THE STORY SO FAR
A partial journal of Group 84’s time in the Amber Isles:
Part One: Commencement and Choices
Chapter One
Titus Seeker is the greasy, sleazy, chainsmoking general manager of the V&S. His chief concern is delivering value to the company’s shareholders, and it’s irrelevant to him how many of you come back alive so long as you complete your mission.
T.B., the erstwhile member of a now-splintered adventuring group contracted to the V&S, is a well-liked local staple who has been in town for a few years. In combat, he exhibits both druidic magic and some other less-defined abilities. He has trouble spelling his own name, but always remembers what yours is. At the Alcove, he toasted to future drinks with you after a safe return from this adventure.
Mathilda, a kindly old (almost ancient) woman, works full-time at the V&S. She staffs the gear dispensary and was touched that Thistle offered her a pastry. She gave you two healing potions and a Scroll of Sending, off the books.
The Alcove is a medium bar with medium patrons and hammered bartenders. It seems like a good local watering hole to visit if you’re looking for low-grade information and/or okay-grade company.
Your first archaeological delve was commissioned by a mysterious cloaked man who didn’t seem too impressed with you when he met you in Titus’s office. Sam’s evaluation was that the figure is a dangerous person and knows it.
The target of your first delve is a mythical magical weapon that can be wielded by magic users and laypeople alike. It’s been searched for many times over the last century, but little concrete information exists about it. Titus is convinced it doesn’t exist, but your mysterious patron seems to think he has new information that might lead you to it. Your patron’s intelligence says that the item is located in a tomb or temple or similar structure on an otherwise unimportant island about two days’ journey from Symphora.
The Threefold Cord is an accessible (and reasonably priced) magic item shop located close to the V&S. It’s run by three elves. Inside are fantastical (and dangerous) books, mysterious items, and plenty of knowledge.
Doris learned the hard way that some books aren’t ready to be read.
Oralak learned that the proprietors of the establishment are very familiar with teleportation magic, but are wary of sharing that information with just anyone (or sharing it for free).
The party got the contact information (in the form of a magical business card) of The Magus, a person who has made the intersection of magic, history, and island studies his passion.
On a roll of 23 for an investigation check, Oralak obtained an enchanted bag of holding. There’s something wrong with it, but the proprietors don’t have time to waste figuring it out.
Sam has made contact with a local urchin (name as-yet unknown) who had some information about Titus (medium-level jerk, but not a serious criminal) and TB (seems like a nice-enough bloke).
Captain SeaTalon is the gregarious (and sometimes pontificating) captain of the Broken Amphora, a serviceable ship that periodically contracts with the V&S. The captain isn’t great at navigating, and he had mixed efficacy in combat.
He has taken a shine to Thistle, who he thinks will help him write his adventure memoir.
The Vanishing Isle is a legendary magical city that floats upside down through the Amber Isles. They say you can’t find it when you’re looking for it, and sailors go their whole lives hoping to glimpse it.
II. Chapter Two
Obann, a former gang member, has sought a new life on the high seas as a crewman on the Broken Amphora. A huge, gruff, tough, half-orc, Thistle brought out his softer side while trying to distract him from Sam’s investigation of the ship’s hold.
The Broken Amphora is more than meets the eye - Sam discovered an illegal smuggler’s hold while Obann was engaged by Thistle’s attempt at a connection. Sam left a gold coin as his calling card.
The adventuring party that came to this island before Group 84 was apparently killed by an array of reptilian monsters. The party met (and defeated most of) those monsters on the island’s beach. You recovered 70 gold pieces and an interesting-looking axe from the bodies, but forgot the axe in your haste to leave.
TB seemed to have had a particularly close connection with one of the deceased members of the previous party.
There is another monster - whom the creatures you defeated regarded as god - living in a cave near the site of your beachside battle. It invited you into the cave, but you elected to run (with the unconscious body of a kobold in tow).
Dathomir, a kobold warrior, was nearly killed by the party but saved for the purposes of interrogation regarding the cave and its inhabitant. He didn’t respond well to seeing Thistle wearing the entrails of his dead friend (lover?) Kevin, and he certainly didn’t respond well when Sam smacked him in the face a couple times.
In addition to the campfire on the beach, Doris’s very high perception check uncovered a small plume of smoke rising from the interior of the island.
III. Chapter Three
Dath, the kobold you interrogated, had big dreams of ascending to godhood by serving his deity (the red dragon wyrmling who lives in the cave you saw when you arrived at the island). He and his friends ambushed Group 83, the V&S party that visited this island before you. He referred you to an old man who lives in the jungle when you pressed him about the island’s secrets.
In the jungle, you met Enkata - an emaciated old man who shared a delicious fish dinner with you over a pleasant campfire near his island hut. Dressed in sea-torn rags, he had disheveled white hair and a long white beard.
Enkata seemed to know the island well; he mentioned that he travels often, visiting the many strange locales that dot the Amber Isle in search of new stories and new sights.
In response to Oralak’s question about a particular island, Norfall, Enkata was, at first, reticent. But he eventually hinted that someone among Five Ambers (who you know to be the governing council of the Amber Isles) might have more information.
In response to your questioning, Enkata indicated that his occupation was that of a caretaker, and that he believed wholeheartedly in the existence of Thistle’s goddess, but that he didn’t believe in Gaia on a more metaphorical level. He also admitted that he’d had a true love - and still does.
In exchange for the location of the item you seek, Enkata asked each of you for a physical token and a description of your most vivid memory of the sea. You all complied.
From Sam, a recently purchased dagger and the memory of a day at sea with his mother. Asked what color the sea was that day, Sam said that he hadn’t been looking at the ocean.
From Oralak, the first gold coin he took from the island and a memory of fishing with his family off the coast of Norfall.
From Doris, a bit of water from her face (which seemed to delight Enkata) and a memory of her grandma showing her how to tend to the family’s underwater gardens.
From Thistle, an amulet of the Church of Gaia (Enkata remarked that it was certainly the first time someone had presented him with something from that goddess) and a memory of her father throwing a thieving employee into the water.
From Deacon, a stringed instrument pick (Enkata remarked that he couldn’t play, and Deacon said he could always start) and the memory of a stolen night on the water with a true love.
From TB, a strange-looking totem with an animal carved into its face (which TB said came from a long-passed adventure) and the memory of the moment he first left his troubled home, feeling truly free and new as his old horizon faded into blue.
Enkata directed you toward the item you seek, but wondered with you whether it was wise to recover something so dangerous - although he seemed to think it was important that you complete this mission.
The magical contracts you signed on departing for this adventure included a serious curse should you locate or acquire the target and then fail to deliver it to the commissioner of the delve.
Following the old man’s directions, you found a deep well underneath some old floorboards in a destroyed abode lost to the jungle. You made it through the underwater tunnel at the bottom of the well (with some difficulty) and discovered a cave covered in the markings of an ancient religious group called Destiny’s Cross.The markings were recent, not old.
Although you’d entered the well at midday, you emerged from the cave under the light of a full moon. The moon cast no shadows, but it illuminated a dying jungle full of creepy flowers, floating violet lights, and fire-scorched flora.
You came across a hangman’s platform with three nooses. Sam was convinced that there were figures dangling from them, but they appeared empty until Oralak’s detect magic revealed three glowing figures and Sam’s investigation roused them to action. The nooses held a decrepit soldier, a woman in white, and an old man. They each chanted “Don’t!” before attacking.
IV. Chapters Four and Five
You fought the three undead figures, killing two of them before one - the sad old man - escaped into the forest. Throughout the fight, they whispered to you: “Leave it,” “It killed me,” “Stop”.
After traveling through the dead forest, you located a ruined structure half-buried under the side of a mountain. Inside, you encountered two puzzles.
In one, mysterious symbols marked a trapped hallway that you eventually traversed after uncovering the right pattern.
In another, you found the statues of six gods. They were:
A tall woman wearing a white robe and holding a quill in one hand and a scroll in another.
A tall man in a midnight blue robe with a flowing white beard who held a trident.
A simple looking elven woman with a faint smile.
A gruff dwarf holding an outsized hammer.
A short, dark-skinned man with a hook for a right hand and a wicked grin (sporting a feather-shaped scar on his cheek).
A shattered druidic figure, which Thistle realized was once a statue of Gaia.
You solved this puzzle by covering the eyes of the statues. When you passed back through the chamber on your way out, the statues were gone (except for the ruined remains of Gaia).
In a locked room, accessible only after solving the second puzzle, you discovered what was once an armory. All that was left: some rusted weapons and a strange object with a long steel tube attached to a wooden stock with a crossbow trigger in the joint.
Later on, Sam (after a natural 20) recalled a night, many years ago, when a drinking companion had recounted a tall tale about an adventure beyond The Pale - impossible, of course - that ended with a serious wound from a weapon that resembled the mysterious object you have recovered.
On removing the mysterious item, five suits of magically animated armor, set to protect it, attacked you. You defeated the constructs, which turned to rusty dust on death.
You investigated two of the building’s ancillary rooms.
One room contained the remains of an old library or document storage chamber. From the crumbled bits of ancient parchment scattered throughout the room you recovered a scroll in Sylvan (which featured a ritual involving some kind of sacrifice) and a scroll in Celestial. You haven’t been able to read the latter.
The other room had some crumbled furniture and a fading wall tapestry. You peered around the room and investigated the stone walls, but you didn’t remove the tapestry.
After leaving the valley where the temple had been located, you discovered that “outside” time had passed at about 1/8th the time you’d experienced inside.
Hoping to find a safe place to rest, you decided to seek out the old man you’d met on the way into the dark valley. But the clearing where you’d met Enkata before was, well, clear; he and his hut were no longer there. The only things left behind were just enough fish and sea plant dishes for a hearty meal.
While on watch, Oralak, Doris, and TB all noticed a misty white figure moving through the trees throughout the night.
Doris learned that Cadence, whom TB had mentioned previously, was his boss, not his romantic partner. He described her as the smartest person he’d ever met, but reckoned she was gone for good. She was vaguely serpentine in appearance, with scales over parts of her body, snake-like irises, and a long blue mohawk/undercut. TB had a healthy respect-bordering-on-fear for her magical abilities, which apparently featured tentacles fairly prominently.
TB indicated that maybe he’d spent too long working for Cadence, neglecting other important business, and that it might be time for him to move on.
On returning to the Broken Amphora, you found that Obann and Dath had become friends; they shared a checkered past and a problematic affinity for brutality, and that was more than enough foundation for a connection. Obann seemed determined to help Dath start a new life aboard the ship.
On a natural 20, for a 25 total arcana check, Oralak learned that the enchantment sigil for a bag of holding he received from the proprietors of The Threefold Cord for troubleshooting was flawed; rather than creating a totally insular pocket dimension, it created a bridge between the pocket dimension and some other place in Symphora.
On the final morning of your voyage home, the party awoke to a staggeringly huge mushroom cloud rising from The Source. It towered over the Amber isles, roiling nearly to the edge of your horizon. The ship’s crew, and TB, were equal parts awestruck and terrified.
Interlude One
Chapter One
Nobody onboard the Broken Amphora had any clue what the giant plume could mean. From her school days, Thistle vaguely remembered Biblical-style allusions to similar catastrophic events around the time of the great calamity that ruined the old civilization on top of which the Symphoran people live.
On returning to land, the party met Howl, a tiefling ranger who’d been a member of TB’s old adventuring party. Howl was rescued from drowning (after being deposited deep at sea by the kobolds you defeated) by a kindly old man who was sailing by, and woke up on the docks of Symphora.
The party celebrated its safe return over a drink at the Alcove.
TB, Sam, Deacon, and Oralak joined a raucous bar crowd in betting on a scryed presentation of a live pirate battle in the southern seas, where the Wrecking Gale (a ship of the Crimson Tide) and the Sea Scoundrel were fighting over the rapidly sinking carcass of a southern merchant vessel.
Thistle, Doris, and Howl were not impressed with any of that crap, which they frankly found offensive, and retired to the back room to sit in silence.
The party agreed to visit The Threefold Cord the next morning, where they hoped to resolve some loose ends and possibly gather more information about the mysterious item they had recovered.
The party closed the bar down and TB offered to lock up for Dustin (the venue’s unconscious bartender). As your friend closed and locked the door behind you, he was stabbed through the heart by a cloaked individual. TB fell, and Thistle’s attempts to spare the dying were ineffective. A fight ensued.
In the fight that followed, Thistle - on a natural 20 for a 26 total insight check - recognized the voice of an arcane assailant who seemed to be directing the battle from a nearby rooftop. It was The Brilliant Professor Gaspard, a lecturer at the Institute of the Amber Isles. Student rumor had it that the Professor’s interest in antiquities often ran beyond the academic - and beyond the bounds of the law. The Professor offered you your lives, and the return of your friend, in exchange for the weapon.
After some pleading, some wrestling, and two fireballs, Oralak managed to get control of the mysterious weapon, with which he promptly skedaddled - although not before saving Doris’s life with a well-timed healing potion.
Deacon did some fleeing of his own, but not before healing Thistle, who channeled the divine energy of Gaia to revive the remainder of the party. Suddenly faced with five enemies instead of one, the Professor abandoned his slow advance toward the party and disappeared in a flash of light.
As the dust cleared, TB’s body was nowhere to be found.
II. Chapter Two
Oralak, acting on his own accord, turned the weapon into Mathilda and collected the reward. A tense encounter with Sam ensued.
Sam spent an eventful night in an alleyway, killing a would-be mugger before connecting with his favorite local urchin. The urchin accepted 8 gold and the dead mugger’s slingshot in exchange for information about Oralak’s location.
Thistle, Doris, and Deacon spent the night at Thistle’s commune, where they met Ben - an illiterate but friendly farmhand who joined the order - and participated in morning prayers. And got some Chick Tracts!
You met with Titus Seeker in his office.
He offered to see if your previous patron was willing to meet with you.
Titus had recently received an inquiry regarding a new commission, this one to recover a non-weapon, non-magical historical artifact. He anticipated that it would be lucrative (and less dangerous than your last adventure). You were to meet with him and the customer the following morning.
You went back to the Threefold Cord.
Rebecca, Bella, and the Professor certainly knew of Professor Gaspard, but they said they hadn’t had any business dealings with him and explained that they don’t really work for the Institute.
You gathered that Bella’s specialty is weapons, the Professor’s is enchantment, and Rebecca’s is spellcraft.
The Professor agreed to attempt an investigative enchantment on the sending stone to see if he could determine where its twin is. Everyone but Oralak pitched in to cover the cost. It’ll probably take about two or three weeks.
Deacon picked up a copy of The Book of Smokeless Fire, a tome about magical demonic creatures. [Wait, maybe that Chick Tract guy was right about D&D…]
Sam picked up a mildly enchanted sword.
The Professor was impressed by Oralak’s work on the Bag of Holding enchantment. He offered to give Oralak the repaired bag and invited him back to talk shop sometime.
Sam asked some oddly specific questions about books that can teach you how to read. Not exactly the Threefold Cord’s wheelhouse, but they recommended that he check out the Institute’s Department of Experimental Academic Studies, an R&D department dedicated to exploring new methods of knowledge transfer.
From the Threefold Cord, the party proceeded to the home of the Magus, some sort of academic expert on island history.
At the door of the Magus’s brownstone you met Sophos, a vaguely awkward young man who serves as the Magus’s apprentice. His parents sent him to the Magus because things weren’t going well at the Institute.
The Magus was an early-fifties man with classic hellenic features. He entertained you in his study and eventually offered to exchange knowledge with you (after you signed a magical contract that prohibits you from telling anyone what he had to say on the subject of the weapon). He seemed very well connected.
The Magus was familiar with the weapon. The old sources say that it was once a common item, and that it’s capable of killing reliably and from great distances. He politely declined to tell you how it worked.
He was very interested in the story of your explorations in the temple. He helped you identify the statues of the old gods you found in the ruins: Moira, the goddess who records fates; Tectanus, the dwarven god of the mountains; Sedine, the god of thieves and tricksters; Oceanus, the god of the sea, and Gaia. He didn’t recognize the statute of the simply clad woman with a faint smile.
The Magus noted that the only reason Gaia is not considered one of the “old” gods is because she is still worshipped today. Thistle opined that her goddess’s persistence was evidence of her greatness; the Magus mentioned that there are other legends regarding the decline of the old gods. When pressed, he noted that information is his trade, and he couldn’t be expected to continue providing it free of charge.
Doris, who pulled the old “I have to go to the bathroom” trick, might have some luck exchanging stories with him later.
Oralak asked the Magus about Norfall, his home island which disappeared mysteriously. The Magus is familiar with lots of things that could cause an island to disappear, but not in the way that Norfall was supposed to have vanished. He mentioned that the Woman in Red, one of the Five Ambers (i.e., the ruling council) is the most powerful witch of the age - and that she was notorious for her use of transportation magic. He also wryly noted that she had a passing relationship with hell - but he seemed to be referring to her personality, not the realm of demons.
The Magus identified one of your scrolls as a summoning ritual for Moira and the other as a spell scroll for Revivify.
The Magus seemed skeptical about your theory that the Brilliant Professor Gaspard was behind the attack outside the Alcove.
Asked about the giant plume that had risen the day before, the Magus seemed to think that geological activity was to blame. He poked fun at Sophos’s theory that the plume heralded the return of the old gods (and maybe the end of the world).
You pressed Sophos about his theory. He said his old nurse had told him stories about things like this, and he trusted her. You also pressed him for her name, address, and background, which he gave you (eager to make new friends). Her name is Xanthe, and she lives on his home island to the north.
III. Chapter Three
You decided to confront Professor Gaspard at the Institute of the Amber Isles. Sam decided to get in disguise as a student, so he traded clothes with Devon, an incel m’lady type guy who Sam saw in the street reading “An Alphas [sic] Guide to Approaching Females.” Thistle has his personal address if you ever need to talk to him for some weird reason.
Oralak decided to go to bed early at a nearby inn (after listening to some local bar griping about the way the northern islands exploit the resources of the southern islands).
