49. Pyt's Bad Birthday

During their trip across the Rolling Blue, the party scryed on the Council of Nine's meeting.

* Having arrived on Tortuga, Aerendyl took the party to his friend Luciana's house. She lives in a part of the Pleasure Quarter called Old Town, filled with cobbled, narrow streets, large houses, rooftop terraces and gardens, and flowers on every windowsill. They were greeted by her live-in butler, an elderly human man called Cornwallace, and made to wait in a nice sitting room.
	+ Eventually Luciana came down from her evening pleasures, wearing a bathrobe and swirling a tumbler of whiskey. She talked with Aerendyl a little, but saw that the party were exhausted and looked like shit so she cut it short and got Cornwallace to draw baths for them all.
	+ Luciana's bathroom, like the rest of her house, was pretty opulent. Hot water was waiting for them in two free-standing copper tubs. Wooden stools were provided for the convenience of the smaller folk, meaning they didn't have to swim.
	+ Aerendyl and Wilfred bathed first. Wilfred asked the elf about Luciana and learned that Aerendyl and she had hunted magical creatures together in the past, as part of a four-person team in fact. The other two members, a half-orc called Strang and a tundra dwarf called Frostbeard, had magical abilities bestowed on them by way of the River King, much like Aerendyl himself. Luciana, however, apparently took all her boons in the form of wealth, as far as Aerendyl could tell.
	+ Cornwallace changed the water.
	+ Pyt bathed next, on his own, save for the company of Jackson (cast into a bar of soap to help Pyt wash) and Jolene, who sat at the far end of the tub reading the Night Mother's notes on raising minions. Jolene was less of a dick than usual, apparently trying a new carrot-and-stick approach to dealing with Pyt, thanks to the book.
	+ Luciana tells Aerendyl to show them up to the guest rooms - she only has two singles and a double, so two of them are going to have to bunk. On the way up, they pass through her first-floor smoking room and see a tall tiefling woman with grey skin, a lot of gold jewellery in her face, and goat legs with hooves at the end. The tiefling courtesan, Yasmine, was just chilling with a drink and a smoke, but gave them some salutary nods and pointed them towards the bedrooms. They all left in a bit of a hurry, Wilfred thinking he just hallucinated a goat-woman in his fatigue.
	+ Clwyd and Luciana bathed last. Clwyd asks about Aerendyl and Luciana says they met in the winter region of Faerie, where they were doing a bit of work.
	+ When asked, Luciana also said that she thinks Aerendyl just doesn't think like people like she and Clwyd do. He's already lived five times longer than the longest life they could hope to live. His way of thinking about the world must be totally different to their own. Luciana likened it to how a human might view a favoured pet - not that she thinks Aerendyl looks down on her like that phrase might imply. Simply that he could know whole generations of their family if he so chose, much like a dog owner might raise three or four generations. And you can love and cherish such a pet, feel great loss when they're gone and rely on them as much or more than another person. But they'll never really be the same as another person, will they? That's her thinking on it, at least.
	+ When they're done bathing, Luciana takes Clwyd up to the bedrooms too, introducing Yasmine as one of the courtesans in Lady Rouge's employ that she enjoys the company of on a frequent basis.
	+ Clwyd and Aerendyl take the singles in the far room. Wilfred and Pyt bunk up in the double bed. Sleep comes quickly to those that need it.
	+ Aerendyl has the same trance dream he's had every night since they left the Pirate Republic.
		- First, he's in the crystal caves reliving the River King's lesson on why witches form covens, and indeed, why the coven of covens might have been formed in turn. Aerendyl's answers sometimes change in these trances, but the meat of the conversation remains the same: the River King tells him that witches want power, and how he believes the Siblings of Agnor will look to replace the witches of Sawtooth Basin in the coven of covens. Then he asks Aerendyl if he's going to hunt or to be prey? Sometimes they talk about catching one of the witches and adding it to their newly started menagerie - they do again on this night.
