[18e03] My Sun and My Stars

As we enter, we see there are a couple of tieflings here.

“All rise for our Lady Bec,” says Freki.

“Did I say watermelon?” Bec mutters.

A blue-skinned woman greets us cheerfully. Bec tells her we’re from the SPI. That doesn’t seem to be a big surprise to her, so she leads us back, still very cheerful. Weirdly cheerful, even. Her name is Taelin, and she’s been with Kerwin since he first got into this business. Bec tries to ask more questions, but Taelin just tells her Kerwin would be happy to help us.

Taelin knocks on the door and announces us; Kerwin says we can come right in.

Freki noticeable flinches as we get closer to the door. Oz nudges me and points at him, and I realize that his pupils are crazy wide. Bec has also clocked this, so she asks Freki to stay outside and “guard the door.”

Taelin is confused about why we need a guard. Bec says something not entirely convincing about feral imps. Taelin says she should go inform Kerwin. As soon as she opens the door, a wave of eye-watering stink rolls over us. Nobody throws up, but it’s still early yet.

Bec says on second thought, Freki should come with us. We all go in. After all the attractive residents of Trell that we’ve met, Kerwin is…well…he looks like King Butterface from Uggo Island. His skin is a weird yellow, his chest is sunken, and his eyes are…um…shining with ooze. His belly is distended not in a fat way, more like an ill way.

Taelin whispers something to Kerwin. Suddenly Freki is like, “Did you just call him your sun and stars?!” Okay, Vondal. Taelin is embarrassed, poor thing.

“Are you an item or something?” says Oz.

“Oh, no, no,” Taelin stammers.

“What? With her? Of course not!” says Kerwin, making it worse.

I feel kinda bad for Taelin. She hustles out as fast as she can.

Kerwin introduces himself and offers to shake each of our hands. Oz offers an elbow bump. Freki is extra chummy and goes for a sidehug.

We all sit down and he asks us what brings us here.

“We were contacted by your wife because she is worried about you and what the weight of all this work you’ve been doing is doing to you mentally and physically,” says Bec, laying it all out there.

“She has made her feelings about these matters abundantly clear, but there is nothing that can be done about it,” says Kerwin.

“Why can nothing be done about it?” asks Bec.

“For the SPI to be involved, that would imply there was some wrongdoing, but that is not the case. This is between my ex-wife and myself. She does not approve of my business dealings.”

“Why wouldn’t she approve?” Bec asks.

Kerwin claims ignorance, but says he’s been very successful and it’s all due to this coffee pot. He gestures at it. It sits in the middle of his desk, plain as day. Honored and revered, even.

Bec asks about the coffee pot.

“It’s the secret of my success and the source of our disagreement, I’m afraid.”

Bec asks for more details. Kerwin says Serelda wanted him to choose between his business and her, and he chose the business. He’s open about the fact that he doesn’t look as he did in his youth (you don’t say), but he doesn’t care. That’s mere aesthetics to him. He mentions that I sold him the coffee pot and says he owes me a debt of gratitude, because his business is flourishing now. Maybe I can explain how it works?

Since he asked me directly, I answer that I’m glad it’s working out for him, but I don’t know how it works. The coffee pot wasn’t in my possession that long. Meanwhile, Bec’s gears are turning on that very topic. She doesn’t tell us until later, but she thinks this coffee pot was specifically made to give its user an edge in sales and business.

“Do you make the coffee, or is it always there?” Bec asks.

“It never runs out!” says Kerin, cheerfully. Everyone here is so happy. It’s very strange.

“Why did you choose this over your wife?” Bec asks.

“It was the last thing I wanted to do, but surely you can see what it’s done to me. I can’t stop using it now. I feel fantastic. The only downside is what you see, but I fear that if I stopped using the coffee pot, I’d just be an ugly old man.”

Then he says even if he could retire, he doesn’t know that he would. He just loves this line of work so much!

Bec makes the classic rookie error of asking about what he does. He is more than happy to tell us all about his contracts. Bec loves knowing things, but she pulls herself back from the edge when she realizes she really wants to buy something from this guy.

He offers property instead of items, blathering on about why you might want to purchase a distressed property. “Raspberry,” says Bec.