At the Institute, you went to the library to ask about Pr. Gaspard’s hours from Methuselah, the positively paleolithic head librarian. He was friends with Doris, and was very glad to see her again, and he offered her a spot as a page if she ever decided to give up adventuring.
You learned that Doris, once a student at the Institute, elected not to pursue a graduate degree and instead joined the V&S to see what she could learn from the world instead of from books.
And then you tried to spy on Pr. Gaspard, whose office occupies the top floor of the shortest of three towers situated at the very edge of the Institute’s grounds. He was a classically handsome fortysomething drow male with dark hair and a wicked widow’s peak.
His office was home to all manner of exotic knick knacks, artifacts, and curiosities. It was also home to a very large and ornate wardrobe.
Thistle attempted to disguise Deacon as Devon. When Deacon spoke with Gaspard, Thistle killed the lights. When the lights came back on, Deacon accepted Gaspard’s invitation to come in for a drink. The Professor’s door slammed shut and glimmered with magic.
The party tried to get Deacon out, but to no avail. In fact, Thistle’s efforts eventually got the entire party locked in a guardhouse at the Institute’s gates.
Inside Gaspard’s office, Deacon and Pr. Gaspard chatted as old friends about the item you’d recovered, your history together, your mysterious patron, and your backgrounds.
Pr. Gaspard eventually arranged for you to be freed from the guardhouse.
Sam went to bed at the cheapest tavern he could find (after some drinks with disgruntled southerners complaining about the lack of appreciation for the south’s natural food production).
Thistle, Doris, and Deacon stayed over at Thistle’s house-compound in the wealthiest neighborhood of the Cloudtop District. Her father was out of town, but her brothers - Ximothy and Vasilius - were hosting a feast to celebrate their return from a successful merchant expedition. You met Naa’n, a servant of the House D’Lyros who was friends with Thistle when she was young. Naa’n, who has dreams of opening a bakery, showed you to quiet rooms in the servants’ guest quarters.
Before bed, Deacon took off his mask at Thistle’s request. Deacon is a tiefling man with a look of both shame and sadness about him, the shame and sadness that come from a hard life poorly lived. But there was something charismatic about him in a quietly compelling way.
Deacon mentioned that, while he was having drinks with Gaspard, the Professor had offered the party a deal - the next time they recover an artifact, they should bring it to him. He might be able to handle that pesky magical curse triggered by failing to deliver a recovered item, and they could probably do some lucrative business together.
The next morning you went back to the Various and Sundry to speak with your potential new client. In Titus’s offices you met Bombus Pitluck, a rotund dwarven man with watches adorning his arms and chest. A fabulously wealthy merchant, he now collects trinkets.
Bombus knew Thistle from society functions, and he thought it was quite scampish of her to be having her youthful rebellion by joining an adventuring party. We all need our childish adventures, of course!
Bombus will pay you double your last fee, and he’ll match that fee for a charity donation to boot. You agreed to take the quest.
The artifact is a stopwatch-type device with three different timekeeping faces. It is located in some ancient ruins on a mega backwoods island to the far, far south. The ruins are apparently infested with some kind of monstrous presence (which took the lives of the day-laborers who were excavating the site).
Bombus is very excited to obtain this piece, which will help him complete his watch collection. The skill needed to manufacture mechanical timepieces was lost during the Calamity, and the only way to get watches now is to recover them from the ancients.
You are to travel south in two weeks’ time on a six-day journey aboard the Broken Amphora. Tonight, however, Titus hopes to arrange a rendezvous for you with your previous patron, who has agreed to meet with the party.
Bombus hopes to display the new watch at his Solstice party, which is approaching in about a month.
IV. Chapter Four
After your meeting with Titus and Bombus (where you had accepted a new job), with the whole world at your disposal, you proceed to… go back to the Threefold Cord and Magus’s house, which you had visited the day before.
Oralak asked for work at the Threefold Cord. Professor Marsden said he would need some sort of proof of Oralak’s abilities as a magician, perhaps by bringing back a rare or unusual item.
According to the shop’s proprietors, the sending stone that TB gave you is very, very strange - it operates on some sort of different magic system than the one used by mages in Symphora.
The party purchased lightvision goggles - special glasses that reduce the glare of light.
The party purchased the Trumpet of Vanishing, a magic item that renders its wielder invisible (as long as they’re blowing the trumpet).
Outside the store, the party discovered that Deacon persistently glows with transmutation magic when under inspection by a Detect Magic spell.
Back at the Magus’s house, you ran into Sophos again (and learned that the Magus would be participating in the day’s parade).
Sophos took you to The Guest Room, a secretive bar for wealthy patrons that serves high-end spirits (some of them clearly smuggled).
As you took turns buying shots, Thistle struck up a conversation with a classically handsome fiftysomething-looking kalashtar who turned out to be Jayar, a world-renowned former adventurer and explorer. He’s responsible for mapping half of Symphora’s most distant and exotic islands, but he’s been retired for about ten years. He played you a haunting song about an adventurer’s last excursion. Thistle flirted with him, but he just seemed generally friendly.
Asked about the island you’re being hired to visit, Jayar remarked that, although The Five are often considered backwaters by many Symphorans, he’s always found it to be a beautiful land with wonderful people. On a lucky roll, he somberly warned you that these are difficult times - and that you should be careful to make wise choices.
Jayar now lives aboard his ship, the Annabelle Lee, which is docked in Symphora and never sails. He gave you a friendly invitation to visit anytime to trade adventure stories or jam together.
You left an unconscious Sophos at the bar and headed to the nearby parade.
Rank after rank of green-clad Wardens, the police/military equivalent for Symphora, walked by in shifting wild-shape form. Most of the populace cheered, but you started noticing that folks with southern-island dress and accents seemed quiet and, at times, outright hostile toward the troops.
Government employees marched next, throwing gold and real food (as opposed to magically created food) to the spectators. You noticed some grumbling among the southerners that, amid shortages back home, on the main island of Symphora riches are squandered in the streets.
Next came the city’s dignitaries - including the Magus in a splendid chariot. Thistle decided to use your magic trumpet to hop in the carriage of Growler, a kenku merchant and sometimes-associate of her father. Growler opined that the parade was being thrown to shore up the populace’s confidence after the appearance of the ominous cloud a few days earlier. Apropos of nothing, he asked Thistle whether she would be interested in assisting him (on behalf of her father or otherwise) with a business transaction he’s pursuing. He hedged about the nature of the opportunity, but you gathered it was related to a joint venture he’d been a part of involving government officials in the southern islands.
Thistle next decided to approach the Magus in his chariot. On a natural 20, she had noticed that he seemed deeply concerned and pensive about something, oblivious to the parade around him. When she spoke he reflexively grabbed her, but relaxed slightly when he saw who she was. He was not pleased at being accosted in the street by someone he’d just met yesterday, and he was not impressed by Thistle’s offer to help with whatever was troubling him. She mentioned that her parents were powerful and wealthy, and he remarked that her parents were part of the problem, not the solution. And he very much didn’t appreciate the fact that their child had suddenly appeared next to him in his chariot during a public parade. Asked about the parade, he suggested he thought there was more to it than a simple response to the ominous plume. As the Magus’s patience grew thin, two of his guards dragged Thistle off the chariot and back to the crowd.
After Symphora’s dignitaries passed, the Five Ambers themselves rode by.
General Kholin, the leader of the Symphoran military. He was accompanied by ranks of black-clad veterans.
The Woman in Red, a scarlet witch whose red carriage was accompanied by sultry dancers and performers.
Archdeacon Brutha, the head of Gaia’s primary religious sect in the Symphoran isles. He was accompanied by somber priests who prayed over the spectators.
Lady Attolia, perhaps the most severe and beautiful woman any of you had ever seen. There was no warmth behind her smile, although her ornate carriage was accompanied by patrons providing gifts to the crowd.
Rumor has it she assassinated her husband to rise to power.
Lord Vetinari, who appeared in a totally enclosed black carriage led by two black warhorses but accompanied by no attendants.
Rumor has it he’s in charge of the Symphoran government’s intelligence efforts - and he might have been an assassin in his youth.
For her third act, Thistle decided to throw a rock at Lord Vetinari’s carriage. She succeeded in hitting its window, and briefly caught a glimpse of a person with ghost-white skin and pale, colorless eyes. Immediately after the stone hit the carriage, a knife appeared at her throat as an otherwise ordinary looking spectator grabbed her. After a moment the knife disappeared - along with its wielder, the trumpet, and Thistle’s purse (including identification papers and money).
You then left for your meeting with your previous patron.
In a ruined temple outside of town you encountered a cloaked figure. He turned out to be Talley, who had commissioned you to find the mysterious weapon after its location was revealed to him in a dream by an entity he described as godlike, but unlike any other deity he’d encountered or read about. Wreathed in fire and molten stone, the entity had somehow suggested that he engage the V&S to acquire the item (which Talley had been searching for over some time). Talley indicated that he was no longer in possession of the weapon, and that it had served its purpose for him.
Talley is a dark-haired, dark-eyed half-elf. He seemed haughty and intense but had a strong presence.
Talley was accompanied by a water genasi with a blue undercut (who appeared to be a spellcaster) and a goliath woman (who was well-armed but didn’t speak). You didn’t get either of their names, but the spellcaster seemed brash and irritated and the goliath seemed concerned and protective of Talley.
Talley indicated that he had need of people who knew how to get things done, which you clearly did. If you’re interested, he has a job for you in a location that he seemed to think was interesting or unusual. Just leave word at a local hospital with the attendant there.
Sam got silenced halfway through the conversation for being a jerk, and he very nearly got hit by a powerful-looking spell sent by Talley’s caster friend (but was saved by a well-timed counterspell). Why he was attempting to rile up Talley’s party is unclear, since they generally seemed pretty friendly toward you. Maybe it has something to do with his new business plan to do child crime and sell morality knives?
Part Two - Ruins and Revolution
Chapter One
Before leaving town, the party gathered for a drink to discuss their activities over the preceding weeks.
Sam reported significant gains on the ‘doing child crime’ front; he’s operating a kid-run delivery/courier service out of the shadiest part of town. It’s either called Sam’s Kids or Kiki’s Delivery Service, depending on whether you ask Sam or the kids. He checked on them before he left, and everything seemed fine - although he was vaguely worried about Yonatan, a bully who’d joined the group.
Doris apparently went on a Sunday Funday with Methuselah, the librarian at the Institute and her closest friend at the university. She also visited a jewelry shop in the nicer part of the merchant district called the Curling Rose, where she bought a rose-gold and ruby necklace.
Thistle did some recon back at home, where she learned that Professor Gaspard is known to pursue relics for the thrill of the hunt. She also released a bunch of family farm animals as part of a ritual honoring Gaia; it apparently didn’t go well.
Oralak was tight lipped, but he did indicate that he’d asked Doris to let him into the Institute’s library, where he’d done some Research(™).
Deacon did some Research(™) of his own, also at the Institute.
Everybody seemed to have turned up rumors of southern discontent, mysterious hand symbols, and strange graffiti of something sunlike. Sam also heard rumors of the Takers, who supposedly kidnap children. Probably an old wives’ tale.
And so you set sail for Focheia!
Captain SeaTalon, encouraged by Thistle’s interest in developing a biography of his life on their last voyage, had prepared a few (~300) pages of outline material for the first draft. You learned that his family stretches back 14 generations, he has 7 daughters, and he blatantly exaggerates (entirely fabricates?) his adventures. He’s hoping Thistle will help him publish the tome after she edits it.
Obann and Dath are still close friends. Obann asked after TB, who was a buddy of his; he was sad to learn TB had passed away.
Sam and Oralak put on a ‘fighting clinic.’ Oralak demonstrated how to magically not get hit by stuff, and Sam demonstrated how to hit magic things that are not there. The ‘fight’ ended afterSam faceplanted into the ship’s deck during a failed wrestling move.
Late in the night, something began scraping at the hull of your ship. Doris’s ill-advised investigatory dive into the water actually went fine the first time - but then she did it *again*, and this time she was almost immediately dropped unconscious by a swarm of attacking monster heads. In a bid to rescue Doris, Deacon followed suit on all counts - he, too, dove in, and he, too, was knocked unconscious. Sam dove in third, and he escaped the same fate as Doris and Deacon by one hit point. Eventually the monster left after Obann rescued Doris and Sam rescued Deacon.
But it didn’t leave for long! After the crew put you ashore on a tiny atoll (word of the day!), and while Doris was off building a friendship bracelet for Obann, the monster attacked again, revealing itself to be a five-headed hydra. A brutal, lengthy fight ensued; Thistle dropped unconscious several times, and Oralak was nearly dragged into the sea. But you prevailed!
II. Chapter Two
Before leaving the hydra corpse, Sam tried to yank one of its teeth out. He happened to pick the head that held a gorgeous and very large pearl hidden inside. Some halfhearted attempts at inspection indicated that it was pearl-y and normal. Sam pocketed it.
You reached Focheia. Calling it ‘sleepy’ would be too charitable by half; it was a run-down, poverty-stricken handful of huts clustered around a broken field and a tired dock. The smell of the sea wasn’t strong enough to mask the earthy tones of farming enhanced by tropical heat.
On reaching the island, you noticed that one house was actually pretty nice; you later learned it was the residence of the mayor, a Mr. Ellmore. You also noticed that several doorways had the sign of Destiny’s Cross marked above the frame. A bent post at one corner of the square bore notices and missing persons posters.
At one corner of the square, a crowd of locals were listening to an animated speech. Wardens stationed around the “town” eyed the group with a mixture of condescending amusement and vague concern. They all seemed to be looking to the mayor of the town for instruction.
The speaker was an earnest and eloquent redheaded human woman riding a dire wolf. She declaimed about the economic exploitation of the southern islanders, the corruption of the local government, and the ineffectiveness of the wardens charged with protecting the people of Focheia. “These islands are our lands!” As she spoke, her rapier glowed with arcane energy. An audience member informed you that this was Joanne d’Criss, a local resident and cultural leader.
As the speech rose to a crescendo, Joanne made eye contact with Doris. The former hesitated, and then called Doris’s name…
But she was interrupted by the sound of magically enhanced warning bells, which tolled again and again as the townspeople (and Wardens) sprung into action (and inaction). As you scanned the town you noticed pirate ships in the bay and landing craft near the docks. Citizens picked up weapons they’d kept close to hand and rushed to the shore, where they attempted to repel the pirates. The Wardens, however, marshaled in lines at the back of the square and did nothing.
Doris hopped on the back of Joanne’s wolf (which she called Fable) and rode into combat; the rest of you followed. It became clear that Doris is originally from Focheia, and that she and Joanne have some kind of history together. In the ensuing fight, Doris exhibited new martial prowess (she caught and threw back an arrow!) and Joanne seemed to fight with a magically enchanted blade (along with some arcane powers of indeterminate origin).
Oralak and Sam coordinated for a one-two sword-poison punch, an encouraging progression of the relational development that began with their ‘showcase’ fight aboard the Broken Amphora.
After the fight, Joanne invited you back to the town’s only business - the Golden Aroma, run by twimen - for tea and a game of cards.
Sam made an ass out of himself, as usual; Joanne, who was pretty clearly gay, was not into it. But she accepted the pearl he gave up as a peace offering. She seemed to know something about it that you didn’t. Sam also learned that Deacon is “spoken for.”
Joanne immediately bristled at Thistle, who she essentially accused of being an out-of-touch wealthy northerner who couldn’t possibly understand the plight of poverty-stricken southerners. She apologized, though, when she acknowledged that Thistle had fought alongside her against the pirates. Sam warned Thistle not to tell Joanne her last name.
Over cards and conversation, you learned a few new things about the island from both Doris and Joanne.
Virtually all of the island’s agricultural product is shipped north to the wealthier islands, where it is turned into real, non-magically created food. Because all of the archipelago’s islands are mountainous, arable farmland is rare and, thus, so is natural food. But the money made by selling the island’s resources never seems to find its way into the pockets of the farmers. They live and work on land that is usually owned by wealthy merchants domiciled in Symphora’s more populous cities far to the north. The farmers work as sharecroppers on property that has been their home for generations immemorial. And what meager wealth Fócheians are able to accumulate is confiscated by local governors more often than not under the guise of “taxes”.
Because Fócheia is the most remote, backwater island in the nation, it is also the least desirable post for government officials. Ministers are sent to The Five when they run afoul of the wrong powerful people back on Symphora, or when their corruption in more populous areas becomes too egregious to ignore. The same goes for the Wardens sent to the island. The governors of Fócheia routinely exploit the populace for what little they have, and the Wardens are often abusive and destructive.
Pirates routinely raid coastal cities throughout The Five. Fócheia’s residents are forced to shoulder the lion’s share of their own defense because the Wardens usually hang back during attacks to avoid danger.
Doris comes from a family who works a rice farm about two hours outside of town.
Thistle noticed that Joanne wore an emblem of Destiny's Cross around her neck.
The new mayor is the most corrupt in living memory.
Joanne is the daughter of Kingston d’Criss, the former owner of a local dojo where Doris once trained. He left a few months ago to find work up north.
Deacon asked what Joanne intended to accomplish by speaking to the locals earlier. Joanne told him that she only hoped to educate her people about the shackles they wore so that they could better understand their place in the world. She was lying.
Joanne had a meeting to attend, so she showed Thistle and Deacon to the makeshift hospital where victims of the pirate attack were being treated and directed the rest of you to a couple of abandoned houses where you could stay for the night.
III. Chapter Three
While healing wounded villagers, Thistle noticed some more imagery of Destiny’s Cross. On a natural 20 (or ‘d twenty natural’, if you prefer), she also noticed a fresh tattoo on a dwarven man’s leg that resembled graffiti she’d heard about from Oralak and Sam - a sunlike body wreathed in flame. She asked about the villagers’ apparent affinity for the old gods; the TL;DR was that “forgotten gods are a good match for forgotten lands.” The villagers seemed encouraged by growing energy and coming changes.
