Controlled Burn

Historian: Jamie. Date: 05/12/2025

Once upon a time…

• We pick up on the 19th of Lionnere with snow falling from the sky all around. It’s not sticking, but it’s close to it. The ground is colder than it should be for the summertime.
• Gwyn checks on Alphie since it’s snowing. They’re encased in a layer of ice that is beginning to spread out from the tent as well.
• Gwyn chips away some ice and tries to move me closer to the fire. Gwyn shouts to the others urgently, calling them over to help “now”
• The party rushes over. Now, Alphie is “like a dethawed fish”
• Alphie slowly wakes up. Gwyn asks if they can hear her, and they nod. Gwyn finds the necklace that used to keep them warm, and tries to fix it as best she can using her tools. But, when she does this…
  • Gwyn hears a strange sound. Then, right in the center of her vision, a message pops up that she’s never seen before:

• The update is called “accelerated artificing” and all Gwyn can figure out is that it will help her with artificing. She accepts the update.
  • With the AA update…
    • Adds additional successes on an artificing check equal to power score + 1 once per session.
    • Possibly also other weird things but that’s all we heard now.

• Gwyn returns to trying to fix the necklace.
  • We learn that it’s, in essence, a heat sink. It traps heat from the environment and then disperses it when activated. Any improvements that could be made would be at Gwyn’s prerogative.
  • Gwyn holds off on repairing for just a few moments while she thinks and debates a way to improve it.
• Anja gathers as much fabric as possible to cover Alphie. Jericho does what he did last time - salt, more fire.
• Astranna tries to warm Alphie as best she can. Colin rules this as, essentially, Astranna is using a lot of her free time, downtime, a ton of effort to keep Alphie warmer. This decreases Alphie’s cold by 1.
• Gwyn asks about using Astranna’s magic, but this doesn’t really help us because Astranna’s magic is more of a flash, less of a sustained foundation. We then discuss using Jericho’s gun to create an item that provides sustained flashes of intense heat.
• Jericho debates internally for a few moments, then hands over his gun. Gwyn harvests the parts and attempts to use the sparkstone and other gemstones to create the same kind of funnel that exists in the gun.
  • Gwyn’s artificing check comes out to 6 successes - 3, plus her AA update.
    • This results in Gwyn leveling-up the item (called Abhida’s Necklace) from a level 0 to a level 2. This allows Alphie to reduce their cold by its level each session. Alphie is allowed to immediately put this into effect, reducing their cold by 2 more.
• Jericho boils a pot of water and Alphie tries to drink it. But it burns her a bit, then it turns to ice shortly afterwards.
• We debate different ways to go. We talk about building a sauna, but the steam could freeze and do the Opposite of what we want. We talk about another forest fire, but we aren’t in a forest. We talk about going to the Queen, but it’s a very long journey. There’s only one volcano that we can see on the map. We also discuss boiling a lake and having Alphie stand nearby, and harvesting the fish that we accidentally kill.
• We do decide to do the lake strat. Gwyn carries Alphie to one recommended by Newton, burritoed in blankets. We learn it has really great bass and wackity turtles :(
• Astranna tries to boil the water. It will take some time, and a LOT of effort, but she does try.
  • She is instructed to make a damage roll, and gets 4 pts of damage (one success). Colin then asks how much energy and for how long she’s putting into this. Caleb says that Astranna is putting in as much energy as she physically can. More focus on trying to get it To a boiling point than sustaining it there. As for a time cap, she doesn’t have one in mind.
    • After two hours, she’s visibly sweating. After four hours, she looks like she’s run a marathon - stamina at zero, arms shaking, etc. Gwyn stops Astranna, and urges her to focus on her own health.
• Anja suggests eating spicy foods. We decide that’s due to poison, not actual heat. We discuss the clerics in Low Falutin, but that is too far away. We discuss another burn, and Gwyn points out that if Alphie draws in the flames, they might not have to worry about a larger fire beginning to spread uncontrollably.
• Jericho casts Augury. “What is the best way to warm up Alphie while causing the least amount of harm to ourselves or others?” He does not get a vision back.
• Alphie absorbs the heat from the lake, and her cold is reduced by 2. Astranna flops onto the ground, incredibly winded. We urge her to rest.
• We learn more about the mechanics of the curse. We learn it relies heavily on potential energy, rather than immediate heat. Something larger has more potential, more sustained heat energy, and is significantly better. Trees, coal, are all evry good for this. Small sparks of magic, grass fires, etc are not very good for this.
