The Wandering Isles: Session 67
The party’s story in Asazaki continued with Eldrin visiting a shrine dedicated to Tempestas, a marble pillar crowned with the bust of a bald, bearded man radiating power. While the town mainly reveres Minerva, this small shrine honours Tempestas as well. Dash, in a gesture of quiet respect for Eldrin’s devotion, left his bow resting against the shrine.
The group regrouped at Roshi’s Bookshelf, Eos’ home, where Eos began teasing Dash about the potential gender of his unborn child with Lysa. She also shared the origin of Duckie’s name, recalling her childhood days feeding ducks with her neighbour Julia, when they first found the horse together.
Dash and Eldrin soon ran into Slate, who had taken on a new guise. With a mocking song to Tempestas, Slate excused himself, promising to meet them later. The pair pressed on, accidentally crossing paths with a blind fisherman on the shoreline. Dash’s attempts at conversation only seemed to irritate the man further, no matter what he said.
Eldrin called out across the water to Hatsu, who shot an arrow carrying a note—nearly striking Dash, though he managed to catch it instinctively. The blind man, overhearing their conversation about healing, revealed he had been attacked and blinded in his youth. He gave his name as Weslyn, though whether mocking or sincere was unclear. Eldrin offered to heal him, but the man resisted. After some tense exchanges, Eldrin insisted, disguising his divine magic as ointment and binding Weslyn’s eyes with a blindfold, instructing him not to remove it for 24 hours. Dash quietly slipped a gold coin into the man’s pocket before they left.
Meanwhile, Hatsu and Amaedrianna packed their things while Weslyn refused to move until his fox, Chicken, returned from the woods. Amaedrianna offered to leave her familiar, Albie, as a tether, but Weslyn would not budge. Hatsu and Amaedrianna went ahead to meet the others.
Eos took Duckie for a ride, practicing with her rapier near the lake and recalling her days of training at the Arcanum. When Duckie playfully dragged her into the water, she returned home soaked, preferring to remain unnoticed in town. Later, Hatsu recounted Eldrin’s interaction with the blind fisherman, prompting Eos to reveal she knew him—Old Man Weslyn, a local eccentric who fished daily yet never caught a thing. She scolded Eldrin, worried Weslyn wouldn’t know what to do with himself now, and told him he ought to stay and protect the man.
The group then gathered as Eos shared a story about Asazaki’s founding: survivors of a shipwreck sought shelter from a storm and stumbled across the bookstore, building the town around it. Whether true or not, she cherished the tale. She led the party into her undercroft to explore old maps. Together, they uncovered sites of importance: Jongvale, Gomgalor, Rirtez, Cairel Healing Facility, Emberhold Courts, Bricksunder, and even the Lave. Dash noted the tunnels beneath the home resembled smuggler’s routes.
With offerings laid at the forest’s edge—Dash’s white jacket, Hatsu’s candle, smoke bomb, shuriken, ration, and feather, and Eos’ bundle of arrows—the group entered the woods. Inside, they found devastation: trees blasted apart, a radiant light blazing at the centre. Only Eldrin could look upon it clearly, and he beheld a fox suffused with celestial brilliance, fur glowing like molten gold and silver infused with starlight. The sight overwhelmed him with joy; tears of golden light streamed down his face as he embraced the creature.
Dash attempted to touch it, but the fox’s warmth burned his hand. To Eldrin, though, the experience was pure bliss. Weslyn, who had known Chicken for longer than memory, had never seen such a transformation. He reached into the fox’s mind, glimpsing an impossible world of radiant flora before being thrown back into his body, colliding with a tree. Dash rushed to his side and noticed Weslyn’s tattoos flare gold before fading back to blue.
Hatsu approached Eldrin, dropping to one knee and offering his sheathed sword, Kaze Joba. He admitted he had believed Slate was the chosen one, but now it was clear the fox had chosen Eldrin. Just as Tempestas had marked him, so too had this divine creature. “You are the knot between this world and the others,” Hatsu told him. “And my blade belongs to you.”
