Day 21 — Memento

KahuPachinkoRyutoOona Katoa

Chapter summary

The crew reunites Kahu with the Migrant Fleet, confronts a Cathayan inspection, and learns of the Ranti slave trade.

Connections

Session notes

Pachinko tries to remove Ryuto’s rune, first thing in the morning. They fail but the rune emits a burning sensation as if it’s aware of what’s happening.

The survivors of the migrant fleet want two things:

Go back to the migrant fleet
Recover their friends and family there were bought by the snake people (the Ranti)

The plan is:

Take the people on our ship and go to the migrant fleet and gather information about the snake people

We should take Palkia with us to do diplomacy on behalf of Moa Tor. We know about the serpents that:

They have a single open port from whence they trade, Serpent’s Repose.
The migrant fleet used to trade with them in the past.
They were not nice but never outright hostile

They were never slavers in the first place, but this time they took some. There might be some mysterious reason. Pachinko asks chieftess Kinipella to send some people with the delegation to the migrant fleet. Kinipella wants to send Ranghi with us as an emissary but does not want to put her in danger.

The chieftess thinks it’s a foolhardy quests. She says don’t trust anything from the serpent’s tongue.

Ryuto strongly convinces Kinipella to send more people as a delegation so she is sending a contingent of warriors with Miros at the head.

We sail off in search for the migrant fleet. Captain Jack and Oona are on the lookout for the trace of the Migrant fleet.

Somehow our location has been found and there’s an alarm from the crow’s nest. It’s an imperial dragonclad approaching us. They have detected us and seem interested in Ryuto. Kahu is fascinated by the smoke coming from the ship. We prominently place the contessa in view so they know we’re a diplomatic mission. The ship is called “General that pacifies the barbarians”, only Ryuto understands this inscription.

The delegation from the celestial empire comes aboard the ship. As they are coming up, Kahu feels a burning fire of alarm. The head of the delegation is a green dragon with military attire. He apologizes for the disturbance. The contessa puts Oona as the head of the delegation. The dragon is looking for contraband. Oona is challenging the legality of the request from the dragon delegation. The dragon is captain Long Wei.

Captain Jackdog and the contessa are confused. It seems that Oona has figured it out. Ryuto thinks it’s bullshit and they are trying to intimidate us because we’ve been doing the tattoo removal. Oona knows that there are not that many ironclads this far west, so they are rare. This is the one ironclad that was requested by the chancellor. If it’s going out of its way to accost us then they have a stronger reason that anything we should be worth.

We’ve managed to waste some time with additional bureaucratic requests. Ryuto tries to communicate secretly with them about his request to move the contessa out of the island. The captain of the dragonship is not interested but a secondary sailor tells Ryuto: “You are being watched, the chamberlain sends his regards, keep the contessa out of the island as much as you can”. He surreptitiously hands Ryuto 50g.

The dragons start their search of their ship meanwhile Kahu has managed to jump through the poop chute and is trying to hold on to the side of the ship. Pachinko helps by throwing a rope. The dragons have not found anything and are being interrogated by Oona who is annoyed. The captain is puzzled by how prickly Oona is. He says we should be thankful for his presence otherwise we would have been attacked by pirates again. The captain tells Ryuto that he should find more civilized friends.

Kahu says he felt a burning fear and that’s why he escaped. The celestials sail away leaving a trail of smoke behind.

We safely make it to migrant fleet and everyone is reunited with their communities. I remove Ryuto’s rune and can craft it onto other things and I can try to remove the bad parts. We get hero points for our heroics and diplomatic handling.

We should go before the fête to talk to Palkia. Everyone regards Kahu as a hero because he sunk the pirate ship that was holding them. The migrant fleet survivors also regards us as heroes because we handled the dragon delegation. The people from the migrant fleet have known Kahu since he was half a child.

He was trained in fisty cuffs by the people of the fleet. He was always a boy of many talents and touched by a mystical force. He said strange things but seemed to predict the future. Turns out he was right all along but only now it’s clear. He said one of the cousins was wearing red and then her house burned down. Miranda, king admiral of the fleet, practically raised Kahurangi. He was always a bit of a loner.

Kahu is now crying as he is overwhelmed with all the information. He should talk to his friends in the Crimson Guard. The group of people that defend the ships and which Kahu is part of. Many people know him. He jumped onto the pirate ship to fight.

Ryuto scares Kahu and he bursts into flame but quickly relaxes and only small flames bursts from his skin. The snake people even traded with the migrant fleet after the migrant fleet’s people were taken but made no mention of it.

The snake people lives in dens in the marshlands far away from the coast, the Serpent’s Repose is only occupied when every 4 years the migrant fleet comes to trade. They’re very insular people, the Ranti. They were never so treacherous before. They are always very hungry for news from the outside but we don’t know much about them. Their society is run in a particular way. The bound do all the errands but then there’s full bloods and then higher the true bloods. The migrant fleet talks to the full bloods but the bounds do all the work, they are boggarts.

Lyssander is the one they have talked to. They always discover mysterious artifacts that they can sell for a profit so the migrant fleet takes them. The Ranti ask for news or, recently, technology. The Ranti bought the slaves from the pirate Johann. It’s strange that they get now human slaves. They only took the healthy and hale. It’s weird they rejected Kahu.

They’re sending a ship to the Ranti and we’re welcome as neutral parties. The King Miranda is coming with a squad from the crimson guard. We will leave Palkia behind in the migrant fleet while we go in the diplomatic mission. Ranghi has volunteered to come. She was denied by Oona but she tried to sneak by but Oona caught her.

Miros and his second are coming with us and the rest of the delegation stays with Ranghi on the migrant fleet.