		- Next, Aerendyl's on a beach, not remembering how he got there and when he left the River King. Mackerel is dying on a pillar of rock jutting through her torso. Her white-clouded eyes are looking straight at him and she laughs with a cackle. She doesn't speak but he hears the words anyway: 'you don't know what I do for this world.'
		- However, this night there was another addition to the trance, though it wasn't truly new to Aerendyl. From a distance, as if looking down from somewhere in the sky, he watched an elf climb a mountain cliff. At the top, the elf met a fey creature and followed them into a house. The door closed and Aerendyl woke up.
	+ Clwyd, not needing sleep any more, was there to talk when Aerendyl woke in a bit of distress. They briefly speak on it, but the elf concludes that he needs more time to think on things.
* Waking up the next day, the group enjoy Luciana's house and hospitality some more.
	+ Luciana herself has a set morning routine: she has loud sex first thing, then trains in her gym until about 10:30.
	+ Going about the house when they wake up, the group of four again meet Cornwallace the butler, as well as a family of halflings that work for Luciana: Iris Underfoot, the mother, mid-50s; Lily Underfoot, eldest daughter, late teens; Wes Underfoot, youngest son, early teens. The halflings are cleaning the house, tending to Luciana's plants and the pigeons kept on her roof, and Iris cooks for the group as well.
	+ The party eat and bat a few plans around. Eventually they're met by a post-work out Luciana who joins them for food. She tells them there's a high stakes poker tournament taking place on Tortuga over the coming month, hence all the fancy ships at dock. The tournament was also serving as a bit of an excuse to have a number of other fancy events alongside: galas and balls; a rare cat show, with the cats being auctioned off at the end; and a silent auction for some choice items. The latter she mentions in particular, since the party tell her they're looking to sell the Pliny Set they got hold of. She says she'll have Cornwallace look into getting them in for an appraisal, but if it was legit, then they event runners should be very keen to get a Pliny Set in the event portfolio.
	+ It becomes very clear that Luciana lives a truly opulent lifestyle. She throws out some plans for the coming days, with the party quickly agreeing that it all sounds good: massages that evening, since some of the party still look tired, then they could go to the Morendo Music Hall the next night, since a Golden Harp was in town (no doubt for the tournament) and was performing there. They mention wanting to celebrate Pyt's birthday and Luciana says they might hit Bronze Boy after Morendo if they want to drink; she can get them into the very exclusive Bar Model Silver.
	+ She also chucks out a bunch of other things she likes to do that they might enjoy later on: the rooftop butterfly gardens, watching the Garden of Sand's Chaos of Clay, Lady Rouge's bathhouse, a few good gambling dens on the shell, watching the performances of the courtesans whose services she keeps, night shopping in a district of the Pleasure Quarter called the Silk Lanes - known for finely crafted artisanal goods, including some tortle works. She and the group agree to play it by ear, but stick to the above plan for the coming days.
* The party spend the day in the Glittergold section of the Small Quarter, in search of new clothes and some other bits.
	+ The go to Smoothhands Tailors!
		- He's in the back as they arrive and shouts that he'll just be a minute. In the meantime, they take in some of the fashions on display and note that the shop has a new painting: a lovely young gnomish woman in a wedding dress, smiling wildly in the arms of a gnomish boy on their wedding day, flower petals in the air. Smoothhands' daughter had gotten married.
		- When the tailor comes out, he and Wilfred have a long chat in Gnomish. The others eventually chime in, getting him to speak some Common. He's pushing hard for the seasonal colours of mauve, midnight blue, black, off-set with accents of silver and grey. He's also adamant that they don't do cloaks. Or bracelets, perish the thought. He is, however, very keen to get them in ruffled shirts too, with double-breasted velvet jackets where appropriate.
		- Wilfred was fully attentive to all the advice the man gave. His first request was for some formal, fancy attire. Smoothhands took some new measurements of the party's gnome - Wilfred of course wanting a tailored fit - and they settled on a grey shirt with ruffled chest and sleeves, dark blue velvet doublet, and a Pantaloon of black with silver trim. Wilfred bribed the man to get the order done in half the time, which still meant it would be a week's wait. So, he also picked up an off-the-rack tunic and trouser set, with a few adjustments from the man Smoothhands to ensure a good fit even as he walked out the door that day.