Sam drank the villagers dry as he investigated Doris’s background. He collected some hot goss, but it turned out later to probably not have been true. He also passed out in the woods (#natureboi), but was recovered by the group after the wardens came around enforcing curfew. You all noticed that Doris wasn’t home, but a brief investigation suggested she’d gone off to hang with her old friend Joanne.
Before leaving the next morning, folks took care of business.
Sam investigated the governor’s mansion and scoped out a few weak points. Looks like there are about 20 wardens total in town, with 4-5 in the mansion at any one time. There’s a civil administrator who works there, too.
Oralak touched base with the Golden Aroma’s proprietresses, who filled him in on the local flora.
Deacon played an impromptu set with the townspeople; they seemed to like him quite a bit.
Doris went to visit her old dojo, which was shuttered and dusty.
Thistle communed with Gaia. Expecting a simple response to her prayers, Thistle instead suddenly found herself on another plane entirely, where blank whiteness stretched out to infinity in every direction. Suddenly a flaming pillar appeared in the distance; Gaia’s voice advised her that a great threat was coming, and that it was imperative that the islands be unified when it arrived.
You also held a mini-conference about the political state of affairs on Focheia. Sure seems like the locals could use some help - how should you handle it? Sam could go either way, Oralak thinks you should stay out of it, Deacon wants to help, Thistle thinks Gaia wants her to stay out of it, and Doris is conflicted. Plus, what should you do with/about the timepiece you’ve been sent to collect, and/or with the money you may get for collecting it? Eventually you decided these questions could wait while you actually obtained the object, and so you set off by river toward the interior of Focheia. You didn’t stop at Doris’s farm, but you can always do that on your way back if you like.
We learned some of Doris’s backstory! She trained at a local dojo growing up and showed enough promise that she was sent to Symphora to study. She was glad to leave, but sometimes feels guilty for not staying home to work on the farm (where her very large family, and loving grandmother, live(d)). She apparently didn’t get along well with her folks.
Your trip upriver was interrupted briefly by combat with some local reptiles (and by poison collection - Thistle has asked Oralak for some, if he can swing it), but you eventually made camp near a river bend with which Doris was familiar. Thistle’s campsite investigation actually turned up some activity nearby; Oralak went to check it out. He found some sort of ritual to the old gods being performed. Faced with a mysterious pagan ritual in the middle of the jungle right near your campsite on a remote island, you elected…. to go to sleep!
Doris (who had first watch) reported later that she’d met Enkata, the mysterious old man you encountered on your first adventure together. He spoke with her about your adventures, and he told her a weird story about crocodiles and piggyback rides or something. He stood at the edge of the ritual clearing wearing a cloak; Doris noticed a handful of other similar figures at the edges of the firelight. He seemed… heartier? than he had been the last time she met him.
Thistle had vivid dreams of the plane she’d visited earlier when she prayed to Gaia; the flaming pillar in the distance seemed to resolve itself into the sunlike shape that’s been popping up recently. Later on, her augury prayer to Gaia confirmed that the “sun cult” (your words) should be opposed.
The next morning, you found only an empty clearing where the ritual had taken place. Oddly, there were a few singed circles around the edge of the clearing.
After traveling inland away from the river, you arrived at your destination: a snarled mass of ruined structure and jungle creep.
IV. Chapter Four
Around the entrance to the jungle ruins you found remnants from an archaeological dig. It seemed that the workers at the site were fatally interrupted in their project some months before your arrival.
Inside the ruins you traversed a long tunnel that was littered with traps, some disarmed and some painfully active. You recalled Enkata’s story, and found some clues around the ruins, and beat the magical traps (with a few falls along the way) by riding each other’s backs.
As you made your way through the dungeon, strange things kept happening - mysterious tugs at your gear, the sound of skittering on the walls, and a sensation like someone rifling through your thoughts.
At the end of the tunnel you found a large boardroom. Inside the room you met Gaia personified as a pillar of flame, just like in Thistle’s vision. Gaia invited Thistle into the room to discuss important matters; Sam wanted to stay with her, but Gaia (and Thistle) insisted that she enter alone. As soon as the doors were closed, of course, the illusion vanished and Thistle was trapped with a monstrous reptilian creature that immediately attacked her.
In the ensuing fight, all of you came close to death and/or unconsciousness. The battle raged even after the monster disappeared and seemed to have fled. But some excellent combat tactics from the party and a crucial final hit from Sam finally won the day.
Unfortunately, the monster’s defeat came just a breath too late for Deacon, who failed his third death saving throw and slipped into the afterlife. You all heard an ethereal-sounding woman’s scream as Deacon died.
The lifeless bard walked down a long, dark path accompanied only by his rapidly fading memories until a light appeared in the distance. As Deacon approached, the light resolved into a massive, flaming, sun-like object. Silhouetted against the fire was a golden throne, on which sat a tall, thin man wearing a suit and black hat. His eyes were pure flame. He mocked Deacon for “wasting” the gift and time that he’d been given, and he called Deacon’s friends fools for taking a chance on him.
And then there was denouement.
Deacon was pulled back to life by Oralak using a Revivify Scroll.
On the monster’s body you found several of your treasures, which it had stolen from you as you made your way through the dungeon.
You investigated the monster’s treasure pile, where you found gold, diamonds worth about 300 gold, a mysterious glowing lantern with a shadowy figure inside (it wants to know if you’re going to take it home?), a set of extraordinary paints, and the watch you’d been commissioned to find.
V. Chapter Five
On his way back from a post-death meeting with the suited entity, Deacon was dragged through what was once a beautiful paradise but seemed to have been decimated a long time ago. He was also dragged through a blood-red nightmare that featured chained people working endless flaming farms. A figure from the fields looked up in his direction - did she sense his presence?
He noticed another entity watching nearby… but was ripped back to Symphora before identifying it.
While you decided where to rest, Oralak managed to meet an insanely high DC and discover the hidden lair of the creature you’d fought. Inside you found some additional gold and a magical ring.
You slept at the campsite where Doris had previously encountered Enkata. Deacon ran into Doris while sneaking back into the camp; he shared a compelling story of love, loss, evil, and hope with her. The rest of you didn’t overhear it. There was an orange and red arcane glow about him.
Deacon’s true love, Aja, is trapped in an awful plane; Deacon saw her on his way back to life. He’s determined to go to her, and has struck a bargain with an entity who’s been living in his head for some time now. In exchange for a pathway to the material plane, the entity will shuttle him to the plane where he believes Aja to be trapped. Deacon’s entity has chosen the name Marie in this world.
The party proceeded to Focheia (Doris decided not to visit her home). You found the town quiet, but - as you approached - alarm bells soon tolled. The residents cried that pirates had returned, and the wardens marshaled in the town square, just as they had when you first arrived. But there were no pirates. Just as the wardens began to realize that something was amiss, a flaming arrow ignited an oil trap on which they were standing. A fight ensued.
Thistle’s attempts to convince Joanne to avoid violence were mostly unsuccessful, although Joanne did later choose mercy when she had the option of executing the governor. She also hugged and thanked Thistle after the battle.
Oralak tried to avoid actively joining the fight, but once the party was committed he fought alongside them.
Sam fought alongside Joanne with reckless abandon, and she clearly appreciated it.
Deacon had already promised Doris he would join her in helping her people, and he fought, too.
With the party’s help, Joanne and Doris vanquished the wardens and stormed the governor’s mansion.
Joanne hinted that this rebellion had been in the works for some time, and she gestured to fires rising from the interior of Focheia to indicate that the skirmish in the town square was not an isolated incident. She’s not too worried about Symphora’s “army,” either; the nation has technically been at peace for hundreds of years.
The governor pleaded for his life, and Joanne spared it - announcing his imprisonment, rather than execution, would be her first act as chancellor of the Free Five Republic. The FFR’s sign is a gold, five-pointed star on a green background.
You captured a hapless clerk in the service of the former governor, but your initial attempts to interrogate him were unsuccessful.
In the former governor’s office, you found a large chest with several thousand gold inside.
Thistle collected 300 gold for use in purchasing diamond spell components.
Doris later picked up an ancient-looking driftwood box.
Oralak recovered a small bag with sandy powder inside.
Oralak recovered a sending stone, four sending scrolls, and a teleportation scroll.
Thistle, investigating the chest, discovered a sheaf of letters. She opened one and found that it was return addressed from her father. There were several others like it. She pocketed them, but Sam and Deacon noticed. She also tracked a bundle of papers that Deacon found (the clerk had been trying to burn them) to a lieutenant of Joanne’s. She cast command on the courier and induced him to trade the papers for 20 gold.
Joanne asked Doris to be her eyes and ears in the capital - the best way she can help her people is to build support for the revolutionaries in northern Symphora.
As night fell, the newly minted FFR citizens celebrated their hard-won independence.
Interlude Two
Chapter One
Joanne bid you all a fond goodbye, thanking you for your efforts on the revolution’s behalf and encouraging you to continue the work back in Symphora. She also advised you to claim that you left a day before the uprising. You elected not to interrogate Ellmore or his accountant any further, and set out onboard the Broken Amphora. Captain SeaTalon would rather not know about what happened on the island.
While traveling, you learned about each other’s histories.
Deacon was born to human parents and has human siblings. His first deal with “the devil” earned him the power of music; his most recent deal with “a devil” earned him a chance to visit “hell” and rescue a long-lost forbidden love, Aja. He is now bound to a demon named Marie, who will escort him around her home plane in exchange for being shown around the world of Symphora. His own home town burned under mysterious circumstances immediately after he visited The Crossroads and made Deal Number One. You all volunteered to visit "hell" with him.
Thistle confessed that, during your last stay in Symphora, she was abducted by agents of Lord Vetinari and coerced into agreeing to act as a spy on behalf of the Symphoran government. She’s supposed to report on your activities, but no one has approached her to do so yet. Thistle also showed you a letter Governor Ellmore had received from her father. The letter addressed a mutual business arrangement between the two. Sam was able to uncover hidden text that further discussed some sort of plot involving the Magus, an “A.I.”, and the Five Ambers.
Oralak’s entire family (and community) disappeared along with his home island, Norfall. He’s now chiefly interested in determining what magic (or other force) was responsible.
Sam confessed that he’s got the clap. He also apparently has a history with someone named Chambers.
One of the magical items you recovered from Focheia, an ornate lantern, houses an entity of some kind named Allura. It seems friendly, and it earnestly wants to be returned home. Oralak ignored its entreaties and stuffed it in the bag of holding.
You again encountered the Vanishing Isle. It’s unheard of for the same person to see it twice in a lifetime, much less twice in a month. The crew of the Broken Amphora was visibly unnerved.
On arriving in Symphora you found the city mobilizing for war. Among the new restrictions: a levy on shipping activity and customs inspections for ships returning from/departing to the southern islands.
A disaster ensued. Oralak’s undead thralls were still in Warden uniform when they walked off the ship, and he was immediately accosted by dock inspectors. A fight/chase/yakety sax sequence followed. Oralak escaped, but only after setting his minions on two officers of the law.
The Broken Amphora was targeted for arrest as well, but Thistle was able to convince the dock manager that it was a ship under the protection of Lord D’Lyros, whose name apparently guaranteed incoming vessels protection and immunity from search/seizure.
Thistle and Deacon visited the Threefold Cord. The mages there had traced TB’s sending stone; it’s located in the heart of the Symphoran mountains, smack dab in the middle of a valley where the nation’s secretive government rests.
Sam headed back to his front/charity/base for a check-in. Yonatan was pleased to report excellent financial progress, and sad to report that Max had been pinched by the cops. Apparently a warden had been coming around inquiring about a dead guy in an alley, and he picked up Max on his most recent visit. Yonatan has been ordered to collect any witnesses of the arrest for Sam’s interrogation.
The party (sans Oralak) enjoyed a couple of drinks with a surprisingly stalwart Mathilda (and decided to set her up with fellow old person Methuselah) before developing a plan for their conversation with the Magus.
Thistle spent the night at her commune, where she met with the group’s leader, Fatima. Fatima was shocked and pleased to hear of Thistle’s direct communications from/with Gaia. The members of the commune have been experiencing strange visions of an ominous fiery sun-like body, but none of them have received as much direction from Gaia as Thistle has. Fatima asked for Thistle’s counsel, and mentioned that she would bring Thistle’s connection with Gaia to Archdeacon Brutha’s attention.
You recovered your watch-collection reward from Titus - 600 gold apiece - and elected to “donate” the bonus payment to Sam’s Kids. Titus is aware of your graft and clearly couldn’t care less.
You headed to the Magus’s place with a clear plan and specifically enumerated objectives.
You did not follow the plan and you promptly abandoned your objectives.
Sophos got into some serious trouble the last time he hung out with you, but he’s glad you’re still friends!
You told the Magus about the revolution, Joanne’s role in the unrest, your own violent assistance to the rebels, the fate of the governor and his accountant, and pretty much everything else you could think of. You also showed the Magus Thistle’s dad’s letter.
Thistle noticed that the contents of the letter deeply troubled/shook the Magus. The Magus believes that the letter proves Thistle’s dad is plotting with some other organization or entity to assassinate Attolia Irene, one of the Five Ambers. He is grateful for this information, as she is a friend of his.
The Magus is not pro-revolution; he thinks a violent uprising has probably torpedoed any chance he and his allies had at effecting reform from within Symphora’s government. But he also didn’t voice active hostility to Joanne’s cause. He believes first and foremost in basic human rights and enlightened self-interest from those in power.
Sophos was relieved your meeting went (relatively) well, and he’d love it if you visited his home sometime! It’s the capital of a northern island, where his dad is the governor. There’s a floating castle!
Doris walkie-talkied Joanne to let her know that Doris's first act as a spy on behalf of the revolution was betraying it to a powerful operative with unknown loyalties and well-known ties to Symphora's government.
II. Chapter Two
At The Threefold Cord, the proprietors identified your magic items as a Folding Boat and Marvelous Pigments. They will accept the spirit lantern as Oralak’s entrance item; they’ve invited him back to examine it further in two days’ time.
Doris is well on her way to setting up Methuselah and Mathilda, who have lots in common, like being old and… I guess that’s it, just being old. Plus Methuselah is an elf and is almost a thousand, and Mathilda is a human and is like 75, so it’s not even the same kind of old... Anyway, they’re going to have dinner together at the Shining Fork, an upscale bistro in the cloudtop district. Doris made use of her overwhelmingly powerful reality-generating magic ink to make cute date outfits for both of them.
Doris also stopped by the Forum, where she saw T. Br. Pr. Gaspard (accompanied by some Institute higher-ups) declaiming about the deficiencies of the Symphoran government and presenting a novel form of government, where the people will vote on their leaders and laws. Via sending stone, Joanne indicated that she was familiar with Gaspard but that he wasn’t a known ally of the revolutionaries. Doris told Joanne she loved her, and Joanne urged Doris to stay safe.
Thistle, Deacon, and Sam visited the Dagger and Coin, a secretive bar in the seediest part of town that’s known as a criminal gathering spot. Sam hoped to initiate a convoluted series of introductions and criminal dealings that would lead to someone else finding out whether one of his kids was being honest about what happened to another one of his kids.
Deacon and Thistle were invited to perform (if Deacon was going to keep his lute). They chose to improv a folk protest ballad; Deacon sounded great! Thistle tumbled off the bar and broke a bunch of bottles.
While on the ground, Thistle met Parilla, a thin, goth-looking person of indeterminate race. They seemed perpetually frustrated, angry, and unimpressed. Thistle was able to bribe her way out of the situation and was directed to the skeeve seats where Sam had been sent after speaking with the bartender.
The group was interrupted by Alatel, a flamboyant high elf who seemed as cloyingly friendly as he was scandalously inquisitive. He introduced himself as the owner of the bar, and offered to run Sam’s request up the chain.
When Alatel came out to speak with you again, Thistle - made invisible by Deacon - slipped into the back office. She saw an overwhelmingly fat man (either a large dwarf or a small human) peering through immensely thick spectacles at a tangled disarray of paperwork and personal detritus. She managed to evade detection while reviewing the man’s notes. His name is Evrart, and he’s keeping tabs on all kinds of criminal activity in Symphora. He’s also taking notes on the Black Fists - and on Sam, who is apparently a former member of that organization. Thistle slipped back out, brushing against Alatel (who seemed to notice, but didn’t object).
Alatel offered to help Sam with his project in exchange for 250 gold pieces. Sam initially attempted to negotiate the sum down, but paid sticker price after Alatel asked about Thistle’s real name (she’d cleverly identified herself as “Bramble”). On the way out, you all got charged for checking your weapons (there hadn’t been any mention of a fee before).
On the way to the bar, Thistle overheard a background conversation between a churro vendor and her patron about an island that had disappeared abruptly. Halfhearted follow-up attempts came to nothing, so that’s all Thistle got. I’m sure Oralak won’t mind.
Sam and Deacon had a nightcap at The Guest Room, where their association with Sophos was enough to bypass the password. Sam, it turns out, used to run with a guy named Chambers, who was a talented B&E expert and a local leader in an island-specific gang called the Black Fists. It was Chambers who ultimately got Sam gutted in a gladiator fight. They are not sympatico.
In the night, wanted posters featuring Oralak’s face began to pop up all over town. There’s a 1,000gp reward for information leading to his capture on charges of sedition, treason, and murder.
The party (mercifully) reunited their various storylines by meeting up at a restaurant across from the V&S for brunch the next morning. A consensus emerged around offering Talley to help with his unknown quest, primarily because the team felt it’d be good to get out of Dodge for a while to let the heat die down.
III. Chapter Three
Finally united under one brunch restaurant’s roof, you immediately split the party again!
