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Our heroes are out late at night, helping Daniel, an enthusiastic villager, search for a strange beast that appeared during a fight between Lucia, our Paladin, and a ruffian named Opal. Daniel doesn’t know that the beast is right beside him, because Gleador, our Druid, is keeping his shape-shifting a secret. It’s complicated. Read the previous session for all the details.
Daniel is wearing a robe and slippers, with a poker in one hand and a torch in the other. He peers down alleyways, prods piles of trash with his poker, and tells the sleepy villagers that he awakens that there’s a strange beast on the loose! After about 15 minutes, Lucia and Gleador convince him that the beast is long gone, so they leave him and return to the Glazers’ house, where they are staying for the duration of the festival. Once they are alone in their room, Lucia holds Gleador’s injured hand aloft, says a prayer, and the pain of his dagger wound is replaced by a feeling of peace. They rest for the night.
Lucia has enough experience to level up, and she becomes a Cleric of the goddess of the Sapphire Islands. She can now cast low-level Cleric spells.
The Glazers prepare a lovely holiday breakfast. All the dishes, glasses, and mugs are beautiful multi-colored glass, because the Glazers are glass-blowers. They tell their guests about the day’s activities: the market is open, with goods from all over the region; there’s a stage for bards & other performers; in the afternoon, there’s an auction for especially valuable items. Our heroes accompany the Glazers to the market, where the Glazers have a stand to sell their glassware. Our heroes act like they are going to wander the market for a bit. They buy some fair food: fried dough & corn on the cob with mayo. Lucia starts to feed her share to the stray dogs, but bystanders scold her.
Our heroes duck out to find the pickpocket’s house. (Last night, they had some dogs follow the pickpocket’s scent, and got directions to it.) They recognize the house by the token over the door, even though the dogs described it in shades of grey and our heroes can see color. It’s a nice, upper class house: no shop attached, a yard with stalls for horses in the back. Rich people live here. The streets are bustling with fair-goers so they are able to circle the house a few times without drawing attention. Gleador wants to infiltrate the house and turns into a tropical hornet when he thinks no-one is looking. A kid notices and tugs on his mom’s sleeve.
Child: “Mommy, mommy! That man just disappeared!”
The mom looks where the child is pointing and only sees Lucia.
Mom: “That’s not a man. She just wearing armor.”
The mom thinks this might be a teachable moment, so she comes over so the kid can ask about Lucia’s armor. Lucia would like to be left alone, so in addition to explaining the parts of her armor, she talks about dangerous quests and violent battles. The mother looks uncomfortable. Maybe the child shouldn’t be hearing this.
Gleador flies into the open kitchen window. A servant comes in through the door to the dining room carrying three plates full of food. He grumbles that the guests left suddenly and no one told him until he had already made extra breakfast. Gleador wants to get into the dining room, but the door is shut. A young man in expensive clothing pops his head in the door to complain about something trivial: his pancake ripped or something. Gleador buzzes past him to get into the dining room. The young man squeals and flails ineffectually as Gleador passes. Gleador sees a table set for five. There’s an old woman at the head of the table, the young man yelling for help and looking something to swat him, and the three absent guests. Gleador leaves the dining room by another way and finds a way out of the house. The young man gets braver once the scary insect is gone and starts bragging to his mother about how he drove the awful creature away.
Gleador flies back to Lucia, who is still telling scary stories to the curious child. Gleador flies behind the mother & child to transform back unnoticed, but they turn to leave just as he does so! Lucia claims that Gleador can turn invisible. The mother hurries her child away from these strange, dangerous adventurers.
Our heroes watch her go and see a pole with a little flag on it coming through the crowd towards them. As it approaches, they see the halfing that is carrying the pole. He uses the flag so people know that he’s there. He’s the Sheriff of this town, named Pepe. He heard that Lucia drove off the strange beast last night. Because of the attack, Pepe’s instituted a curfew tonight, and he’s collecting able-bodied deputies to search for the creature. Pepe’s working hard to ensure the safety of everyone at the fair! Since Lucia has fought the beast already, and her friend can apparently turn invisible, he asks them both to meet him at town hall at sundown and join the deputies. They agree.
