Supercharged

The morning after the Contemplation of Calm in the Freelancers' back tavern was relatively mellow as the various Freelancers had finished their breakfast and considered their day.  They had not spent much time on these ruminations when Damakaios, the Pungarehu hanyou leading the Freelancers, entered and looked around.

"Dryali and Tuala, would you mind coming up to my office please?" he asked easily, and got himself a cup of tea from the bar.  Sipping it, his eyes fell upon Ana and Quelenna.  "You also, if you wouldn't mind," he told them.  He left again, with his tea, which did not slosh at all.

Ana and Quelenna looked intrigued, and followed him.  Tuala and Dryali looked at each other speculatively, then rose.  Tuala followed Damakaios, but Dryali went to the bar, and got a glass of port before heading upstairs.

Damakaios' office wasn't exactly unchanging, but there was no hint of why he'd asked them up.  His desk was clear other than a blotter and an inkwell.

Quelenna leaned against the doorframe.
Ana calmly sat in an enormous chair in the front row.
Tuala also sat in the front row, on the far left.
Dryali, glass of port in hand, sprawled into a chair in the darkest part of the room.

They all looked at Damakaios expectantly.  He opened a drawer and pulled out a packet.  "Actually, this was Dryali & Tuala's work," he started.

Dryali sat up properly.

"Waypoint Tremendous is near to Commerce now.  I would like the four of you to go investigate Daystar cult activity.  It's only four days' away, and Church of Storms will pay 300 eagles," he announced.  "I'm pretty sure you are all game for a Daystar mission," he concluded.

<Dryali glared.>
Ana:  always down for them!
Quelenna:  not a fan of butthole worship.
Damakaios <grimaced>:  I do my best to forget that part.
Quelenna:  Damakaios, with the number of these missions that I have been on and the sights I have seen, I am unable to forget.
Dryali:  what is the environment on Waypoint Tremendous?
Damakaios:  it's boreal forest: cool and a little bit chilly.  It's an elliptical orbit, right now Commerce is near its periapsis, but Coldstream near apoapsis.
Dryali:  is this stealth or somethin'?
Damakaios depends on what you find.  Sometimes there's nothing; just report.  If you find… well.  I trust your judgment.  If you want to take direct action, that's fine.
<Damakaios unclipped an actual Church of Storms badge and handed it to Tuala.>
Damakaios:  don't go flashing this around unless you've made a big stir.  The Daystar cultists know they're hunted; letting others know that too, isn't a bad thing

Tuala tucked the badge into a cloak pocket.  Damakaios told them the ship they were to take was the Barucci, a mechanical airship hailing from Filigree on Grafton; Fir Blackstone, a quinametzin, was captain.

The Freelancers rose and left to prepare.  While the others were buying warmer clothes, Dryali thought he'd be okay.

A couple of hours later, the Freelancers arrived where the Barucci was docked, accompanied by 3 owl gryphons and a pony pegasus.  Tuala, Quelenna, and Dryali were relieved to learn most of the crew was quinametzin, although there were some Maker gnomes and coblygnomes as engineers for the mechanical airship.  But then they learned that the ship was set up for Grafton, so the doors were big and small, with some hallways only for gnomes.

Ana was happy, but now the others were not so much, as everything felt in the wrong place for them, from door handles to shelves.

Damakaios was right that the waypoint was in periapsis and near Commerce, but that meant it was already headed away from the center again.  The orbit was so different from Commerce's that the airship would need bursts of accelerations at its own periapsis to align orbits and speed, and then in 4 days, when it was approaching periapsis again, they would catch the waypoint and land.  Or so the captain explained.

The first day was quite lovely.  The Barucci departed Ripa Daneo and only slowly moved away from Commerce, trying to line up the apsidal nodes before the first big acceleration.  But the breeze was pleasant and refreshing.  The big acceleration was at the start of truedark.

The second day started out nice, but it was obvious that the Barucci had apopapsis much further out.  The airship kept climbing, into some clouds, until an hour before Daystar zenith, when the captain yelled for everyone to hang on!  Unexpected turbulence.  Tuala heeded  the captain's warning and hung on, but the others figured they could ride it out, no big deal.

It lasted almost 4 hours, after which it took everyone a while to relax.  Another burn happened during truedark.

The clouds were below them on the third day, and the brisk breeze gave hints that they were getting pretty far outwards.  It calmed down overnight, but the morning of the fourth day it resumed.  This time it felt more like a breeze from below, a trick of the eccentricity.

The morning was cloudier than previous days, reducing visibility.  So it wasn't until Captain Blackstone exclaimed "what?!  what is that?" but before anyone could deduce anything, the Barucci was enveloped by a really big insect swarm.

