Cratius has the cube made of bone found in Iskos Valley Village’s elders’ hut
• Natalya has one of the pine wood cubes and the ring of seven keys; she dropped the obsidian cube containing her heart into the ocean

Zulon has been on the material plane for 20 days.

The Deathless One’s invading military are expected to arrive in 9 days.

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