Episode 7 - Shady Cats

## **Episode Synopsis**

### **Episode Summary**

Zippy is still talking to Peterson after many hours as Dariun is foaming at the mouth on the ground. Dariun ushers Zippy away to pay trying to prevent him to telling his whole life story. When they pay, Zippy asks the saleswoman drop the price so they decide to give them their coats for free if they put a banner promoting Fur Balls Fur and Accessories Salesman on their airship. Before they leave, Peterson comes up to Dariun and Zippy and asks about their airship. Peterson asks is he could be a passenger on their ship as he wishes to travel quickly and discretely to the second grand treasure, the grand library to the north. Peterson offers them gold as well as his skills in fighting and navigation. Dariun suggests they bring Peterson on as a sell sword that pays them and after he helps them in Manasnow, they will take Peterson to the second grand treasure to which, Peterson agrees. Peterson goes to pay for a white, polar bear coat and the saleswoman gives him a price that Peterson can see is way too high. He barters it down and pays. Dariun, Zippy and Peterson all leave together and look around the town.

Yogurt meets back up with them and tells them his family was grateful to especially Zippy for being a brother to Blackjack and Yogurt so they gathered up some gold to say thank you. After discussing investing the gold, Yogurt and Peterson become introduced and Peterson asks if there are any magic item shops around but Yogurt says no. Dariun gets an idea that maybe Valentine could be around so he uses detect portals and can sense a large portal under a house about a mile away. The team decide to head to a general store so Peterson can sell some items. They find a blind tabaxi salesman knocking things off shelves. Peterson pulls out some tabaxi tang and the blind tabaxi asks Peterson to open it and give him a whiff. When he does, the old tabaxi slumps to the floor and they hear the sounds of doors opening as a bunch of tabaxi's come to investigate the smell. Peterson takes the opportunity and runs an auction for the tabaxi tang and ends up getting 800 gold from a tabaxi, David, who definitely does not care about his kids enough.

After making sure Yogurt is okay, Dariun asks about the large portal he found earlier. Yogurt doesn't believe there are any portals in Lundy. Dariun leads them all to where he found the portal. Yogurts described the part of town they're in as a poorer area as they come up to an old, haunted looking building. They all decide to head into the building and they see some homeless cats snapping their fingers singing '*shady cats'*. The cats watch the team walk into the building with their piercing yellow eyes. Dariun asks about the portal and the shady cats snap their fingers and ask who told them about the portal. As a shady cat tries to convince the team there is no portal, the cats snaps start to de-sync and they run after the smell of tabaxi tang. Yogurt also tries to run but Dariun holds him back and Zippy tries to convince him it's not worth it. As they are talking, the bookshelf in the room opens up and a bunch of tabaxi's in white and red cultist robes wearing amulets with a symbol of an eye on it run out after the tang. Dariun drags Yogurt down the stairwell with Peterson and Zippy following.

The wooden stairs become stone as they eventually reach a wide basement that is a balcony overlooking a pink pit. There are buckets of fish on the floor and they can see it's a 40 foot drop to the very large pink area below. Dariun throws a pebble over the edge and it hits the pink floor then slowly sinks in and is absorbed. Peterson pulls down his mask and looks into the pink area and he can only see grey area but he does spot a shadowy figure walking on the pink area. Dariun decides to hop into the athereal plane and tries to talk to the shadow figure but they seem to ignore Dariun. When he asks where the figure comes from, the smoke dissipates and Dariun sees a face. The person explains that he was killed by the pink stuff after he was sacrificed by the tabaxi cultists about a week ago, now he is just wondering around. After being satisfied with the answers, Dariun hops back into the material plane next to Peterson and Zippy and explains what he now knows.

Zippy decides to tie a rope to a candle holder on the wall but when he tugs on it, it comes off the wall slightly. Zippy decides against tying himself to the rope and connects a bone to the rope. He lowers the bone and it begins to be consumed. When Zippy can't see the bone, he tries to pull the rope but he is met with a lot of resistance. Dariun lends Zippy a hand and they pull up the bone to see it looks fine. Zippy concludes it should be fine to jump into the pit but as he says this, the floor begins to move and a giant eye appears from the center of the pink pit and it fixates on the team. Dariun attempts to speak primordial to the eye, it doesn't respond but it does blink. Zippy calls out to eye and he feels his fur stand up, he hears a very quiet voice sounding like someone from his family calling out for help. Zippy closes his heart and ears to the voice and despite feeling a pull to the eye, he is able to resist. He continues to hear the voice now of Donny Quacker but Zippy keeps resisting. Donny tells Zippy they're all connected just like coco. Zippy closes off his ears and tucks his head in his legs.