		- Perhaps for the first time in her life, Clwyd spent some good money on clothes. Smoothhands wouldn't entertain her request for reds this season, but he acquiesced to perhaps a bold green or light brown trouser and belt to offset a darker tunic. She got two outfits and suffered through the man's insistence on making a few minor alterations for fit.
		- Aerendyl followed most of the man's advice as Wilfred had, going for more purples than blues. Smoothhands turned his nose up at the request for a cloak or a bracelet though.
		- Pyt had quite specific desires for flared shirt and trousers, and curly-toed shoes. Smoothhands didn't have his size in the shoes, primarily catering to small folk after all, but he gave them directions to the Bafflestone cobblers nearby where they might have more luck. The clothes were easy enough for the gnome to see to though.
		- The party commented on the painting of the wedding, congratulating the man. He gushed a bit, saying she was his only child and how happy an event it had been.
		- After a few hours, the party walked out Smoothhands' shop in the best of this season's gnomish fashion, looking fly as hell.
		- A quick trip to Bafflestone cobblers and a quick conversation with the grumpy gnome that ran the place, and Pyt had his shoes too.
	+ Still in Glittergold, they ask around a bit and find a small jewellers tucked out the way.
		- The place is ran by goblins - Clwyd recognises them as 'hobbers,' a pejorative term that refers to goblins that have given up being travelling people of the sea, domesticating themselves on land; seen by some goblins to be revering to their old days under the hobs.
		- Initially, Clwyd doesn't even care that they're hobbers since it's been months since she's seen other goblins. But when she tries to sell them 1000gp worth of black pearls and they hit her with a 400gp offer, saying they need to make a profit too and they don't know how long it's going to sit in their shop waiting for a buyer, she walks away cursing hobbers all over again, not accepting the deal.
		- Wilfred picks up some diamond dust and gold dust from them.
	+ Clwyd hits up a silversmith in the area that she'd been to before, when she was gathering ingredients to make her Periapt of Wound Closure. She comissions a small, hand-sized silver cage from them, overpaying by trading them the 500gp black pearl she has. She's to come back for it in about a week, around the same time Wilfred needs to come back for his outfit.
	+ As they're riding a rickshaw back to Luciana's place, Wilfred hands Pyt the diamond dust, telling him to consider it a late birthday present. He might ask Aerendyl to use it for a Greater Restoration to hopefully get the bard's memories back at long last.
* Back at Luciana's, the party enjoy their evening.
	+ They have dinner with Luciana and Yasmine the tiefling courtesan.
	+ Yasmine proves herself to be an expert at conversation, having been trained in the art, as all of Lady Rouge's best were. She quickly gets the party talking about themselves and having a good time. In particular, she seems to take a liking to Clwyd.
	+ Luciana mentions that she probably needs to work soon since the River King had been silent with them. Strang had apparently gone off with Frostbeard looking for work for the same reason. Then again, she might not need to worry about it if she places well in the poker tournament.
	+ This leads the group to talk some more about the Chaos of Clay. At the show's peak, it was running every night in the Garden of Sand, and the prize pool was just growing and growing. It's slowed down a bit now, and the event still proves popular. It runs once a week, on the first night of a new moon, and the prize has been capped at 40,000 gold. Nobody has bested it yet though, and since people don't recover properly from the injuries inflicted by the clay golems, the number of people willing to try it are decreasing fairly rapidly, even with the clause that people can give up at any time and not risk their own deaths.
	+ Luciana agrees that they could try it, but the event looks to be a real shit-show, even if the party are handy in a fight. Two clay golems smashing them up with wounds that won't heal properly, and an arena floor pitted with pits that housed gelatinous cubes. The cubes didn't just hamper movement though. People struggled to get out if they ended up in them, and the things burned with potent acid - acid which would heal the golems on contact. And the golems would jump into the pits when they were damaged, often carrying contestants with them when they did so.
