Serpent's Kiss

In Riverdrown, Hachiman and Doctor Balthesar rent a room in the Seventh Ruby and enjoy an extravagant night of drinking. While sipping his sake, Hachiman is reminded of the time he first had one with his father; he was 12 years old and ended up vomitting on the floor after drinking it too quickly.

In the morning, Hachiman discovers his hatched sunhawk scarfing down the bones in his bag. Leaving Balthesar to recover from his hangover, Hachiman takes the sunhawk with him to buy more food for it. He buys a hill giant femur from a strange, skeletal merchant selling smuggled bones, then takes on a quick job to smuggle a shipment of bones into the city for him.

Near an icy ridge in the Talons, Lau, Taigus, Tingle, and Roach are approached by the boy in white, who has slightly grown since they last saw him. They decide to break camp and spend some time speaking with the young Iornas. He mentions to the party that he is aging faster than expected and that he must continue searching the world for answers. Before any more questions can be asked of him, however, he fades away. Tingle corrals a couple of nearby mountain goats and takes to riding one of them. The party eventually reaches Riverdrown and reconvenes with Hachiman.

They spend the rest of the afternoon at Boyle's magic item shop. Lau purchases a few more spell scrolls and Tingle forks over enough gold to have an alchemy jug crafted. Later in the evening, the party has dinner at the Seventh Ruby with Balthesar and Nimrya. Everyone is surprised to see the lieutenant in a dress for once. Tingle, Roach, and Hachiman sing and dance on the stage, while the rest of the party hangs back and chats with each other.

As Balthesar formally introduces himself to Nimrya, he begins choking and falls to the floor. The party rushes to his side, but none of them are able to determine his affliction. After a moment, a few guards arrive with the medic Zoltan, who determines through the casting of various spells that Balthesar had been poisoned. Balthesar survives, but he is taken to the nearest infirmary to rest and receive further treatment. Hachiman suspects Balthesar's flask of Draconic red wine to be the culprit. Tingle, an alcohol connoisseur, takes small sips of the wine and confirms that it's been poisoned.

Learning that Draconic red is cheap and primarily sold in poor markets, Lau, Tingle, Taigus, and Roach follow this lead and pay a visit to the Caged Rat tavern in the Mutant District. Taigus chooses to stay with Nimrya, as there is something he wishes to tell her in private. At the Caged Rat, the party looks around for signs of anything unusual. There are only a handful of patrons this night. Roach speaks with the guarded bartender, who urges the tiefling to leave immediately, while Lau eavesdrops on a group of cloaked figures sitting at a table, hearing them speak in sharp hisses.

Upon seeing two more cloaked figures enter the tavern, Lau casts *bonfire* near the ones closest to him, causing the bartender and the other patrons to flee. The four figures attack the party. As their hoods fall down, revealing forked tongues and slit pupils, it becomes obvious to Hachiman that these are orochi - the ancient, snake-like enemies of his people. The party quickly overcomes the assassins, only suffering minor injuries, and keeps two of them alive. The party learns from one of them, a female named Azak-si, that they poisoned Balthesar's flask at this tavern by "persuading" the bartender who refilled it, promising to kill him if he ever said anything.

Azak-si further explains that Balthesar was poisoned because of his past involvement with the super soldier program, which was being funded by clan Toshiyama, and Hachiman's own family, clan Hachimoto. After their spies learned of this, the orochi knew that their kind would be the first ones targeted by the super soldiers, so they worked to end the program at any cost. This confuses Hachiman, who previously assumed the orochi to be the truly villainous ones rather than his own people. He takes Azak-si with him, determined to return to the Typhoon Isles.