Chapter 1, Pretentious 3: The Festival of the Sacred Elk

[Admin]

For Those Who Came In Late!

You haven't missed an awful lot. A standoffish tengu with a katana met a possibly drunk and definitely ebullient kitsune with a gun in a ditch, and "helped her out" in the sense of standing and watching while she pulled herself out of the ditch. The tengu returned a ball to a group of adorable elf children, and subsequently the tengu and the kitsune were slowly helped to the town by an elf guard. At the gate, they ended up alongside a troupe of two elf sisters, their horse, and their freaky human-sized owl, who had a kind of vaudeville double-act going on, as well as a ratfolk with two cats and the kitsune's semi-stolen semi-borrowed donkey. Also cart. Donkey cart.

The actual recitation of events can be provided on request.

[Admin]

The guardsman at first seems a little overwhelmed by his sudden surfeit of guests, but quickly recovers his pose and his ability to ignore Vlie's decision to not perform service for the town. A good salesman, after all, exhaustively pushes what he wants to sell on his customer until his customer gets angry and punches him.

The guard sets aside his previous group for a moment, then turns to the newcomers - the reserved tengu and not-at-all-reserved kitsune - and offers them the standard greeting, "Leaf blessings for the Festival in the name of Everindul and Her guardian, the Sacred Elk." After that, he's talking to the entire group, all at once. "We've found a lot of visitors to Irrelonde, especially for the festival, are venturers, mercenaries, fortune-hunters, and troubleshooters, and during the Festival we do have a great many problems that need solving. So we offer the opportunity to perform some light work in keeping the area safe on behalf of the town and its guard in exchange for much cheaper room and board, preferential treatment, and some local favours. It's proven very popular," he finishes, that last sentence perhaps spoken directly to Vlie, although the guard does retain plausible deniability. "If you'd like to participate, I can take your names down and put you in contact with the people in charge. Otherwise..." He gestures to the town square. "Welcome to Irrelonde."

[Admin]

Mechanics: Ugh, that's what I'd meant to put at the end there!

If you think you might know something about Irrelonde or the Festival, you can make any of the following skill checks. (If I've given you a character sheet, you should have the bonus listed on your sheet: roll 1d20 and add that bonus.)

To know about Everindul, roll Knowledge (religion). You can make this check untrained.
To know about the Sacred Elk, roll Knowledge (religion). You can only make this check if Knowledge (religion) is one of your trained skills.
To know about the Festival, roll Knowledge (local). You can only make this check if Knowledge (local) is one of your trained skills.
To know about the history of Irrelonde, roll Knowledge (history). You can make this check untrained.

[Flidget Jerome]

Vlie attempted to wrack their mind for anything they knew about Irrelonde and their customs but only drew a vague thought that they expected it to be muddier and more woad-covered (Roll(1d20)+1: 5).

Perhaps they were distracted by the sudden appearance of Cly of the Steel Liver. They squeak a polite and reasonably cheerful good-morning towards her, hoping that she's still drunk enough and or hungover enough or just herself enough that she isn't going to mind or even possibly notice she'd been abandoned in a ditch a few miles back.

[edit]

A glance back at Liberty and Equality confirms that they remain fluffy and adorable and Vlie is reassured of their being adequate distractions. Mind more at ease, the recent history of Irrelonde is correctly recalled (Roll(1d20)+Kadrin reminding me Vlie's bonus is actually 7: 11).

[Admin]

There's two major historical events to remember about Irrelonde, and Vlie - and anyone else who rolls a 10 or higher on their Knowledge (history) check - remembers both of them.

While "founded" as a collection of farmhouses, taking advantage of the nearby sea air, the solid soil, and the ability to glean from the bountiful northern forests, Irrelonde became the town it is today due to an influx of freed slaves. The nearby Uzun empire held racialised chattel slavery of fey-blooded humanoids from its founding to approximately 70 years ago, and liberators would run slaves over the border to remain in Irrelonde, then a border town in the nearby kingdoms of Carragan. A large proportion of Irrelonde's population is either freed Uzunian slaves or descended from slaves.

