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js_thrillMy summary of our Avatar the Last Airbender: Legends Session One
We pick up immediately where we last left our heroes, ushering Kallik's wounded ?th cousin, Tapisa, back to Opal's restaurant Continental Drift. In the kitchen's stock room, a cot is set up, and Opal tries to tend to Tapisa's leg, as Tapisa implores Kallik to help with Tapisa's mission as a member of the Northern Water Tribe military. Tapisa has heard that someone in Zeng Chu Cove's militia/military has made arrangements to get a boat through to the Northern Water Tribe, and is supposed to investigate. He is still planning to go, but his injured leg prevents him. Kallik agrees to investigate. Meanwhile, Po has excused herself to the kitchen and gotten permission to use some of Opal's cookware ("not the good pots!") to whip together a painkiller, and she won't be upset if it also has some side effects that loosen Tapisa's tongue a little bit. After all, the group's mission is to protect the peace and the culture of the town, not to work for the Water Tribe army. Plus, she wants to see whether Tapisa is reluctant to accept medical help from someone who isn't a straight-up water tribe member. Tapisa accepts the pain-relief tea, and opens up a bit more about how he wound up in Zeng Chu Cove. The increased hostilities post-Tsunami led a number of merchant ships to request undercover military presence on trading ships, and in this case, Tapisa just happened to be sent along with the secondary mission to look into the potential incursion by the Earth Kingdom. Excitable as Tapisa was about the possible outcomes of looking into this secret military boat, it seemed to the group that Tapisa was genuinely aiming to prevent escalation of the conflict. They agree to help, and get the information about where the ship is being docked.
Po and Kallik head off to the marina to do some initial reconnaissance. The boat itself is non-descript. Not impressive enough as a vessel to be a warship, but being guarded by a number of undercover militia members, they'll have to get on-board to find out what is going on. They return to the restaurant and Po proposes a plan: damage the boat and offer to repair it. Initially she proposes making a small batch of acid that Kallik could waterbend at high velocity at the boat's hull, but if Kallik doesn't hit the right place, or time it correctly, the boat might sink. Not knowing what—or who—is on the boat, Opal is not sure how she feels about the risks of this plan. Po suggests they could instead have Kallik waterbend some obstructions into the rudder so that the boat will start to angle at the boat next to it at the docks. If the folks guarding it are trying to keep a low profile, they will very much want someone to fix it before it starts colliding with it's neighbor, giving her and her assistant (Kallik) an opportunity to get onboard. Opal is more comfortable with this plan, but not wild about Kallik heading into the dangerous situation.
At the docks, Kallik waterbends a little too well, and instead of a leisurely drift towards the neighboring boat, their target boat is basically whooshing straight at its neighbor. Kallik compensates for this by waterbending a wave to adjust the boat positions and buy some time back, which knocks two of the guards off the boat. Po and Kallik then smoothtalk their way onto the ship, Po explaining that she can tell that something's been caught in the rudder mechanism; and as someone with a background in boat construction and repair, she could help fix it so that they don't have any risk of dockside collisions. Due in part to the level of success on Po's roll, here, the Guard in question is extremely helpful, pointing out not only how to get to the area of the ship that would be useful for conducting the repairs, but also explaining that a certain room is off-limits, even to the guards, and that no one is permitted to go near it, except Sheriff Woong. Po and Kallik proceed to head down to the lower level of the ship, and excuse the (very helpful) guard while they get to work fixing the rudder. Po realizes that the off-limits room is serviced by the same dumwaiter that goes to the captain's cabin, and sends Kallik into the dumwaiter for recon purposes only; basically spying through the cracks in the dumwaiter door, rather than opening it. Kallik sees two people in the room: a woman and child, they seem to be nervous, but not scared. They have a general sense of danger, though this doesn't seem to be an invasion force of earth benders like Tapisa was worried about, or some sort of secret weapon. Thinking back to his own experience as a refugee, that's the most similar thing Kallik can think of to what he is seeing about their mood. As they are departing the boat, the overly helpful guard thanks them profusely, mentioning that he'd have been in big trouble if the boat had been damaged since it was slated to depart tomorrow.
