In short
Marta asks the party to find her brother Kito, who was taken by the Flaming Fist. Kintergas chats up the gate guards at Fort Beluarian. Elias then poses as “Ember” of Flaming Fist Intelligence and brings Kito out of the commander’s office. The sealed scroll case Kito was carrying stays with Blaze. Meanwhile Kintergas and Kale tour the Grand Souk. Zindar offers them the pirates of the Jahaka Anchorage, and they start choosing a jungle guide.
Marta
As the party climb out of the dye works, Gimbal heads to a temple across the way to clear his head. (Gimbal is a cleric of Selûne.)
A barefoot girl of about six or seven, dragging a stuffed rabbit by one arm, tugs Kintergas’s sleeve: “They took my brother.”
- Her name is Marta. Her big brother Kito has looked after her and Mum since their father left.
- Mum works on the other side of the bazaar and doesn’t know yet.
- The men had “angry eyes”. One carried a shield showing a hand on fire: the Flaming Fist.
- They went out through the North Gate.
Marta goes to the temple to stay with Gimbal.
Fort Beluarian
At the North Gate the city wall runs down into the water beside a small harbour and a cluster of ironworkers. About half a mile past the gate, built into a hillock, is a small fortress. Kale recognises it straight away (natural 20): a Flaming Fist fort. Its flag is blood red with a black gauntlet wreathed in flame.
Kintergas chats to the gate guards. He walks up openly, friendly, weapons left alone.
- Fred is cheerful, dim, and insists he never kicked that dog; a different Johnson did. He can’t read but can tell lagers from pilsners by the pictures. He mentions an old general who led undead legions against the jungle “before my granddad’s time, or maybe more recently”.
- His partner is a mute guard in a full-face helm whose tongue was cut out “over business”. Fred met him yesterday.
- The Fist caught a “spy” in the bazaar that morning. He is being held inside.
- Fred hasn’t seen Marshal Valerian in a long time. The Marshal’s last visit was to flog the previous captain.
- The commander’s rank is “the Blaze”, and the new commander is also named Blaze. The fort thinks this is hilarious.
- To join the Fist, fill in a form at the recruitment table on the harbour, run by Pickering.
Kintergas’s Insight: they’re exactly what they seem. Gate duty is the worst posting in the fort, a fitting punishment for a dog-kicker.
Back with the others, Kintergas says this garrison feels more like thugs than a proper Fist company. He refuses to take part in a lie, which his oath forbids, so the party splits:
- Elias tries his own approach at the fort.
- Kintergas and Kale check on Marta, then go shopping.
Ember of Flaming Fist Intelligence
Elias strolls up playing his guitar. He tells Fred he has just signed up at the harbour. When Fred asks where his red recruit wristband is, Elias claims they had run out and that Pickering gave him a kiss on the cheek instead.
Fred is heartbroken. He has fancied Pickering since the day he joined, and admits that’s why he kicked the dog (“I was so frustrated”). Elias’s offer to swap places on guard duty doesn’t work. Fred does send him in to see the captain for his “initiation”:
- Go to the big building on the left, up the stairs, first door on the right.
- Knock. Fred once didn’t, and still has the boot print on his backside.
They agree to meet at the Thundering Lizard in three days, when Fred’s shift ends. Elias promises to help him win Pickering over and give the man’s nose a song. Elias gives his name as “Ember”.
Inside the fort:
- About 30–40 people.
- A heavy door leads into the hillside (closed).
- A mess compound of tents.
- A three-storey stone tower.
On the tower’s ground floor (a storeroom) Elias takes a maroon Flaming Fist tabard and cuts it down to halfling size. The duty ledger’s last entry reads: “Spy captured, held for questioning.”
Blaze’s office is up the stairs.
- Blaze is a human with flaming red hair slicked back, a thick black handlebar moustache, and fine steel armour with flame marks on the shoulders.
- He is sweating heavily in the 42° heat and is furious about it.
- Beside his desk stands a Chultan boy with a split lip: Kito.
- On the desk lies a sealed leather tube with brass caps, stamped with a strange spiral seal. → Spiral-Sealed Scroll Case. The seal stirs something in Elias’s memory, but he can’t place it.
Elias introduces himself as “Ember, Flaming Fist Intelligence, from the harbour” and offers to help with the interrogation. Blaze isn’t interested:
“Got what I wanted from him. He was delivering the scroll case. Lad can’t read. Take him back to town.”
He comments that Ember is “rather short for a Flaming Fist” and dismisses him. On the way out, Fred asks Ember to tell Pickering something nice: “He does have a mighty fine nose.”
Kito’s story
A man in a brown-grey hooded robe paid Kito 5 silver (enough to feed his family for a month) to carry the case to the harbour. The man had human hands and smelled of incense. Someone there would recognise Kito. The Fist grabbed him on the way.
Red Bazaar to Grand Souk
On the way, Kintergas and Kale look in on the temple. A robed monk silently refuses to let armed men inside. Marta is playing on the floor and Gimbal is meditating.
