Session Date: 01/12/2025
Last Time On Danse Macabre Z
Arythas diverges from the party upon returning because Robin wanted a tea party and so he spends time with her.
The rest of the party goes to the hotel where Dia’s father is staying. While there, Inky realizes that the liondrake - Gust - is actually a human turned into a liondrake. He even catches a memory or thought of Peregrine calling Gust his son, implying that this is Agustus, Dia’s missing eldest brother. Also, Kestrel was there.
Session Start: Rohan, Inky, Iskra, Dia
It’s immediately clear to everyone in the party that Inky is perturbed. Dia immediately goes into healer mode and asks what’s wrong, and Inky says he needs to speak with Arythas and is trying to avoid saying what’s on his mind. He asks Dia who her siblings are, and Dia mentions August is the eldest brother, and Inky stops her and asks why she doesn’t know him. She explains he’s like 25 years older than her, and he left.
Inky says he has good news, and bad news. The good news is that August has been closer to her than she’s thought her entire life, and some bad news: August is in the liondrake. Dia thinks she’s joking, and Inky immediately starts saying that he isn’t, that would be incredibly messed up and he wouldn’t do that. Dia is in denial about this: she’d thought he was living his best life. Rohan jumps in and points out August → Gust. Inky explains he’s bad at this kind of news and doubles down that the liondrake was once August, or else it’s one hell of a coincidence.
Dia sort of dissociates as she tries to parse this information. Rohan asks if Inky can undo it, and Inky says he’s not sure: he can research it, certainly, and he’s not sure what being polymorphed for so long might do to a person - Iskra agrees with this. Dia is caught somewhere between wanting to destroy everything, and just steal Gust and run.
It’s clear that Dia wants to steal her own brother, but Inky asks if that would be an issue because then her father would know we’re there. They talk through this and Dia suggests making it look like a burglary where someone stole his mount… Peregrine likely has tracking spells, but it can be rather convincing. Peregrine would kill the guards, of course, but there is no good solution right now.
Gust is in a playful mood, showing his belly. Dia pets Gust and Inky suggests that they call Arythas and let him know of the situation. They cast the spell exposition to Arythas, and they discuss what possible future opportunities there could be. Arythas advises that if there will be other opportunities, they should come back so they could speak with Kestrel St. Clair about possible plans and where they can perhaps hide Gust until they’re ready to leave.
As Dia and the others leave the room, and Gust starts yowling in grief as she leaves. The party stops for a minute to mess up the room they purchased, making it look like they got up and left early, and then return to the mansion.
Back at Kestrel’s
We all have dinner, and Dia gets her own bottle of wine. We have a tense dinner and Kestrel asks if we should plan. Dia says she needs to contact her brothers (and Kestrel mentions that Bertram is up north, which she confirms; not sure where Rafferty is) and then create a plan to kidnap Gust.
The group and Taraaq are generally against getting Gust right now, much to Dia and Arythas’ distaste. Dia asks if Kestrel could find out how to reverse what’s been done to Gust, and he offers to try to find someone who might know something. Arythas has the thought that perhaps we could pick Soldos’s mind about it, and Dia mentions perhaps Ercari might have something.
For now the plan is to go to the undermarket and find out what’s going on with the Thuls. We all break and Dia clings to Arythas as he does his best to comfort her.
Inky and The Library
Inky retires to the The Library Between to ask Mattai what’s up with the polymorph spell on Gust. She explains that it is more likely a curse rather than a polymorph spell. When told who did it, she recognizes who it is and comments that he’s rather powerful for a mortal. She comments that terminating the original caster could take care of it (and she advises do not, we are too weak), brute force break the curse (loud), or find a statue of a liondrake that he may have and destroy it. She comments that a person was turned into an animal, but now it will be an animal that’s been turned into a man - which Inky was afraid of. Mattai comments that this is uncommon and distasteful magic, it’s not very old, and it’s cruel in a way that Mattai cannot abide.
She comments that restoring his memories is possible, but would be a separate process. Inky is aware of the magic to impart information to the Thuls and that might be possible. Inky is aware that he likely won’t be able to speak unless he rolls a natural 20 in the ritual.
Mattai brings inky some books on breaking curses. She warns there will be an entire process After. His studies prove to be rather fruitful and he learns quite a bit in one evening.
Visiting Soldos
We head over to the Bloodsoaked Banner’s base - as a reminder, a large mansion gifted to the organization. We find Soldos inside and explain that August is the liondrake, and that we don’t have any concrete plan as of yet.
Soldos comments that we cannot kill Peregrine yet, and if we do then the twins will take power. Soldos offers to kidnap August for us, but he will not be able to watch August for us.
Through a log conversation, we realize that Bertram has the collar to make Robin smaller - if Bertram came and brought the collar then it would be easier to hide August. We call Kestrel and he offers to hide the liondrake and arrange for Bertram to get here.
We return to the conversation about how to exactly get the liondrake: Soldos could easily get ahold of him, but we will get another target on our back. We come up with sending the tracker on a ship and throwing it overboard to try to throw whoever is investigating this off.
Rohan suggests that we pin it on Dia so that we don’t have another group chasing us, and it would throw off Ace Freeman for sure.
We throw a few more ideas around, but this is what we decide is the best.
The Undermarket
Ercari leads us to where the entrance to the market is, and he shows Rohan the brick combination to push in order to open the path. The bricks move out of the way and we walk down the stairs into the market. There’s magic in the creation of this road as we go down and pass by basements and stone. Kestrel explains the rules, with the main one being absolutely no fighting. There’s a coliseum for that. You will die if you break this rule.
There are several Undermarkets on the continent and they are all connected. The council running it is a secret, nobody knows, and they enforce rules strictly. Some people live here, some are locals - we are tourists, we will be taken advantage of.
He gets us there and by the time we take everything in, he’s gone.