Kallik doesn't know the people in the room, having just arrived recently. Po doesn't recognize them by description, having just gotten back to town. They hightail it off the boat and return to Opal, who does. "That sounds almost exactly like Sheriff Woong's wife Yong and daughter Pushi." Tapisa jumps into the conversation: "Aha! So it is an invasion force of powerful earth benders!" Except Woong's wife isn't a bender, and as far as anyone knows, neither was his daughter. "Then why would he be making such complex secret arrangements to send them to the Northern Water Tribe?"
They brainstorm some possible theories as to what could be going on, and realize they need to talk to people who might know more. Kallik says they should just go confront Sheriff Woong with what they know. Opal worries that this might be dangerous. Po says the alternative is for her to talk to her parents, who have lived in the village for their entire lives and probably know lots of details about people like the Sheriff and his wife. "So, I guess Kallik's plan it is," Po says. Tapisa suggests they could get a trinket of some sort and make as if they are returning it to the Sheriff's daughter, to see how the Sheriff reacts. They pick up some earrings at a nearby store, and go to Woong's house. Kallik attempts to "return" the earrings to Woong, saying they were left at Continental Drift, and the Sheriff blusters at the suggestion his daughter would eat there. He is proud in claiming that she has strong earth kingdom heritage. Kallik extracts a promise to return the earrings to her, and trips the Sheriff up slightly when mentioning how impressive his daughter is. The sheriff notably calms when Kallik says that she is impressive academically.
The group returns home, now highly suspicious that the Sheriff's daughter is potentially water tribe, or not really his own daughter, or something of that nature, but still in need of confirmation. Po invites her parents to Continental Drift for dinner. Between heavy servings of guilt and fish stew, and bizarrely passive aggressive compliments from Po's mother towards the restaurant, the conversation does eventually turn to the matter of mixed heritage families. Despite Po's parents being a mixed marriage themselves, this is a topic they are very reluctant to discuss. ("I don't see why people need to put labels on things, or announce it to the whole world, you can just quietly be who you are and keep your head down!"). Eventually, though, they get what amounts to confirmation that Yong's father was water tribe, though this is definitely not widely known, and was almost certainly not known to Woong when he married Yong (it may not have even been known to Yong herself).
After another serving or two of guilt, Po's parents depart, and the group asesses what they have figured out. Though they remain unclear on Woong's motives, they are fairly certain that his daughter must have recently manifested water bending, and he has gone to great lengths to arrange to get her out of the village. Since he has been publicly quite indifferent to the issues facing mixed-families and refugees, many questions remain, but one question that arises now is: how did Woong get the money to arrange a special boat, hire guards off-the-books, bribe members of the water-tribe blockade, etc. On the other hand, it was time to tell Tapisa that this doesn't seem like any sort of military threat to worry about.
As to the money question, the group went to go see theirgood friend new associate Hanna and inquire about Woong's finances. Hanna invites them in and says "what brings you by?" to which Kallik begins narrating the events of the day and evening more or less verbatim. Opal and Po's jaws drop as they are stunned that Kallik doesn't understand how information exchanges with underworld figures work (though, in fairness, Kallik is a 14 year old refugee, and so it is not exactly surprising). Hanna just starts taking notes on what Kallik is saying until the adults step in and suggest it might work better if there was some sort of exchange of information. Eventually, Hanna reveals that Woong has taken out loans which, indirectly, she holds, in part because she thought it was better for her to hold the loans than for someone nefarious to have the Sheriff in their pocket. She had simply assumed the Sheriff had a gambling probem, but she is not intrigued by the information about what the money was really needed for. She inquires about whether there was some reason for her to try to delay/stop the ship's departure, but the group is not interested in preventing the Sheriff's wife/daughter from getting to safety. Before leaving, Hanna encourages Opal to attend the upcoming Banquet of the New Moon in a week's time, as a reputable business person, and a) put a word in the ears of council members that the council is in need of expansion, given the recent growth of the village, and b) try to throw some support behind Beryl Qiang (owner of Beryl's Barrels, who is under Hanna's thumb, as a candidate for the new council seat. The more successful the group is at this task, the more Hanna will throw her organization behind things like better fish prices for the restaurant, safety patrols in their neighborhoods, etc. Classic back-scratching arrangement.
