RECAP
The group made the arduous trek to Melg without incident. Once there, we were treated to a fine meal and rooms for the night. We parted ways with the guards who brought us here and were then met the next morning by our guide, a refined looking light skinned Orcish Har Alta of some repute. He said he would be taking us to the festival.
He escorted us through the city and into the shopping district which spanned a half mile. We made it to the end of the stores lined up outside the city and entered an area that led to what the Har Alta referred to as the Hall of Good Fortune. This was the corridor leading to the gladiatorial events and, of course, the festival of which he spoke. We all took in the sights and sounds of the thousands of people attending the festivities, then the Har Alta told us we were to be tested before meeting the Emperor. We gasped as we thought this meant mortal combat, but to our relief, it wasn't. Instead, we were tasked with figuring out if the Emperor was attending the event, and if so, we had to locate him on our own. We were given one hour to complete this test.
We immediately split up in small groups. Artur went to the bar areas in order to determine if anyone would give up his location if drunk enough. Ozrick and Taye went off to the fighting pits. Oz and Gareth went to the shopping district to obtain some coin with the Emperor's face on it, and Yoshi began praying for a Divination spell to get some answers. We spent about a half hour doing various things, but nothing helped and we couldn't find him.
After about ten more minutes of conversing with the crowd and trying to figure things out, Taye and Oz went to a guarded back entrance of the arena and Taye used his psychic powers to Scry through the doors. He found the Emperor's personal guards standing at attention facing the crowd outside, but no sign of the Emperor. Meanwhile, we met up with one of the more unique contestants of the games; a Chosen of Frostine in heavy cloak and hunched over to meet the gaze of most people. He eventually took an interest in all of us and joined us in looking for the Emperor since he knew what he looked like having seen him at the beginning of each day's opening ceremony. He revealed himself to be about nine feet tall when fully standing, but couldn't spot him.
At this point, we were running out of time and Gareth decided to give up and throw back a few cold ones. At one of the bars, he met up with someone watching his surroundings and sitting quietly at the bar. Gareth eventually found out this was one of the Emperor's attendants and he told him that the Emperor likes to be entertained. Gareth returned to the group, who at this point resorted to gaudy magic tricks and embarrassing displays of oration atop a floating disk to try to get the Emperor's attention. Nothing worked until Yoshi realized he should probably read the prophecies he had recorded over time. Sure enough, there was one prophecy with an image of dancing Orcs. We made the connection that the Emperor likes to be entertained and darted over to the dancing Orcs at the other end of the arena. We got there, Oz held up one of the Orcish coins, and saw an uncanny resemblance to the Emperor among the dancers. With about a minute to spare, as the Har Alta was descending the stairs where we were all standing in order to inform us of our failure, we introduced ourselves and the Emperor immediately acknowledged our arrival and the fulfillment of this part of the prophecy.
With that, we were welcomed with open arms and the Emperor cleared a path among the crowd to take us back to his mobile chambers for a private discussion. That's where we left off. DM had much more planned, but between our lousy rolls and terrible oversights of the obvious, we stopped there. Thus, you didn't actually miss the season finale which is now scheduled for next week.