“Shh, baby bear,” says Oz, holding up a finger to Kerwin. He is attempting to panache him, which we’ve seen before. He changes his outfit to match Kerwin’s. Then he leans in conspiratorially and tries to bro down about Taelin, as a lead-in to asking about Serelda.

“How was she?” asks Kerwin.

“Bitchy,” says Oz, not inaccurately.

As it happens, Kerwin has a very big deal in the works. If it goes through, maybe he can retire and wouldn’t need the coffee pot? He either needs a replacement with no side effects, or maybe there’s a way to reverse them.

“You look kind of like melting butter,” says Oz.

“I am aware,” Kerwin agrees.

I ask him whether Serelda might have ties to people who would want the coffee pot. He thinks probably so; she also tried to get custody of it in their divorce. But it’s still his because he has an iron-clad legal claim to it and his expensive attorneys have drafted up all kinds of papers to say so.

Freki, for reasons that defy understanding, starts scooching his butt across the carpet. Kerwin is completely distracted. As am I. Neither one of us notices Oz slide some papers off the desk.

“Could you please refrain from scraping – this carpet was a gift that has great sentimental value to me!” says Kerwin.

Oz tells Kerwin to send the cleaning bill to the SPI, care of “M-a-o-lorry.”

Bec wraps things up so we can beat a hasty retreat. There’s not much more to say after your werewolf has done a butt-scoot on a priceless heirloom.

One of the front-office folks tells Oz he’s looking sharp. “Thanks my man, you too!” says Oz.

We stop to chat with Kerwin’s staff. “How do you know it’s not gonna brain-fuck you guys?”

“We’re fine,” they all agree. They’re sure the coffee pot has had a noticeable effect on business.

“So it helped him master the art of the deal?”

They think so, yes.

Oz asks whether they’re aware that Kerin might retire after the next big deal. The ladies are perfectly happy with whatever Kerwin wants to do. The guy doesn’t get why you’d stop when you’re raking in so much money. Anyway, they’ve all signed NDA’s so there’s a limit to how much they can tell us.

Taelin thinks they’d all be set for life if Kerwin retired, which is a weird thing to say about your boss. But she hopes the business keeps going because it’s so fun to work here! Look, I have managed employees, and this is more like a religion. Or a cult.

Oz asks about Serelda. They try to demur, but they let slip that Serelda has filed all kinds of papers trying to get ahold of the coffee pot. “And she has a lot of big feelings,” says Taelin. “It wasn’t a marriage of convenience?” says the red-skinned tiefling (he’s the bookkeeper and his name is Zarlas Shale). “She comes from a wealthy family. He married up, to be honest.”

While we’re talking to the office staff, Freki notices some plants. Fernadette! He goes to talk to his new friends. He asks them if anyone comes in after hours. One of them is kind of low-key distressed. It doesn’t like it here and would like to live somewhere else. Also it wants some water, which Freki gives it from a nearby watercooler.

Zarvus wants to know why Freki is so weird about the plant. Freki counters that if his tips were yellow, he would be concerned! He flashes his badge and “suggests” that the plant situation be better by the next time we visit.

“Water that executive palm!” Freki yells back through the door as we exit.

“I didn’t know it had a goddamn MBA. Shut up about the fuckin plants!” Oz complains.

“We have an inside man now!” Freki says.

Oz hands me the papers he pilfered and we head back to the office to see if Vex knows of a good place to eat.

Vex asks how it went and Freki says, “We made our mark.” On the carpet. Heyo!

Now that we’re outside the office, the effect of the coffee pot feels almost like a dream, like it’s hard to be confident that we really felt what we felt back there. When I had the pot, I felt it was dangerous and like I shouldn’t have it. Now I feel like maybe no one should have it.

For Vex’s benefit, Oz recaps our options: We could just break in and steal it, steal it and replace it with a fake, we could try to help him with his side effects, or we could replace it with something that works as well but without side effects.

Vex says this all presupposes that we even need to get the coffee pot. He thinks there’s more to this than meets the eye. It definitely isn’t just a lover’s quarrel. If the coffee pot is dangerous to society, we could remove it, but we would need proof for that.

We discuss the tavern situation with Vex. He tells us that each tavern in this district is affiliated with a gang, and as SPI, we shouldn’t be seen siding with any of them, even if it’s just to eat a sandwich.

