17: ...But Toucan

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## Summary

### Friends, Reunited

As the sun sets to the west over the Malabar ridge, the party looks to Bran, broken surfboard in his hands, gazing up at the road. A tall young elf with long golden hair jogs toward the party with Hercules at his ankles, yapping excitedly. It’s Aster, Bran’s best friend from back home. One half-hug-half-handshake later, the pair lead the party to the tiki bar on the beach to unwind and catch up.

Bran and Aster set to telling each other road stories, and get to chatting about how Aster came upon his new work. While he and Hercules were in Samsara, Aster says, Hercules gambled their funds away playing cards Luckily, they met an eccentric traveling professor from the Lhoam Academy of Sciences, who commissioned them to put together a compendium of Balaayt’s exotic birds. While Luca makes friends with Hercules under the bar, Aster mentions that the pair have trekked south to find the fabled Malabar Golden Toucan.

### Jungle Japes

After Aster shares a few more stories about K’nafay and he and Bran shyly show off some artwork, Aster hears the squeaky cry of the Golden Toucan, and sets off for the jungle north of the beach road with Hercules hot on his heels. The party follows their new friends into the dark jungle, moonlight blotted out by the thick canopy and the sound of beachgoers replaced by strange animal calls and the creaking of foliage. Aster pleads with the party for help catching the bird, and they accept. But as they chase the bird through the trees, over roots and fallen logs, across streams and chasms, they find that it isn’t an ordinary bird, but some sort of fey creature. It slows to turn back towards the party, revealing its mysterious third eye before afflicting several party members with a variety of strange fey charms.

After a merry chase through the jungle, and once the “bird” is through playing with the party, it leads them to a clearing deep in the wood. It perches on something tangled in the roots of an ancient kapok tree. Bobbing its head and blinking its third eye, the toucan implores the party to “solve riddle, make funny!” Meanwhile, Aster sits on a mossy rock nearby to sketch the bird, paying no mind to its task.

Upon further inspection, the box tangled in the tree roots says, “ONE CANNOT OPEN ME”, with a further inscription scratched away and illegible. After a few minutes of talking themselves in circles, Cat posits: “but two can,” and makes a grave revelation. Erupting in eerie laughter, the toucan accepts their pun and flies off, leaving them with a magical golden feather and the open box, which contains a gem of seeing in the shape of its third eye. None the wiser, Aster finishes his sketch of the toucan, and requests that Bran draw him a personal rendition as a keepsake.

## Quotes

HERCULES THE HIGH ROLLER

> “First we took the Northeast Road to Samsara to see the Wetlands. But *someone* gambled all our money away playing cards. Luckily, I met a traveling academic from Lhoam who liked my work, and he’s hired me to do this book. We’ve just come from K’nafay now, where we found the Limosa’s Hoopoe. Have a look!”
>
>

> “We came to this beach town to find the fabled Malabar Golden Toucan, but still no luck. Since it’s our last night here, I fear we may miss it...”
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>

*—Aster*