Headmaster Flint Stone gathers a band of adventurers with nothing better to be doing around town: Ragu the lunch vendor, Warrior Geoff, and Post Macrowne (the half-elf formerly known as Crickets), to contend with a rising issue: the lowering water level of the river, which has been problematic for the merchant boat that regularly visits, and is worrying the farmers.

Geoff reminds Flint that Castor Stone exists, and may know a thing or two about water level management, so they climb the wizard school tower to the highest floor currently constructed: the 4th, where he’s working behind a desk covered in paperwork. While he isn’t overly connected to the local dam builders union, we convinced him to join us as the forests of Chult are at least far more interesting than bureaucracy.

The crew boards their Ship of Theseus, intent to sail it as far upstream as it’ll go. Geoff Armstrong uses his strong arms to row dual oars of the boat upstream, while Flint and Castor work on designing upgrades to the keelboat to improve its powertrain, imagining a sort of Paddleboat design which could hybridly use either Gust of Wind or a stationary bike as a mechanical backup.

By the afternoon, we encountered a camp of lizards, who seemed friendly enough, though they too were concerned by the lowering water levels, and mentioned a few of their hunters had gone north to investigate. Our chef’s enchanted cast-iron pan impressed them, and they traded biscuits for… cannibal ‘drumsticks’.

A full day further up river, our birds eye view provided by Mr. Macrowne caught some beavers chopping down trees, and a grand wooden fortress of a dam blocking the river’s flow, forming an enormous lake in the valley behind it. We could see the tips of the occasional trees poking above the lake’s rising surface, with our closer forest primarily reduced to rough stumps. The lizard hunting party evidently met their end there, impaled on wooden spikes.

Hey Castor, are those dam quality trees there? Those are some dam good trees. We’ll have to find some dam’ing evidence.

Having initially scattered upon seeing us, we’re soon approached by a group of beavers which look quite similar to Castor, being led by a proud looking beaver bearing a white spot on his forehead. Castor attempts to communicate in beaver cant, worried he’ll be rusty after not using it for so long, but he has a surprisingly easy time conveying complex topics - and with the way the leading beaver looked at us as we spoke, led us to worry they were awakened as well.

We tried to explain (first with Castor as a 2 way translator, and then more directly) that their impressive dam was blocking a bit too much of the water and it was hurting the lands, including our town downstream, but he almost seemed smug at that result. We asked if there was anything we could bargain them for in exchange for relaxing the dam, at which point the beavers wanted us to continue the discussion inside their wooden fortress. As if to further establish themselves in the power dynamic, with a few stomps of his tail, some much larger Chultian beavers emerged from the woods, with more white-spotted smaller beavers riding them with harnesses, who then led us up to, and inside, the dam.

We learned the smaller beavers were actually from the old world too, from a pond close to Castor’s, and were similarly boxed and shipped across the sea, before being dumped outside the market into the forests. A friendly two-legged fellow dressed in plants helped them survive, and ultimately thrive. And he told them stories of the terribleness civilization can bring to an ecology…

I channel my ki through my teeth – a hypothetical monk with a dig speed (powered by… teeth)

As we’re led deeper into the dam fortress, we find a wooden throne room of sorts, filled with more white-spotted beavers, with one sitting on an arrangement of wood quite alike a seat, or throne. The leader on it seemed quite antagonistic, despite Geoff’s endearing attempts at peace brokering, until Flint mentioned he’d helped Castor achieve sapience, which seemed to intrigue them. He asked if we had any large Agates, and then sent us to speak with their local expert.

We find a fellow shackled in several layers of iron, inside a wooden cage, a foresty looking human who, we learn, was the druid Tobias who Awakened them all, but was locked up when he started reconsidering the expansionist path they were going down. They had evidently taken some of his hippy complaints about cities being bad a little far, with goals of sieging them out of existence. He seemed surprised Flint was able to awaken Castor so unconventionally, as typically the Druidic ritual involves embedding the Agate stones into the animal’s head, but Castor bears no such spot. Flint, having no memory of the specifics beyond his written notes, tries to lean on swagger as cover for ignorance. Through brief mumblings in draconic, the druid conveyed that he wanted help escaping, ideally with his cat Tony, so Geoff heroically volunteered to trade places with him as collateral, so that he could leave with us and gather the large Agates they so dearly sought. Geoff winked at us, as if he somehow had a foolproof plan of his own to escape - probably one of those feats of strength he likes to impress upon us!

As the party, one Human Fighter lighter and a hippy in his place, begins to leave the dam, Geoff is - at his request - escorted to Tony the sabertooth tiger’s cell, who seems at least calmed by the mention of Tobias’s greetings.

Previous Chapter: Greenstone Town Directory

Next Chapter: Puzzles

Dramatis Personae

• B - Flint Stone, amnesiac wizard, Wizard/Monk School Headmaster and Head Mayor of Greenstone
• N - Ragu, sage Lizard Chef
• D - Post Macrowne (aka The half-elf formerly known as Crickets), eyes in the sky
• G - Geoffery Armstrong, Human Fighter with a heart of gold? definitely has a heart there, yep.
• Castor Stone, Awakened Beaver, first pupil/son of the aloof Flint Stone, increasingly capable mute Mage