The next day, Tapisa was well enough to be moved upstairs, so that the restaurant could re-open with lower chances of the water tribe military member slash spy being found in the kitchen, and the group decided to do some recon on people who might be at this banquet. Po invited the head of the dockworkers to Continental Drift but he suggested dinner at Wang's Wings ("Best Turkey-Badger Wings in all of Chenbao!"), because he doesn't like that fancy food with all the weird spices. At the meal they talk about who might be in the market for a boat, since that's Po's line of expertise, and he mentions some obvious candidates (rattling off some rich people in town, basically, and anyone who lost a boat in the Tsunami), and then does eventually think of two merchants who are new to town: Aster Li and Garnet Cho. These merchants work separately, are not particular about what they buy or sell, and are very keen to learn the whole supply chain, from who makes the goods and how it gets made, to how it is shipped and stored, etc. Po thinks to herself: "these sound like spies, and perhaps, much better spies than Tapisa."
Later in the day, back at Continental Drift, after the departure time of the boat with Woong's wife and daughter, Woong enters Continental Drift and loudly announces that he has looked into the report that Opal filed about the incident at her restaurant, and that it was without merit. He warns her off of filing frivolous reports at the sheriff's department in the future. Quietly, before he leaves, he hands a folded paper packet to Kallik and mentions that his daughter said that these were not her earrings.
He then leaves, reminding Opal and everyone there not to cause trouble or file false reports. Kallik tears open the packet and examines the paper, which appears to be from a council meeting, or at least from a council member, and references a plan called "Peace through Partition" for addressing the refugee issues and rising violence/disarray by redistricting the village to create separate areas specific to different groups. The plans are not entirely present on the paper, but it appears to have been written in a way to woo the mayor (focusing on how to calm/ease the post-refugee influx tensions), and again, Woong's motives in delivering it were not fully scrutable.
Kallik immediately runs out after the Sheriff to follow up but Opal grabs Kallik and suggests that discretion may be warranted.
We pick up immediately where we last left our heroes, ushering Kallik's wounded ?th cousin, Tapisa, back to Opal's restaurant Continental Drift. In the kitchen's stock room, a cot is set up, and Opal tries to tend to Tapisa's leg, as Tapisa implores Kallik to help with Tapisa's mission as a member of the Northern Water Tribe military. Tapisa has heard that someone in Zeng Chu Cove's militia/military has made arrangements to get a boat through to the Northern Water Tribe, and is supposed to investigate. He is still planning to go, but his injured leg prevents him. Kallik agrees to investigate. Meanwhile, Po has excused herself to the kitchen and gotten permission to use some of Opal's cookware ("not the good pots!") to whip together a painkiller, and she won't be upset if it also has some side effects that loosen Tapisa's tongue a little bit. After all, the group's mission is to protect the peace and the culture of the town, not to work for the Water Tribe army. Plus, she wants to see whether Tapisa is reluctant to accept medical help from someone who isn't a straight-up water tribe member. Tapisa accepts the pain-relief tea, and opens up a bit more about how he wound up in Zeng Chu Cove. The increased hostilities post-Tsunami led a number of merchant ships to request undercover military presence on trading ships, and in this case, Tapisa just happened to be sent along with the secondary mission to look into the potential incursion by the Earth Kingdom. Excitable as Tapisa was about the possible outcomes of looking into this secret military boat, it seemed to the group that Tapisa was genuinely aiming to prevent escalation of the conflict. They agree to help, and get the information about where the ship is being docked.
