Blood & Booze Prologue Part 2

So, after the temple business is wrapped up, the group wants to know what this interesting place is that they’ll be going to. I proceed to explain to them that it is a place and planet currently called Sloane. It’s interesting and unique because the place is sentient. You heard that right, the planet is a living, thinking being. And over the course of its history, there have been cataclysms that mark the end of ages. The plane was due for one and I wanted to try and avert it. We are friends, after all.

In order to help them out and blend in, I made wearable items for them to choose from. Sloane is split into four major regions and factions: The Burned in the North, The Heartwood in the South, The Gathering Storm in the East, and The Wandering Hills in the West. Each faction offered different physical benefits: resistance to certain types of harm and a boost of elemental damage. Five of them chose a faction, as Mara was needed elsewhere (which ended up being a theme and then a more permanent situation).

Bob chose The Burned, Ursus The Wandering Hills, Valen The Heartwood, and Thorak and Tymund The Gathering Storm. They attuned, slept on it, and woke up to a more permanent version of the Tavern in Sloane’s capital city of Balazaar. This is when the group met the incredibly beautiful, talented, and intelligent Kalkari. This lovely Tiefling has a mechanical mind and an arcane understanding that is better than most. So she was the prime candidate to be their contact. And apparently, Tymund’s future love interest.

I gave them the lay of the land, let them know that they could do what they liked with the place, and went about my business. Valen got to work brewing beers, eventually concocting a beer called the Woodland Punch and a cocktail called Moon on the Mist. Thorak took the opportunity to explore his culinary side and began setting up a menu. They also ventured out into the ringed city of Balazaar. Find the blacksmith Fouthous Greatrock at Rock and a Hard Place, who took some commission work from Ursus and Valen.

They also met the blind cartographer Loqi and his seeing-eye pseudodragon Spex at Magnetic North and a Tabaxi woman named Shadow of the Stars who runs a textile shop called Back to the Fuschia. It’s actually a front for an underground fight club, which excited most of the party. Eventually, they get to a market with a dire situation in progress. Tymund spots a lost and scared child, and in trying to help this small Unillum girl, they walk right into a terrorist attack.

They dispatch the threat, which they find out later is a cult called The Scorching Sun, (remember that name), but not before there is collateral damage. It’s at this point that Mara and a Wood Elf called Dona Takal show up. They help the boys get out of trouble with the city guard and all head back to the Tavern with the little girl, who is named Amina. After resting up for their fights under Back to the Fuschia, they head out and dominate the fighting ring. This is not only where the legend of the Slash Brothers, (Thorak and Ursus) is born but they meet an important person: a human woman named Sloane who has the same goals as the party. They decide to meet up in a few days to discuss what they should collaborate on. 

Meanwhile, Mara and Dona are doing a bit of recon for me elsewhere on some unrelated issues. Mara ends up becoming crucial to those missions, so she stays with them and Dona takes her spot on the team. When everyone reconvenes, Dona, Valen, and Tymund head to Amina’s family home to find the girl’s parents. Unfortunately, it is found that they’ve been murdered by the Scorching Sun, (presumably). When faced with this turn of events, Tymund and Kalkari, (who are now an item), decide to raise Amina as their own. On top of that, Amina seems to be having dreams of being beckoned by a gargantuan tree. The party suspects that she may be the next Arbiter.

Over the next few weeks, the party meets with Sloane and they discuss several options on how they can help: They can be envoys for her to The Burned, specifically to the Monastery of Perpetuity. They can search for a legendary black leatherbound book called the Tome of Ennicion, that could potentially hold the secret to stopping the oncoming calamity. Pr they could take Amina to the Heartwood to see if their suspicions are correct about her future. Eventually, they decide to head north to the monastery while Tymund stays with Kalkari and Amina to look more into that situation.

Ironically and fortuitously, while the party is preparing to head north, a separate party is setting out southward from a hidden city in The Burned. Their goals are to find the source of an influx of aberrations on Sloane and to stop it. Two different parties, with different goals, search for the same answer to the same question: if the end is coming, where is it coming from and how do we stop it? And the fuse continues to burn…