	+ Clwyd suggests maybe they go and watch the Chaos of Clay in person before deciding whether or not to enter. The others also mention that maybe they don't even want the notoriety that would inevitably come with winning the thing.
	+ After dinner, they all enjoy massages, Luciana having ordered the masseuses to her house. After the massage and sleep, they would recover two points of exhaustion instead of one!
* Luciana and Yasmine retire for the evening, leaving the party to their own devices. They take to the smoking room, pouring out a few drinks and filling a pipe or two. Pyt wants to play some games for his birthday.
	+ The first game Pyt wants to play involves scrying. They were to pick someone, guess what they were doing, and then Aerendyl would scry on them.
	+ They consider scrying on Wick, almost get to the point of doing it, and then some of them decide in a hurry that it could actually be a really bad idea.
	+ Aerendyl suggests that anyone from Driscoll's crew would be a bad idea, in fact.
	+ Pyt suggests Shandy next and is shot down.
	+ They settle on trying Kind, the Proprietor's old front man. When the spell is eventually cast, it ultimately fails. They conclude that the guy is probably dead.
	+ Next they try Tobias Ashborne, the guy who had helped the Rumidian Mage Hunters get Wilfred alone in the back of his merchant ship. Aerendyl casts the spell and they see the man in a dark room. He's muttering to himself a bit and ultimately gets into bed and goes to sleep, leaving them free to watch him do so for about 5 to 10 minutes if they so wish.
* With the scrying game proving to be a bit of a dud, Pyt asks Aerendyl to cast Greater Restoration on him, trying to restore his memories this time. The elf does so, and at last, Pyt's mind becomes clear.

> Pyt had found his way to a little town called the Crossroads, on an island called Mich. It was approaching Midwinter, and as an entrepreneurial bard, he was looking for a bit of work during the celebrations that were to take place in the next town over, the town of Bramblebreak.
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> Then there's nothing.
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> The next memory Pyt has is him and the gnome Starth going into a bar between worlds, a bar called the Cat's Shadow. The place was inexplicably massive, hundreds if not thousands of rooms, and the clientele was eclectic to say the least. A cat with two tails called Maud ran the place, and seemed to be laying down on a small table in the corner of most of the rooms they went into.
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> Pyt and Starth got really drunk, and eventually Pyt found himself alone and in a side room. Six different types of mephiti were playing cards in the corner, and two black cambions with six fingers on each hand were sipping drinks at a table. A bar dominated the room, and that was where Pyt found his drunken self. Behind the counter, the wall was covered in a lattice of shelves, and each box housed a beautiful, colourful, corked bottle - all different shapes and sizes. The man behind the counter had the presence of a giant but stood at a height with Pyt. The sign on the back wall read 'Bottled Memories.'
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> Pyt asked for the best one they had. He was told it would cost him but he said he'd pay whatever, he just wanted the best. The barkeep says he'll take some of the past and some of the future then, and Pyt slurs his agreement. The giant in a man's body reaches for a pure black bottle on the bottom shelf, a smooth orb capped with a long, narrow neck. He again has Pyt confirm, and then places the bottle before the half-elf, uncorking it, and wafting its contents toward his patron.
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> A stream of colours and moving pictures floats out from the bottle. It seeps into Pyt's nose and mouth and eyes and ears. His head is surrounded by a nimbus of memories. And so it is, that Pyt remembers much of the life of another man. But not just any man. A great man. One of the first ever glamour bards: Pliny the Quick.
