Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers, after sufficient rest, are ready to explore anywhere and everywhere on their map.
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Sneaky Pete: A mutated weasel scout. Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers. Recovering from his injuries from the Glow near Ulmin.
Sonny Helianthus: a sentient sunflower artifact examiner with Restorationist ties.
Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble, and finding it often.
Lathar Bracken: A pure-strain human from River Bend. He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters. Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does. Looking for trouble in all the right places.
Ramsay Kallax: Mutated Ram from the far-off KIA Academy with a predilection for ancient treasures... and the occasional head-butt.
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Fresh from a trip to Healers' caused by another snafu in the experiments of Sonny, Ramsay Kallax came back to the Leaping Drunken Keg to drink with the others, and plot their future course.
Soony stood up and hailed him over to the table, "Any preference to where you want to go, Ramsay?"
"None."
"I'd love to visit your parents at KIA Academy and picked their brains," Sonny added, "But I think that's not everyone else's cup of tea."
"I'll do anything that doesn't involve swimming or flying." Squiggles stated.
"Staring at the bad copy of the main map, the Wild Lands sound crazy."
Lathar was stern, "Catacombs sounds awesome."
"True," Sonny agreed. "I want to see what Blackvale City has in store of us."
"If we're going to anywhere, I say we either visit down towards Fair-Town... or go all the way to Blackvale City."
Some inquiries were made with a few travellers and travelling merchants. No one was heading upriver to Catacombs, but one was heading to Fair-Town, the head of the Riverbend militia, Loman Streight
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| Loman Streight |
The following morning, they met at the edge of town. Loman had full black podog pulling a wooden cart. Inside the cart was a collection of helmets of the Ancients.
"I've been collecting these since I was a young lad. Sometimes I swap them straight-up, sometimes I swap for some cool stuff. Everybody meets up at the Bug-Mart and we swap the stuff we collected. Lots of hoarders. You know what I wished somebody hoarded and brought to Bug-Mart? Ammo.
Loman commented on the healing faces of the party, turned around, and started riding off on the cart.
The two-day journey was uneventful with conversation as dry as toast. The highlight for most was encountering a canal lock close to Fair-Town, and watching the locktender lower the barge without issue.
The road provided a different a better view of the town than the river barge that dropped you off across the river. Behind the wooden wall, they saw a number of three and four-story buildings, small triangular flags adorned every high spot on every building.
A line formed near the gate to let folks in. Two guards, dressed in shiny, heavy metal armor were questioning everyone and taking a one domar entrance fee. They were quick to place a hand on the hilt of their still sheathed swords anytime a problem arose, and most problems seemed to evaporate.
Getting through with little issue, it was Squiggles who tugged on Pete's jacket.
"Hey! Did you see the fancy gun in the guard shack? Definitely heavy-duty Ancient Tech!"
The town of Fair-Town seemed full of life with food vendors, street shows, and people dressed in finery. Ramsay was confused. His travels through Fair-Town could only be described as "dirty", but this was far more vibrant. Walking a few blocks down the main road, and he could spy the scenes that Ramsay had encountered previously: broken clay cups strewn across the alleys, bodies passed out, other bodies vomiting or relieving themselves.
Loman finally spoke up, "Bug-Mart is this way."
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