Ana, with insects in her hair, was super displeased, and Dryali and Quelenna looked at each other in alarm as the mechanical rotors started to strain and sputter.  Dryali went to the captain and asked, "Where can I put wind wall?"  The captain told him, "Get the starboard engines!"  So he did, protecting that engine.

Ana went to the other side, and used mage hand to clear the port engines, while Quelenna used her fans to keep the insects from bothering anyone on the observation deck.  Tuala used prestidigitation to attract the bugs from something other than people and rotors.

After a while, the Barucci moved past the enormous insect swarm, but was covered in dead bugs.  Dryali pulled out his decanter of endless water, and hosed everything off, including the people.  Nobody appreciated being knocked over, but at least the airship and the people were debugged.  Well… mostly.  The Dark elf did manage to avoid knocking over Captain Blackstone.

Between the turbulence and the bugs, things were a little off and some course-correcting was in order.  But the morning of the 5th day, they found themselves approaching a small skylith, that looked kind of like a cockeyed potato with greenery stuck out the top:  Waypoint Tremendous.

<Narrator voice:  Tremendous is shaped like a potato, we decided, see Ida.>

The captain had told them, as they traveled, that Tremendous was a bog-standard transshipping waypoint, popular because its eccentricity provides a free ride from  Pembroke's orbit in the middle reaches to Coldstream's orbit in the outer.  So the Freelancers thought that gave them a simple cover story:  they were going to visit Coldstream.

As they approached, the Freelancers got a better look at the waypoint.  It was a bit bigger than most waypoints they had seen, perhaps 12 miles for the long axis of the potato.  The outward side was well-forested, boreal:  pines and spruces dominated the darker part of the forest, the lighter part was fluffy green spruces and red larches.  The station consisted of a bunch of timber buildings:  an inn/tavern/dormitory, a small mechanical airship repair shop, and a small stable.  Dominating them all was an extremely big warehouse which could have easily held the rest of the buildings within.

After docking, the Freelancers thanked the captain, and debarked with their mounts, heading to the stable, which was a standard 3-wing setup for separating carnivorous flying mounts from their prey.  A human man, Grinstad, was stablemaster.  As he and the stablehands took charge of the mounts, one of the bugs flew out from Pelorus' saddlebags.  Ana shrieked, and smashed it, starling the stablehand, who put some effort into calming Pelorus.  He gave Ana a stern look, but Ana was blasé.

Dryali tried to check for any unnatural tanning action, but Alanya occupied his attention.  Quelenna did better, but did not notice anyone's tan.  As the Freelancers left the stable to go to the inn, the stablemaster told them it would be an eagle for every night, and cautioned them that the stable would not be exercising the mounts, they would have to do that themselves.

The Freelancers wanted to check in, eat breakfast, and listen to chatter, in that order.  The waypoint was busy!  As they strolled over to the inn, Quelenna and Dryali saw a number of Cloud elves and Holder dwarves.  At the inn, they got rooms from Arkand, the Wild elf who was deputy stationmaster, for 1 eagle/night each.  They set their bags in rooms, then headed to the tap room, which was serving breakfast to a reasonable number of people – personnel, visitors, and airship crew.

They saw some humans and a couple halflings as well, and saw that the tap room had a halfling woman at the bar and a Holder dwarf man waiting tables who was happy to take their order.

Ana:  waffles
Dryali:  scrambled eggs, with stuff
Quelenna:  vegetable hot dish
Tuala:  breakfast sandwich with sausage

<Narrator voice:  a pause ensued, then someone intoned, "Today, I learned David has never been to a truck stop.">

The waffles and scrambled eggs were really good, but Tuala and Quelenna did not have food grabbing their attention.  They found out the Holder dwarf's name was Remus, and observed he had a faded tan.  Once he went out of earshot, they pointed this out to Ana and Dryali.

That got everyone looking around, and they saw a Wild elf woman in overalls, eating by herself.  She was wearing overalls, and also had a tan, with no tan lines, but faded out.

The Freelancers finished their breakfast pondering these observations, then Dryali suggested they take the stablemaster's advice and exercise the mounts.  Ana agreed, adding, "I want to speak to those folks, but not when they are about to work."

They talked to the stablemaster as they got their mounts, to learn the usable outward surface of Tremendous was about 6 miles across.  Then they were circling the waystations on happy mounts who were tired of being cooped up for 5 days.