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> *Pyt remembers Pliny stumbling into Faerie, being told by a quickling to choose a side, and walking for weeks and months through rolling hills and beautiful, inhospitable forests. Eventually, he remembers Pliny meeting the Queen of Air and Darkness in her seat of power where Dusk met Autumn met Winter. And he remembered Mab looking at Pliny with those terrifying, beautiful eyes that knew too much for a face so young, and knew him despite this being their first meeting. And when Mab asked if he'd fight for her, Pyt remembered Pliny saying yes.*
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> *Years passed in Faerie, and Pliny learned the way of their courts. He lived and loved, and learned to wield the glamour of Faerie in his lute and song. He fought often and well, battling with the agents of the Dawn who ever came to thwart them, and also with the constant in-fighting of the Gloaming Court, since violence seemed to be ingrained in their very natures.*
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> *Eventually, though, Pliny's life took a turn. For all the fighting and learning had just been Mab's training - the Queen of Air and Darkness was always thinking ahead, always planning, always unknowable. And on this day, the war Mab had been preparing Pliny for began. He quickly learned the true reason the Gloaming Court existed: they were to fight horrors.*
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> *The horrors came from the stars. They came in hordes, and they attacked mind and soul as much as flesh and bone. Maggots and worms writhed in some of them in the place of lifeblood. Others were formed of tumours and sores that only gave them yet greater strength where such ailments would easily have robbed the life of Pliny or his allies. Pyt remembered it all. The endless, daily horror that was Pliny's war with the stars. How many friends and lovers and rivals and foes did Pliny have to watch die? How many of the loyal servants that had been bestowed to him had died so that he might keep living? How much could a man scream before his voice and his mind together broke?*
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> *Decades had passed, and Pyt remembered that Pliny had been a loyal soldier, unerring every day. But no more. The bard broke from too much suffering, and he fled. He broke his oath to Mab in doing so, and to break an oath in Faerie is to commit the most heinous of all offences. The Queen would see him suffer yet for it.*
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> *Pliny did not see the end of the war. Indeed, he didn't see anything for a long time. Queen Mab had frozen his eyes, and she'd chained him in ice. And each day she carved the oaths he had swore to her into his flesh in perfect little letters. Each day a different place and a different knife. And when she ran out of flesh, she began to chisel on his teeth.*
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> *But anyone can cause pain with hurt. Queen Mab did much worse. She hurt him with her love too. For she would sometimes take him down from the chains, wash his body, restore his sight, sing soothingly to him, kiss him, care for him, love him even, and then she'd be gone and the chains would be back. And the pain would be worse for having known that little joy. And it was only when Pliny came to fear her love most of all that she was done.*
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> *Pyt remembered when Mab at last sent Pliny away, giving him his final task. He was to scour the world and find people to sing of the greatness of the Gloaming Court. They were to make sure the world never forgot the Queen of Air and Darkness. Ten of them plus he there were meant to be. And so it was that Pliny was free from the pain at last.*
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> *But he was the Quick, not just of finger but of mind as well. And Pliny twisted the deal, his final fuck you to the Queen that had wronged him so. He had his group make many songs and plays, a whole cycle of them, in fact, but they didn't just sing the praises of the Dusk. No, they told many of the stories of Faerie as they truly were, beautiful and wily and terrifying and decadent, Dawn and Dusk and Wyld Fey and all. And more than this, Pliny added a twelfth to their number, and hidden they remained.*
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> *Even now, Pyt could not recall the face of the Unnamed Twelfth in Pliny's memories, but they had been there. Of that, Pyt was sure.*
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> *Finally, Pliny sought out 'the Cat and the Giant,' hearing them to be great and to have abandoned Faerie in an age gone. He eventually found his way to this bar, the Cat's Shadow, and he freely gave up these memories, wanting nothing more than to be rid of them.*
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> When he'd finished remembering Pliny's memories, the nimbus returned to the black bottle, a little duller now, faded from use, as memories fade with time. The barkeep corked the bottle and had another two ready. With a swipe of his hand, he took some of Pyt's past, all that happened between the Crossroads and entering the Cat's Shadow, and into a bottle it went. Then with another swipe in the opposite direction he took some of Pyt's future, two seasons' worth or so, from the moment he'd leave the bar and onward, and into the final bottle that went.
