5 - Mead must flow

PCs

Fingal - human sorcerer

• Nana is a good and faithful person and I trust her implicitly.

• Nyree seems to have a secret they are not telling us.

Gildon - human swordsman

• Ithkan is good at investigating things and I want to learn from them.

• Fingal may be interested in my faith.

Ithkan - goliath grave priest / investigator

• Nyree owes me.

• Gildon is good at people stuff and I want to learn from them.

Nana - half-elvin grandmotherly healer

• Fingal is out of place and I will help him fit in.

• Gildon is someone new to me and I want to impress someone I have not known since they were a baby.

Nyree - half elf/goliath tracker/ranger

• Ithkan knows incriminating secret about me.

• Nana should know something about my father but won't tell me.


 New NPCs

Goodmead Residents


Marshal Report


Party went to the meadhall to meet with Mrs Untapoor and hear morefrom her side. Olivessa slowly tried to feel out the party's religious beliefs and knowledge of what was going on in town while not revealing much.  Her tactic was to ply  the group with mead and giving a bit of history of Goodmead.  It seems that the meadary was started with bees from Firefinger a famous tower towards the northern end of Chult.  She gave samples of old mead, early good mead meads, last years meads, and then the new rosé mead.  Finally she finished off the tasting with a small taste of the brackish rotten mead that was frankly unpalettable.  But by that time she felt she could confess to the party the secret she had been hiding which the party had already figured out from their own investigations.  She confessed that the speaker was still using magic from Kassen the Chaplain to purify the rancid mead into something palatable.  Without the Chaplain's magic they had no way to turn the foul mead into good mead and so the meadery was doomed.  Bees had been producing less and less honey and the Speakers rosé mead only worked so long as the speaker was able to purify it using an odd ritual of his.


The party investigated and decided that it was some form of magic circle vs elementals that forced out the badness somehow.  Speaker Rielsbarrow always opened the kegs and said it was to let the goddess drink her fill but Olivessa suspected it was party of a ritual to drive out the taint but he had never taken her into his confidence.  Really only the boy Jonathan was the only one whom ever got that close.


Olivessa gave the party a tour of the meadhall.  They got to see the apiary and see how sickly and few the bees were.  They also got to see one of the large barrels that was "going bad" but upon entering the bad batch burst free and the group had to face a mead elemental whose very attacks could intoxicate.  Wisely avoiding fire and frost magic the party subdued the elemental mostly through force of arms.  During the fight the mead elemental enveloped Nana but FIngol jumped into action using a gust of wind to force the healer out of the elemental's body.  Ithkan attempted a spell but found while the spell worked magical bubbles appeared from his mouth making it hard to communicate.  Still despite the confusion the party was able to dispatch the elemental using sword, arrow and spell to lay it low.


The group then went to investigate the hidden Apiary that Jonathon had told them about. And they found the apiary exactly as the boy had described it.  A frozen streambed used as a path into a hidden cave complex that had been transformed into a fairly impressive enterprise. by the speaker.  There was evidence of a fight where the speaker had been stabbed multiple times but only upon dying did he freeze solid.  Investigating the honey processing plant the party found signs of a second hidden area with a small sanctuary as well as swarms of giant man eating bees.  The speaker had clearly been giving the bees meat and corpses turning the lifeblood of the town into the towns livelihood.


Ithkan and FIngol found notepapers inside the innermost sanctuary that helped them to decode the journal revealing the following findings among its pages:


(first page) Well, they finally convinced me to join them following this new goddess. I'm still loyal to cassion but is not worth making a fuss over. If they all want to claim to follow his new goddess, I can still conduct the rites and keep them from straying too far from the path. Gonna miss my rite of warmth though.  House is already colder.  Tempted to move my hives but I need at least one in my house to explain where honey comes from. Besides that hive isn't movable the the bees are just too irritable.
(week later) Bees hives are sickening fast.  I can't keep many without my place being warm.  The bees are starting to go into a stupor.  Not that they were producing much with so little foilage around.
Honey decreasing to almost nothing.  Should we abandon the town?  I am walking the perimeter nightly.  Found some tracks of a ogre in woods I need to keep my eye on them.
(few weeks later) Found a cave in the woods where I can stash the "food sacrifice". The meat should keep and I think we will need it later when game becomes even more scarce. It isn't too far from the cave with the fae lady and her brutish thralls.  They could be trouble but so long as they stay out of town we can just avoid each other.  Not like we have many fighters in the village anyhow. Worried we will need to move to a big city soon.  The hives of firefinger have all but died off.  Winter is hard on bees.
(monthes later) Found bees in the cave.  They had build a nest into the meat offerings I was storing.  Nasty buggers too. Its lucky Kassen gives me rite of vermin repelling. Otherwise I would not be able to use this cave anymore.  Thinking of enclosing them in back section.
(weeks ago) Jonathon mischief.  He followed me to the apiary and is threatening to tell everyone I am keeping it warm with hearth charm.  He promises he will not tell if I make him my partner.  Makes me sick but he isn't a bad boy and I do need help but not with the new bees.  Luckily have them closed off safely already or boy would have been stung to death.
(days ago) Darn that Shander.  Why does he want sacrifices so much.  i know the big towns do that but it feels like he is doing it just to undermine my authority. I bet he started the rumors about me and Jonathan too!
(last entry) Woke up to find the fae lady and giant of a man in my house trying to steal my hive!  No idea how the giant had gotten in but he broke the roof somehow.  I woke with it crashing down and my bees buzzing angrily.  I don't think he is an ogre..  She sprayed me with some perfume from her flower and I just watched them take the hive.  Must have been some sort of charm.  Thankfully most of my hives were in the cave so they got only the nasty bees.  Giant guy crashed through wall to escape them but came back to get hive after a bit.  I'm gonna need to come up with some way to hide this in the church or apiary so Jonothan won't immediately find it. That boy would probably decipher it too...

Despite the groups impressive stealth eventually while moving around in the cave they were noticed by the wild vulture bees whom proved incredibly agressive attacking until all of the bees were eradicated but that was not the only interesting thing that happened that fight,  Gildon cast a spell that caused his steps to grow shoots and mushrooms wherever he stepped and found himself greatly jrested ust by being in contact with the earth.


Fingol cast a spell during the fight to sear several bees and disappeared entirely for several seconds wished away to a spritua lreal from which he could see a source of power nearby deeper in the cave and a kindred spirit to the north somewhere maybe a mile away at most. Eventually the party proved  that they were definitely not the B team.  The bees were dead their festering honey rotting in buckets and leaking from burial niches in the walls where the bees had made their hives covering corpses and offerings alike and converting the meat into red rancid honey.


The party investigated further down the cave complex and found the sourc eof pure water and elemental spirits.  A pool of pure water that was rich in elemental spirits had clearly been used to help purify the bad mead back in Good mead.  An elaborate system of buckets had been set up to dip small amounts of water out of the elemental pool and it was thought that the elemental spirit was used somehow to drive impurities out tof the mead and was in turn driven out during the speakers ritual to leave only rosé mead behind.


Case log updates:

Investigate situation around BigBoi's Death (New leads on killer)

Find missing marshals (In progress)

Investigate missing mead (In progress)

DIscover what's up with the bloody honey? (Complete)

New investigation priorities / assignments

Questions to explore next time: