• Healing and Heroics: At the start of the fight, Khalid lies unconscious and is revived when Mickle administers a healing potion. Nebish kills one of the pirates with a brutal rapier thrust through the skull, an act that leaves Captain Barnaby visibly horrified.
• Destruction of the archanotech Spider: Bruenor, newly active in the battle, channels divine power into his warhammer using Divine Smite and Channel Divinity. The blow strikes the mechanical spider drone with tremendous force, spraying molten metal and collapsing the machine with its legs splayed across the ground.
• Technological Insight: Mickle examines the wreckage and, through a combination of historical knowledge and technical understanding, recognizes the spider as a hydraulic war machine originally used in The American Foreverwar, the major conflict between the two regional powers, before being repurposed for criminal use.

After securing the compound, the party searches the building.

• The Den as a Pawn Shop: The structure turns out to function partly as a pawn shop where addicts traded stolen valuables in exchange for drugs.
• Loot Secured: The party collects one pound of powdered gold, saffron, fine silk, two books of poetry, a mithril gauntlet, and a sack of assorted gemstones including amethysts and tourmaline.
• The Trapped Lockbox: Behind the counter they find a locked box protected by a poison gas trap. The trap triggers as it is opened, dealing minor poison damage. Inside they discover 675 gold pieces, two turquoise animal figurines, and a map of Caracas marked with several mysterious “X” symbols scattered through residential districts.
• Potion Identification: Mickle identifies several liquids recovered from the raid: a Potion of Speed (pearlescent), a Potion of Fire Breath (red), and a vial of Serpent Venom (green).

Returning to their inn, the party discovers their room already occupied by three goliath guards and a well-dressed halfling gazing out the window. The halfling introduces himself as The Baron, the ruler of Caracas.

The negotiation for the diamond’s sale resulted in a strategic compromise that secured the party's immediate future in Caracas. While the party initially hoped for 5,000 gold, they ultimately accepted the Baron’s firm offer of 2,500 gold pieces after asking him to “sweeten the pot”.

In addition to the cash payment, the Baron provided the party with luxurious, high-altitude accommodations in his personal tower, effectively relocating them from their previous “shithole” inn.

He also granted them access to his private equipment room to outfit themselves for future tasks, a privilege earned because the party had proven their honesty by returning his stolen goods from the opium den rather than keeping them.

This arrangement effectively transitioned the group from independent debt collectors into a favored strike team operating under the Baron's direct patronage—and his constant, threatening scrutiny.

• Selling the Gauntlet: The party visits a pawn shop called The Busted Knuckle, operated by a woman named Rorix. They sell the mithril gauntlet for 500 gold and trade part of the payment for a set of smithing tools.
• Equipment Upgrades: Mickle receives a chain shirt recovered during earlier adventures in order to improve his dangerously low armor class.

• The Path to the College: Following Captain Barnaby, the party travels toward the College of Arcana to have Nebish’s sword enchanted. The route leads them through a sprawling slum filled with shanty tents, refuse, and stagnant filth.
• The Blockade: While climbing a narrow staircase, they are intercepted by a gang of six armed figures including a Tabaxi, a Half-Orc, and a Fire Genasi. A well-dressed leader emerges from an alley and demands a cut of the party’s recent earnings.

• Psychic Devastation: The fight begins when Nebish fires on the Tabaxi. Khalid rises into the air and unleashes a massive Psychic Blast in a thirty-foot cone, causing several enemies to bleed from the ears and nose and knocking many of them prone.
• The Fireball Retaliation: The enemy leader reveals himself to be a powerful spellcaster. After Bludarious destroys his protective magical shields with concentrated gunfire, the wizard retaliates by casting Fireball, dealing devastating damage and leaving Captain Barnaby barely alive with a single hit point remaining.
• Conclusion of the Fight: Bruenor grapples the wizard and nearly beats him to death with his hammer, but the mage escapes by teleporting away before the killing blow lands.

During the chaos of the battle, Nebish is severely wounded and collapses unconscious, already failing one death saving throw. As the party regroups in the shattered slum corridor, eerie whispers begin echoing from nearby windows, suggesting unseen observers are watching the fight unfold.

Picking up from the aftermath of Session Seventeen, the party stands before the final chamber of the Petrolina cemetery crypt. Khalid’s body remains secured within Mickle Cobblelob’s Bag of Holding. As the massive marble doors groan open, the party is confronted by Remorso, a demon of the Legion and the source of the necrotic doom infesting the site. The demon is immediately shrouded in a ten-foot aura of magical darkness that imposes blindness on any who enter. Grundel flies into a barbarian rage and charges into the gloom with his “Thoughts” and “Prayers” brass knuckles, though his strikes initially find only empty air as the demon laughs from the shadows.

As combat intensifies, a stranger named Amnon—a tiefling bounty hunter and sorcerer—approaches from the corridor. Amnon, also hired by Marshal Yasmin Santiago to eliminate the demonic threat, joins forces with the party. He demonstrates formidable arcane power, casting Blink to slip into the Ethereal Plane and is able to summon a spectral shadow dog to harry the demon. Meanwhile, Nebish discovers that the magic blade he recovered earlier in the crypt begins humming and vibrating, telepathically cursing at him in Abyssal as it seeks to be drawn into the fray.

The battle reveals a horrific mechanic: whenever Remorso is wounded, pulses of wicked energy fly from his core to reanimate corpses in the adjacent foyer, creating a self-sustaining cycle of undead reinforcements. Bludarious de'Tempoon (Blu) identifies the tactical threat and rushes to a holy water fountain in the previous room. He spends a frantic minute dipping his bullets into the blessed water to craft makeshift holy rounds. These bullets prove decisive, cutting through the demon's darkness barrier and dealing permanent, non-regenerative damage that forces the fiend to howl in pain.

Mickle utilizes his homunculus, Lofta, to deliver a R.I.P. Bomb directly onto the demon, dealing massive shrapnel damage. Nebish and Grundel coordinate their strikes, with Grundel using a radiant blow from his “Prayers” knuckle to finally drop the demon’s shield. For the first time, the demon's physical form begins to crumble into what appears to be smoldering black cottage cheese. Amnon concludes the engagement by unleashing a Chaos Bolt that washes over the last lurching zombie, melting it into a smoking pile of bone with fluorescent green acid. With its hosts destroyed and its physical form reduced to a black ooze under a dousing of holy water, Remorso is banished from the Material Plane.

Following the battle, the party thoroughly scavenges the crypt’s burial urns and hidden alcoves, recovering a massive haul of treasures: * A Wizard's Spellbook containing five pages of scrawled magic. * A mithril-headed branding iron and an electrum house medallion bearing the sigil of the local Lanish farming family. * Four pairs of fairy wings, a gold baby rattle, and a bandolier of silver flasks containing brandy, acid, and gold dust. * A silver brooch depicting a mage’s tower, an abacus, and a set of silver shuriken. The party pays their final respects to Khalid. Eschewing a traditional return to the city, they place his body in a grand, unused sarcophagus within the crypt, sealing it as a permanent monument to their fallen comrade.

The party returns to the capital at high noon, finding the city bustling with activity. They present the “chunky” remains of the demon to Marshal Yasmin Santiago at the Magistrate. Though she is appalled by the consistency of the evidence, she honors their contract, providing a 400 gold piece bounty. Amnon officially accepts an invitation to join the “band of degenerates” aboard the Sloop Dogg. Bludarious attempts to persuade the Marshal to restore his name to the city's monument of heroes, but his drunken state leads to a stern scowl and a refusal of further city resources.

Returning to the docks, the party finds Ormus and Gil have made the Sloop Dogg functional, though she remains visually battered and covered in barnacles. Lofta attempts to wash her wig in the seawater, inadvertently making it filthier. After a round of stories and sad songs honoring Khalid's memory, the ship weighs anchor and rises from Petrolina. The session ends with the Sloop Dogg sailing east toward Manticore to reunite with Captain Barnaby Harrier and the Wind's Revenge.

Following the defeat of the night hag coven, the party took a twelve-hour long rest in the safety of the canyon cave.

• The Humming in the Dark: During the third watch, Khalid and Ark heard a low, steady humming sound emanating from outside the canyon walls. The sound lingered for nearly an hour before trailing away into the night.
• Party Shenanigans: During the rest, Garbajio attempted to steal an ingested poison mushroom from Khalid, but was spotted by Nebish and Bludarious. No combat ensued, and the watch passed relatively uneventfully otherwise.
• The Sight of the Armada: As the party crested the hills within two miles of Caracas, they observed a black-dotted horizon—a fleet of hundreds of Amazonian military airships encircling the city in a massive blockade.

The party approached the city via the main road and was intercepted by a cadre of twelve Amazonian soldiers, a Goliath, and a massive Iron Golem.

