Yay period mercantile politics!
We find out the reason for Iris’s dad (and Kate’s mom) visiting is a little like something out of Spice and Wolf – Iris’s family is a land-holding knightly family that went into debt to save their peasants during a major crop failure. That debt, owed to the local Baronet, is why Iris is gathering reagents for money. It has, however, now come due, putting her family in a tight spot.
One solution has been offered: a young merchant, recently ascended to head of the family by untimely death, has offered to pay off the debt if Iris marries him. She’s generally resigned to the idea of marrying as a transaction, but who is the young merchant? None other than Shay Dilly, the successor to Gree Dilly from a couple episodes back. This is, of course, quite shady – the Dilly company was on the rocks, so there’s probably some degree of collusion between Dilly and the baronet. Dad is very reasonable and doesn’t want Iris marrying a slimeball, so this is something to be looked into while Sarasa arranges a “get rich quick” gathering expedition for everyone.
This expedition ends up doing double duty with an investigation into the origins of the rampaging Hellflame Grizzlies from the start of the show. They track down the home turf of the Grizzlies, a “nearby” volcano, and find it overrun with lava lizards that seem to have out-competed the grizzlies and driven them entirely from their niche. Sarasa and company (mostly Sarasa) hunt a few lizards, but before they can really collect high value lizard bits, an earthquake reveals that King Dodongo (properly identified as a Salamander) is here too, and it looks to be quite the threat.
Honestly, I kind of liked the story of Iris’s family debt and the initial reaction to her marriage being on the table, even if the ‘punch line’ of it being Dilly took too long to drop in terms of lines spent dancing around a name. It’s very Spice and Wolf, but Spice and Wolf was a good show and I appreciate acknowledgments to at least some of the economic realities of a period setting.