Session 10, VP2

Our heroes entered Ulmar's cabin. A thin layer of dust coated everything inside, which caused Ulmar to tut in annoyance. Once he had cleared space at his dining room table, Ulmar invited the trainers to take a seat, as they laid out the three books they had found.

His response to the children's fable was similar to Flugil's, but he was able to discern that the missing chapter to the archaeological book dealt with an old temple to Frigga. The group had not heard the name before, so Ulmar explained that Frigga was a goddess in the old pantheon in Vanachrom. She was primarily associated with fertility and the earth, with her counterpart in the new pantheon being Groudon.

Finally, the group asked him to take a look at the book written in Elder Vanic. Unfortunately, Ulmar had only a very basic understanding of the language. Growing frustrated in his failed attempts to translate it, he set the book down.

The party began to discuss the events that had been occurring in Ever Dam with Ulmar, trying to what connections they may have. As the conversation continued, Sylvie began to wince in pain every few seconds. Not realizing anything was amiss, the rest of the group continued the conversation with Ulmar, eventually reaching the conclusion that the murder was unconnected to the Puphest pack.

Suddenly, Sylvie stood up from her chair, and began walking towards the door without a word. The group asked her what was going on with concern in their voices. Sylvie explained she had been receiving odd flashes of pain for the past few minutes. She had attempted to focus on them to learn more, but the pain broke her focus.

Needing some fresh air, Sylvie stepped outside for a moment, with a concerned Bronze in tow. Reinhold remained in the cabin with Ulmar, watching as he tried once more to glean information from the Elder Vanic text. More to himself than to Reinhold, Ulmar began to mutter about how confused he was at what connections they books held.

When Reinhold inquired if he had been able to translate anything, Ulmar explained that the text appeared to be a collection of census information from Varfjall in days of yore. What he could read indicated that it dealt primarily with the populations of the myriad towns across this half of the country, but of what import that could be, he had no idea.

Meanwhile, Bronze talked with Sylvie a bit about her burgeoning psychic powers. The flashes of pain had slowed down, but were still occurring in sporadic bursts, akin to a pounding headache. Taking a deep breath, Sylvie decided to try something different: rather than trying to force the visions of pain to reveal more, she instead opened herself up to the psychic forces flowing throughout the town.

Almost immediately, she could distantly feel the humming of a voice crying out, somewhere on the other end of town. Galvanized into action, Bronze entered Ulmar's cabin, explaining that Sylvie could tell someone was in trouble and needed help.

Reinhold immediately got to his feet, but Ulmar suggested that he stay at his cabin for the time being; having been camped out in the wilderness with Donner for a few days, he sorely needed a shower and some rest. Bronze nodded her understanding, as her & Reinhold began to follow Sylvie towards the town proper.

The courtyards closest to the cliff face were still and empty, much as they had been before. Although they could not hear anything, Sylvie could tell that they had moved closer towards where the psychic call had emanated from. They continued through the town, heading towards the Pokemon Center.

As they neared the encampment of townsfolk, they could begin to hear and see a commotion of some kind taking place amongst the Puphest & Barghound. Sylvie's mind was momentarily staggered by the proximity to the flashes of pain she had intercepted. As Lauren helped her keep her feet, she waved for Reinhold & Bronze to go investigate before things got any worse.

The two made for the trench at the town entrance, and no lightning crashed down as they crossed it. With the sun setting behind them, the growing darkness made it difficult to make out the details from this distance, but they could see a few people embroiled in physical combat up ahead. Sharing a look, the two of them took off at a run towards the conflict.

When they were closer, they could see that Hragn, Bjorg, and another man were all exchanging blows with Donner. Seeing the party heading his way through a swollen eye, Donner gave a wry smile, only for Hragn to immediately punch him in the face. Reinhold cried out to get the townsfolks' attention. Hragn turned to face them with his knuckles bloodied, as the other two men hefted clubs.

Angered at the party continuing to act as interlopers in "town business", Hragn ordered them to leave. Bronze and Reinhold both argued back that they had done nothing but help the town so far, even finding and returning Flugil. Spitting at her name, Hragn insisted that even with her return, nothing had been done about the growing threat the Pokemon represented.

