Dramatis Personae
- Limon. Lime nomad Steppelander climate migrant. Bound in servitude to a demigod Bonsai Turtle named Glum. Owner of a strikingly wide-brimmed pale green wizard hat.
- Astia. D.W.A.R.F. Decapolitan Biomancer Ambassador of the Cobalt Ziggu-Rot. Making more Biomancer friends than anyone should be comfortable with.
- Marcy. Grapefruit nomad Steppelander Black Gold Industrialist. Budding cat coffee dealer, amateur camel matchmaker, furniture fight emcee.
Deep In the Underbelly of the Last Trading House
...our heroes convened at The Buried Delicatessen. The den of biomancy felt about the temperature of a Subway toppings refrigerator and featured body parts drained of blood, hanging from meat hooks amidst and above the half dozen or so unoccupied ka-boxes. Anise of Star eyed the Skull of Rot eagerly and confessed his expert opinion on the artifact to Astia: this, he surmised, was the long-awaited Crystalline Seed. A gift from their mutual god to his followers on earth. Anise offered the group free ka-box sessions and a full facial reconstruction for Marcy's mouth situation in exchange for the skull. Astia understood well the power of this artifact, but knew that its application could prove... problematic, what with the un/willing sacrifices and whatnot. An artifact conveys power, undeniably, but so does instantly getting on the good side of the known world's foremost expert in one's chosen field. Potentially even moreso than the skill itself. Astia agreed and the party's nettle burns and chemical coughs were healed overnight.
Rejuvenating as six or so hours in a ka-box may be, our heroes had nonetheless stayed up into the wee hours of the morning and sought refuge back at their hostel. At least a couple hours of shut-eye would be better than nothing, save for Marceline who no longer requires sleep. Before they left, Limon asked Anise for employment who acquiesced. He needed a bouncer, and someone to index his increasingly scattered collection of preserved organs by quality. Anise also offered Astia a position as research assistant while he further studied the skull. While everyone else retired to their beds, sleepless Marcy headed for a coffee shop.
Everything was Going Okay Until the Barista Exploded
Marcy sat reading a magazine at Crystal Rebirth, a coffee shop in the Harmonium she had spotted during her previous day's exploration. Commotion from the hallway outside the front doors caught her eye. An orange Spectrum Satrap was being rushed into a pod by a pair of necroamblers, which in retrospect are probably supposed to be zombie-like creatures but I decided in the moment were dog-sized spiders comprised of sewn-together human legs made animate. The Ultraviolet Grasslands, baby! Moments afterwards, the barista came to collect Marcy's empty cup and hadn't even finished if she'd like a refill before erupting into a shower of gore, painting the formerly cozy spot with blood and viscera. Marcy screamed.
Responding to the horrified shrieking, 10 humanoid figures wearing matching outfits and hercules-beetle-shaped masks of black porcelain rushed in. Four of them began questioning Marcy about what had happened and what she had seen, introducing themselves as Black Helmet 60-plurality; the others pulled out black batons and began beating to death two writing, rosy flesh-colored wormlike vines writhing about in the muck that had once been a coffee shop employee. After taking down her account, the poly-cop (polyce??) assured Marcy that it was merely "static overload," nothing to be concerned about. She tried to point out the worm-vine things, but Black Helmet 60-plurality refused to acknowledge them, and having sufficiently beaten all evidence of them into a nasty paste marched off in uncanny unison. Marceline needed a bath.
She soon found a kindly old woman willing to lend her a helping hand despite everything. No one else would make eye contact with the blood-soaked and shaken teenager, with the vast majority of folks taking one look at her and promptly pulling an about-face, noping off as fast as possible. Katya took her up to a makeshift hovel in a storage room and introduced her to a friendly janitorial gelatinous ooze who Marceline agreed to let clean her. The ooze felt like hydrogen peroxide and her entire body an open wound, but you couldn't argue with the results. A squeaky clean Marcy thanked the ooze and the old lady, trekking back to The Last Trading Hostel to inform her friends of what had transpired.
Getting to the Bottom of Things
Things had become suspicious-er and suspicious-er, and now it was time to piece together the clues and crack this case. Skeletons with worm-vines, a Spectrum Satrap rushed into a privacy pod, a barista exploding with worms inside, "static overload," Porcelain Prince Police cover-ups... they decided to head over to The Final Embassy's Cultural Center to learn about Spectrum Satraps and their history.
