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BSI: Bosum Strand Irregulars
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<blockquote data-quote="skotothalamos" data-source="post: 6629564" data-attributes="member: 83398"><p><strong>Mother's Day, part 2</strong></p><p></p><p>With Grappa’s letter in hand, Delft and the constables agreed that their next step should be to track down Leone Quital and free Grappa from his mind. Then, with Grappa’s information, they could infiltrate ObCon and get closer to undermining the conspiracy’s plans. To start, they would need to follow Quital’s trail to the Crisillyiri city of Alais Primos, seat of the clergy. Delft told the constables to head to the docks, where the Impossible was waiting to take them to Crisillyir. He also told them that former Junior Constable Oksana Kozlov had been on sabbatical in Drakr these past six months. She had just returned to active duty and would meet up with them in Alais Primos. Before they left, he provided them with a full set of Communication Rings, which allowed for communication rituals (like Sending) to cross the barrier between the real world and the Bleak Gate. Harkover Lee had made them specifically for the constables, on the assumption that their travels would undoubtedly take them back to the Bleak Gate.</p><p></p><p>Upon arriving at the docks, Captain Smith rushed up to them, indicating that there was an incident aboard the ship. A woman with skin the color of the open sea and tentacles for hair was trying to install a magical “portal pad,” saying it was a gift, and could the constables please talk to her? They obliged, and the woman introduced herself as Beshela, Archfey of the Sea. She said that she had previously been allied with the Duchess Ethelyn, and the Duchess had warned of a terrible threat to Risur. Since the constables had defeated Ethelyn, they must be more powerful than her and best equipped to face this nebulous threat, and so Beshela was offering them a gift: a portal pad for their ship that would not only allow for teleportation to and from the ship, but also allow the entire ship to sail into the Dreaming or the Bleak Gate if need be.</p><p></p><p>The constables, especially Cazara, were wary of accepting a gift from the fey. As they were beginning to question Beshela on the specifics of the gift, they heard a crowd approaching, singing one of Rock Rackus’s bawdier songs. They all turned to watch as the crowd approached, led by Rock himself, who was accompanied by James. They marched to the dock, and when the song finished, Rock shouted up to the party. “I heard you need my help on your next mission!”</p><p></p><p>As everyone took a moment to let that sink in, the crowd grew restless. They had spotted Beshela and started to shout angrily about her supposed misdeeds. According to the crowd, she was responsible for every bit of misfortune that had befallen any of them on or near the sea. Accusations ranging from spoiled cargo to sunken ships filled the air. Just when it seemed a riot would begin, a dapper gentleman in a fine suit popped into being with his arm around Beshela. The man’s hat had a fancy ring made from polished copper, but where his face and hands should have been, there was nothing. Cazara recognized him immediately as fey emissary Copperhat the Headless.</p><p></p><p>“Good day, Agents of King Kelland,” said Copperhat, before turning his “face” toward Beshela and making an exaggerated smooching sound. She detached herself from him and glared at him as he walked and teleported around the ship with no respect for the law of gravity. Cazara addressed him by name and asked him what he wanted. He walked up masts and stood on the undersides of sails as he asked the party whether they were trusting Beshela and accepting her gift. He hinted that the Unseen Court had been having some disagreements with some archfey. “It’s times like this when exciting and stupid things happen,” he said.</p><p></p><p>Copperhat then grabbed the portal pad and teleported with it to the dock. He dropped it from a high height and when it struck the wood of the dock, the dock began to dissolve into seaweed and run into the bay. “That would have been your ship!” It was around this time that Rock and the constables noticed that James had disappeared; he had been Copperhat in disguise all along. This enraged Beshela. She summoned a kraken and a stormcloud of acid rain and dove into the ocean. With Rock’s help, the constables were able to defeat the kraken, at which point it dissolved into so much seaweed.</p><p></p><p>After the fight, Copperhat congratulated everyone on their victory (in which, it should be noted, he had not actually participated in any meaningful way). “My work is done here. Rock, King Thisraldion is hosting a party this very night. Shall we away?” Rock eagerly agreed, and the two vanished an explosion of leaves and flower petals. As the constables took stock of what had just happened, Copperhat and Rock re-appeared. “I almost forgot,” said Copperhat, “I need a favor. I have an item I need kept safe, but I can’t be bothered to carry it. Would you do me the honor of carrying it for me?” At this, he produced a foot-wide glob of tangled spider web from his pocket. “Feel free to use it while you’re holding onto it. You’ll have some dead bodies on your hands in the near future and this will come in handy. Not sure quite what you’re up to, but I’ve got a knack. I can always smell a corpse in the offing.” The constables agreed to hold Copperhat’s Absurdist Web for him. A quick once-over by Summer revealed that it was an extradimensional holding space. Copperhat thanked them again and poofed back to the Dreaming.