Session #64: "The Land of Yogurt and Ghee"

Last week, Durham of the Ringing Anvil gathered to him a number of fellow barbarian-adventurers in the drinking room of the Gatehouse at the Kantor Kabljauhof. Recalling a glimpse of a strange place deep in the Ocean's Throat sea-caves, Durham was looking for others interested in joining him in exploration there.

He reported having ventured into strange mists in the caves with Bartholomew Pettibone as his companion (a side venture at the time, as their main intent had actually been to address the Sakkra Kaa), and through the mists seen the edges of a kind of palace--a palace set in the midst of a jungle, under the great red sun! Impossible, and yet there it was--and Pako, Durham's faithful renyu companion reported tales from the Wasgo tribe of renyu of a kind of "Bilad al Chumetl wa Ghee", a faerie-land through the mists where the Wasgo sometimes hunted or foraged, but where not everything within was "really there".

It was on Durham's mind to investigate; and so he gathered these companions, and they all set forth across the northern beach to enter the caves and seek "the Land of Yogurt and Ghee":

• Durham (fighting-man)
  accompanied by Pako (renyu)
• Bartholomew Pettibone (magic-user)
  accompanied by Gan ad-Din (fighting-man)
• Lord Althis (magic-user)
• Heijo (magic-user)

The company returned with lips greasy from a feast fed them by the Wasgo renyu. They carried a small chest with them on their return to the Gatehouse to divide the spoils, as well as several sacks filled with foreign herbs, roots, and flowers. And their boots--though they had been traipsing across sand, and walking the cold stone of cavern floors--were muddy!

Within the chest was discovered various Alkari accoutrements--which matched up with tales later told by Pako as he spent some of his cut for beer, and worked his way through something of the deeds they'd done in his thick renyu speech:

"Wasgo send with us scouts, Hrodh, Askol, and Hatti. Hrodh is nephew of Scar. We go across water on skiff, attacked by qaqtla, but kill them. Through mists is big palace--very big!--and sun shines, but we are in cave. Jungle is around, full of smells. So many smells--because of so many flowers in palace-gardens. Is big garden-palace, and Durham wants to take cuttings, and dig up roots. I like gardens more than caves. But there are strange white people inside palace. We hide, and they leave; and then later we find Alkari, and we kill them after Althis makes them sleep with magic. That's where chest comes from. I want more beer now ..."

The Lucre

• 1770 dinars (gp) from 7 gems (1@1000, 1@500, 2@100, 1@50, 2@10)
• a magic codex, pages of almost foil-thin brass, script of bluegreen enamel; it is accompanied by notes in an alien script--perhaps the Alkari attempting to translate it?
• a magic scroll in an alien script, illuminated with sro and feathered serpents along the margins
• 700 dinars from an enameled gold anklet, worked as a twining feathered serpent
• 600 dinars from a collection of Alkari feather-dyes
• 1600 from a sro-mask--clearly some kind of religious fetish, resembling the kind of masks worn by dancers when impersonating their hero-deity--this mask is a work of art, a piece of hard tiu-wood intricately carved, its "scales" made of small seashells carefully affixed and painted black
• 8 rylath root portions (said by the Wasgo to invigorate one who eats one)
• 30 sinda berries (said by the Wasgo to fortify one against disease or poison, if one eats 10; these are dried at this point, and could be crushed and added to a drink, for instance)
• 5 hallucinogenic flowers--at least, according to the Wasgo; if the company wants any dinars for these, they would have to find the right buyer, otherwise they seem like they would make fine alchemical ingredients
• rubbings from the obelisk in the palace, taken by Bart

There were remains of the "dnelu" that the party claimed to have skinned and taken with them, which disappeared sometime between slaying it and returning to town. It was curious for having allegedly resisted the effects of mu'agh acid, but alas, it seems to have vanished!

The Learning

• 4670 xp from treasure
• 513 xp from "qaqtla" x3 (150 + hp ea.)
• 223 xp from a "dnelu" (200 + hp)
• 320 xp from Alkari x3 (100 + hp ea.)
• 161 xp from Alkari x3 (50 + hp ea.)

The Cut

• 1037 dinars and 7 dirhams to each player-character
  518 dinars and 9 dirhams to Gan ad-Din
• 1472 xp to each player-character
  736 xp to Gan ad-Din
• the codex of brass and its attendant notes
• the scroll with serpent-illuminations
• 8 rylath roots
• 30 sinda berries
• 5 hallucinogenic flowers
• Bart's rubbings from the obelisk

Player-characters who wish to retain anything for themselves may "buy out" an item of discrete dinar-value; non-valued items included in the Cut must be negotiated out per the will of the company.

And as always, write-ups, art, &c. representing the events of the expedition will earn the supplying player-character 100 xp per level.