Day 14 — Who dunnit?

PachinkoJimminyRyutoOona Katoa

Chapter summary

A voyage with the Contessa and Saint Sebastian becomes a murder mystery with dangerous religious implications.

Connections

Session notes

We’re prepping for our travels. Pachinko tries to recruit some open minded interns but only criminals show up and he has to dismiss them. Punx was getting tea and met an old acquaintance of Ryuto. Punx bought 2 units of goods, one unit of silk and one unit of cotton. One common unit of weapons. 2 crates of weapons for Oona. Pachinko buys one unit of bibles, one unit of toys, one unit of music instruments.

The company of Palchia and her entourage is ready. The countess has diplomatic staff and her ladies in waiting. They have taken the better deck. We’re sleeping with the guns and cannons. Some people do sleep in the wind.

A simply dressed woman comes and gives us a giant spreadsheet with our departure window with the flotilla. We’re on the later half of the flotilla. Escorting it from behind. She was the King Admiral of the Flotilla.

We’re ready to depart. Punx is trying to improve his sailing skills. He is now a skilled Navigator. Ryuto learns very little from his training. Pachinko improves the sails with his engineering acumen bringing the speed to 4 when downwind.

Oona meanwhile talks to the contessa Palchia. She is happy to talk to someone. She is bored and happy to talk and play cards with Oona. Oona is shy about her when talking to the contessa who wants to learn more. The contessa knows that Oona was the leader of the expedition to the elephant isle, she wants to learn more about the frog people. The contessa is curious about Saint Sebastian who is holed up in his room. He only lets one of the crewman attend to him, a little boy. The one up there in the rigging. Ziggy is the only one in contact with Saint Sebastian. Stoa is the secretary in charge of the expedition. Pachinko amuses Palchia with some of his jokes.

Oona approaches St Sebastian’s room and hears coughing coming from the room. St Sebastian says he is okay but he does not seem to be totally ok. He is suffering from heavy sea sickness. He thinks he is going to be ok.

Pachinko talks to Ziggy while making the sails better. He is instilling in him the importance of helping others. Ziggy has been bringing meals to Saint Sebastian but nothing else has happened.

Suddenly something happens that we don’t detect. Something is terribly wrong with the stew tonight. Everyone but Ryuto and Pachinko are knocked into a deep stupor. Pachinko lowers the main sail. Ryuto tries to alert other ships with his flame producing abilities.

Ryuto and Pachinko go down the deck to find everyone sleeping. Ryuto is casting dispel magic on Oona. Nothing happens. Then Jimminy stabs Punx to wake him up while Ryuto electrocutes Oona. They are both now awake. Ham the chef says that Goda from the embassy wanted to add something to the food to make it special for the Contessa. We need to go down to find Contessa’s staff and Saint Sebastian. The Contessa’s guards are asleep by the door but the door is latched in the inside. Oona tries to lift the door off its hinges to open it. She wakes up Lady Contessa who was lying on the floor. The door to St Sebastian’s room opens upon knocking. St Sebastian is hanging on his hammock, his bulging muscles are spilling over the hammock, his throat has been cut and is bleeding on the floor. Pachinko ruins the crime scene by cauterizing the wound of St Sebastian. The crime has been very recent.

We identify regular size footprints in the blood and follow them to a locked door which we promptly open. It’s an empty room but the porthole is open. There’s nobody we can see in the water and there’s a ship nearby. It’s not in the direction of the flotilla. The ship is coming in our direction. It’s not flying a flag. The room is Goda’s room that’s opposite to Stoa. We take inventory of everyone and everything to see what’s missing. Goda and Minnie, a handmaiden, are missing. Goda and Minnie have been in Lady Palchia’s retinue for years.

We set sail towards the flotilla which has been signaled by Ryuto’s fire balloon. All the ships are on high alert after our alerting through semaphore flags. The other ship is just 1 nautical mile away. The ship does not look varangian, it looks mercantile and local.

We hear a fun pop and see a flash from the water not too far from the other boat. They are getting picked up it seems. We go full throttle towards them. We shot a warning shot from the chaser.

Ryuto is going to be shooting the gun. He fails on the first try. Pachinko heroically succeeds and shoots one hull on the other boat. Ryuto rolls a powerful shot with double damage. The other vessel is thinking.

We lower our tinders to rescue the remaining crew in the ship. The crew is rescued by a lowered tinder. We then board the sinking ship where we find Goda trying to drown Minnie. He has a look of hatred and anger. Oona is trying to approach him but he is currently not responsive. She manages to grapple him while we get Minnie. We get them all out of the tinder and into the ship. Pachinko tries to find the Captain’s log. Pachinko does not find the log and instead finds a fish which Punx throws overboard. Minnie is declared dead on site.

We make it back to the ship and sit down to breathe. Captain Jackdow says we’re all fucked. The most important dignitary has died. The killer is from the staff of the princess. This is all a diplomatic disaster. This is a secret.

Ryuto tries to interrogate Goda but fails to discover anything except a suspicion that it’s Stoa. Goda is a radical who is very much against the saint and his kind. Now Goda is spilling his guts to Oona. This is a strange phenomenon to have a traditionalist Moa religion. He talks about the westeners mistaking the shadow for the truth. Old Moa is the one true god, the father god, the old god. There are no other gods, says Goda. The others are only splinters and fragments of the flame. Embers cascading from the smoke. St Sebastian was coming to hunt down the heresy of the flame that Don Gregorio talked about. Goda does not know about Don Gregorio, he hopes we listen to him so we all adapt and are saved from the flame. Goda is a sacrificed pawn and won’t reveal and doesn’t know anything more about his organization.

We need to talk to the captain and Ziggy to find out if St Sebastian was being poisoned the whole time. The captain of the fisher ship does not know more than knowing that a woman named Samoa paid and is someone known in the Underground in Kapitall. Stoa suggests capturing Don Gregorio, and using him as the escape goat. That way we all survive.