Blood, Plunder and D&D

At the end of the last adventure, the party was gleefully patting themselves on the back for convincing Bast, goddess of cats, into sneaking them inside the Great Pyramid to force the Governor into providing an audience he had been reluctant to give. The Governor was the official empowered to grant the Writ of Passage, which authorized the Exile Queen and her entourage to travel deeper into the Holy Empire of the God King. While the Exile's case for such a writ was well established by precedent, the Governor seemed leery of the potential blowback of being the one responsible for allowing a shipload of barbarians carte blanche access to the Empire. Since he didn't wish to grant nor did he have grounds to refuse it, he had decided the pragmatic course of action was to delay any decision on the matter indefinitely.  In addition to securing the Writ, several other notables in the city had asked the group to take advantage of a potential audience with the Governor in various ways. ...

We last left our heroes, the Search for Black Alice has led them to the streets of Bawaaba Mbo , gateway to the Holy Empire of the God King and the vast continent of Great Mbo.  The journey to the city was not easy. They were inspected twice, once by a pair of dragon-riding High Justices and once by customs officials in the harbor who charged a tax of 10% of the value of the cargo (a tax the heroes cleverly avoided by using Ricmo's newfound mirror magic). Dakhir noticed with some dismay that each High Justice wore an amulet identical to the Amulet of Theno that he carries. He managed to hide his amulet before the High Justices took notice, however. On the last day of the voyage, the heroes also each had a strange and magical dream in which their various magical patrons gave them advice and, in some cases, special tasks to complete.  Whisperleaf acquired a paper bag of mysterious cookies. Very good cookies. Ricmo acquired a strange mother of pearl ear ring.  They al...