Plecos Circus, Season 1: Beginnings

What would be known as Plecos Circus meets in a small tavern in far off Fontias. Mundy’s Corner, the single tavern in town, finds itself host to a plethora of interesting characters. One it is familiar with, the son of the owner and general worker Arias Fontias helps serve the motley bunch that finds its way into the sleepy mining town to the far north of the continent Jaelma. Those he serves are Vox Sardan, a strange dirty elf who sits in the corner, Lazarus, an even stranger figure made not of flesh but porcelain, Wendyll, a lyre playing elf more comfortable with children than adults, Throden (as he was known at the time), a lizardfolk with a knife in his head and a proclivity to get anyone talking, and Cieth, a feral goblin whose comfort lies in the outdoors, not in warm and populated spaces.

The disparate strangers, having been minding their own business, were alerted to an incursion of Gnolls happening in the village. Taking action, the acquaintances rushed to the streets of Fontias and met them head on. The gnolls had been mucking about the area (a few of the travelers had been aware of them as they approached the city) and finally made their way in, but were not expecting the force that was the party. Having successfully saved the city, the group is given free room and board in Mundy’s Corner, leading to a drinking contest between Vox, Throden, and a denizen of Fontias named Graham.

The group decided to do another service for the town while they were all in town, a strange creature having showed up in the lake and terrorizing the creature. The group devised a plan to corral and snare the creature in a net and were successful in doing so, revealing a young aboleth. Not native to this area let alone this plane, the group was confused by its appearance, but were unable to find any hint why it might have appeared.

Not wanting to leave their new acquaintances, Lazarus asked the party to escort them and their companions, Celia and Rein Ukral, back to the City of Uniper and the Iron Concord, a large library and temple dedicated to the Learned Lady, the deity of wisdom. The two had been taking a honeymoon in Fontias and had concluded their trip, looking to get back to where they were needed in the Concord. The party agreed, happy to travel with the newlyweds back to their far flung home. They began to trek the long journey through the Shifting Sands of Rubalnar, the large desert that makes up most of Jaelma and keeps the city states as separate as they are. Following common trade routes, the party ran into bandits before eventually coming across a ruined temple. Rein, an archaeologist, immediately wanted to investigate, so the party stopped along the way. The temple was filled with imagery to Additiri, the Smoke Weaver, the deity of War and Death and had been buried by the sands for centuries. As the party continued to venture further into the temple with Celia and Rein, they encountered ghosts and secret passageways until stumbling across a shadowy figure with venom in his voice. They encountered the stranger twice, once making his way through where the temple seemed to turn into an ancient lair and even further in, a bed of magma and clutch of petrified dragon eggs at his side.

“This is bigger than all of you! If you’re smart you’ll leave.” He spoke before smashing as many eggs as he could and vanishing. One of the eggs oozed as if in incubation. Seeing as dragons were thought to be extinct 200 years ago, it was noteworthy if nothing else.

A caravan heading to Sraem led by its retired Captain the Ashblades, Dre’nvai. Seeming to be escorting a gaggle of religious and expensive goods from Uniper to Sraem, the party briefly interacted (with a theft taking place), before they continued on to their final destination: Uniper.

Outside the city, a tent village was seen pressed against the large wall closing off the city-state from the rest of Jaelma. Filled with the destitute and kept in strict line to not interact with travelers, tension hung around the party as they watched Rein and Celia pay them no mind. A normal occurrence while traveling the city most of the party had no experience with.

Rein and Celia led the party back to the Iron Concord, a sprawling structure of stone and glass housing the largest collection of tomes in the world. Inside, a middle aged woman idled beneath the large glass ceiling. Having just finished her own voyage, Celia immediately walked up to Ida Stanier and struck a conversation. Ida, being an old friend of Rein’s, was brought by Celia along with the remaining party to her office, two birds one stone and all of that.

After obtaining money for their service and the Ukral’s, the party decided a night on the town was appropriate, going to the Green District of Uniper to a tavern known as Wretched Glory. Dancing, drinking, and crying was all had amongst the new compatriots, ending with Vox being comforted by Arias in an alleyway nearby to all’s surprise and confusion.

The next morning brought a bold decision. As the rest of the party was sleeping, Wendyll awoke and saw a set of red sails drifting on the horizon before a flash of green light blinked it out. Recognizing the vessel, he immediately scampered down to the docks and began trying to steal a vessel. The party followed and after a back and forth, Ida, went to her contact Captain Otis Bhtar, a half orc woman with sharp eyes and a gold crown on her tusk, to see if passage could be bartered. After remarking he needed to follow the ship, Otis agreed to test run the party to see if they were worth taking on the seas. “If you cannot fight, you have no business being on my ship.”

During this time, Throdenulate and Cieth came back with a strange contraption. The strange disk is rimmed with a metal the party had never seen before, mistake able to copper if not for the blue tint that flashes in the right light. Inside, a whirling set of concentric rings and mercury operated at one point, the well in the center shattered with an impact from Throdenulate’s spear. To help Staz. The bat said it made his ears hurt.  Unsure of what to do with it, the party continued as they had, getting ready for the trials ahead.

