In this episode, the party picked up at the fight they encountered at the end of Delve - with a massive shark guarding its eggs in a lake deep inside the Cave Between Seas. The shark had found its way there during high tide and apparently thought it a good place to hang out protecting its eggs, or otherwise had gotten trapped there when the cave un-flooded.
Lysta, who nearly became shark meat
The party decided to take the head-on approach, and began with Lysta zapping the shark with a lightning bolt. It quickly retaliated, though - lunging toward Lysta and clenching it in its jaws. The party began stabbing, punching, aciding, and arrow-ing it into submission, but things soon became urgent when the shark flipped Lysta into the air and swallowed her whole!
The party fought hard now that Lysta’s life hung in the balance. Fortunately, the shark soon went down, allowing the party to cut Lysta out from her intestinal prison.
The party collected their treasure - an unidentified stone, a magic rod, and some gold. After some brief investigation of the rod - resulting in a fireball briefly engulfing the party - followed by wound-tending, they moved out.
They met back up with Captain Guppy and the rest of the crew, and began splitting loot. They managed to convince Guppy to only take 50gp, with the caveat that she wouldn’t help them figure out how to get everything around customs.
Rhea, who’s slowly unveiling the mysteries of her past
Later, Rhea met up with Captain Guppy after finding out she had something to show Rhea last episode. After some chatting about the god Catfoot, Captain Guppy revealed that Catfoot often sent followers messages by sea - with there being a long standing tradition of throwing things into the ocean so Catfoot could help them find their way to those who needed to have them. In this case, Guppy found some old records from the Temple of the Seventeenth Sage. She had initially been confused as to why Catfoot sent the papers to her, but upon meeting Rhea, it clicked that the papers weren’t meant for Guppy in the first place. The papers had faded, but it was still clear that they described paperwork for adoption. They had the given name “Cora Demikin” on it, as well as part of the name of her birth father: “Tulgan”
As they approached port, Guppy threw them another complication - Mollovass wasn’t on the manifest, and so might get in trouble for stowing away at the port - at which point Doctor Swole Doctor Adkins told Mollovass to take his name and jumped overboard before anyone could protest, taking the long route by sea to shore.
When they arrived at port, things seemed tense for a bit as Mollovass was grossly unfit to play the role of a refined doctor, but the Customs official either bought the lie, or decided pressing further wasn’t worth it, and carried on.
The party then set about meeting back up in the city of Bottom Bay and discussing what would happen next.
Pyotr, who’s looking forward to finally settling down
Pyotr wanted to settle down and start building a life with Sasha - find her a school, get an apartment or maybe a house, and start getting to know what makes the city (especially it’s underbelly) tick
Milo looked toward setting up shop in the city - as well as doing more research and improving his skills in crafting and medicine
Lysta and Ethren looked back to the home which they had been away from for quite some time - Relliven in the Shywood Forest.
Ymitri wanted to continue his research into the Ordemists, as well as help Rhea look into her backstory and help Pyotr get more insight into Bottom Bay’s underworld
Rhea wanted to look into her history and delve more into her adoption papers, while also helping Ymitri out with his work
We ended the session a ways in the future. Lysta and Ethren were on the road, sitting by a campfire after a day’s travel.
Soon, Lysta began to see something in the flames. A woman standing on a cliff overlooking a city. She read off a long list of names ceremoniously, before closing her scroll, looking into the distance, and saying “Thank you for your sacrifice”, before a flock of ravens swept up from behind her and flew off into the distance.