76. Blockade

* Travelling by *wind walk* spell, Aerendyl, Pyt, Wilfred, most of their crew (Poop was temporarily being kept in the iron flask), and their guests, the artificer Halcyon Cill, the changeling Lockjaw, and the truther Mennick all made their way from the sandbar where they'd seen off the recently deceased Clwyd, onwards, towards the Rumidian Southern Margraviate and then Spice Town beyond that. The day was Fallinglead 27, the time early morning.
* As they go, the group spots ten magnificent ships sailing in formation: narrow, intricately patterned, ivory white hulls, each set with two masts sporting saffron yellow sails, and each mast flanked by sub-masts that jutted out at a shallow angle and supported triangular sails. Four such sails, two on each side, resembling the wings of the insects these ships were named for: dragonflies. These were ten ships from the Calendar Fleet, the naval force of Pirate Lord Ibn Qahbe, ruler of Spice Town, and they were cutting through the water at a clip as they patrolled. Curious.
* Cill led the group beyond where they'd spotted the dragonfly ships, and land soon came into view, heavily forested, with the peaks of a mountain range poking up behind. They sped over the forest, skirted around the mountain range, keeping to its foothills, and eventually landed in some grasslands a short walk from where Cill spotted a logging community set up at the edge of another forest to come.
	+ Returning from their wind forms, the group are hit by the tropical heat and humidity of the Southern Margraviate.
	+ Cill sketches a rough map of what he recalls of the location, placing them on a large, triangular, resource rich island called Firensia, at the bottom of the Margraviate. The capital, New Bernesia, an industrious port city that had taken over the whole of the island it was on, should have been in the large bay formed of Firensia island itself.
	+ Aerendyl was the only one that had rested since the sea fury attacked them, and here, far from the coast in these inland foothills, Pyt felt comfortable putting up his drum-yurt and letting them all get some rest. He released Poop from the iron flask and everyone settled into the comfortable hut, saving Aerendyl and Wilfred -- not everyone could fit in Pyt's hut and those two volunteered to remain outside.
	+ Everyone rests while Aerendyl keeps watch, and all wake up by mid-afternoon.
	+ From there, Pyt messages Nix, intending to carry out Clwyd's final wishes quickly by handing over the items she'd told him to. Aided by an additional *sending* spell from Wilfred, they arrange to meet on New Bernasia the following evening, in an inn located in the Low Ward apparently called the Shag.
	+ Aerendyl can't *wind walk* them again that same day, so they spend it walking through Firensia's foothills, staying away from the logging community or any other people in general.
	+ Aerendyl finds a suitable tree to mark for use with his *transport via plants* spell.
	+ Wilfred asks Aerendyl if he knows what weapons Luciana uses against fey creatures. The elf tells him she has a particularly effective weapon, an oath dagger, made from the wood of a dryad's heart-tree. When Luciana marks a creature as her sworn enemy, the seemingly simple wooden dagger becomes a force to be reckoned with, but it also hinders her from doing all else besides slaying the foe until that deed is done. As such, she tends to be quite cautious about activating the thing.
	+ Finding that answer somewhat incomplete, Wilfred used a number of *sending* spells to message Luciana and ask what she recommends for going up against fey. They have some pleasant chats, her telling him that her last hunt went well and that she's back to relaxing on Tortuga again now. For fey, she recommends cold iron, if he can get his hands on any of the stuff. She has a dagger made of it and the fey can't stand it.
	+ They rest without issue that night, and the next day, Fallingleaf 29, they ready themselves to *wind walk* over to New Bernesia.
	+ Pyt doesn't want to have to be the bad guy and ask Poop to go back in the flask again, so this time Wilfred does it. The gnome has a real job of convincing Poop to do it again. The little brownie says that he doesn't really like being inside the bottle and it makes him feel weird for a while afterwards. Eventually, he agrees to do it, but only on the condition that Wilfred 'owes him one.' Wilfred agrees, and feels the tiny, brownie-appropriate weight of a Sylvan deal having been struck. He sighs, looks at Poop somewhat hurt, and says that they're friends, that Poop doesn't need to do stuff like that. The little brownie cocks his head and says he doesn't understand. Wilfred nods, resigned. Of course he didn't. And with that, Poop goes in the iron flask again.
	+ Next Wilfred puts a *telepathic bond* up that links most of the group, and then Aerendyl *wind walks* them again and Cill leads the way, taking them high in the air so they can spot the great ports of New Bernesia as they fly.
* The sea traffic seems lighter in the bay than Cill would expect, but soon enough, the capital of the Southern Margraviate appears before them. And then as they get closer, another curious sight: more dragonflies. A hundred of them or more at least, all holding formation on the windward side of New Bernesia. Ibn Qahbe was blockading the Margraviate.
