39. Necromancer

* Aerendyl takes himself to a quiet corner of the island of Many Apples so he can speak with the River King on the first night of the new phasing moon.
	+ The River King asks if Aerendyl intends to hunt the witches of Sawtooth Basin, to which the elf replies that he thinks the party lack information on the fey in general and these witches in particular.
	+ This earns him praise and a round of applause from the River King.
	+ Aerendyl's patron offers to pour his power into the rain, such that it would fall over Sawtooth Basin and he might learn of these witches and inform the party. However, such an act would drain him greatly, and so the River King would need promises from Aerendyl in the Binding Tongue that he would present the fey with the corpses of the witches for his harvesting once they were killed.
	+ With the moon phasing, it hangs full in the sky for only a few minutes each night. At the end of this short time, the River King ends the conversation and promises to return on the next night.
	+ Aerendyl returns to the party and shares what the River King had said to him. They're all a little unsure about making Sylvan promises when they lack so much information. None of them, least of all Aerendyl, are keen to get themselves trapped in a no-win situation.
	+ They opt to speak to Rascal in the morning and try and ingratiate themselves with more of the Council of Nine.
	+ Clwyd can't get to sleep.
* The next day the party find Rascal in Fort Cider's stables and tell him they're going to head to Lovely Gallows and talk with Feverfletch.
	+ Rascal says he'll get himself dressed and armoured and go with them, putting in a word or two with Feverfletch to get the party in for a conversation.
	+ The group head to the bay of Many Apples and find Herb, a bulky middle-aged human from among the orchard pirates of the island. He's eyeing up the three galleons that had been brought over from the Cherries, thinking about ripping one apart to fix up the other two so they might sail or sell better, whatever people decide to do with them in the end. He's also idly stroking Zaratan the cat in his hands - the beast having ran away in the middle of the fight on the shores of Many Apples four days ago, when the party rapidly folded up *the Drunken Dragon*. He returns the cat to Pyt without much thought, then goes on pondering which galleon would be best to dismantle.
* The party get ready and then sail to the island of Lovely Gallows, where Wilfred is planning to talk to Feverfletch, mage to mage.
	+ Wilfred dons his wizard's robes.
	+ Aerendyl uses *druidcraft* to make him spell of Panacea petals.
	+ The pair then also make sure Wilfred's *mage armour* spell is active, and Aerendyl adds an *enhance ability* spell to the cocktail, boosting the gnome's charisma.
	+ Rascal meets them out on the waters, him and his griffon Wahoo both in armour. He tells them to sail to the top part of Lovely Gallows, where he'll meet them with Feverfletch for the introduction. He then flies away, moving faster than *the Drunken Dragon* sails.
	+ They pull up to the docks, fold their boat up, and see Rascal talking to Feverfletch in front of her galleon, *the Rubedo*. It's a magnificent ship, with a hull that doesn't appear to have any seams, as if it were carved from a single tree rather than assembled in planks. Its deck and masts appear to be made of beautiful cream-coloured marble.
	+ Feverfletch herself stands with the frame of a short-ish human, but little more can be discerned of her appearance other than a pair of dark eyes. She wears full length robes, and underneath her hands, arms, neck, and presumably all other flesh is wrapped in bandage cloth. But most noticeably, the face within her hood is covered with a sad theatre mask.
	+ Rascal makes the introductions then says he'll leave them all to it, flying back to Many Apples.
	+ Wilfred introduces himself, saying he was the student of Lyra au Leones, something that gets Feverfletch's attention immediately, since the Lioness was at one point so famously against the idea of ever taking an apprentice.
	+ She asks the group if they'd be more comfortable aboard her ship or in a more neutral location. They sense little hostility from her, but opt for the latter all the same - also wishing to have a look at the island of Lovely Gallows as well. She agrees, signalling for a huge obsidian golem to come off her ship and follow her, telling them that its orders are only to attack those that attack her and no more, so they should have nothing to fear.
	+ Feverfletch walks with the group up the switchback paths that climb the steep mountainous island all the way to its top, where Twice-Hanged Artemis's ship and bones still rest. She tells the group to not be alarmed when she casts a conjuring spell, and then creates a functional two-story wizard's tower in but a moment.
* The party and Feverfletch enter her tower. The lower level is a comfortable lounge, where she bids the party relax. She has her golem stand guard outside the tower. Then she and Wilfred ascend to the second story, which has the decor of a study, to talk in private.