Po and Kallik head off to the marina to do some initial reconnaissance. The boat itself is non-descript. Not impressive enough as a vessel to be a warship, but being guarded by a number of undercover militia members, they'll have to get on-board to find out what is going on. They return to the restaurant and Po proposes a plan: damage the boat and offer to repair it. Initially she proposes making a small batch of acid that Kallik could waterbend at high velocity at the boat's hull, but if Kallik doesn't hit the right place, or time it correctly, the boat might sink. Not knowing what—or who—is on the boat, Opal is not sure how she feels about the risks of this plan. Po suggests they could instead have Kallik waterbend some obstructions into the rudder so that the boat will start to angle at the boat next to it at the docks. If the folks guarding it are trying to keep a low profile, they will very much want someone to fix it before it starts colliding with it's neighbor, giving her and her assistant (Kallik) an opportunity to get onboard. Opal is more comfortable with this plan, but not wild about Kallik heading into the dangerous situation.
At the docks, Kallik waterbends a little too well, and instead of a leisurely drift towards the neighboring boat, their target boat is basically whooshing straight at its neighbor. Kallik compensates for this by waterbending a wave to adjust the boat positions and buy some time back, which knocks two of the guards off the boat. Po and Kallik then smoothtalk their way onto the ship, Po explaining that she can tell that something's been caught in the rudder mechanism; and as someone with a background in boat construction and repair, she could help fix it so that they don't have any risk of dockside collisions. Due in part to the level of success on Po's roll, here, the Guard in question is extremely helpful, pointing out not only how to get to the area of the ship that would be useful for conducting the repairs, but also explaining that a certain room is off-limits, even to the guards, and that no one is permitted to go near it, except Sheriff Woong. Po and Kallik proceed to head down to the lower level of the ship, and excuse the (very helpful) guard while they get to work fixing the rudder. Po realizes that the off-limits room is serviced by the same dumwaiter that goes to the captain's cabin, and sends Kallik into the dumwaiter for recon purposes only; basically spying through the cracks in the dumwaiter door, rather than opening it. Kallik sees two people in the room: a woman and child, they seem to be nervous, but not scared. They have a general sense of danger, though this doesn't seem to be an invasion force of earth benders like Tapisa was worried about, or some sort of secret weapon. Thinking back to his own experience as a refugee, that's the most similar thing Kallik can think of to what he is seeing about their mood. As they are departing the boat, the overly helpful guard thanks them profusely, mentioning that he'd have been in big trouble if the boat had been damaged since it was slated to depart tomorrow.
Kallik doesn't know the people in the room, having just arrived recently. Po doesn't recognize them by description, having just gotten back to town. They hightail it off the boat and return to Opal, who does. "That sounds almost exactly like Sheriff Woong's wife Yong and daughter Pushi." Tapisa jumps into the conversation: "Aha! So it is an invasion force of powerful earth benders!" Except Woong's wife isn't a bender, and as far as anyone knows, neither was his daughter. "Then why would he be making such complex secret arrangements to send them to the Northern Water Tribe?"
They brainstorm some possible theories as to what could be going on, and realize they need to talk to people who might know more. Kallik says they should just go confront Sheriff Woong with what they know. Opal worries that this might be dangerous. Po says the alternative is for her to talk to her parents, who have lived in the village for their entire lives and probably know lots of details about people like the Sheriff and his wife. "So, I guess Kallik's plan it is," Po says. Tapisa suggests they could get a trinket of some sort and make as if they are returning it to the Sheriff's daughter, to see how the Sheriff reacts. They pick up some earrings at a nearby store, and go to Woong's house. Kallik attempts to "return" the earrings to Woong, saying they were left at Continental Drift, and the Sheriff blusters at the suggestion his daughter would eat there. He is proud in claiming that she has strong earth kingdom heritage. Kallik extracts a promise to return the earrings to her, and trips the Sheriff up slightly when mentioning how impressive his daughter is. The sheriff notably calms when Kallik says that she is impressive academically.