• The Command Tent: After a high persuasion roll by Khalid, the party was allowed to keep their weapons and was escorted to a beach command center to meet with a high-ranking Colonel.
• The Dossier: The Colonel revealed he possessed extensive dossiers on the party, knowing of their employment under The Baron (Harvey Proudbottom).
• The Counter-Offer: Stating that he wished to take the city without a guerrilla war against criminal elements, the Colonel offered the party a deal: deliver The Baron to the Amazonian Navy alive.
• Payment: After intense bargaining, the Colonel agreed to provide the party with a “non-fleet” airship (off the books) and allow them to keep any loot they recovered from the Baron’s compound.
• The Tools of the Trade: To assist in the capture, the Colonel provided two Darts of Paralysis and a specialized signaling bolt to be fired once the Baron was extracted from the city.

Entering the city, the party found Caracas in a state of eerie stillness. The bustling markets were gone, shops were boarded up, and the usual Amazonian patrols were absent from the streets.

• The Hag Eyes: The party visited Alara Windlass to identify the properties of the eyes harvested from the coven. Alara warned that a complete set of eyes from a hag coven could be used to fuel illusions of an “epic scale”—capable of covering entire cities or countries.
• Preservation: Alara suggested preserving the eyes in alcohol or formaldehyde, though she grew visibly unsettled as the party’s “hypothetical” questions became increasingly specific.

The party returned to the Baron’s stronghold, noting the extreme tension and skittishness of the guards.

• The Baron’s Specter: Harvey Proudbottom revealed his own plan: he intended to use the hag eyes to create a massive, terrifying specter to intimidate the blockading forces into retreat. He tasked the party with bringing him a high-ranking Amazonian officer to complete his ritual.
• The Decision: Realizing the Baron’s “you work for me or you're in my way” attitude left little room for neutrality, the party voted to proceed with the Amazonian contract.
• Combat Erupts: Bruenor Silverhammer released his pixie, who attempted to steal the Baron's Dimension Door ring to prevent his escape. The theft was spotted by a hooded henchman, and combat began.
• The Capture: Khalid cast Hypnotic Pattern, successfully charming The Baron and several guards. Seizing the opportunity, Mickle Cobblelob grappled the incapacitated Baron and stuffed him into his Bag of Holding.
• The Cliffhanger: The session ended with Mickle's homunculus, Lofta, flying toward the exit with the Bag of Holding (containing the Baron) while the rest of the party remained engaged in combat with the Baron's Goliath bodyguard and soldiers.

• Khalid successfully resisted a Zone of Truth cast by the Baron during initial negotiations.
• Bruenor utilized a Shardisite crystal to craft an Experimental Elixir of transformation with a 24-hour duration.
• The party currently possesses two Darts of Paralysis provided by the Amazonian Colonel.

The session begins at dawn on the outskirts of Petrolina. Standing over the remains of the three Cockatrices, Mickle Cobblelob and Grundel investigate the carcasses for venom. While they are unable to locate a specific gland, they observe petrifying drool oozing from the beaks; Mickle successfully harvests a beak dripping with the saliva and preserves it in a medium jar. Meanwhile, Nebish and Grundel search the nearby farmhouse foundation, discovering a nest containing the petrified remains of former travelers. They recover a blowgun with ten silver needles and a backpack that has been completely turned to stone. After a short rest, the party observes the skyline of the Amazonian capital, noting its military air traffic, the opulent Gothic castle of Prince Rafael de Mayo, and the massive, blocky Magistrate building at the city’s center.

The party joins a long queue at the city gates, where they witness the City Guard—under the command of Marshal Yasmin Santiago—systematically shaking down travelers for bribes. When it is the party’s turn, Khalid attempts to bribe a guard with ten gold pieces to learn what they are searching for. The guard pockets the money but offers no information, leading to a heated verbal exchange. Khalid attempts to intimidate the guard by name-dropping Admiral Pablo Martin, but the guard remains unfazed, watching the party like a hawk as they finally enter the city’s poorer districts.

While Mickle and Lofta split off to find a meal, the rest of the party travels to the Magistrate in the Noble District. They present their credentials as the “Heroes of Caracas” to a handler for Captain Dashan. Khalid signs a deed for their reward: the Conquerante. The ship is a sloop-class airship currently moored at the docks; however, the clerk warns that while she is seaworthy, she is not currently airworthy. Upon reaching the vessel, the party finds a 45-foot sloop with a deflated red balloon submerged in the water and a hull marred by battle damage. The hydrogas engine is intact but empty, and the internal dynamo has been stripped.

In the Market District, Mickle successfully dines-and-dashes at an opulent restaurant, stealing a silver platter containing a full roast leg of meat. He then wanders to a local stable and attempts to steal a “war ostrich” valued at 7,500 gold. The theft goes poorly: the ostrich kicks Mickle for bludgeoning damage, and two handlers alert the City Guard. As four guards in full plate armor apprehend Mickle, Khalid intervenes from a distance, casting a third-level Heat Metal on the guards' armor. Amid the screaming and smoke, Mickle uses Dimension Door to teleport 500 feet away into a field of crops to hide until nightfall.

The party regroups at the Conquerante and debates repairs. They decide to rename the ship the Sloop Dogg and resolve to fix the balloon, rigging, engine and dynamo for approximately 800 gold. Seeking a crew, they visit The Hedge, an “all-walks-of-life” tavern outside the city gates. Using a Zone of Truth, Khalid interviews several candidates and eventually hires Ormus (a bald dwarf) and Gil (a lanky human “wizard with a knot”) for five gold pieces a day. The night ends in a massive celebratory bar crawl; Khalid becomes “white-girl wasted” and blackouts, while Vladimir Vladislav becomes the life of the party, making friends with the locals.

The session concludes at dawn back on the Sloop Dogg. The party wakes with debilitating hangovers only to hear the heavy pounding of boots on the deck. A gang of five brigands, led by a man seeking revenge for an ear lost during the previous night's bar fight, boards the ship. Combat erupts on the deck: Khalid unleashes a Psychic Blast that knocks three attackers into the water, while Grundel deals massive damage with his crescent wrench. Lofta executes an attacker with a Force Strike to the throat, and Bludarious lethally snipes the armored leader through his chest plate. The last of the brigands is methodically dispatched by Nebish, leaving the deck of their new ship stained with the blood of their first challengers.

Picking up directly from the previous session's cliffhanger, the party finds themselves in a small room facing a terrifying half-man, half-wolf creature.

• Combat: Captain Barnaby Harrier attempts to fire his double-barrel shotgun but suffers a critical failure. Khalid intervenes by successfully casting Hold Person, paralyzing the creature.
• Execution: With the werewolf frozen in place, Bludarious De'Tempoon steps forward and executes it with his ornate revolver and silver bullets, delivering a devastating shot that tears through the beast’s brow and chest.
• The Reversion: Upon death, the creature reverts to its original form: a shaggy-haired, naked human man unknown to the party.
• The Infection Scare: While attempting to carve a tooth from the corpse as a trophy, Nebish accidentally cuts his finger. A failed medicine check leads to the grim suspicion that he may have contracted lycanthropy.

The party explores a northern corridor and discovers a small prison area containing two locked cells.

• The Prisoner: One cell contains a haggard, filthy middle-aged man who identifies himself as Professor Clank. To ensure he is not infected with lycanthropy, the party pricks his skin with a normal dagger and confirms he bleeds normally.
• The Kennel Room: A nearby chamber contains tapestries depicting wolves and several large crates of “Havana” brand dog kibble.
• The Trapped Box: Khalid attempts to open a wooden box resting on a desk but triggers a lightning trap, suffering nine points of damage and becoming temporarily paralyzed.
• The Severed Hand Solution: After Mage Hand fails to open the box safely, the party uses a severed werewolf hand to bypass the touch-sensitive mechanism. Inside they discover an iron key, which is used to free Professor Clank and recover his belongings.

As the party regroups, Clank and Mickle Cobblelob—both artificers—enhance several weapons using Repeating Shot infusions. While examining the corpse of a slain troll, a hidden section of wall grinds open, revealing a staircase descending deeper into the mountain.

• Discovery of Treasure: In the frozen chambers below, the party discovers a gold-and-brass gas mask mounted on a mannequin. In a nearby alcove they find a marble bust of a woman wearing a tiara set with a massive blue sapphire estimated to be worth approximately two hundred and fifty gold.

Descending further into an echoing chamber filled with skeletal remains, the party opens a set of heavy timber doors and inadvertently alerts two more werewolves.

• The Battle: Mickle creates a slick zone of Grease to control the doorway. One werewolf lands a brutal critical bite on Vladimir Vladislav, nearly killing him and snapping his collarbone.
• The Turret: Professor Clank deploys a mechanical flamethrower turret that spews burning fuel across the chamber.
• Victory: Nebish uses Hunter's Mark and his silver rapier to deliver a devastating critical strike, impaling one of the beasts. Bludarious and Clank finish the second creature with concentrated firearm fire.
• Body Disposal: The party discovers a rotating brass platform suspended above a pit of bubbling acid and uses it to dissolve the werewolf corpses.

The session culminates in a confrontation within a massive, pitch-black circular chamber.