	+ She begins by matching Wilfred's introduction, saying Feverfletch is the only name that matters to her nowadays, that she joined the Council of Nine 22 years ago, and that she left the Rumidian Empire 6 years before that. While in the Circle, she trained as a transmutation mage and achieved noteworthy success.
	+ She tells Wilfred that she once fought alongside his mentor, Lyra au Leones, though Lyra probably didn't know her from anyone else in the crowd. This had been at the Battle of Windy Hill, where a great many Rumidian wizards clashed with so many users of faith magic in the Sultanates. Wilfred didn't know of the battle, but Feverfletch was not keen to reminisce on it, saying it had been a horrible day. All the same, she remarked that the Lioness had been deserving of all the fame she'd ever earned - she was magnificent.
	+ Wilfred asks if Feverfletch knows anything about a group of Rumidian mages that went missing 21 years ago, inquiring about his parents Amber and Jebeddo Seabottom by name.
	+ She doesn't answer the question right away. Instead, she asks him if he thinks he's reached the limits of his magic, if he hasn't ever wanted to do more with his arcana. She asks if he thinks it impossible for a wizard to heal, as users of faith magic so readily do. Then she produces a dying mouse in a little cage from her robes, takes it in her hands, and casts a spell. Before Wilfred's eyes, the mouse's wounds knit closed and it is up and happily scurrying around on her hands. A small patch of Feverfletch's bandaged hand darkens, and a single drop of her blood falls to the table. Necromancy.
	+ She guides Wilfred through a speech she's no doubt had prepared from the moment she chose this path long forbidden to Rumidian mages. She asks him if he's ever killed with his magic, ever beguiled a mind with it, ever chained the forces of elemental creation? She argues that she and him and all other wizards are manipulating the forces of life and death every day already, and that it is sheer hypocrisy to label necromancy as an inherent evil when its merely another branch of study. So long as theirs is a calling to learn and understand the workings of the multiverse, she says, one must recognise that the lifestream - the flow of life - is just another fundamental force to be studied, and they should feel duty-bound to learn of it.
	+ When all is said and done, she tells Wilfred that she heard a little of something that might be of interest to him in her final days in Rumidia, and she would happily share this with him, as she would begin to share her understanding of the lifestream, should he agree to become her student.
	+ Wilfred says he has little interest in wrenching control of people's souls - this he thinks is wrong. However, despite a lifetime of Rumidian warnings about necromancy, he concedes to her argument and says that he thinks the healing magic she just showed him would be good to know. Feverfletch presses, asking him what he thought about turning the lifestream into a weapon against his enemy - the same principle as what she used to heal the mouse, but weaponised. Would that be so different to his firebolts? Again, he concedes.
	+ Wilfred agrees to spend two days in deep study with her, to grasp the basics of the necromantic school of magic. He will then return for further study with her when he has the time, for Feverfletch herself has little interest in stealing him away from his allies for weeks or months at a time. She merely wishes for the spreading of the study of the lifestream which has so long be stunted.
	+ As per their agreement, she tells him what little she knows of the Rumidian Vanishing, which, it turns out, really wasn't much. She says that there were whispers among dissenters during her final days in Rumidia, people talking about trying to leave as a group. This had long been thought to be a fool's errand, since more people means more targets from divination magic and more liabilities in the event one is captured. Feverfletch had ultimately opted to leave Rumidia on her own, finding her own way - and that ended up being 7 years before the Vanishing. However, she does tell him of a name that kept cropping up during those whispered conversations, a name he might look into: 'Old White Eyes'.
* Wilfred and Feverfletch return to the rest of the party. He tells them he's going to study with her for the day and Clwyd asks to sit in.
	+ The three of them return to *the Rubedo* and go into the deck cabin. It's beautifully furnished with dark woods, tonnes of candles, and intricate furniture. Clwyd is sat in a comfy armchair and left to her own devices. The obsidian golem joins them in the room, standing near Clwyd, but remaining motionless and causing no trouble.
	+ Wilfred and Feverfletch sit at the table and dive into an 8-hour crash course on the basics of this new field of magic to Wilfred.
	+ Clwyd tries to pay attention for a couple hours, but most of it goes over her head. Eventually, she takes to pouring over her own tome of shadows and plotting new uses for her hellfire magic.
