Session 2 Report

On the road to Junction, Bryn and Deltair drove the cart while Nira rode Cliff ahead. Marty rode inside with Maks, Triss, and Peiskos [those last three offscreen for this game], and Fen and Tatil held up the rear.   Bryn and Marty noticed the passers-by treating the group a little strangely on the road, which came to a head when they passed a farmer’s cart. Their little girl burst out excitedly with, “is that them?” only to be hushed by her mother – but when Fen approached and offered a flower from Ayla’s trunk, they explained that the Criers and Dreamers in Junction had been spreading the word about a group who had stood up to a local ecoterrorist that had held six other towns hostage. Marty was concerned about their burgeoning notoriety; Nira suspicious that news travelled so fast.   “Dreamers” turned out to refer to a recent technology breakthrough, where local news and events could literally be dreamed into the heads of participating individuals if they purchased a Dreaming Crystal, spreading news even faster than a town crier could. Nira, Bryn, and Marty were somewhat horrified by this idea, but Del and Fen thought it sounded quite convenient.   The next encounter on the road at first seemed to be similarly benign – but Bryn quickly realized the dragonborn ‘father looking for an autograph’ was actually heading up a group of bandits that had the cart almost surrounded. Though at first a series of warning shots and near misses, the tide quickly turned in the group’s favour as Bryn ran one bandit through, Fen crushed another, Tatil slashed one to ribbons, and Nira lit up the leader with a searing radiant blast. Del – with some distraction help from Bryn – then tripped the leader as he tried to run, and so the last two were stripped to loincloths and tied to a tree with a helpful sign reading “we are bandits” (and some food, courtesy Fen, who could not abide the thought of their suffering slow death by starvation). Marty, who took a crossbow bolt in the fray and held herself together with false life, consented to the silvery touch of Sehanine and was healed – albeit first tasting the bite of field bolt-removal. Fen, in searching the men and tying them to the tree, discovers some gold and gems in its branches.   The group made Alt Ascir, which houses portal 8 to Junction, and it is in that good-sized town that the party decides to spend the night and recover before hitting the big city. Deltair acquires a journal, and Marty and Bryn make some overtures of friendship. Everyone retires to a tavern.