Session 5

oh shit

In A Puff Of Smoke
While our fearless adventurers prepared to leave Eeryn, Zephyr mystically disappeared into a puff of lingering black smoke. When no form was found to be inside the cloud, Madame Voila and Krell decide to get the Zephyr cloud into a bottle, so Krell inhaled all the smoke and blows it into the bottle. The bottle was labeled “Zephyr”, which Voila kept safe, and Ssera got to use Zephyr’s horse.

Liam And Big Bird
About 9 hours on the road later, The Birch Bitches came upon a turned over wagon. Voila saw blood that lead her to a severely injured teenage boy. The half dead teen points out the scaly large "bird" in the trees eating someone’s leg. We tried to move the boy, but he screamed like a little wimp because of the pain from his mortal wounds attracting the featherless beast. The creature seems to want to finish off the young, but was halted went Ssera conjured up a cloud of thick fog. Voila almost got the young boy out of harm, but the bird ripped a good chuck of the lad’s stomach and innards out. Bleeding and dying Voila magically healed the boy. Tofu, using the river, was able to drown and ultimately kill the large scorpion-tailed "bird" with a combine of space lasers and tidal waves.

Once safe, Voila got the boys name, Liam. He was on his way to Greywald for work. There seems to be a lot of young teens going to there to work accord to Liam. He also warns that we can’t bring our weapons in. The party talks about hiding their weapons in the dead bird, when Liam sees the extent of his injuries and passes out.

Elophia And The Band'O Minors
Immediately after Liam faints like a wuss, the group is approached by a traveling group of curious children. The party seems delighted to see the kids, even El is greeting them. They are led by an adult woman in vivid robes and jewelry who introduces herself as Elophia. She tells the party that she is part of a caravan of “rovers” and invites the group to stay the night with the caravan.

Get This Party Started
The group is greeted by the rovers with food, wine and tons of dancing. Tofu immediately falls asleep after magically putting a rope swing on Arbor for the kids. Krell attracts Elophia's two hot sisters Ethelinda and Ehra, who show him how they do their dance--which he performs impressively well. Ssera and El enjoy the dance and wine while Voila spies an old musician playing by himself right outside the crowd. The man’s music can be heard clearly over all the other music. Being curious Voila talks to the man, named Kaven, and learns he is from Arad Doman and married to Elophia. Voila tries to get him to play with her but he prefers to play “solo”.

Voila of course, decide it is time to steal one of his instruments, and so distracts him by getting his wife to dance with him. Voila recruits El into the theft as long as she keeps Ssera company, which Voila quickly abandoned in order to dance with some foreign dude named Francisco, who had a nice butt and knew how to move it. El goes to slip one of the instruments away when another young man comes to check on her. El claims she is hurt, and he takes her to healer’s tent. Once there, El wishes to speak to the healer alone because it’s a “girl problem”, causing the young man to leave, before he hears something that is too much for the sad little man to deal with. El tells the healer she isn’t hurt and that she just wanted to get away from captain creepy. The healer tells her she needs to tell the dude that he is barking up the wrong tree or he won’t stop. El lets the guy down (surprisingly) gently, even when his responses were pretty troubling.

Dude, Where Did I Park My Tree?
Not long after, we notice that Arbor is missing. Although Krell is far too distracted with Elophia's sisters, the rest of us track his movements into the woods, where we happen upon a man out of breath. Immediately seeing through his flimsy excuse of 'going for a walk', he leads us to a small grove where we find one of Arbor's glass blades broken off in a tree, but the trail goes cold there. With our questioning yielding nothing, we knock out the man and drag him back into camp to demand answers.

The moment we come into its vicinity, the music takes hold of us. We immediately forget the man and Arbor to rejoin the festivities, then dance wholeheartedly for the evening. However, Ssera miraculously resists the effects of the charm, and does her best to wake Tofu out of the spell, knowing full well the power of his magic. Failing to pierce the thick shell, she instead turns to strike Kaven. Still, he persists playing his song, and eventually she succumbs to the spell.

At Least They Left Us Liam
The next morning we awake to find that we were abandoned. While Voila sobbed in the woods over the farce that was 'Francisco' we each check our inventories for what was robbed from our persons'. It becomes apparent that almost all of our worldly possessions were taken by the Rovers. Most insultingly, we were robbed of all but 1 gold piece each. Anger overtook feelings of disbelief and grief, particularly as we notice Ssera is missing from the party now as well. We grab Liam for his safety and for the success of our future mission, and together we find a stump with the Dagger of Venom pinning a note in place.

The note itself is from Elophia and states "Good morning Beauties,""I was delighted to dance and sing the night away, and even more to see you dance and sing your money away! It is in good hands, I assure you. You ravishing devils will be missed. Just remember with every copper we spend, we'll remember those who provided us with such a plentiful load! If ever you find yourselves in Arad Doman, seek us out. We'd love to return the favor.""Till our next dance,""Elophia"It is of no comfort, and we trek at full speed in pursuit. This leads us to an additional stump where Elophia left us a small love potion, a strange curio that seemed as if it was only meant to tease us further. Thankfully, Krell could hear their music in the distance. With that, the Birch Bitches continued their hunt for the band of Rovers.