(Out of game, Michael asks whether Freki is colorblind when he’s in wolf form. Curtis says “all he sees is RED.”)

Bec makes us invisible. When we leave, I’m not terribly stealthy (I’m gifted in other ways!) but I can fly silently with my wings.

We make our way to an alleyway across the street from Kerwin’s office. Bec and I circle around to the back. There’s a window, but on that side is the main office, not Kerwin’s office.

From the front, across the street, Freki and Oz observe three people entering the building, then they can see some movement behind Kerwin’s blinds.

I watch through the window for about an hour. Lotta books being kept in here, yessir.

Around 6:30, I see three people come up into the main office. They’re wearing hooded cloaks. One is bright yellow. One is green. They’re pretty short; gnomes or dwarves maybe? The third one is wearing an indigo blue cloak. Oh yeah – the Noffindorfs!

The SPI agents visited Olivan Transitional Assets in Minauros’s Harbor District, where they met Kerwin Decastine, a tiefling businessman whose body was being grotesquely consumed from the inside out due to his dependence on a mysterious bronze coffee pot. The pot emitted a sulfurous, alchemical aroma that bypassed rational thought entirely, stripping those exposed of their instinct for skepticism — a effect so prolonged in his employees that it had permanently altered their behavior. His assistant Taelin displayed this unsettling, deep-seated devotion firsthand, and was visibly wounded when Kerwin coldly dismissed any personal connection to her. After Bec identified the pot’s mechanism and the group proposed finding either a cure or a replacement in exchange for the item, Kerwin agreed to the deal. Freki, meanwhile, communed with the office’s ailing palm tree, which conveyed chronic distress from the foul air and a memory of a light-footed visitor returning to the office two days prior — suggesting someone, possibly Sorelda or her agent, had already made a move on the location. Ozborn quietly lifted a business contract from Kerwin’s desk before the group departed.

Back at the SPI branch, the party debriefed with Vex Morradine and weighed their options before splitting up for a stakeout of Kerwin’s building. Bec and Callie went invisible and monitored the alley, while Ozborn and Freki — after a chaotic rooftop climb involving an involuntary backflip and a teleporting dagger — took up a vantage point across the street. As evening fell, a magical bubble carriage arrived and three short, hooded figures in yellow, green, and indigo cloaks entered the building. Callie recognized the rainbow-colored cloaks with cold certainty: they belonged to the Noffindorf family, the same family tied to the secretive manufacturing deal at the heart of Kerwin’s most lucrative business arrangement.

The SPI agents made their way to the third floor of a recently renovated building in Minauros’s Harbor District, where a sign bearing a steaming coffee pot marked their destination: Olivan Transitional Assets. A deep, sulfurous, and sickeningly sweet odor seeped through the very frame of the glass-walled office door, and Freki, whose senses were sharper than most, caught a concentrated waft of it the moment the door swung open — his eyes dilating as the smell hit him like a wave. Inside, three tiefling employees worked cheerfully at their desks, each wearing a slight, unsettling smile that seemed to belong to people who had forgotten what it felt like to have a bad day.

They were greeted by Taelin Fosse, a blue-skinned tiefling who had been with Kerwin Decastine since the very first year of his business. She radiated a kind of infectious, almost brainwashed cheerfulness — not the happiness of someone having a good day, but the deep, structural contentment of someone whose capacity for doubt had been quietly erased. Bec, whose training made her acutely sensitive to such things, sensed that Taelin was not charmed in any conventional sense, but that something far more insidious had taken root in her — as though her mind had been washed clean of any instinct to question the man she served. Taelin led the group up the back stairs toward Kerwin’s private office, and as she knocked on his door and announced the SPI’s arrival, Freki caught a whispered phrase she offered her employer — “my son, my stars” — and blurted it aloud to the entire room, sending a flush of deep embarrassment across Taelin’s face.

Kerwin Decastine was not what any of them had expected. He was a tiefling man in his early fifties, well-dressed in the manner of a successful businessman, but his body told a different story entirely. His skin had turned a sulfurous yellow-green, his eyes glowed with a sickly ooze rather than any natural light, and his teeth, when he briefly forgot to keep his lips pressed together, were stained a deep black-green. His torso was grotesquely distended, barrel-like below and sunken above, the body of a man being slowly consumed from the inside out. He welcomed the agents warmly, gesturing to the chairs arranged before his desk, and waited for them all to sit before lowering himself into his own seat — a small, deliberate power move that was not lost on the group.