Oralak and Doris picked up some black and white linen at Things and Linens. They also visited The Threefold Cord, where Doris let the proprietors know that Oralak wouldn’t be keeping his appointment to examine the Spirit Lantern. Doris also bought some healing potions. They later headed to a graveyard outside town, where Oralak dished on his backstory. He was fishing off the coast of Norfall when his island disappeared. He spent subsequent years getting closer with his dad, learning magic to help uncover the secret of his island’s disappearance (and who knows what else). His dad is out on the ocean somewhere. Oralak fished up a couple of skeletons as they talked.
Back in town, Thistle, Deacon, and Sam visited the Curling Rose. Thistle picked up some spell components and Deacon was talked into purchasing an enchanted earring for Aja, his erstwhile love. They also visited Heart and Sole, a cobbler’s shop helmed by an old gnome who makes shoes for children as a charity on the side. He agreed to prepare 40 pairs for Sam’s Kids and sold Sam a nice pair for Max. The group then made your party’s fifth stop to the Threefold Cord in three days, where Sam bought an animated shield, Thistle picked up a couple healing potions, and Deacon commissioned some +1 dexterity gloves.
Sub-group number two then visited the Symphoran Mission, a charity hospital to which Talley had directed you. At the front desk you met Nurse Christine, a bubbly receptionist who agreed to pass on a (somewhat mean) note to Talley. You also learned that Talley lives in the hospital, keeps odd hours, sends and receives secret messages, and “has a good heart.” Sam volunteered some of his kids for the hospital’s service, and you donated some coin on your way out.
The party had an option to reunite on the road to the meeting place with Talley, but Doris and Oralak elected to go on ahead to the rendezvous. And so it came to pass that Thistle, Deacon, and Sam had to face two gith thugs and a werewolf on their own when they were ambushed. Deacon ran, Thistle was under the gun, and Sam was about to get torn apart when Deacon’s desperate plea to his demon Marie paid off. In exchange for a deepening of their pact, she rescued you from the fight. Marie is a tall tiefling-adjacent woman with red skin; she appeared in a turquoise evening dress and was wearing the earring Deacon had purchased earlier in the day. In retrospect, the ambush appeared to have been a robbery attempt.
Back at the ruins outside of town, your (slightly battered) party held congress with Talley’s group. He wants your help as muscle on a lengthy journey far to the northeast. You’ll stop at one town before proceeding to the edge of the Pale. He can’t (or won’t) tell you more about your eventual destination or the purpose of your journey, but he assures you that his mission is backed by powerful allies. You agreed to join him, Jayna, and Subari on the trip; the ship will leave tomorrow night.
IV. Chapter Four
Thistle was interrogated by two cloaked figures (again). She was forced to disclose the alleged assassination plot, but managed not to divulge her involvement with the revolution. Thistle also went to the library, where she did some research on ancient religions. She didn’t have much luck, so she went to meet with her old religion instructor, Professor Wastrilith. He said that there had been a strange and sudden uptick in devotion to the pre-calamity pantheon in recent years. Gods who had been considered long-dead archaeological relics suddenly have followers again after a thousand years. He’s not aware of any god associated with a flaming sunlike body akin to the one Thistle described, but there are lots and lots of fire-related gods written in the legends. In general, the ancient gods corresponded with aspects of the world - physical things like rivers, abstract concepts like love. Separately, Thistle’s dad wants to meet with her to discuss disturbing rumors about her involvement with the rebellion down south. She sent him a note putting off the meeting.
Doris went shopping on behalf of Oralak. She also ran into Thistle; the two discussed the ethics of undead thralls, Thistle’s dad, and the growing connections Thistle thinks she sees surrounding the mysterious sunlike symbol that keeps popping up during your adventures. Plus they touched base about Methuselah’s date with Mathilda; it seemed to have gone reasonably well, although Methuselah had some trouble shaking off the interpersonal rust after 200 years out of the dating scene. Doris warned Joanne that the d’Lyros family is aware of Group 84’s involvement in the revolution and indicated that they had possible leverage over the patriarch. Joanne wants Doris to put pressure on the d’Lyros family if she can - information gathering and sabotage, that sort of thing.
Sam, Deacon, and Oralak grabbed a drink at Dock 7, a wharfside watering hole near their rendezvous with Talley’s party. The party then boarded Sly Sedine, a sleek but bare-bones cutter ship. Subari shushed a visibly drunk Sam, which wounded him to his core. Talley joined soon after, apparently pursued by something, and the ship set off. Thistle warded the ship. As you prepared for an evening briefing with Talley, naps were interrupted by a near-disastrous encounter with the Vanishing Isle - your third sighting of the legendary locale. Sam went overboard, and ¾ of the party spent the next half hour saving him. Thistle managed to get a pretty good look at the island. It’s home to a large city that was both familiar and strange at the same time. Streets paved more evenly than those in Symphora, buildings with oddly shaped windows, architecture that would be out of place on any island you’ve seen.
Talley called a meeting to answer your questions, sort of.
He’s actually a follower of Gaia, although he doesn’t think there’s a connection between the flaming entity that told him the location of the rifle and Thistle’s visions; as far as he’s concerned, Gaia doesn’t just talk to random people.
You are on a mission sponsored by the Symphoran government, probably - it’s “off the books.” Talley believes this mission will ultimately benefit the safety of Symphora as a whole.
You are traveling to an island up north, where you’ll need to obtain an object/some information to be used later in the trip. After that, you’re going to the edge of the Pale. Talley, Subari, and Jayna are all from northern islands, and Talley used to be a blacksmith. He’s hungry, ambitious, and exasperated by all your questions. His favorite dessert is the brownies his dad used to make.
Jayna fights things, Subari reads things, and Talley does a bit of both. Jayna got to know Talley when he hired her for a gig a couple years ago, and now they’ve become friends - although Doris thinks there might be more to it than that. Subari apparently has a familiar in the form of a tabby cat that prowls around the deck.
Thistle communed with Gaia, who seemed to think that helping Talley would lead to good results. Deacon chatted with Marie, who seemed to like Oralak and Subari. Asked whether he was on the right path to hell, she reminisced about an old employer of hers who often said that “all roads lead to hell, eventually.”
Your voyage continued the next morning. As you passed two massive sea-cresting statues of ocean waves, Jayna suggested that you offer a prayer to Oceanus, the ancient god of the sea. Talley wasn’t interested; he’s a follower of Gaia, and that’s more than enough deity for him. Thistle opted not to worship either, since her Augury spell returned negative feelings about Oceanus. Sam didn’t join, and neither did Doris or Oralak. The whole affair sparked some conversation about the true identity of Enkata, who sure seems to have a strong affinity for the sea. As you spoke, water began to seep up through the deck of the Sedine and resolved into three violent-seeming liquid entities that charged toward you.
Part Three
Chapter One
The session opened in combat as three water creatures arose from the deck to punish your lack of faith, which they found disturbing. They seemed intent on corralling and transporting you, although where they might have taken you remains a mystery - Sam’s violent attacks and the party’s general good tactics defeated them before anything too terrible transpired. Subari wasn’t much use in the fight (noting that she was missing some critical book), Jayna exhibited the abilities of a fighter, and Talley fought with sorcerous magic that seemed out of his control at times.
After the fight, you started getting to know your companions. Jayne has a grudging respect for Sam as a fellow fighter (she offered to spar (non sexually) if he’s ever up for it); Subari was intrigued by Thistle’s theories about the flame cult (but wasn’t super jazzed about the prospect of teaching her how to sail); Talley seemed nonplussed about Sam’s child crime operation. Subari is an astronomer, although she has pretty general academic experience. Oralak and Deacon teamed up to keep the group supplied with some pretty damn good fish, and you religiously kept a spot open at your dining circle for whatever deity might choose to join you.
The day after the fight, the Magus contacted Oralak. All of you except Thistle have appeared on ‘wanted’ posters around Symphora. But it seems the Magus has a plan to protect Lady Attolia, and your party figures into that plan - perhaps he can get you amnesty in exchange for your help? Shame you left so quickly, but he wants to meet when you get back. Doris also reached out to Joanne, who says your wanted status is a sure sign you’re doing the right thing. She also alluded to a military setback, and warned you against “rumors of strange new Wardens.”
Thistle recalled that Archdeacon Brutha is a male firbolg who came to religious prominence some 30ish years ago during a power struggle with Deacon Vorbis, a claimant to the archbishop role who purported to be a direct prophet of Gaia. The church keeps the details of the leadership transition quiet. Brutha is known for his commitment to proselytizing new islands on behalf of Gaia and attempting to cut down on the cultural excess of the church. Thistle has also put together that the mysterious sun cult and Destiny’s Cross appear to be two different organizations since they have different symbols. According to ancient Gaianic texts, the old gods passed away during the calamity like chaff before the wind - they weren’t true deities, and so they could not survive the trial.
Your trip was otherwise generally uneventful, a brief encounter with some shaughin creatures aside (Talley appeared to pay a toll after communicating with them via Subari’s Comprehend Languages spell). Finally, on the last night of the first leg of your voyage, Talley called a meeting over a fish dinner Jayna had prepared for everyone. He finally offered some (limited) answers.
The Pale is not as impregnable as the public has historically believed. Apparently, some outside entity has found a way to traverse the magical fog that separates Symphora’s continents, and they have set their sights on making contact with your archipelago.
Everything about Symphora’s way of life is, in some way or another, premised on the first principle that the islands are alone. Obviously, Talley noted, an incursion by outside forces could destroy all you know to be true about the world. He says that the foreign entity has imperialistic designs on the Amber Isles.
A rogue agent is set to meet with the foreign entity’s emissaries at the edge of the Pale. Talley’s mission, and yours by contract, is to thwart that mission and prevent the destabilization of the islands.
Your first stop is a cliffside town where, Talley says, an artifact is hidden that will lead you to the rendezvous point. Your task will be to infiltrate the military-esque compound where the item is located and retrieve it. Afterward, you will sail even further north to intercept the rogue agent and prevent first contact between the two cultures.
Shrouded in thick mist and wrestling with a dry, bitter cold, you finally arrived at the mountain town of Friki. Situated atop high cliffs overlooking the ocean, the city’s ‘dock’ is located in a narrow water-filled canyon dotted by seafaring activity and precarious elevators that bring sailors and goods from the sea to the townsfolk.
II. Part Two
After Talley appeared to bribe the dockmaster, you rode a rickety platform up through the ocean mist, eventually reaching the crumbling city of Friki. Bordered on one side by the ever-shrinking cliff face and on the other by an ever-eroding mountain face riddled with mining activity, Friki is an industrial nightmare that plays host to its citizens’ impossible dreams of riches (and their dalliances with the underworld). Precarious homes and businesses stave off their inevitable slough into the sea by chaining themselves to the cliff face and - on the mountain cutbacks that overlook the city - mining complexes work day and night to extract valuable resources that fund and fuel the city’s desperate blend of exploitation and prosperity.
You are staying at a nameless inn that’s long past its prime. A decrepit sign with a crossed hammer and pick are the only evidence that this establishment might once have served a bustling industrial clientele before the city’s mining activity inevitably moved inward as more and more rock was stripped from the face of the mountain.
After settling in, you discussed your situation. Joanne warned Doris again of strange, green-eyed Wardens, and Thistle’s inquiry to Gaia regarding Talley’s employer returned a mysterious response: the paint on a decaying decoration in the room stripped suddenly, leaving only a streak of maroon.
Deacon and Sam ignored Talley’s dire warnings regarding (and demands for) secrecy, instead following a trail of thieves’ cant markings to a dangling bar that serves as a hub for the city’s literal underworld. After crossing a harrowing rope bridge they arrived at The Loaded Die, a gambling parlor and drinking den where the worst of Friki’s universally grim citizens unwind and unleash. Deacon charmed the clientele with relatable ballads about drunken wedding crashing and some free-form upbeat jazz-adjacent tunes. His satirical roast of Greymoor Steelheart, the city’s tabaxi governess, was very warmly received. Sam won an uncomfortably close game of skill against a hollowed-out drug addict which earned him the admiration of the casino’s unsavory clientele. While losing at roulette he also made friends with Celasar Mithanme, an older human woman and washed-up former warden in a long-faded uniform who bought him a couple rounds and generally seemed to enjoy partying as long as her cash held out. Sam and Deacon stumbled their way home just as a gray sun rose over endless streams of smoke rising from the town’s looming mountain foundries.
The next morning, Talley was furious. You gathered that Subari’s familiar had been keeping tabs on you the night before. What’s he paying you for, if it’s not discretion?? Addressing the more serious members of your party, he finally disclosed the details of your mission. Greymoor, the town’s governor, is heading to the edge of the pale to meet with an alien representative. Talley is determined to thwart her; to do so, he needs to recover an artifact in her collection that he says will lead you to their rendezvous at the end of the world. Your mission is to infiltrate Greymoore’s compound and recover the item - a gold locket on a silver chain, embedded with a large sapphire - without disclosing your identities or, more importantly, disclosing his. You learned that Greymoor rose to power about eight years ago, and that she has encouraged - and profited from - the city’s exploding black market and smuggling trade. Her political appointment was initially due to popular acclamation and was ratified by the Five Ambers - among whom she counts at least one ally.
Per usual, you proceeded to split the party.
Sam went in search of Celaser, who he actually did find on a lucky roll - curled up in an alley not far from the entrance to the Loaded Die, where she enjoys three square meals a day scavenged from the trash of a nearby restaurant. She never served in a war, but she has seen some strange things, and she seems determined to drink and gamble the memories away as fast as her pension will allow. Although perturbed by Sam’s direct inquiries about Greymoor’s compound, she seemed to have taken a shine to him. If she were trying to infiltrate a place like that, she said, she’d (i) stake it out for at least 24 hours, (ii) check for magic around the outside, (iii) examine it from above as well as from the street, and (iv) she’d be awful careful about taking any obvious entries.
Doris chose to interrogate your inn’s keeper, a gnomish woman named G’maro. In exchange for an oversized payment, G’maro explained that Talley had a complicated relationship with Greymoor and noted that his family’s home, where Talley’s father once worked as a blacksmith, had been burned down about 8 years earlier. Talley comes back to visit about once every six months. On an impulse, Doris tried to follow Talley and Jayna when they left the inn (Talley was clearly frustrated (infuriated) by her prying). Against Jayna’s unspoken warnings, she accompanied Talley to a brutal and grim prison built into the side of the mountain, where Talley made a bribe-facilitated visit to his father. His admission: Greymoor sent Talley’s father to jail. Doris’s most important achievement, of course, was (sort of) stealing the inn’s desk bell.
Thistle and Oralak headed for an odd magical antique shop helmed by Nanny Ogg, a wildly eccentric and possibly (probably) insane green woman of indeterminate (but very old) age. She’ll sell you anything from her bizarre collection, although her starting price for everything from information to a first date is 10,000 gold pieces. She took a special shine to Oralak. Oralak, in turn, purchased an ornate bank box key that Nanny Ogg says will lead to unfathomable wealth, a feather quill of unknown purpose, and a color-shifting stone. Nanny Ogg also knows Talley, who she says has had a hard life but is host to a lot of magical potential. Critically, Oralak purchased two cat-collar bells, expanding your all-important bell collection.
Your party commenced surveillance of Greymoor’s compound. On three sides it’s bounded by a fifteen-foot-tall wall with one magically-shrouded entrance. On the back is the cliff face, which the compound abuts and overlooks. A private dock 300 feet below the compound is the center of Greymoor’s economic enterprise. Two guards staff the gates overseen by two more on the walls. At the center of the space is a two-story mansion where Greymoor resides while home (and where she stores her most prized possessions). Doris spent some time painting the scene and Thistle spent some time wrapped in hobo garbage. Between them, the women discovered that wagons carrying crates of goods come and go from the compound and noticed that the guard changes around eight each night. Thistle’s class-conflict-laden tail of two off-duty guards led to a pretty nice bar and a revelation: the compound’s security forces have had to work overtime because of a failure in magical defense wards protecting the property’s back-right corner.
III. Part Three
Deacon and Oralak opened the session with their very first buddy plot! A harrowing reconnaissance mission in the pouring rain got them a missing snake, spotted by the guards, tossed off a cliff, soaking wet, and none the wiser about the compound’s security. Turns out trying to scale an inverted cliff face 300 feet in the air above a roiling sea doesn’t work well for a bard and a wizard. It didn’t go *too* badly, though, thanks to an abuse of the Dungeons and Dragons spell list and a benevolent DM. The only casualty of the mission: one of Sam’s prized handaxes, which Deacon had previously lifted. Maybe the inn’s maid took it?
Your party set a new personal best for group-splitting in this session:
Thistle did some arcane and mundane surveillance of the compound’s gates. Her spell revealed a password uttered by everyone who entered: Maranatha. Her attempts at setting up Doris with the gate’s orcish guard Dhokk were less successful, although not entirely fruitless; despite her unorthodox (rude) approach, he seemed receptive to meeting someone. After all, he’d just been dumped by his mine-working girlfriend of six months. Thistle also picked up some new warden-themed duds from the Phantom Thread, a tailor’s shop run by a ghost. Thistle also had a chat with Gaia, and learned that the item you seek is in the mansion itself, not any of the warehouses on the property.
Doris took a surprisingly firm tone with Joanne during their daily message, responding to a question about exclusivity with a chirpy response about not having found anyone else.
Sam and Deacon slept the day away, still recovering from their night at the Loaded Die.
Oralak re-summoned his familiar and did some more scouting. The compound is comprised of barracks, stables, a mansion, and several warehouses. There are extensive magical defenses, including an antimagic field and some sort of surveillance spell hovering above the area. This intelligence came at the cost of a second familiar in as many days.
When the evening arrived, Doris and Sam took up their posts in the bar Thistle had previously noted as a regular haunt for guards at the compound. When Dhokk arrived at That Bar, Doris made her move: Dhokk was a very sad, very complicated orc wrestling with a career that had gone off the rails and taken his relationship down with it. Doris’s very odd decision to inquire about “The Lake,” a mysterious warm oasis tucked in the frigid northern mountains, resulted in an immediate connection with the guard; after Sam’s choreographed douchebag routine inspired Rhokk to propose taking the night elsewhere, and after a stiff right hook to Sam’s jaw, Doris and Rhokk headed toward the compound.
