That's right, forgot about that. I did enjoy the image of the batch of you struggling through the cold ocean in the dark, though. 

City of Madness, Chapter 2: In the Court of King Zandar ran last week. After the riot and Yellow Druid attack on Princess Melita Bley, Lady Avita's gang of bandits (they hate it when I call 'em that) are hailed as heroes in Parsool, gaining the hospitality of the royal household and an audience with King Zandar Bley himself. Zandar is a dark and brooding man who just so happens to bear an astonishing resemblance to Omar Sharif in One Night with the King. He appears troubled, short-tempered, and distracted. And now he has to deal with player characters. I kinda feel bad for him. 

First, the guards give their account, of the cookshop owner Eshmun lunging at the princess, and one of their number moving to defend her highness. (They either don't fully understand or conveniently leave out that the guard had also succumbed to violent madness.) Then they were set upon by Yellow Druids and had to fight for their lives. In the confusion, the princess panicked and she and her chaperone fled down the marketplace. (Ditto for their take on the princess.) When they were able to catch up with them, Princess Melita was safe, and the Druids had been defeated by a group of travelers. They also regret to report that somehow, in the conflict, the travelers had killed the royal chaperone, Lahmi Bekar, cousin to the king and childhood friend of the queen.

That account may sound a little lopsided, but the Guard in Parsool are a resentful bunch, envious of the fat budgets the Navy receives from the king.

Melita was able to help fill in some details, but her memories while under the curse are confused and jumbled. She does recognize and feel gratitude towards Nymox, Laurits, and Cownann, particularly singling out Nymox as coming to her aid.

Nymox and Laurits then tell their story, making sure to highlight the whole outbreak of madness thing and the role of the chaperone in the attempted kidnapping, with her ceremonial dagger offered as evidence. They did, however, take the precaution o

Gruntfuttock wrote:

I love this version of Parsool. I particularly like the market with all the cookshops - I often detail food and drink shops in my fantasy games, as well as the usual taverns. As both Alison and I are rather food obsessed I try to distinguish the different food cuisines of fantasy cultures, nothing over the top, but I find that little details about food styles and types of beverage add to a sense of place and build over time so it becomes part of the world.

Why thank you! My main inspiration for this plot was the line in the rulebook about the sea birds of Parsool being enough to drive one mad. I thought, well, what if that were true? And, hey, there's a God of Madness in the setting! Cool!

And I'm trying to keep an ancient-world flavor to my Lemuria, which means no taverns, inns, or formal restaurants except in the most civilized areas, and even then mostly only for the rich. Those roles are filled by agoras and markets with vendors, and by divinely-enforced rules about hospitality extended to travelers. It's a bit of a challenge, but I think it will help distinguish it from a High Fantasy campaign, and that's very important to me.

Oh, yeah, that! Maybe I've got some time for that, I could certainly use the distraction. Where was I? Oh, yes, the princess had just arrived at the market for lunch.

So, Princess Melita arrives with her entourage, a squad of elite guardsmen and the princess' chaperone, Lahmi Bekar, a distant cousin of the king and long-time member of the household. She goes to the largest fish vendor in the market, the one that supplies the royal household, and selects some fine fresh seafood and local produce, and she takes it to the cookshop of Eshmun.

Now, Eshmun is a controversial figure in the Parsool cooking world. He's probably the best chef in the city, but he has a philosophical bent. Even though he could cook for the royal household, he feels he does more good working in a cookshop in the market, and he has shunned all attempts to woo him to a more prestigious gig. If the nobles want to eat his food, they can come to the market like everyone else. (Imagine a cross between Emeril and Diogenes.) So now, the Princess Melita has come to the market, like everyone else. On another day, this might have been a touching moment of reaching out to the common people by someone who may well be Queen someday. But today, everyone is on edge from the endless screeching of the gulls. 

Anyway, our heroes (to recap, we've got half the group: Nymox the Red, a young and impulsive thief, Laurits, a courtier and all-around fancy boy, Cownann, a Beastman from out of the Empty Lands, and the group's current companion and employer, the Lady Avita of Satarla, on the run from a murder charge) want none of the action here, maneuvering to keep themselves far away from the princess and her entourage. Probably a wise choice, as that's about the time the cries of the gulls started driving people mad. Various people around the market started losing their tempers and becoming violent over minor or entirely imaginary annoyances, and most notably, Eshmun and one of the princess' guards succumbed to a vio

So, City of Madness, Chapter 1: The Cry of the Gulls!

When we pick up the story of our band of outlaws, they've been in Parsool long enough to have burned through Ooryphas's diamonds and learned a fair amount about the city. They were still travelling with Lady Avita Wintermere of Satarla, the noble widow from Halakh who had been arrested on suspicion of the murder of her new Halakhi husband; she had promised them a reward if they returned her to her family in Satarla. Because news had spread that Halakh was searching for the murderous Lady Avita and a band of cutthroat outlaws who escaped a Halaki jail and were ravaging the countryside, the group was trying to keep a low profile in Parsool. Of course, only so much of that you can do when you've been painting the town red for the past few days, but, y'know...

I started out by filling the players in on what they've learned about Parsool since their arrival. It's a restless city, full of resentment over the high taxes charged by King Zandar Bley. The Bleys came into power two generations ago, when Zandar's grandfather Arishem Bley, commander of the Parsool navies, killed then-King Yarikh Adonias after Yarikh was consumed by a curse of madness. The possibility of the curse passing down to Yarikh's heir gave Arishem cover for his claim to the throne. 

Since that time, the Adonias line, though stripped of noble rank, has prospered as merchants. Meanwhile, Arishem's eldest child died a few months before he would have been declared an adult and legal heir by the Church of Shazzadion. At least, it was announced he died, of a vaguely described and sudden illness, but few can claim they saw the body, and the funeral services were almost scandalously modest and small for a prince. And when Arishem's second-born, Liran eventually inherited the throne, and his first-born passed in shockingly similar circumstances, people began to wonder which line was actually cursed.

Now Liran's second-born, Zandar, holds the throne of Par