Candynight Capers

After the plague in Skyport passed, Azriel was finally able to complete his journey, and made it to the house in the outskirts of the city that had been waiting for him. He invited the rest of the gang to stay with him, and they went along with it more or less.

Then -- it was Candynight, Skyport's annual festival that is definitely in no way just a reskin of Halloween. Kids dressed up as monsters and oddly-familiar heroes to go door-to-door demanding candy from strangers, and the gang largely got into the spirit as well -- except Mahto, who had no idea what was going in. (Ba'ob didn't either, but he felt left out and dressed up anyway.)

At some point in the night, however, someone knocked on the door and Azriel had to call for help from Jasper. A large box had arrived, and he asked her to drag it into the sitting room and pry it open ... revealing a finely-dressed and armed old corpse. Azriel shoved it aside to retrieve the papers smuggled in under the false bottom of this casket and wandered out of the room.

Immediately, the rest of the gang was compelled to steal the corpse's loot.

So they did, each grabbing a weapon, piece of jewelry, etc, and realizing the moment they had what a bad idea it had been and that they were probably all cursed again. Azriel soon returned, froze, and confirmed that -- his parents had sent him these items to sell in order to pay for his house, and he was out of luck now, because all of the cursed items were now bound to their new owners.

He sent them off to the Red Gryphon, as Robin was the contact he'd been meant to sell the loot to, and at least had the ability to identify exactly what these curses were. Robin wasn't willing to do this for free, but Jasper and Abel employed teamwork and haggled him into doing it for a significantly reduced price. (Luckily, they were out of the shop before the Charm Person spell wore off and he realized they'd swindled him.)

Robin told them that he knew a cursebreaker -- a black tabaxi named Lyra -- but she'd been kidnapped by bandits and would need saving if she was going to help them. After the usual amount of bickering, during which Abel was momentarily resigned to his fate to just always be cursed and had to be cajoled, the gang set out to an isolated area of Grimwood Forest to rescue Lyra.

They were quickly distracted by some harmless will-o-wisps, then some zombies that didn't attack until the gang stole the treasure they were guarding, then a shipwreck. They had a brief encounter with a mermaid who asked for their help with some other treasure up the river, but determined that they should stay focused this time. This resulted in them running into a graveyard and directly into a trap, where they were attacked by skeletons.

Towards the end of this fight, the gang heard hoofbeats approaching from the darkness, and were accosted by a mysterious masked figure on a skeletal horse who pointed a crossbow at them and demanded to know who the fuck they were.

Gwydion, who had just gotten done being stabbed by skeletons, was immediately ready to throw down with this person, but Abel de-escalated the situation and explained that they were here to save someone named Lyra from some bandits.

The figure sighed in exasperation and took off their mask, revealing herself to be a black-furred tabaxi. "*I'm* Lyra," she said. "There aren't any bandits here. What the fuck?"

"Do you know someone named Robin?" Abel asked.

"*Fucking Robin*."

She was still mad at them for killing all of her skeletons, but Mahto apologized and earnestly explained that they had genuinely been trying to rescue her, and she calmed down, turning her annoyance towards Robin instead. She went back to Skyport with them to shake him down for sending the B-Team out to ruin her set-up, and afterwards, pleased with herself and richer, she agreed to take a look at the cursed items. Only Mahto was interested in keeping the uncursed version of his loot -- a small ocarina made of bone that would put an enemy to sleep, but also an ally -- and Lyra took the rest of these very valuable items off their hands for free, as if she were doing them a favor.

No one thought about this until the gang returned to Azriel's house and found him in panic mode about the fact that they hadn't brought back the gold he needed to pay for said house.

Also, while they were getting uncursed, Abel asked Lyra if she was really a necromancer and if she knew anything about the spell Soul Trap. She was a bit cagey and suspicious, and told him that she wasn't able to pull that spell off, herself, but she could do some research and get back to him about it, if he wanted -- since Robin had wrecked her opperation out in the forest, she was going to be hanging out in Skyport for a while. Abel seemed rather surprised about this offer of help, and accepted it.

Later on, presumably, the gang went trick-or-treating, except for Azriel, who stayed home to man the door and fret over how he guessed he'd have to get a job now, or something. At least Ba'ob and Gwydion pitched in for rent.