	+ They fly onto the island, flying over its concentric ring design, past the docks, the shipyards, and the warehouses -- the whole city seemed designed solely to service its massive ports alone -- and into the inner part of the island, where the Low Ward and the High Ward waited.
	+ They alighted in some back alleys in the Low Ward, exited their wind forms again, then set off to find the Shag. Along the way, it becomes more and more evident that the city is under immense strain because of the blockade, tensions running high.
	+ By the time they find the Shag, an old, shady pub-style place with a sign that once-upon-a-time read 'the Shaggy Dog,' it's sometime in the late morning.
	+ They opt to go into the place, extra busy under the conditions of the blockade, and try and get a table before their meeting with Nix. Cill sends Lockjaw to go poke around the city a bit, do what he does, and try to find out what he can about what's going on.
	+ An hour and change later, Lockjaw returns, and the party have themselves a table and drinks in the busy tavern. The changeling tells them that the blockade has been ongoing for a couple weeks already but is apparently soon to come to a head. Ibn Qahbe has set three conditions for lifting it:
		- Firstly, the Rumidians are to acknowledge him no longer as a Pirate Lord, but as Emir Ibn Qahbe, ruler of the Emirate of Spice, a sovereign principality.
		- Secondly, every Rumidian ship that makes sail across the Sultanese Sea is to make port in the Emirate of Spice
		- Thirdly, each of the native peoples of the Rumidian Southern Margraviate is to be given the choice of staying and remaining vassals of the Rumidian crown or instead making for the Emirate of Spice, where they will be assigned rank based on their talents and breeding.
	+ Cill is immediately certain the Rumidians will never accept the third condition, and that they will likely be hesitant about the second, if not the first as well. On that point, Lockjaw tells him that a Rumidian delegation is said to be in talks with the blockading fleet regarding the terms, and it consists of a high-ranking member of the Company and at least two Rumidian Archmagi. Reports were somewhat conflicted regarding which ones.
	+ Pyt is immediately concerned that Wilfred among archmagi might be a problem waiting to happen. The gnome is sure that if he keeps his magical use to a minimum then they should be fine. All the same, the group opt to wait until Spice Town before they start looking into getting *the Drunken Dragon* repaired following the heavy damage it sustained at the hands of the sea fury.
	+ Pyt decides to get them some rooms, paying an extortionate price to secure them (but a fairly paltry sum for the party these days). After that, they day drink a bit and wait for Nix's arrival.
* Nix arrives in the guise of a long haired, dark skinned man. Aerendyl, Pyt, and Wilfred take him up to Pyt's room for their talk, and Cill gets carried along as the cambion starts up with his usual polite patter about investing in one's afterlife -- noting that the old gnome couldn't be too far away from it these days. Their crew and guests show various looks of concern, but remain at the table in the inn's common room.
	+ Pyt hands over Clwyd's blasting rod, the manual of bodily health, the bag of 15 soul coins Mephistopheles had given her, and the letter she's written to Nix, its seal perfectly repaired by Cill after the group had read its contents.
	+ After a quick read of the letter, an assessment of the items Pyt had given him, and some commiserations given without any trace of empathy, Nix offers the group two deals, if they should like Clwyd back. The first deal they know well, but Nix suspects Wilfred Seabottom still remains unkeen to join the household, and so he quickly moves on to the second: if the group convince 99 innocent people to consign their souls to House Telphousila, he'll return Clwyd of Telphousila to them for one more chance at mortal life.
	+ The group say they'll consider the deal but it's not something they can agree to suddenly, not like the old days. There are more people with them that are affected by these things now.
	+ At that Nix leaves, and soon after they kick out Dimitri, remembering he was likely in the room, invisible, straight away this time, rather than after revealing something incriminating and then having to modify the imp's memory. Cill, it turns out, has a nice lamp that can shine a light to reveal invisible things, and he does so as they get Dimitri to leave.
	+ The party get their crew to come up to Pyt's room now that they're alone so they can go over everything. Cill, in a panic regarding the nature of the people he'd ended up travelling with -- thinking they were seriously considering Nix's deal as they'd told the cambion they were -- had a conversation with Lockjaw in the common room. The two didn't really know what to do from here, but decided that the very least they owed the party was to hear them out on this. And so they go up to Pyt's room too.
	+ The trio unanimously and immediately agree that they're not going to damn 99 people like that, even if Clwyd likely would have told them to do it should she be there to say so. All of their trajectory, Pyt's trajectory, was for the sake of having nothing more to do with Nix. They had no intention of ending up deeper in that pit. This was Pyt's reason for looking for a genie in the first place, which he hoped to find in Spice Town.
* The group spends the night getting drunk and telling stories of Clwyd.
