Tl;dr: A group of adventurers end up as diplomatic envoys of AFK to the Human/Karkinos village Kamisuyako.
Future Adventure Notes:
•The villagers are interested in lumber to make ships, for themselves and possibly for us.
•The village has underwater specialty goods for sale.
•The mountains can be cold enough to require cold-weather clothing.
Session Title : Falling leaves of the crimson sunset
Session DM : Geokhan
Session Date : 03 Sept 2021 @ 23:00 UTC
Characters
•”Trailblazer” Barley (Druid 3)
•”Scout” Dakka Doon (Fighter 7)
•Kadar (Sorcerer 3)
•”Leader” Katla (Fighter 7)
•Nog (Fighter 7)
Recently I was accosted by another adventurer around here with questions about my last journey. To prevent such future encounters I will endeavour to recollect to pen and paper. ~Barley
I don’t particularly remember why we were together, but together we were when some dwarf guy from Rehope was asking us to escort him to some village by a lake east of Ruined Oak. He also suggested we bring gifts as representatives of AFK. Well, I suppose we have to help earn our keep around here and this was doing our part so we agreed. This group in particular was lucky to have me around as they could probably get lost in their momma’s kitchens.
We followed the road south out of Ruined Oak, then went west across the bridge and spent the night at the outpost. Outrageous that we are expected to pay money, I’ll be sure to bring that up with someone’s manager. We continued along the road until it forked, following the southern fork to a burned down inn. I don’t know why, but we stopped to spend the night at the run down inn. These people expected me to continuously make goodberries for them instead of doing their own decent foraging.
During the night we were attacked by a glowing demon dog of some kind and some odd fellows. One of the odd fellows touched Katla and they both disappeared, while we dispatched the rest. Shortly after we finished Katla reappeared talking some hooey about going to a magic prison and being stuck there for six months. Who knows, her hair was longer but maybe she can do that with her spooky mind powers.
The morning came along quietly after that problem and we set out to make our way through the mountains. I could’ve found the path by myself but that dwarf guy showed it to everyone. On the way through we thought we were beset by from screeching imps or demons or whatever but it turned out that they were being chased by something worse, a six-legged lizard with scary eyes. I stayed away from that fella while the more brutish members of the party took it out. We found its nest and some gems in its leavings.
Crossing the mountains is slow work and it took all day to get through. I didn’t begrudge them their goodberries this night, it was pretty barren up there. Nothing of note happened during the night that I was aware of, but in the morning Dakka Doon was playing with some antlers as if they were new to her. We followed the river westward until the end of the day. I recall seeing some very interesting flowers that seemed to watch us but watch us was all that happened. Set up camp and again they need food. They could very well have starved with out me.
This night I was awoken by a deer that was aggressively poking me. This was unusual, deer are normally a bit shy. I cast speak with animals ready to give this deer a piece of my mind to find out that it was Dakka Doon shapeshifted into a deer. She had been playing with those antlers and poof, suddenly deer. I woke the rest of the group and after some experimentation, it was determined she needed a spell more powerful than either Kadar or I could manage, so she’d have to make do as a deer for now.
We continued following the river in the morning, and a few hours into the day, we spotted two individuals on the shore of the lake with a boat nearby. One of them reminded me of the crab guy I met before named Scout. He seemed a decent fellow.
One was a human female who named herself Arakaki Juzaburo. The other was a crab guy named Takeuchi Tetsuo. The dwarf guy seemed excited to meet these two.
After some rather tedious back and forth it transpired that these guys were scouts or trailblazers, something like that, from the village that the dwarf guy wanted to go to and better yet they offered us a boat ride there. We were happy enough to not have to walk around looking for it so we agreed to the boat ride. It was a well constructed boat, and moved fairly swiftly on the lake. As settlements go this village wasn’t so bad looking I suppose. We were told the name of it was Kamisuyako.
Upon arrival we were taken to what I think were the factional leaders present in the village. Another human female, crab guy duo. This human female was Sakata Kaemon and the crab guy was Nishikawa Shigetaka.
One of the first things handled was Sakata Kaemon removing the curse on Dakka Deer. I was grateful to not be the only way for her to communicate to the party again. They said the antlers were cursed and they should be destroyed and asked if we minded, which we did not.
There was much conversation after that about various topics, from history to cartography, to trade. At some point we realized they were interested in agreements with AFK and not just the dwarves.
We learned that the proper word for crab people is Karkinos, and they live with the humans, with the population of their settlements being roughly three-fifths human.
Apparently their history goes back quite a ways, but the initial reasons for the two populations living together had something to do with trying to bring peace to two warring kingdoms that have since fallen. There was something about a calamity or such, and I’m not sure but I don’t think they have always been on the island.
The village here by the lake is a new settlement, with them having two other ones underwater in the lake itself. I don’t know if I’d enjoy living underwater. They named the other two places as Karkos and Meddenfirth. They talked about how they had explore the lake and the surrounding areas and down the rivers. Since we knew that our cartographers had yet to make progress in the area we suggested a map exchange might help foster good relations each other. They agreed.
This is what they gave us, we gave them and area of approximate size in return, maybe bigger, that showed the Rehope dwarves domain, some of the area southwest of Ruined Oak and the upper reaches of the desert south. They added that the river that flows south eventually get to the ocean after some treacherous lands, part of which have dinosaurs.
As the discussion moved on to trade they said they are interested in lumber for shipbuilding. Additionally they have interest in herbs and rare foodstuffs. They seemed very keen on the lumber idea though. They suggested they could pay for the lumber by building ships for us instead of buying the lumber. I should note they seemed quite skilled at shipbuilding and at ship enchanting. On the ride back the ship flew up the river with no regard to the current. Might be handy to have a boat like that for ourselves.
They also said that if we wanted to transport lumber to them, we would only need to get it to the start of the river in the mountains, they and their magic ships could do the rest. We were given a diplomatic parcel to be given to senior AFK diplomats upon return. When we looked around their market they also had various equipment specialized for working underwater. The shop we ended up at was run by a tabaxi lady.
We spent the rest of the day looking around the market or watching the unusual sights around us, such as a frog-mounted scout returning from somewhere. The let us spent the night for free and gave us a ride in the morning right up the river. We were moving at a good clip I tell you.
We spent the rest of that day getting most of the way through the mountains. We briefly saw a hideous worm of some kind but it ignored us as we ignored it. The last night was peaceful and we hurried along the road the next day, pushing ourselves by the end to get back to Ruined Oak safely.