</p><p></p><p>The journey to Crisillyir was far less eventful. Upon arriving in Alais Pimos, Summer disguised everyone as humans, and Alienor hid her guns in the jacket she had taken off Lorcan Kell, as both non-humans and firearms could be trouble in the clergy’s most conservative city. They proceeded to the address Delft had provided them with for contacting Oksana. She answered the door, looking confused at the gaggle of humans on her threshold. Cazara flashed her badge and pushed her way past the dwarf into the apartment. “Undercover,” she explained. </p><p></p><p>Oksana had last seen active duty the night Lorcan Kell and his lieutenants slaughtered Pablo Duende, Garson “Bugtree” Wildflower, and Quentin Augst, the lawyer they were supposed to protect. Oksana had been carrying Augst to safety when Kell hacked them both down with his vicious machetes. Left for dead under the corpse of her charge, Oksana was revived by Magnus and the two escaped the carnage. Since that traumatic event, Oksana had been on sabbatical in her homeland of Drakr. While there, she had been exploring the various belief systems of her people, most significantly Eschatology. During her explorations of Drakr’s many libraries, she happened upon a heretical original text by William Miller. While studying the text, the ghost of Miller appeared to her in a vision and tasked her with bringing his original, unedited message to the people. This encounter infused Oksana with mental powers. She found she was able to control minds and even bend reality to her will. She set aside her old martial training and spent many months exploring her new powers and trying to find more of Miller’s original texts (which were supposedly all burned with him when the Clergy executed him as a heretic in the year 17).</p><p></p><p>The constables got her up to speed on the current situation, explaining about the Obscurati, Grappa, Quital, and ObCon. Oksana revealed that she had recently had a dream where she was Ken Don, the head of the Jeneva Grand Librarium in Alais Primos, and as him she had attended a convention just like the one they described. She filled them in on her situation in Alais Primos; she had arrived two weeks prior and been put up in this apartment by former RHC agent Joe Hobner. However, she had not heard from Joe in two weeks and was vaguely concerned. Before starting their pursuit of Quital, the constables decided to check up on Joe.</p><p></p><p>At Joe’s import/export business, they were greeted by someone who looked just like Joe Hobner, but who did not seem to recognize Oksana, referring to her as a customer. When she asked him to retrieve her fictional special order, he went into his back storeroom and tried to escape out the back door. Cazara was fastest in pursuit, but by the time she got into the alley, the imposter was already dead. Two kobolds squatted on his back, wielding bloody daggers. Cazara pounced on them in return and held them down as their boss arrived.</p><p></p><p>With a dramatic pillar of smoke, a kobold wizard teleported into the alley seated atop a pile of books. He wore dark robes and stroked his fleshy “whiskers” while smoking a pipe and flipping through a tiny book in his lap. The fact that he was doing three things with his two hands was somehow not remarkable. Cazara and IronPeak recognized him as matching the description of El Extraño, the spymaster of Ber. He opened with a monologue.</p><p></p><p>“I know all of your names. Do not be impressed yet. It is not impressive because I did not need my many loyal eyes for that. I work for Bruse Cavallo, and he told me your names while we ate dinosaur eggs in his castle. Still, it is not time to be impressed.</p><p></p><p>“I became interested in this conspiracy that has caused so much trouble, and I knew if I were them, I would kill your spies. Also, I knew where your spies were. Do not be impressed. It is not hard to guess that a former constable would still spy for his country. My eyes watched his home, and sadly they could not save him from this assassin. But then they watched the assassin, and now we have helped you. </p><p></p><p>“Leone Quital was spotted on the 28th of Spring in the Cathedral of Triegenes at Enzyo Mons. Do not be impressed that I know you are looking for him. His former associate, the gnome named Oddcog, cursed the man’s name repeatedly while he fitted me for my own mechanical battle suit. It was natural you would seek the Steelshaper at some point. </p><p>“We will work together. My eyes will follow you, look for threats and targets around you, and share what they see. If you disagree, my eyes will send couriers to share what they see, so that you don’t get upset and kill any of them. You should read this book, so you