2025/12/05: Return to Rael-Aestra

Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Malakai, Aetheril, Everett, Kal'vus
  The aerial battle had actually been the morning of March 3rd. The search and escape flight had taken all night. The party was exhausted. Othar had been planning to be gone from home only a little while, so he took this opportunity to go home. Nimbus also headed out (or rather, waited to be picked up). Ril showed up with Kal'vus to replace them. She was following a tip left by her future self.
  Malakai and Buzz spent the afternoon fabricating parts to repair the Ragnarok. With their work, it was expected to only take a day rather than a week.
  At Buzz's suggestion, Ril went back to Castle Fallingstar to see if a particular guy could come and pull the crystals out. He told her Ril had told him not to do it. So apparently the group had to do other things to solve the problem.
  Nefea suggested polymorphing someone and having them go in to negotiate with the spriggans. Pay them for the crystals. The group agreed with that plan.
  The spriggans have been making deals with the magma dwarves and also attacking them and stealing from them and making more deals to help defend the dwarves against the mysterious attackers that are also them.
  The fight with Captain Heroditus apparently made the spriggans very worried, so they called the magma dwarves and set up a trap inside the mine with some of the magma dwarf higher-ups. They're aware that the party is also Heroditus' allies and are the ones involved with the black dragon ship that's caused so many problems.
  The crystals are sort of like solcite but mainly have the demon lord's soul. Or something like that.
  Ril gave Vrex a suit of elven chain.
  The party considered whether to go and fight the ambush or just leave and go to Rael-Aestra. Future-sight from Ril suggested fighting the ambush wouldn't go well; it seemed they'd found a countermeasure for Knight, in any case. The team decided it wasn't worth the time or the risk.
  While flying, the ship was boarded by weird clown things riding a giant moth. They identified themselves (in an aborted future, thanks to Ril) as the Ketor-kan Hah, Dancers of the Blooded Wind.
  Ril made that encounter not happen.
  The people of Rael-Aestra are against proselytizing and aren't interested in organized religion. They're big on free will and are against slavery. Don't start problems with the town guard; there are a lot of them and they have very good magic weapons. They're pacifistic, or at least really don't want violence inside the city.
  Rael-Aestra is very metropolitan. All sorts of races and species from all over. Pretty much any civilization-compatible species you can think of is present.
  Union used metacognition to get a mental map of the city. There are a bunch of districts and sub-districts. There are 35 million people in this city. There are all sorts of districts for different purposes, including a "celestial district". There's an arena that Knight and Kelsey might be interested in. There's even a "build your own golem" workshop. Five major magic shops were found.
  The power in the city resides in the guilds, not in the ~12 kings. The guilds each have power over the thing they're focused on. So the shoemaker guilds would have the power to make the rules regarding shoes. There are various adventurer guilds that have a lot of power. They have most of the military might. The actual military and defensive guilds don't have anywhere near as much power as the adventurers.
  The kings mostly just declared themselves kings and established themselves as go-betweens, benevolent politicians, and people who know people. There's actually a kings guild. The job is half politician, half mall santa.
  Ril took Knight and went to buy a house. Kal'vus went wandering solo. The rest went shopping.
  Every 1-3 blocks, the city changes its genre. Totally different colors, aesthetic themes, architectural styles, etc.
  Short elf with way too big ears and a cat person started following Knight and Ril after Ril (at Knight's prompting) started teaching Knight about herbalism and plants and fungi and medicinal properties and so much more. Her first employment was as a teacher, and it absolutely showed. She may have made new contacts with the herbalist guild.
  The archipelago had apparently been importing plants from elsewhere. There were hundreds of thousands of plant varieties here, when on Meridan there would have been tens of thousands.
  Doyle showed up out of nowhere. Ridiculously stealthy. Knight went with him while Ril stayed to talk to the herbalist guild master. Doyle had set up shop in a wine cellar in the local museum, which shows art and plants and is extremely well fortified (because of all the valuable art).
  Doyle gave Knight a brief update.

Acts of violence are extremely harshly discouraged; both perpetrator and target are stasised, frozen in time, and the target is teleported to a safe area. And the guards will be called. It will not go well for attempted murderers.

Inflation is extremely high. Buyer beware. (Might be an opportunity for those selling, though.)

  Kal'vus went to an arena. There are magical safeties in place so weapons are stopped before they can make harmful contact. Kal'vus was better than the beginners, but his second fight was against a seasoned adventurer who was a little better than he was, and the third was a trainer who was even better than that. The trainer told Kal'vus that Kal'vus was better than about two thirds of the adventurers in the city, probably. Also notable: Physical armor seemed out of favor amidst the combatants, with them preferring some sort of "clothing with AC". It lets the local adventurers go all-in on personal style, because they don't have to worry about chain mail and plate armor and so forth.
  Kelsey went in search of magical formalwear that she could fight in and that was, preferably, self-cleaning. She managed to get a personalized military ruler outfit that's resistant to damage and stains for about 8000 gold. Flann's Finery came through for her!
  She also overheard some adventurers talking about a dungeon that had something called the "mask of Ares" in it as loot. Apparently dungeons just pop up here? This one's got minotaurs and is a big colosseum arena thing, showed up on a hilltop a little outside the city. Might make a good atonement quest item. Unfortunately, you have to be an adventurers guild member in good standing to go dungeon-crawling; otherwise you get in all sorts of trouble. (The two adventurer women were about 5' tall and were looking up at Kelsey in shock.)
  Kelsey also bought a super magic eyepatch for 220,000 gold. Turns out she has a ridiculous amount of money from her Renegade Legion days.