- Red Bazaar: no jewellers (Kale wants to hang his ghoul tooth on a chain). There are farriers, cart-makers, leatherworkers, a Chultan spear-maker, and a shield-maker who sells only wood and leather. He explains why:
Merchant Prince Ekene-Afa holds the monopoly on weapons and shields (especially metal), canoes and adventuring gear. All of it may only be sold, taxed, in the Grand Souk.
- Grand Souk: on the west side of the city, under purple and green canopies.
- It is a vast, tiered stone plaza with colonnades carved with Chultan myths and stylised dinosaurs, and silk banners overhead.
- It has hundreds of stalls: gems, textiles, spices, insect repellent, rare botanicals, ironsmiths.
- Hadrosaurs and triceratopses haul goods, and each prince’s guards patrol their own section in their own livery.
- Metal armour is rare and very expensive because it’s all imported. An armourer with dreadlocks warns against wearing steel in this heat: the gladiators who win are the ones in loincloths.
- Kale finds no magic for sale. “Can’t sell any magic items without Wakanga’s seal.” Wakanga’s guards wear deep royal purple and yellow-gold, with bronze armour and amulets, and “he enjoys his magic items”.
- Plan: get to Wakanga through Zindar and hope for a discount.
The empty drop
Elias, Kito, Kintergas and Kale meet up at the North Gate. Kito leads them to the drop point, a row of abandoned warehouses at the far end of the harbour. Nobody comes. Kintergas finds a spot on a warehouse roof under the eaves where someone had waited for a long time. They have gone now. It doesn’t feel like smuggling. Whatever the plan was, it has fallen apart.
Zindar’s offer
In his office Zindar says:
- Blaze has commanded the Fist for nearly a year. He is erratic, hard to work with, “something off about him”.
- The previous commander was very effective, until “that nasty business”.
- The port needs a Fist presence, just not Blaze’s.
- The princes ignore the Fist as beneath them, and each has their own guards.
- Fist thugs caused a scuffle in the market that morning, which is bad for trade.
- The Red Bazaar is the unlicensed trade (food, fish, clothes) that none of the princes care about. The Grand Souk is where the princes’ trade happens.
- Pirates. For the past few weeks a pirate crew has been attacking merchant ships two or three days out of port.
- Zindar thinks they are based at the abandoned Jahaka Anchorage, an old deep-water harbour to the south that was abandoned when the undead overran the jungle.
- Reward: whatever the pirates have stolen. It is already written off, and it is “more than two zeros”.
- In return he can help them get an audience with Wakanga.
- Routes: about one day by sea (more pirates) or two days by the old road out of the South Gate (more jungle). Kintergas doesn’t do boats.
- Whoever guides them must hold a licence paid up with Merchant Prince Jobal. “If you don’t have a guide, you will die alone and hungry in the jungle.”
- Kito gets a job carrying cargo at the docks. Kintergas tells him to join his sister at the temple after work.
- Quill news: Syndra reports that Quill “somehow wished not to be teleported”. He is sitting in her drawing room drinking her sherry while she works on the spell.
Choosing a guide
At the Thundering Lizard, Gondolo offers himself as a guide. Jobal won’t license him, he says, because “he’s got a thing about short people”. The guide notices all cost about 5 gp a day, 30 days paid up front (≈150 gp):
| Guide | Rate | Speciality | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azaka Stormfang | 5 gp | Wilderness survival, tracking, big-game hunting | Fee waived for help recovering a stolen family heirloom near Firefinger |
| Faroul & Gondolo | 4 gp | Logistics, mapmaking, heavy transport. Includes Zaza, a 4-ton triceratops | — |
| River Mist & Flask of Wine | 5 gp | Tabaxi brother and sister: stealth, scouting, fast travel, river navigation. Two scouts for the price of one. | Message at the Thundering Lizard |
| Hew Hackinstone | 3 gp | One-armed shield dwarf: mountains, mining, fighting | — |
| Musharib | 5 gp | Albino dwarf: underground navigation, albino dwarf communities, foraging | Old City market |
| Qawasha & Kupalué | 5 gp | Druid plus a vegepygmy companion: herbalism, antitoxins, undead identification | Temple (heard as “of Sabra”) |
| Salida | 5 gp | Diplomacy, jungle infiltration, serpent lore, ancient ruins | Executioner’s Run tavern |
| Shago | 5 gp | Undefeated Coliseum champion and son of Ekene-Afa. Heavy combat, dinosaur handling | Grand Coliseum training grounds |
The party leans towards Azaka Stormfang (free, in exchange for a side quest) or River Mist & Flask of Wine (stealth suits a pirate raid).
Loot & items
Flaming Fist tabard (Elias, cut down) · Kito freed
People met
Marta · Kito · Fred Johnson · Mute Fist Guard · Blaze · temple monk · Grand Souk armourer · Gondolo again · named: Pickering, Ekene-Afa, Jobal, Shago
Threads opened
- Spiral-Sealed Scroll Case: who sent it, who was waiting, and what does Blaze want with it?
- Fred, Thundering Lizard, three days.
- Pirates of the Jahaka Anchorage
- Hire a guide.