Quelenna:  we should circumnavigate the skylith
Ana:  I'm okay looping around the town
Tuala:  unlikely to find caves, that way
Dryali:  they don't worship from caves
Tuala:  we can find paths

The Freelancers decided to do all of these, so Dryali cast detect magic and started doing low swoops over the town.  He picked up peoples' magic items, and also noted Pelorus had a saddle blanket of protection much like his Alanya did.  The buildings had standard anti-fire abjuration; the warehouse was mostly full of non-magical goods, except for the corner holding the quartermaster's office, which had nice items in a corner.  But nothing with the magical signature of Daystar lotion.

But the morning was fading, so they took off over the woods, looking for people who worship Daystar with their butthole.  <Narrator voice:  I'm not being creative here; that's what the session note says.>  They went back and forth a few times, looping over the docks, looping around the skylith.

Tuala was only half-heartedly looking, as he was far more fascinated with the view of the sky.  But the others noted a couple paths from the docks through the woods, and just casually followed them.  They found, about 4 miles in the woods, a slightly overgrown clearing, well-lit by Daystar, that could have been used by cultists for worship.  But nobody was there.  Quelenna had noticed more people in the woods closer to the dock, but nothing suspicious.

As the Freelancers landed, Dryali cast detect magic again, and it lit up on a distinctively-shaped rock in the southwest side of the clearing.  It was obviously a half-full crate of Daystar lotion.  But close up, the clearing did not look like anyone had been there at all, recently.

Quelenna and Dryali noted boar tracks in the mud, and called that out to the others as they dismounted.  Ana changed her mind and stayed on Pelorus.  Tuala dismounted, and Dryali equipped his shield.

Dryali looked at the rock closely.  Did the crate have other things?  are there bones?  are there traps?  The answers were all no as far as he could tell.

Tuala was looking for foot paths; nobody had been to this clearing in a couple eighths.  He looked for burn marks on the rocks, remembering the Daystar elementals, but there was no fire or char on any rocks.  He did see a lightning burn scar near the crate, but thought it was natural, since Waypoint Tremendous had an orbit that took it right through a shear wall before entering the outer reaches.

Quelenna and Ana were entirely preoccupied with the possibility of boars.  Quelenna wondered if she could handle boars, and Ana was just resentful that yet another aspect of Nature was interfering with her activities.

Mystified and suspicious, Dryali took out his arcane firearm, then extended it into a 10' pole (since it was also a pole of collapsing).  Maintaining his distance, he tried to open the lid of the crate, but didn't account for the wood of the crate rotting.  The pole went entirely through the side of the crate.

Angry whuffling noises sounded behind him.  He turned to see his compatriots frozen, surrounded by 6 boars.  One was really big, bigger than Comet, Tuala's owl gryphon; all of them had small lightnings playing through their fur and tusks.

A big wind sprang up, blowing… down.

Quelenna looked ready to rumble, and Ana, eyes wide, was calculating if she could get in the air faster than the boars could charge.  Dryali was so startled he forgot himself.  The boars and the wind lit up his detect magic with a weird… evocation.

Dryali:  who has the token?!
Tuala <musing>:  I wonder if these are supernatural; not sure what god.
Dryali <to Tuala>:  these are from the gods Hua and Whatitiri.  <to the big boar>  We're here to remove this.

The big boar lowered his head, and shook his tusks at the Freelancers.  He scraped his hooves, eyeing the Freelancers.  The lightning playing around his tusks intensified.  Quelenna shook open her fans, eyeing the boar herself.  The boar scraped his hoof again.  The Wild elf decided to hold her attack in reserve, if the boar actually attacked one of the Freelancers.

Tuala pulled out the Church of Storms badge, holding it up for the boar to see.  "We're here from Church of Storms," the nekomata explained, his voice persuasive.  "We're trying to track down how it got here, and all that good stuff."  The big boar stared at him, not understanding the words.

Two of the smaller boars moved to flank the chest, to Dryali's unhappiness, since his pole of collapsing was still poking through it.  Another one shifted, and Pelorus took off, straight up… into the wind.  The pegasus was able to lift up maybe 18 feet in the downward wind, and stay there despite its strength.  <Narrator voice:  Grace rolled a nat 20 on Pelorus' strength save.>  Ana concluded she was still in range of the big boar.  "Look, you're clearly going a great job guarding this stuff," she told the big boar.  "'Bye now!  have a good day!" she tried to persuade them to leave.

The boars clearly did not understand, but they were not angry either.  Dryali took a risk and, without otherwise moving, collapsed the pole back into his arcane firearm.

The lightning faded out on the big boar's back, but before the Freelancers could feel any relief, he pawed the ground with a hoof again, charging his tusks up and rebuilding the lightning on his back.  Quelenna stayed eyeing him, ready to respond to any attack.