When Reinhold mocked him for assuming the situation could be resolved like flicking a switch, Hragn squared off across from him. Reinhold readied himself for combat, not willing to throw the first punch. Hragn held no such reservations, and swung his right arm forward for a heavy blow. With a sharp crackle, a small web of electricity spun out from Ros' tail: Bronze had been at the ready, her Mareep prepped for a Thunder Wave should the townsfolk attack them.

Clearly unnerved and shaken, Hragn and his men became cowed by the show of force. Reinhold forcibly escorted them back across the trench into town, as Donner sat down heavily. Although he had put up a strong defense, he had still been fighting one-on-three. One of his eyes was blackened and swollen, his lip was split, and he was covered in bruises. Despite this, he didn't seem to notice or pay any care to his injuries, instead hanging his head in his hands. Lauren & Sylvie rushed over to join the group, asking Donner what had happened.

With shame & guilt clear upon his face, he explained that he had momentarily fallen asleep while keeping watch on the trench. As cries of anguish cut through his psyche, he awoke to find Hragn and his cohorts beating several of the Pokemon to death. He had immediately rushed over, attempting to drive the assailants off, but could do little more than keep them busy.

The group tried to tell him that he had done the best he could, but it was clear this failure weighed heavily on him. Behind him, the fallen forms of several of the Pokemon began to slowly dissipate into the aether. Sylvie convinced Donner that he should get his injuries looked after, and he begrudgingly began limping his way towards the Pokemon Center. The group studied the pack of canines: before, they were obviously not just good-spirited, but innocent. Now, they could see the Pokemon huddled closer together for comfort, confusion and sadness visible in their eyes.

Disheartened, our heroes turned and made their way back towards town themselves. As they crossed the trench, they could see that there were less townsfolk milling about than before they had accosted Hragn, a minor victory. Given his limp, the group quickly overtook Donner, and entered the Pokemon Center with him. Bronze took advantage of this brief moment of respite to use the Pokemon Center's laundry room, as her clothes had been brined in jambalaya.

The others sat Donner down, and Sylvie did her best to clean up his injuries. For his part, Donner had a thousand-yard stare, not seeming to take notice of his surroundings. He only responded when Sylvie mentioned that she had been drawn to the fight by his psychic senses reaching out for help. Donner seemed aghast that he had accidentally caused a friend pain, but Sylvie reassured him by saying that "there isn't a handbook for this psychic shit".

After dressing his wounds, Sylvie made the group tea to help them calm down. Once Bronze had returned, the party began to discuss what they could do to potentially resolve the growing storm in a peaceful manner.

Flugil entered the Pokemon Center a few moments later, hailing the group. As she took a seat at their table, she explained that she had been talking to more of the townsfolk, and had convinced some more to return to their homes. Our heroes explained the recent events they had experienced, and a dark cloud hung over them all. As Flugil & the party wondered what had drawn the Puphest here in the first place, Donner interjected with a mumble.

When the group asked him to repeat himself, he weakly said that he had seen pieces of the pack's memories when he was fighting off Hragn. Unwilling or unable to explain what he had seen, Donner instead closed his eyes in concentration. Sylvie let out a gasp as a murky vision filled her mind.

Silhouettes, cast like shadows on a wall, played out before her. Her eyes saw through those of a lone Puphest, calmly exploring the Varfjell fields outside Ever Dam. No pack was visible anywhere nearby: this was clearly before they had begun gathering. The looming shape of a person appeared, pausing as it noticed the Pokemon.

Eager to play, the Puphest bounded over. It placed its front paws on the person's leg with a friendly yip. There was a moment of stillness, before the person swung their arm down at the Puphest, and the vision cut off. Sylvie explained what she had seen to her friends. Someone had attacked a lone, defenseless Puphest, kickstarting the events of the past few weeks.

Disgusted, the group was reinvigorated in their determination to see the Pokemon safely away. Eventually, the idea of using some sort of large-scale Repel was mentioned. Although it would be driving the Pokemon away, it would at least be non-violent and keep them from further harm. The party asked Flugil is she knew any such recipes, but she unfortunately did not. However, she did think the library might contain helpful texts on the subject.

