6:00AM You wake up to the sound of thunder. The type of thunder that can rattle a whole Aigrei clipper and reverberate through your bones. You've slept a good while of your journey but there is still a ways left.   Outside the seas are harsh. You see lightning in the distance revealing the many jagged, rocky, islands that poke out from the waves.   Odi and Confidence leave their rooms to investigate the sound of a stringed instrument being played to find Kelvin in the common area with a Qanun. He speaks that war might be inevitable in the The Bay of Kamard between Elves and Humans. He lets Confidence play the instrument for a bit.   In Ioanna's room there is a tapping outside of her window. She looks out to see a crow. One of the crows flies inside, seemingly very curious about Ioanna. One by one more crows fly in until around 60 crows are now hopping about Ioanna's room.   Firn, along with the rest of the party notices the growing squaking and comes to investigate. The crows don't attack anyone but they seem agitated as soon as Firn enters. As Odi and Kelvin come to see what is going on the crows take off and fly out the door into the ship and head to the top deck. The crows sit on a mast, watching Ioanna. A single crow moves forward and chirps at Ioanna which Jar translates...   Bad magic... here to watch... don't trust the elves... Unnerved by the appearance of the crows, Ioanna decides to try a new convenient spell, remove curse. She touches where the staff had touched her... and falls unconcious to the floor. At the suggestion of Kelvin you bring her down to the surgeon's quarters and place Ioanna on a table. The sergeon readies to determine the source of her illness, until Ioanna wakes up. Ioanna awakes noticing that the curse still remains but remarks that she had a very strange dream. She asks the group to come back to her room. Ioanna tells the group she woke up in a different body, and saw Immeshar, though she spoke with him and he appeared not to know her. She says she was in the town of Welf and that Immeshar had seen her in the town before. He was hungry and asked for food, he seemed to be in hiding. Immeshar asked her to apologize to a man named Itzal for him. You are told there is only an hour left before arriving in Ilstese . The group decides to ask Imarra about her powers she demonstrated in the fight against Rasmus Vasa and she reveals she is an Aasimar.   At long last you finally arrive in Ilstese. You enter the citadel through a waterway that makes its way into the center of the city. As you start to look around the town that expands outwards from you, you notice that the entire city is eerily calm, in fact, you don't see a soul. As you start to approach the docks, robed figures appear from behind buildings on all sides of the boat and slowly begin approaching the boat in unison. A voice booms from above, telling the elves to escort your party to the colliseum.   Kelvin escorts you off the boat and you are flanked by the robed elves. You are lead through the town where you see elves of all sorts peeking out at you from inside windows. After about 15 minutes you enter into a beautiful colliseum, made of a marble-like stone. More robed figures are up in the stands, in a circle stretching completely around the arena. An older elf now approaches you, he introduces himself as Viceroy Peressy and greets you, specifically for being the first non-Aigrei persons to enter the city of Ilstese . Peressy questions the group a bit where you are from and how you came around the powers that you posess. He also asks about your reason for needing to travel to Ilstese, and the curse Ioanna has. Peressy informs you that this is all a precaution to protect the citizens of his city from a potential timebomb in Ioanna.   Peressy informs you that your group must stay by her side while she delivers the message. He dismisses his guards around you, and Ioanna says:     Align the powers of Kamard to pledge fealty under my Empire, or the Fey of Aigreigos will suffer the same fate as my kindred.   Ioanna stands rigid and the black of the curse quickly spreads to every last visible bit of skin. As this happens, the two closest to Ioanna, Odi and Imarra fall unconcious to the ground.   Firn, Confidence, and Ferron start to hear a bubbling sound and you see what looks like black ooze, flowing from Ioanna's legs. It bubbles and spits and they see black shadowy tendrils starting to reach out, growing bigger every second. Firn jumps in between Ioanna and Odi and begins hacking at the tendrils while Ferron pulls Imarra's body away.   They find out that the tendrils are weak to fire, but every time they are hit they find some of the black mark on themselves, and its growing quickly. Slowly chipping away at it, when they hit the shadowy arms it solidifies and cracks apart. They manage to neutralize almost all of it when Confidence falls to the ground, Firn burns up the rest of the ooze, and slowly, they start to see the curse start to flake off of Ioanna, and then Confidence and Firn as well.   As the curse fades from Ioanna, she wakes, along with Odi, Imarra and Confidence. Peressy informs the group that now that they are no longer a threat they will have a room waiting for them at their royal guest suites. He dissapears along with the other elves except for Kelvin. Odi and Imarra rush to help heal Confidence and Firn and Confidence catch the others up to what happened with the ooze monster.   Kelvin leads the group through town over to the inner walls and takes you through a series of tunnels before arriving at the guest suites. Kelvin leaves you and Firn begins to investigate the room for signs of traps or listening devices. Odi casts detect magic to discover the door has some sort of charm on it to alert others if it is opened. Firn finds a panel behind a painting by the bed that contains nice elven smithed weapons.   Ioanna tells the group that while she was unconcious she spoke to her patron, a fey god called the Frost Prince, and that he has commanded her to find a way to bring him to the land you are in. She was given a choice to continue to the city of the dead or return back to the living.   Odi says that when him and Imarra were unconcious they shared a dream from the perspective of Itzal who was rowing to Ra'uel . They headed into the cave you previously found on the island and retrieved a staff that used to be held by the statue, but in order to take the staff he needed to cut out Itzal's tongue. Imarra also mentioned that Itzal appeared to be an old friend of Immeshar's family, a sympathetic soul outside of their island.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/blood-and-scales-nerd-squad/donations