Irrelonde is now semi-independent, having broken from Carragan alongside the merchant city Emmerport thirty years ago. After a particularly bloody border skirmish in a larger war during which Emmerport changed hands three times in one week, Emmerport's leading guildmasters decided that being part of an embittered nation was for the birds (no offence to Sayahi) and declared independence and neutrality. Irrelonde followed largely due to proximity, and is now one of a few towns under Emmerport's penumbra.

[twigcollins]

Cly feels as if, high in the distance, someone accidentally closed something called a 'browser window' and lost a very clever and charming post complimenting Vlie and their cats on their very fine tails and the effort they must have went through to keep them untrodden and untrammeled, along with a great deal of general musing and palaver.

To the point, Cly would like to offer up services for the festival, as working is usually the best way to get the real feel of a place. Previews of juggling, singing, bawdy limericks and giving small children a turn on the 'kitsune rodeo' are all available. The donkey is an excellent character reference.

[Admin]

(I have temporary permission from Siobhan to run Foxglove for her.)

"Helping people keep their land safe is what we do!" says one of the elves, excitedly. It's the short-haired one, for the record. She then speaks Elven for quite an impressive rant that neither Cly nor Vlie understand. To Sayahi, it seems like some particularly old part-religious part-martial poetry. Speedwell winds down when she looks around herself and pinkens in the way that suggests she's just realised she's gone on too long. Foxglove rolls her eyes at her sister's indulgence - and so does Laurifolia, in a prime case of animals growing to look like their masters - but nods once, agreeing to it.

"So, that's you, Cly," the guard says, showing no sympathy for Cly's terrible loss when earlier catastrophe felled Buurau za Window in its prime and took some wonderful actions with it, "and you, Speedwell, and you, Foxglove, signed up to work with us. Yes? And, as to you two...?" He gestures his clipboard towards Sayahi and Vlie, as if Vlie hasn't already said that they'd rather not thank you very much.

[Flidget Jerome]

Vlie represses a sigh. The economic resource of pawning an entire donkey cart now denied to them, they and the cats are now forced to have to work for a living. Or, well, work for a holiday. Either way, this is a tragic outcome.

They give a short, polite nod to the guard and then hop to the back of the cart to distribute ear-scritches and apologies.

[soranokumo]

Sayahi still feels a little odd standing here with all of the people, and hoping that they aren't really paying THAT much attention to her, but she nods to the guard as well. She spent a lot of coin to get this far, and she only had so many things to pawn off to start with. Not having any of those things left, that meant that it's not really much of a choice after all.

[Admin]

Excellent, the guard thinks to himself. He has successfully sold the adventurer-work bundle to the person who didn't want the adventurer work bundle. Full points. A promotion and a raise in the future, no doubt. "Well, then," he says to his gathered sales targets. "Not much to set up right at the moment, but Ranger Aelora will have something for you by tomorrow afternoon. You can come to her in the guard tower any time after noon, or she'll come out to you. For now, thank you for your contribution and welcome to Irrelonde." He waves his hand towards the town square.

(EXPERIMENTAL DUAL TIME MECHANIC!

In tabletop games it can be hard to get intraparty character development going because you need to get to the next place and fight the giant ants. But we have theoretically unlimited time and multiple focus points. So I'm going to try a new thing!

There will be a thread for the period between "now" and "tomorrow afternoon" HERE that will be mostly for character development, unless someone decides to pick a fight. I'm assuming nothing too drastic will happen in between that time and the action time.

And there will be a thread for "tomorrow afternoon" HERE, which will be for actually going out and adventuring.

And you can post in them both simultaneously! Just try to keep in mind that any revelation in the social thread will presumably have happened before the adventure thread, so you might suddenly have your character realise that Sayahi is the Princess of Jupiter and Foxglove is made of chocolate.)

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