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> Would that that were the end of it, but Pyt wasn't done partying yet. He kept drinking, kept cavorting, and eventually found his way to a room with a fey tree he knew well: the loftus tree. Pyt had experimented with it before, making music with its bark for a bow. He did so again now, and broke one of Maud's rules in doing so, for the loftus tree can warp the mind and memory, though alcohol does wonders in dampening its effects. Still, Pyt scrambled his drunk mind just as he'd stuffed Pliny's memories into it, and he scrambled the memories of a bunch of other patrons too.
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> Maud was furious, and she was a little housecat no more. She filled the room, a beast of fangs and claws, a roar like a thunderclap, and her orders were inevitable. Starth had vouched for Pyt and so the pair of them were thrown out, with Starth's membership to the Cat's Shadow being revoked for a time as punishment.
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> Despite having entered the bar just after Midwinter, Pyt woke up sometime after Midsummer. He had an awful hangover, he couldn't remember shit at the time, and he got Jeremy to massage him to feel better - it quickly turned into Jeremy tugging him off.
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* His memories returned, Pyt abruptly stops being giddy. He goes to bed, not sharing what he'd remembered with the rest of the group. That night, Aerendyl again has the same trance dreams: the River King's lesson, Mackerel's death, an elf climbing a mountain.
* The next day, the party again enjoy breakfast cooked by Iris Underfoot in Luciana's dining room. Pyt and Wilfred notice Lily Underfoot looking at Wilfred a fair bit. The gnome is fairly clueless, thinking he might look strange in his new clothes. Pyt recognises that the halfling probably has a bit of a crush on the out-of-towner.
* When she's done with her morning routine, Luciana joins them and says they can go to get their Pliny Set appraised after lunch. The group mill about Luciana's house until it's time for them to go. They head to a lovely hotel in the Pleasure Quarter and off in a side room, they see the area that's being set up for a silent auction.
	+ A short, fat, suited human man is waiting to appraise the books for them.
	+ A representative from three of the Shell Lords is also present in the room, providing protection for the valuable items being left there. The Proprietor has sent a human man called Honey, Lady Rouge has sent a half-orc, and the Warden has sent one of his older children with the glazed-over eyes.
	+ Alongside the large table they were now placing the Pliny Set on, the room had a number of pedestals with items on display.
	+ While the fat man is looking at the books and confirming they're not a forgery, he rambles a little about the nature of a Pliny Set, though he admits to not having seen one in person before. The sets were said to be penned by Pliny himself: 101 sets of 101 books. Further, they'd lost the art of making such books now: there was not a scrap of magic about them, but they were still in mint condition despite how much time must have passed since they were made - truly some hardy materials.
	+ The set is confirmed to be genuine. The man says the Proprietor will provide them with 25% of the estimated value of the item up-front, recouping that from the final selling price, as well as taking 5% of the total sale for himself. The group agree and the man fetches them a velvet pouch with 600 platinum pieces in it.
	+ Among the items around the room, Wilfred notices a couple:
		- a chain shirt with intricate elvish script marked into every single link. It's a beautiful piece, feychain he remembers it being called. (It gives an AC of 14+dex mod (max of +2) and you don't need to have proficiency in medium armour to wear it).
		- Next he sees a fist-sized black rock, with raindow patterns all over it when the light caught it right, like an oil slick. It was being sold as a particularly choice opal, but Wilfred recognised it as something much more than that, remember the first and only other time he'd seen one: he was maybe eight years old, having snuck into a part of Lyra's house he shouldn't have gone, and he found such an item. She's caught him and he was about to cry, but she said she wasn't going to be angry at him for being curious. She told him that such a stone wouldn't appear magical by any ordinary test, but that it was no ordinary rock. It was a roguestone, an item hungry for magic, and should a wizard feed it, a bond could be formed. Once the bond was in place, regardless of place or plane or means, the wizard could *gemjump* back to the stone, or call the stone to their hand, in but a moment. So since it was her last contingency, she had the little gnome put the rock back where he'd found it, even as he was mesmerised by the thing.