Kerwin made no secret of the source of his success. He gestured to an ornate bronze coffee pot sitting on his desk like a trophy, its strange markings etched around the base, its aroma filling the room with that same cloying, sulfurous sweetness that had been seeping through the building since their arrival. He admitted freely that it had cost him his marriage — that Sorelda had demanded he choose between her and the carafe, and that he had chosen wrong, by which he meant he had chosen correctly. Bec examined the pot closely and came to a chilling conclusion: it was not a charm spell, not an enchantment in any traditional sense, but something alchemical and olfactory — a mechanism that bypassed the brain’s ability to evaluate trust entirely, leaving its victims feeling perfectly clear-headed while stripping away every instinct for caution or skepticism. She further realized that the employees, having been exposed to it daily for years, had been permanently altered — behavioral grooves worn so deep that even leaving the office would not easily undo what had been done to them.

The conversation turned to business, and Kerwin revealed that Olivan Transitional Assets dealt in shipping, distressed acquisitions, and the controversial licensing of bloodlocked spells — a practice common in Trell, where arcane research could be patented and sold under strict legal contracts that prevented the spells from being freely copied. Callie’s blood ran cold at the mention of it, recognizing the implications immediately. Ozborn, meanwhile, deployed his considerable charm, calling Kerwin “Baby Bear” with such disarming confidence that the businessman’s guard dropped entirely for a moment. When Ozborn pressed him about Taelin, Kerwin dismissed her coldly — “With her? Of course not” — and the hurt that crossed her face before she quietly excused herself was plain to see. The party proposed helping Kerwin find either a cure for his deteriorating condition or a suitable replacement for the carafe, in exchange for the item itself, and Kerwin agreed that under those terms, he would be willing to part with it.

The exit from the office was not without incident. Freki, whose connection to the natural world was as instinctive as breathing, had noticed the executive palm tree near the door — a six-foot indoor palm with yellowing leaf tips and fronds drooping in the wrong direction, growing not toward the light of the windows but away from the coffee pot and toward the stairs. He communed with it quietly, sensing its chronic distress over the foul air and its disturbing awareness that it was growing in the wrong direction and could not stop itself. It also conveyed a memory of a relatively light-footed presence returning to the office two days prior after a long absence — someone who had been there before. Freki watered the plant from the office cooler, attempted to convince the staff to relocate it, and had to be gently but firmly steered toward the exit by his teammates, with Ozborn assuring the bewildered employees that Freki had been kicked in the head by a mule as a child.

Back at the SPI branch, the party debriefed with Vex Morradine, laying out everything they had learned. They debated their options — theft, replacement, finding a cure, or leveraging Kerwin’s desire to close his major deal — and Ozborn produced the business contract he had quietly lifted from Kerwin’s desk while Freki’s rear end was making its memorable impression on the man’s expensive rug. Vex warned them that Trell’s laws were strict and that the Harbor District’s color-coded gangs made any of the local taverns a political minefield, before agreeing to fetch dinner while the others conducted a stakeout of Kerwin’s building. The party suspected that Sorelda herself, or someone acting on her behalf, had already attempted to access the office — the plant’s memory of a light-footed visitor two days prior pointed to exactly that.

The stakeout split the group in two. Bec rendered herself and Callie invisible, and Callie used her ability to levitate to drift silently through the alleyway behind the building, watching for movement at the back. Ozborn and Freki made for the rooftop of the building across the street — a journey that involved Ozborn losing his grip on the sheer wall, executing an involuntary backflip to land safely on his feet, and ultimately teleporting to the top using his magical dagger after Freki had secured a rope with a grappling hook. From their crumbling vantage point, they watched as two of Kerwin’s employees departed for the evening, and then, as the light faded, a magical carriage shaped like a floating bubble arrived at the front of the building. Three short-statured figures in hooded cloaks — one yellow, one green, one indigo — stepped out, and one of them pressed a hand to the carriage, which shrank into his palm before they entered. Callie, watching from the alley as the figures made their way up to Kerwin’s third-floor office, felt a cold recognition settle over her: the rainbow-colored cloaks belonged to the Noffindorf family — the same family connected to the Noffindorf manufacturing subsidiary at the center of Kerwin’s most lucrative and secretive deal.