The group returns home, now highly suspicious that the Sheriff's daughter is potentially water tribe, or not really his own daughter, or something of that nature, but still in need of confirmation. Po invites her parents to Continental Drift for dinner. Between heavy servings of guilt and fish stew, and bizarrely passive aggressive compliments from Po's mother towards the restaurant, the conversation does eventually turn to the matter of mixed heritage families. Despite Po's parents being a mixed marriage themselves, this is a topic they are very reluctant to discuss. ("I don't see why people need to put labels on things, or announce it to the whole world, you can just quietly be who you are and keep your head down!"). Eventually, though, they get what amounts to confirmation that Yong's father was water tribe, though this is definitely not widely known, and was almost certainly not known to Woong when he married Yong (it may not have even been known to Yong herself).
After another serving or two of guilt, Po's parents depart, and the group asesses what they have figured out. Though they remain unclear on Woong's motives, they are fairly certain that his daughter must have recently manifested water bending, and he has gone to great lengths to arrange to get her out of the village. Since he has been publicly quite indifferent to the issues facing mixed-families and refugees, many questions remain, but one question that arises now is: how did Woong get the money to arrange a special boat, hire guards off-the-books, bribe members of the water-tribe blockade, etc. On the other hand, it was time to tell Tapisa that this doesn't seem like any sort of military threat to worry about.
As to the money question, the group went to go see their
The next day, Tapisa was well enough to be moved upstairs, so that the restaurant could re-open with lower chances of the water tribe military member slash spy being found in the kitchen, and the group decided to do some recon on people who might be at this banquet. Po invited the head of the dockworkers to Continental Drift but he suggested dinner at Wang's Wings ("Best Turkey-Badger Wings in all of Chenbao!"), because he doesn't like that fancy food with all the weird spices. At the meal they talk about who might be in the market for a boat, since that's Po's line of expertise, and he mentions some obvious candidates (rattling off some rich people in town, basically, and anyone who lost a boat in the Tsunami), and then does eventually think of two merchants who are new to town: Aster Li and Garnet Cho. These merchants work separately, are not particular about what they buy or sell, and are very keen to learn the whole supply chain, from who makes the goods and how it gets made, to how it is shipped and stored, etc. Po thinks to herself: "these sound like spies, and perhaps, much better spies than Tapisa."
Later in the day, back at Continental Drift, after the departure time of the boat with Woong's wife and daughter, Woong enters Continental Drift and loudly announces that he has looked into the report that Opal filed about the incident at her restaurant, and that it was without merit. He warns her off of filing frivolous reports at the sheriff's department in the future. Quietly, before he leaves, he hands a folded paper packet to Kallik and mentions that his daughter said that these were not her earrings.
He then leaves, reminding Opal and everyone there not to cause trouble or file false reports. Kallik tears open the packet and examines the paper, which appears to be from a council meeting, or at least from a council member, and references a plan called "Peace through Partition" for addressing the refugee issues and rising violence/disarray by redistricting the village to create separate areas specific to different groups. The plans are not entirely present on the paper, but it appears to have been written in a way to woo the mayor (focusing on how to calm/ease the post-refugee influx tensions), and again, Woong's motives in delivering it were not fully scrutable.
Kallik immediately runs out after the Sheriff to follow up but Opal grabs Kallik and suggests that discretion may be warranted.
That night, the group heads to Woong's house, and as they are about to knock on the door, he opens it, rushes them inside, and demands to know what they are thinking showing up there. "Were you followed?" Kallik takes out the paper and Woong is aghast that they still have the paper, let alone that they brought it with. He tears it up and destroys it.
(and that's where we ended).
