Downtime Montage (3rd of First Stores, Rose: 47 - 5th of Second Stores, Rose: 47)

Downtime and Training Montage

(Queue A-Team Music Soundtrack)

Arrival in Sphant

• The party is greeted by the massive colossus' of Isthmeira, Gaia, Dhyane, and Ohnuava.
  
• The Sea Wyvern docks in the harbor of Sphant.
  
• Slip fees are 5 Crowns/Day.
  
• Upon arriving, that evening, on the 3rd of First Stores, the party gathers on the deck of the Sea Wyvern, each of them lights candles and stare into the stars. Llew strung up his lute. Tolman made a comforting tea and baked sweets. Elan passed around goodberries and sat with her dog - now fully grown. The dwarves hummed old dwarven durge songs (which sound a lot like drinking songs only performed less sober and with less enthusiasm - only Vongur remembered all of the words). Siegride refused to give last rites but, instead, they each told stories of Ma'yah and how they remembered her, with pictures of fondness and kindness. That said, they then all mutually agreed to throw the weird body part stuff (like the preserved, ghoulish, gouged-out basilisk eyeballs) overboard.
  
• Rumors abound that the black ships are prowling the Shattered Isles, are willfully attacking small Abbeys and Shyn's, and killing defenseless Sisters and citizens. The black ships are from a far away foreign land. The Queen - otherwise preoccupied with Rhackdalia - can't spare the time or attention to Sphant, and this angers the populous. It makes them fearful. The Midnight Sanctuaries have armed themselves and begun patrolling their areas of Sphant, giving rise to the fear of senseless violence among the religious factions.
  
• There are also rumors that a young Sister of Isthmeira, accompanied by a militia of Dwarves (who've traveled far from their home in the Kingdoms to once again save humans, how poetic!), having discovered atrocities committed against Sunrock Abbey, leads the charge in repelling these invaders. They say the young Sister was even spotted in Shyn-Bhokerdown feeding the hungry and tending to the sick and diseased. Among monarchy loyalists, they say she and her Dwarven militia has been secretly commissioned by the Queen Herself (through the ordination of Sphant's Magistrate) to take whatever actions are necessary to protect the people. This affords just a small bit of hope to many. However, by the 10th of First Stores, the rumors explode into such fantastical tales that can hardly be believed (nonsense like water-walking, wrestling sharks, and even defending a colony of lizard people from an onslaught carried out by the black ships) ... certainly stories so large, so outrageous, they couldn't possibly be true. Just the fact that the Queen has dispatched such a capable group of heroes only goes to show that She hasn't forgotten about the lowly Shattered Isles, way out here, in the Fathoms....

Return of the Books

• The party returned the cache of books recovered The Gentle Current to the College of Lore in Seminary received the books you returned.
  
• The Headmaster of Seminary - Audry of House Cyna - promises that the books will be looked after, studied, and protected.
  
• Audry of House Cyna extends a boon to Llewellyn. She asks him to give a guest oration on the 6th of Second Stores in front of a select audience of instructors, sisters of various abbeys, renown thinkers, and academic staff, regarding the recovery of these texts. Naturally, all of his fellow adventurers would be more than welcome at this gathering.

Advising the Magistrate

• The party has the option to advise the Magistrate - Lwynn, Sister of Dhyane, a Paladin - of tactical details concerning the black ships. She would, of course, honor the bounty of 1,000 Crowns should the party divulge what they know about the ships.
  
• Rumors abound about the black ships among the fishermen and sailors of Sphant - fast, two-masted ships that are rarely seen during daylight hours, racing in the shallow waters of the Shattered Isles, hugging the coastlines like creepy shadows ... although by the 8th of First Stores, no new sightings of the dread ships haven't been reported to the Magistrate.
  
• I'll leave it to the party to decide how/what/if they want to inform the Magistrate on their findings.

Rhackdalia

• Rumors circulate that the southern portion of the island has been left relatively unharmed by the marauding giant horde. Shyn-Levenson and Shyn-Bhokerdown have established themselves as the only functioning human cities on the island, and are achieving a point of equilibrium (their resources balancing out with the fleeing exodus of people).
  
• Both Shyn's have sent representatives to Sphant and to Floreth to plead for resources, money, food, engineers, Sisters, and guards (to aid in the construction of infrastructure, tend to healing, and a defense capability). They feel they can hold their own against the giants, perhaps even reach some level of appeasement or accord with them.
  