	+ The group also consider selling the Manual of Flesh Golems to the Proprietor, since he's always looking for creatures to put in the Garden of Sand. They briefly talk to Honey about the possibility and he tells them to go to the Obsidian Villa to discuss it; he was busy with the silent auction.
* The party again return to Luciana's house.
	+ Wilfred asks Pyt about last night and the bard tells the group what he'd recalled, ending the retelling with, 'I guess I'd thought that I finally made it, you know.' He also thinks that he should either stop drinking or drink a lot more, but he can't decide which. Pyt goes into lamenting that, in his opinion, he didn't really do much during the witch hunts -- 'I just turned into a werewolf and nearly ate you. Otherwise, I was kinda just there' -- and now he's found out that he didn't serve the Queen of Air and Darkness, command an army of minions, fight in a great war, or any of it.
	+ The other three try and cheer him up, but he doesn't really seem to be in the mood for it. The party tell Pyt that he's still got a long road ahead of him, and he retorts that he might just have to re-scale his expectations.
* When night comes, the group plus Luciana and Yasmine head to the Morendo Music Hall.
	+ There's a massive queue out the front, but Luciana heads to a side door and says she plus her entourage have a private box booked.
	+ Inside, the Morendo is built in the structure of a concert hall, but with the area in-front of the stage filled with round tables like a tavern, bars on the sides of the room. They were on the second floor, in a private box with lavish seating, looking down on the stage and floor. There was a common area and bar that led into all the private boxes, so the high-rolling customers could easily mingle if they so wished.
	+ Luciana tells the group that it's all on her tab, so they can feel free to drink and eat if they want.
	+ They chat and enjoy several hours of great music.
	+ On arrival, a halfling was playing a lively rendition of Ghillie Greenbottle's Fingernails, getting the crowd to sing along and cheer with him.
	+ Other acts followed, playing a mix of lively and impressive music.
	+ Eventually, the main attraction of the evening took to the stage, having been sat among the crowd like most of the other musicians who had performed. She was a slight half-elf, and she carried a few different stringed instruments onto stage. A lovely little pin of a golden harp was displayed proudly near her left shoulder.
	+ The half-elf proceeded to blow everyone's minds with her music. The crowd loved her.
	+ About 3/4 of the way through her performance, she played a slow sombre song. It garnered quite a dramatic stare from Pyt, making him look at odds with the rest of the crowd who here enjoying it. The woman herself was scanning the crowd's faces as she played, and she eventually met eyes with Pyt. Recognition taking her for a moment, she smiled at him and eventually broke eye contact and went back to playing.
	+ She finished her performance, bowed to the cheers, and joined the crowd on the floor to enjoy the drinks that they were itching to buy for her.
	+ Pyt remained silent, watching her, not talking to the others in the box. Eventually, the woman left the room and he dimension doored after her.
	+ She'd been waiting for him though, so wasn't too shocked with his sudden appearance.
	+ Pyt was immediately aggressive with his enquiry, asking who she was, how she knew that song, why she played it!
	+ She was calm in her response. She said that one of the few who's bested her taught her the song, and asked her to play it where she could looking for a half-elf man who recognised it well - he'd helped the woman make the song, she'd said. When she found the man, the woman who had beaten her asked her to give him a blank piece of folded card, telling him to whisper his name into it, sexy like.
	+ Pyt took the card but remained sceptical. He quickly dimension doored away from the troubairitz.
* Pyt ran back to Luciana's house alone, in the rain. He was practically hyperventilating by the time he arrived there and was let in by Cornwallace. He found a quiet place and tried whispering his name a few times before he got the 'Pytinel' just sexy enough to satisfy the card. With himself fairly embarrassed, a magic mouth resembling a woman's pink lips sprang up on the centre of it, the folded crease forming the gap between lips. The magic mouth let out a peal of laughter that cut right through Pyt's heart, then Riss's voice spoke the words: 'Ahhh, I'm fucking hilarious!'

In his spare time about Luciana's house, Wilfred is taking to reading a rare history book she has in her library: a history of the Northern Margraviate.