The A-Team

Up on the river city of Dreicaster, a half-orc named Bronna has put out the call.

The Bloodmages use underground rivers to travel in secret, but aboveground, a thriving riverboat trade offers still fleeing bloodmage contacts an unobtrusive way to smuggle themselves—and their goods—out of the Greenering.

The calm waters of the Dragon’s Tail stretch all the way from the bay to the heart of Accordia. Passage on a merchant riverboat is uncomfortable, but the swiftest way to make it to Porthilt, a trade-city on the coast of Sildel and Doria.

Bronna has reason to believe that a specific merchant’s guild in Dreicaster has been smuggling blood serum and crystals since Manfred’s arrival in Precipicen. She has an appointment to keep with some other allies in Advilka, but she needs someone to handle these merchants, and to see how deep this corruption goes.

## The A-Team Assembles

* Cirion Sunrise - Bard, Braggadocio, Paladin of Nature.
* Gunnar Clifton - Captain, mentor, commander.
* Jin Bon - Magus, maniac, vigilante.
* Charles Broadsight - Businessman, Oil-man, straw-wielder.

These four answered Bronna's ad, ready to take on the Everglots.

## Session Recaps

The A-Team featured a changing cast list of allies, by-standers, and freaks.

### Session 1 — The Oilman

Bronna's request for fighters willing to assist turned up four veterans of skill—Jin Bon, the magus; Captain Gunnar Clifton, the bannerlord; Cirion Sunrise, the bardically inclined paladin; and Charles Broadsight, Oilman.

After some discussion of their pay, Bronna's expectations, and their backgrounds, the A-Team agreed: Take down the local Everglot Family Merchants, who have been human trafficking, and see just how deep the criminal activity goes...

The investigation proceeded with charismatic Cirion leading the charge. He cornered Artinius Everglot, presenting a charade of needing to transport Charles "oil". They secured a visit to the Everglot Facilities that evening, and went about their business in town, taking in the activity, talking about Jin Bon's dead sheep wife, and dissuading drunk thieves.

When Artinius came to row them out, he demanded they blindfold themselves. The mercs agreed, and the rowing began.

After some time, and some casual questioning from both sides they seemed to near their destination, with Artinius seemingly calling out coded phrases.

Angrily, Cirion ripped off his blindfold, only to find that his claim that they could easily see where they were and the blindfolds were useless, was in fact not true. They appeared to be on a tributary of sorts, surrounded by trees, cut off from Dreicaster.

Artinius seemed irritated and unsettled by this development, however, and as the boys reached the floating collection of buildings and docks that made up the Everglot Dreicaster boathouse, they prepared for a battle.

And battle they got. Artinius led them to his mother, Idiya, a sea hag, and the battle was on.

Some near misses, a swamp hag's gaze, and zero hits from Gunnar's former squad member later saw the boathouse enveloped in flames. Red liquid burned, bloody cages rattled, and two banderhobbs joined the fray.

But the mercs proved victorious.

With the dead and the destroyed all around them, the A-Team collected their treasure and returned to Bronna to discuss further employment.

### Session 2 — The Bubble

Bronna sent the boys a request to check out a ghost circle on their way to Porthilt. Evidence of bloodmages and human traffickers led her to believe that someone had started up a bloodmagic center inside a pocket plane.

The mercs, joined by a new friend, Al, entered the pocket plane, ready to investigate, and potentially take down those within.

Some declaiming by Cirion brought cockatrices and a manticore on the boys, but they dispatched them with aplomb. Creeping through the swamp, they avoided a fight with some swamp beasts, but could not evade the leucrotta, natural hunters of the plains. The battle with the monstrosities was hit or miss, with the leucrottas downing al, farting on Cirion, and trampling Jin Bon.

The boys survived, however, and made their way into the tower. Further exploration led to them absolutely curbstomping a pair of mages, who they assumed to be the residents of the tower, and uncovering some treasure and letters.

As they entered the “Testing and Containment” room, they found however, that the tower was much more inhabited than they anticipated.

### Session 3 — Crabs

In the pocket plane, the boys cleared their way through the blood mage labs, fighting mages and freeing the experimented-on prisoners, including new friend Blado Blademaster, who claimed to be from the future.