• The Beast: The party discovers a colossal Winter Wolf, standing roughly six feet tall at the shoulder, sleeping in the darkness. It awakens when Khalid and Mickle cast Cure Wounds on themselves.
• The Breath Weapon: The creature exhales a freezing cone of frost that deals significant damage to the party.
• The Retreat: Realizing the creature’s strength, the group retreats up a sixty-foot staircase. Clank deploys a turret behind them as a distraction, which the wolf quickly smashes.
• The Explosion: Clank remotely detonates the turret, dealing force damage and creating a concussive blast that temporarily deafens several party members.
• The Final Kill: As the wounded wolf charges up the staircase toward Clank, Nebish lunges forward, drives his bayonet into the creature’s neck, and fires. The shot destroys the wolf’s head and sends the massive carcass tumbling down the stairs.

The session ends with the party battered, exhausted, and victorious. With the final guardian slain, they prepare to search and loot the last chamber of the dungeon.

The session begins with the party in a clearing following a battle with three direwolves. Exhausted and damaged, they decide to return to Lobo Village for a long rest rather than immediately pursuing the “big bad werewolf” they believe is nearby. Grundel, a goliath barbarian, decides to lug one of the six-hundred-pound direwolf carcasses back to the village to show the locals and eventually skin it for a new garment.

Upon arriving back at the village, the party conducts an investigation to determine whether the wolves they killed were responsible for the death of a resident named Raze.

• Track Comparison: They compare the direwolf's massive paws (roughly the size of a human head) to the prints found near the attack site. The tracks are incomplete, leaving them unable to definitively confirm a match.
• Fur Analysis: Fur taken from the original crime scene is compared with the direwolf carcass. While the coloration differs slightly, the texture is identical, confirming a wolfish attacker.
• Wound Discrepancy: The village elder, Ozzy, shows them Raze’s body. The party notices a chunk of flesh missing from the wound that is significantly smaller than what a direwolf's massive snout would produce. This leads to the realization that their work is not finished and that a different creature—possibly a smaller wolf or a humanoid lycanthrope—is still at large.

The party spends the night and early morning in the village performing various tasks.

• Gunsmithing: Bludarious uses his dagger and the village’s blacksmithing tools to attempt to modify a revolver into a long-range rifle using musket components. The village blacksmith, Tilda (a tabaxi), informs him that high-quality steel will be required to make the weapon durable and functional.
• Tanning: Grundel skins the direwolf and begins tanning the hide using the wolf’s basketball-sized brain to create the traditional tanning slurry.
• Negotiating Payment: Nebish speaks with the village elder, Remus, regarding compensation for their help. Remus explains that the village possesses no gold or silver but offers the party life-long friendship and access to their resources. Captain Barnaby ultimately accepts the offer as fair given their current circumstances.

At dawn, the party heads back into the mountains, following a trail of blood from the clearing where the remaining wolf carcasses had been left. Something had dragged the heavy bodies through the snow toward a small cavern high on the mountainside.

Inside the cave they discover a direwolf sleeping near the entrance. To avoid a loud confrontation, the party coordinates a silent execution. Grundel sneaks up to the beast and delivers a coup de grace, driving a dagger through its ear canal and into the brain.

While searching the immediate area they discover three high-quality leather leashes and a bugbear hide coat, which Grundel claims for himself.

Deeper within the cavern the party encounters a thirty-foot-wide chasm crossed by a rickety, two-foot-wide stone bridge. Looking down, they see the pit below is filled with massive carrion worms resembling giant centipedes.

The crossing proves extremely dangerous.

• The party ties the recovered leather leashes together to form a sixty-foot safety line.
• Bludarious attempts to sprint across the bridge but trips, ending up dangling over the pit before being hauled back up by the others.
• Using the leash rope as a guide line, the rest of the party—including a very fortunate Vladimir Vladislav—successfully crosses the bridge.

Beyond the bridge lies a chamber containing two doors: a stone door radiating unnatural cold and a wooden door radiating intense heat. After deducing that the doors react to opposing temperatures, Vladimir casts Sacred Flame on the frozen stone door, causing it to slide open.

Inside is a chamber completely coated in clear ice, inhabited by a hairy Ice Troll.

• Combat: The troll is caught off guard but attacks immediately. Bludarious fires multiple gunshots while Grundel charges into battle with longsword and quarterstaff.
• Regeneration: The party quickly notices the troll’s wounds seal themselves mid-fight, its flesh regenerating even as bullets tear through it.
• Defeat: Realizing that fire is required to stop the creature’s regeneration, Vladimir uses Sacred Flame to ignite the troll after it is knocked down. The creature burns, carbonizes, and finally dies.

As the party recovers from the brutal fight, they hear heavy boot steps approaching from the far side of the chamber.

Suddenly, the wooden door explodes inward, blasting into splinters and filling the icy room with smoke and debris as a new threat enters.

The session begins with the Wind's Revenge hovering at the peak of the mountain range. The party identifies salvaged parts from the Caracas Gantry, including pulleys, gears, steel cable, and brass ingots. Upon spotting glacial ice, Captain Barnaby Harrier orders the ship to descend for harvesting. The party successfully fills seven barrels with melted ice; Mickle Cobblelob utilizes ritual casting to purify the water, ensuring the crew avoids dysentery during the long journey east.

While traversing the mountain range above a thick layer of rolling clouds, Nebish and Grundel spot unnatural glints and ripples in the cloud cover. A massive Skracken (Sky Kraken) lunges from the mists, drawn to the ship to feed on its hydrogas fuel. The beast clamps onto the side of the hull, violently rocking the vessel. Khalid unleashes a psychic blast that ripples through the creature's gelatinous form, while Mickle deploys a Flaming Sphere directly onto the monster's face. Lofta, Mickle’s homunculus, successfully hurls a R.I.P. bomb into the sphere, causing a massive explosion that maims the creature's eye and hide.

The Skracken retaliates with a jagged lightning bolt that knocks Mickle prone and grapples him, along with the ship's hydrogas engine, using its tentacles. Using a legendary action, the creature flings Grundel 40 feet backward into the open sky. In a desperate rescue effort, Lofta pitches a 100-foot coil of rope toward the falling Goliath. Nebish dives from the top of the balloon at dash speed to grab the rope and fly it to Grundel, embracing him in mid-air to arrest his lateral movement. The entire party—including Mickle and Bludarious—join a combined strength check to anchor the rope to the railing, eventually hauling Grundel back aboard via a rope ladder.

Bludarious mans the ship's brass cannon, dealing massive bludgeoning damage to the Skracken’s face. He follows up by taking aim with his hunting rifle, firing a precision shot into a gaping hole in the creature's head. The bullet ignites the creature's internal hydrogas, causing its head to explode in a violent burst of purple flame. They harvest a square foot of Kraken skin and a 100-foot spool of brass wire from the stomach of the dead carcass. During the remaining seven-day journey, Bludarious uses the ship's workshop to craft a professional-grade stock for his rifle, significantly improving its appearance.

Captain Barnaby drops the party off at a peninsula on Suriname Bay at midnight, careful to avoid detection near the Amazonian capital of Petrolina. He bids them farewell to reprovision the ship in Manticore, promising to meet them there in a few days. While traveling north through the lush jungle coastline, the party discovers a marble monument overlooking the bay. The monument features statues of warriors and lists highly decorated officers; however, the party discovers that the name Bludarious de'Tempoon has been illegally crossed out of the stone.

Continuing their forced march through the night, the party is stalked by a group of Cockatrices (hybrid bat-lizard-chicken monstrosities capable of petrification). Combat breaks out in the tall grass as the creatures charge. Bludarious uses his pistols to deliver a series of lethal “cowboy style” shots, eliminating one creature. Nebish hacks another to pieces with his rapier and shortsword. Mickle concludes the fight by using a Firebolt to ignite the feet of the final Cockatrice; the creature's frantic “hot-foot dance” causes it to lose its balance and snap its own neck. The session ends as day breaks over the horizon of the bay.

The party traveled to the College of Arcana in Caracas to identify items and seek knowledge. The entrance was a magically sealed stone wall that only permitted those with magical gifts to pass.

• The Entry: Party members cast various spells such as Firebolt, True Strike, and Speak with Animals to turn the wall transparent, allowing them to walk through it.

• Item Identification: Inside they met a disheveled human diviner and traded a Potion of Fire Breathing for his services. He identified their woven metal gloves as Gloves of Swimming and Climbing.

• Library Research: While the party studied biomechanics and legendary weapons in a magically silenced library, Curtis remained outside tinkering with his “Haggard Boomstick,” the homemade firearm hes been crafting during downtime. Successfully reducing its misfire score by one.

During their downtime at the college, Captain Barnaby Harrier revealed much of his personal history.

• He is originally from the island of Lemuria.
• He contracted in a Lemurian mercenary company called “The Guardians”, working for the Hawaiian crown, before later becoming an officer in the Cordoban Expeditionary Force.
• Eventually he led a mutiny alongside his wife Miranda, stole an airship, and became a notorious smuggler operating out of Havana. His former mutineer companions making up the majority of his crew.

