Torches Sessions 19 and 20, March 11th and 21st 2023

Session 19 had some loose ends and we had to bug out early so we wrapped up the loose ends with Session 20.   So Kormatin's Seven, plus the Eira and Brychan whom they rescued made it out of Swynfaredia and to Prophet's Pass.   Kormatin and his allies took downtime to sort through the notes they collected and to divvy up the loot.   Aleesia the Satyr took the book on plant lore and 1225 gold silver pieces. She traveled Eira and Brychan to King's Lake   Ujarek took 1025 gold silver pieces pieces and 200 drams of scroll paper and a couple captured weapons. Ujarek returned to helping train his men around the Wooly Slopes Barony.   Noggra the Tengku took 1225 gold silver pieces, the weapons oils, and a couple captured weapons. He also returned to King's Lake, though he traveled ahead of Aleesia, Eira and Brychan. His plan was to drop off most of his gold with a relative in King's Lake to deposit then hang back to the main southern Fumayan army encampment.   Once Kormatin and company figured out from the notes that there were spies lingering in the Old Uwcharedian territories now rechristened Blue Peaks and Wooly Slopes, they reported the spies to the rulers of these realms.   It also turned out that Queen Janah Wiern was visiting around this time. Via messengers as proxies, the Queen confirmed that Lady Pallava was a budding sorcress (which Kormatin confirmed with Tacitus later) and Kormatin passed on a copy of the notes he had about spies in King's Lake.   During all the downtime, Brigid started crafting belt shaped wands of Augmentation.   Kormatin and his trusty companions Bendek, Ragani, and Brigid had decided that their next major goal was to assassinate the other three Gorisinod spymasters identified in the notes.   One is in the south of Swynfaredia near the coast, one is in the Swynfaredian capital, and one is in Old Talama. Kormatin decided to hit the one in the capital, then the coast, then Old Talama. The rationale being that the capital is the most dangerous location so they wanted to make their attack before Gorisonad has their guard up fully. Their target in the capital was named Lord Derwyn ap Gorisinod.   They had to bribe a border guard near the Fumayan border, but the party made into the Swynfaredian capital with an unprouncible name without a major problem.   Once inside, with intelligence from their new ally Brychan, they made contact with anti-dragonblood Lanterns who gave them shelter and intelligence. In return Kormatin shared the intelligence of the Gorisonad actions against the Lanterns, the spell lists of various sorcerers, and they gave the scrying aids to two dragonbloods on the Lantern's enemy list.   Bendek went to the wizard ghetto to learn a new spell or two. The Lanterns helped provide him with a fake Swynfaredian wizard's liscense. During this downtime, Brigid worked on her magic belts some more in the Lantern's workshop.   The Lanterns informed Kormatin that Lord Derwyn usually stated in a heavily fortified and defended walled manor district, but they knew he had a drug addiction that could be exploited.   Kormatin bought some magical cocaine to try to set up a sting to lure Lord Derwyn out to buy it but instead got one his minions. One of the Lanterns was able to pick pocket a piece of his clothes to scry with and from this they found out about Derwyn having a spy meeting at a seedy brothel.   Awkwardly, the next battle had to be put on pause as this stretched over two sessions due to an unexpected minor emergency.   Bendek tried to talk his way in as a John but botched his con job Titan AE style but they kicked down the door, and knocked out the guard.   Ragani intimidated the brothel security into not engaging, so Kormatin and his allies only had to overcome two Talon Warriors which fought well for a while but eventually broke (and were chased down and killed anyway) as was Lord Derwyn who attempted a fairly pathetic plea bargain when finally caught. The unknown confederate that Derwyn was meeting with managed to escape.   Ragani improvised a plausible cover making the attack on Derwyn look like a mob hit by [Hungry dragons] crime cartel.   Kormatin and company hastily looted three corpses (they didn't have a whole lot) and hid the bodies adequately in the short term and safely exited the city without incident.   We still had over an hour left to play, not enough time to go after another spy master, but enough time to deal with a couple minor loose ends from all the spy notes. The group traveled south to Swynfaredia's main port city without incident.     Kormatin's next sidequest was to deliver the intelligence he had about Gorisonod trying to blackmail House Cefnor to a high ranking noble of House Cefnor of high virtue honor, at least how a Keeper measures such things. The Count Kormatin wanted to talk to was on his way to the capital, so Kormatin wanted to meet with his trusted right hand. In this case an older and political savvy Fang Warrior named Ser Dafydd.   Brigid tried to make discrete inquiries to find out where Ser Dafydd was. She found out where he was but was not discrete. As Kormatin and his allies were debating what to put in a letter, Dafydd found them and assuming they were Gruffyl ambassadors, relucantly agreed to meet them but chose a meeting place that gave Dafydd a military advantage.   Kormatin revealed his true identity and passed on the information he had and explained how he got it. Dafydd chose to let him go peacefully and made a snarky comment about "My lord would like it if we collected the bounty on you, but we have to spend most of that money hiring new castle guards."   Session ended, we won't likely to be able to play this campaign for at least three weeks. It will pick up with planning and possibly carrying out the next assassination of a Gorisonod spy master, or in this spy mistress.