session 2
Death of a God: Session Two
Section titled “Death of a God: Session Two”Getting Back on Track
Section titled “Getting Back on Track”A series of knocks on her room door woke Fai from her 3-hour rest. Mat, her mentor and attendant priest told her that food was ready, and that they were to depart soon. Travel to the Isle of the Gods had already been arranged by her mother’s Ahurikishki attendants—they were to join a caravan of traveling merchants. The very same caravan that the mercenaries from the Pierced Wave, and Troy Montague were to be a part of as well.
[//]:
“TODO: fill out the notes here in a more prosaic language, don’t have time rn”
Chian’s people apparently hired the Band of the Hawk, led by a guy in long golden hair and golden eyes.
Some old lady tried to sell corn to Fai, a kid tried to pick her pocket during the transaction.
There was a stall selling jewelry depicting various religious iconography that Fai had checked out. Aside from the typical Divine Masochist ones, there was a 9-pointed star of the Arzhadad. The merchant described it as a precursor to the Church of the Divine Masochist. Mat explained that the Arzhadad religion was, based on the works of the Giza Ahurian scholars of the day, completely wiped out after a series of pogroms across the region after the Purha and the Chetsi had consolidated control.
Fai, Mat and Chari entered an Apothecary and Flower Shop owned by the Maidenfeld family.
Fai sneaked away from Mat and Chari to see what exactly Troy was going to be selling. Vegetables in one cart, boxes marked with labels of the Mirian Shipping Company.
Troy was trying to sweet-talk Prince Kolha without knowing who she really was.
They leave. Mother tells children about how succession works in the Ahurian tradition.
Pit Stop #1
Section titled “Pit Stop #1”They arrive at inn at 5 pm, settle down. Prince Kolha is called to join the merchants. The most jovial and friendly toward her happened to be Troy Montague himself. Fai looked at the man with disgust and a suspicion. As soon as she could manage it, she quickly, and secretly, casted Unseen Servant to keep an eye out on the room as she went about her business. By business, she apparently meant that she wished to use the bathroom. So she asked an attendant at the inn where the closest one was. To her delight, they were outhouses in the inn’s backyard. She instantly had a reason to leave the inn without arousing much suspicion.
Indeed, as she exited the inn’s side-door on the way to the outhouses, she found a swinging door along the fence. The mercenary encampment was about a couple of yards away from the inns—not too far from the carriages the mercenaries had been hired to protect.
The encampment was a lively place, filled with not just the mercenaries themselves, but also a veritable army of camp-followers and opportunistic impoverished merchants, who cannot pay for their own protection and passage west.
Meanwhile, as Fai’s Unseen Servant oversaw the goings-on in the inn’s main hall, Fai saw that Mat and Chari began to wonder where she could be. Mat asked the same attendant, and they were directed to the outhouse. Of course, when they got there, Fai was nowhere to be found.
Fai didn’t want to head back without accomplishing anything, so she checked out the mercenary group that Chian’s attendants have hired: the so-called Band of the Hawk. There were rumors that the band was led by a mysterious man with golden hair and golden eyes. Fai, or rather, Sorscha, knew these features as signs of magical potential. So she had to see the man herself.
She eventually found her way across the encampment, past a troupe of actors were preparing for a play, toward the pavilion of the Band of the Hawk. It was a bright red pavilion, capable of fitting 50 people inside, and a large tarp with a stylized drawing of a hawk hunting a mouse emblazoned on it.
On a wooden stump, in front of the pavilion, is the golden hair man, palming a small black-purple orb. Instantly, she had an idea what the orb was, and so she casted Prestidigitation to see if the orb would react as she had expected. It did. The man holding it, she thought, might just be a member of the Reformist Church.
The Unseen Servant, the one that Fai calls Bertha was still stalking the inn’s main hall to keep tabs on Prince Kolha and the merchants’ conversations. Fai took over Bertha’s senses and heard that they were talking about the disappearances of multiple merchant vessels headed to mainland Ahuria, and how the sailors had been blaming people with yellow eyes for their misfortune. Kolha was intently listening to the merchants argue about whether or not there was any merit to what the sailors were saying. A portly, elderly man merely laughed it off and dismissed the idea as the product of the superstitious nature of the sailors, but does note that there may be pirates from the fringes of the Mirian Islands.
Uninterested in the succeeding discussion, Fai tuned Bertha out and made her way back to the inn. Before she got there, however, she was met with a stern Matarelha staring disappointingly at her, Chari behind him. Fai explained that she was bored and wanted to see the busy encampment and the products it offered. Mat began to lecture her of the impropriety, only to give in as Fai begged him to take her and Chari into the encampment once more, explaining that she wanted Mat to buy her a weapon and teach her how to use it. Her true intentions were to check the Band of the Hawk out some more, in reality. The black-purple orb that the golden-haired man was holding was something she had seen during her time with the Reformists, and it would be too much of a coincidence that someone with magical features was holding them.
The stage play that was being set up when Fai first visited was starting, and she had talked Mat into watching it with Chari while Fai sneaks off to look around. She looked around at the weapons available, while keeping an eye on the Band of the Hawk’s pavilion. All the while, thinking of ways to reveal their leader’s secrets. Fai then headed back to Mat and Chari and finished the strange play about the scandalous affair between an Ansa and an Akkibati.
During the play, Fai convinced Mat to allow here to hire the Band of the Hawk leader for some “services” of a sexual nature. Mat was somewhat scandalized by this, but ultimately thought that the strictures of their religion did not forbid it explicitly. They did want to train her in the sexual arts before they arrived at the Isle of the Gods anyway. However, Fai did not want to ask him herself, and further convinced Mat to do it for her. A request which, out of a devotion to his god and ward, he acquiesced to despite his apprehensions.
While waiting, Fai dragged Chari into making fun of a random person in the Band of the Hawk. A thin and somewhat short man who said his name was Creamy. Fai was flirting with him openly, and was goading her sister to do the same. Creamy took the bait to Fai’s delight. He waxed lyrical about how he was a great adventurer, and that the group was really called the Band of the Big Birds, because they all had “big birds”. Of course, Fai wanted the man to prove his claims while casting the spell Friends. All this to get him to show them his “big bird” while telling them the name of their leader. He said their leader’s name was “Gravy”.
Almost the instant they finished with Creamy, they saw Mat exit the pavilion. Fai prodded Mat for answers to her questions. It turns out, Gravy was not amenable to being hired as a prostitute at all, at whatever price. But also, that the man seemed distracted during their meeting. Gravy seemed to have been playing with a black-purple orb.
Mat buys Fai her whip. Fai steals a choker and some leather straps with a brass buckle.
Fai tries to find Troy’s room, convinces Mat that it’s important to do so. Troy is not in room.
They are led to a different tavern/inn with a bent for anonymity and privacy. They find Troy’s bodyguard outside. Fai convinces Mat to distract bodyguard, succeeds.
Fai enters the room, sees Troy with Ada, and Ada failing to be a good dominatrix. Troy asks Ada to leave.
Fai orders Ada to stay as she takes Sorscha’s face. She then acts like a dominatrix again.
Learns that boxes contain luxury goods, cosmetics, Philter of the Living Dead, Blackbane, boxes of arsenic.