Bronze set out across town to search for any helpful books, as Reinhold, Sylvie, & Flugil continued to plan. Our heroes had realized that since the townsfolk seemed to be superstitious, it might be a good idea to wrap up their Repel idea in some sort of ritualistic trappings.

Flugil said that she thought the idea was great; if the "ritual" actually caused the Pokemon to leave, she had no doubt that they could convince the townsfolk to embrace the new "tradition". Many ideas were lobbied back and forth. Finally, the idea of leading the town in a paper-lantern releasing ritual, under the guise of releasing spirits to the heavens, was landed on.

Excited, Flugil asked the group to meet her at her gym the next morning, as she left to start telling some of the citizens about "a ritual to help disperse the Puphest & Barghound". Across town, Bronze entered the library. With several shelves knocked to the floor, it would be difficult to find relevant books. Fortunately, Bronze knew that every library had some sort of catalog system, so she began to search for any files cabinets.

With none visible on the first floor, she ascended to the second story. Solveig's living quarters took up around half of this floor, and Bronze could see that the door to her rooms had been left open. Curious, she decided to investigate further. Inside, she could see the file cabinets she had been searching for.

Nearby was an ornate writing desk. Upon its surface, candles could be seen burnt down to nothing, alongside a quill and un-stoppered well of ink. It appeared Solveig had been in the midst of writing something before she had gone to investigate when the intruder broke in. Oddly, whatever book she had been writing in was nowhere to be seen. After reading through the catalog system, Bronze turned to return downstairs when she noticed something else odd.

Muddy footprints were pressed down into the carpet leading into Solveig's rooms. After examining them, Bronze was able to determine that they were human footprints, which had been made in the past day or so. She followed the footprints: they started at the entrance on the ground floor, beelined straight to Solveig's desk, then left the building.

Clearly, someone else had been in here, after the recent murder. Unable to do anything further on that front, Bronze used the catalog to successfully find a book on holistic medicinal recipes. After checking the book out herself, she headed back over towards the Pokemon Center.

Having set their course, Sylvie & Reinhold had begun to craft paper lanterns for the coming ritual. Although he was clearly still in a fugue state, they convinced Donner to help them. Eventually, the soothing repetitive motions seemed to draw him somewhat back to himself. Slowly, he told the two about his history before meeting them: where he hailed from, and how he had come by his burn scars and limp. He seemed hesitant to name whatever specific force he had been fighting against, and lapsed once more into silence.

A few moments later, Bronze re-entered the Pokemon Center, book in hand. After the party caught each other up, they read over the recipe Bronze had found. Luckily, most of the ingredients were not too different than a typical, modern Repel. The only exception was an odd purple flower, whose petals had a somewhat wilted appearance. Knowing that the book had been written by a healer from Seeder Grove, the group was able to discern that the flowers could be found amongst the Varfjell Fields along the South-Western coast.

Leaving Donner to continue with the lanterns, our heroes set out into the night to find the flowers. Bowing to Sylvie's expertise in foraging, the trainers followed as she led them towards the nearest mountain of the Hrungnir's Lay range. Using the knowledge they had absorbed from the book, they were quickly able to discover that the flowers were known to grow at the roots of large trees.

They found a large portion of them, and split up to search for the rest the recipe called for. Reinhold found a small, red-furred Pokemon sleeping amongst some of the flowers. Despite his efforts to remain quiet, he woke the Darumaka, who seemed afraid at being cornered. Not wanting to spook the Pokemon any further, Reinhold called his friends over softly.

After they had all scanned the Pokemon, they resolved to let it run away on its own. Though nervous, the Pokemon seemed to understand, and timidly waved them goodbye as it hopped off into the brush. With the moonlight above them being blocked by the treetops, their searching slowed to a crawl.

Sylvie released Thistle, her chief foraging partner. After giving him a scent of the flowers they had collected so far, she sent him off to find more. Full of excitement, Thistle darted in and out of the growth around them. A few minutes later, he happily trotted over, a large amount of the flowers clutched in his mouth.

According to the recipe, they now had what they needed to craft the repel potion. With the end to the recent troubles hopefully in sight, our heroes turned their steps once more towards Ever Dam. Tonight, they would craft lanterns & medicine; tomorrow, they would craft a legacy.