Miser's Mindset

Historian: Caleb. Date: 03/31/2025

TLDR – The party loots, and gets some fun stuff, including a compass that shows a map of the Skybound Lands with some unknown markings. We argue about what to do with all the gold, and start Newton’s corruption arc. We find out the talking frog used to be a goat, and offer to try to convince the woman who turned him into a frog to reconsider (after we wash some guy’s dog). Gwyn repairs herself, with “help” from Astranna. Anja and Maple have a heart-to-heart. Gwyn begins to malfunction. The people tracking Alphie hone in on us as we head toward Mrs. Penderghast to deliver our report.

Date: 6 Lionnir 715AR-7 Lionnir 715AR?
Shannon gives the recap!
Jericho checks up on everyone – Gwyn and Astranna are both shell-shocked for different reasons, but everyone’s physically fine. Investigating the chest, he finds a heavy suit of deep, ashy grey plate armor; the ultra heavy dusk knight armor. Gwyn dons it.
- It decreases her walking speed by 30 ft, but at the start of combat, she can activate it and gain an additional +5 ab (for 7 total). This also sets the wearer’s speed to 10 ft, and disables the dash action.
There’s also 700gp, a beautiful bronze compass with a sapphire on it and “E.W.” inscribed in it, a beautiful velvet ribbon with a golden shimmer, and a potion that changes from turquoise to orange every few seconds. The ribbon is a ribbon of sharpness – it seems you’d hang it on a weapon. Jericho is determined to take the chest with us, but before that, he starts to yank out the dragon’s teeth. Astranna leaves at this point.
Gwyn asks if Astranna is alright, and Astranna says it’s a lot – she’s never killed anything (beyond like, farm animals) before, and hasn’t had anything try to kill her like that before, either. She feels bad about it, but Gwyn reassures her that she did good; she doesn’t know if what she did was right, but she did save everyone. Astranna offers to help Gwyn fix herself up, and Gwyn agrees, offering to give her lessons later. She decides to sit down and stare into space and not think, and invites Astranna to join her. She does, sitting beside her and idly playing with the hourglass.
Jericho checks on Piero, who’s all icy and cold. Anja starts making him a toga.
Jericho starts fiddling with the compass, and finds that it’s not pointing in a specific cardinal direction – it’s definitely focused on something, but not true anything – they start to follow it, and something begins to materialize. He chooses to allow magic of the compass to expand in front of him, and a visualization of the Skybound Lands appears, with some odd markings on the map.
Maple is caught trying to sneak up on Jericho. She denies any misbehavior. She was just surveying the area.
The party debates on what to do with the gold – some want to distribute it to the town, others want to keep it, but we decide eventually to give a lot of it to Mrs. Penderghast. As we head back to town, we talk about the frog, who we realize is probably the missing merchant we were told about. Jericho casts Augury on the frog, and gets a vision of a frog that’s wrapped a string around the mouth of a pink dog, almost like a bridle bit, and seems to be riding bareback from garbage can to garbage can to get food.
Arriving in town, we drop Newton off with the treasure at the inn, and some very alarmed townsfolk direct us toward the dog and the frog. Jericho approaches and greets him, and the frog sighs, almost spurring the dog on before stopping.
- “You talking to me? Oh, oh joy! I’ve been trying to talk to people all day!”
Jericho tells him we were informed by the children with the paint, and he panicks, asking if they’re close. We tell him they aren’t. He informs us he used to be a mountain goat. He was climbing a mountain and came across a storm, so he went to a nearby house and asked to stay the night. The woman who owned it agreed, and he went and rolled out his sleeping pack, but while he was going to sleep, he saw a loose apple on the floor and ate it. She got pissed at him. The apple wasn’t even that good. She turned him into a frog.
This happened about 3 weeks ago. He tried to hop back home, but right before he got there the kids got him. He introduces himself as Kirval. We offer to take him home, but he’s not sure about the point of going home when he’ll be a frog forever. Astranna volunteers the party to talk to the lady for him.
