Ricardo carried Nix's trunk to Shautha's cabin. As the half-orc was still outside talking with the hobgoblins, he just set the chest down outside the door. "The young half-orc, you must have met her, has this cabin. I'm sure she won't mind if you share." He points down the companionway with a roguish grin and a good-humoured wink. "My room is right there. In case Shautha's not to your liking."
As soon as he leaves, Nix sits on the trunk, rubs her face with her hands and mutters something in Gnoll to herself. "Oy vai."
(Translated from Gnoll)
When the demon first appeared, Shautha had been torn between bowing down before it and striking it with her morningstar, still bloodied from the Mist creatures. Her rage had slowly dissipated, though, and as Ricardo spoke, Shautha's jaw dropped in a very unseemly way.
What was he thinking? It is one thing to revere the demons, but an entirely different thing to give them everything they want without proper negotiation! We are all doomed.
She kept her eye on the demon until it disappeared and then turned back to the ship, very much resigned to what she hoped is just Ricardo's fate. But as the Mist knows, the demons have a way of dragging everything and everyone into their webs. She paused in her tracks and then resumed after a moment.
I should have left him to rot in that stupid dungeon! When she reboarded the ship, she just shook her head at all the chatter and looked for some way to help get them out of there.
Whistling cheerfully to himself, Ricardo tidied himself up in his cabin, getting a fresh hankerchief and making sure his hair and cloak were back in place.
Then he set out to find Francesca. Poor little thing was looking a trifle down, no doubt because of how he'd had to leave her earlier in the day. A little cheering up is what she needed. And maybe a little competitive spirit stirred up in her breast -- Ricardo never met a little sister who wasn't competitive with her older sister.
Gustav had swooned. Yes, swooned. Dr. Livingstone was huddled in a corner, trembling over a puddle of his own vomit. Francesca was more composed, but her eyes are still wide and she's staring into space. (All the NPCs failed their Sanity checks! The PC's didn't have to make Sanity checks, they're the "heroes!") With the liberal application of a couple buckets of water, everyone was awakened and cleaned up, and the ship was soon repaired and ready to go. Ricardo pranced around the ship ignorantly, wondering why in the world everyone was staring at him that way.
The monkey was hiding in a cabinet with the charts in the Captain's cabin. He was still mumbling to himself in Monkey about where he thought they should go and what they should do. Also, there was a strange book sitting in the cabin that wasn't there before. It was bound in black leather and had gilt page edges, and a gold clasp. It was clearly a work of art and something very valuable. However, no one could read it. In addition to the rather disconcerting fact that this book just appeared out of nowhere (as near as anyone could tell can tell) it seemed to give off disquieting emanations of some sort. Something about this book, besides its abrupt and unexplained appearance, was unnatural.
When the ship was fixed, Lash wasted no time getting back in motion. It was late by this time, and early stars were starting to appear. Gustav located their position using the stars and a sextant and told everyone that they'd blown west much farther than they could have traveled without the storm giving them extraordinary speed, and were (almost) directly south of Sènt-Andriu.
"Good," Lash answered. "Whatever 'welcoming committee' that bastard Kirov helped arrange should be waiting for us to the East. We should head for the passage between Terrassa and Erau and take the inland passage. That way we only have regular pirates to concern us. And could someone do something about this monkey before it damages the charts?"
Shautha studied the book carefully before handing it over to someone else. "This," she proclaimed, "is demons' work. If we try to throw it overboard, I'm sure it will just reappear. If we try to burn it, the flames will not touch it. If we douse it in acid, it will eat the acid. We should put it somewhere out of the way until its purpose is revealed. As it certainly will." She finished with a dark glower in Ricardo's direction.
"Book must be the words of the Mist Demon to her new slave...Keep Ricardo away from it?" Scritch's taste for conversation exhausted, he foun himself a nice quiet hidey-hole (aka his cabin) and performed the cleansing rituals passed down from year to year year from the Kriisa elders, trying to free himself of any lingering taint from the Mist.
Shautha spent the next several hours (I'm sure) trying to coax the monkey into being her friend, and chasing it around the ship. "Wow, your standards are really slipping," Vuukran commented.
"Vuukran," Shautha asked curiously, "do you really understand what the monkey is saying, or are you just guessing?"
The hobgoblin started to answer, but then shared a knowing wink and nod with the monkey instead. Shautha rolled her eyes.