After returning to the compound, The Baron gave the party a new and unpleasant task: travel three to four miles north along the coast to eliminate a hag coven and return with all six of their eyes.

He also provided the party with custom garments bearing his own face, which served as official identification for city guards.

Following a hunter’s trail toward the hags’ cave, the party encountered a middle-aged man fishing on a bridge.

• The Confrontation: When the party attempted to intimidate him into letting them pass, he summoned a Water Elemental from the river.

• Combat: Bludarious (Blue) quickly ended the threat from the guardian with a lethal headshot.

• The Elemental: After its master’s death, the elemental entered a foaming frenzy and grappled both Mickle and Khalid.

• The Kill: Bruenor destroyed the elemental with a powerful Divine Smite delivered through his warhammer.

• Loot: The party recovered a sapphire worth 250 gold, along with a dead mouse and a comb from the guardian’s body.

The entrance to the hag lair proved to be a gauntlet of magical traps and shifting terrain.

• Fireball Glyph: Mickle accidentally triggered a Glyph of Warding (Fireball), dealing damage to himself, Blu, and Khalid. Khalid was knocked unconscious by the blast.

• Wind Tunnel: A second rune activated a powerful Tunnel of Wind, buffeting the party as they attempted to advance.

• Shifting Floors: As the group moved deeper, the ground tilted into a steep gradient, dropping Barnaby and Bruenor onto a lower ledge above the water.

• Entangling Thorns: A final rune caused vines and thorns to erupt from the ground, entangling Grundel as he rushed toward the objective.

The session concluded as the party finally reached a small shack at the back of the cave.

As they approached the door, it suddenly burst open, pushing them backward as a blinding white light filled the chamber.

The session begins at sunset as the Sloop Dogg departs from Petrolina, rising into the skies for a three-day journey east toward Manticore. The ship remains in a state of disrepair, requiring the new deckhands, Ormus and Gil, to work double shifts to keep the vessel airworthy. During the transit, the party engages in several downtime activities:

• Mickle Cobblelob utilizes his tinkering tools to craft “Lofta's Turd Collar,” a retractable wire-and-manacle leash system for his homunculus that can also be used to rig tripwires and bombs. He also uses fairy wings harvested from the Petrolina crypts to brew two Potions of Resilience and two Potions of Boldness.
• Bludarious de'Tempoon and Amnon shadow Ormus to learn the finer points of airship sailing, though Gil remains shady and avoids all conversation.
• Nebish maintains a constant scout perimeter a quarter-mile out from the ship.
• Mickle crafts ten mechanical bird statuettes for Nebish to eventually animate with magic.

On the second night of the journey, the Sloop Dogg is pulled into the currents of a massive, unnatural thunderhead. Nebish identifies the heart of the storm as a Sleet Elemental (a gargantuan magical creature born of storm) that is fixated on the ship. As the creature closes the distance, Amnon attempts to mask the ship's escape with a Globe of Darkness, but the elemental passes through it unfazed. The creature retaliates by firing “Sleet Mephits”—ice-crystalline forms—directly onto the deck, initiating a chaotic boarding action.

Combat erupts across the deck as the party defends the ship:

• Bludarious utilizes his Legion Armor gauntlets to punch the Mephits, later wrapping his hands in oil-soaked cloth and igniting them to deal fire and slashing damage.
• Amnon drinks a Potion of Speed and utilizes his Skybinder Staff to flare a blinding light against the elemental, though the creature eventually slams into the ship, tangling the balloon rigging and sending the vessel into a controlled nosedive.
• Mickle and Nebish coordinate a high-risk gambit: Mickle ties two R.I.P. Bombs and a jug of oil into a makeshift “sea urchin” mine. Lofta flies the device to Amnon, who hurls it into the elemental’s core at point-blank range.
• The resulting explosion deals 50 damage, shattering the elemental's form but knocking Amnon unconscious from the blast. Nebish delivers the final blow with his hunter's rifle using Hail of Thorns, causing the elemental to dissipate into harmless sleet.

After Mickle repairs the soot-charred hull with Mending and heals Amnon, the party arrives at Manticore—a lawless regional hub run by the Deep Crimson Syndicate. They moor the ship at a price-gouged local gantry and head to the Bell Tower Inn to locate their comrade. They find Captain Barnaby Harrier sobbing in a dark corner, completely broken. He reveals that in a drunken gambling stupor, he lost the Wind's Revenge at the tables to a powerful local figure named Abraham Wheeler.

Refusing to let the ship remain in Syndicate hands, the party travels to the Watchdog Casino, an opulent building distinguished by bright neon underglow. Mickle (disguised again as “Chubby Blu”) wins 300 gold at the blackjack tables to secure a stake. The party is eventually escorted to a high-stakes back room, where they are forced to surrender their weapons into a Briefcase of Holding before meeting Mr. Wheeler. Wheeler, guarded by six men with high-grade lever-action rifles, dismisses Barnaby but challenges the party to win the ship back via a game of Stud Poker. Amnon uses Thaumaturgy to make his eyes dance with fire, successfully unsettling the crime lord as the dealer begins to flick the cards.

• The party arrived in Manticore with approximately 20-25% fuel remaining.
• Mickle utilized Flash of Genius to ensure his firebolt connected with the elemental during the storm fight.
• Amnon successfully used Strength of the Grave in a previous encounter, but failed the DC 23 charisma save this time, dropping to 0 HP.
• Nebish and Bludarious are nearing proficiency in airship sailing following their training with the crew.

Following the haunting shared vision of the Panama Premonition, the party—Bludarious De'Tempoon, Mickle Cobblelob, Xilleth, Grundel, Khalid, Professor Clank, and Nebish—awoke aboard a moving steam locomotive in the war ravaged desert of northern Amazonia. The year is 2081 A.M. and the tranquility of their transit is short-lived. The group quickly found themselves in the center of a violent mutiny against the Cordoban Military officers overseeing their forced conscription.

The session erupted into chaos within the cramped, soot-stained confines of the train cars. As gunfire shattered windows and splinters flew, the survivors turned on their handlers.

• The Touch of Decay: Vladimir Vladislav demonstrated the terrifying lethality of shard-touched magic. Standing up with a casual stretch, he reached out and tapped the Cordoban Commander. Utilizing a second-level Inflict Wounds, he drained the officer’s life force instantly. The party watched in grim fascination as the Commander’s body shriveled and his uniform collapsed into a coagulated, shriveled wound, leaving him no longer of this earth.

• Prison-Style Justice: Grundel, the massive goliath, moved with surprising speed, closing the distance to an officer and unleashing a flurry of three prison-style shiv attacks with his daggers. Despite the officer attempting to ready a shot, Grundel’s blades found their mark, dropping the soldier to the ground in a spray of gore.

• Firearm Chaos: The battle highlighted the mechanical unreliability of the era's weaponry. While Nebish and Khalid maintained a perimeter, other conscripts struggled with the heavy smoke and concussive reports of black-powder muskets.

The train itself proved to be as dangerous as the enemy. During a precarious crossing between moving cars, Xilleth (a genasi conscript) lost his footing.

• The Kick of Salvation: As Xilleth began to fall into the churning wheels below, Grundel utilized his immense strength to deliver a literal kick to the ass, propelling the genasi across the gap and onto the next car. Xilleth survived the impact but was rendered unconscious by the trauma of the fall.

• The Killer Train: The DM noted that the train had killed more people than anybody during the skirmish, as another officer tumbled to his death between the shifting iron plates.

With the immediate Cordoban threat neutralized, the party began a frantic search of the cars.

• High-End Armaments: The party recovered a nickel-plated, gold-inlaid six-shot revolver from the fallen Commander, valued at over a hundred gold. Mickle also recovered two gold medals for bravery and a mysterious silk handkerchief embroidered with the initials “WB”.

• The Pantry Brew: Investigating a savory scent, Mickle discovered a pantry containing a stew that was magical in nature. Using his artificer's intuition, he realized it was a potent alchemical brew. Lacking proper vials, he emptied his waterskin to preserve the mystery potion for later identification.

• The Shardisite stone: A magical crystal shard, wrapped in a leather strap, was recovered from the Commander. Though its exact function remained unknown, its resonance confirmed it as a powerful relic of Post-Meteor Earth.

The party’s attempts to secure the remaining loyalist soldiers met with mixed success.

• Intimidation and Failure: Nebish, the crazy bird guy, successfully intimidated two loyalists into dropping their muskets. However, Vladimir’s attempt to bind their hands ended in humiliation. The cleric rolled a natural one, accidentally tying his own hands while the prisoners laughed at his incompetence.
• The Execution: When one prisoner sensed weakness and prepared to jump, Nebish ended the indecision by placing his musket against the man's head and pulling the trigger, leaving the remaining loyalist completely calm and cooperative.
• The Seperation The party realizes that loose gunfire has broken the coupling between the cars and the engine as they feel the car they are on begin to slow and see the engine continue on down the line.