Last we left off, our agents of the SPI made their way to the Harbor District of Minauros, climbing to the third floor of a freshly renovated building to pay a visit to a man named Kerwin Decastine — proprietor of Olivan Transitional Assets, dealer in shipping, distressed acquisitions, and the legally murky trade of bloodlocked spells. What they found there was not merely a successful businessman, but a man being slowly devoured by his own ambition — his skin turned sulfurous yellow-green, his teeth blackened, his body grotesquely reshaped by years of proximity to an ornate bronze coffee pot that had become the true engine of his empire. The carafe, they discovered, worked not through charm or enchantment, but through something alchemical and olfactory — a mechanism that stripped away every instinct for doubt while leaving its victims feeling perfectly, terrifyingly clear-headed. His employees had been altered beyond easy recovery, and Taelin Fosse, his most devoted assistant, bore the deepest marks of all.

The agents negotiated carefully, proposing to find Kerwin either a cure for his deteriorating condition or a suitable replacement for the carafe in exchange for the item itself — a deal he accepted. Freki, ever attuned to the living world around him, paused long enough to commune with the office’s executive palm tree, which had been silently growing away from the pot’s foul aura for years and carried with it a memory: a light-footed visitor, two days prior, returning after a long absence. Meanwhile, Ozborn had quietly relieved Kerwin’s desk of a rather important business contract, and the party brought everything back to Vex Morradine for a full debrief.

Now, as night settled over the Harbor District, the group split to conduct a stakeout of Kerwin’s building — and their patience was rewarded. A magical carriage shaped like a floating bubble arrived at the front of the building, and from it stepped three short, cloaked figures in yellow, green, and indigo. Callie felt the cold weight of recognition settle over her as they disappeared inside: the rainbow-colored cloaks of the Noffindorf family, connected to the very manufacturing subsidiary at the heart of Kerwin’s most secretive and lucrative deal. Whatever is moving in the shadows of Olivan Transitional Assets, it is moving fast — and our agents find themselves squarely in its path…

To Minauros’s harbour they climbed,
Where sulfur and sweetness were rhymed.
A carafe of bronze
Stripped doubt from the pawns —
And Kerwin was rotting, slimed!

His skin had gone yellow-green sour,
His teeth black as mold in a tower.
He’d chosen the pot
O’er his wife — like as not —
And called it his finest hour!

Bec studied the carafe with care:
No charm spell, but something more rare —
Alchemical trust,
Inhaled like a gust,
That left victims blissfully unaware!

The palm tree grew away from the stench,
And Freki knelt down on the bench.
It whispered of feet,
Light-footed, discreet —
A visitor, two days hence!

Then nightfall brought cloaks of the rainbow,
Three figures stepped out from their bubble-carriage’s glow.
The Noffindorf name
Set Callie’s blood aflame —
The deal’s shadowed players now show!

Welcome to the episode where the party visited a perfectly normal office building and found a man who is literally being digested alive by a coffee pot — and he’s fine with it. Great. Kerwin Decastine, tiefling entrepreneur and cautionary tale in a waistcoat, has built his entire business empire on a magic carafe that makes everyone around him incapable of thinking he’s a bad idea. His employees have the glazed, structural contentment of people who have simply forgotten that skepticism exists. His most devoted assistant whispers “my son, my stars” to him like a prayer. His office palm tree is growing AWAY from him in silent, arboreal protest. The plant has better survival instincts than everyone else in the building combined.

The party struck a deal — cure the man or replace the pot, get the pot — and then immediately started a rooftop stakeout that involved Ozborn falling off a wall, executing an accidental backflip, and eventually just teleporting up like a normal person. Their patience paid off when a bubble-shaped magic carriage pulled up and deposited three cloaked figures in coordinated rainbow colors directly into Kerwin’s building. The Noffindorf family has arrived, and Callie recognized them instantly, because of course the most secretive and lucrative deal in the city is connected to the people already circling this cursed coffee pot. Everything is fine.