Meanwhile Thistle, Oralak, and Deacon (joined by Sam, who saw them nearing the target) headed toward the compound. Thistle was wearing her commissioned uniform, and the rest of the troupe went invisible after she (briefly) convinced the guards she belonged in the compound. The deception didn’t last, though, and before long she was being led by one of the guards into a warehouse. She and Sam were able to subdue the guard and take his uniform, locking him in an office, and they headed toward the main entrance of the mansion.
Doris managed to talk Dhokk into leaving their moonlit overlook for a flirty infiltration of the mansion, so they headed toward the main entrance.
Oralak and Deacon decided to proceed toward the mansion. Deacon successfully picked the lock just as Doris, Rhokk, Sam, and Thistle all approached.
IV. Part Four
Dhokk began to recognize both Thistle, who had spent a significant amount of time earlier in the day trying to talk him into a date with Doris, and Sam, whom he had punched in the face halfway through the date with Doris. With just a split second to react, half the party remained invisible while Sam rushed Dhokk. The first grapple attempt failed, resulting in a significant clatter (both from Sam’s armor and from his bag of 3,000 silver pieces), but the second succeeded; Sam pulled Dhokk into the mansion, where Oralak and Deacon began exploring. One of the guards manning the wall rolled a natural 20 for its perception check, and another rolled a 19, and they sounded the alarm.
A brutal fight began. Sam held out as best he could by the entryway, tanking hits from as many as four enemies at once, but eventually went unconscious - not once, but twice. At death’s doorway, he recalled his first days as a blacksmith’s apprentice, when briefly it seemed as though he had a chance at a normal life.
Doris and Oralak fought through the mansion’s library, where a swarm of animated books reacted negatively to Oralak’s prodding, and the patio, where Dhokk lashed out after his second heartbreak in as many days by stabbing at Oralak. The library featured books on navigation, the Calamity, and Symphoran history. There was also a very large renaissance-style portrait of Greymoor Steelheart, a dark violet tabaxi, lording over her cats. Oralak also explored a training room of sorts, where he noticed some coils of rope and whips along the wall.
Thistle did the best she could to keep Sam alive and sent an SOS to Jayna, who (as it turned out) had been assigned to keep an eye on your infiltration attempt. She joined the fight. Thistle also explored the mansion’s kitchen, where she found two very deferential homunculi chefs.
Deacon explored upstairs. He picked the lock on an alchemical laboratory of sorts which contained the remnants of various experiments, a comprehensive ingredients cabinet, and a very large navigation portrait of the night sky. Five of the stars in the portrait were highlighted. Deacon grabbed an apparently magical potion on his way out; it’s got some sort of cloud in it. When he went through the next door, he found himself on a grassy gnoll under a flawless, moonless Symphoran night sky. The only things on the hill were some telescopes pointing upward in various directions.
It’s anyone’s game going into halftime; you’ve killed two guards and done significant damage to the rest, but Sam is down, Oralak has 1HP, Thistle has 7HP, and you’re all low on spell slots/abilities.
V. Part Five
The battle continued.
Sam the Human Punching Bag went up and down like a Bermuda barometer, continuing to facetank the combined assault of Greymoor’s guards. Through death-save memories we watched the early days of his involvement with crime and kid rescuing alongside associate Chambers.
Thistle dumped spell after spell into keeping Sam alive while doing some damage, too, battling two mages from the mansion’s staircase.
Deacon shuffled up and down the stairs as well, supporting Thistle and Sam and harrying the slowly dwindling army of security guards.
The tide began to turn in earnest when Subari’s familiar managed to shock one of the defending mages out of concentration on her highest level spell and do significant damage to the other caster. Eventually, and just barely, you managed to down all of the guards, including Doris’s erstwhile date Dhokk. The mansion’s entryway is a burned and bloody nightmare.
Oralak fled to (sort of) rob the Empty Scabbard (a generic (and heavily trapped) weapons store) and an apothecary that appeared to be owned by the platonic ideal of sweet grandmother, where he recovered (respectively) various weapons and some magic potions. He’s planning to go back and avenge his comrades, who he assumes are dead as doornails. He also facilitated Doris’s escape from the hallway meat grinder.
Doris made her way outside and up the wall of the mansion, stopping along the way to chat with a deeply frightened Subari, who had sent her familiar into the fray to help. A hastily painted ladder and a broken window gained her access to Greymoor’s bedroom, where she found a jewelry box (with some unusual and interesting contact lenses) and a trophy room (which housed two animated swords). She recovered a sheaf of papers from the latter.
Reunited, the party explored the rest of the mansion, pressured into haste by the upcoming arrival of law enforcement responding to a very long and very loud magical fight in the heart of the governor’s home.
Downstairs, Sam found an office strewn with paper and books which featured a secret door in the back. You didn’t take any of the documents.
Doris and Thistle explored the basement while Sam recuperated with Jayna.
In one pitch-dark storage area they found a group of bubbling tanks that contained unsettling and odd creatures the likes of which they’d never seen. The girls noped out of there immediately.
The neighboring room was scorched black as though it had survived a vicious fire, but the floor hosted a pristine arcane sigil of some kind. They gathered that a summoning ritual had taken place there - something terrible had recently occupied this space. Even the remnants of the spell drove Doris to nausea and headaches, and they left the room just as a deeply, deeply “wrong” toad hopped into view.
The final basement room appeared to be a smuggling staging area. Large lead enclosures dotted the space in between stacks of wooden crates, and one wall opened out of the cliff face. While investigating the creates Thistle recovered some vials of mysterious powder and some nice knives, and Doris met Nikel, a friendly boy with sharp green eyes and blond hair who said he’d been trapped in his lead box for over a week. You busted him out. He’s a “detective,” and he’s on the case of Greymoor Steelheart! He also can heal people, apparently.
Back upstairs, Deacon and Subari considered the planetarium and the star chart. Subari pretty much immediately realized that the star chart Deacon had cut out of the wall held the solution to the planetarium’s puzzle; she turned five telescopes resting on the hill toward the stars highlighted by the map. The room reverted to normal and a final door was revealed.
While adjusting the telescopes, Subari was troubled to find a mistake in the otherwise perfect magical reproduction of the Symphoran night sky: one of the telescopes, she said, was pointed at a celestial body that, as far as she knows, has never existed above your world.
After solving the planetarium puzzle, a new room appeared. Inside you found bookshelves whose contents were padlocked and chained; magical tomes with minds of their own, too dangerous to leave unfettered. At the center of the room sat a chest, apparently unlocked, which was unopenable via conventional means. By sheer luck you happened to cast spells at the receptacle, and Subari suggested that you keep doing so. Once you’d poured enough magic into the box it opened, revealing a beautiful sapphire amulet (the object of your search), an onyx figurine of a horse, and a strange mechanical sphere.
You booked it outside with the fuzz hot on your tail. Jayna immediately jumped off the cliff, joined by Sam, before the rest of you (and a very chatty Nikel) linked hands and leapt into the sea under the protection of Deacon’s feather fall scroll.
VI. Part Six
The party completed its fall down the mountain while being shot at by Wardens who’d arrived at the scene of the crime(s). For the most part you got down okay, and Doris whipped out her collapsible boat. You elected to row to the Sly Sedine, where Jayna and Subari left you to tend ship while they went to help Talley. Thistle gave Jayna the heart amulet, which was giving Thistle odd vibes about, like, feelings or something? Tough to say. Back at the inn, Oralak filled Talley in on the disastrous heist attempt. Talley was characteristically mad, and he stormed off to try and fix what y’all had broken. Oralak passed up a peek at Talley’s room and went to bed.
The party narrowly escaped detection during a warden sweep of the docks. Nikel handled the conversation while the group hid in barrels below deck. Thistle heard strange voices above deck during the negotiations. Nikel’s parents died a long time ago, and he’s from Navagio, the island with the big volcano crater! He’s on a secret mission to uncover a mystery involving Greymoor, and he got caught outside the governor’s mansion.
Talley returned from a mansion excursion of his own in very, very high spirits (and with Perdida intact). He led Oralak, Jayna, and Subari through the city, which was swarming like an anthill that’d just met a boot. Robberies all round! Guards dead! The governor’s mansion in flames (Talley later admitted he’d set it on fire out of spite)! What could it mean? A secret tunnel carved into the cliff face poured out onto a secluded portion of the dock and, after a wait, Talley reunited the two groups. He was rueful about the collateral damage you caused, but generally very happy with you for recovering the artifact.
And so you set sail for the edge of the world.
On the way out of town, Deacon received a strange visit from Marie, his patron, at the helm of your ship. She was upset with him for so nearly dying. She put so much of herself into keeping him safe, and into visiting this world for him! He needs to be more careful! She offered him some more power, just to help keep him safe. Deacon accepted, and woke to find an adorable three-headed puppy in his hammock. The puppy has evil-ish eyes, and is very warm, but is otherwise pretty benign. At Deacon’s request Marie appeared in the hold of the ship briefly, clad in the same garb as before (and still wearing the earrings Deacon had given her). The temperature of the room rose by about ten degrees. She was enchanted to meet you, and very flirty, but she didn’t stay long. Like Deacon, she thinks Nikel is the worst. Deacon spent the next two weeks chatting with her; she says that the more they adventure together, the stronger he gets - and so the closer he gets to his goal of finding Aja. But anyway, aren’t they having fun? Don’t they make a good team? No need to rush things, right? He also got to bond with Trinity, the baby cerberus, and trained it not to bite Hat. It’s taken to chasing seagulls instead.
Doris conversed with Joanne. The revolution was initially going very well, but there’s been a recent influx of very strange, green-eyed Wardens at the front lines. Nobody knows where they came from, and they fight with a single-minded dedication while ignoring pain and anything else besides their goal. As a result, the Free Five have suffered a series of setbacks lately. Joanne is conflicted about her feelings for Doris; on the one hand their relationship is a comfort during a difficult time, but on the other hand it’s like the literal end of the world, so the timing’s not great. What happens if something goes wrong and Joanne doesn’t make it?
Thistle heard from her dad’s chief assistant, Nahuseresh. He informed her that her father was not happy with her extended absence, and that he demanded she return immediately to explain herself. Thistle eventually rang up her dad himself, telling him that she was okay but that she wasn’t coming home unless he could promise her some things. In a terse reply, Demetrius informed her that it did not fit a father to bargain with his daughter and commanded her to come home. He warned that his protection from the consequences of her actions - first in Symphora and now in the north - would not last forever.
Sam trained with Jayna, both of them honing their skills as they compared fighting styles and learned new tricks. Jayna comes from the far north, where she used to live with a nomadic tribe of other goliaths until she headed south to seek her fortune. She and Sam are of roughly equal skill, although she’s larger and Sam is more resourceful in combat. Sam also had Thistle send a message to Max. Thistle learned that Max was very scared and alone and cold in a prison just off the coast of Symphora. She only told Sam that last part, though. Doris also asked Joanne about Max, but there’s just nothing J can do; she doesn’t have many spies in Symphora, and she can’t risk them. Thistle tried another message, this time to Enkata (for some reason). At her urging, Sam tossed a handaxe into the sea. Enkata did respond, but explained that he didn’t have much influence in the area where Max is being held. If Max does cross his path, though, he’ll do his best.
Oralak investigated your fancy new magic items. He was able to deduce the nature of the potions you’d recovered, and figured out that the contact lenses were Eyes of Charming, but struggled with the obsidian figurine and the mysterious mechanical ball. Subari, seeing his struggles, offered to help him in exchange for some analysis of a problem that was bugging her. They met at night, where Subari (who is an astronomer working on a dissertation) had pointed a telescope at the Black Eye, a strange patch of sky where there are no stars. Except now there was a star, smack dab in the middle: she’d first noticed it back at Volcano Manor, where one of the puzzle telescopes had been pointed directly at it. Why would a star suddenly appear in the night sky, especially there? After their talk, Subari charitably agreed to teach Oralak the Identify spell. Oralak also did a training montage for Pongo and Perdida, who watched Sam and Jayna spar.
As you approached the Pale, things began to change. The atmosphere, already bitter, bitter cold, began to bite in a dark and uncomfortable way. As tendrils of the strange fog passed over the ship, you felt as though they were drawing pieces of yourself out of you. Time moved strangely, and you heard odd sounds and saw mysterious sights in the distant mist. Your magic occasionally, and increasingly frequently, began to misfire, or to produce unusual results. Even your dreams were affected:
Doris dreamed of being a blacksmith, feeling the sting of sparks on her arms.
Thistle dreamed of making music, the sensation of a chord on her fingers.
Sam dreamed of running through an obstacle course in dense jungle terrain.
Oralak dreamed of a strange continent unlike anything on Symphora, and felt that it was a very old dream indeed.
Deacon dreamed of running with a pack of friends through freezing mountains.
Huddled around a fire below decks (the only place warm enough to sit and talk), with Trinity and hat curled up at your feet, you began to see an entirely new side of Talley. A peace came over him more and more each day, and he laughed easily and frequently. He expressed admiration for your work in obtaining the amulet, and he seemed to regain a more comfortable rhythm with his friends Jayna and Subari. A few days before your journey was set to end, Jayna gently asked Talley for a story. He obliged.
On the first night, Talley told you the story of the spider goddess of fate. A young prince, beloved to the land’s people as a kind and generous lad, left his home and grievously ill mother - an evil and manipulative queen - to find a long-lost relic that his court magicians said could heal her. Along the way he performed many feats; slaying monsters, gambling his life in a game of cards with a powerful necromancer, and thwarting a robbery attempt by immortal thieves at the temple of the spider goddess who weaves men’s fates (where, in thanks, she promised him one favor). On his way home he met and fell in love with a beautiful and kind musician; although they did not meander, the journey was long, and so by the time they arrived at court they planned to marry. But the prince’s mother, jealous of the musician and worried that she would undermine the queen’s iron rule, forbade the marriage and secretly arranged for the maiden to be poisoned. Heartbroken, the prince remembered the promise the spider goddess had made him. So he traveled once again, facing even more trials and tribulations, until he reached the moon, which in this land was really an impossibly large and beautiful tangled web of silver threads. The fates of each man and country and thought, represented by glimmering strands, were tied together into a sprawling celestial body. At the center of the web the young prince found the spider goddess of fate, and begged her for his true love’s life. The goddess told him that, although she would not respin the young woman’s strand of fate (which had snapped when she died), the goddess would permit the young prince to hold the two ends together himself. As long as he remained in the web-moon holding his love’s fate in place, she would live. And so the prince remained there for years, and years, and years, and watched as his kingdom crumbled under the awful rule of his selfish mother, and watched as his friends grew old without him, and watched - hardest of all - as his true love fell in love with another, and was married, and had many children. Through it all he held on, a line of silver web wrapped around each arm, until the day his own strand of fate snapped, and he passed into the great reef where souls swim after they leave the world. Subari felt this was a very sad story, but she seemed glad Talley was telling tales again.
On the second night Subari asked for a happier story, and so Talley told the story of the wise knight. It seems that there once was a lascivious, violent, and corrupt knight who grew tired of the paltry power he’d amassed in his own fiefdom and decided to search the lands for all the wealth he could find, steal, or conquer. As the years went on, however, and as he met more and more and more people, and read more and more and more books, and sought the counsel of more and more and more gods, he came to realize a fantastic truth: that the greatest power of the world isn’t found in a sword, or in a coffer, or in a mage’s book, but rather in the pursuit and collection of wisdom. In his wisdom he came to be ashamed of the way he had treated the world and its people during his journeys. For seven days and seven nights he thought on all that he had learned, and on all that he had done, and at the end he wished in his deepest soul that he could right the wrongs he had committed. At the moment of this conviction, however, his shame was so great that his heart failed and he began to pass into the world hereafter. But in this realm the god of death was a greedy creature, and it knew of the wealth the knight had amassed during his mortal years. And so the god of death offered him a bargain: in exchange for all the worldly goods he had gathered in his life, the god would grant the knight another lifespan, exactly equal in length to his first. In fact, the god of death said, for each lifetime at the end of which the knight could return and bring so much treasure, the god would grant him another lifetime. So the knight gave up his wealth, and was returned to earth at the same moment as his death. For seven days and seven nights he thought over the god’s offer: he, alone among men, could live forever - so long as he spent each lifetime amassing all the material wealth he could. Finally the knight set back out along the very same path he had already trodden, and the god of death was happy, because it seemed the knight would repeat his last lifetime, and the god’s treasure would grow. But at each place along the path, the knight reversed his previous actions. He ministered where he had wounded, he gave where he had taken, he apologized where he had scorned. At the end of his second lifetime the knight died once again, penniless, and ignored the angry yells of the god of death as he passed into the hereafter. The goddess of eternity didn’t know what to do with him; no creature had ever come before her to be judged for two lifetimes. But eventually she placed each of the knight’s lives on one of her scales and, finding that they balanced perfectly, was amazed. This, too, was a first, and she did not know whether to send him to heaven or hell. Finally she told the knight that, because his impact on the world had, in the end, been nothing, he would travel neither to heaven nor to hell, but would instead pass from existence entirely. The knight, now as wise as any who had ever lived, thanked the goddess of eternity for her decision and went gladly to his rest. So it was that the man who could have been the world’s first immortal became instead the first to truly die. Subari wasn’t sure this was a happier story, but Jayna thought it was.