As the severed train finally shuddered to a halt, the party realized they were not alone in the wasteland.

• The Airship Approach: Using a spyglass, Professor Clank tracked the plume of steam from their departing locomotive and spotted a terrifying sight: the silhouette of an airship heading directly toward their position, estimated to arrive within forty-five minutes.

• The Final Crate: In a desperate search for a countermeasure, Grundel kicked down the door to a rear car, discovering a disassembled brass cannon. Realizing the dirigible was likely a Cordoban interceptor, the group abandoned thoughts of rest to begin the arduous task of assembling the heavy ordnance.

The session concluded with the party standing among the carnage of the rail line, racing against the clock to mount a brass cannon atop a dead train while a hostile airship descended from the bruised clouds of the Age of Conquest. There was no time for a short rest. The next confrontation was already on the horizon.

After defeating the wolf entity Shusiva and escaping the mountain cave, the party returns to Lobo Village to report their success. They inform Remus that the wolf threat has been eliminated, though they confirm the existence of werewolves, validating the fears that had plagued the village.

• Upgraded Weaponry: The village blacksmith, Tilda, completes two projects for Bludarious. She provides a heavy sack of “carpet tacks” (mini-caltrops) designed for use as blunderbuss ammunition and constructs a custom five-shot rifle cobbled together from an old pistol and musket components.

• The Shardisite Discovery: The party presents Tilda with a strange green-glowing crystal. She immediately identifies it as a fragment of shardisite and reacts with visible fear. She warns the party that wars have been fought over such objects and urges them never to reveal it to anyone, especially the authorities of the warring American nations.

• Downtime and Resting: The party takes a long rest within the village. During this time Khalid grinds a silver coin into powder using a grindstone and mixes it into food to test the townspeople for lycanthropy. No villagers display signs of infection.

Leaving the forested hills behind, the party travels north toward the coast.

• Military Patrols: As they descend from the foothills into open plains and desert terrain, they observe Amazonian and Cordoban military patrols marching in mirrored formations several miles to their east and west.

• Entering the City: The party eventually arrives at Caracas, a neutral pirate-controlled city. The settlement is choked by caustic smog and surrounded by foul brackish water. The streets are unpaved, the air heavily polluted, and the overall atmosphere is one of decay and desperation.

Once inside the city, the party conducts several errands and investigations.

• Curing Lycanthropy: After previously being infected, Nebish and Khalid visit a temple in search of healing. An elderly priestess performs a ritual using Lesser Restoration. The process takes four hours and costs ten gold pieces each, successfully curing both of them.

• The Gantry: The party visits the gantry, a massive airship docking facility featuring elevated orbital platforms used to moor vessels. They negotiate a deal to have the hydrogas engine repaired for two hundred and fifty gold pieces, leaving the device there for a day before retrieving it.

• Identifying the Demon Armor: At a magical shop operated by Alara Windlass, the party identifies the dark spiked armor recovered from the acid pit in an earlier session. The item is revealed to be Legion Armor (+1 plate), which enhances unarmed strikes but carries a powerful curse. Once worn, the armor cannot be removed without high-level divine intervention.

To cover the increasing cost of supplies and services, the party engages in several financial transactions.

• They sell three muskets and two revolvers to a weapons dealer for fifty-five gold.
• Mickle reluctantly sells his enchanted gold chain to a goblin jeweler named Boblin for seventy gold.
• Through Boblin, the party schedules a meeting with The Baron, Harvey Proudbottom, the pirate ruler of Caracas, in order to sell a large diamond they discovered. Boblin negotiates a ten percent finder's fee.

• The Job: Captain Barnaby secures employment from the Baron's agents to collect a five-hundred-gold debt from an opium den located on the Amazonian side of the city.

• Infiltration and Combat: The party scouts the target location, a dilapidated farmhouse compound guarded by four large mastiffs and an inactive archanotech spider automaton. Khalid enters the building disguised as a customer to scout the interior while Mickle casts Silence on the dogs to begin the assault.

• Nebish dive-bombs the compound and kills two of the mastiffs.
• Grundel attacks the archanotech spider with his greataxe, but the machine proves extremely resistant to damage and attempts to trample him.
• An enemy marksman shoots Khalid with a poisoned crossbow bolt, knocking him unconscious and forcing him to make death saving throws.
• Bludarious unleashes a barrage of gunfire, killing the marksman and another fleeing guard with precise shots.

The session ends in the middle of the battle. Captain Barnaby finds himself in dire condition, severely wounded and grappled by a frenzied pirate wielding a hammer and sickle.

Following the dark resonance of Vladimir Vladislav’s necrotic magic, the massive marble doors of the Petrolina cemetery crypt ground open, revealing a descent into a subterranean complex that felt disconnected from the world above. The party moved deeper into the darkness, encountering a series of arcane traps designed not merely to injure, but to force “no-win” moral choices. These mechanisms tested the party’s resolve, forcing them to navigate through corridors where every path forward required a perceived sacrifice of their values or safety.

At the heart of one of the deeper chambers, the party discovered a solitary stone pedestal. Surrounding the base of the pedestal was a gruesome collection of corpses and animal carcasses, all stopped at a perfectly circular line in the stone. The party observed that an imperceptible barrier existed at this line; even motes of dust that drifted across the boundary would instantly incinerate, leaving a sterile, lifeless void around the object on the pedestal.

The artifact atop the pedestal appeared differently to each member of the party, manifesting as their deepest, most desperate desire:

• Bludarious de'Tempoon saw a collection of his lost war medals, a restoration of his military honor.
• Mickle Cobblelob saw his sister, whose features bore a striking, haunting resemblance to his homunculus, Lofta.
• Vladimir Vladislav saw a manifestation of absolute, unbridled divine and temporal power.
• Nebish saw his Vrock Feather Sword, fully completed and pulsing with Abyssal energy.
• Khalid saw a wicked, curved scimitar that sang to his thirst for status and arcane edge.

The party recognized the site for what it was: the “Temptation of Death.” They understood that the barrier was lethal and that the objects were likely illusions or anchors for the Legion. However, Khalid, driven by an impulse he could not restrain, chose to tempt fate. He charged across the line in a desperate attempt to claim the scimitar.

As he crossed the threshold, the barrier reacted with terminal intensity. Khalid managed to strike the pedestal, loosening the scimitar and knocking it toward the safe side of the line, but the effort cost him his life. The arcane backlash was instantaneous and total, leaving Khalid’s lifeless body to be recovered by his companions. Nebish quickly secured the “wicked scimitar”. Mickle placed Khalid’s body into his Bag of Holding for safekeeping.

Distraught and burdened by the loss of their friend, the party pushed further into the crypt. After a light skirmish with a group of shambling undead, they entered a chamber belonging to a long-dead necromancer. The man’s corpse was found slumped over his desk, surrounded by notes detailing his attempt to summon a power he could not contain or control. The room was heavy with the stench of ozone and decay, telling a story of a man consumed by his own ambition.

The party looted the room, recovering several items, including a wizard's spellbook and various silvered flasks. As they progressed, the air grew increasingly thick with a palpable sense of guilt and regret—the environmental manifestations of their grief over Khalid and the weight of their past mistakes.

The session reached its climax as the party reached the final set of heavy doors. The weight of their recent loss acted as a beacon, drawing them into the presence of the entity the necromancer had mistakenly invited into the world. As the doors groaned open, they came face-to-face with Remorso, a demon of the Legion and the literal manifestation of the shame and regret the party was currently enduring. The demon immediately shrouded the room in magical darkness, setting the stage for the desperate battle for survival that would follow.

• Khalid was removed from the active party following his death at the pedestal.
• Nebish acquired the Abyssal-cursed scimitar loosed by Khalid.
• The party entered the final encounter with Remorso significantly demoralized by the loss of their comrade.

The session begins with the party interacting with a large mechanical turntable mechanism that rotates clockwise. The party determines that they can move thirty feet within a single “click” of the mechanism—roughly the equivalent of one combat round—allowing them to hop between different enclosures as the structure rotates.

As they explore the surrounding rooms, they encounter several obstacles.

• The Poison Box: In one chamber the party discovers a metal box. After checking for traps and opening it from a distance with Mage Hand, the box releases a spray of poison gas. Inside they find arcane circuitry and a small controller box that hums in rhythm with the temple’s rotating mechanism.

• The Lever Room: Another chamber contains a similar circuit box alongside two unmarked levers. Through experimentation they determine that the left lever stops the temple’s rotation entirely, while the right lever reverses its direction.

• Draining the Acid: Eventually the party reaches a room with a hazy, acid-filled floor and a locked iron door. By manipulating a lever and a large wheel located in a separate control room, they manage to drain the acid and raise the heavy iron slab blocking the passage.

At the bottom of the drained acid pool the party discovers the remains of a corpse wearing a set of magical steel plate armor. The armor is dark and menacing in appearance, covered in spikes and jagged growths reminiscent of demonic-styled armor.

The party quickly determines several unsettling characteristics.

