January 25, 2025

Hook

Winterfall III - Pthora, Cahyali

Plot Synopsis

The party wakes in the morning and gets on the tasks they had been suggested to take the previous night. They visit Dr. Xaris, a clinician treating general aches and pains in the lower quarter of Polis. He asks them to investigate a worry he's had: several dockworkers at the airship yard are coming down with leyline sickness in various parts of their bodies. He shows them the scans. They ask what else they can do, and he notes that a shipment of crucial medicine is missing and was likely taken in the slums. They investigate the docks first, and Uriel and Volke sneak in to see. Watcher, Vladisk, Sadie, and Icarian wait outside. Marlowe, Elizabeth, and Aether split off to see about the missing shipment in the slums.

The docks group sees that there is a brightly glowing orange thing near the engine, only briefly visible before the workers put on a panel of siding. Uriel casts Third Eye, and sees a massive amount of earth-aligned energy coming out. As they sneak in, they talk to some other workers around lunchtime, who say that things are scheduled to be completed tomorrow - but an old, crazy guy swears up and down something in the engine spoke to him. He mentions a "powder snow man" when they ask him if he's high. He insists that whatever it was growled to him to 'kill all Oxians'.

Meanwhile, at the slums, Elizabeth goes around openly asking after medicine and gets grabbed by a snow leopard beasthide woman, a mother. She ties her up and threatens her with divine magic, before Marlowe shoots the door off and shows up with Aether. They have a tense conversation about their reasons for being here, before Aether tells her story about the destruction of her village at the Ember Army's hands, and how they are not on their side or the Shinneans', and that wins her over. She says that she sold the medicine to a traveling band of weasel beastmen, who had promised to smuggle her and her family out of Pthora. She says that they make their home in the tundras north of the city.

Outside the docks, Sadie notices Misha hurrying down the road with a paper bag full of flowers. She goes down to greet him, and both her and Icarian tease him about having a lover. He tells them to leave him alone, and hurries away. Sadie notices that he was carrying several unit repositories in the bag.

The party reunites, and they make a plan to sneak into the docks and take care of the airship. They decide to hit it at 6pm, after the workers have gone home and the guards are changing their shifts. They'll commandeer the ship and fly it out of the city, before crashing it in the tundras and teleporting home just before impact with the ground. This plan is cleared by Marshal Volkov. There is some time before 6pm, though, and they have conversations amongst themselves as they wait. Elizabeth and Aether return to the slums to make up with the snow leopard woman, named Asya. Aether makes a surprisingly sturdy door to replace the one Marlowe blew off. Sadie goes to Dr. Xaris to see about getting a prosthetic arm, but finds out that her body rejects it and melts the prosthetic before it can work. As she leaves, she finds Volke and has an encounter with a mysterious cloaked figure, who disappeared completely when they caught her.

As the hour approaches, they meet back at the docks, ready for their assault...

Noteworthy Postgame Events