Praetor Pray Tell

*Hired by*: Ourselves

*Mission Request*: Talk to Praetor Tuvak Ruadon regarding his offer for the golden elixir

*Rewards/Loot*: N/A

*Discovered Places*: N/A

*Caravan Allies*: Gromlo (antiquarian), Caliban (cook), "Bob" (alarm gnome)

*Monsters Encountered*: N/A

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## Summary

We had a magical elixir and we needed a buyer. Dragon in the east, Kingdom in the north, or a slaver, right here in Celadon. As we walked through Praetor Ruadon’s estate, a slave woman bumped into Eira. She was quickly whisked away and we never saw that person again. “Nice going Eira,” someone said jokingly. Eira didn’t laugh. The son slaveowner was a diminutive man with a weak soul who made some feckless attempts at getting a rise out of Raxis.  Then the man-boy was dismissed and the Praetor Ruadan sat down with the Dyzarri Nakkar Consortium. The big man said a lot of words and eventually got to his point. He says he still owns Raxis. He says he is owed the elixir. He says we should give him the elixir, in exchange for Raxis’s freedom. And he said he would wait for us to agree to his plan.

The DNC decided to explore other options. We headed back to our hotel and spoke with each other about our next move. A blue dragon in eastern part of the peninsula wants *our* elixir. Why who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to meet such a creature. *RING RING RING!* What’s that? A rock in Eira’s pocket is some sort of magical communication device. “Will you take Ruadon’s deal?” the raspy voice inquired. Our resident talker, Raxis handled the situation skillfully saying “Sssssssssssss…..we are thinking about it.” “Then we’re done here.” *click.* That was the end of that thread.

Slavery is quite an unsavory topic. So who wouldn’t feel absolutely betrayed, just devastated when they found out their comrade-in-arms had engaged in such activities. Some internal conflict for the DNC, the Praetor had let it slipped during our meeting that members had engaged in his services. Now Gwyneira for one, could not accept this. Aleria admits flatly that she did engage in such dealings, the consequence of which are upstairs in one of the hotel rooms. A bunch of kids, 7-15 (I did not stop to count) were strewn about the room with an elderly woman to act as caretaker. Aleria explains her kind-hearted gesture but, questions remain. What will become of the children now? The DNC is getting ready to leave the city. Who will take care of the kids? Aleria had also bought an elderly woman to serve as caretaker. Where will these children live? Aleria had the brilliant idea of keeping them in one of the towers. You know? The ones the DNC uses to teleport from place to place. So we escort the kids to the tower and Aleria and Eira use money to buy food and supplies for them. We have an elementary school in one of the towers now.

[*smash cut to a new scene. deep within the threadbare pockets of one Arco Il’Ris*] A small, fluffy, soul is born.

The gang teleports to the nearest tower to the Dragon and begin the journey. Along the way they stumble upon a lake of black tar. They came from the black lagoon and proceeded to beat us down. Weapons broke, monsters croaked, and Cedric spoke words of garbled fury as he raged. Aleria and Raxis had made a tactical retreat and Eira and I (Arco; hello I’m author) were stuck between three tar blobs. Fists flew, flames of sacred character were hurled, lightning apparently makes the situation worse, and Arco was at his wits end. With a pray to Onema (and maybe a being even higher on a metaphysical level rule-bendy in a I’m not sure this is allowed way), guardians of the spiritual variety flew about and proceeded to do so much damage that maybe someone misinterpreted the rules along the way. The DNC was able to NOT die and they escaped to live another day.

An old woman sits alone in her hut in the middle of the desert shuffling her cards of tarot. A lizard boi appears and she treats him with kindness. Not long after a whole consortium of individuals crowd in her abode. “Would you like to have your fortune read?” the old lady said before she read all our fortunes. Some were surprising, some were scary, some were foreboding, some were hairy (foreshadowing Beebo next session). After the card reading session we were ready to continue our journey to the Azure Dragon!