Some cat cultist come down the stairs, sad about the tang being closed but ready to keep on sacrificing only to see Peterson, Dariun, Yogurt and Zippy standing in the area. Dariun straight up asks what's going on but they aren't wiling to answer and attack. Peterson pulls his mask down and uses bless on his team mates. Yogurt uses his scimitar and hits one of the cultists. Dariun puts the steam gem in his switch blade and hits the cultist twice, killing one of them with a diagonal slice from his shoulder to his hip. The other cultist freaks out and goes to run up the stairs but Dariun and Yogurt both are able to get a hit on the cultist but not before he is able to yell out to the others. Four more cultists run down and are freaking out about the eye. Zippy still hears the voice in his head telling him that he is the connection to it all through the dreams. Zippy decides to use control water on the pink stuff and he sees it start to ripple. He then uses redirect flow to force it on the wall towards the stairwell but give Dariun and Yogurt time to move out of the stairwell. Zippy then hears a different voice telling him he is no fun.

The cultist come down the stairway and perform cultist attack section 7, a group attack where one cultist it held up by the others and they ram into both Dariun and Yogurt. Peterson casts shatter just behind the cultist group and three of them take damage along with some boxes on the ground. One cultist is freaking out causing him to punch another cultist next to him throwing him off the balcony into the eye. Fish also rains into the area from the destroyed boxes and the cultist starts to sink into the pink and disappears as the eye blinks again. After they sink under, a tunnel beneath the eye opens up leading below. Yogurt uses a health potion to bring himself to feeling a bit better. Dariun sees the remaining 3 cultists and tries to find out what's in the tunnel. The cultist seems keen to go in the tunnel but doesn't let go of any information about it. Dariun activates planar warrior and slices through two of the cultists in front of him. Dariun then grapples the final cultist. Zippy continues to move the pink stuff along the walls and up the stairwell. He hear the faint snapping of some more cultists backing away from the pink stuff now in the house. Peterson goes to use primal savagery but Dariun asks him not to kill the cultist.

Dariun, holding the cultist, tells the him if he tells them what the tunnel and eye is, Dariun will allow him to go through the tunnel. If not, Dariun will kill him. Despite his harsh words, the cultist is very confident Dariun would not be able to kill him. Dariun shoves the cultist into the pink slime Zippy is controlling, killing the final cultist. Dariun once again tries to ask the eye what he is but it blinks again. Zippy hears the voice tell him he is not in control after Zippy claims he is. Zippy decides to tie a rope to the bucket and lowers it to the pink floor. The bucket starts to sink and when the lip of the bucket reaches the slime, it begins to flow into the bucket. The eye fixates on Zippy but does not speak to him. After a little while, the bucket becomes full and Dariun and Zippy can feel it being dragged under so they attempt to pull it back up. Dariun uses Zephyrs strike to give him some extra power as Zippy creates a trench around the bucket to bring it up easier. They are able to bring up the full bucket of pink stuff.

The team look down into the pit and see flashes of pearls and treasures. They see tabaxis looking at the treasures and the houses in the area. The tabaxis look up confused at the group on the balcony. Peterson looks down and can tell this is not an illusion and may be another plane. Zippy tells them he can keep open the area for at least 10 minutes if Dariun and Peterson want to go and gather some treasures. Peterson offers animals he can conjure to get them up and down but he leaves it to Dariun to decide. Dariun decides they should go for it so Zippy gives Peterson his magic carpet and Dariun gives him a rocky walkie to talk on if needed. Zippy gives them a 12 minute window and yells out the command word of alacazam causing it to swoop under Peterson. Peterson is descending into the pink floor on the magic carpet.

## **Quotations**

* Peterson "*Did you say Norman D!? The great, probably the greatest treasure hunter of them all?!!*"
* Zippy "*Oh boy, we're one quick hop step away from being villains in this story.*"
* Voice in his Zippy's head "*Zippy you know, you know you're connected. The dreams! The dreams, you're connected to all of us. You're the connected between all of it! It’s not just dreams, it's more! It's so much more.*"

## **Featured Characters**

### **Main Cast**

* Dariun Branch
* Zippy Westborrough
* Peterson

### **Returning Characters**

* Yogurt
* Fur Balls Fur and Accessories Saleswoman

### **New Characters**

* Blind tabaxi salesman
* David (tabaxi tang buyer)
* Shady cats
* Donny Quacker (Voice in Zippy's head)
* Kevin (cultist tabaxi)

## **Locations**

* Lundy
* Fur Balls Fur and Accessories
* Shady Cat Cultist Hideout