The third night, Subari asked for a true story. Talley said that all stories are true to some degree or another, but he took her meaning and told the story of Eriker and Elise. Not so long ago, in these very lands, lived the greatest swordspeople the world has ever known. Eriker was born to a tiny family living in the farthest northern reaches of the farthest northern islands, where he first learned to fence with icicles and became, for a time, the chief hunter and protector of his village (some say that he rode a polar bear, and others say that he mostly slew them). Elise was born to a sprawling family who worked a farm on one of Symphora’s southernmost islands. She terrorized her fellow children with swords fashioned from sticks and cornstalks, but soon grew to be the most talented reaper in the southern isles (and certainly the only one who cut wheat with a sword instead of a scythe). Their wits were as sharp as their blades, however, and both began to hunger for more than their tiny communities could provide. So Eriker set out south, where he began to make a name for himself fighting the colonies of bone naga that had long infested the mines on some islands there. And Elise headed north, where she served as the chief bodyguard for the most powerful merchants in the land. But Eriker soon ran out of bone naga, and Elise soon grew bored of merchants, so each went in search of teachers who could ready them for something greater. Eriker sailed far to the west, where legend holds that he stole secret sword teachings from immortal caretakers older than the Calamity. Elise traveled to a mysterious realm adjacent to our own, where the stories say she learned swordcraft from monsters eternally chained for cosmic crimes. It was around this time that they found, stole, or forged their famous weapons; which it was, we do not know. We know only that Eriker fought with a frozen blade some believed to be forged from the heart of a comet, and Elise fought with a glowing white sword that onlookers claimed seemed to draw power from the earth itself. Armed with their secret teachings, and masters of their crafts, neither Eriker nor Elise could find any employment that satisfied their intellectual and professional curiosity. So they dedicated themselves to the craft itself. Eriker returned home to his village, where he settled in the deepest ice cave and thought only of swordplay. And Elise went home to her farm, where she climbed the island’s highest mountain and spent all her days training atop it. But by this time Eriker and Elise had become living legends - as had the valuable secrets they collected during their studies. Slowly at first, but more and more frequently, adventurers came to challenge them. Time and again, Eriker’s contemplations were interrupted by fools who thought they deserved to be known as the greatest swordsman in the world. Time and again, Elise’s training was interrupted by boastful adventurers who were sure they could best a woman in combat. The interruptions grew so bothersome to Eriker and Elise that, after a year or two, they decided to take matters into their own hands. Eriker would head south, he decided, and visit every town and village and city, challenging anyone who wished to try their hand at besting him. Elise would sail north, calling out to each port she passed and inviting any would-be challengers aboard to face her in a duel. Eventually, they both reasoned, there would be no one left to challenge them, and they could spend the rest of their days in peace. All went according to plan; Eriker dispatched his foes easily, and Elise rarely broke a sweat proving her talent. Finally, Eriker and Elise reached the midpoint of the isles, and took up rooms in the City of Symphora. Each was weary; it had been a long and winding road. But both knew that, once they had bested the other, their travels would be through, and they could return home cemented as the greatest in history and free to study alone, in peace, for the rest of their days. By this time there were no two more famous people in all the islands, of course, and visitors from every borough in Symphora began to arrive to witness the bout. It began, finally, in the Forum, at sunset, with a roaring crowd present and the eyes of the islands upon them. Amazingly, to that day, they had never met. Eriker, seeing Elise for the first time, was heartbroken: here was the most beautiful woman in the world, and he would soon take her life. Elise, laying eyes on Eriker, was horrified: here was the most lovely man she had ever seen, in this realm or any other, and he was about to die by her hand. They say that the first clash of the duelists’ swords was so powerful that the sound it made was louder than the shouting from all 50,000 spectators, but of course this is probably an embellishment. We do know, though, that the din from spectators and the clashing of swords drowned out a furious conversation: hour after hour Eriker and Elise talked, and fought, and circled, and talked, and fought, and circled. None (then or now) can say what it is they discussed, though many have wondered. Twelve hours into the battle some in the crowd left, and were replaced by others who were waiting in lines outside. Twelve hours after that still more came and left. Hour after hour, day after day, Eriker and Elise fought - and smiled. All who witnessed the fight agree: by the second day, the only thing as furious as the clash of their blades was the pace of their laughter. By the third day, the Symphoran government was forced to ban gambling on the match because too much of the nation’s currency had made its way into the hands of bookmakers. By the fifth day there were six hundred and eighty reported injuries in the stands, but none on the field: though they fought as hard as they could, neither Eriker nor Elise could land a blow. After six days, and then seven, some began to wonder if the combatants would die of exhaustion before one managed to kill the other (this worried the bookmakers, who hadn’t included that outcome in their odds). On the eighth day there was torrential rain, and the stands began to empty. But they filled again on the ninth day, when two blows were finally scored: Eriker, seeing a tiny pebble underneath Elise’s boot, anticipated the hair’s-width opening it would leave in her stance and sliced a thin line across her thigh. Elise, who noticed the puff a gust of wind made in the dirt, foresaw a millimeter’s space in Eriker’s guard that would be created by the breeze and whispered her blade across his back. The crowd was exultant, but Eriker and Elise - who had not stopped talking or fighting for nine days - seemed crestfallen at the marks their blades had made. Their craft was their everything, however, and the fight went on. It was noon on the tenth day when Eriker saw a pattern in Elise’s swings which, in seven hours, would leave her right side completely unprotected. It was at that same time that Elise, analyzing Eriker’s footsteps, realized that in seven hours he would maneuver in such a way that his left side would be totally vulnerable. The crowd could sense the fighters’ trepidation (and excitement), and the din grew. Finally, just as the sun set, Eriker and Elise whirled in perfect unison. The stadium shook as the crowd roared - at first in anticipation, and then in confusion. For, at the very moment their swords should have plunged into each other’s sides, Eriker and Elise disappeared into thin air. They left nothing behind but two day-old streaks of blood in the dust, ten days’ worth of footprints, and a lot of very angry bookmakers. They have not been seen once in the twenty years that have passed since. Subari conceded that Eriker and Elise had lived, and that they had been very good at swordfighting, but she felt that Talley might have taken some liberties with the actual history of the thing.
On the final night, Talley asked if any of you had heard the tale of the first storyteller, who had invented the art of saying things that were not true (but used that power to save the land rather than deceive it). Jayna and Subari perked up; it seemed as though they hadn’t heard this one from him before. [This story is too long to put in the google doc, believe it or not, but I threw it here in case you want to read it: The First Storyteller]
VII. Part Seven
Sam turned down Oralak’s 500gp sending scroll offer and had Thistle cast the spell instead (she’d briefly glimpsed Chambers, Sam’s old mentor, at the fight where they first met). Sam asked Chambers for help getting Max out of jail, but it seems Chambers is already familiar with Max’s plight, and has - in fact - met the Sam’s Kids crew. I wonder what’s been going on back home?
Doris rang up Joanne, per usual, telling her that Doris was afraid about her encounter with the foreigners in the morning and that she “didn’t want to die out at the Pale.” Doris’s heart sank when Joanne was barely able to respond; she sounded very, very hurt. I wonder what’s been going on down south?
Thistle had everyone inspect the mysterious mechanical orb. For the most part it just kept spitting out coins and feathers, although Nikel somehow got it to shoot fire. Doris disclosed that she’d actually seen coins like those before, when a mysterious man met her in the bar where Dhokk was being deceived. The mysterious man seemed impressed with how ridiculous your plan was, and he gave Doris some advice about “The Lake” before paying with the strange coin. The thing with The Lake is what got Doris on Dhokk’s good side and set your plan in motion. Doris now realizes that the stranger had a faint feather-shaped scar on his cheek, just like the profile on the orb coins, the coin with which he paid for drinks, and the statue of Sedine in that one temple.
Talley emphasized that all of the Symphorans in Greymoor’s party, which had traveled on the magical ship Evergale, had to die to prevent the successful consummation of a deal between them and the foreign emissaries. However, it’s critical that you not harm the foreigners - the absolute last thing anyone wants is an intercultural war. That’s what you’re out here trying to stop in the first place, says Talley.
Talley has been working on thwarting Greymoor for at least five years. When Doris inspected his thoughts, she found nothing but determination to personally murder Greymoor. In fact, he’ll give you guys a 10% bonus if he’s the one who does her in.
Talley mentioned that he’s seen correspondence from Greymoor that’s often signed “The Fire Comes.” Nikel’s heard the same thing during his Investigations! He thinks the saying is connected to this mysterious sun symbol he keeps seeing everywhere. When Thistle drew the sun symbol tattoo she’d seen on a guy in Focheia, Nikel confirmed it was the same. It’s also the same symbol Sam and Oralak found griffittied around Symphora.
You also noticed that, every time Talley said something mean or angry, he seemed to calm down (and that his amulet glowed each time he did it). Doris used telepathy to confirm that his anger was physically leaving his body and entering the amulet.
Next, the party got to strategizing. How to get intel on the rendezvous point? After considering and discarding about 10,000,000 versions of turning something invisible, polymorphing it, making it walk on water, etc etc, you sent a ravenized version of Trinity to spy on the meeting.
There are two boats at the edge of the Pale. One is the Evergale, on which Greymoor, Anastriana (Greymoor’s edgelord accountant/bodyguard), and at least one private Warden traveled. The Evergale has invisible sails and rigging that always catch the wind.
The other ship, much larger than either Greymoore’s vessel or yours, is host to (at minimum) some guy named Reilly Heckethorn (the main envoy with whom Greymoor has been in cahoots), an orange-haired skull-faced emo warrior, and another guard of some kind. This ship had closed portholes, plus some strange glass enclosures along its deck that were filled with roiling ashen smoke. Its design is unlike anything you’d find in a Symphoran shipyard.
While waiting for Trinity to return, Doris struck up a conversation with Subari. The astronomer was standoffish as usual at first, but opened up quickly when Doris started inquiring about her studies. Subari is fascinated by the new celestial body in the Black Eye, and thinks it’ll make a good topic for her dissertation. She alluded to a complicated history with Talley, who has apparently been consumed with vengeance lately, but withdrew from the conversation when pressed for more.
Once you had Trinity’s intelligence, you went through another 10,000,000 ideas. Doris could water walk up and paint holes in the Evergale’s hull? Thistle could sneak aboard and plant wards? Someone could turn into a narwhal and, I dunno, ram it? Orlak could polymorph someone into a blue whale on top of the ship? That last one forced the DM to rule that there are no such things as large whales in this world. Nothing seemed like a good fit; it’s really hard to sneak up to two ships on high alert at the absolute edge of the world.
After cycling through frustration a few times, Talley strangely suggested that maybe it was time to call it and return home. There’d been so much violence already, maybe it would be better if everyone just left things in peace… Suddenly, Jayna handed him a note. After reading it, and nodding at her, Talley took out the amulet. Once beautiful red, it was now black as sin, emanating fronds of negative energy. He dropped it to the deck and smashed it with his boot. The energy suddenly returned to his body and he was, suddenly, once again just as angry and grim as when you first met him.
In the end Thistle asked Gaia what to do, and her goddess seemed to suggest that the best result would come if they headed directly into the Pale and emerged alongside your targets for an ambush.
VIII. Part Eight
As your ship plunged into the Pale, shit got weird. You heard increasingly insistent voices, cries, and laughter from long-dead or missing friends and relatives.
Thistle heard the Voice of Gaia urging her to set out on a journey of conquest and proselytization, but managed to see through the false commands and resist temptation.
Oralak glimpsed the familiar silhouette of his home island through lightning-riddled fog, but managed to talk himself out of going to investigate.
Doris heard an urgent call from her beloved grandmother: according to the old woman, there is something waiting at home for Doris - something critical, her birthright. Doris fought through Sam and dove into the sea, but was eventually charmed back onto the boat by her friends.
Deacon caught sight of his lost love, Aja, calling to him from a nearby island. He went chasing after her, sprinting as hard as he could but never getting closer, until Thistle was able to talk him back aboard the ship.
Sam suddenly found himself next to Chambers, who taunted and fought with him as Jayna and Pongo tried to restrain him. Eventually Sam shook out of it, but not before hitting his buddies a couple times.
The gripping cold drew energy from both your physical forms and your spiritual selves until finally you burst out from the Pale and into combat with the ships at the end of the world.
A massive fight ensued.
The foreigners are led by Reilley “Sparks” Heckethorn, a flame-wreathed musician of some kind who invited you to parlay but didn’t hesitate to immolate your ship when you turned him down.
His companion is Gideon, a furious fighter of some kind shrouded in necromantic energy, but she was turned against her companions by Deacon for most of the fight.
Greymoor herself, a tall tabaxi in a violet cloak, was polymorphed into a worm by Talley. But she managed to escape and fell toward the ocean, fighting with a screaming Talley as he demanded that she tell him where “she” is. Greymoor is fighting with two magical-looking whips (or would be if she hadn’t been a worm most of the time).
Sam is dominated by Sparks and has been dealing massive damage to Deacon. Nikel and Trinity’s best ankle-biting efforts haven’t been able to snap him out of it.
Jayna, in giant crab form (thanks Subari!), wrecked Anastriana, Greymoor’s accountant/bodyguard/companion. Ana has failed two death saving throws. The Pale’s weird magic sent you flashes of her memories: shivering in a cell, being (literally) stabbed in the back.
Crewing the ship and fighting you at Sparks’s behest are the strangest creatures you have ever seen: primarily made out of metal, they have some flesh components and move in short, jerky bursts. They can also fly on tiny, buzzing wings. Talley’s cool with you destroying these, should the need arise.
The fight is going well for you, overall: one of the three Symphoran adversaries is unconscious, another is falling into the water at half health, and the third is pretty banged up. But your DM has two weeks to plan, and the baddies are next up in the initiative order…
IX. Part Nine
Whoo boy, the fight kept going.
As she fell, Greymoor threw a strange tentacle-like whip from her belt onto the deck of the Sly Sedine. It morphed into a tangled mess of otherworldly monstrosities that damaged and restrained much of your party, including a hapless Deacon. She also grappled her way into the rigging, where she soon ended up in a fight for her life with Talley. The tentacles also did damage to your already fire-ravaged ship.
Sparks blinded half the party with some fancy pyrotechnics. Later, he immolated Oralak, and he sent a wall of fire across your soon-to-be-stolen ship. Throughout the game he insisted that you remain to negotiate with him, and he seems intent on keeping Thistle on his ship with some version of the Command spell. He frequently healed his friends with “the warm fires of home,” and he responded viciously after Sam attacked Gideon, warning that “he was right to believe this is a barbarous land that must be taught civilization.” Regardless of what happens next, Sparks warned, he will return.
Jayna has been popping in and out of Huge Giant Crab Form. She managed to escape the tentacles on the Sedine and make her way to the foreigners’ ship, where she was able to crush Greymoor in her claw and, eventually, grab the charmed Thistle. Her decision to leave Greymoor’s corpse behind in favor of saving Thistle was a meaningful one.
Doris has spent the entire fight blinded, but still managed to make her way over to the Evergale - thanks to the efforts of Subari, whose secret non-hate for Doris was revealed when she dimension-doored off the sinking Sedine with your monk.
Oralak threw possibly the clutchest spell of the encounter when he dispelled three different effects from Sam and returned him to both your side and the fight. He also cold-blasted about five enemies off of the Evergale, but only one of his zombies (Pongo) made it across with him. While he was unconscious on the deck, the party got flashes of a happy memory where he ran through the tropical forests of an island with a small port village, and the sad memory of him cowering in the corner of a ship after sequestering himself.
Deacon has been battling an awful cocktail of unconsciousness, blindness, tentacle attacks, and fire for the duration of the fight. He came within one saving throw of dying for the second time in this campaign (no thanks to Thistle, who announced that she “can always heal him later, even if he’s dead”) before Nikel once again brought him up to consciousness. Ultimately it was Jayna’s demolishing of Greymoor, and the subsequent disappearance of the tentacles on Sedine, that gave him a fighting chance. He paid the help forward by healing Oralak, who had been knocked unconscious by another flame attack from Sparks.
Anastriana succeeded on a death saving throw - you saw a memory of her juggling knives successfully for the first time while a hooded figure in the background clapped - before being finally murdered by Thistle. In the end, her memories revealed that the mysterious figure in the prison, stabbing her in the back, and applauding her had all been the same grey-haired man. Greymoor seemed upset, but not devastated, by her accountant/bodyguard’s death.
Gideon, the skull-painted warrior attending Sparks, finally got into the action by disemboweling Talley, who fell to the deck unconscious. She also enjoyed sparring with Sam, who she cleverly shoved into the water after feinting a frontal attack. She’s still got those weird spirits swirling all around her, and she’s wielding a super dope claymore.
Sam, finally cleared of Sparks’s influence, sprinted across three ships to save an unconscious Talley, who was about to be finally murdered by Gideon. Breaking the cardinal instruction you’d been given, he threw an axe directly into Gideon’s sword arm, knocking the weapon away and harming a sacrosanct emissary from a totally foreign culture. Unfortunately he then got shoved into the ocean by the sacrosanct emissary.
Nikel spent most of his time saving Deacon and scrabbling aboard the Evergale. Although he was apparently blinded by Sparks’s pyrotechnics, he didn’t have much trouble getting around. He also took a lot of damage, but still seems pretty okay.
Subari did a pretty damn good job in support, saving Jayna yet again with a polymorph spell and spiriting Doris away to the helm of the Evergale through a dimensional door. She spent the latter parts of the fight (i) getting to know the steering mechanisms of Greymoor’s ship and (ii) getting knocked unconscious by Sparks’s wall of fire, which is a problem since you probably need her awake to get the squad out of there.
Thistle’s wards might have helped save the day, since a half-dozen characters seemed to use them to variously heal the party and attack Greymoor. Thistle herself is being Commanded by Sparks, and is intent on making her way out of the water and into the foreigners’ boat.
Subari has failed one death save and succeeded on one, too. Her happy memory was the first time she worked up the courage to knock on the door of a local observatory and got to see through a telescope, and her sad memory was of a fight with Talley, where he screamed at her for betraying him, she yelled that she’d done what she had to do, and he told her she’d never have the chance to do it again.
Talley fought violently with whip-wielding Greymoor in the rigging of Sparks’s ship until, finally, Gideon nearly killed him. Only an extremely fortunate nat-20 on a death saving throw brought him back up to consciousness and enabled him to dimension door over to the helm of the Evergale. He even managed to recover a voodoo doll of himself that had been created earlier from his wild magic. During his fight with Greymoor, you heard her tell him, “You think I took her, but she wanted to go. She left on her own.” His nat-20 saving throw memory was of the moment he proposed to a beautiful and sharp-looking brunette over dinner (and she accepted).