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| He may have stood out better had I remembered about the tentacle arm. Oops! |
Unlike the Last Trading House and Harmonium serais, the party found the Final Embassy a spotless, hermetically sealed affair. The sliding glass doors opened with a "pssshh" sound and the inside smelled like a freshly opened tube of tennis balls. At the wide, curved receptionist's desk sat... another orange Spectrum Satrap. Not recognizing the fellow, Marcy began interrogating the receptionist about the incident she had witnessed earlier. Information was requisitioned via a brass tube extending into the floor below their feet, but while the Satraps had a record of the event, it contained no mention of worm-vines. The Spectrum Satrap introduced himself as Satrap 57 and strongly suggested they not pry too hard into this whole worm-vine thing. It was probably just static overload. Leave it alone! Satrap 57 sent a necroambler to show them the way to the Cultural Center on the second floor.
The horrifying leg-beast ambled on over to the back of the room where it began cautiously mounting the inside of a glass tube extending both above and below the serai's ground floor. Satisfied that it was as well-situated it was going to get, it spider-climbed its way up to the second floor. The party looked bewilderedly up after the bizarre creature as it ascended slowly and awkwardly.
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| The only way to get up to the cultural center |
It was everyone else's turn to follow. Astia and Marcy deftly performed the athletic feat, but (surprisingly) Limon slipped, sliding slightly below ground floor before regaining his grip. To his surprise, the air was humid and smelly down there, a far cry from the sterile, heavily filtered air of the above-ground floors. Stranger still was that rather than a natural mixing of the two floors' gasses, a distinct yet unseen barrier separated the humid below from the clean above. Limon climbed his way up to the cultural center and shared his findings with the others.
Now less concerned with the word salad technobabble nonsense displayed on the plaques ("During the Decadent Poly-chromatism movement of the Savenger Polities, it is said that Every Spectrum Satrap Died" and so on and so forth) and more with the mounting mystery of the forbidden basement (signs in 12 different languages said "do not enter" more or less), the group discussed their options. Should they sneak into the basement? Cause a distraction to distract Satrap 57? Would they get in trouble or be killed? Armed guards were out back overseeing the unloading of marrow-beet from the colossal prismatic walkers stationed outside... would there be time to escape before they reacted? After speculating all this and more, they noticed the necroambler observing them. It then dashed off toward the mobility tube, but in its rush to get back to the front desk, slipped and fell who knows how far into the darkness Below. Limon, Marcy, and Astia decided it was time they all left.
A Tense Negotiation, Scheduled
On their way out, Satrap 57 got a buzz from the tubes heading below and chased after them, but only to the border between the Final Embassy and the Harmonium. Marceline mentioned smelling magic from below at which point the Satrap exasperatedly denied—perhaps a bit too preemptively—any and all accusations not yet made of Dark Phytomancy being practiced below the Final Embassy. The group threatened to go to Black Helmet 60-plurality with their newfound information unless the Spectrum Satraps made it worth their while. Decidedly opposed to this outcome, Satrap 57 agreed to meet them at a neutral location to discuss terms. He also made Astia swear a D.W.A.R.F.en vow they wouldn't divulge any information prior to the meeting; he agreed. They scheduled the meeting for that very night at the Giving Cow.
Upon arriving at the Giving Cow, however, our party found a group of familiar yet uniquely unwelcome faces: The Dangerous Ballad. Once again, the goons hired to hunt them down were playing their betting game around a glass of putrid toxic milk. Being the only party member who the Dangerous Ballad did not possess a description of, Astia nobly chose to get them out of everyone else's hair. He flashed his wad, impressing the goons, and offered to take them out on the town for the evening. Excited to leave the dump and hit up a nicer joint for once, the mercenaries left with him post-haste, walking directly past Limon and Marceline who were standing by the entranceway to the milk bar. Marcy quickly pulled Limon into her embrace and planted one on him so as to not expose their faces to the bounty hunters. The goons chided them, but passed by without IDing the macking teens. They had lost their best negotiator in exchange for removing a serious problem, but Marcy had a greater concern on her mind.
Sparks had flown.
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