respect the value of little people.” </p><p>El Extraño tossed his tiny book to Alienor. She read the title: Codex of the Little People. The constables agreed to his help, but on the promise that he wouldn’t kill the people they were trying to question in the future. He said there were ways to question the dead, but agreed to try to have his people be more careful in the future. He asked Cazara to free the two she was currently pinning to the ground and they scampered up onto nearby rooftops. With another dramatic pillar of smoke, El Extraño was gone. Oksana tried to speak with the dead man, but discovered that he had no soul to speak to. El Extraño had at least provided them with the information that Quital had been seen going to the volcano just a few miles outside of town, where the devout made sacrifices that kept the caldera quiet these past 700 years.</p><p></p><p>Not looking forward to a day of canvassing dockworkers for any information about a ship that came into harbor five months ago, the constables decided to pursue some of Summer’s memories first. They followed the pull of the Arc of Reida to a hillside half a mile outside the city. When they arrived, the Arc altered reality out to the largest diameter yet. </p><p></p><p>The crackling edge of the reality shift stretched all the way back to the walls of the city, where the golden bells of the cathedrals were ringing, summoning a great enchanted shield for the entire city. The farmland between the hilltop and the city walls had turned from farmland to a battlefield. Around the constables was an entire Eladrin army from the time of the Great Malice. Half of them lay dead and the others stood in stunned disbelief. Between the army and the hilltop where the constables stood was a circle of six bonfires. At the center of the circle knelt Kasvarina, holding the charred remains of an Eladrin woman. In the air above Kasvarina, a shadow made of soot and ash hung in the air. Before the wind disperses it, the shadow looked like it was in the shape of a six-armed woman, one hundred feet tall. Kasvarina was out of her mind with grief and while she knew who the woman was that she held at the time, she could not remember who it was after the memory even ended. Alienor went to investigate one of the bonfires, and inside she found a fifteen-foot-tall flaming sword. She grabbed it.</p><p></p><p>As the memory faded, Alienor was somehow able to enforce her will on the sword and bring it back with her. She knew instinctively that it was the Third Sword of Srasama, embodying her aspect as the mother-protector. Summer collapsed to the ground, catatonic. Some local farmers who had been subjected to the memory panicked and ran. The constables made their way back into the city as quickly as they could.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="skotothalamos, post: 6629564, member: 83398"] [b]Mother's Day, part 2[/b] With Grappa’s letter in hand, Delft and the constables agreed that their next step should be to track down Leone Quital and free Grappa from his mind. Then, with Grappa’s information, they could infiltrate ObCon and get closer to undermining the conspiracy’s plans. To start, they would need to follow Quital’s trail to the Crisillyiri city of Alais Primos, seat of the clergy. Delft told the constables to head to the docks, where the Impossible was waiting to take them to Crisillyir. He also told them that former Junior Constable Oksana Kozlov had been on sabbatical in Drakr these past six months. She had just returned to active duty and would meet up with them in Alais Primos. Before they left, he provided them with a full set of Communication Rings, which allowed for communication rituals (like Sending) to cross the barrier between the real world and the Bleak Gate. Harkover Lee had made them specifically for the constables, on the assumption that their travels would undoubtedly take them back to the Bleak Gate. Upon arriving at the docks, Captain Smith rushed up to them, indicating that there was an incident aboard the ship. A woman with skin the color of the open sea and tentacles for hair was trying to install a magical “portal pad,” saying it was a gift, and could the constables please talk to her? They obliged, and the woman introduced herself as Beshela, Archfey of the Sea. She said that she had previously been allied with the Duchess Ethelyn, and the Duchess had warned of a terrible threat to Risur. Since the constables had defeated Ethelyn, they must be more powerful than her and best equipped to face this nebulous threat, and so Beshela was offering them a gift: a portal pad for their ship that would not only allow for teleportation to and from the ship, but also allow the entire ship to sail into the Dreaming or the Bleak Gate if need be. The constables, especially Cazara, were wary of accepting a gift from the fey. As they were beginning to question Beshela on the specifics of the gift, they heard a crowd approaching, singing one of Rock Rackus’s bawdier songs. They all turned to watch as the crowd approached, led by Rock himself, who was accompanied by James. They marched to the dock, and when the song finished, Rock shouted up to the party. “I heard you need my help on