The city runs on coffee.

That’s not just my expert opinion, but the opinion of everyone ‘in the know’. If you don’t agree, you’re just not in the know.

This wonderful drink is made from coffee beans, which only grow in large plantations far up stream. A land of plenty where the trees grow a mile high and their twisting branches produce beans the size of an elf’s head! I’ve heard the riverlanders scale these trees and wrestle the great branches for their beans.

A dangerous job, and their steppelanders masters want all the beans so it’s dangerous for the riverlanders to smuggle them out. They demand a lot of trade to make it worthwhile, so the merchants in turn demand a lot from us.

To address this trade issue the first Proper Pathfinder Operation (PPO) was undertaken this cycle to steal the secrets of coffee trees for our own cultivation.

13 Pathfinders sailed upriver, disguised as a new group of merchants determined to make a living on the dangerous waters of the Vistula.

When they arrived at Cohe-atata (Coffee Town), they ingratiated themselves with the distrusting locals while our brave hero, Mirabella Stormshadow, snuck off. She climbed down one of the many coffee ravines (apparently they grow these massive trees at the bottoms of ravines so the branches are easier to access) and took a sample of a coffee tree’s root.

She had arrived at Cohe-atata with a blanket in her shirt, feigning pregnancy, then stuck the 15-inch root in as well. But as they were leaving they were inspected, and the root fell into her pants.

Mirabella is so boyish that they assumed the root was something else, which is hilarious.

When they arrived home Mirabella got horribly drunk to drown her sorrows and told me the story.