• Jericho shoots down a tree which is badass. He creates, essentially, a bonfire and describes VERY very well a fantastic strategy to creating this. He also makes sure to dig/pull out a circle of grass around it in case the fire spreads, it shouldn’t spread too far. He then does the same thing with the second tree.
  • Once both logs have caught and are actively burning, Jericho brings Alphie to the fire. She attempts to absorb the heat, and is asked to roll a d100. They roll a 95. They are able to absorb all of the heat in the most efficient way possible, and none of the fire spreads.
• We spend the rest of the day on lumberjack duty. We take down pretty much all of the trees in a 10-mile radius. It absolutely exhausts the rest of the party, but Alphie’s cold is reduced to zero, and they regain one health block.
• Heartfelt thanks and celebrations are had. Alphie and Astranna hug, Jericho and Alphie smoke together. We then move onto downtime.
• Gwyn attempts to run diagnostics on herself, and Jericho tries to observe any more malfunctions. He makes a physical check, and notices some odd things. He sees a flash of yellow in her eye, and she pauses oddly in the middle of tasks sometimes. Once Jericho is sure that she isn’t aware of these things, he goes up to her and informs her.
  • Gwyn asks if there’s anything he can see right now, but he doesn’t see anything. She then asks him to use the notebook to see what’s wrong with her. Jericho says he’s never used it for that before, and he’s scared to use the notebook again after what happened last time, but he will if she wants to. Gwyn insists. She’s scared. She needs help, and she’s doesn’t know who can help her.
  • Jericho agrees. He pulls out the notebook, and writes Gwyn’s name. Nothing is displayed back. He tries to write something innocuous, like height. Still nothing comes up.
  • Gwyn tells Jericho to try “Olwyn”. He’s worried that it will pull up someone else, not Gwyn. But Gwyn says, worst case scenario, then we’ll know something about Olwyn Annwn. He writes it.
    • Deceased. Occupation: Artificer.
  • He then tries to do “II” at the end.
    • It asks if he means Olwyn Annwn.
  • Jericho then has an idea. He asks if Gwyn looks like Olwyn, and she says she does. Almost exactly.
  • He then writes date of birth, and it comes back with 744 A.R. As a reminder, it’s 777 A.R. right now. This is not Gwyn’s birthday. Jericho shuts the notebook, and calls it a jerk.
  • Gwyn continues to express her nervousness and fear. She tells Jericho about the update, and he is immediately alarmed. He asks Gwyn to elaborate, and she tries, but she can’t. Jericho continues to be alarmed and confused. Gwyn mourns the fact that she can’t go to her mom about these fears and malfunctions and updates and fuckery, because Morgen is trying to kill us, or do something, or… something. She doesn’t know.
  • Dalton has another idea, but isn’t sure if Jericho knows what an update is well enough to ask it. Colin says that, for the sake of argument, he would, since it’s the age of innovation and a lot of things are being updated.
    • Jericho then asks if an update means that Morgen knows where Gwyn is, and knew that she needed help - or if it’s internal to Gwyn. Gwyn doesn’t know. Anna asks if Gwyn’s eyes could be cameras or something, but Colin says Gwyn wouldn’t know.
    • Gwyn says she doesn’t know, and she says that she apparently doesn’t know a lot about her mother. She apologizes, but Jericho brushes off the apology. Gwyn says that she feels like we need to find another artificer. Jericho reminds her that Sizzle came from Sailor’s Nook, and he had some advanced stuff. Maybe we can find help there.
  • Gwyn promises to fix Jericho’s gun. He says it was a memento, and we learn it’s from his partner when they opened up a detective agency. She was tough, a detective. Easy to talk to for him, but she didn’t like to talk to other people much. Her name was Lavinia (sp?). It turns out that they are ex-partners now, “in more ways than one”. Things in their hometown got rough, she wanted to leave, and Jericho wanted to stay. They both ended up doing exactly that. That happened a while ago. She taught him a lot, and he still misses her sometimes.
    • Gwyn makes a joke that she’s missing out on the Skybound Lands, and Jericho says that she probably would have taken it better than he did, at first.
    • Gwyn also thanks Jericho for giving up his gun, and he says that a person is worth more than a gun. It was hard, but he thinks it was worth it. And it would be not ideal to go around in this strange world with fewer people than they have already.
• Astranna and Alphie pass t f out, with Alphie praying to the Gibbit first, describing the events of the day. Anja folds up the cloth again, with Maple getting in the way.
  • Maple complains about the coldness of the cloth. But Anja brushes her off. Maple gets in the way all night.
• The next morning, Alphie thanks the group again. She’s healed fully now, for the first time in literally seven sessions/multiple weeks in game. She talks a bit about her history with the illness, citing her initial coping strategy of warm baths and hot hearths. And a LOT of warm baths. But it wasn’t always as bad as it is now. There wasn’t a real inciting event to make it as bad as it is now, mostly a steady decrease in the skybound lands.
