Aster's Ledger

Summary

The party resumed their fight against the blights advancing on the ruined workshop. Beatrix summoned a fiery, fossil-like dinosaur that incinerated five twig blights as it appeared; she later named it the Spirit of Extinction. Needle blights shot Bone out of the sky and wounded John and Beatrix, while twig blights pressed toward Glomblax. John shattered enemies into flying splinters, Shoomit worked the battlefield like a hidden sniper, and Glomblax held the line until every blight was dead.

Their search for the apothecary immediately led John through the wrong door and into four ash zombies. After another fight, the party searched the surrounding ruins and recovered brass dragon scales, enchanted leather armor, a healing potion, coin, and other gear. Reidoth allowed them to rest in her cottage while openly ridiculing the series of avoidable monsters they had fought. Once Bone had been restored, the party found the actual apothecary, where Beatrix claimed a fine emerald pendant and two questionable vials she labeled "death and/or pie potion."

On the east side of Thundertree, the party found six masked dragon cultists consumed not by chanting but by an agonizingly slow game of Arcana: The Assembly. After a tense introduction, an obscene misunderstanding about John's intentions toward the dragon, and a formally recorded retraction, the party joined their game. Eight in-world hours later, Shoomit defeated Favric despite still not knowing what a sovereign was. The cultists entrusted them with an offering for Venomfang—six amethysts, a potion of flying, and a handmade foil card—and the party took a long rest in their house. The session ended the following morning as the party debated how to approach Venomfang with a sequence of gifts and, if possible, leave the tower alive.

Key Events

Blights at the Workshop

• The party returned to the fight already underway outside the ruined workshop, with twig blights advancing through the town and larger needle blights firing from range.
• Beatrix summoned her Wildfire Spirit behind the advancing creatures. The fiery, fossil-like dinosaur erupted into existence and burned five twig blights to a crisp.
• Shoomit used his musket and Sneak Attack to drop blights while ducking back into cover. When asked what people called him in the mines, he answered, "They called me Shoomit for other reasons, though."
• Glomblax held the front with his greataxe, sometimes attacking recklessly as the twig blights converged on him.
• A needle blight shot Bone for nine damage. Beatrix's familiar fell from the sky and vanished as Beatrix's view through his eyes dissolved into static.
• Beatrix promised the blights, "I'm gonna turn you all into kindling. I'll kill every last one of you." Her first furious pistol shot still missed even after she spent her inspiration.
• Beatrix renamed her Wildfire Spirit the Spirit of Extinction and sent the flying skeletal dinosaur above the buildings to answer the needle blights with fire.
• While the fight dragged on, the party began workshopping a plan for the dragon: John would approach the tower as a delivery man with wine and try seduction, while the others waited below in case he fell. The proposed contingency quickly became using their dynamite in an anatomically ambitious way.
• Beatrix used Scorching Ray against three blights, burning one twig blight to a crisp and badly scorching a needle blight. The Spirit of Extinction then critically hit and finished the needle blight before retreating through the workshop roof.
• John cast Shatter on two twig blights. Both failed to withstand the spell and exploded into "a billion pieces" as twigs flew everywhere.
• Glomblax critically struck another twig blight with his greataxe, and Shoomit killed one from a window while in "full-on sniper mode."
• The same needle blight that had killed Bone critically hit Beatrix when she leaned out to shoot. John used Silvery Barbs, forcing another attack roll; it still hit, but the damage fell from eleven to four. Beatrix and the Spirit of Extinction then killed it together.
• John tried to finish the last twig blight with Vicious Mockery, but it saved and effectively mocked him back. John ran inside to cry, and the final blight gave up before the party finished it off.

The Wrong Door and the Ash Zombies

• The party tried to find the apothecary by searching eastward. Reidoth had given only a general direction, and the group argued over who had assumed the workshop itself was the destination.
• John opened a door farther down the road and discovered four ash zombies inside. His alarm brought Shoomit running; Shoomit braced his musket over John's shoulder and fired through the doorway.
• The ash zombies smelled pleasantly like a campfire compared with the undead the party had met before. Beatrix caught three of them in Burning Hands, only to watch them visibly enjoy the flames even as they took damage. The table immediately renamed them "ass zombies."
• John cast Faerie Fire across the room, illuminating all four zombies, then slammed the door and ran before they could make opportunity attacks. One zombie simply reopened the door on its turn.
• Glomblax met the zombies outside with his greataxe, while Shoomit repeatedly fired from hiding. One zombie briefly looked ready to stand back up after Shoomit shot it, then collapsed for good.
• Shoomit later critically hit another zombie from the bushes so hard that its head and body exploded. Beatrix shot the final survivor, and the party left initiative.

Looting the Ruins

• A thorough search of the old smithy uncovered a large leather satchel filled with brass dragon scales, tough as iron and worth 75 gp to an interested buyer.
• In the spider-infested workshop, the party found the shriveled body of a male elf cocooned in silk. They recovered +1 leather armor, a shortsword, a potion of healing, 23 gp, and 35 sp. Beatrix took the healing potion; the new coin had not yet been divided.
• While reviewing the party's backlog of unsold goods, they remembered that Shoomit was still carrying forty beaver pelts. The Whorebedashery's business model was summarized as, "We sell sex and trinkets."
• Beatrix immediately developed a plan for the dragon scales: dragon-scale cowboy boots. The competing proposal was to grind them into an aphrodisiac.

