01. October 13, 2019

This session is all about character creation...after being rescued from imprisonment in a wagon heading to slaver country but unable to remember anything from before our rescue, we are dropped off in the Imperial City to start our new lives. We spend 2 years in the city developing our Backgrounds, just living as 0th level characters. Then we spend another 2 years establishing 1st level in our chosen classes. So 4 years have passed...

We all live in the neighborhood of Saltpork, which is within the city's Field Ward. It's an area undergoing renovations, people who are poor as well as people who live modestly live here. Saltpork is the area where the city sends the “blanks” who were rescued from slavery and do not have any memories. Inside the neighborhood, there is also: Prestige Street (where the slightly more well-to-do people live); Twelve-Dog Court (small market area, community area); the Endshift Tavern (popular with off-shift city guardsmen); the shelter at 22 Knockdown Street.

We see each other a lot in our neighborhood, and we four always get together on the anniversary date of our rescue, which was on the 12th day of the 2nd month.

- - - - - -

It's our 4th anniversary, we are in the Endshift Tavern eating, and suddenly feel a sense of deja vu. Jaindoh looks at Cam and sees him looking super-smart and reading a book, and there's a cat next to him. Hakon looks at Reddy, and sees her looking like herself but with a huge curved sword on the table next to her, and a helmet with wings (beaten up helmet, one wing is bent). Cam looks at Hakon and sees him in dark clothing with a hood, tossing a small throwing knife up and down, looking around the room. Reddy looks at Jaindoh, and sees her looking like herself but in really fancy clothes and producing small balls of flame from her fingertips and rolling flames around.

Additionally, Hakon and Cam notice, in the shadows behind the table, humanoids in mostly black clothes with dark purplish trim, motioning toward the table. They see almost ghostly/translucent shapes, come up behind Reddy and Jaindoh and the girls suddenly get blank looks on their faces. And they themselves see ghostly shapes when they look down but remain cognizant. Then the girls come to and look normal again. Cam thinks the humanoids he saw had a lot of rings; one had rings on both joints of its fingers, the second had many rings on only the back joints (the normal spot for rings), the rings are of ordinary copper and iron metals; Cam thinks their skin was gray. Both humanoids had long-fingered hands, like pianists, and the motions they were making may have been spell-casting. The humanoids are gone when Cam and Hakon look again. Nobody else in the tavern notices anything amiss.

About 5 minutes later, ripples form in our cups. Then the building shakes a little. Then someone bursts through the tavern door and screams—“That was an explosion!” All the city watch hanging out in the tavern run out to help. We follow. To the west, toward Saltpork, the sky is glowing like something is on fire. We run toward it. A tenement building on the edge of Saltpork that holds blanks is on fire. It looks like something exploded from inside. We help rescue people and put the fire out, and direct the displaced people to where they can spend the night. One person is missing; we go in to try to find her. The blast epicenter was on the second floor. We dig through the rubble and find the girl; her hands were blown off, hair is missing, she is dead; she was brewing and bottling something, some kind of big alchemy setup. On the back of her skull is a tattoo. Both Reddy and Jaindoh think the tattoo looks a bit like the symbol of Gruumsh, but it isn't quite. It's similar, but only if someone was re-styling that holy symbol.

Hakon has another “vision” like the one we had in the tavern; he envisions Jaindoh lying on a stone table, covered in a cloth with alien symbols, and someone carving something in the back of her head. Hakon realizes it's just a vision. But then he wants to check if it's a true vision...it turns out ALL four of us have tattoos exactly like the one on the back of the dead girl's head!

We go to the shelter and examine and bandage the wounded from the building. Looking closely, none of them have similar tattoos. We talk to the dead girl's close friends, and learn she occasionally complained that she felt like she was in the wrong body, and would have bad dreams about it.