The Master of Placido Terra
Nade City, and rural Nade
The party crashes at Aidra's estate, and stays up late sampling the cellar of ports and wines. Aidra passes around the cups with a reckless abandon that seems her signature style. Awakening in the (late) morning, the party finds that servants have laid out a lavish meal. Aidra does not show. When questioned, the house servants say that she left late last night, shortly after the party went to sleep. She has gone to the countryside to "check out a farm".
The party grabs pastries to go, swings by the Nade House to gear up, and heads to the Nade Traverton market on the Gate road to inquire about Placido Terra. Farmers there tell that the farm used to send quality grains and fruits to the market, but no one has seen them in a year or more. Vague directions point the way Gate-ward. On the road a beggar admits to seeing an armed figure passing by late last night. After a day of walking, Paetro chats up a pair of evident thieves in the roadside inn. They report with interest that a well-to-do looking noble lady, albeit in travelling clothes and armed, came in that afternoon, slept for a few hours, and continued on. They were thinking about "befriending" her. That night on watch the party sees them leaving, and follows them down the road a bit, overhearing them talk about Aidra and the coin purse she might have. The party assesses that she is on no real danger and lets them go.
The next day they wend their way closer to Placido Terra, along the way asking for directions and any accounts of Aidra passing by. They find both in abundance and that afternoon arrive at the nearest hamlet to the farm, a tiny collection of country houses and a smithy called Owen's corner. There has been much recent excitement at Owen's Corner. Late the previous evening a woman arrived and began drinking anything that could be bought. While she slept off her drunk, this morning two ruffians arrived and stole all her possessions. She asked the locals many questions about Placido Terra and then left this afternoon to check the place out herself. Asking about what she asked, the party learns from Owen's Corner that the farm has had new owners for over a year, and that no one goes in or out, with two exceptions. A man named Trask is apparently their representative in Nade, and he only stays at the cottage by the gate. A gateman named Jacoba also occasionally visits, and also doesn't go further than the front gate. Trask is here now- he just came in a day before Aidra.
The party thanks the people of the hamlet and heads down the overgrown track to the farm. Koros and Paetro attempt to sneak to the cottage by the front gate, with little success in the twiggy undergrowth. Aidra in fact sneaks up on Koros - she has been watching the cottage herself for a few hours. The party regroups, and after some awkward and disingenuous back and forth about how each came to be here at Placido Terra in such a short amount of time, Aidra accepts the group's help in investigating the farm. The first step is to approach the cottage and confront Trask, who Adria identifies as the man who captured and beat her in the cellar of this spice shop. Aidra, lacking weapons due to beig robbed, asked to borrow a sword, and Paetro lends her his.
As the party approaches, the man himself appears on the roof of the cottage, and with various imprecations in the theme of, "Impudent children!" he warns the party to disperse and leave. When Ramach steps closer, he casts, and everyone moves. Four bright motes of light appear between Trask and the party, and shortly thereafter four of the vegetal transformed humanoids lumber around form the back of the cottage. The humanoids are soon discovered to be images, and Trask takes firebolts and arrows aplenty before dropping back into the cottage. The motes vanish as quickly as they appeared. Aidra is briefly be-spelled and calls on the party to stop attacking her "friend", but with a punch from Orosh Trask is knocked low and the effect dissipates. The party holds Aidra back from killing him instantly while they tie him up, wake him up, and question him.
Akissi intimidates him into answering, and from Trask the party learns that he has worked for someone at the farm for many years, trading favors for tidbits of arcane knowledge. He indeed was told to pick up the Gate Compass from the late Baron Bredini, and later to go back and silence him. He brought the Compass here, to the farm, and a few months thereafter began serving a new master. The new master had him bring boxes of pollen to Nade, to both store and infect a few poor wretches in his basement cells who then transformed into the hulking vegetal humanoids. Eventually he was to begin putting into the food he sold. He relays that there are about 20 workers on the farm, and no one else is allowed on the land.
When asked who this new master is, Trask can only reply, "The master is the farm and the farm is the master." The questioning over, Aidra unceremoniously kills Trask with Paetro's sword. Ramach pics up Trask's spellbook. Paetro was meanwhile keeping a watch outside, and saw a few lazy looking farmhands stand at a low rock wall well inside the wooden fence. They just watch the cottage, but at the moment Trask is killed the calmly turn and walk back into the trees.
Ramach levitates up to get a good look at the farm. He sees a barn and a few buildings towards the center, a lot of overgrown fields, a roughly circular low rock wall built up near the old wood fence border, and many workers walking back to the central buildings. The party presses on, stepping over the rock wall. Akissi immediately feels uncomfortable, and Aidra bends over and wretches in the grass. Orosh notices that there is a bit of yellow pollen on the breeze, but it stops dead above the rock wall and falls to collect in small drifts on the farm side of the wall. Aidra shakes if off, and the party continues.
A few minutes later the party comes under fire from two groups of workers with longbows. Oddly, each group fires, hits, and misses in what appears to be prefect unison. Anyone "hit" by each group takes as many arrows as there are people in the group. The party returns fire and then takes shelter in a copse of trees. Paetro takes aim and takes down workers one by one and Orosh, Akissi, and Koros run out to rush one of the groups. While they engage, Paetro, Ramach, and Aidra discover that the trees hold tiny imps, apparently baby versions of the flying creatures they encountered on Wisp. These drop out of the branches in droves, grappling and biting with tiny, sharp-toothed mouths. Ramach puts them all to sleep in two quick waves, and Aidra and Paetro dispatch them quickly. Meanwhile, the rushing party closes with one group of archers, and as they get the better of them the last worker in the group drops his bow, draws a dagger, and cuts his own throat. The other group, down to four, turns and jogs off through the tall weeds, all in perfect unison. The party restrains Orosh form chasing them, and regroups. The dead workers appear to be in bad shape - malnourished, unwashed, and wearing threadbare clothing. It appears that thy have been under the sway of whatever controls them for some time.
Aidra admits that she can sense where the imps are - she missed the first group because the entire place feels bad to her and she hadn't been looking for pockets of "deeper badness". So the party continues but weaves away from trees where Aidra senses imps, moving deeper into the farm towards the central buildings. In a clearing they are all hit with a wave of slight nausea, and then with no warning Ramach, Aidra, and Paetro begin attacking other members of the party! Koros and Akissi run off for cover, while Orosh rushes in to bash Ramach to unconsciousness. Aidra, in her ensorcelled state, luckily attacks Ramach as well. Paetro delivers a few crossbow shots before coming to his senses, at which point he drops his bow on the ground and grapples with Aidra to prevent her from hurting anyone else. Ramach is eventually knocked unconscious, and a restrained Aidra eventually comes to her senses as well. Shaken, beat up, and tired, and party finds shelter in the lee of a large rock and rests for an hour before continuing, alert for workers, imps, and mental attacks.
Rested and wary, the party continues and approaches the central buildings through the cover of tall weeds. They see that five tall trees surround the central barn, and that each tree has large yellow flowers that seem out of place. Aidra retches again, and now even Akissi begins to feel queasy. Koros attempts to sneak up on the first building, and rounds a corner into a group of five workers, who fire at him simultaneously and hit him square in the chest. As some of the party rush forward to assist - Paetro and Ramach stay back and provide cover from the edge of the weeds - two other groups rise from hiding and begin firing on the party from other buildings and the cover of boulders. Koros, having sneaked through the first building to attack the first group in the rear, himself takes another five arrows in the back and drops to the dirt, bleeding and at the edge of death. And then the mental attacks begin, waves of despair radiating from the barn. Orosh is the first to succumb, sinking to his knees and consumed with the utter futility of humanity. Akissi also descends into a fog of hazy ennui, followed by Aidra. Soon only Paetro and Ramach are left facing the unified archers and whatever force is gripping the minds of the party. Paetro continues to pick off the archers one by one, and Ramach rushes forward to try and shake Akissi out of her stupor. A group of archers targets a helpless Orosh, and pounds him with arrows, which he survives, and which also knock him out of the mental lock. He rises and rushes forward to charge an archer group, providing much needed healing to Koros on the way. Orosh lso breifly takes cover by the barn, and hears a rustling inside, like wind through dry leaves. Ramach slaps Akissi, which brings her out of the funk. Soon the archers are whittled down to a slim few, and they turn their daggers on themselves. The party retreats to the edge of the fields to regroup.