Resting Under Reidoth's Roof

• The party returned to Reidoth and asked to rest in her cottage. Reidoth was astonished that they had managed to get injured by twig blights, zombies, and spiders instead of simply avoiding them.
• Shoomit defended the party: "We're more of the types to take problems head-on." Reidoth replied that she had not realized they were "the stupid kind."
• Reidoth allowed the rest but promised to continue making fun of them while they slept. She also warned them about dragon cultists occupying the east side of town and asked the party to talk sense into them or drive them away.
• Beatrix questioned whether another druid had created the blights. Reidoth denied making them, and even after spending a luck point on Insight, Beatrix found no sign that Reidoth was lying.
• Beatrix spent 10 gp on the ritual materials needed to restore Bone. John strummed his guitar directly behind her during the ritual, supposedly to help. Bone reappeared after roughly two hours and ten minutes.
• The incense left Reidoth needing to air out her cottage. As the party departed, she told them not to return for another rest until they had dealt with both the dragon and the cultists.

The Apothecary at Last

• Glomblax finally found the building whose sign actually read "Apothecary and Herbalist Shop."
• In the hidden compartment they had been told about, the party found a fine emerald pendant worth 200 gp. Beatrix immediately put it on.
• Beatrix also gathered two spoiled-looking vials that might produce a psychoactive effect or might kill whoever drank them. She entered them in her inventory as "death and/or pie potion."

The Disciples of the Scale Descendancy

• Beatrix and John demonstrated their established stealth technique: Beatrix crouched on John's feet while he walked, while Shoomit claimed his "bulbous body" dampened noise and vibration.
• Inside, six black-cloaked figures in horned masks were gathered around a card table. Their argument concerned a play clock, the timing of Counter Quill, and whether flavor text could change the rules. Favric eventually played a single forest after ten minutes of deliberation.
• The room was devoted equally to dragons and cards: carefully sleeved legendary dragons, sketches classifying dragons by wing shape and "aura of majesty," and a battered box labeled Arcana: The Assembly, published by Mages of the Shore.
• The silent swordsman noticed the party. The cultists invited them in, and Favric checked a note on his palm before introducing the group as the Disciples of the Scale Descendancy, servants-in-waiting to the green dragon Venomfang.
• Shoomit tried to flatter the cultists with a false name and talk of glistening dragon scales. When one cultist claimed that dragons naturally see empty towers and take them, Shoomit challenged the claim as "dragon racism" learned at a school without a single dragon teacher or student.
• The conversation nearly turned violent when the party explained that John hoped to copulate with Venomfang. Favric demanded to know how John dared consider himself worthy. The party hastily retracted the statement, and the cultists' ledger keeper formally recorded: "Statements retracted."
• John recognized Arcana: The Assembly as a popular but obscure and deeply nerdy card game. Beatrix's first reaction on learning that people paid for the cards was, "Damn. People spend money on these? I gotta start making this."
• The cultists admitted they had watched Venomfang from afar but had not approached him during the eight weeks they had spent in Thundertree. They insisted they were waiting for the correct moment while earning money by painting cards.
• John demanded a seat at the table and promised, "I'll beat your ass." The party negotiated the stakes: if they won, they would carry the cultists' offering to Venomfang on the cult's behalf.

The Eight-Hour Game

• The players selected borrowed decks. John chose the Dawnflock and planned to play deceptively. Shoomit chose the ugly, unsleeved Molten Grievance deck because it was the goofiest-looking option; it also happened to be unusually powerful. Bone selected Aerial Disruption for Beatrix.
• Shoomit openly declared that he intended to cheat under the pretense that he did not understand the game—because he genuinely did not understand it.
• Rather than play every card in real time, the contest was resolved through Intelligence, Deception, and Sleight of Hand checks. Beatrix was eliminated almost immediately after the table ganged up on her.
• John used a luck point to stay competitive but was eventually eliminated. Shoomit spent his inspiration to avoid elimination, then outlasted Therryn, Grist, John, and finally Favric.
• The game consumed eight in-world hours. Favric repeatedly refused to be governed by the hourglass, while several cultists simply fell asleep waiting for turns.
• Shoomit defeated Favric "by the skin of your teeth." When Favric blamed the result on Shoomit's powerful sovereign, Shoomit asked what a sovereign was and insisted he did not think he had played one. Favric went into a corner and screamed.
• The party secured permission to sleep in the farmhouse by agreeing to another game and intentionally losing. John sat in a corner drinking wine "like a baby," and the party completed a long rest while Favric and Therryn continued playing through the entire night.

Venomfang's Offering

• In the morning, the cultists handed over their gift: six amethysts worth 50 gp each, a potion of flying, and a non-proxy foil card they had spent months making for Venomfang.
• The custom card depicted Venomfang coiled around the broken tower and named him Venomfang, Verdant Sovereign. Its flavor text read, "The forest speaks. The clever listen."
• Outside and out of earshot, Shoomit dismissed the card as an unimpressive gift until the rest of the offering was revealed. The party briefly considered keeping the potion of flying.
• The group planned to approach Venomfang with gifts in stages, using the promise of greater future tribute as a reason for the dragon to let them leave and return. If negotiation failed, the third stage might become a fight—or John's repeatedly proposed seduction.
• Shoomit recalled that dragons are intelligent, solitary, covet interesting treasures, seek lairs, and desire subjects. The party recognized that Venomfang might not simply allow visitors to walk away.
• The last table debate concerned whether Venomfang could assume a humanoid form and what that meant for John's plan. The refrain that closed the session was, "Bad dragon. Bad dragon. Bad dragon."

Session End

The session ended the morning after the card game, with the party rested, carrying the cultists' offering, and preparing to approach Venomfang's tower.

Inspiration