Respite

With the winter months upon them, our heroes start to settle in to their new home. As soon as they get dust cloths off the furniture in the the living area and find some undisturbed wine barrels in the cellar, Ferric's old friend,  Crandon Kerymstacia of Uthodurn, arrives. As a trained wizard and diplomatic emmisary from Uthodurn to the Clovis Concord, Crandon is up to date on a wealth of things both arcane and political.

Ferric fills Crandon in on the basics of a few of the group's encounters – Princess Suria Dwendal, The harpies that attacked the Silver Duchess, and the journals and plants retrieved from the  greenhouse that pertained to the Savalirwood.

Crandon tells you that the Dwendalian royal family has announced that Suria is with child. She has also joined the King's council, as she wishes to ensure a safe and prosperous nation for the heir. Her husband has no interest in such matters, and the king (for all his mysoginistic tendencies) respects her keen strategic mind. So she now advices and partcipates in the larger strategy for their war effort.

He goes on to say that the war is still fiercely raging on the eastern front. There have been incursions by the Kryn deeper into the Empire, using burrowing worms to infiltrate as far as Felderwin. The Empire also tried to take back the garrison at Ashguard, but failed. So the war pushes onward.

Crandon examines the mirror and the gold from the harpy attack and confirms what you had already determined – the one is magical and requires attunement to fully activate, and the other is indeed Kryn gold. Given the apparent hag origins of the mirror, he thoughfully tells you there are two types of hags that would be present in costal areas where you'd find harpys – Sea Hags and Carey Hags. The most well-known Sea Hag in this area is Dashilla the Dreadful, about whom many sea shanties are sung in the dockside taverns. He doesn't know any specific Carey Hags from stories or songs in this area, but does know that they tend to prefer mobile lairs that are well out to sea, either on ghost ships or on top of cloud formations that they rigoriously design to suit their exacting standards.

Crandon ponders the journals with deep interest, as his family was one of the original noble elf houses that fled Molaesmyr for Uthodurn centuries ago. Tracing his long, elegant fingers down the drawing, he murmurs to the room that the only A2 he can think of is an Aeorian crash site in the far north of Eiselcross. When the flying city impacted the island, chunks of it were flung far and wide, resulting in different crash areas that have slowly been uncovered by excavating explorers. He has never traveled there himself, having only been as far north as the base camp at Balenpost, which is technically run by the empire.

When Snow rightly points out that the trip to Eiselcross would be shorter via Bysaes Tyl, Crandon explains that the elves of that region have become very isolationist. And the Frigid Depths in that area are extremely dangerous, so most people prefer to go through Palebank Village in Uthodurn.

He does mention that he can get the party home to Uthodurn by magical means if needed. He seemed reluctant to take the group all the way to Eiselcross, however. Magic is highly unpredictable across the entire region, which makes teleportation there a dangerous idea.

Before taking his leave, Crandon gives Ferric a sending stone should he need to get in contact in the future. He then departs for dinner at the home of Marquis Hector Solvia, who he labels an "insuffrable prat" but who does, at least, have the best interests of the city at heart.

Downtime

And with that... we go to Downtime. These are my sketch notes of things we need to roll and/or discuss.

The House & Grounds

* The damage will take 7,000 GP to repair. This covers the manor house and main outbuildings. Repairs will take roughly 45 days. * There is a vineyard on the grounds. It's overgrown but has old vines that, while currently untended, still yield fruit. * The estate comes with a license to harvest fruits from the plumgrove. There's a rotating area that's designated for your use.

Hiring Staff

The "maintenance cost" of a noble estate is 10gp/day--this includes the salaries of  3 skilled hirelings and 15 unskilled ones. Staff salaries and the cost of running an estate of this size come to 304 GP per month. Your three skilled hirelings are listed here.

As far as I know, you plan to hire Celestia, but the other two we have not talked about.

* Estate Manager - Thar Thunderhand & Tawar Thunderhand - Oversees all aspects of the business and estate in your absence. * Butler - Head of Staff. * Housekeeper - Celestia Behmar - Mother of Andrew Behmar and sister of the Dockmaster, Feiban Tannish. Head of House.

Others

* Amber * [Tabaxi fabrics & textiles] *

Funding the Household

The party wants to cover the household expenditures using the winery and by setting up a leasing agreement with Evelyn at Patsy's Pies to help her expand her apiary and provide infrastructure for her growing mead business. I need to set up pricing and we need to figure out what you need to sell to be profitable.

For what it's worth, Snow/Ferric/Erash have no interest in getting involved with – or in competition with – the big wine families of the region (you can read about them on the Feolinn page). This can be something midrange that just covers your costs.

Herbalism & Alchemy

Snow plans to learn proficiency with a Herbalism Kit, which takes 10 weeks of time. She can learn this from Phelan at no cost. However, she'll need to help forage and hunt for ingredients for the things they're trying to make.

Snow to roll 14 D20s. For everything that is a 10 or higher, please roll a D100. Send me those values, and I'll tell you what you successfully found while foraging in the Plumgrove. We'll use all of that for alchemical crafting.

Once we have Snow's rolls, I can get a full list of the components we have on hand and we can figure out the most useful items we can make. Right now, based on what Phelan has harvested from the many bodies of Emmaline, the two assassin vines, the mantrap, and 2 weeks of foraging the plumwood...

I can get you two potions of Greater Healing but that's about it. We could buy additional speciality ingredients from Grace, potentially, and maybe sweet talk her prices down. But let's see what the we come up with on our own first.

Learning Languages

Erash plans to learn the basics of Ignan. Again, this will take 10 weeks of time. To do this, he needs to find a tutor, pay them, and probably offer room and board given the person probably does NOT live in Feolinn.

Erash to roll an Investigation check to find an Ignan tutor. Or tell me what you do to locate one, if you want to make a case for a different skill or avenue of exploration.

Growing a Garden

Ferric, I know you were interested in cultivating a garden. We can definitely do that. If you have specific things you want there, let me know. If you have other things you want to do during downtime, let me know that too.

FGC Phone Home

Several folks expressed wanting to use Sending or write letters to communicate with folks in other areas. For the Sending spells, we'll do those at the table. You will have to explain to me how you can "show" the person to the caster.

If you want to write letters home/elsewhere, please send me an email or an individual text so I can write you back. :)