Yesterday we finished up our Blue Rose story run by my son Cael, in his inaugural foray into GMing. Here's last time!
Our heroes spend some time cleaning up the reef, recruiting help from the village of Ray'fin. They try and clean the mold above a certain depth, hoping to keep the mysterious and terrible sleeping leviathan to the deeps.
The annual feast day in the surface village of Amber Bay rolls around, and still no mold-pocalypse. The characters head up on land to walk around. Well, Adad and Makala walk. Gali stays in the water with her dolphin friends, and Greeni crawls into a bucket and brachiates or uses Move Object to hover around.
The craftsmen of the village have their wares on display, and so Makala goes looking for a new she can use in combat. She finds one that's really meant for fishing, but spends a little time altering it with weights so it'll work as an entangling weapon.
Adad is accompanying two of his younger siblings (younger sister Zho and little brother Po), and his two niblings, the twins Tyll and Fyll. As such, he's spending a lot of the time at the feast reminding them that while in the water things tend to sink gently, on land they just drop so they need to be careful what they handle.
As they're walking around the village, Zho finds a shop with an intricately carved door, but no one is in evidence and there's no indication of what the shop might sell. She asks if she can go in; Adad tells her maybe knock first. She does, and the door creeeeaks open to reveal a store full of weird trinkets and curiosities.
As they're looking around, a man with a great big bushy beard and an eyepatch pops out and welcomes them to the shop. This is the place to purchase the peculiar treasures of the sea! He shows Adad a gold spyglass that makes things glow, maybe some kind of aura-reader. Adad shows interest, but it's far too expensive. The man shows him a potion that, he claims, is a way to make psychic contact with any mind, no matter how powerful. Adad knows a little something about such magic, and reflecting that making contact with the immensely powerful being in the deeps might be necessary, buys it. And then he gets the kids the heck out of that store before the ancient Aldin maxim of "ya break it, ya buy it" becomes relevant.
Greeni, meanwhile, finds a stall with a bunch of octopi hung up from hooks! Initially horrified, they realize that these are children's toys made from fabric. They talk with the proprietor (who is remarkably chill about mental communication with an octopus in a bucket), and explains that one can pay money to take part in a competition to win one of these. Greeni isn't really interesting in winning a stuffed octopus (they find it a little creepy, honestly), but then the man pulls out a stuffed human doll and they're all about that! Greeni mentally contacts Adad (as Greeni has no money), and Adad walks up, each hand being tugged by a five-year-old.
Adad pays for a go, and Greeni has to fling balls at bottles full of liquid. Get one in the bottle, win the prize! Greeni tries twice just hurling the ball and manages to hit and knock over the bottle, but on the last try casts Move Object and guides their throw a bit more, winning! The man pulls out a doll to give to Greeni, this one with a mild enchantment that will keep it from getting waterlogged.
The characters meet back up by the water's edge (where Gali has been taking part in some rhy-fen competition involving juggling), and relax for the feast. The leader of the village gives a brief speech and is about to start the festivities, when an underwater quake nearly knocks them all over! The characters spring into action - Makala tosses Greeni into the water and dives in, and Adad hands his charges over to his older brother Adz and follows. The swim down towards the quake and see...mold, creeping toward Ray'fin. The mold has even formed into three distinct entities, two fairly small blobs and one humanoid sized creature. And these molds aren't interested in discourse!
(Mold Discourse is my psychedelic jam Nirvana cover band.)
Greeni swims straight for the biggest one and casts Cure, remembering that this healing spell was damaging to the mold. And it works! The mold bubbles and disintegrates, but more fills the void. Makala and Gali follow up with spear and snout-slams, and Adad summons a psychic staff and bonks one of the mold-blobs. The mold defends itself, striking back at the characters and sapping energy, but the main one (his name is Harold. OK, it's "the Ebony's Herald") mentally dominates Makala. Adad quickly snaps her out of it; having their best and most dangerous warrior under the mold's control would end this fight quickly!
The heroes battle mold, fighting it to a standstill and destroying the two minor blobs, but the Herald flows back against the cliff wall and absorbs more of the mold, healing itself. And then the rumbling starts anew, and the heroes realize the creature in the deeps is waking up. Greeni grabs the potion off Adad's belt and quaffs it, and reaches out to the leviathan below. The shopkeeper wasn't lying; Greeni is immediately able to make contact.
The leviathan's mind is a maze of shattered mirrors - grief, loss, time, and most of all, hunger. Greeni tries to sort through it and help the creature awaken, and Adad joins them (linking first to Greeni's mind and then piggybacking through to the leviathan). They focus on the hunger, trying to bring the creature to consciousness, while Makala and Gali keep the Herald busy...and finally, it works.
The sea dragon's head emerges from the caves below and it devours the Herald in one bite. It brings Gali and Makala into the mental conversation and reveals who and what it is - Roara, once the protector of these reefs, worshiped by the bustling metropolis of Ray'fin thousands of years ago. Once she was bedecked in gold and gems, with carvings of her on every wall, but then...
She had pups, she says, and she turned her attention away for a moment. She doesn't reveal exactly what happened, but her overwhelming feeling of loss is clear. She succumbed to her hunger and slept for too long.
She slurps up the rest of the mold, and the characters ask if she would like to meet the people who live here now. She rises them up to the surface, and her head breaches just as a group of rhy-fen are dancing for the people of Amber Bay. The Sea Dragon has returned!
(Roll credits over Roara rest her head on the beach as the bravest of the children of Amber Bay and Ray'fin climb on her face-fins.)
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