After the defeat of manaresaurs and space worms, and the recovery and division of salvage, Captain Swafford and the Party sailed the Red Odenate on to the Primespace crystal sphere which was mere days away. The crystal spheres of wildspace were something almost incomprehensibly big to the party members. A giant, solid shell some some impervious, indestructible, opaque, crystalline substance called quintessence. These giant shells kept out the phlogiston and contained the orbiting planets, suns and stars of all the known campaign worlds of D&D. They floated and drifted in the infinite, eternal phlogiston and the spelljammer vehicles "sailed" between them. The crystal shell they entered was called Primespace, and Captain Swafford knew little of it. But she specifically planned to visit it to explore and develop new markets for her trading goods. She had very rudimentary charts and maps of the place that she had purchased from some other spelljammer merchant a few years ago. The inhabited world within the shell was called Fiobrachne and it was in orbit around a orange dwarf sun called Jebed Once inside the shell, the party and the entire crew were required to remain within the Odenate to be safe from the vacuum that existed in the crystal spheres. This brought several benefits: Scallapronon was finally able to leave his barrel of beer. This was because the crystal spheres kept the highly flammable phlogiston out. He was both sad and relieved. Dag Hammarskjold was also relieved because, once inside the shell, he felt the tiny warming presence of Tika Nahu again. He was able to pray to the God of Campfires and Travelers and receive his spells once again. Somehow the gods were able to communicate with their followers inside all crystal spheres Anyway Captain Swafford flew the Red Odenate at enormous speeds the planetary orbits to land in a port city of Ritolias on the surface of Fiobrachne, whose surface gravity was slightly higher than Ednom's. At the city, which was built on an circular, artificial island built up from rock, pilings and landfill. The port city was built like a circular layer cake, with the port and market districts built on the lowest level, open to the sea. On the tidal side, it was also partially behind seawalls to protect it from storms and invading fleets. The city of Ritolias seemed to be peopled entirely by humans. There seemed to be no other species of humanoids in the area. No dwarves, halfings or elves. But widely interspersed in the crowd there were a small smattering of illithids. Nearly all the people of the city wore masks. The society seemed to be divided into castes depending on the masks they wore. The priests and priestesses wore bird masks The merchants and craftsmen work cat masks. The wizards and scholars wore spider masks The city watch and military people wore ram masks The underclass, the untouchables wore no masks. Foreigners also wore no masks. As Swafford's crew unloaded cargo, the party visited the markets in the outermost, lowest ring of the city. Dignan bought arrows and Adwona was forced to translate and negotiate for everyone. Adwona was plagued by street urchins and Torkunde was proselytized by a priest. This infuriated the Ravenslander barbarian and so he struck his sword, tripped and held the priest down ready to strike him again. Dignan yelled out Tork and rest of the party to let the priest go and to flee back to the ship. Which they did. Adwona and Scallapronon spotted that they were followed by two ramheaded city guards and several minutes later there was big confrontation outside the Odenate between the party and a squad of city guard with four wizards and high priest in tow. The guard demand that the Swafford pack her ship, take the party and leave the city. Captain Swafford tried to get Dag to restrain Torkunde but it was mostly to no use. There was a tense standoff where Torkunde bounded over the Adwona and Dag and onto a barrel to stand over the guard captain and his lieutenants, ready to strike if need be. A compromise was reached where the party would remain in the boat until Captain Swafford finished her business in the city but then Torkunde had a brain wave were he wanted to get something new to read on the long boring trip between crystal spheres. So the Ravenslander ran after the retreating guards to ask directions to the city library. This they pleased to give. So Scallapronon, Adwona and Torkunde followed the map to the Sky Temple Library. Dag followed along, in flight and invisibly. There followed an amusing thirty or so minutes of Torkunde checking out a lengthy murder mystery called Smoke of Angels by Alexander Queen. It was book of three lengthy scrolls written in the language of the people of Ritolias. Adwona and Dag paid for the book since Torkunde still seems unable to understand book checkouts work.