Quick facts
Campaign: Campaign 2 · Session: 71 of 83 · Arc: North City and the Cell Games · Where: North City, Cackler Barrel
The party spent a morning shopping in North City. Nelda finally parted with her glaive. An appraiser’s identify spell showed that although she was no longer bound to it, the curse still clung to the weapon. A visiting curse expert valued it at about 4,000 gold, since some buyers pay well for a blade that siphons the souls of the dead. The shopkeeper opened at 1,500, but after some masterful persuasion from Nelda he settled at 2,300 gold and threw in a ring of swimming.
Meanwhile, Escher stayed hidden in the private suite at the Cackler Barrel as Mia’s father held a strategy meeting with his officials. A halfling with a portfolio briefed him. The tracker planted on Nelda was live and reporting cleanly, logged by the monitoring desk as Asset Songbird, and the company expected it to lead them straight to wherever the Fellowship had hidden their families. The halfling read aloud the monthly memorandum from the Grand Confectioner, reminding the board that the Mistress’s directive was still in force: no Dominion operation could engage The Cacklers, their households, their academy, or their affiliates. Mia’s father brushed it aside, saying Nelda was only a classmate of the Cacklers, not one of them. The report went on:
- The Sugar Cartel said the dragon had fully completed his assignment in the Salt Desert and was being recalled to Choco Island within the week. That meant the eggs were ahead of schedule and Gideon Velgrave would be insufferable.
- Mia’s father was due to meet Bulma Briefs at the Garden Terrace the next morning. Bulma was offering licensing on her new airship technology, but he wanted exclusive manufacturing rights for fifty years. He reasoned that an airship that didn’t need brumestone would make mines, ports, and Seraphina Rusk’s harbor chokepoints worthless, and that whoever owned the sky would own the movement of everything. If Bulma refused, he planned to find what Capsule Corp was leveraged against and buy it.
- Seraphina Rusk had contacted him twice. She knew about Songbird and wanted to know whether the Fellowship’s human had been seen in North City, and whether he would be arrested for her. He confirmed that Escher had been positively identified entering the stadium with the Fellowship, the same young man from Hamhock Harbor. Still, he refused to kick down doors. Seizing Escher alone would scatter the other five across Arlia, while Songbird would catch them all in one net. He wanted the Fellowship erased as a problem for the company, not as revenge for Seraphina’s grief, adding that Kenton had been a bore anyway, and ordered that last remark kept out of his reply.
As the meeting ended, Escher tried to slip out but brushed against a guard. He drove his flame blade through the man, and the second guard raised the alarm. Escher fled down the stairs as a soldier’s pistol round pierced his shoulder, then misty-stepped away and relayed everything to the party by sending stone.
Nelda went to see Mia alone and found her in tears. Mia confessed that she didn’t even work for the Velvet Truffle Company, and that her father used her as a pawn to keep his own hands clean. Nelda shared how her own father had tried to marry her off for politics and told Mia she respected her for choosing what was right. Mia then revealed that a friend of hers claimed to be dating Verio Nightwind, the stage name of Cedric Lightharbor Jr., and that her father had asked her to slip the friend an experimental love potion. The goal was to keep Cedric Jr. in North City, out of his father’s reach, so the company could better control Cedric Lightharbor, the VTC’s puppet mayor of the Saline Coast. Nelda admitted it was a relief to know her former suitor had moved on, but was horrified that he was being coerced. Mia also warned that Catman was set to be executed within the next week or two. The two agreed to have dinner with Bitch Perfect at Chili’s.
Before dinner, Wilbur urged Bulma not to make deals with the VTC, telling her that nearly every evil they had faced traced back to the company and that its generous offers were probably meant to win over the person with influence over the Cacklers. Bulma agreed to take it under advisement. A miscommunication then sent the entire FAM to Chili’s, crashing Nelda’s dinner, where Wilbur called a huddle to confess he was seeing someone new: Bulma, as of four days ago. The party agreed it was safer to stay together, especially since the VTC clearly knew about their ship. Watchers followed them to the docks and camped about 150 feet away. Nelda argued that Mia deserved a chance to repair things with her father, so the group agreed they would rather get him fired than killed. They settled on a decoy plan: send the ship on to the Saline Coast so the VTC would believe the party was aboard, while they traveled through The Underdark for Wilbur’s business before going to rescue Catman.
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