Welp, me again, on my quest to try and get caught up on my Exalted write-ups.
Can't think of anything to add, so let's just get into it.
We cut to the next day. The sky is cloudy with an ominous wind blowing. Lecht, looking like death warmed over, goes downstairs to get breakfast, hearing people talking about the death of 'Old Man' Marku Liczka -- it's not that they're surprised, he was old and has been in ill-health since the ghost 'attacked' him[0], but it is a shock. Wandering Dawn shuffles downstairs and takes the seat next to Lecht, who says they're there for the 'hair of the dog.' Dawn slaps Lecht on the back and goes to get it for them -- classic hangover breakfast of bacon, eggs, biscuits and questionable gravy. Lecht remarks it looks more like corpse-slough than food. The whole place is quiet, with someone asleep in the corner.
Lecht asks Wandering Dawn how much they should charge for burial, since last night was kind of a bad time for it. Wandering Dawn tosses out an amount, but says that it might be a tough sell since he died while they were trying to help him, and Lecht says they're going to give the family a discount at least. Then they realize that the guy asleep in the corner is Stray Dog, and go over to poke him with their staff. He startles awake, shocked that it's morning, and Lecht tells him he's been asleep for three years.
Letting the 'three years' comment go, Stray Dog asks the others to confirm that it's morning. As in, before noon.
"Da," Lecht says.
"By a few hours," Wandering Dawn adds.
There's some back and forth and Stray Dog goes to look for the nearest mug of something to drink and Wandering Dawn gets him some 'hangover juice' -- vodka bloody mary with a rhubarb stalk, with a raw egg and bacon grease. But once that gets him up, he asks what the topic is and Wandering Dawn brings him up to speed. There's some discussion about getting back on the road, which Stray Dog suggests might be a good idea since that exorcist is probably pissed and it'd be good to get ahead of her. He also wonders aloud if she could have separated the spirit from the old man, and Wandering Dawn's wondering that now too.
Lecht explains that he wouldn't have survived it -- he was too old, the trauma would be too much. By the time they got to him, he was already on his way out. Wandering Dawn takes that at face value and says they've done their good deed for the city whether they realize it or not. So they get back on the subject of getting on the road, get everything together, so on and so forth.
So soon enough the caravan is back on the Traveler's Road. They stop off at Kolozma -- Lecht's village[1] -- a few hours down the road, and from there it's just a straight shot to Gethamane.
A couple of peaceful days pass and they get to the Groaning Mountains, where they find a set of immense doors of steel alloyed with jade and orichalcum. The doors open to a tunnel that leads to an antechamber with portcullises made of orichalcum-infused adamant. Here, guards register visitors and accept entrance fees to come in or offers of payment in labor. Lecht goes for the labor offer, where they're directed to the Jade Hospice once they're inside.
Gethamane is an ancient city in the hollowed-out mountain, lit by glowing crystals. Walls of wood and leather divide up the different sections of the multi-layered city, and three mysterious temples to nameless gods rise up near the mountain's peak. Everyone's directed to the 'Guild District,' where outsiders are politely but firmly encouraged to stay. As everyone gets settled in, Lecht takes advantage of the first private moment to dig out the scroll case with the assignment from Nadia.
The notes talk about an artifact -- an astrolabe called the 'Star Taker,' last known to reside in the mysterious tunnels beneath the city. Another agent of Nadia's, a one-legged man named Zephyr, should have scouted ahead and gone looking for it but he hasn't checked in in a while -- which is a problem partially because even before then, he was already pushing the amount of time Gethamane allows outsiders to stay in the city. There are instructions to track him down, as he should have at least enough information to point Lecht in the right direction.
And as Lecht goes over the pages, on the back of one of them is the title of this new episode...
"Descent"
We jump ahead a bit, where the rest of the group are fully settled in and relaxing while Lecht has been working at the hospital. While there, they put out some feelers and got some info about where Zephyr lives -- and that nobody's heard from him in about a month, which tracks with what Lecht heard from Nadia. They go track down the small apartment he rented, which clearly hasn't seen a lot of use as of late. There are also a bunch of notes and things scattered around, like someone was gathering together a bunch of research to copy into a journal or something. The notes include some rough guidelines as to where to go to find the ruin where the Star Taker is, and just some scribblings on what's down there -- including a lot of stuff with sun and lizard-imagery on it.