The Evergale is ready to go, Greymoor and her friends are dead. If you can get Sam, Jayna, and Thistle onboard, you may yet escape with your objectives (mostly) fulfilled.
X. Part Ten
Good lord, this fight just would not end.
Oralak made the surprising, gutsy, and ultimately unsuccessful decision to try and steal Gideon’s death-shrouded claymore. He jumped onto the foreigners’ ship, knocked the sword out of Gideon’s hand, succeeded on a wisdom saving throw to resist the sword’s influence, and BAMFed back onto the Evergale.
Gideon jumped right back after him, unsuccessfully attempting to steal the sword back - she began to waste away without it - until Oralak was finally knocked unconscious by Sparks, who burned him through the sword. Gideon took the chance to murder Oralak, shoving her recovered sword into him after he’d already failed two death saving throws. We saw Oralak, crying in the hold of a pirate ship, while the crew hit him for making a mistake. After recovering the sword, Gideon leapt into the sea (after earlier being shoved into the sea by Sam, who stormed through the wall of fire to do it).
At one point Oralak was dead and Thistle, Deacon, Subari, and Talley were all unconscious. It looked for all the world like Sparks might win the fight after all, ending your campaign and sending you to the afterworld just in time for Halloween. But healing potions from the remaining party, plus some assistance from Nikel and Huge Giant Crab Jayna, got your train back on the rails. In the process we got a couple of memories from Thistle on successful death saves; we saw her throwing ingredients together with Na’an during her childhood and crying during electric-guitar style youth group worship at her first Gaia retreat.
When Oralak died, he found himself walking in an empty simulacrum of his home town. He spotted a strange figure standing in the town square, and suddenly perceived that his whole town - including its inhabitants - were half-way immolated, engulfed in perpetual fire but unable to die. The ominous figure resolved into a flaming, suited man who spoke in condescending (southern) tones, accusing Oralak of wasting the potential he had been given by investigating the past instead of conquering (or creating) the future. The dark figure - flaming eyes, odd clothes - was in the process of welcoming Oralak to the afterlife when Thistle managed to cast revivify, bringing your wizard back from the brink.
Eventually you were able to escape by the skin of your teeth, sailing the stolen Evergale into the grey seas of northern Symphora and away from a furious Sparks, who shouted threats against you and your nation as his ship receded behind you.
Huddled around the ship’s fire, you traded stories, plans, and confessions.
Talley disembarked in Friki, his home island, where he hopes to consolidate some of Greymoor’s now-vacated power. He also had a meaningful conversation with Thistle; Talley feels hollow after finally defeating Greymoor, since all the problems she caused for Talley still exist even after she’s gone. He asked Thistle to inquire with Gaia about his fiance, Cyri. Gaia has declared that Talley going after Cyri would be bad for him and mixed for Cyri. Talley still refuses to disclose who hired him to obtain the weapon from your first mission. He has gifted you the Evergale, strongly recommending that you rename and repaint it since it’s well-known in smuggling circles as the proprietary vessel of the dearly departed Greymoor. You have named it The Foreshadowing and painted it black. Talley has also opened an account at the Bank of Symphora benefitting you, where he has deposited 1,000 gp each in your names.
You shared stories with each other:
Talley recalled how Nanny Ogg had a legendary, decades-long, bitter feud with a shopkeeper across the street until one day he mysteriously vanished. Everyone in town was convinced she had done away with him until Talley and his friends, investigating the “muder,” discovered reams and reams of letters from him in Nanny Ogg’s shop; he had retired to a tropical island, but they kept up their argument by writing each other almost daily.
Jayna confided that she had been tapped to lead her people up in the northern mountains, but had been afraid of the responsibility and ran away. After adventuring for a while she returned home, only to learn the tribe’s secret: only people who refuse the mantle of leadership are allowed to lead, and so Jayna’s flight had been part of the plan all along. Infuriated by the manipulation, she left again, this time determined not to go back.
Subari tried to explain to you how stars and constellations are formed by the gods, but the description got a little technical. She’s clearly very passionate about the night sky.
Oralak admitted that he’s wanted on Navagio, the pirate island, for killing one of the pirate kings in some kind of magical accident.
Sam disclosed yet another unfortunate contagion he’d acquired under prurient circumstances.
Nikel says that his mothers’ names were Zarasta and Telesta. One of them was a businessperson, and the other was a scholar. He doesn’t remember much of them because they died a long time ago when he was very young. He’d like to go back to Sympora for his Big Investigation, so he’s hitching a ride with you! Maybe he’ll stay with Sam’s Kids!
Sam was taken in as child by a dragonborn man named Red, who taught him the art of blacksmithing.
Some sly observation confirmed that Subari has definitely taken a shine to Doris (they spent a few late evenings watching the stars together). Subari is heading back to Symphora as well; she wants to write about the mysterious body in the sky as soon as possible, and she’s hoping to resume her studies at the Institute. She has also mentioned that, if you ever need a navigator for the Foreshadowing, she’d love to keep sailing such a beautiful vessel. You also learned that Subari is from Sophos’s home island. Plus also after Talley left you noticed she’s started carrying around a new spellbook and walking with renewed confidence. I wonder what was going on there?
Jayna has elected to stay with Talley, since he needs all the help he can get and there aren’t a lot of people willing to give it. She hugged Sam goodbye, taking his last handaxe as a gift and offering, in return, a totem of her family that will grant him their favor if he ever finds himself up north.
Thistle made some calls. Most notably, she rang up Sparks, the foreign emissary - offering up Oralak in exchange for the safety of her followers. She also talked to Gideon, who made it clear the painted barbarian relished the prospect of returning to Symphora to finish off your party. Gideon described armies of bone, marching across the “Circle Sea” to invade Symphora. Nahuseresh also gave thistle a ring, insisting that she return home as quickly as possible and not spend any more time dallying with her miscreant acquaintances. After Thistle’s terse reply, word came that her image had begun appearing alongside the rest of the party on wanted posters around Symphora.
The Magus reached out! Because you came to him with the assassination plot against Attolia developed by Lord d’Lyros (allegedly), he trusts you. Attolia has long suspected a plot against her because of her sympathies to the southern islands, and so she’s willing to go along with the Magus’s plan: you will find out when/where Lord d’Lyros’s associates intend to assassinate Attolia and thwart the attack. If you succeed, Attolia will issue you pardons for your actions against the Five.
Deacon made (another) deal with Marie: once you’ve done that whole Attolia thing, he and Marie will go to the beach. She reluctantly agreed to take along the rest of the party, but only if they ask to go; she’d really much rather go with just the two of them.
And so you approach Symphora: wanted, now, in all three regions of the archipelago after the revolution in the south, your debacle in the Capital, and some recent exploits up north. You plan to infiltrate Lord d’Lyros’s confidence and save Attolia in a bid to restore your reputations, but the plan is set against another ominous, towering plume, which has risen over the Source to dominate the Symphoran night sky - a reminder that something is still deeply, desperately wrong in the islands you call home.
Chapter Four
Part One
Doris and Subari continued deeping their friendship, after a fashion; Subari is determined to study the new light in the night sky when she returns to Symphora.
Thistle spent her remaining ship time consulting with Gaia. Her newly empowered meditations put her in front of a small sapling on another plane, which seems to respond to her questions. She learned that the foreigners wouldn’t be invading for at least a month and that Nikel isn’t all that he seems to be (shocker). When confronted about his motives, Nikel flipped the script, accusing you guys of being a little sneaky. He singled out Thistle for having secret inspiration. Gaia also told you that the foreigners are not time travelers and that Attolia was responsible for her husband’s death.
Nikel left! He had so much fun adventuring with you guys! You can always send him a message if you want to spend time together again, but he’s off to do some more Investigating!
While searching the Evergale Sam found a fancy envelope/letter in a super secret compartment. Later, the Magus called to say that he had a place you could stay if necessary: an abandoned castle on a precarious cliffside not far from the Cloudtop District.
The castle is huge! It includes guard barracks, a separate tower, a lab, a fancy library/meeting room, a fighting pit, dungeons, a kitchen and wine cellar, a chapel, a throne room, and six bedrooms. While investigating the basement, Deacon met Domhan. Domhan is the very old ghost who haunts this castle after perishing in a mysterious manner that he refuses to disclose. He’s got a taste for red wine and deep thinking. Oralak, for his part, has claimed the largest bedroom, while Thistle slept in the wizard tower, somewhat bothering Subari, who found an old telescope at the top and was working on repairing it. Doris helped by painting a lens.
Your plan for the morning: find out where the assassination of Attolia is set to take place and check on Sam’s kids.
II. Part Two
You awoke in various parts of the castle to the smell of breakfast being cooked in the kitchen, where you found Nowhere, an odd tiefling with a strong penchant for mushrooms, mystery, and machinations. They’ve been sent by the Magus to help/oversee you as you work to protect Attolia. The Magus trusts you but, let’s face it, you sort of have a track record of blowing up everything you touch. Nowhere’s talent, like the Magus’s, is information: they speak of a mysterious network that keeps them updated regarding the goings on of the world. They also carry around a frozen fish, which they apparently met while trapped in a pirate hold at some point in their career. Their pirate days also yielded an acquaintance with Deacon, who they think is silly for his love of Aja. Their relationship with Sophos sounds equal parts complicated and surprisingly sensual; seems like opposites have strongly attracted here, but Nowhere isn’t the type to be tied down - at least, not outside of the bedroom.
Sam did some reading over breakfast, opening up the mysterious envelope he’d discovered hidden carefully onboard the Evergale. Inside, a bombshell: Greymoor Steelheart had been sent under the authority of the Woman in Red to negotiate a treaty pursuant to which the foreign nation of Karawit would receive assistance from a group of partisans working on her behalf. In exchange for a guaranteed victory over Symphora, either via coup or conquest, Karawit would appoint the Woman in Red as sole ruler over the islands, which would become a vassal state of Karawit. Nowhere noted that, according to her sources, the Woman in Red might be immortal.
Some analysis ensued: The painting omen that Gaia sent was meant to communicate that Talley has been working for the Woman in Red. Does this mean that you were secretly working on her behalf this whole time, back from the gun acquisition through the contest at the edge of the Pale? Why would the Woman in Red simultaneously want to encourage Greymoor to negotiate with Karawit while also sending Talley to thwart the meeting? Did Talley know the Woman in Red was plotting to assassinate Attolia? Did Talley just get deceived/screwed, same as you? He certainly seemed to be on more of a personal mission w/r/t Greymoor, based on the things they said to each other.
After some characteristically extensive planning/plotting, the entire party (except for Sam) headed for Thistle’s home, disguised at varying levels of effectiveness that ranged from being a ferret, going invisible, putting on a dark hood, to donning a sunglasses-pinkie ring combo. On the way, you saw inescapable signs that Symphora is now a nation at war, and that the war is not going the way its citizens planned.
You promptly ran into Na’an, Thistle’s old companion/attendant, to whom Thistle immediately announced that she was doing a double-cross caper. Na’an is still raising money for her bakery; it’s tough to save cash when you’re a serf with no income. But she’s happy to keep bringing you baked treats, and giving you information about Thistle’s dad! Nowhere helped with this as well, confirming that Thistle’s siblings are on the outs with dad after some disasters associated with the rebellion down south. Na’an fetched some old clothes from Thistle’s room (turns out her mom has been buying her stuff and putting it there for when her daughter returns), and Thistle - dressed to impress - walked through her childhood home to her father’s office.
Dear old dad didn’t seem super jazzed to see Thistle, and he was incensed to learn that she’d been mucking about with the traitors down south - who have cost him a lot of money. Plus also he suspects her of being involved with the recent disappearance of his close ally to the north, Greymoor Steelheart. As far as Thistle’s wild accusations about some sort of plot against Attolia are concerned, Lord d’Lyros hasn’t the faintest idea. He is deeply disappointed in her. But Thistle’s lie about being a prodigal daughter eager to return to the fold played into the narrative he wanted to hear, and - on a natural 20 - he agreed to give her a chance to rejoin the family trade.
The deal: bring d’Lyros irrefutable proof of the death of the Magus within three days, and Thistle will be welcomed back to the right hand of her father.
On the way out of the office, Doris and Nowhere came reeeeeaaaaal close to starting some shit: Doris isn’t super not cool with d’Lyros’s attitude toward the south or his plan to assassinate the only people up here who seem to be sympathetic toward her fellow southerners and their upstart rebellion.
Sam, convinced he’d left his flock unshepherded for too long, headed toward the Sam’s Kid’s headquarters. But he was met a block away by a kid he’d never seen before, who informed Sam that the passwords, handshakes, and leadership of the organization had all changed. He was led to a command center, where he ran into Yonatan - head kid ever since Max was… removed en route to an encounter with his old friend? enemy? Chambers.
Chambers is awful sorry Sam felt he had to run before - he was as mad as anyone that guy Sam was fighting pulled a knife, and Chambers can attest that the fighter paid for it. Chambers has missed Sam, and he’s real glad they’re getting a chance to start again.
It seems the Black Fists have come under new management, and they’re very impressed with the organization Sam has started building here in Symphora. As Sam knows, they’ve always wanted to crack the capital island, and this seems like their perfect chance to do it. Sam was away, after all, and these poor kids needed someone to look after them - Chambers just did what he knew his buddy would have wanted, overseeing the conversion of the organization into something a little more… serious. The only way to be a man is to face the fire, isn’t that right, Sam?
The Black Fists sure would love to bring Sam back into the fold, any unfortunate misunderstanding back in the day notwithstanding. They’ve heard about his impressive exploits with his new gang, and they’re interested in bringing the whole group on board. It sounds like Sam has grown and, according to Chambers, it’s time for Sam’s responsibilities to grow, too.
If Sam wants back in the organization - if he wants control of Sam’s Kids again - he has to prove his loyalty. The Black Fists have a job for him. But it’s an up or down, yes or no thing; he needs to commit before he learns what the job is. It seems Max is being held in the Ever Gaol, a prison island off the coast of Symphora. If Sam does the job for the Black Fists, they’ll help him bust Max out of the clink. Chambers doesn’t mind if Sam takes the time to talk with his crew first.
Agreed in principle, Sam and Chambers drank old wine like old friends, shaking on their renewed partnership before Sam left to rejoin the group.
You all met back up at Eddis Keep (the castle where you’re crashing) to do some more planning (and possibly some hallucinogenic drugs). Nowhere is going to meet up with the Magus and report back with his feelings on Lord d’Lyros’s (second) assassination plot.
III. Part Three
Nowhere reported back that the Magus is willing to go along with your plan on three conditions:
You need to have a True Resurrection Scroll on hand to make sure something can bring him back.
You temporarily swear allegiance to him and Attolia via magic ritual. This will expire when the plot you’re investigating to assassinate Attolia is thwarted.
You will travel to Telos, a legendary island to the far, far west, and search for the secrets of the Calamity.
On some history rolls, you know of Telos as a near-mythical place. None who have ventured so far west have ever returned. Around the islands, people hawk artifacts allegedly from the western islands, some clearly fake and some - like the strange machinery and materials in Lord d’Lyros’s private collection - oddly authentic-seeming.
Thistle nobly offered to deliver her dad to the revolutionaries after saving Attolia, which earned Doris’s vote, and Sam is willing to proceed so long as he can rescue his kids before leaving. You unanimously decided to proceed.
You had two known options for acquiring the scroll of resurrection: Gaspard is rumored to have one, and the Threefold Cord told you they could obtain one in exchange for 10,000gp. After thinking through some non-mission things you could accomplish with one of those bad boys, you elected to buy the one for sale and worry about Gaspard’s later (if at all). Thistle made the purchase under the pseudonym “Laura,” who needed it to resurrect her maw-maw so that she could ask a question about an old family recipe.
You also completed the Magus’s ritual. Four of you decided to do shrooms provided by Nowhere during one of the most powerful magical experiences you’ve ever had, with some pretty significant (but unpleasant) results.
Sam just straight up had a bad trip, unable to stop dwelling on unhappy memories. It was a heavy experience, and the party (including Trinity) comforted him afterward.
Thistle followed the weave of divine magic forward just a little too far back. She saw a terrible scene: ash falling from a burning sky, a city filled with empty streets, a mother and child huddled in an alley as soot began to cover them like snow. She came out of the trip bone-certain that what she had witnessed was something real, not an illusion. She also vaguely recognized the architecture and streets in her vision as being uncannily similar to the buildings on the Vanishing Isle.
Deacon followed the weave of music just a little too far forward. He found himself suspended in the sky over Symphora; before him, he saw an immense dome of fire stretching from horizon to horizon. Below him, he saw boiling seas and falling ash. He, too, woke up convinced that what he’d seen was no hallucination.
Doris followed the ki of the universe too far forward, too. In her mind’s eye she saw the fiery destruction of a huge fleet in a desperate battle gone awry. The ships she saw destroyed appeared to be of southern origin. She, too, felt that her vision was true, and not a figment of her imagination.
Nowhere, for their part, did the shrooms but not the ritual, and had a lovely conversation with Death Incarnate (voiced by Domhan) for several hours.
Doris made her ubiquitous call down to Joanne to fill her in on the d’Lyros shenanigans and to check in generally. Joanne disclosed something unsettling: rumors are growing that the new class of wardens with glowing green eyes, seemingly unthinking and immune to pain, are made up of Symphorans who have gone missing in the past…
IV. Part Four
We heard you like planning sessions and shopping sessions, so we put a shopping session in your planning session!
Thistle announced that her father had sent an ominous letter. The gist is that, while he’s pleased you all took care of the Magus, he still doesn’t really trust Thistle. He disclosed the location and time of the planned hit on Attolia, but if it goes awry he’ll know you all are double-timing him. She attempted to glean more information from Na’an (who is mostly concerned with cleaning the draperies and feeding the large, dangerous pigs) and Nahuseresh (who is tight lipped, but disclosed that the assassin tasked with the job is a recent acquisition of House d’Lyros).