• The armor is cursed.
• It appears to function as both a boon and a bane to its wearer.
• Anyone who dons the armor may be unable to remove it afterward.

Unwilling to risk immediate consequences, the party chooses not to wear the armor and instead stores it in a backpack until its properties can be properly identified.

Passing through the newly opened doorway, the party descends a fifteen-foot staircase into a well-lit chamber lined with four pillars that periodically blast jets of flame every six seconds.

At the center of the chamber stands a large wolf-shaped entity accompanied by two dire wolves.

The creature communicates telepathically and identifies itself as Shusiva, described as the *Father of all Werewolves* within the world. It presents the party with a choice:

“Join me, or die.”

The party’s response is immediate and unequivocal, initiating combat.

• Silver Requirements: The party quickly realizes that the werewolves are resistant or immune to non-magical damage unless it is delivered with silver. Bludarious uses silver bullets while Grundel fights with a silver dagger and a silver boomerang.

• Mickle’s Tactics: Mickle casts Heat Metal on the silver bullets already lodged in the boss’s body, causing intense internal burning. He also activates a magical device that produces a high-frequency dog whistle sound, imposing disadvantage on the wolves’ attacks.

• Shusiva’s Escape: Bludarious lands a series of devastating shots that destroy a large portion of the boss’s skull. Instead of dying normally, the creature’s physical form collapses into dust while its essence escapes through a chute and disappears.

• The Minions: The party successfully slays the two remaining dire wolves after the boss flees.

After the battle, Mickle carves the words “Mickle was here” into the stone floor and fills the grooves with fecal matter.

Despite their victory, the triumph is overshadowed by a lingering sense of darkness emanating from the cursed armor stored in their pack—a palpable taint that every member of the party can feel.

The session begins on the blood-stained decks of the Sloop Dogg at the Petrolina docks, as the party recovers from the previous night's bridge-gang ambush. The new crew members, a boisterous dwarf named Ormus and a shanky human wizard named Gil, arrive at the ship to find the party cleaning up corpses. Mickle Cobblelob utilizes Disguise Self to take on the appearance of a “chubby” Bludarious de'Tempoon (Curtis) to avoid being recognized following his “war ostrich” theft incident. Vladimir Vladislav takes a long rest to recover his high-level spell slots, while the rest of the party prepares to make the ship airworthy.

The party decides to sail the Sloop Dogg across the harbor to the Petrolina gantry for repairs and provisioning. Under the direction of Ormus, the party engages in an intense day of haggling and supply gathering, ultimately spending 2,100 gold pieces. This cost covers a full load of hydrogas fuel, rations, extra hull planks, balloon patches, and internal furnishings like hammocks and nets to make the vessel a self-contained unit. During this downtime, Grundel—haunted by his previous fall during the Skracken attack—insists on the development of a “parachute” or “glider” system. Mickle agrees to prototype silk-and-wire hang gliders for the crew during future multi-day journeys.

Returning to the docks, the party finally loots the brigands killed in the morning skirmish. They recover a Potion of Superior Healing, a Scroll of Animal Friendship, a hooded lantern, a longbow, and five gold pieces. The party then heads to the local Market District for personal gear. Nebish purchases a Burglar's Pack and an iron lockbox for the ship, while Khalid finds a fine tobacco pipe. Mickle, still in his “Blu” disguise, visits a toy store and buys a small wooden toy elephant for six silver pieces.

Seeking to restore their reputation and find work, the party returns to the Hedge Hall tavern. To appease the bartender, Rufus, Khalid pays 25 gold pieces to cover the damage to the tavern door from the previous night. Khalid further “sweetens the pot” by buying a 5-gold round for the house and tipping the barmaids with silver. Rufus, impressed by the party's professionalism (and coin), directs them to Marshal Yasmin Santiago, the Captain of the Guard, who has work that the regular city guard is “too squeamish” to handle.

The party is escorted through the eerily quiet Royal District to the city guard house. There, they meet Marshal Yasmin Santiago, a chiseled human woman in immaculate gold-inlaid plate armor. After Khalid name-drops Rufus and mentions their success in capturing The Baron, Yasmin offers them a contract. She tasks them with investigating the city cemetery, where reports of the “dead coming alive” have terrified her men. After negotiation, the party secures a payment of 600 gold pieces for clearing the threat.

The party travels to the outskirts of the city to the foggy, chilling cemetery. Grundel leads the way with his “Thoughts” and “Prayers” brass knuckles glowing pink and orange thanks to Mickle's tinkering. They are ambushed by a group of four zombies, including a massive Goliath zombie. * Vladimir utilizes his Channel Divinity: Turn Undead, instantly crumbling one zombie to ash and sending a corpulent zombie fleeing back toward a crypt. * Khalid unleashes his blunderbuss loaded with fifty pennies, shredding two of the undead with a hail of copper. * Grundel and Nebish methodically dismantle the remaining zombies with a combination of crescent wrench strikes and rapier thrusts.

Following the surviving zombie into a stone foyer, the party encounters a massive, handle-less marble door. Nebish and Mickle investigate and realize that all the religious symbols on the door have been desecrated or scratched out. After Vladimir fails to open the door with Bless and Sacred Flame, he realizes the seal requires an “evil” resonance to permit entry. Vladimir casts Inflict Wounds, matching the door's dark aura with necrotic power. The marble slab creaks open, releasing a cold, foul stench as the party peers into the darkness of the inner dungeon.

The session begins with the party successfully navigating a dungeon and stepping through a blinding white portal located inside a small shack. As they pass through, the characters experience the terrifying sensation of falling through empty space before crashing into a musty cavern filled with mold and yellow-green bioluminescent rock.

Several party members—including Mickle, Grundel, and Vladimir—become violently ill from the disorientation of the transition and begin retching.

While the party attempts to recover, they are ambushed in a chamber filled with a gaseous cloud of spores released by a hidden enemy.

• Invisible Foe: The party initially struggles to locate an invisible enemy that taunts them with mocking laughter.
• Cursed: Nebish is touched by an unseen hand, leaving the left side of his body numb. The attack permanently reduces his charisma and inflicts a curse that imposes disadvantage on attacks against the creature responsible.
• Tactics: Khalid uses Faerie Fire and a wand of Web in an attempt to reveal the surroundings, though no targets are initially caught.
• The Reveal: Eventually three identical figures emerge directly from the stone walls—later identified as Nepalese Hags.
• Execution: After a chaotic exchange involving a blunderbuss loaded with pennies, Grundel kills the primary hag with a massive cleaving strike from his big-ass wrench, shattering her spine and nearly decapitating her.
• Loot: The party harvests three three-inch claws from the corpse. Additional loot includes a copper ring, a handcrafted necklace made of bright green feathers, eight gold pieces, and various alchemical components.

The party continues into a vast echoing cavern separated by water that they must cross.

• Manifestation of Fears: Each character is confronted by an illusion representing their greatest fear.

• Nebish: A screeching rock radiating dust and spores.
• Grundel: A baby version of himself.
• Khalid: An emaciated version of himself stripped of jewelry and status.
• Mickle: A deep black void leading into oblivion.
• Barnaby: The corpse of Miranda.
• Bludarious: An undead soldier he once ordered to die.
• Vladimir: Himself stripped of all divine power.
• Bruenor: A demonic possession

A second hag attacks the party from beneath the water.

• Transformation: During the fight, the hag transforms Captain Barnaby into an infant, leaving him crying helplessly on the shore.
• Fishing for Hags: Attempting to locate the creature, Mickle uses a Genasi finger as bait on a fishing line. The hag takes the bait and pulls the entire fishing pole into the water.
• Death of the Second Hag: Bludarious eventually kills the creature with a precise gunshot that pierces her heart.

• Loot: The party recovers a Potion of Fox's Cunning, a Potion of Cure Light Wounds, eighty-two gold pieces, and a black sapphire ring valued at roughly eight hundred gold. A glint beneath the water also reveals a hunting rifle, which the party retrieves.

The party enters a final chamber where a Night Hag resides within a massive crystalline structure.

• Ethereal Gateway: The room functions as a hub connecting the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane. When the crystal is damaged, objects and individuals—including Grundel and even a keg of gunpowder—randomly flicker in and out of the Ethereal Plane.
• Night Hag Tactics: The hag casts Sleep and incapacitates Khalid. Bruenor later revives him using Lesser Restoration.
• Restraint and Victory: Khalid uses his wand to cast Web, pinning the hag to a wall twenty feet below the party's ledge. Bludarious delivers the killing blow with a gunshot that momentarily vanishes into the Ethereal Plane before snapping back into existence and tearing through the hag's body.

The party emerges victorious but exhausted after the deadly encounter. As a lingering comedic consequence of the hag's magic, the infant-transformed Captain Barnaby must now refer to Vladimir as “Mama.”

The party was attacked by the train soldiers and crew. The train got away, the crew did not. The party repaired the rest of the Spring wind and as it rose to the sky again, Barnaby rechristened it the Wind's Revenge. The made way back to Lobo Village. The party long rested in Lobo Village.