They track down Stray Dog, because he clearly knows a good bit about history and such. It's easy enough to find the tavern where he's partying, because they can hear it from the outside. The pause and brace themselves for the chaos and go in to find him on a table, waving a mug, splashing beer everywhere while everyone sings along. They reach up and grab his clothes to get his attention and ask if he has time to talk.
Stray Dog pauses, thinks, and then grab someone and puts them on the table where he was standing. He puts his mug in the guy's hand and tells him to keep the song going, then drops down to join Lecht. Lecht shows him the notes and ask for his take, and he identifies the lizard-figures as turning up in a lot of old ruins, especially in conjunction with imagery evoking the Unconquered Sun.[2]
Lecht explains that a work colleague may have wandered down into the tunnels beneath the city looking for something and has gotten in trouble. They'd feel more comfortable having someone watch their back while they go looking. This sounds like fun to Stray Dog, and so the two of them go looking for Wandering Dawn.
They can't find him at first, until they hear a familiar voice yelling 'Order up!' They find him working in the bar's kitchen, though it takes a moment to recognize him because he's not in his usual gear. Stray Dog asks him what he's doing.
"Oh, hey guys, um..." Wandering Dawn looks around, nervously. "Apparently some of the money that I thought I had when I went to pay my tab turned out that it wasn't actually money. It was rocks. I don't know how they got in my coin purse, so I've just been working off the debt a bit. Is everything alright?"
"Sounds like you were robbed," Stray Dog mentions. "Or paid in raksha money."
Wandering Dawn glances away at that. "I don't remember exactly when it happened, I might've had a bit too much to drink, and I've been talking with so many people... I'm almost done, this party's been really helpful, and I've made some tips." He turns to the bartender. "Should actually be done soon, right boss?"
The bartender glares but nods.
"Is there anything up?" Wandering Dawn asks. "Looks like you've got something on your minds. Something to say?"
So we have that JRPG moment where there's an ellipsis in a text box, and things fade to black for a moment, and then everybody's up to speed.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" Wandering Dawn says as he just takes off his apron and tells the bartender he has to go do something. But the party is so loud that nobody can hear the bartender yell at him to stop, as Wandering Dawn goes and grabs his gear (including that direlance, which he forgot he had) and his wolverine. Stray Dog also goes and gets his entourage, and the group travels through the city -- getting a lot of looks from people not liking the idea of outsiders away from the Guild District -- and find one of the entrances to the Underways beneath Gethamane.
They venture into the tunnels, which go from being constructed and normal-looking to slick and organic-looking, pitch black without any of the magic crystals seen in the city above -- but fortunately they still have that magic lantern they pulled out of that Shogunate armory a while back. They follow Zephyr's notes combined with Wandering Dawn's navigational skills, basically aiming themselves in the right direction and trying to sort it out. As they go down further they hear chittering and clicking sounds, and so the group starts preparing for danger -- Wandering Dawn generates a magical set of armor and hookswords, Lecht uses necromancy to summon a Bone Lion, and Stray Dog Serenade draws upon the Charm that gives him a telekinetic appendage/weapon.
As they go down deeper, they find carvings on the walls -- simple carvings, in a weird dialect of Old Realm, that indicate dangerous passages and the like. Some of them also suggest they're approaching at least one set of ruins. And as they go further down, they hear uneven footsteps.
"Is anyone there?" someone calls out.
Lecht responds, asking who's there.
"Thank the gods," a man says, staggering out into the light of the lantern -- staggering because he only has one hand and walks with a crutch. But he matches the description of Zephyr -- older man, extremely light-blue hair. Looks a little worn down. "I don't know how long I've been down here, but I'm glad somebody came."
And we leave it there.
[0]-- It seems clear that either the family knew he was responsible for the ghost and was keeping him out of sight, or he fell ill about the time the ghost first appeared and maybe someone saw it around the house and came to an understandable if incorrect conclusion.
[1]-- Or, more accurately, what's left of their original village, where they slumbered away the past several centuries. But they're slowly rebuilding it into a new base of operations.
[2]-- For those of you playing along at home, these are carvings referring to the Dragon Kings, a pre-human race of lizard-people who worshipped the Unconquered Sun. They were mostly wiped out, and most of the remaining ones are either feral and near-mindless or they're in magical hibernation.
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