Lash dragged Ricardo into a cabin and explained to him, multiple times, exactly what he did and who he was talking to. Ricardo was frankly relieved to be pulled away from Francesca, as she'd gotten decidedly more... intense in her "friendship"... At first he wasn't really paying attention to the hobgoblin, so busy was he planning his strategies for Nix, and Francesca and that Shautha ("I wonder that's the SAME Shautha from that dungeon? Never did get a chance to see her..."), but eventually it sunk in and Ricardo was horrified. "WHAT? And with the teeth and the breasts and... WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP ME?"
When he heard that the beautiful woman he'd promised to serve started life as a freakish demon-thing, Ricardo was what you call FREAKED OUT. "Okay, but allies of Samyassa, that's not so bad. That's that angel supposed to rule a kingdom in the mist, around here somewhere they say. Maybe she wasn't a demon. Maybe she was an angel. You think maybe...?"
Ricardo didn't bother finishing that question; he knew what Lash was going to say. "We need more information."
Lash sat back and grumbled. "You really got yourself into trouble this time. This is worse than that 'incident' with the cross-dresser in Kadath."
"NOTHING HAPPENED!" Ricardo insisted, his face going flat.
"Except you cried then, too."
"I'm not crying. Francesca was licking my eyes."
"Ok, ok. You aren't crying. But you should clean yourself up before you go out and I'd say something about how smoke from the lamps blew in your eyes to explain the puffiness."
Lash continued, "By the by, about Francecsa.... Hands off, Ricardo, I mean it. She's the sister of our employer, remember her? Rich lady, paying us, had sex with you, is paying good money to move weapons of mass destruction, knows more assassins than you do whores? However pretty you are, and however much you impressed her in the sack, she'll have you castrated for fooling around with her sister, especially after fooling around with her. Remember back in Torregina? The twins? This will be worse. Way worse."
Ricardo was affronted. "Me? You think I'd betray our business interests, our partnership, for the sake of a pair of blue eyes?" Then he thought about the twins. "Well, alright, never mind that. Don't worry about Francesca; that situation is under control. Castellana is not going to have any cause for jealousy, even if she were inclined that way about me, which I assure you she is not. "Delivering her sister safe sound and with a good report of us is going to do us plenty of good with Castellana. I can make sure she's happy a lot better than you can."
Otherwise, the trip to Zin was relatively uneventful. Between Lash's diligence and Francesca's nervousness following "the incident" of inadvertently getting pregnant with Rosemary's Baby, Ricardo's advances in that regard were frustrated. Dr. Livingstone checked each of them out in detail (especially Nix. He spent a very long time examining Nix. Shautha he kind of rushed through nervously.) and gave everyone a clean bill of health; no traces of taint or corruption that he could see. For the moment anyway. Francesca's monkey (who had been unfortunately named Mr. Peepers, a name that he did not appreciate) becomes good friends with Vuukran, swapping all kinds of rather simplistic and boring stories about being pampered by Francesca, and before that, swinging in the trees in Mnar as a youngster. He seemed to be much more widely traveled than Vuukran ever suspected, but his memory and ability to determine important details was sketchy at best, as was his vocabulary and ability to communicate complex thoughts.
Assuming, of course, that Vuukran really
could understand him.
Scritch had a number of really bad dreams about toothed, shadowy maggots burrowing through his legs, and twice he woke up from such dreams to find the mysterious book sitting in his cabin, as if watching him, although he knew for sure that it was not there when he went to sleep.
The book itself seemed to exhibit some unusual properties, if that's not merely imagination. Sometimes the characters seemed to be different, as if the writing was spontaneously changing languages when no one was looking at it, but still nobody could read a word of it. Gustav got physically ill when he could see the book, and refused to be in the same room with it. Francesca, in an effort to stave off boredom, suggested that everyone play cards, betting food rations as stakes. Amazingly enough, she could eat like crazy and still look like a coltish, thin youngster. And she did seem to win. A lot. Everyone that spent any appreciable time playing with her went hungry more often than not.
Despite some creaking and the occasional need to climb up on the balloon and make adjustments, the field repairs and spare parts held out and the airship had no further problems. They also had good traveling weather, managed to avoid pirates, and had apparently thrown any pursuit by Kirov's agents off the scent with the unexpected landfall. Shautha, after losing all her meals for the day to Franesca, attempted to shoot, lasso or otherwise catch some birds and cook them, maybe, but they taste tough, dry and slightly rancid. The most common breed they saw while traveling were carrion eaters like ravens, crows and vultures anyway, although an occasional eagle or hawk flew by in the distance. Bats were also a common sight, but nobody was desperate enough to eat them, even the large unfurred carrion-eating.