The boys dealt with ever duplicating crabs and scorpions who devoured the lab caretaker Eegahr. They freed a trapped, experimented on Deva, Eltielle, who went on to exact wrath on the blood mages both in the pocket plane and in Porthilt. The boys attempted to cool her wrath, but only Blado was able to talk her down when a fight broke out. She decided to seek atonement in hopes of getting her horses back from Pelor.

The boys then cleared the rest of the lab, finding many bodies and evidence of Eltielle’s carnage. Time shenanigans occurred when, attempting to convince the prisoners to leave, Cirion put his blood in the home cauldron, drank it, and found himself back in the feywild with no takebacks. He had to walk back to the ghost circle, fight through it and reunite with the boys, only to find that his three days was their ten minutes. Nevertheless, the prisoners happily drank some blood and went home.

Some sheep encounters and crawling hand encounters later, the boys learned that the tower was stabilized by a daily casting of Demi-plane at 8th level and recovered two scrolls of dispel magic at 8th level.

They pocketed the scrolls and decided to head out via cauldron.

Blado briefly got to see his own cauldron destination using his echo and saw a tornado with a golden man inside, pouring white liquid on people, who vanished. He vaguely recalled that happening to him as well.

Al decided to believe very hard that Porthilt was his home and try drinking his blood to go there. This sort of worked! The A-Team found themselves in Porthilt as planned… but 400 years in the past.

### Session 4 — Time Police

Reunited with Gunnar, who had fallen out of time accidentally, while going through one of the portals, the mercs debated their options. Gunnar had been pursued by a gold-robe, who always seemed to be watching him, and warned the team that she was clearly holding malicious intent.

Indeed, when Blado didn't come back from the bathroom, the boys received a message: *I've got your friend in the bathroom*.

Thus began the mercs' first encounter with Junior Time-Cop Kairy Tereza. She had Blado inside a holding cell, and attempted to arrest them and confiscate their O't'Milque, but, upon learning that the boys had no O't'Milque and had time-traveled by accident, revealed that she had badly fucked up. She was out of O't'Milque, and was hoping to cover up her mistake by confiscating her arrestees' O't'Milque.

Thus began a weird adventure:

The mercs agreed to team up with Kairy to retrieve some O't'Milque from the only known purveyor: some hags in Porthilt. They hurried there, planning to bargain, and unsealed some glamours to get into the warehouse. The two hag covens there agreed to bargain, and offer five vials of O't'Milque in exchange for bringing back the bloody bodies of four unicorns and four pegasi--the boys managed to bargain transportation there, only to realize their error when they saw the joyous celestial grazing of a magnificent herd of unicorns and pegasi.

Would it be evil to kill them?

The A-Team realized that, yes, it would. Instead, they spoke with the lead pegasus and headed off to defeat some poachers who had been harassing the highly endangered creatures.

They learned that not only are pegasi and unicorns endangered, but that O't'Milque is made from the sacrifice of Pegasi and Unicorns. Celestinia, the lead pegasus claimed that forty-two pegasi are slaughtered for every drop of O't'Milque, but her math didn't totally line up.

Nevertheless, the group agreed to receive the pegasi blessing in exchange for being able to take the bodies of the slain creatures from the Poachers' camp.

With their bargain fulfilled, the mercs (and Kairy) were teleported back to Porthilt, and received the vials of O't'Milque. Kairy mixed up some time travel dust she pulled out of her pocket, and the mercs returned to their proper time--only to realize they were in the area that Eltielle had destroyed.

Kairy booked it, with Blado still detained, while the mercs had to confront Princess Twinkletoes and King Tinkletoes, Eltielle's steeds. They had arrived here to try to undo Eltielle's act of wrath only to be overwhelmed by the damage and death. They asked for the Mercs' assistance capturing the matriarch of the Everglots to bring her to Eltielle to grant forgiveness for the act of wrath. Instead, the boys convinced the horses to kill the matriarch, so that Eltielle's wrath would be over.

A swift battle commenced, with Cirion basically one-shotting Ogtha the matriarch.

The horses offered their thanks and departed, leaving the Mercs to contemplate their day, and their next steps.