Zephyr's Farm

 Present:

• 

  Selina Porshay

  Sophia Beauchamp (half-elf priest 21) - Ian
• Joe Manco (human fighter) - Shane
• MARMALADE: Balder Dash (gnome wizard) - Jamie
• Slim Jim (human rogue) - Darryl
• Walton Formalin (half-elf mystic of 21) - Andrew
• Red Feuersturm (human temple fighter of Hob) - Chris
• MARMALADE: Donk Platebreaker (human fighter) - Jeff
• Malcolm Gandhi (gnome thief) - Kevin

By Walton

[ NOTE: All the pictures are bespoke using Stable Diffusion (A1111) running on my PC. ]

We were in the city of Draser. We were trying to find Selina Porshay at the behest of Simone Fussell. Selina was the daughter of wizard Jason Porshay who had got into a large gambling debt; she had been kidnapped by the evil Zephyr the Turk when Jason could not pay the debt, and, we suspect, enslaved and taken to his saffron farm downstream the Draser river. 

In was further rumoured that Zephyr had been kidnapping the daughters of wealthy Draser locals for a years. Whether this was with the blessing of the Globe Casino, the Draser rulers and, perhaps, the Draser Thieves Guild, we had no idea. But it did seem odd that people of power let him get away with this, if true.

According to Tommo Fussell, the saffron produced by Zephyr's farm and picked by his slave girls, was one of the best quality saffrons in the Known World, and it had special, almost magical, powers (one of its powers was rumoured to enhance male performance). The rumour continued in that the reason for this superb quality was because the saffron was harvested by "special" slave girls.

I tried to push Tommo on this matter. What made the slave girls special? Did they have some unusual unique characteristic that made them different from any old saffron harvester, be she slave or nay? But Tommo could not think of anything special, so didn't know. Maybe it was just a rumour.

Tommo and Simone further asked us that when we got into the mansion of Zephyr, that could we take the accounting ledger of Zephyr? It would get more evidence against the Globe that Simone could use. We, of course, enthusiastically said "Yes! Anything for Vingt-et-Un!"

Tommo arranged for a barge to take us downstream to Zephyr's farm. The trip would take two days.

We had some treasures that needed identifying, and tonight was a good opportunity to do this. So, I used the Identify spell on the Thieves Tools - they were +1. And on the magic dust: it was actually enchanted saffron, 5 doses, each one makes the breather's Mind immune to Charm and ESP spells.

Cortez barge

Next day we boarded the barge. It was captained by Hamish Cortez. He had two mates Freddy and Ben. The rest of us would pose as his "crew."

Hamish said that the Zephyr farm was one league inland from the Klib bank of the Draser river (on our left as we went downstream). Out of note, upstream of the Zephyr farm was the McKenzie farm, and further downstream was the Charles farm.

We spent a lazy day watching the banks go by as the barge drifted downstream. The area around Draser was one of the most fertile patches of land in the known world. So, we saw farm after farm, luxuriant and bucolic. More crops and horticulture tended to be on the Zephyr side (Klibwards) and livestock on the Funken side.

That night, the barge moored at a way-station on the Funken bank. They don't sail barges downstream at night - it is too dangerous to not hit bars and shoals. (Upstream travel is by horses pulling barges, so is much slower, so upstream barges do keep moving all night. The upstream speed is less than half downstream speed, so plenty of time to spot those hidden bars, plus the horse team is way out in front of the barge, so can provide plenty of warning).

The next day was uneventful until 4 be'light. We passed the Zephyr jetty. There was a small guardhouse and we could see two bored guards there. A track went off through the scrub and Hamish told us that Zephyr's actual farm was just over the ridge.

We stopped 90 minutes further downstream and all surreptitiously disembarked. 

saffron crocus

"I will be at this very spot in 6 days," Hamish said. "Make sure you are, if you want a ride back to Draser. I will not wait."

We made our way to the close hill, out of sight of the Zephyr jetty, and crossed it.

In a circular basin, a few kilometres wide, was Zephyr's saffron farm. Rows and rows of the purple flower covered the entire basin. In the centre was a fenced 50x50 paces compound with buildings and guard towers.

[ The active component of saffron is from the red stigmas of the flower - each flower has three. The three stigmas of one saffron crocus, when dried, weigh only 7 mg, so you need 150 flowers (450 stigmas) to get a gram of saffron, or 150,000 to get a kilogram. It's very labour-intensive to harvest, and takes 40 hours of fiddly work to pick 150,000 flowers (450K stigmas). That's about one flower per second. Retail 2023 price is NZ$30,000 per kg for Te Anau saffron, or $15,000 per kg for others. ]

Picking saffron

We found a copse on the edge of the farm (far side away from the river) and waited and watched. Points of interest:

• There was a low wire that surrounded the entire area of the farm about knee-height. There were no saffron crocuses outside this wire.
• Two ogres were let out at night. They stuck religiously to the paths.
• During the day, six women, four guards and four dogs were sent into the fields. The women worked picking the ripe saffron while the men guarded. We assumed that the girls were slaves, but they were clothed and not mistreated.

Along the edge of the basin, we came across a spring bubbling up in a little stone well. Next to the well was a cave. The spring water flowed down here, next to a path, into the cave.

Gandhi investigated and returned reporting a large bear on a chain. Rather than slay the guard bear, Sophia charmed it (with Charm Animal spell [ this is a level 3 spell. Sophia took 4 attempts, and 12 points to get it to work - she is not very good at this spell! ]).

After this was a long winding underground path where we followed the stream. It proceeded under the basin and under, we guessed, Zephyr's compound. 

Exploring, we used Gandhi as a sneaky vanguard with the rest of the group not moving into an area until he cleared it, and thus we explored most of the paths. There was a small cave complex here with some fungi caves, pools of water, a guard cave with a single guard, and eventually Gandhi found a suspicious dead-end.

Axe man

We were very low on spells; Sophia and I were all but drained, so we need to rest the night. We stayed in the fungi cave. That didn't turn out to be such a good idea. We all awoke with severe eczema and asthma, and poisoned.

The guardsman was strange - he was a great big guy, naked wearing an apron, with a huge axe. Not wanting to fight him, I got him with a Sleep spell. Then Joe killed him. We tried to make it look like an accident. The axe man had a whittling knife and we arranged it to look like he slipped while whittling and cut a wrist artery. Blood everywhere.

And now we stand next to a secret door. With eight hours left before dawn, suspecting this passage emerges somewhere in the central compound.