Nebish had Tilda and Hargrave Umfridus begin work on his Vrock Feather Sword. Grundel and Blu began training with Barnaby on airship sailing. Mickle began creating his C.R.A.P. hook and his R.I.P. bombs.

Barnaby refused to take the party to Petrolina as he has a bounty on his head there. Barnaby agreed to take them to the southern peninsula of Suriname Bay after their stop in Lobo Village. Grundel paid Remus 1 platinum for 150lbs of rice provisions. The party successfully went foraging and hunting for meat and vittles. Blu got mauled by a bear. Nebish ate it's guts. Needing water the party decided to harvest ice from the top of the mountain on their way out.

At the top of the mountain the party spotted the Amazonian Navy moving West out of Caracas

Following the explosive conclusion of the battle in the sewers, the party stands amidst the gory remains of the Neolithid. Covered from head to toe in blood and viscera, they begin the grisly task of disassembling the carcass for valuable components. Mickle leads the effort, utilizing his medical knowledge and various toolkits to guide the harvesting.

The harvest results in several significant acquisitions:

• Tentacles: The group successfully retrieves four tentacles. The process is difficult due to their fragile and slippery nature, requiring the party to use a heavy rock as a “paper cutter” to ensure clean cuts.
• Acid Glands: By heaving the creature's mouth open with a quarterstaff, Mickle crawls inside to locate eight glands near the throat. After several failed attempts where the acid ate through glass jars and copper wire, they utilize a healer’s kit and sutures to successfully tie off and harvest four vials of magical acid.
• Neo-Hide: The party slabs off five square yards of the two-inch-thick armored hide. Due to the varied quality of the cuts, they end up with two “high-grade” and three “low-grade” sections.
• The Brain: Using a newly crafted surgeon’s kit, the party saws through the skull to retrieve the brain. They manage to harvest seven of the nine total parts intact.
• The Heart: The most valuable find is a basketball-sized heart pulsing with powerful psychic magic. A ritual identification reveals that the heart can be used to cast Foresight, though it carries a risk of inducing feeblemind.

While scavenging the cavern for “dead adventurer gear,” the party discovers several curiosities: a two-headed platinum coin, a Fido Whistle that buzzes with magic, a bear trap, and a bandolier with three grenades.

With the way they entered now collapsed from the explosion, the party discovers a new path out of the chamber. As they begin a multi-hour trek through the deep tunnels, their minds begin to wander, and the environment starts to feel increasingly realistic and jarring.

Unbeknownst to the party, they have been dosed with a massive amount of chemical residue from the destroyed Narcotics lab and from harvesting the neolithid carcass, triggering a collective and vivid hallucination. As they walk, each member falls under a different psychic compulsion:

• Drathus becomes convinced of his own godhood, demanding worship from the rest of the party and the environment.
• Mickle hears a constant orchestral score and feels compelled to perform everything in the form of a dance.
• Nebish finds his clothes painfully hot and itchy, leading him to strip completely naked.
• Blu perceives his weapons as snakes coiling around his body.

The party eventually emerges into a “library” or “study” filled with glowing gateways.

• The Purple Portal: Mickle enters a room of decorative chairs. He attempts to use magic to light them up, but the trial requires the party to sit together to succeed.
• The White Portal: Blu and Drathus encounter a massive stone tower in the clouds guarded by an angel and a Kirin. A combat ensues where Drathus falls through the clouds back to the library, and Blu is beaten by the angel before jumping through the floor to escape.
• The Black Portal: The party observes a mechanical factory producing Warforged and finds “Boggles” sorting through scrap metal. Drathus attempts to assert dominance over the boggles, leading to a skirmish where he is eventually thrown into a furnace.

Eventually, the party gives up on the trials and reconvenes at a table set with a “hearty commoners' meal”. After consuming the tasteless “sadness soup,” the hallucination finally breaks.

The party awakens aboard the Sloop Dogg to find that eight days have passed since they entered the sewers. They are tended to by their crew, Ormus and Gil, who have mysteriously returned to the ship. The long rest is complete, but the “trip” leaves the party with several bizarre side effects:

• Nebish is infested with fleas.
• Blu has 54 pieces of silver magically glued to his skin.
• Drathus has lost attunement to his Morningstar for three days.
• Mickle has a rose tattoo on his face.

Final identifications of their haul include the Fido Whistle, which summons a spectral dog with various effects (including “distracting” enemies or “peeing” on the user). Drathus also attunes to the Veil of Chains armor, which permanently burns out his left eye with green flames but grants him immunity to being charmed or frightened.

This is the end of Apocalyptica Arcanum - Campaign I. Partly because of scheduling conflicts, and partly because there were many aspects of the setting that had not been fully fleshed out and needed to be addressed. Issues of note were:

• Our homebrew weapons and class mechanics were wildly out of balance leaving combat extremely difficult to balance for such a large party. On average we had between six and 9 players at the table per session. It may not seem like it from the recaps but there was almost always one or two players “visiting” for a session or two and many of them didn't make it into the recaps.
• The entire theology of Choir and Legion was in a state of flux and many names/domains had not been settled on even during play. Some of these details have since been retconned in the recaps to better fit the larger setting.
• This campaign was always meant to be a testing ground for the setting as a whole and as such had all sorts of wild, experimental mechanics and lore. It relied heavily on random tables and did not set the stage for a cohesive storytelling platform.

Because of these reasons and more the group decided to take a break from D&D for a while and come back when the time was right. Thankfully we did.

The session begins five hours into a long rest within a Tiny Hut in the sewers of Gorgon. The party is alerted by Draven to the sound of 15 armed “bruisers” (associates of a criminal named Dimitri) approaching their position. When the hut is dropped, a chaotic skirmish erupts:

• Draven immediately unleashes a 4th-level Fireball, followed later by a 5th-level Fireball and Scorching Ray.
• Mickle utilizes Lofta 3.0 to hurl bottles of high-proof spirits, which Draven ignites to clear the magical fog.
• Blu provides precision fire with his rifle, utilizing “piercing shots” that explode the heads of multiple attackers.
• Nebish summons a swarm of bees to harry the center of the enemy formation.
• Despite the enemies being “sturdy” and wearing body armor, the party kills ten of the fifteen bruisers.

Realizing that more reinforcements are likely en route, the party decides to abandon their rest and retreat to the surface to better prepare for the environment ahead.

Back at the Sloop Dogg, the party takes a short rest to recover. Recognizing the tactical disadvantage of the sewer’s “shit shroud” (toxic magical fog), they visit an army surplus store. They purchase six gas masks for 24 gold.

Utilizing a stone of Shardisite and a Chromatic Orb spell, the party enchants the masks with Devil's Sight. This magical modification allows the wearer to see through magical and non-magical darkness up to a distance of 40 feet, effectively neutralizing the Neolithid's environmental defenses.

The party re-enters the sewers at midnight. During their navigation, they encounter several curiosities:

• The Mystery Growth Goo: They discover a room where a magical liquid drips from the ceiling, causing moss and sprouts to grow and die instantly. Mickle collects two jars of this “mystery goo.”
• The Human Cocoons: In a spider-infested corridor, they find mummified vagrants wrapped in silk. They harvest five bolts of spider silk from the cocoons.
• The Loadies: The party encounters a group of homeless junkies living behind a ramshackle door. For the price of bread, “Drunken Uncle” booze, and a dose of Illithidust, the dwellers provide directions to the Neolithid's lair: follow the south wall west.

The party enters a massive cavern (150–200 feet wide) and encounters the Neolithid, a gargantuan, psychic purple worm with a gaping maw and lashing tentacles.

• The creature initiates a psionic assault, attempting to confuse the party and using telekinesis to hurl Blu and Draven against the rocky walls.
• Draven maintains concentration on Immolation, keeping the beast continuously burning.
• Nebish, empowered by a glowing celestial gem from the Angel of Relief, delivers a devastating radiant dive-bomb that slashes through the creature's tail.
• Mickle uses Catapult to lodge a dagger into the beast’s side, subsequently casting Heat Metal to burn it from the inside.

The tide turns when the Neolithid swallows Mickle whole. While inside the creature's gullet, Mickle utilizes his final 4th-level spell slot to cast Polymorph, transforming himself into a Cloud Giant.

The sudden expansion of the giant's form inside the Neolithid causes the beast to splay open in four great chunks, spraying gore and stomach acid across the cavern. As the creature dies, the party emerges from the wreckage. In a final, undignified flourish, Mickle—still in gaseous form before his transformation—chooses to exit the dead beast by “farting out the butthole.”

The session concludes with the Neolithid slain and the party preparing to harvest the acid glands for their employer, Georgie Hristo.