Deacon and Oralak dropped by the Threefold Cord, where Deacon picked up some enchanted gloves he’d commissioned and both of them bought some health potions. The store is glad of your business–although they’re sketched out by your wanted status--because business has slowed a little since a rival store - Beyond the Pale - has opened up in town.
Sam, Deacon, and Oralak made two stops. At the Heart and Sole, they found that Chambers had already picked up the shoes Sam commissioned and distributed them to Sam’s Kids. Sam asked the proprietor to deck out one pair for Max, and the team headed to Black Fist headquarters. Sam and Chambers are agreed: while breaking out Max, Sam will also break out The Cleaner, a legendary criminal and homicidal maniac extraordinaire. Apparently the Black Fists want his services for some purpose. To help Sam break both Max and the Cleaner out of jail, they can provide the plans for the jail along with some other pertinent information. They’ve also given you some Black Fists uniforms, which you planned to use during the upcoming fight on behalf of Attolia.
As they made their way through the city, the party members noticed new propaganda for a group advocating “Our Power,” as well as a marked uptick in the strange sunlike symbol you’ve noticed before.
Nowhere went ahead of the group to meet with Attolia and discuss the plan. Attolia, who lives on an estate a half-day or so outside of town, is unfailingly polite but vaguely cold. Like the Magus, she’s willing to hide out if you succeed in thwarting the assassination attempt to give you a chance at bringing down Lord d’Lyros. She retired early, although Nowhere noticed a shadowy figure climbing through the councilwoman’s window.
The next day you all arranged yourself around Attolia’s garden and waited for the attack. Sure enough, when Attolia went to the gazebo for a moment of quiet reflection, a cage of energy trapped her. From the corners of the garden came three enormous dire wolves and a shadowy cloaked assassin. The assassin was well dressed and well-armed, with a clean shaven face and glowing green eyes.
The fight raged on - it became clear that this assailant is very magically powerful and physically strong. He seemed to seethe with fury. Eventually, several fire attacks from the party stripped his cloak from him, and you got a clearer view: he is tall and skinny with long, lupine teeth and pointy ears. Thistle finally placed him - the attacker is your old and long-lost friend TB, apparently dominated through some strange magic.
V. Part Five
You went back and forth with TB, eventually forcing him out of dinosaur form but unable to meaningfully damage him.
Doris peered at Lady Attolia, who eventually gave up on trying to escape the force cage and instead began to pray. The target of her supplication was apparently Sedine, of all people, and Doris observed that her ‘prayer’ seemed more like a conversation than a one-way request.
The party eventually became convinced that the only way to win the fight was to psychologically rescue TB. You appealed to his memories of Cadence, his love for a good scrap, and your time together at the beginning of the campaign. Each time you got through, he seemed to be drawn a little closer to his old self.
Eventually TB snapped out of it. He feels awful bad about roughin’ y’all up! He can’t remember much of the past few months; his last clear memory is going for drinks with the group at the Alcove. This whole experience (being turned into an ultra-powerful weapon for dark and unknown forces) has sort of turned him off of fighting for a while. He was already planning on taking a break from adventuring before this all went down, and now he’s sure: TB’s fightin’ days are done for the foreseeable future. Instead, he’ll hang out at your castle and help fix the place up, maybe adding a tree fort for Sam.
Lady Attolia managed to talk you out of destroying (the rest) of her garden and agreed to lay low until you decide what to do next. The Magus is doing the same. Lord d’Lyros has quietly skipped town. Also on the docket: freeing Max (and maybe the Cleaner?) and (eventually) visiting the other end of your known world.
VI. Part Six
As Deacon slept, some portion of his consciousness was spirited away to a terrifying hellscape. Broken black rock stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, all the way to the horizon, where the atmosphere-less sky was filled with the inky blackness of space dotted by distant stars. Suddenly he found Aja, beckoning to him as the flaming wind whipped her in and out of corporeal presence. She gripped his arm with coal-black hands, burning his skin on contact. Although they were standing right next to each other, he could barely hear the words she screamed to him. He is in danger, his friends are in danger. The fire is coming. Aja was sent to this plane after making a deal with the same figure that gave Deacon his bardic magic, and who he (and others of you) have met in separate visions. As Aja began to lose her hold on whatever magic kept her and Deacon together, Deacon saw distant lines of shadowy figures marching across the landscape. Turning back to Aja, he instead found the mysterious, flame-eyed figure in a suit, who scowled and asked, “What are you doing here?” As the dream faded, he heard Aja’s voice again: “I’ve been trying to reach you for so long…”
Deacon recounted his strange encounter over breakfast, which Oralak prepared after reclaiming his kitchen from Nowhere. Marie, listening in, was angry, surprised, and hurt, especially when Deacon asked her to take him to hell. She insists that he’s not ready to go, and can’t understand why he’d want to, anyway. Symphora is so fun! And she and Deacon are having such a good time together! Why would he want to go and ruin it all by traveling somewhere as awful as the plane where Aja is? Thistle/Hollie, listening in, began to suspect that Marie has romantic feelings for Deacon. Marie left and a huff and hasn’t been seen since.
Oralak has a new ability: he can see people and places that are far away. All he needed was about 20 spell slots’ worth of magic holy water from Thistle (provided on the condition that he never scry her without prior approval from Doris). The first target: Sparks, foreign emissary and combat adversary. You saw him traversing a strange, steampunk-y tunnel and emerging on the surface of an acid washed nightmare landscape dotted by structures protected from the harsh elements by domed shields. He was walking with Gideon, the necro-fighter from the ship. They seemed to be in high spirits. Oralak also tried to scry Aja, but the spell failed because she appears to be on another plane. Deacon’s hand-shaped forearm scar seems permanent.
The party’s next move was: to go shopping again! You visited The Threefold Cord first. As you crossed town, rolling a natural one on your stealth check, you noticed how much the island capital has changed. Once-gleaming paint is dirty and smudged; formerly busy marketplaces are empty; the harbor is crumbling from overuse; streets are lined with sewage and waste. The war and other unrest has been hard on this city and this nation, and both are beginning to collapse. Bad economic fortune and poor performance in the conflict are leading to dissent: increasingly, the local populace calls for a change in government. And the strange sunlike symbols that have shadowed your adventure since the beginning are growing more common and more prominent, often accompanied by an odd warning, or promise, or both: “THE FIRE COMES”
There was another shopper in TTC, a regular named Ingel. You refused to do anything except stare at him until he eventually finished his purchasing and left, after which you turned the store’s sign to ‘closed’ and proceeded to ask the owners for free gear, free information, free enchanting, and free advice. You also asked to be made customers of the month, a request which the shopkeepers declined for some reason. You did make one actual purchase; Sam picked up a Ring of Jumping. You also found out that the Spirit Lantern that Oralak gave to Professor Marsden contains the soul of a deceased person, and that the lantern provides some protective magic and other beneficial qualities to its bearer. You left the mysterious mechanical sphere that’s connected to Sedine with Rebecca for investigation. You also learned a little bit about different planes of existence: gods are said to create their own and inhabit them. They are physical locations on different bandwidths of reality, and they sometimes physically overlap slightly with the world of Symphora.
You also visited The Threefold Cord’s newest competitor: Beyond the Pale. Located at the end of a decrepit dock in a grimy old boat house, its door is a strange misty portal and its proprietor is an emaciated corpse inhabited by a creepy entity. But the store has lots of cool stuff! Thistle purchased a candle that will enhance her connection with Gaia in a small radius, and Deacon bought a rock, which the proprietor claimed was the most fantastic magical item of all. It cost one gold piece.
VII. Part Seven
Shopping once again in the books, you set to planning and gathering information. Doris chatted with Joanne and asked after the mysterious sunlikes symbol you’ve seen popping up. Joanne says that, now that you mention it, the sunlike symbol is somewhat reminiscent of the “fire of revolution,” which was something that appeared to her in a dream years ago and inspired her to begin the rebellion.
Oralak tried to scry on Norfall, but the spell failed almost exactly the same way as his attempt to see Aja had fallen apart. He also scryed on Lord d’Lyros, who is traveling by sea with his associate Growler on the way to Thrinos, the industrial capital of the far north that’s also home to Subari and Sophos’s family.
Thistle spoke to Gaia. A foreign invasion from Karawit is not the “fire” that’s referred to in various places during your adventure. Neither is the “fire of rebellion”. When she asked, “Will going to [hell] protect us from the fire that is coming,” the answer was no. Thistle also talked to her father, who directed her to Nahuseresh with any financing questions and told her he’d “look into” getting y’all un-wanted.
Everyone went down into the basement to finally resurrect the Magus, which you’d put off for… reasons? But Domhan was adamant that you not cast the spell in his basement; he seemed extremely triggered by the magic you were using. So you adjourned to the chapel and did it there. However, although the spell returned the Magus’s body, it has not completely returned his soul. Doris’s mindreading efforts indicate that about half of his essence is missing. You all invited Nowhere over for dinner to discuss their boss’s ailment. Nowhere’s spores confirm that the Magus is split into two pieces, somehow. The soul has to be willing, and Nowhere mused that the Magus’s disappearance could have something to do with his missing daughter, who was abducted under mysterious circumstances many years ago.
Thistle went looking for sun graffiti people. She did find a shady character out late at night, who she trailed to a home with the symbol on its door, but they spotted her and set the place ablaze before she could do any serious investigating. She had to command two firefighters into groveling in order to escape suspicion w/r/t the blaze.
Oralak buried Pongo and Perdida outside in a forest, forgetting (until TB reminded him) that the castle has jail cells in its basement.
Thistle and Oralak went to her family’s estate to meet with Nahuseresh about getting some money. You opted for the “be a jerk” method of negotiation, which featured Thistle getting Nahuseresh’s name wrong and Oralak killing his orchid. Nahuseresh is willing to award funds, but only for believable and worthwhile projects.
Sam met with Chambers to discuss the jailbreak. You have been provided with plans for a panopticon-style fortress with an all-seeing creature at the center. On the outside, it’s an island patrolled by creatures above, on, and below the surrounding water. Your plan: have TB turn you in to the authorities on the island and break out from inside.
VIII. Part Eight
TB rowed you through a dismal night toward the mesa-like outcropping on which a featureless cylindrical building stood. Wraith-like corvidae flitted to and from your boat, and a grim chariot helmed by skeletal figures rolled across the water alongside you. In the ocean, off-putting aquatic creatures peered curiously up at you. Once the boat reached land, a stoic guard showed you to a staging room where your wanted pictures hung on the wall. Assured of your criminal status, he ordered that you be taken up to the Ever Gaol while he determined what to do next. TB, who can’t count, did his best to verify the reward money amount and sailed off.
You were chained to an elevator for the ride up, where you met Donny, a gnomish trickster who claimed to have escaped all sorts of jails in the past. He assured Deacon that no prison could hold him for more than a day, and that he would take Deacon with him so long as nobody backstabbed anybody.
The guards patted you down, missing Oralak’s knife and the various small items you had, uh, ingested. They showed you into a five-story cylindrical prison, where rows of bar-less cells look out onto a central tower. The tower is home to an obscured room, in which your watcher sits.
There is only one rule: do not leave your cell. [The unofficial second rule: no numbskullery.] If you leave your cell, your life is forfeit.
In the jail you met a motley group of characters:
Dinil Mevlia Runona, a dwarven woman whose cell is adjacent to Thistle’s, insists that she’s only been imprisoned (for three years) as a result of a case of mistaken identity. When Thistle attempted to cast dispel magic on her, Dinil briefly extruded the ghostly figure of an elven woman before passing out. She seems to be magically incapable of discussing the person she allegedly was mistaken for. At one point, she begged for Thistle to take her life so that she could be ‘free.’ She falls asleep at night crying and chanting her own name.
The Cleaner, a human man who has one normal eye and one eye that is entirely black, is adjacent to Oralak. He’s having so much fun talking to Oralak. He wants to help you all escape. He’s only in jail because people don’t understand his beautiful work. He doesn’t have a name for himself, and he doesn’t much like the one Oralak used for him. Oralak is so much more fun to talk to than the last person who they put in that room.
An imposing red dragonborn on the top level whiles away the hours running a role playing game with a few prisoners adjacent to him. Sam attempted to make a connection by speaking draconic to him, but the dragonborn told Sam not to interrupt the game.
A sly looking elven woman sits at the front of her cell meditating (and observing you).
A charming satyr dances the days away in their cell. Deacon chatted with them (and played them a song), and they promised they’d leave too if you all stepped out of your cells at once. They think they could induce others to do so, too.
A mysterious and affable tiefling chatted with Deacon in infernal, advising him to give up on trying to escape.
Red, an elderly dwarven man, is the kind of fellow who knows how to get things. He offered Thistle information about the prison couched in philosophical musings about the nature of morality and freedom.
Max is on the first floor, bedridden with exhaustion and grief. He thought he wanted to be a big-time thief like Sam, but now he just wants to go home.
The group continued experimenting, exploring, and conversing.
Donny and Deacon sang songs and discussed the finer points of prison breaking. It seems Donny gets himself committed to jails intentionally because he so enjoys escaping them. Sam clocked him as a ninth-level rogue.
Oralak rearranged his room and discovered a hole in the wall through which he conversed with The Cleaner. He also learned that the opaque enclosure in the tower repels magical attacks.
Sam attempted repeatedly to, uh, dislodge the ring of jumping he’d swallowed before entering prison. He was unsuccessful, but it’s bound to come out one way or another.
Thistle spent an entire day trying to cast a cantrip, finally succeeding after 11 hours of effort. Through some sleuthing and interrogating, she realized that her successful attempt came right as a tiefling woman across the prison also tried to cast a spell. Further investigation by Thistle, Oralak, and Deacon confirmed: the antimagic field appears to only affect one person at a time, and you can increase your chances of getting off a successful spell by having more casters use magic at once. Thistle also made a wooden shiv.
Deacon managed to fish a mysterious gem (and a blanket) out of another prisoner’s cell.
Upon learning that she could cast spells, Thistle immediately committed cold-blooded murder. Donny, already convinced that this was a classic case of inverse psychology, a mental prison if you will, an exploitation of the social contract as it were, failed his saving throw on a command from Thistle that he leave his cell, and he was promptly disintegrated by a beam of dark energy that flew from the opaque chamber in the central tower.
Grim proof of concept in hand, you have hatched an escape plan: Thistle will command four prisoners to leave their cells, and - odds (hopefully) in your favor - you will make a break for it.
IX. Part Nine
After some additional preparation, you set your plan into motion.
Your party and a few of the prison friends you’d made all stepped out into the center of the prison together. The opaque barrier along the guard tower’s third floor opened to reveal a hideous, eyestalk-ridden monster with a huge eye and enormous, gnashing teeth.
Sam, using his smuggled ring of jumping, leapt across the center of the jail to join Oralak, who was unable to dimension door away. Determined to give Max as much cover as possible, Sam was literally clinging to the beholder’s face in an attempt to distract and, possibly, defeat it. Unfortunately, he was also charmed by the monster.
Doris sped across the first floor, picking up Max along the way, and beelined for the door. It turned out to be locked, and a log jam of fleeing inmates backed up behind her while she got the door unlocked (revealing two guards in the antechamber beyond).
Deacon got into a kerfluffle with The Cleaner after an attempt to pick his pocket went awry, suffering a few penalty stabs. A strange ray from the beholder hit him, and he can feel petrification creeping up his legs.
The other inmates are variously hiding, running, dying, or staying put. Dinil, in particular, has been undergoing some odd changes: apparently killed by a ray from the monster, the previously weepy dwarven woman popped up again a round later with a sly and sharp look in her eyes.
X. Part Ten
The escape raged on! Your party was actually able to kill the monster, but not before it had painfully zapped a few of you and only after Deacon had turned completely to stone (in a T pose). Marie was particularly distressed, appearing to you all and begging you to help him.
After the guards and monster were down, the entire prison began to sprint for the exit. You had, uh, neglected to plan the escape any further than the first door, so Thistle sought the intervention of her God to rescue you from your lack of foresight.
Amazingly, Thistle’s connection to Gaia was just strong enough that her goddess interceded on your behalf. As the sound from the prison faded and was replaced by the soothing noises of a sleepy glade, you found yourself whisked away to a mysterious place suspended in space and time. A golden field in front of you rose up to meet a verdant forest behind you, and on the horizon you spotted crumbling ruins of what once must have been magnificent temples. A starry horizon at the edge of your view gave way, above, to an atmosphere lit by three dim suns. Deacon and Oralak recognized this place - they were each transported through here when they perished and were brought back to life. But you didn’t remain long; within moments, the sounds of the glade were replaced by the muttering of TB as he worked to help keep your castle in order.
On arriving home, Sam attempted to connect with Max. But Max couldn’t understand why Sam had left him in the prison for so long; his wounds run deep, and he asked to be left alone so that he can go feel what he’s feeling and understand it better. The party attempted to convince him to stay, but to no avail. Sam had to make do with catching up to Max and handing him the shoes he’d commissioned for the boy. This chapter of their relationship ended with the sounds of sniffling and a box being opened.
Back at the ranch, you discovered that Deacon’s left hand had been broken off while he was in statue form. He was distraught on being woken up by TB, and became determined to go to hell immediately. But his worries didn’t last long. Marie appeared to him in the evening and offered to replace his hand with a magical stand-in - on the condition that he wait just a little longer before ending their journey together. The two of them went into town and enjoyed a drink.
The question now: what will you do next? Lord d’Lyros, Sophos’s wet nurse, and a mysterious lockbox wait to the north, legendary islands said to contain ancient secrets sit far to your west, a revolution rages on to the south, an invasion may be brewing on the eastern edge of the Pale, and the capital city - for centuries a shining beacon of prosperity in what was, until recently, the peaceful archipelago of Symphora - is crumbling all around you.