your next mission!” As everyone took a moment to let that sink in, the crowd grew restless. They had spotted Beshela and started to shout angrily about her supposed misdeeds. According to the crowd, she was responsible for every bit of misfortune that had befallen any of them on or near the sea. Accusations ranging from spoiled cargo to sunken ships filled the air. Just when it seemed a riot would begin, a dapper gentleman in a fine suit popped into being with his arm around Beshela. The man’s hat had a fancy ring made from polished copper, but where his face and hands should have been, there was nothing. Cazara recognized him immediately as fey emissary Copperhat the Headless. “Good day, Agents of King Kelland,” said Copperhat, before turning his “face” toward Beshela and making an exaggerated smooching sound. She detached herself from him and glared at him as he walked and teleported around the ship with no respect for the law of gravity. Cazara addressed him by name and asked him what he wanted. He walked up masts and stood on the undersides of sails as he asked the party whether they were trusting Beshela and accepting her gift. He hinted that the Unseen Court had been having some disagreements with some archfey. “It’s times like this when exciting and stupid things happen,” he said. Copperhat then grabbed the portal pad and teleported with it to the dock. He dropped it from a high height and when it struck the wood of the dock, the dock began to dissolve into seaweed and run into the bay. “That would have been your ship!” It was around this time that Rock and the constables noticed that James had disappeared; he had been Copperhat in disguise all along. This enraged Beshela. She summoned a kraken and a stormcloud of acid rain and dove into the ocean. With Rock’s help, the constables were able to defeat the kraken, at which point it dissolved into so much seaweed. After the fight, Copperhat congratulated everyone on their victory (in which, it should be noted, he had not actually participated in any meaningful way). “My work is done here. Rock, King Thisraldion is hosting a party this very night. Shall we away?” Rock eagerly agreed, and the two vanished an explosion of leaves and flower petals. As the constables took stock of what had just happened, Copperhat and Rock re-appeared. “I almost forgot,” said Copperhat, “I need a favor. I have an item I need kept safe, but I can’t be bothered to carry it. Would you do me the honor of carrying it for me?” At this, he produced a foot-wide glob of tangled spider web from his pocket. “Feel free to use it while you’re holding onto it. You’ll have some dead bodies on your hands in the near future and this will come in handy. Not sure quite what you’re up to, but I’ve got a knack. I can always smell a corpse in the offing.” The constables agreed to hold Copperhat’s Absurdist Web for him. A quick once-over by Summer revealed that it was an extradimensional holding space. Copperhat thanked them again and poofed back to the Dreaming. The journey to Crisillyir was far less eventful. Upon arriving in Alais Pimos, Summer disguised everyone as humans, and Alienor hid her guns in the jacket she had taken off Lorcan Kell, as both non-humans and firearms could be trouble in the clergy’s most conservative city. They proceeded to the address Delft had provided them with for contacting Oksana. She answered the door, looking confused at the gaggle of humans on her threshold. Cazara flashed her badge and pushed her way past the dwarf into the apartment. “Undercover,” she explained. Oksana had last seen active duty the night Lorcan Kell and his lieutenants slaughtered Pablo Duende, Garson “Bugtree” Wildflower, and Quentin Augst, the lawyer they were supposed to protect. Oksana had been carrying Augst to safety when Kell hacked them both down with his vicious machetes. Left for dead under the corpse of her charge, Oksana was revived by Magnus and the two escaped the carnage. Since that traumatic event, Oksana had been on sabbatical in her homeland of Drakr. While there, she had been exploring the various belief systems of her people, most significantly Eschatology. During her explorations of Drakr’s many libraries, she happened upon a heretical original text by William Miller. While studying the text, the ghost of Miller appeared to her in a vision and tasked her with bringing his original, unedited message to the people. This encounter infused Oksana with mental powers. She found she was able to control minds and even bend reality to her will. She set aside her old martial training and spent many months exploring her new powers and trying to find more of Miller’s original texts (which were supposedly all burned with him when the Clergy executed him as a heretic in the year 17). The constables got her up to speed on the current situation, explaining about the Obscurati, Grappa, Quital, and ObCon. Oksana revealed that she had recently had a dream where she was Ken Don, the head of the Jeneva Grand Librarium in Alais Primos, and as him she had attended a convention just like the one they described. She filled them in on her situation in Alais Primos; she had arrived two weeks prior and been put up in this apartment by