While they heal themselves and each other, Ramach launches a barrage of firebolts at one of the trees, burning off flowers and leaves. All the trees tremble a bit, releasing a yellow mist of pollen. Akissi then notices the fields and trees behind them shaking as well, but with the movement of hundreds of the little imp creatures, all converging on the buildings. The party decides to rush the barn, clearly the center of whatever is going on at the farm. They enter and close the doors behind them.
In the barn is the master of Placido Terra, a large spindly creature seemingly made of branches and antlers, rooted to the ground by five trunk-size roots than stretch in the directions of the five trees outside. It has what seem to be tiny eyes, and a malevolent presence that invokes a feeling of utter defeat, a dragging dread born of the meaninglessness of existence. Koros shoots at it, but arrows slew through its branches and seem to do no harm. Ramach fires off a firebolt, which burns a branch or two, and then gets attacked by small roots unwinding from the floor and trying to wrap around Ramach's legs. Orosh, Airdra, Akissi, and Koros rush the creature and hack away at it. The creature flings out antler-branches and wounds all around it - Koros is dropped for the second time, and Aidra for the first - but between Orosh's halberd and a critical blast of radiant energy from Akissi's sword, the master of Placido Terra is hacked and burned to stillness. Paetro, holding the door and watching a small army of imps rush the barn, sees them all lose their momentum and begin milling aimlessly when the tree-creature is slain. Three small pops from the top of the tree-creature draw attention upwards, and tiny seedpods on wispy fluff float upwards towards the rickety barn roof. Ramach promptly blasts them before they can leave the barn.
Also in the barn are a large seedpod, cracked open near the base of the tree-creature, and a circle of stones sunk into the dirt, each with an arcane rune carved into its face. The circle resembles those the party has seen in the Alshekal houses in Nade and Iradel, but the runes are clearly done in a different style.
Thinking that the circle likely allows the bearer of the Gate Compass to gate right to it, the party destroys the circle, and then proceeds to search the farm. There is no sign of the Gate Compass, and many signs that the place has not been inhabited by rational humans in quite some time. The only paper on the farm is a bunch of shipping invoices in obvious disarray. The party sets all the buildings and trees ablaze, and makes the two day trek back to Nade City and parts ways with Aidra
Bereft of immediate clues, the party settles back into the House, and duplicating a trick they pulled on Vaaris they hire a gaggle of street urchins to watch Aidra's estate. The next day the scamps report that she has left her estate well armed and walked to the offices of the gateman Jabobi. The party quickly follows to find that Aidra has muscled her way past clerks and is questioning the man himself about his interactions with the farm. She has a blade at his throat and his shouting drunken nonsense at him. The party intervenes, asking more coherent questions and learning that Jacobi has been shipping items from Placido Terra to other Islands for years. He doesn't recall anything out of the ordinary, but does keep records of invoices....the party has him pull everything in the past few years, and Ramach quickly looks them over. Not seeing anything immediately, he let's Aidra take them and lay them all out on a desk. She smirks, pockets one, thanks everyone again for their help, and leaves. Ramach looks over the piel again and is able to tell which one she stole - a box of about the right size, for a very large sum, was shipped from Placido Terra to islet 42 in the The Concord on Uldrath about a year ago.
A Gate opening from Nade to Uldrath is still a little more than a month away, so the party takes some R&R and tries to find out what they can about the place. Natives from Uldrath recall that islet 42 is also known as Helkala's Hold, and is owned by a wealthy descendant of a famous family of magical advisors to the Uldrath ruling council. Koros even finds a sketch of the place hanging in a tavern in the Rathi Quarter...where he also runs into Aidra again, who is attempting to steal the drawing. Koros brings her back to the house, where the party discusses and officially "teams up" with Aidra to travel to Uldrath and look for the Gate Compass.
A month passes, and everyone gets some much needed rest.