Tuala concluded from the boars' reaction that the Church of Storm badge was no help here.  He put it away, readying firebolt in case of an attack.

Ana, from atop Pelorus, read the tableau a little more accurately.  "You want me to destroy the crate?" she called down to Dryali, who called back, "Yes, but I don't wanna provoke the boars."  Dismissive of his fears, she sank a firebolt smack in the middle of the crate, shattering the lotion bottles and setting the wooden bits of it on fire.

The tension immediately drained out of the clearing.  All 6 boars bowed at the Freelancers, especially at Ana.  <Narrator voice:  imagine Pumba, from Disney's The Lion King.>  Then the normal-sized boars turned into lightning that flew up into the sky.

The big boar bowed again, and a small lightning shot out from his tusks at each of the Freelancers.  They realized they had received a boon, but before they could react he bowed again, and he too turned into a lightning that shot into the sky.  The big wind died simultaneously, and Pelorus shot up about 50' as well.  <Narrator voice:  the boon was a d12 bardic inspiration, with no expiry.>

Quelenna put her fans away.  "I wonder if this was already a shrine to the storm gods?  Why the boars here?"  They looked around the clearing some more, a bit easier now the wind blew all the grass flat.  It turned out the stone with the crate stashed inside of it had ancient, faded holy symbols to Hau and Whatitiri.  Dryali used his artificery to produce stonecutting tools, and spent some time refreshing the carvings.

Shaking their heads, the Freelancers mounted up and returned to the waypoint station.  They decided they would definitely talk to the two people with the faded tans:  the Holder dwarf Remus, and the Wild elf woman they'd seen at breakfast.  It wasn't clear if these two remained Daystar cultists, or what.

<Narrator voice:  before I continue, let's think about the elliptical orbit of Waypoint Tremendous which is bouncing from the middle reaches to outer.  Turns out that means the waypoint has a 35h19m day, and for narrative purposes we will make the late afternoon and neardark in the long, slow part of the orbit for the time the Freelancers are visiting.  It has an apsidal precession but I haven't worked that out and it doesn't matter for this story.  Yes, that means I'm adding creative context to this section>

The Freelancers returned just as the Barucci was departing for Filigree, and they found the tavern about to close up at the beginning of the long afternoon.  Surprised, they ended up in their rooms for a long rest before dinner.

Dinner was very busy, as 2 ships arrived from Coldstream.  One was a ship out of Gemhallow on its return trip, another was a Cloud elf ship bound for Sheerness.  Remus was busy, but the Freelancers managed to sit with the Wild elf they spotted in the morning.

They got to chatting, and learned her name was Viri, and she worked in the repair shop.  As dinner wound down and drinking ramped up, they asked about the tan, but Viri demurred.  After a while Remus joined them, and they found out why he was working 2 shifts.

There had apparently been a lot of Daystar cultists.  Remus and Viri simply thought it was fad, and were not taking it seriously.  But then (here, they lowered their voices) there was the lightning.

"We were all, it's okay, you made a bad choice," Viri said.  Remus added, "After the boars chased us off, we told them, 'you don't want to do it, now.  Nope!'"  He shook his head.  "Other people were not chased off.  'we really believe in it,' they said."

Viri shook her head too, somewhat sadly.  "Tusks up the butt," was all she said, and all the Freelancers conjured a frightening image of the boars charging when the cultists were all "worshipping".

The two showed the Freelancers their new holy symbols.  They were devoted to Hau and Whatitiri now.

The Freelancers stayed on the Waypoint for one full revolution past that, but sadly did not get to visit Coldstream.  They took the fire elemental airship Volland, captained by the Cloud elf Opet, with a home port of Sequoia back to Ripa Daneo.  The trip back was a tag shorter, since the fire elemental was not thrown off by vagaries of weather or insects.

The Volland docked while it was still fadein.  Upon return, they went to visit Tempest Addis, the human leader of Commerce Church of Storms, to report what had happened, what they had learned, and what they had done.  While initially sleepy, Addis was intrigued and amazed by the report, and made them repeat it so he could write it down.

"I will tell other Church of Storm leaders about this," he declared.  "We should perhaps get volunteers to go maintain this shrine."  He paid the Freelancers 300 eagles each, and Tuala returned the Church of Storms badge.  But Addis was still musing.  "It is fairly infrequent, that the Primordial gods take direct action.  Perhaps I should work with Waiola to set up a rotation at this shrine."

• Quelenna → lvl8 monk!
• Ana → lvl8 wizard!
• Tuala -> lvl7 sorcerer!