	+ Aerendyl reminisces about when they were fighting June the Maiden and the witch made to flee. At the time, Clwyd hadn't even hesitated as he pointed the way and she teleported blindly alongside Wilfred after her. And after that Clwyd had got the job done, like she so often had.
	+ Wilfred's favourite memory of Clwyd was when they went out on Tortuga and she actually dressed up nicely -- owed in large part to the skill of the illustrious Pog Smoothhands and Luciana's fashion sense. It made a great change from the ratty dresses and dishevelled appearance the goblin had often sported, and it had been a lot of fun, even if Clwyd didn't really go out for that sort of entertainment that much.
	+ Cill talked about how she'd been a great assistant while he'd been fashioning the log pin for Oleantis. Never complaining, perfectly content to hold a stand steady for hours at a time. He'd never asked her why she was so content during the process.
	+ Pyt says they should remember what Clwyd was like before all the Nix stuff, when she'd been a brandy maker --so fond of the stuff she'd almost been killed by rum gremlins when they first met her -- and a tinker of magic items not so different from Cill.
	+ Inevitably, the question of Madog comes up at some point. Cill says he'd be very grateful if the party ended up killing him, but as for whether they should or not, the group are undecided. Taylor says that he thinks Clwyd wasn't really so interested in the goblin warlord any more, but that she'd just not been honest with herself about that. Aerendyl says that it always seemed like the closer they got to Madog, the more adamant Clwyd was that they needed to go in another direction. Ultimately, Pyt agrees. He thinks that Clwyd never would have steered their ship Madog's way.
	+ Alric's contribution is simply to toast Clwyd as a good fighter, and then to ponder the final request she'd left for him back in Pyt's hut at the Roof of the World: live a good life. The old berserker had no idea how to fulfil such an atypical final wish.
* The next day, the streets are busy. Criers are screaming the news that the delegations were meeting in the bay that morning, that the blockade might be lifted by nightfall. The group *wind walk* again, spending the day island-hopping up the Southern Margraviate until they reach Port-o-Plenty, the bastion at the very edge of Rumidian territory. The port city had also been under blockade, though apparently the number of ships in waiting had been fewer than those off New Bernesia. But in any case, those ship were gone now, for the blockade was lifted.
	+ The group settle into the city for a couple days, staying well away from the docks or the water in general. Their plan was to follow a trail of ships all the way to Spice Town, since they lacked a log pin to show them the way, and for that, they wanted to give it a bit so that ships would start moving again.
	+ While in Port-o-Plenty, it's easy enough for them to ask around and learn about the agreement between the Empire and Spice Town. In fact, a great many works of art are hurriedly being sketched up based on the accounts of the event:
		- The two sides had apparently met out on the water, on platforms stretched between the hulls of their ships. Or that's how the artwork now depicted the meeting at least.
		- Shandara Elonrae had been there, the dark elf also known as Lady Nightfire, the Archmage of Evocation, a living legend in her own right, a founding member of the Circle of Magi, she who served as personal adviser to Rumid the Great and a dozen or more other Rumidian monarchs.
		- She'd been accompanied by the half-elf Sienna au Prespescone, the Archmage of Abjuration. Together they represented war magic, a particular showing of strength on the part of the Circle during the negotiations.
		- A large, sleek automaton was often depicted standing behind each of the archmagi, shield guardians linked to the mages.
		- As a representative of the South Rowe Trading Company, the young human Sistine Le Marchand had been there. Though she was only in her early 30s, she'd already earned a reputation as a shrewd and cunning merchant. The artwork depicted her with a military air, and if she was outshone by the archmagi, it was only by a hair.
		- For Ibn Qahbe's delegation, his court advisor, the Mustashar had been there, accompanied by a dozen black skinned, bald headed, halbert touting mamluks -- royal guards.
	+ The agreement they'd come to was thus: The Rumidian Empire would acknowledge Ibn Qahbe as Emir and his city as an Emirate, and for every three Rumidian ships that sailed across the Sultanese Sea, one would make port in the Emirate of Spice, but the dock levy would be wavered in perpetuity for all Company ships and Rumidian military vessels. Of the third condition, there was no mention at all.
* On Fallingleaf 33, the group again *wind walk* over the sea, leaving Rumidian lands behind, flying high in the air, following merchant ships and dragonflies both. Eventually, they entered an archipelago of islets, and then in their heart, Spice Town. They saw a few of the beautiful dragonfly ships folded up into boxes at port, just as their own ship could do. High in the air over the elevated districts of the city, above the spires and tower tops, people flew about on soaring carpets or occasionally on the backs of wyverns. Somewhere between the docks and the walls of the high city, markets and bazaars sprawled out in every space afforded by rabbit warren streets. The group touched down there, in the shadow of an alleyway, and returned from their wind forms. They'd made it at last.
	+ Poop was still in the iron flask.