Among the Reeds: Episode 04

### Reddit Thread

***Among the Reeds* Episode 4** was streamed on Arcadum's Twitch channel on July 7, 2021, and premiered on Arcadum's YouTube channel on July 10, 2021.
Following the Blacksilver bandits, the party splits off and creates a shrine to Crowley, summoning more Depthar into Glies. They are caught trying to fake the rescue of Dozo's daughter and are forcefully summoned to Azolon Cal'telonis for interrogation.

## Summary

*Originally written by u/Lrret1064*

The party heads to the location where the Black Silver Syndicate intended to intercept the Daimyo's son. From a distance, they can see members of the Syndicate searching through the corpses strewn around the village. While investigating the scene, the effects of the potion mixture Rattacus drank wears off, so he returns back to normal. Machio has become less enthusiastic about continuing the quest and plans to turn himself in after they have saved the daughter. Rattacus casts Suggestion on Machio to make him enjoy killing and stop being depressed. This works too well; Machio now hungers for battle and violence. To fix this, Kaju summons his familiar, a demon from Abbadon named Mouth, to try to calm Machio down. Instead, Mouth digs deeper into the evil of Machio’s heart and gets him even more motivated. Machio then attempts to throw Dik Cok across a river so that he can investigate the area on the other side. However, he misses and Dik Cok lands in the river. He falls down a waterfall, hits a rock, and falls unconscious. Luckily, some of the bandits fish him out the river. Rattacus uses Sky Write to say that there is a 10,000 jade reward for a perverted goblin to ensure they don’t instantly kill Dik. Unsure what to do, they decide to take Dik to someone called the "Green Man".

The rest of the party decides to split up; Machio and Eli go to the village to sacrifice bodies to Crowley, hoping that it can help them rescue Dik, while Rattacus and Kaju go back to Dozo to do the original plan and disguise one of themselves as the daughter to claim the reward. Machio and Eli begin the ritual to Crowley by gathering all the corpses in the area. However, Eli reveals that he actually doesn’t know much about Crowley because he never paid much attention to his classes, which causes the ritual to go out of control. Instead of empowering them with the power of Crowley, it transforms the nearby bandits that came to investigate into Depthar, psionic undead that are closely linked to Crowley. Seeing the Depthar move toward the village to infect the rest of the Syndicate members, Machio and Eli run back to Dozo.

Before this happened, Dik Cok is brought to a Glien Elf named Elwreath, who interrogates him about what he’s doing here. At first, he tries to withhold information, but Elwreath has a spell that reveals that Dik is lying, so he begins to reveal everything. This let's Elwreath know that there is a traitor among his ranks, as Dik shouldn’t know what was going on at this location. However, before Dik Cok is able to say who it is, Elwreath runs out of magic, so he knocks Dik out to finish the interrogation after he recovers. Three hours later, Dik Cok is awoken by some commotion outside. He breaks free of his bindings and looks outside to see that the village is overrun by Depthar. Dik sneaks through the chaos and destruction, trying his best to avoid being seen. He is almost spotted by a giant Flesh Crime, but he is saved by an archer who tries to shoot it. While the Flesh Crime is occupied with killing the archer, Dik Cok is able to sneak away. He arrives at the river as suddenly the Mist rolls in, and he sees that the Mist creatures begin to battle the Depthar. Panicking, Dik Cok quickly dives into the river and returns to Dozo.

Back at Dozo, Rattacus disguises himself as the daughter and goes to the headsman. Kaju claims that they found the daughter at the Daimyo’s place and that the rest of his friends have died while rescuing her. The headsman and his other daughter are suspicious at first, but they accept that their family member has returned, albeit with a strange desire for cheese. Kaju stays to eat before claiming the reward. A while later, Eli and Machio arrive at the bar with Dik Cok not too far behind. They wonder where Rattacus and Kaju are, but they guess they must be late. Figuring the plan hasn’t been put into action yet, Eli decides to move forward with the plan. He dresses up as the daughter and heads to the headsman’s house with Dik and Machio. The headsman opens the door, sees them, and realises he has been tricked. He gets mad and calls the guards to keep everyone inside. A fight almost breaks out while everyone is arguing, but then suddenly the Vizier, the assistant to the Archmage Azolon, arrives. He’s here to tell the party that they have done something very dangerous and that he has to take them to Azolon to stand trial. He then snaps his fingers, and the party disappears. (This campaign has now changed to Servants of the Spire.)

## Featured Characters

### Main Characters

* Dik Cok
* Eli Bloodbane
* Kaju Magi
* Machio Manis
* Rattacus

## References

1. ↑ Date is shown on YouTube VOD
2. ↑ Verum Weekly: Summaries of Streamed Games of the Week (July 8th, 2021)