Session 13 - Some joke about a house, a golem and a frog

Things moved quickly this week, though in a way that mostly involved standing ankle-deep in water and trying not to think about how much worse things could still become.

When we arrived at Emike's building, the situation was grim. The river dike had given way somewhere upstream, and an entire section of the district had been swallowed by floodwater. Most buildings were either submerged or damaged beyond saving. Somehow, Emike's building was still standing, stubbornly refusing to join the rest of the area in collapsing into the mud.

I spent most of the day helping repair the breached dike. Kinetic shaping turned out to be extremely useful for moving wood where it was needed. By the end we had restored a large section of it, but it became obvious that patching the breach would not be enough. The ground throughout the area was soaked and unstable. If anything was going to survive long enough for proper reconstruction, it would be Emike's building, and that would require significant fortification.

While examining the damage, it occurred to us that the real problem was not the water itself, but the ground beneath it. If we could somehow help the land recover more quickly, perhaps we could restore stability to the entire area.

That thought led Meera and me to the library.

After a fair amount of research, we managed to find a ritual that seemed promising. Unfortunately, one of the central components involved performance and storytelling, which immediately made me think we would have a problem. I can recite useless facts for hours, but asking me to captivate an audience would likely end in disaster.

Fortunately, Okoro volunteered. His role was to recount the original nature of the land, telling stories of what the area was before the flood and calling upon those memories through the ritual.

Our first attempt was... disappointing.

I am still not entirely sure where we went wrong. The ritual simply failed to take hold. Perhaps the timing was off. Perhaps one of the symbolic elements was incomplete. Whatever the cause, nothing happened.

The second attempt, however, worked beautifully.

The energy settled into the land, the ritual took root, and we immediately saw signs that the ground was beginning to recover. There was cheering, celebration, and a general sense that maybe we had actually accomplished something meaningful.

We had a show-and-tell session, which somehow always manages to become more dangerous than actual field assignments.

Mariama had brought a golem equipped with a wand. There was something strange about the construct from the very beginning. I could not identify exactly what was wrong, but the whole thing felt off. The moment several of us started paying closer attention, the golem abruptly activated and focused on Rib.

The construct proved alarmingly dangerous.

It moved with supernatural speed, cast spells rapidly, and hit hard enough that I was very glad not to be standing directly in front of it. Once we managed to yank the wand out of the golem, we gained enough control over the situation to order it to stand down.

Afterward, we learned that the construct had apparently identified Rib's shield as some kind of evil object. Whether that was a flaw in its programming or a problem with the shield itself remains unclear. Personally, I think there are several questions that should be asked before anyone is allowed to bring magically armed constructs into a classroom.

The week was not over yet, however.

We received another assignment from Janatimo, who wanted to know why street performers had recently become targets of a wave of robberies. The pattern was oddly specific. The victims were usually attacked while packing up after performances, at precisely the moment they would be carrying the most coin. Instruments were often stolen as well.

After some investigation, we tracked the scheme back to a small gang consisting of two lizardfolk and an elf. Their leader was someone named Raf.

The operation itself was not particularly sophisticated. They had simply identified an easy target and exploited it repeatedly. To their credit, it apparently worked for quite a while.

To their lesser credit, they also managed to anger their employer.

During our investigation, references were made to their boss, someone we have apparently heard about before. Frustratingly, I can’t fully remember the name. All I know is that it sounded distinctly... froglike.

I have written exactly as much information as "sounds froggy" in my notes.

I sincerely hope that will be useful later. Past experiences suggests it probably will be. Unfortunately, past experiences also suggests that when comments like that become important, things tend to get much more dangerous shortly afterward.