Session 5 - We find Big Onion and Fool is kidnapped

Back to masterpost.

Starts at day 26.

Pornk says the men want to kick out the baby. We convince him to look for Big Onion.

Amura sees we're about to leave and comes up to us, asks to go, says she'll be just "one minute". We decide to move along so as not to draw Friala's ire. She comes back and starts crying when she doesn't find us.

We camp between two woods.

Partway through the night, Pornk alerts us to another fire. We decide to go check it out.

As we approach, we see that there are a couple of them with a decent number of people. Eleven of them. They're at the border of the northern woods. Have bows, don't look Ikkali, have animals hung up to dry.

Fool approaches the camp, our plan is to see how they react to a baby and see if they're nice people. They appear Balamite.

Their sentry is a man drinking, his hand is deformed. He seems surprised and asking his comrades if it's cursed. He catches it and seems dubious, Fool asks for beer and they ponder the situation. Another man, with a big black beard (Balamites tend to have lighter hair), with an imposing aura, appears and asks if he wants to kill someone's baby with beer.

Drool and Rosy come down fast to introduce themselves, Pornk comes too. Drool asks who are they, and the man introduces himself as Dark Odyssey, a hunter, says he's hired by the richest man in the world to collect the skin of Big Onion. He says his patron's caravan was raided, supposedly by the onion.

Rosy asks if they had any luck, he says no, but that there's a dead patch in the centre of the woods and that this is probably where the onion is.

Drool says she knows where the patch is and tries to point them towards it. Rosy supports it. They say they'll spend 2 more days here and if nothing more happens they'll move somewhere.

We convince them to go there with the Novum war party and camp with them, they have beans. We find out they hail from Malgran. Fool asks for the name of the richest man in the world, they say it's Mr. M (Nathan couldn't find the name yet).

They interrogate Fool a little bit now about him being able to talk.

Rosy asks about his hand. He seems disturbed and asks for more drink. Drool, going to grab the beer, overhears Dark Odyssey saying that Fool must be worth a pile of gold.

Drool assumes the best, brings the drink best and says "They love you there! They think you're worth a lot of money!"

Fool says "Pownk pwease guawd me tonight, they'we gonna seww my ass."

Geoff doesn't explain what happened to Rosy, just says he spent "a whole winter inside that animal".

We go to sleep. Pornk guards him. Fool wakes up to Dark Odyssey crouched, there's howling out in the woods. Pornk leaves, hands Fool to Drool for the guarding.

Fool counts 6 people out of 11, says this is a decoy. As he starts to explain, Geoff comes and offers drink to Drool. She refuses it.

A back and forth takes place between them, Geoff is very pushy. Eventually they asks what's the heaviest rock he can lift. While he's doing that, two guys appear, one tries to grab Fool, the other the spear.

The spear-grabber falls on top of Rosy, the guy with the baby grabs Fool.

Drool gets up and runs after Fool, Rosy and the other guy run after her. The kidnapper turns around and tries to kick Drool, she kicks his knees back in and he falls down, letting Fool out.

Fool grabs his knife. Geoff shows up, looking surprised.

Pornk is coming running, the hunters hot in pursuit. The man who was on top of Rosy stops, turns around, and tells her to stop. She tries to dodge him but can't, just keeping his attention on her.

The guy gets up from the ground to go for the spear, Rosy goes for it, Drool goes to do a flying kick on his knee.

The guy dodges Drool and hits Rosy with the haft of the spear, breaking her jaw. His comrades starts wrestling him down. Pornk yells for us to run, Fool does. Drool grabs Rosy up to try and run for it.

Come dawn, Dark Odyssey in camp tells Pornk Fool will have a great life if he comes. Fool, who was listening, comes in and says that's fine and he wants to join them, so long as he makes money too.

Away from camp, three scouts find Rosy and Drool and try to get them to come back, they're refusing. Rosy says she has to pee and they sneak away. They find their way to the coast and find the famous cave.

There are a bunch of carpets of finely made red fabric there, perhaps silk or cotton. On the wall there are more strips of fabric, dangling like tapestries. Finally, the ground evens out, appearing to have been carved, with a statue of a four-armed woman at the back, half broken. On it, the only remaining arm is holding a hand mirror, the others have been collapsed and placed around it. It smells like onions.

We don't recognise the statue, so it doesn't appear to be Ikkali or Balamite, and seems to have been carved out of the back.

The cave hooks inwards and there's a spot to watch the outside. We see some Ikkali fishing boats and hail them. While we're waiting for them, Big Onion appears moving up the coast.

They introduce themselves to one another and discuss the situation with Big Baby. We offer to help him set the cave up and look nice for his "Mama" (the statue) in return for him taking care of Big Baby.

The Ikkali boats arrive, they're from Phalange and know us personally, distant cousins or something. The guy introduces himself as Nalus and we talk about what happened. He says Malgran does most of our trade with them but he'll ask the oracles about it. We ask him to take us to Novum.

As we arrive, there's a big argument there. Daldan and Aluna come up to talk to us and Nalus. One of the huts was destroyed, apparently by the big baby, so they want to kick it out or kill it (not Daldan and Aluna).

We tell them we found the baby's caretaker and that we need to take the baby to him. Aluna takes us to the conflict, the baby is crying, it's bedlam. Myfarog is bleeding, he has a big cut on his face, and he's yelling and being held back. It was Pornk's hut that was destroyed.

A guy covered in metal scales, very tall, has a helmet with ram's horns on his head, fierce eyes and a round shield slung on his back, patterned with red, orange and yellow. He has a big mace with 4 heads depicting faces. He also has 5 people with mail shirts, all of them appear Balamites. Don't seem to be mercenaries. Myfarog is yelling at him, Aldem is holding him back. The guy is saying he is crazy and that Myfarog should be killed. Aldem is saying he's a guest and that Myfarog offended him.

The baby says its first words: FOOL, FOOL, FOOL. We try to mime Big Onion, the baby starts going nuts.

Aluna Moonspeaker yells through the conflict "We found a home for the baby", settling things down a bit. We ask for the shopping list that Onion requested. The metal man starts trash talking Myfarog.

Drool tries to get him to go do something crazy (attract the attention of the baby to soothe him). They strip naked to do it. Turns out this is Craymore in armour. He jangle it until the baby quiets down and then Craymore hands a mail shirt to the baby.

Craymore says "there's nothing wrong with evil people, the problem is dishonest people" to Drool and she runs away with much to think.

Now settled, the Baby is walked to the boat by Aldem and Craymore, Nalus departs with it.

Aldem drags Myfarog towards Craymore to force him to apologise. Myfarog apologises for "trying to kill a baby in front of everyone", and Craymore says "if anyone's gonna kill a baby it's gonna be me, and I'd never kill a giant baby". Craymore's punishment is for him to have his legs bound up and crawl around. Rosy intercedes for him to suggest the punishment be for him not to eat for a week. That night, Craymore and his guys, along with Daldan, are tempting Myfarog and Rosy intervenes again to get him out of there.

Myfarog starts saying he didn't want Rosy's help but then Pornk shows up and says he'll be going with Fool to Malgran. Everyone says their goodbyes.