former RHC agent Joe Hobner. However, she had not heard from Joe in two weeks and was vaguely concerned. Before starting their pursuit of Quital, the constables decided to check up on Joe. At Joe’s import/export business, they were greeted by someone who looked just like Joe Hobner, but who did not seem to recognize Oksana, referring to her as a customer. When she asked him to retrieve her fictional special order, he went into his back storeroom and tried to escape out the back door. Cazara was fastest in pursuit, but by the time she got into the alley, the imposter was already dead. Two kobolds squatted on his back, wielding bloody daggers. Cazara pounced on them in return and held them down as their boss arrived. With a dramatic pillar of smoke, a kobold wizard teleported into the alley seated atop a pile of books. He wore dark robes and stroked his fleshy “whiskers” while smoking a pipe and flipping through a tiny book in his lap. The fact that he was doing three things with his two hands was somehow not remarkable. Cazara and IronPeak recognized him as matching the description of El Extraño, the spymaster of Ber. He opened with a monologue. “I know all of your names. Do not be impressed yet. It is not impressive because I did not need my many loyal eyes for that. I work for Bruse Cavallo, and he told me your names while we ate dinosaur eggs in his castle. Still, it is not time to be impressed. “I became interested in this conspiracy that has caused so much trouble, and I knew if I were them, I would kill your spies. Also, I knew where your spies were. Do not be impressed. It is not hard to guess that a former constable would still spy for his country. My eyes watched his home, and sadly they could not save him from this assassin. But then they watched the assassin, and now we have helped you. “Leone Quital was spotted on the 28th of Spring in the Cathedral of Triegenes at Enzyo Mons. Do not be impressed that I know you are looking for him. His former associate, the gnome named Oddcog, cursed the man’s name repeatedly while he fitted me for my own mechanical battle suit. It was natural you would seek the Steelshaper at some point. “We will work together. My eyes will follow you, look for threats and targets around you, and share what they see. If you disagree, my eyes will send couriers to share what they see, so that you don’t get upset and kill any of them. You should read this book, so you respect the value of little people.” El Extraño tossed his tiny book to Alienor. She read the title: Codex of the Little People. The constables agreed to his help, but on the promise that he wouldn’t kill the people they were trying to question in the future. He said there were ways to question the dead, but agreed to try to have his people be more careful in the future. He asked Cazara to free the two she was currently pinning to the ground and they scampered up onto nearby rooftops. With another dramatic pillar of smoke, El Extraño was gone. Oksana tried to speak with the dead man, but discovered that he had no soul to speak to. El Extraño had at least provided them with the information that Quital had been seen going to the volcano just a few miles outside of town, where the devout made sacrifices that kept the caldera quiet these past 700 years. Not looking forward to a day of canvassing dockworkers for any information about a ship that came into harbor five months ago, the constables decided to pursue some of Summer’s memories first. They followed the pull of the Arc of Reida to a hillside half a mile outside the city. When they arrived, the Arc altered reality out to the largest diameter yet. The crackling edge of the reality shift stretched all the way back to the walls of the city, where the golden bells of the cathedrals were ringing, summoning a great enchanted shield for the entire city. The farmland between the hilltop and the city walls had turned from farmland to a battlefield. Around the constables was an entire Eladrin army from the time of the Great Malice. Half of them lay dead and the others stood in stunned disbelief. Between the army and the hilltop where the constables stood was a circle of six bonfires. At the center of the circle knelt Kasvarina, holding the charred remains of an Eladrin woman. In the air above Kasvarina, a shadow made of soot and ash hung in the air. Before the wind disperses it, the shadow looked like it was in the shape of a six-armed woman, one hundred feet tall. Kasvarina was out of her mind with grief and while she knew who the woman was that she held at the time, she could not remember who it was after the memory even ended. Alienor went to investigate one of the bonfires, and inside she found a fifteen-foot-tall flaming sword. She grabbed it. As the memory faded, Alienor was somehow able to enforce her will on the sword and bring it back with her. She knew instinctively that it was the Third Sword of Srasama, embodying her aspect as the mother-protector. Summer collapsed to the ground, catatonic. Some local farmers who had been subjected to the memory panicked and ran. The constables made their way back into the city as quickly as they could. [/QUOTE]
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