We check out the dog – his collar says his name is Benny. We tie a lead to him and try to find his owner, and eventually he tugs us to the yard of one house. We knock on the door at a bright and sunny 1 AM, and the boar from earlier opens the door. Jericho asks if he’s missing a dog, and gives Benny back, telling him what the neighborhood kids did. He sighs and grabs an ax, and Alphie panicks and volunteers us to wash his dog.
We get to Kirval’s house. He has 25 spare keys under the doormat. We eventually find the right one. Alphie tries to steal them, but is told to put them back. They’re for various safety deposit boxes, things in his house, a horse stabled at the local stable…
Eventually we get to the inn. Newton is enthralled by the money. We settle in for the night, and Jericho locks himself in his room with the chest. Gwyn thanks Astranna and Alphie for sticking with her, and seems very flustered when Astranna says they’re friends.
With Astranna’s help, Gwyn begins to patch herself up (4 successes). She starts patching over the hole with the scrap, and comes to a point where her vision goes a little fuzzy, like she’s not seeing things correctly. Some lights are too bright, some aren’t bright enough. She tries to keep working, and eventually slots another piece into place. Her whole body momentarily flashes and glows, and there’s a high-pitched whine in the back of her mind, and then her vision starts to return to normal. She looks down, and her body has patched over the hole perfectly well. It took her maybe an hour, and a half. Gwyn tells Astranna she’s a real natural.
Astranna looks to Alphie (who curled up in bed when they noticed they weren’t needed), and clocks that they’ve been noticeably cold since leaving the grave – to the point you can tell where they’ve been from the aura of cold. She lays her extra blanket over them, though they’ve already got several. Astranna and Gwyn get +2 HP.
Gwyn makes some clothing buttons out of scrap while we’re sleeping – a little nice, little fancy. She then goes to “sleep”, and we all get a complete rest.
Anja apologizes to Maple for getting heated at her, and that she can’t give her a steady place to be inside right now – she didn’t think about how stressful this would be for Maple. Maple appears to accept the apology.
Alphie feeds Frank, who just kind of Disappears the food. He declares “SCRIMBIMBELO” and fucks off. Gwyn gives the buttons to Anja, telling her that she was in a mood and that making things helps. Anja very happily accepts them. Gwyn asks for another try at petting Maple, and this time Maple allows it.
- “Was that fun for you?”
- “I am an enigma. You shall never know.”
Gwyn tells Maple she’s a very good girl, and Maple tells her she kills things acceptably.
Gwyn goes to check on Jericho, who has been staring at the money, and sees Newton outside the door, very obviously wanting to go stare at the money again. He says he got some sleep, but is very cagey as to whether or not he went home. Gwyn goes inside to talk to Jericho, and asks if she should move the chest so it’s not stressing him out.
Jericho says he got here with a month’s rent, and he’d like to have… at least two month’s rent…
- “Back home, work’s been… hard… Whoa, Gwyn, are you okay? I can, like, see your brain – okay, it’s back. Like, your eyeball just opened up for half a second.”
Everything feels normal to Gwyn! She thought she fixed everything… she sits on the bed and panics for a minute.
- “What if I don’t know how to fix myself on my own? I’ve never had to do this much repair on myself, not on my own.”
Jericho says that as far as practicality goes, he’s not a mechanic – he doesn’t know how to help. They float the idea of maybe seeing Quasit for help.
Outside, Newton is still waiting. When Jericho asks, he’s again cagey about how much sleep he got. We go downstairs, and Jericho asks Gwyn if she wants to talk to the others or keep it private. She says we all should know, and immediately blurts it out when they get to the table.
- “I think I might be malfunctioning.”
They relay the situation, and the party agrees to tell her if they notice anything – Astranna also asks her to tell them if she feels anything is wrong. With that, the party decides to head to Mrs. Penderghast to update her on the pie. It’s a beautiful, wonderful day in the Skybound Lands as we walk through Low Falutin.
We begin to zoom out, looking through the vision of someone who’s farther away, on a nearby rooftop, watching the party walk. They pull out a stone and speak into it.
- “I have found the Tattercoat Knights. Alphecca is with them. Releasing Protocols 10 through 3. I shall begin the extraction process. Promptly.”
And it is here where we will end the session for today! Everyone gains +3 HP.