Episode 2: The Feast of the Swallowtails

When we last left this group of adventurers they had made it to Sandpoint in time for a festival.

<cut-scene>

This room is dark, stone walls, ceremonial with a strange alter with an empty basin. A Quasit, a small demon, passes through this room flying nonchalantly. It comes across as almost bored or perhaps mindlessly.

Just as the Quasit leaves, a bright reddish glow flares up behind and causing a faint shadow before it. The Quasit stops in its tracks/hovers with a look of surprise and confusion on its face as it looks down at the shadow cast before it.

Turning to look in the basin, it is now filled with a strange substance somewhere between a liquid and a gas, bubbling and emitting a dark light. Slowly the Quasit approaches all the way to the rim of the basin, cautiously looking over the top. The Quasit slowly starts smiling.

<end cut-scene>

It is the day of the Swallowtail Festival here in Sandpoint. The closer we get to the temple the more crowded we get. There's a festive air to the gathering, with food and game vendors setting up in the courtyard and down the roads leading to the courtyard. Off in the alleys between buildings there's a small figure hiding and watching the crowds.

Among the vendors there's an old, scholarly, halfling with rimmed glasses deep in a book. He has a stand full of books titled "The Late Unpleasentness" by Lem Nimblefoot. There's a gaunt robed man with intense eyes trying to cinvince passers-by that they definitely need to own a zippo stick and a rave stick. There's food everywhere and the scents fill the air.

Suddenly there's crash of a soup pot hitting the ground while a halfling lady lets out an exasperated cry. "Oh Bethana!" cries a young Xian woman as she rushes over to help her clean up the mess. Bucky, who I swear is part squirrel, rushes over to the mess to help pick up some of the miscellaneous food that hit the ground, handing it to Bethana. Bethana is very surprised and a bit scared, but takes the food reluctantly. The Xian woman, Ameiko, thanks Bucky and comments that she doesn't usually see many of his kind around here.

Then the town crier comes through shouting "Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Gather In! Presenting the Mayor of Sandpoint, Kendra Deverin!"

As the crowd gathers in, Ashryn feels a tiny hand patting hers, looks down to see Bucky "Up please?" As she bends down to put Bucky on her left shoulder, Fallos does the same. So he wound up on her right shoulder. They could see what was going on. So we definitely stand out now, full armor and helm with a goblin on one shoulder and a halfling on the other. Bucky leans over and goes "What's a mayor?"

The mayor gave her welcoming speech, typical politician speaking and joking with the locals, but did point out that there will be lunch on the vendors of Sandpoint just remember to vote for best dish by 3:30pm. Bucky leans over and asks "Does that mean free food?!"

She then turned the podium over to Sheriff. Ashryn kind of snorts and then goes "What's a sheriff?" to Bucky. The sheriff reminds everyone to stay safe while enjoying the festival, reminding everyone of a previous incident involving halflings and fire. He then holds a moment of silence for the previous cleric of the previous temple that burned down. Then the Sheriff introduced the proprietor of the local theater. He makes references to something called "The Late Unpleasantness" but how welcome the sight of the new temple is. He also promoted the latest play at his establishment, then introduced the new cleric of the new temple.

The new cleric welcomes everyone to this festive and spiritual occasion, invites everyone to see the new temple, and officially opens the festival. So the crowds disperse to visit vendors and play festival games. Over at the "toss the balls in the bottle" game we see an Elf, who does remarkably well and actually manages to get all three balls into bottles. He wins a large stuffed goblin of all things.

As we're walking along ... Wazboot and Ashryn mostly staying together, the smaller pair sometimes staying with them sometimes running off to see something shiny and interesting. Then an enterprising vendor points at Ashryn going "You, you look strong! Come, play tug-o-war!" She shrugged, took off her helm and walked up to him and goes "Only if you explain your game to me." He looks a bit taken aback and goes yes, yes of course and then explains tug-o-war to her and she nods then goes "When does the war and blood come in to play?" This also set him back a little and he assured everyone listening there was no blood involved.

So he pits Ashryn against 5 pre-teen boys, all chuffed and talking smack. At the sound of the whistle she proceeds to pull them a solid 5' in one tug, then another 5' in the second pulling them solidly across the line. She still doesn't understand the purpose of the game, and the teen boys scurried off. Wazboot is looking around basically, looking for socially aloof individuals, but only finding the town grump.

At noon the cleric returns with some acolytes and has several carts wheeled into the square. He proceeds to tell the story of Desna, one of the deities, how she fell from the sky and was nursed back to health by a child. As a reward for her service, Desna turned the child into an immortal butterfly ... and with that they uncovered the carts releasing swarms of swallowtail butterflies. Kids of all ages tried catching the butterflies, Bucky managed to catch one without killing it. As he was contemplating whether it would make a good ingredient, Wazboot snaps out "Do NOT kill that butterfly!" So realizing it wasn't a good ingredient, Bucky released the butterfly unharmed.

The food vendor competition/free lunch begins and everyone enjoys some good food. The small figure that's been hiding in the alleyways just observing everything did sneak over and acquire some of the food as well, though waiting to eat till it returned to the safety of the alleys.

But eventually Ameiko Kajitsu was announced the winner of the food competition with her crab stew. Wazboot remembered that was the name of the person we were supposed to find so the four adventurers went to find her. Wazboot mentioned to Ameiko that we had a mutual friend, Areal, which Ameiko didn't remember at first. Then we mentioned Cheliax and Ameiko remembered. She isn't a democratic scholar, just an inn-keep that caters to adventures, but she was willing to meet and chat this evening after festivities.

The cleric then gets back on the stage, clears his throat, took out a stone and struck it. It made a loud clap, setting Ashryn's nerves on edge. At that moment though we also heard a scream, followed by a a dog yelping. We also see goblin ears bouncing around followed by other screams and the crowd starts to panic.

And you guessed it, that was the end of this session. More in 2 weeks (this game runs every other week).