Lonesome Wanderings, Session 61

 In which Badger...

• Travels to the West Marches and travels from the towns of Blackgate to Eastwatch.
• Runs from bandits, lion and boars, wolves, green dragons, a hydra, and jaguars.
• Kills a couple of giant bees.
• Meets a friendly orc village on his journey and rests with them, hearing of their struggles with dragons picking of their fellows.
• Discovers a cave in the forests and notes it for the future.
• Returns to his keep and learns crime rate has been dropping.
• Heads to the weakened but still surviving Wicked City at the request of Courtesan Jamila, whom he fancied, to retrieve a blue gem for her cloud people who's cloud castle was stolen by Patricia Vezzini, the cunning last scion of her noble lineage, and the ex-minister of civil order, the coarse Gulnora the Radiant.
• Heads to the bazaar and is assaulted by a Murder Harlot.
• Slays the Murder Harlot only to learn he is a shock trooper sent by a contingent working for Patricia, who vanish into the shadows.
• Frees a slave girl and runs through the streets with her, escaping her former captors.
• Learns of the gem's location in the Maze under the city, and heads with his freed slave girl ally into the Maze.
• Avoids another assault by poison darts from a contingent of Murder Harlots.
• Hides from some automatons excavating the Maze, and visits a shrine in the Maze inhabited by a wild hermit who demands the pair undergo tests.
• Loses the slave girl, who dies in the "test" of the mad hermit dancing wilding with a blade in the shrine before he is slain by Badger.
• Heads deeper in and finds the gem - only to be attacked by 4 blind ghosts who age him by nearly two decades as he flees.
• Manages to escape the ghosts even in his weakened, aged body only to be surrounded by cloud folk and Jamila, who beat him and take the jewel for themselves without honoring their agreement.
• Manages to survive and find a cleric who reverts the aging magic for a hefty sum.
• Is met by Patricia and Gulnora, who reveal that Jamila is a snake who works for the real lord of the cloud castle and stole the gem to pay off her debts from its real owner, Patricia Vezzini.
• Learns that Patricia and the Murder Harlots actions have been in self defense and fear, and he agrees to help her regain her heritage.
• Avoids conflict with some Blood Men in the streets of the Wicked City, who egg on passers by for a fight.
• Joins Patricia, Gulnora, and his now allies of the Murder Harlots and uses the Rope of Climb to tie to the bottom of an elevator that takes Jamila and her crew up to the cloud castle.
• Follows Jamila to the throne room of the cloud castle and releases a Bear Jar into the room, and sets off an alarm to attract all the guards.
• Captures one guard and rushes to the cloud castle's control room to bring down the castle, cutting the control battery with Knutsvar, only for the backup generators to kick in.
• Fights off ever increasing guards with Patricia as Gulnora is slain by Jamila.
• Ties a rope and hangs out as live bait in the cloud castle wearing the Spite the Drowning Waters bracers as 2 rocs (and many other sea creatures) arrive near cloud castle  now over the ocean, and manage to destroy the backup power as the castle comes crashing down.
• Manages to, along with Patricia and Jamila, get picked up by a merchant crew to be sailed back to the Wicked City, with the two women making up as well now that the cloud castle has fallen.
• Gets attacked by pirates off the coast of the Wicked City and helps the Merchant crew try to fend them off using the Spite the Drowning Waters bracers to attract killer whales and control one of the whales with the ring of Animal Control.
• Realizes his mistake once the other whales except the one controlled start attacking the merchant ship as well as the pirates.
• Tries to swim to other ship only to get attacked by whales attracted to the Spite the Drowning Waters bracelet.
• Has the merchant ship shoot the bracelet onto the pirate ship and gets a whale ride as the other whales ignore him to the pirate ship, slays a couple of pirates, and activates the bracelet to attract the killer whales.
• Sees the merchant ship - and Jamila and Patricia with it - unfortunately drown as the whales turn their attention to where they felt the bracelet last - the pirate ship - and attack.
• Deactivates the bracelet, and stealthily gets away to the coast on whaleback as the pirates and killer whales fight it out.
• Escapes the Wicked City back to his keep, avoiding the remaining Murder Harlots in the city.
• Returns to his keep to learn the relic found their has lost its holiness, and that a war has broken out between Yoon Suin and Varsia over portals that have started opening up in the Steppe.
• Learns the population in his keep and Kebi continues to grow.

Current Level: Badger 11