The next day was full of trial fights with the entire party except for Ida, who had just traveled with the Siren’s Bane from across seas on a job with the merchant Frederick Brann and his assistant Gideon Thrall. Everyone was judged worthy after a one on one spar with a member of the Siren’s Bane, culminating in the party standing up for Arias and his pacifist ways. And thus, the Siren’s Bane became the backdrop for the second half of the season.

The Siren’s Bane set out to follow the trail of the Calamity’s Plunder, the wretched ship with red sails that was the scourge to pirates and common folk alike. This ship in particular decimated Wendyll’s family and home, and stole from the Siren’s Bane just as it was coming to port. This vendetta led the ship across the Lemidar Sea, brushing into a siren’s den and causing hallucinations for some of the company. With the help of Marla Kern, the pirate crew’s quartermaster and heart, and Captain Otis herself, the party was able to defeat the sirens and get everyone out of the trap. It also left a few of them with lovely trinkets: Ida and Lazarus getting smooth stones from a mysterious divine dream, and Vox, finding a beautiful ruby necklace hidden in the shrapnel of the shipwreck the sirens called home.

The dreams only started getting bad for Vox after that.

Having depleted resources in their travels, Otis directed the Bane to the Moonsliver Isles, a bootlegger stash pirates under the Coalition of Tattered Sails used when the tides were right. Arriving to the islands found them deserted, Otis and Grim Devos, the water genasi master gunner for the Siren’s Bane with a bit of an attitude, but in the fun way, took the party to be useful and investigate. While the rest of the Siren’s Bane’s crew kept watch over the seas, the party made their way into the stone and thatch fort and found it abandoned. Following signs, it appeared whoever had been here was kidnapped or murdered, bodies and blood dragging through a tunnel working its way back to the thin bridge that connected the fort to the volcanic island beside it. As the party began getting closer to the volcano, a massive explosion took its foundations and set one third of the surrounding forest ablaze.

Rushing inside, the group encountered an ancient race of Triton on patrol, called to the surface by the explosion. Mercilessly killing most of them, the party captured one of the fish people and using Ida and its magic, attempted to get a dialogue going. The Triton, convinced the incursion was wrought by the party and reinforced in this decision by their actions, made its escape and was lost to the tunnels under Thraz’dul, the name of the volcano as well as the ancient deity to the Tritons. Captain Otis and Grim split at this point, deciding to take another tunnel to cover more ground. The party continued to explore the tunnels before the thunderous sound of giant spiders forced them to book it, eventually forcing them to fall down a large pit to escape. Using ingenuity and magic, the party landed without (much) issue on the ground, revealing a beautiful and misplaced meadow and lake beneath the volcano.

Runes and symbols ringed the stonework near the lake, leading to a half built bridge hovering over the empty glowing pool. The party decided to sleep there, and the dreams of Lazarus, Vox, and Ida took them to a far distant past, placing them in the last living memories of three different Tritons during the fall of their empire. Led by a triton, Abek, the party was rushed to his temple in a last ditch effort to save their civilization, the three saw the same meadow and pool. Abek immediately jumped in, and as the three followed suit, a large temple was revealed. Made of sandstone and pools of water, the party worked with Abek using skill they did not themselves usually possess to unlock the center statue and reveal a beautiful sea foam gem the size of a football in the center. This item appeared to be powerful and a gift from the god directly, and Abek rushed forward to begin a communion, setting it its proper place and quickly speaking in words the three interlopers knew, but shouldn’t have.

When the party woke abruptly in the morning, now knowing what they had to do, they all jumped one way or another into the lake. They dragged themselves through, the three ready to do whatever they needed to in the now familiar space and finding it completely different. Once beautiful columns lay scattered and dusk in the wake of a massive tidal wave. The structures were all broken and barely hanging on, but what was more interesting was the three figures standing where Abek’s altar had been.

Three figures, an elven man with hair and red cloak, a white tiefling bundled in white cotton, and a human man who appeared like he could be from Sraem if the designs were just switched, all stood looking for something. At the intrusion, they all turned and Wendyll gasped.

Althalaer, his son lost to the Calamity’s Plunder centuries ago, stood before him.

A tense exchange soon takes place, Wendyll trying to plead to the boy Althalaer used to be instead of the Captain to Plunder that he was now. Anger broke into violence as Vox began a combat, even after Althalaer tried to give the party an out. Multiple outs. Even after Ida’s warnings about who these people were and that they were above their heads. They never took it. Wendyll would not take it and the party would not leave without the sea elf.

So the three members of the Calamity’s Plunder took their lives.

The party’s corpses were discarded by Althalaer and co., believing they were truly dead as they claimed their true prize, the stone that Lazarus, Ida, and Vox saw Abek use in their vision. Grim and Otis found the party’s broken bodies and was miraculously able to bring them from the brink. All except one.

Wendyll was rushed to Vincent as his body cooled. Otis’ anger more than made up for the corpse’s temperature. As the ritual took place, Otis went after the group, yelling about their incompetence and suicidal tendencies. “You’re fucking stupid if you think you were any match for them.” she yelled at the battered and traumatized group.

“If you plan on continuing on this asinine quest, you are doing things my way. I will not save you a second time.”

The party agreed.

Otis’ way it is.