Having returned to the city our heroes decided to try one last time to convince the members of the nine to form an alliance with reinos. Sparky however decided that he would stay, as he was interested in learning from Velachamon, who was a much more experienced druid, and who agreed to take Sparky on as an apprentice.
Fang, being a bit of a fool, mistook which members had previously shown favor in allying with Reino and attempted to convince Mitsui and Rove, before realizing they were the ones who had shown interest in an alliance. He therefore wasted his first day back.
Crux on the other hand looked for someone to modify him. He thought of asking the first, another Automaton, who gave him a lead, and so he went and found Maeoyala, who had been singing at a tavern. She agreed to help him but only once she was done for the day. She brought him to a gnomish friend of hers, Urinan Tunnetirog, who had experience with automatons.
One there the gnome was curious as to what Crux was, who confirmed he was an automaton. The cost of repair would be 100 gold. Crux laughed and said he wouldn’t pay such a thing to someone who was so unskilled. This upset Urinan, as he had a certain pride in his skills, and claimed he just didn’t recognize non-magia automaton builds. Crux apologized and indicated he would be willing to pay for the modifications, but had to get the money.
Maeoyala suggested going to Darwar, who was currently in need of some assistance. As she led Crux over, he learned that someone had messed up Darwar’s library and he wanted it cleaned; he was willing to pay the 100 gold for the service.
Scales had been searching for a mount, and managed to find some druids who sold him a Grauladon mount. He then found some work at a tavern, working as hired muscle.
Upon retiring at the inn for the night, Scalez and Fang met an interesting tiefling, Lina. The woman made friends with our heroes. The next day Scalez continued his work as Lida and Fang talked. Lina helped Fang find the other members of the nine, as she was a much more culturally adept person. She helped fang find Darwar first, whom she learned he would agree to if Reino could provide him information in his field of research, which he highly doubted.
Next they found Lohren at a Tavern, where Scalez happened to be. He wanted to know what our heroes were willing to do. Only Scalez seemed to have the willingness to go to any lengths, so Lorhen told him he wanted a large number of sacrifices in exchange.
Our heroes also spoke with Velachamon, who truly showed no interest in it but was ok with it if the rest of the circle would, they then headed back to the inn for the night, all except for Crux, who upon finishing his second day of work realized that he had made no progress whatsoever. Believing this to be some sort of trick, he confronted Darwar, who assured him this was not the case. Darwar even offered to pay more for solving the issue, including getting others to help. Darwar, so Crux headed to the inn to find his traveling companions and ask them for help.
The group agreed, and Crux wanted to head out now, but Lina and Fang were tired and said they would go the next day. Scalez agreed to go with Crux immediately however. Crux was convinced one of the nine might be behind this, so after speaking with Darwar he ended up going with Crux to Rove’s house. Knocking on the door a little woman goblin answered it. Crux insisted on speaking with Rove, and, the female goblin whom he learned was Rove’s wife, went to go get him. Rove, sleepy, agreed to go to see Darwar with Crux after insisting he was not responsible and thinking Crux was crazy.
Once back at Darwar’s library, Scalez investigated and saw a lizard knocking over the books. It escaped by running and disappearing into thin air. Afterwards Scalez saw some more, but the same thing happened. They couldn’t find any more lizards but then found some spiders. Picking one up, they told Darwar and Rove to go find a jar to put them in.
As the two left, Crux and Scalez were surprised as the spiders turned into snake-like creatures which they identified as Akizendri, type of creature native to the Maelstrom, the plane of chaos. These creatures like to mess around with books and libraries, falsifying information. The two heroes managed to finish off the 3 creatures, and received payment for their work.