Session Log 2023-10-31

The party and the still-handcuffed Angitt emerged from the bonfire in front of the Warehouse District. Brushing off the ash, they greeted the late-night stockpile guards, and passed along word that the hot air balloons were on their way. The sentinels were of strained morale, at best, in the undead-stalked burning city under the tortured night sky. One of them asked after Lieutenant Torrix, and the honest answer - that the party had simply lost him in the night - offered little solace. The stockpiles themselves bore signs of pessimistic raiding, but Angitt eyed them with naked calculation in her eyes.

Ignis broke away from the group to try and lighten the atmosphere among the guards. He was able to strike up a few conversations, joking about the overwrought uselessness of the Torch with the mutineers. One of them told him there was an end-of-the-world party happening in the last warehouse in the row. He elected to crash it, reasoning that alcohol and carousing would serve morale as well as any speech.

Klaitos, Robin, and Ekkels reasoned that they might be better-served by resting in the Hangar until the militia arrived at the with the hot-air balloons. To keep Angitt from running off with stockpiled goods while they slept, Robin whipped up a sleeping potion dosed for the giant woman. She grumbled at the treatment, and demanded her ballista back to prove the party wasn't going to treat her as disposable. They conceded, and she was left in a drugged stupor in the corner of a stockpile warehouse. Ekkels, seeing her sleeping uncomfortably, opted to remove her handcuffs.

Klaitos cleaned his scalp wound and face, then he and Ekkels settled in for a nap between two ships on the lowest hangar floor. Robin broke off to find Ignis, wanting for his liquor to restore her injured shoulder before she rested. As a secondary concern, she hadn't seen him in long enough that he was probably up to or in trouble.

From the plaza, she heard the sounds of laughter echoing distantly from the far warehouse. She grouchily headed to investigate, but a bulky figure emerged from behind a warehouse and began to follow her. She turned into an abandoned building and slipped into the shadows. Utterly still, she watched the figure peek around the doorway, and recognized him as the lizardman rioter that had earlier attacked Ignis.

He stared into the darkness, oblivious to her proximity. She tossed a stone across the warehouse to clatter by the far doorway. He jolted at the sound, then peered further into the room, swore softly, and rushed around the building to intercept "Robin". The real Robin waited for him to leave and then crept out the window. She hurried over to the end warehouse to find Ignis and put him between her and the lizardman stalker.

She found the apocalypse party to have gotten somewhat out of hand, most of its attendees well past drunk. She wandered over to Ignis and bade him heal her shoulder. He welcomed her to the party and offered her a drink of strong magical ale. She wandered off, tipsy but relieved of the day's injuries, and settled into a game of cards in the corner of the room.

Ignis, realizing that he had been partying in a perilous location, took it upon himself to patrol the area and ensure the security of the party warehouse. His self-appointed watch saw him stagger through the warehouse alleys in a loop, coming across no danger but the stale vomit of mortally terrified binge-drinkers.

Robin, for her part, easily read the shellshocked gamblers' body language and took the table for herself. Unusually nonplussed, the players began gambling treats and trinkets they had appropriated from the stockpiles they had been guarding earlier. Robin eyed - and easily won - a decorative map of the city, with Lord Arva Sirroon's crest marking his tower in its center.

She gambled long enough to sober up, and was ready to head in for some rest, when she remembered that the lizardman stalking her. She told Ignis - who had begun, at this hour, to sober up - of the encounter. The two of them decided to use him as bait, so Robin climbed to the roof of the warehouse as he pretended to urinate against the side of its neighbor.

Sure enough, the lizardman emerged from around the corner to ambush the apparently defenseless Fireheart. He leapt from hiding wielding his mace, crackling with lightning, only to have his charge interrupted by Robin's sharpshooting. He reeled back from the bolt in his shoulder as Ignis drew to engage him in melee.

The lizardman muttered that he hadn't wanted things this complicated, but Ignis ignored him and lunged suddenly to stab him through the hand. The lizardman dropped his mace with a shriek of pain. Lightning jumped between his gritted teeth, but Robin was able to take him down before he could make another step.

Ekkels and Klaitos, far from any drinking, gambling, or ambushing, were confronted with troubling dreams in their light sleep. Klaitos stood hidden beneath a vast and heavy presence, unknowing if he was beneath its notice or only spared its attention by luck. He raged against it, but his shouts echoed as quiet, distant thunderclaps before the force, and went unregarded.

Ekkels's dreams were haunted by a pair of dancing lights, shining with an indescribable radiance that made them difficult to look directly upon. He approached with his eyes shadowed by his hand, but the lights seemed to grow past it rather than be smothered, and he was unable to discern them at all. He lowered his hand and stared into the sun; after a few moments his eyes seemed to adjust, and he witnessed two luminous forms: a earthbound dancer appearing to wear a gown, and a winged humanoid circling overhead.

The pair of them were then awakened by a mutineer messenger announcing the arrival of the hot air balloon contingent.