	+ This return to *the Rubedo* revealed its crew to the party full and proper. They're all constructs created by the transmutation magic of Feverfletch - an unshakeable, untiringly loyal crew, just as Rascal had said.
		- Her bodyguard, the obsidian golem, is called Number One.
		- Filling the role of quartermaster is a helmed horror called Number Two.
		- The main deck hands are all suits of animated armour that work through the day and night without complaint.
		- An oaken bolter rests in a corner of the ship, ready to shoot when called upon.
* Pyt and Aerendyl spend their day on the island.
	+ They find a dice den and make good friends with the denizens.
	+ They hear that their reputations are preceding them, as people have heard about Rascal's new friends who 'popped the Cherries' on arrival.
	+ The pair decide to try and add 'hardcore gamblers' to their list of accolades and are wildly successful.
	+ They dive deep into the many games of liars' dice being played, and Pyt walks away 50gp richer through his lies. Aerendyl, though, bets big and wins bigger. The minds of his foes are but books to be read before his eyes. He makes 400gp.
	+ When they're done with dice, they start getting drunk and befriend a halfling couple, Elden and Blossom Copperkettle. After Aerendyl tells a story about attending the birthday party of Jiggy Gingerale - Tortuga's Lord of the Small - last winter, he and Pyt, and a number of others in the dice hall, are invited back to the Copperkettle's home to eat and drink some more. Blossom starts dishing out her stew from a massive pot as big as she is, going into great, prideful detail about how 'every proper Hin lass keeps a pot of eternal stew,' started from her mother's own stew, but then tweaked and changed over the years until it became her own. The food was fantastic.
* The four of them reconvene at the docks of Lovely Gallows in the evening.
	+ Aerendyl and Pyt are very drunk. Clwyd and Wilfred have post-study fatigue.
	+ Clwyd mentions how she thinks she has an idea to add some magical protections to *the Drunken Dragon*, but might need to collect money from the party to go towards the cost of components. Still, she promises that it'll be good and worth it.
	+ They set up their ship on the docks near *the Rubedo* and prepare to spend a night aboard it.
	+ They use the sending stone to fill Cormorant in on what they can with the limited words of the spell.
	+ Wilfred continues to work on the new spells he was beginning to grasp under Feverfletch's tutelage throughout the day.
	+ Aerendyl gets another summons from the River King, as promised. The party briefly consider going to meet the fey themselves, and Aerendyl mentions that he's often thought they'd stand to gain much from interacting with him. That creeps Clwyd out a little, and the elf is left to go have his chat on his own.
		- In this quick conversation, the River King tells Aerendyl not to fear trickery from him. Aerendyl is far too precious for him to squander, so he'd never force him into a binding oath that would senselessly kill him, or force him to trudge ceaselessly to his death against these witches.
		- No, all he wants is a promise that Aerendyl and his friends would do their merry best to kill the witches, should they decide to have the River King pour his power into this task, and that when they did so, they'd give him the bodies so he might recoup his losses and then some.
		- He also says that though a witch coven may be inexplicably connected, and though Aerendyl could expect them to know of each other enough to know when one had been killed, the River King believed he could block such a connection, at least for a time. Should they agree to take his aid, he could allow the party the fight the witches one by one by one.
* The party rest, though Clwyd again remains awake for the entire night. In the morning, Aerendyl shares with them all that the River King told him, then Wilfred goes for another day of intense study with Feverfletch.
	+ During a break in the tutelage, the gnome tries to find out what his new teacher thinks of the witches. She says they maintain the status quo, which she finds useful for undertaking her own research and projects, and he's unable to get any more out of her than that.
	+ By the end of these intense days of learning, Wilfred grasps the beginnings of the process of manipulating the lifestream. Working from Feverfletch's magical formulae, he is able to learn the following necromancy spells: *false life*, *life transference*, and *vampiric touch*.
	+ That night Clwyd reckons they should give the alchemy jug to Mary as their gift, saying that Wilfred and Aerendyl can make them drinking water when they need it, and they'd just have to get by without mayonnaise.
	+ Wilfred also floats the idea of offering Feverfletch one of the questions from the Siblings of Agnor, to maybe try and get her assistance. The others think this might be a shrewd move indeed, though it would mean Wilfred has to broach the topic of fighting the witches of Sawtooth Basin with her.
	+ The River King again contacts Aerendyl to tell him the specifics of the blocking he'd be able to pull off. The other witches in the coven would be none the wiser so long as the party:
		- attacked at night, under the light of a full moon.