Lucia wants more information about the house. For all she knows, this rich old lady is the ringleader of a band of thieves! She waits for the servant to leave the house, looking for a chance to talk with him. About an hour later, he leaves through the back door with a basket under his arm, heading for the market. Lucia follows and tries to bump into him. She underestimates her strength and sends the servant stumbling and knocks his basket to the ground. He recovers and notices his coin purse is gone! Oh, it fell under the basket. Everything is fine. Gleador approaches, complains about Lucia’s clumsiness, and offers to share some pipe-leaf with the servant. He happily agrees.
His name is William and he serves Lady Poirot and her son Master Thierry. Three guests (matching the descriptions of the pickpocket and the two ruffians) came in yesterday on a metal cart pulled by a pony. They kept to themselves. He brought in their things and served them some food, then they went out. When he got up today and made breakfast, the guests had already left, and no one told him. Very frustrating! Our heroes commiserate with William and send him on his way.
Our heroes wonder how to gather more information. They could have the stray dogs follow the scent on Opal’s cloak, or investigate the strange cart. They return to the Poirot house. There’s a shed divided into three stalls in the back yard. There’s a horse in one stall. The guests’ pony and the cart were probably stored in the other stalls. Lucia promises to cure the dogs’ fleas if they sniff out Opal’s scent. The scent leads to the stalls, but the horse won’t let the dogs approach. Gleador goes to speak to the horse and asks about the pony. The horse says that the pony and three humanoids got into the cart and the cart left. The pony was inside the cart, not pulling it! Weirdest thing! Some of the humanoids may have been dwarves or juvenile humans. The horse has trouble telling the difference. Gleador thanks the horse for its help and gives it the corn on the cob with mayo they bought earlier. Cart tracks indicate that the self-propelled cart left town going south.
Lucia lays hands on the dogs to cure their fleas as promised, but transfers the fleas to herself instead! How embarrassing and annoying. How can she get rid of them? The bath house won’t admit someone with fleas, and the river is miles away. Samantha the witch knows potions and remedies. Maybe she can help. They return to The Brace of Pigs where they last saw her. Lucia has to wait outside while Gleador goes in to inquire. Samantha’s probably in the market, but so is everyone else. They don’t find her, but they do find a shop selling anti-flea oil. The shop-keeper wants 3 bundles of Gleador’s pipe-leaf for the flea oil, but Gleador talks him down to two bundles, and they share some now.
They go into the shop-keepers tent. Lucia removes her armor and covers herself in the flea oil. The shop-keeper gives Gleador the pipe and tries to light it for him. The flint sends sparks toward Lucia, who is covered in flammable oil! She dodges, but drops the vial of oil, which catches fire . . . on the grass . . . inside the cloth tent . . . in the middle of the crowded market! Lucia backs away from the flames and tosses a canteen to Gleador. Gleador tries to remember if it’s OK to pour water on an oil fire. It seems good to him, but he’s wrong! He pours the water on the water and it splatters out further, setting one side of the tent on fire and sending flames towards a cabinet full of other potions! Lucia tosses Gleador a container of milk. Maybe that will work. Gleador realizes that milk is mostly water and will have the same effect, so he doesn’t pour it out. The shop-keeper drags his cabinet out of the tent and flees, yelling about the fire. Now that they are alone, Gleador is free to transform into an earth elemental and smother the fire, but he fails and belly-flops onto the fire as a normal, flammable Elf! He already stopped and dropped, so he rolls to put the fire out. He’s not on fire anymore, and neither is the grass. The tent still burning. Lucia throws over a rug, which Gleador uses to smother most of the fire. The remaining fire on the tent is just burning fabric, not oil, so Gleador douses it with the milk. The market is saved! Our heroes breathe a sigh of relief before the bucket brigade arrives and soaks them & everything in the tent!
Lucia goes to the bath house to wash off the flea oil. It did work. She’s cured of fleas. Gleador goes back to the Glazers’ house to rest and level up.