Quick facts
Campaign: The Wonders of Arlia (Campaign 1) · Where: the mermaid kingdom off the Toasty Desert, Cherudo Beach, the Ranchinian Peninsula, North City · Previous: C1 Chapter 12 · Next: C1 Chapter 14
Juliette’s old promise to a mermaid went horribly wrong and left a princess trapped in a crystal apple. To make it right, the Cacklers robbed a sorceress in Cherudo Beach, uncovered a treason plot, and struck a deal with a sea hag.
The crystal apple
The party set the ship down in the water off the Toasty Desert and went below looking for the mermaid’s sister. After they killed a baby kraken outside the kingdom, guards who had watched the fight brought them in. The party explained they had a crystal apple for Princess Athena from her sister. The princess was startled, since she believed her sister had been killed years ago. Hoping she had survived, the princess took hold of the apple, and it sucked her inside and streaked off through the water.
Athena’s father, King Triton, demanded to know why. Juliette explained that someone they believed was Athena’s sister had offered them passage off the Ranchinian Peninsula months earlier. When the Cacklers offered that “you lose people every day,” he shot back, “You just came in here and took her from me and you’re telling me people lose things every day.” He gave them two choices: fix it, or fight right there. “Sounds like you really don’t want your kid back,” Greene said. The king pledged that if they rescued his daughter, he would give them any aid they needed in their war with the “land walkers in the east.” Greene agreed to try, and to avenge her if they failed.
Cherudo Beach
At Cherudo Beach, Elyon and Juliette were allowed in, but Greene and Oolong were turned away again for being voes. On the way, the Rootbeer Float briefly passed through a red, sulfur-smelling distortion that only Oolong saw.
The party found the librarian, and Elyon with them. The librarian confirmed the Manual of Quickness and Action was in the city, locked in the vault of its owner, Raviki, who thought such books too valuable for the public. Outside the gate they watched a magician called David the Amazing Davvers. Oolong had him draw from the Deck of Many Things, and on the second try Davvers was left a “shell of what he was before,” his soul ripped away. “So you killed him?” Elyon asked. When Oolong argued he wasn’t dead, a Cackler cast inflict wounds, and the body went still. They decided to rob Raviki’s vault. “Damn, I already lost my cloud. Let’s do it.”
On the airship the Cacklers explained their rules, among them “fuck the army,” “all Tuesdays are taco Tuesdays,” and Oolong’s rule nine, “Voes before hoes.” Elyon then found a fresh mound of sand and lifted it to reveal Davvers’s withered body. “You killed him,” she said, and asked whether killing innocent people “just make us the Rose Ribbon Army?” Oolong turned into a mouse and ran. Then a Cackler fired an eldritch blast at Muffin, Oolong’s owl, and killed it. “I wasn’t trying to kill it. I was just trying to.”
Raviki’s vault
They walked in by day posing as staff. Two stitched-together androids guarded the doors, Elyon stepped on a creaky stair, and Raviki’s assistant, Karita, yelled “What the fuck?!” before the party dropped her.
Greene grabbed a book and a staff from the vault, and Raviki stepped out of an arcane circle. “Well, well, well. My alarm wasn’t kidding. We do have visitors.” When Greene claimed “knowledge is all of ours,” Oolong sold him out. Greene put the items down, then grabbed them again and flew out the window.
Raviki chased them through the air (“Give me back my fucking stuff”) and nearly killed Oolong. Elyon set her on fire, and Greene threw his Power Pole into the back of her head, pinning her as the guards arrived.
The haul included the Manual of Quickness and Action, the Manual of Bodily Health, the Tome of Leadership and Influence, and other manuals. It also included letters between Raviki and Sergeant Saffron of the Rose Ribbon Army, planning to hand Cherudo Beach to the army as a port onto the western continent. The Cacklers talked Karita into becoming a local hero who broke in because she suspected treason, then floated her down from the airship. “Thank you for changing my life, Elyon. I will never forget you.” Oolong began learning to read.
The sea hag
Back at the old temple on the Ranchinian Peninsula, a mermaid led them into a cavern where a sea hag waited. She knew Greene was made from the “cells of many” and that the party carried a strange affliction. She offered to cure it and give them the apple for one hair from Greene’s head. She also offered to make Oolong the “smartest pirate in all of Arlia” for one feather. Oolong demanded a hair of hers and got a “sea hag pube,” then signed for the boost, only to realize he had signed for his own intelligence, not the mermaid.
Greene, saying he’d be “dead in a couple months anyway,” offered his hair on condition it never help the Rose Ribbon Army, that the mermaid be released alive and well, and that the transformation be removed from their curse. Elyon secretly made her own trade to have her mother revived. The deal was struck.
Home to North City
In North City, Juliette gave Bulma the portal device. Jebidiah had sold the controlling stake in the Cackler Barrel to the “nice young Bulma.” Dr. Briefs reported that Dr. Gero was on the run from his own creations. Then Bulma announced she was pregnant. “Is it Barqs’s baby?” Oolong asked. It was. Greene asked Dr. Briefs to build a bomb big enough to wipe the Rose Ribbon facility off the map if they lost. Oolong recruited Jasmine, a bored night clerk at Omar’s shop of curiosities, for a robbery, and the party went to trivia night as “The Snap Cracklers Pop.” Then Commander Red’s voice rang through Greene’s head: “You will lose.”
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