• Politically, nobody is taking the Shyn's with any seriousness and this creates a great deal of contention among the Houses, refuges, and society's thinkers. Although most feign sympathy, most would discretely suggest that support for the remaining Shyn's on Rhackdalia would be a fool's effort, and not a single Crown should be wasted on buffeting what is foreseen to be a certainty: the island must be abandoned for all will be undone by the giants when they continue their march south in the winter months ahead.
  
• Meanwhile, Rhackdalia-city has become somewhat of a black hole. The Queen has issued an official edict to confiscate the property of House Mhorovia and their associates (Houses Morley, Witherdew, and M'lahn) throughout Her Reign; relatives and relations of those Houses have been rounded up in the capitol city; the Queen has taken no action militarily against Rhackdalia. Meanwhile, those brave souls who attempt to go there never return; those who sail too close to its harbor are never seen again; there aren't even qualified rumors about the place, just speculation. Most speculate that the city is in ruins and its people enslaved. Nobody knows for sure.

Training

• The player characters train to 7th Level.
  
• On the 6th of First Stores, three days after arriving at Sphant, Dru the pseudo dragon spent a great deal of time with Elan, resting in to her, snuggling, trying to find solace for the ache it felt with Ma'yah's absence. It's bottom lip even quivered. It made little whining noises and endured fitful sleep. And on the fourth day, Dru was nowhere to be found. Dru hasn't been seen nor heard from since.
  
• Annel of Isthmeira learns that Siegride has returned to Sphant and wishes to eagerly speak with her, mostly concerning the importance of returning to a lost temple to recover artifacts before the snows set in, and the frost giants most assuredly descend into the southern part of the isle.
  
• The Rangers of Pathfinder Abbey are overjoyed to find Elan alive; for some reason, they figured Elan for dead after the Massacre at Sunrock Abbey, like, somebody slit her throat after the incident to keep her from talking. Assuring them that she was, in fact, alive, Elan could reveal what she learned on her travels. If so, the rangers would take a particular interest the pirates. They suggest that the pirates must be mercenaries picked up in the Shattered Isles, in less reputable Shyns to the south. Armies of brigands could be had for the right price. But the description of the ships ... are unlike anything they'd ever heard of or seen.
  
• Gorbash and Tamroohk are greeted with an abundance of kindness, enthusiasm, and gratitude as they walk among the citizens of Sphant. Many of them stop, turn, and clutch the dirt the dwarves walked in, holding fast to it and brought tenderly to the chest, in a gesture to suggest that the very earth they've walked on is special and appreciated. The Dwarves have returned to save Rhackdalia, and here they are, in living proof. By around the eighth day of this, Vongur becomes visibly agitated. "Stand up, ye' weebly git!", he yells, and the poor people look painfully hurt at Gorbash who raises his hands, "Wait! Wait! I didn't say that! Oh come on!". And Tamroohk feels a little more conspicuous for all the attention. There seems to be a mounting expectation, she feels, as more and more people encounter her, that she's here to do something - about the homeless, the refuges, the giants, the pirates - and that makes her feel uncomfortable.
  
• Llewellyn learns something of The Sagean Coast in old maps, logs, and journals he researched in Seminary.
  
• The Sagean Coast is to the south east of the Shattered Isles. It would take nine or eleven cycles just to reach it by vessel, stopping along the way for water and provisions.
  
• It is an arid landscape and desert terrain; its coast faces the Ibrus Sound.
  
• All accounts speculate that there isn't a bastion of organized society or rule; simply nomadic tribes of primitive people vying for scarce resources, organized under tribal warlords called Emir's. Their Emirates war against each other in a blistering hot wasteland. There is no notable sovereign from which relations have ever been constructed with Floreth. No shipping. No trade. No commerce. No viable markets. Thus, Floreth never maintained any interest in the area - it was never deemed a threat or an ally to the Monarchy. It's been largely ignored. Expeditions to the Sagean Coast have always (each and every time) been undone by savage attacks of pirates. It's uncertain if those expeditions ever made land-fall. There is no record of any expedition into the deserts beyond the coastline.
  
• The Door sits silent. It doesn't ever open.
  
• The Book of Names rests with Siegride.

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