		- ensured their individual assaults on each witch were completed in a single night
		- And finished the job, the killing of all three, within the span of a full-moon week - without the moon as his conduit, the River King won't be able to maintain the blocking.
		- Should they fail on these counts and let slip to the other witches that they were attacking, the surviving witches would likely be far better prepared and would likely turn their wrath outwards.
	+ Again, Clwyd can't sleep. She's starting to feel pretty tired though.
* The next day, they sail to Freetown, ask around, and find Mary Freed, member of the Council of Nine, so they can introduce themselves.
	+ Mary is a human in her late fifities or early sixties. This belies the story that Cormorant told the group, wherein she was a half-elf. That version of the story gained traction because of how young Mary looked when he heralded in the end of the Wetwar and started Freetown. People just have a hard time believing that a girl in her mid to late teens could have done it all, but there it was before them. She's human.
	+ She's busy cleaning and gutting a massive haul of fish. She smiles as they approach and asks if they wouldn't help her with the job. As she's talking to them she is displaying a casual expertise with the small hatchet she's using to scale and ready the fish on her chopping block.
	+ Pyt and Clwyd are happy to join in the task.
	+ Mary and the party have a nice chat. She recognises them as Rascal's new friends, who there's a little bit of talk about following them clearing out the Cherries. She asks if they're enjoying the Republic, and when Clwyd asks what they might do to pitch in, she tells them that there's no tithe man who comes to maintain the buildings, roads, docks, and piers of the Republic. Everyone who lives in it does a bit. And if they don't, well, they generally find themselves without too many friends sooner or later, and that's not a good place to find yourself, generally speaking.
	+ Clwyd gives Mary the alchemy jug, explaining what it does and how she's sure the Republic could find good uses for it. Mary is open with her gratitude, and offers the party to take freely any of the fish they want. Clwyd takes a bite out of the bonito she's been cleaning there and then.
	+ During the conversation, Aerendyl notes that the breastplate armour that Mary is wearing under her apron - decorated with fish and shell motifs and flowing seamlessly into a long, modest, dark blue dress - her gold chain necklace with eight red beads hanging off it, and her two rings - one with an intricate hummingbird design and one like a tiny link chain - are all magic items. She also has a couple more hatchets slung through her belt alongside the one she's been prepping fish with.
* As they're wrapping up their introduction with Mary, Pyt hears someone casually greet him from across the street. It's Mennick, hammering a sign into the wall of a building. The sign reads 'Mennick's Real News.'
	+ Mennick tells Pyt that the carnival stopped off in Tortuga for a long time to get repaired, then made its way to the Republic before moving on. Mennick hopped off in the Republic while it was in town. He says he likes it here, which comes as no surprise to Pyt at all.
	+ Mennick introduces Pyt and the party to the rum runners he's made friends with who are all in the building.
		- Molly - a human woman who it looks like life's been pretty hard on. She grumbles about how shit the empire and Rumidians are a lot.
		- Gully, Cid, and Ralph - human triplets barely out their teens who are impossible to tell apart.
		- Thatch and Marsh - a halfling couple that like tall tales.
		- Sprocket - a old female gnome that's tinkering with something clockwork.
		- Barrel - a burly half-orc woman.
		- Pipes - an ever-drunk, ever-distilling reefbeard man.
	+ Mennick tells Pyt how he plans to start a newspaper. Sprocket reckons she can whip up a printing press, and the rum runners already travel around Rumidia lots for their smuggling, so distribution should be no problem.
	+ Pyt asks if he can have a column and Mennick says sure.
	+ Mennick then asks the group if they want any hemp. Turns out the rum runners also recently robbed a colonial island. They just have sacks and sacks of the stuff.
	+ Everyone starts smoking hemp and drinking rum, telling tall tales, and playing a bit of music. It's a fun time.
* In the middle of the night, deep in his drink- and drug-fuelled haze, Pyt is called to the door by Barrel, saying there's someone there asking for him.
	+ When he gets there, all he sees in the doorway is an arm extending from the right-hand side, a twiggy, pure-white finger beckoning him to come out and turn the corner.
	+ As Pyt does so, he's immediately booped on the nose by a rat corpse on the end of a fool's sceptre.
	+ The Jack of Bones stands before him, wearing a frown.
	+ He says, 'what a strange twist of fate that you'd meet me. Tell me, my boy, what do you know of gallows humour?'