Session 14 Recap: Routin' Reuben and Recuitin'

We jumped right into battle this time, following another of Caesar’s ambitious schemes. He ordered some of Reynaldo’s architects to sneak into Fort Elbridge in Greydell and sabotage the construction going on there, causing massive flooding in the castle. Once that was done, a group of dwarves served as decoys to draw all of General Reuben’s forces out of the castle so we could ambush them. The plan went just as expected, and we cut off their retreat. Royce’s rival Felicia was defeated once again, and Harold’s brother Henry fled when Reuben surrendered after Daisy’s attack (many thanks to Harold’s battle advice and everyone’s combined spells and skills). Marcus came with us to help convince his old mentor to defect, and eventually join us he did, albeit reluctantly. Reuben was a major Harmonian strategist who trained half the current Priest Generals, so this should come as a major blow to our enemies.

We discovered upon our return to Liberty castle that many of the major construction projects had been completed during our mission, and the place was starting to shape up into headquarters we could be proud of (i.e. Castle Level 2). With so much extra space to work with, we knew it was time to look for more people and launch another recruitment drive to liven up the place. We returned to Westhollow and found that Farmer Zelda had finally finished her chores, so she agreed to join us (she seemed surprised at our enthusiastic recruitment efforts, clearly not realizing how much we truly love our vegetables). With our farmer recruited, we turned next to Gloria’s request that we find her old crew. Our search began and ended on Dreidred mountain, where we first met Gloria during our short-lived partnership with poor Miles. Gloria’s #2, a fancypants-turned-bandit named Byron, was still there along with a few dozen bandit soldiers from Gloria’s old gang, and they all happily joined our army for Gloria’s sake.

To our surprise, a female Winger was waiting for us back at Liberty Castle. She introduced herself as a traveling saleswoman named May and asked to know who was in charge of this magnificent castle. Daisy took the credit (with much protesting from Royce) and invited May to set up shop at Liberty Castle. She readily agreed and mentioned that she was traveling in order to make a name for herself far away from her annoying brother… right before Daisy and Harold, both from Dunan like her, asked if she knew Chaco. Poor May appeared a bit disgruntled that even way up in Harmonia she can’t get out from under her brother’s wing.

Acting on a tip from Ramza, we teleported up to Prymount city and stepped into an explosion of color. Harold spotted his fancypants friend Roxie, who we ran into a while back in Coldwall castle harassing some soldiers for their fashion sense, being dragged away by the city guards for her graffiti. Her bail was 5000 potch. Royce tried without success to bribe the guards with a free dragonback ride, so we just paid the bail and took Roxie away from there. Never one to pass up recruiting a fellow fancypants, Harold offered to pay her to decorate our castle for us. Overjoyed that someone actually wanted to pay her to decorate as opposed to paying her to go away, Roxie rushed straight to the castle.

We happened to stop by Snowview on our travels and heard some commotion coming from the village of the dwarves. A human man was ejected bodily from the blacksmith’s to shouts of “You’re the worst blacksmith I’ve ever seen! Get out!” Poor Massa explained that he tried very hard to be a good blacksmith but had a tendency to get clumsy and make mistakes (in this case, he “accidentally” broke a sword over a dwarf’s back). Daisy suggested that he might not be cut out for this blacksmith thing, but he insisted that he had to do it because his father did it, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather… Taking pity on him, we offered him the chance to work at our castle and gave him the Brass Hammer to help get him started.

Since we were in the area, we decided to finally check out the mountain path near the dwarf village. The team stumbled across a few nice treasures and, strangely enough, a penguin (with a face!). Daisy patted it on the head and then hugged it, followed by Sciath and most of the party. With no way to communicate with it, though, we had to say goodbye and continue exploring. At the end of another path was a lone dwarf fighting a group of goblins and losing, so we jumped in and saved the day. Miner Marco explained that he was been checking out the dwarven guardian statue at the end of the path. It was apparent from his surprise at our story that he’d been in the away from the dwarven village for some time, so he left to join his fellows back at Liberty Castle.

A sad scene was playing out over in Lorin village, where a crippled woman was being harassed by a group of bullies. As we watched, one of the bullies kicked her crutch out from under her and we saw that she had only one leg. Royce came roaring to her rescue with his fire-breath and spear (we still don’t know what he did to those bullies). Serena thanked us for our help and said that she was once a first-class citizen and an adventurer, but the loss of her leg reduced her to less than nothing in Harmonian society. Daisy pointed out that (with the possible exception of Harold) no one among us was exactly a good fit for Harmonia’s idea of first class society either, and she accepted our invitation to go to the castle. Since she could no longer be an adventurer (though we hope the healing springs and bath house will do her some good), she opted to open an appraisal shop instead.

Finally, another rumor led us back to Merridwell castle, where Daisy led the way to the bar. A woman named June was running a game of Chichorin and attracting a crowd of gamblers. A woman back in the small village of Marid once told us to keep an eye out for her missing daughter June, so we asked if it was she. June agreed to tell us anything we wanted to know and even go set up shop in our castle if we could win 5000 potch from her. Harold lost some and won it back, and Royce lost a few potch too, but Daisy got lucky and won the required amount. June went to our castle as promised, but she still doesn’t want to go see her mother.

The party returned to the castle to finish up a long day of recruitment. Massa upgraded the weapons for Sciath and Kuarjav, since the Brass Hammer lets him go to Level 5. We dropped off our seed collection with Farmer Zelda and Royce made sure to stock up Rosalita’s bar with Dwarven Ale. Daisy found she’d developed a taste for gambling and won another 18,000 potch from June on a lucky streak.

Caesar had important news for us as well. Spies reported that some sort of peace deal was apparently struck between Harmonia and the Grasslands and allowed Harmonia to reallocate their troops, but even that wasn’t enough to win against Camaro. The knights of Camaro were in serious danger of crushing Harmonia’s forces and taking over the Crystal Valley in the near future, which wouldn’t give the Union Army enough time to grow and gain support from the people. Caesar proposed that a small unit disguised as Harmonian soldiers go cut off the Camaro supply line to buy us more time, and though Daisy wasn’t happy with the idea of turning on people who once helped us, everyone agreed to the plan in the end. Next time, we will be undercover agents on a secret mission. Better brush up on those acting skills!

Recruited: Reuben, Zelda, Byron, Roxie, Massa, June, Serena, May

Investigations: Reuben, Massa, Roxie, May