Editing 12/03/2023 -- Operation Holy Wildfire

* We enter into Zetian’s cabin, he’s waiting inside – they’re building a house of cards, a scale model of Tpres, right down to the houses on the street. They say they detected the magical signature of a great Narabor tree, and to act quickly. 
* He reaches into the central castle of Tpres and pulls out a very thick tome, along with a sealed alchemist’s flask with a dark black liquid. They explain the tome is a book of incantations, and that we need to add milk to the potion they brewed, dump it on the tree, and read from pg. 32. Zetian then asks Bloom what he was just saying, and Bloom repeats it.
* He gets a copper coin from Talisman, and does a little disappearing trick with it. He tries to get Talisman to pull it from his ear, but Talisman corrects him on his name (since Zetian called him Talis), and Zetian decides they’re doing this the hard way. Talisman has a significantly harder time pulling the coin from his ear, and grabs something squishy and wet – he begins to pull the head of a cow from his ear.
* Talisman is stubborn and tries to pull it out on his own, but fails his physical check and ends up weirdly conjoined with the cow. Damon helps him pull it the rest of the way out, and the cow burps out the coin. Zetian introduces the cow as Beelzemoo, and says we will escort her, and that the milk must be fresh for the ritual. Damon shapeshifts to see if the cow startles, but it is wholly uninterested. Zetian tells us to have fun, and dismisses us.
* Damon and Thomas converse at the watchtower, and talk about Damon’s plans to research the Black Horn. Thomas also reveals that he thinks his son is still alive (or at least, not dead). Damon says he’ll help Thomas find his sons, and Thomas says he’ll help Damon find his people. Talisman and Bloom also hang out at the watchtower, but at the base, since Talisman worries about the cow making it back down the stairs. Talisman asks Bloom about the ‘two lives’ again, saying Bloom might need help if something in his situation goes wrong, but Bloom replies that if anything goes wrong in his situation, none of them would be able to do anything about it. They drop the topic, and watch Beelzemoo go to town on the grass.
** Damon also tries to visit Claudia, and finds her coffin, but is scared of her lashing out at him for disturbing her, so he leaves her alone.
* We have a day of travel to reach the tree, and all of us lose 10sp trying to wrangle the cow, because she is not an agreeable traveler. Varos expresses concern that Zetian is just pranking us, but Bloom asserts that he has faith that Zetian knows more than we do.
* Eventually, we see a massive blue tree, towering over the others around, leaves spinning down from it. There’s a small ring of yellow posts 200ft from the tree’s base, the tree seems to have near its posts no less than a dozen dead Blossomed zombies. Damon sniffs the air, and smells something freshly dead by a few days, closer to the tree. He tries to approach, and loses a health block as the posts surge to life (though he doesn’t take an injury from it).
* Because Damon is in his hybrid form, he immediately attacks Talis – Talis fails at casting a spell to defend himself, and Thomas wrestles Damon to the ground until the bloodlust passes. Damon is aware that he got zapped because he has points of corruption, and relays this to the party. Only Bloom and Varos have no corruption, so Varos gets elected to go up and perform the ritual.
* Varos finds the corpse of a dead elf leaning against the tree, in clerical vestments similar to Talis’s, with a spear in their hands. He milks the cow into the potion and completes the ritual, reading out the incantation, “I am so glad we have brown cows, otherwise there wouldn’t be any chocolate milk.” The potion begins to glow, spreading through the base of the tree, and the purifying effect spreads outward, with the trees around us taking on brighter colors, and the air itself becoming more crisp.
* Varos also picks some fruit after some urging by the party, and gets +1 recovery worth. Bloom considers helping, and sticks his leg past the post, but immediately feels like his leg is on fire, so he pulls back. Varos relays with a little needling that he saw a body over there, and reluctantly goes back to look at it – he reports that the body’s lapel has a symbol on it, an X with something like an S through it.
**
* We decide to travel back after, and Talisman, Thomas, and Bloom enter Zetian’s cabin to find her in a meeting with Cordell and Kynaston. We tell them the ritual was a success, but they seem disappointed, after asking if we found anything and only receiving the report that we found fruit and a corpse.
** Talisman asks Zetian what honorifics they use, and they say they’re ''the'' Zetian, before then saying we can call them Sir, Madam, your Highness, or your Lowness – they don’t really give a shit, as long as it’s not derogatory. Talisman asks if your Lowness isn’t derogatory, because of the association with low magic, and they go back and forth a bit about low magic, being an elf and seen as related to Sin, etc. 
* Eventually, Kynaston reminds Zetian they’re in the middle of an important meeting, and we get dismissed. The session ends here.