• We learn that, as long as a Medusa can get a look at YOU, they can turn you to stone. They have a harder outer body of scales. But that’s about all that Jericho knows.
• Anna asks if Gwyn can take out one of her eyes, without destroying it. Colin says maybe, if she’s taking a night to do it. Anna declines, but says she will keep it in mind for the future.
• Gwyn does occasionally ask Jericho if there’s anything weird and wrong still. Jericho does keep an eye on her, and he’s asked to roll 2d6. He notices a weird iridescence in her eyes, like flecks of color that weren’t there before. She also seems to be more toned, as though she were working out. And all of her movements just seem much more fluid. She has this refined sense of body control at all times.
  • Jericho tells her about this, and she remains confused. He asks if she even has musculature that can develop, and Gwyn says no, not to her knowledge. He tells her that it looks like she does.
    • Jericho asks to throw out a theory to her. He asks if Gwyn thinks it has anything to do with what her mom is up to. Gwyn agrees that she’s thought of it, but we don’t know what her mom is doing.
  • Gwyn checks the place she repaired in her chest. Colin says, about that…
    • There’s no visible patch job anymore. It’s fixed.
  • Gwyn, panicked, nicks herself on her sword to see if there’s blood. With 8 damage, she’s unable to get through her flesh. However, as she’s trying to get through the flesh, a new update comes through!
    • This one is to increase her damage.
  • She tells Jericho that she got the option for an update, and he can’t see anything visibly different with her. He calls for the rest of the group.
  • Gwyn tells us about the updates. She’s nervous about accepting the updates.
    • Jericho then fills in the rest of the group about the issues noted above.
    • Anja tells Gwyn not to take the updates, and says she suspected Morgen might be related to the Scrimbimbolo. We all agree.
    • Anja asks if Gwyn has patch notes, but we’re not sure how to access them if she even does. We also learn that the notebook won’t tell us anything about Gwyn.
  • Gwyn draws the symbol she sees on the update box (pictured above) and none of us know what it is - EXCEPT Henrietta. She asks us to put it away because it’s a bad thing. It means power, used by powerful people. It’s bad because “it will make people more powerful than you!” We begin to bombard Henrietta with questions, before she goes “Oh look, a bug!” and pecks at it.
    • We try to ask her more, but she doesn’t give us anything helpful, because she is a chicken.
  • We ask Astranna why her chicken knows that, and Astranna says she doesn’t know much about where Henrietta came from. She just kind of appeared ten years ago. Alphie throws up a red flag and is like yo, chickens only live 3-5 years. Are you sure that’s a chicken?
  • Astranna kind of brushes it off and is like, yeah, she outlived the rest of the chickens. But even if she’s not a chicken, maybe she’s just something sent by the family ancestors to keep Astranna safe.
• Gwyn ignores the update.
• Alphie pushes the thing about family ancestors, and Astranna describes the shrine her mother keeps to the ancestors after she moved to the Titanic Ring from Arkhet.
• Gwyn tries to see if she can feel a heartbeat, and she thankfully cannot.
• Alphie summons Inora around a campfire, and they hang out. We make jokes about using a telephone to convince the medusa to leave, then agree to discuss our strategy before entering into town. We then hang out the rest of the night.
• Next morning, we come across a crossroads with a small otter child waiting there. He says the town is closed. We try to convince him to let us go. He says that another group of tattercoat knights went in there and didn’t come out. We learn that they had really nice coats, and they took all the money the town had. We are pissed that there are possible impersonators extorting money out of the townsfolk of this land.
• Apparently, the Medusa came into the town throwing a fit before locking himself in a tavern and refusing to leave, turning anyone to stone who tried to make him leave.
• We decide we need to approach him peacefully, since the other attempts seemed quite violent. We debate using mirrors, but it’s possible that won’t save us.
• We ask this otter boy to draw a map of the town. He asks us if we have paper, and Jericho passes him some. The otter boy pockets it and draws a map in the dirt. Jericho asks him some clarifying questions, and we learn that there’s a very tall shoe store nearby.
• We learn the otter boy’s name is Clancy, and Alphie gives him a gold piece. He tries to make change, which she refuses. We also learn that the other Tattercoat Knights looked “more normal” than we do.
• We thank Clancy, and decide to move onto the town. It’s not long before we find a street littered with stone statues. And it is here where we end the session.