30 Eleint 1492
After a day’s travel, the group reached the small harbor town of Beasanport. Upon walking to the town square, they immediately saw a blackboard with a variety of messages:
Three things caught our eyes:
- What are Cockatrice eggs? The group determined they are small featherless chicken-like mini-basilisks and they were unsure if the eggs were intended for consumption or to raise your own…
- The next day would be the Harvest Festival! Gigi is especially enticed by the prospect of free food
- To kill the time, the group decided to take on a job. The “protect a journalist” gig seemed especially fitting since it would be at night
The “Harford Herald” was just across the square. A small building that seemed to be determined to imitate the appearance of much bigger newspapers in much more important cities. Also, why was it called Harford Herald if the city’s name was Beasanport?
Inside was a reception staffed by a halfling named John who explained that the paper was named after the owner Mr James Harford, and who brought us to a little conference room. Casmos meanwhile took off exploring, distracted by the noise of the printing presses. He saw “John” changing clothes to become “James” for the meeting. This causes some confusion with the group, except for Mir and Casmos (now returned) who are completely unfazed due to their inability to tell halflings’ faces apart.
Determined to play along this little charade, Gigi introduced herself as Lyra. Lyra in turn, surprised called herself Jim Pretend, Casmos meanwhile brought John/James “his” Jacket: “You forgot this!”
About the job: Mr Harford needed a security details for an investigation. There have been odd sightings of lights around the docks at night, followed by lots of dead fish or “wrong” tides the next day. He suspected some sort of cult might be responsible for this.
Casmos did a Tarot card reading for a very fascinated Mr. Harford, who in turn promised to publish a profile of Casmos in his newspaper, plus a payment in shiny buttons.
| Past | Present | Future |
|---|---|---|
| Strength Reversed | The Emperor | The Hanged Man |
 |
 |
 |
For the job, we would get paid 10 GP pP per Hour and a front page article about the good work we would have done…
In the conversation, Casmos and Eldara almost discover that they might serve different moon goddesses.
In the afternoon, Gigi bought some wool with a shiny thread woven in at the local general store. And stole some more wool when no one was watching.
Eldara meanwhile led the group to a little restaurant called “Shan’s Noodle Shop”, where a large Firbolg served a selection of foreign but very delicious dishes. Eldara was especially taken with the food and seemed right at home with this selection and the weird sticks they were using to eat. But upon asking how she knew about this, she was quite evasive.
Shan on the other hand, joined the group at the table and told them a long tale of how he ended up here, including defeating a cult and banishing the dragon goddess Tiamat herself back to hell.
[Inspiration to everyone]
Gigi gave the fork she stole at the Crossed Bones Inn to Eldara who in turn apologized for trying to read Gigi’s mind before. Gigi then made it very clear that trying to steal a certain cookie recipe from her would end in someone dying.
In the evening, we met James, now in (bad) disguise as “Janette” at dock number 7 to investigate. He led us to an old temple building where we tried to position ourselves around and to look unsuspicious, everybody failing at the task in their own way. Not long until we saw a group of hooded figures entering the temple.
As we looked through the window openings, we saw five cultists plus their leader chanting around a water basin, in which a water elemental slowly appeared. Our journalist friend was a little too loud and a fight ensued. Luckily, we managed to topple the basin instead of attacking the elemental, who had no intention of joining the fight and just took off towards the ocean.
Gigi put one of her knitting needles into a guy’s eyeball, Lyra put a group of three to sleep and Mir simply cut one cultist in half with his glaive. The leader, in absolute terror in the face of such violence, tried to take off, but was also put to sleep before she could reach the far end exit of the temple.