Shautha spent some time of the journey trying to scare the poor doctor. She also spent much of her time trying to determine if Vuukran really could speak with the monkey or not. Though she did not seek it out, she also did not avoid the book and when it was convenient, she studied it in the hopes that some magic of the Mist would let her understand its purpose. It didn't. She also gambled recklessly, often getting angry and stomping away from the table at a particularly bad or foolish loss, but she always came back the next time for more.
Scritch spent the remainder of the trip in a couple of places: his cabin, where the sounds of tribal chanting could occasionally be heard, the cargo bay, where he curled up amidst blankets and bedding and naps during the day, and the rigging of the airship itself, where he spent the nights he wasn't tortured by nightmares enjoying the breeze and surveying the Mist-shrouded world.
Occasionally, he could be found returning the book to wher it normally was kept. After losing a day's worth of food to Francesca, he stopped gambling but did watch the others play, obviously enjoying their company but not providing much in the way of conversation himself.
Finally after twelve days of travel, they arrived at Mnar and could see Zin in the distance. Mnar itself was a rather flat plateau, stretching off into the distance, with sharply falling red sandstone cliffs that angled near the top. Zin was built literally on the cliff itself; the lowest levels were carved into the side of the rock, and treacherous paths, rope bridges and ladders, and rickety scaffolding made up the "streets". At higher elevations, it came to terraces where the buildings were much more substantial. The richest Zinians lived on the top of the plateau itself, away from the edge. Zin was a large city of several hundred thousand regular residents and a few tens of thousands of transient residents at any one time, and was possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the entire region. Airship and flying mount traffic was relatively thick as they approach edthe city itself, and a guard mounted on a giant eagle flew out to their ship to welcome them and determine their business in Zin.
As they get within sight of the mainland, Shautha took deep lusty breaths at every opportunity. "Ahhh, Mnar! Home sweet home!" she crowed.
Lash ignored her and answered the eagle guard. "Trade, resupply, and repairs, likely in that order. What news in Zin?"
He looked bored, especially since they were still flying the di Vicenta colors, which he recognized and wasn't about to mess with. He pointed Lash towards their local estate and gave him some really boring news about the succession (the King was getting on in years and his many, many children by many, many women, were coming out of the woodwork. And mostly getting assassinated as soon as they did) and about rumors of unrest in the interior. Settlers, trappers and downright crazy people alike all agreed that something was going on. The most common story was that the gorillas and the gnolls were going to war with each other, although some people said that they had allied with each other and would instead march to war against the cities along the edge of the plateau.
Vuukran whispered loudly to the monkey, "Did you hear that, Commander Bananas? Gorilla warfare!", then shook his head sadly.
Given their connections to the di Vicenta family, the eagle guard didn't charge them any docking fee, warned them that his only function was to charge docking fees and/or other tarriffs and that once they were in Zin itself their safety and security was their own affair, and let them go.
Before changing heading for the di Vicenta estate, Vuukran presented Commander Bananas, the name he claimed was the monkey's
real name, with a crude monkey-sized pirate hat and eyepatch that he had made for him during the journey, and promised to buy him a nicer set as soon as he could. He also admitted, somewhat awkwardly, that he wasn't aware that Shautha was from Mnar. "Have you ever been to the Great Bazaar in this city? I've heard so much about it... I've been told that the prices are Zinsane!"
At Vuukran's question, Shautha kind of blushed. "Oh, uh, I've never actually been to the Bazaar . . ." she mumbled.
Upon seeing Mnar from the ship, Nix's mood turned sour.
They flew deliberately over the rooftops, up to the higher elevations where the rich lived. The di Vicenta estate had a fair bit of real estate, up on the highest levels of the ridge that made up the plateau rim. From here they could see the sunken interior of the gigantic Mnar plateau, farmlands extending a mile or two away from the city to end at a shrieking, steaming treeline where the infamous jungles of Mnar started. The estate was surrounded by a thick wall, and their ship was helped by liveried servants and slaves to the docking platform, and pulled down and secured. Francesca gulped slightly as she saw her older brother Gaspar waiting for them to disembark. "Maybe I'll just stay here in my cabin while you meet with Gaspar." she said.
Gaspar himself was a finely dressed (and fine-looking) man, tall, dark and handsome. He smiled as they started to disembark. "You were as good as dear Castellana promised! Congratulations on your swift arrival!"