The session opens with the party aboard the Sloop Dogg in the city of Gorgon, Nepal, discussing the various leads they gathered the previous day. The Dungeon Master clarifies a list of active rumors circulating in the city:

• The Stolen Cloak: A black cloak was stolen from a patron at the Burnt Bridge Tavern. The owner is offering an unusually high reward of 10 platinum.
• The Ornate Casket: Ditch diggers near the shrine of Marvela unearthed a mysterious tin casket they cannot open.
• Hobgoblin Tunnels: Rumors persist of hobgoblins tunneling under the city a year ago, an event suppressed by the Black Guard.
• The Slavers: A merchant named Samira Zagant is seeking his son, who was sold to Manchurian slavers.
• Missing Vagrants: Homeless populations are disappearing, and large, unusual dung droppings have been found across the city, corroborating the Neolithid rumor.
• Political Fervor: The local Church of Jasiri is distributing pamphlets calling for the conquest of the Bengal Isles, accusing their Emperor of worshipping the demon Nekoda.

Following a vote, the party decides to prioritize the stolen cloak due to its proximity and high payout, though they plan to research the Neolithid later in the day.

At dawn, the exotic carcass dealer Georgie Hristo arrives with a crew of laborers to retrieve the Dragon Turtle shell. While the shell is being moved, Mickle attempts to fly his new Broom of Flying. Due to poor coordination (and a series of low rolls), the broom shoots out of his hand and sails onto the deck of a neighboring ship, leaving him grounded and embarrassed.

After paying the 20 gold daily docking fee, the party seeks directions from the City Watch, who describe the Burnt Bridge Tavern as being located in a blue-collar factory district across town.

The party arrives at the tavern, which has been largely avoided by locals lately because of a disgruntled patron who has been “flipping out” for three days. Blu consumes several bottles of “Triple X” grain alcohol, becoming significantly intoxicated before the party heads upstairs to investigate.

In Room 3, they kick open the door to find a disheveled human man who is stark naked and highly agitated. After a tense interaction where he nearly grabs Amnon, he reveals his story: five nights ago, he was drugged and mugged during a high-stakes card game. He lost 800 gold and a “sentimental” black cloak.

The man describes four players from the game:

1. A **Tiefling** with a thick African accent and poor gambling skills.
2. A **Dragonborn** who was quiet and difficult to read.
3. Two local laborers covered in silt or clay, one of whom is a human with two different colored eyes (one green, one brown).

The bartender directs the party to a flower shop at the end of the block that doubles as an illegal bookie joint. Inside, they meet a Goliath bookie named Ricky. To gain Ricky's favor, the party pays 5 gold to place a 10-to-1 bet on an ostrich named Thunder Thighs for the 3:00 PM race.

While the party is in the shop, Grundel inquires about underground brawls. Ricky leads him to a back room where Grundel spots the man with the one green eye counting money. Grundel signs up for a main event fight at 10:00 PM against a woman named Sheila.

The party travels to the racetrack, where Mickle sneaks into the rafters and dopes Thunder Thighs with a Potion of Swiftness via a dart. The ostrich wins “by a beak,” netting the party 50 gold, though Blu loses 91 gold on side bets he placed while drunk.

Before the fights, the party takes an aerial trolley to a Bestiary to research the Neolithid. The keeper describes the creature as an ancient, psychic “mutated earthworm” from the time of the Meteor strike. He warns that they are masters of the mind and suggests that hunting one in the sewers or rail tunnels would require massive amounts of incapacitating drugs.

Returning to the warehouse for the fights, the party discovers the ring is surrounded by a powerful anti-magic/counterspell field.

• Blu wins his welterweight fight by knockout.
• Amnon is knocked unconscious by a massive opponent.
• Drathus wins his match against a clean-cut human fighter.

The session concludes as Grundel enters the main ring for his fight against Sheila, a massive half-orc woman. As he rages, he makes eye contact with the man with one green eye who is watching from the crowd.

The session begins with the party returning to the Burnt Bridge Tavern to confront their original client. Mickle utilizes his Broom of Flying to eavesdrop on the room from outside, hearing the conspirators discuss rigging fights and accusing the party of being in league with the thieves.

Before a plan can be formed, Amnon sneaks into the building through a window to confront the men in the hallway. A brief struggle ensues, followed by the deafening report of a blunderbuss. By the time the party enters, they find Amnon dead and his body ransacked. A quick investigation of the corpse recovers his Pearl of Power, Ring of Truth, and Headband of Intellect, though his other magical items have been stolen.

The tavern proprietor calls for the guards, and five members of the Black Guard—the city’s elite, law enforcers—arrive. After a Zone of Truth spell confirms the party’s innocence, the guards cordon off the area and allow them to leave. However, Mickle, attempting to pickpocket a guard while invisible/gaseous, is caught and blasted with a necrotic spell. He takes 31 necrotic damage, which reduces his maximum hit points until a long rest.

Back at the Sloop Dogg, the party meets Draven, a bald man with severe burn scars who has been hired by Georgie Hristo to assist the party in hunting the Neolithid.

The next morning, the party hires a private investigator, Vitaly Stepan, to locate their missing crewmen, Ormus and Gil. While at Vitaly's office, Blu smokes a potent drug called Ogre's Breath, which grants him a +4 bonus to Dexterity saving throws but carries the risk of swelling the brain and tongue.

The party enters the sewers via a manhole in the street. After descending a ladder that terminates in a 40-foot drop, they splash into two feet of filth. Using a Lion and a Mastiff from a Bag of Tricks as scouts, the party heads south toward sounds of activity.

Their progress is interrupted by a Glyph of Warding (Force damage) burned into a wall. While most of the party survives the blast, the Mastiff is killed instantly.

The party encounters a group of “sewer junkies” and a spellcaster in a makeshift antechamber.

• Drathus delivers a series of Smite-fueled strikes with his executioner’s axe, while Draven utilizes Scorching Ray.
• The enemy spellcaster nearly petrifies Draven with a stone-skin spell.
• Blu eliminates a talkative marksman with a precision rifle shot to the head.
• Grundel pummels the final crackhead into unconsciousness.

Following the combat, the party recovers a Junkie +1 Dagger, a +1 Glaive, and a Dancing Monkey Fruit. They also discover a mysterious Astrolabe Globe that contains a magical item sealed within a conjuration barrier. Interrogation of the surviving wizard reveals they are manufacturing a narcotic using Neolithid droppings.

The party moves deeper into the complex, turning a massive iron crank to lift a portcullis. They discover a fully operational Drug Lab manned by twelve technicians and guarded by two Cave Bears.

A secondary skirmish erupts:

• Draven casts Fireball, centered on the bears, which causes the lab equipment to explode in a chain reaction.
• The explosions kill both bears and several technicians, filling the room with chemical smoke.
• Drathus executes the final ruffian, while the remaining spellcaster surrenders.

The party identifies three primary drugs being produced in the lab:

• Sleepy Salt: Grants +5 Temp HP and bludgeoning resistance, but induces an hour of sleep.
• Spiral: A liquid that numbs pain (advantage on pain saves) but causes severe dizziness (disadvantage on Dex saves).
• Illithidust: Made from fermented Neolithid droppings. It provides random psionic powers (telepathy, mage hand, or psychic damage) but may cause long-term intelligence penalties.

The session ends with the captured “Stony Boy” pointing toward a final door, revealing the location of the Neolithid.

The session continues with Grundel locked in a brutal underground brawl against Sheila, a massive half-orc woman. Grundel enters a blind rage while the rest of the party attempts to position themselves in the packed warehouse. Blu and Nebish are unable to push to the front, but Mickle and Drathus secure a vantage point near the ropes.

From their position, Mickle and Blu spot their target—Heinrich Voss (the man with the green eye)—watching the fight and counting a large sum of money. Acting quickly, Mickle casts Invisibility on Blu, who begins to navigate the crowd. To provide further support, Mickle mounts his Broom of Flying to track the invisible Blu from above. To distract the crowd and Voss, Blu begins “making it rain” by throwing 15 gold pieces into the air, creating a chaotic stir that allows the duo to shadow their target without raising immediate alarm.

In the ring, the fight reaches a violent peak. Grundel utilizes his superior strength to suplex Sheila, dealing significant damage. He attempts to straddle and pummel her, but the crowd's cheers fuel a comeback for the veteran fighter. Sheila retaliates with a series of lightning-fast strikes, landing a dirty blow to Grundel's groin. As Grundel doubles over, Sheila delivers a powerful critical hit directly to his nose, knocking him unconscious and winning the fight. Despite the loss, the party nets 100 gold as Blu had bet against Grundel at 10-to-1 odds.

As the crowd disperses for the next match, Heinrich Voss attempts to slip away. Mickle and an invisible Blu follow him to a dark, industrial river boardwalk. Blu reveals himself behind Voss and attempts a deception, posing as a “curator of curious items” interested in purchasing the stolen black cloak. Heinrich, inherently paranoid, becomes suspicious when four of his associates emerge from the shadows, flanking the party.

Tensions break into a Quick Draw moment between Blu and Voss. Using a grit point, Blu acts with incredible precision, shooting the revolver directly out of Heinrich’s hand before he can fire.

A full-scale skirmish erupts near the river:

• Nebish uses Conjure Animals to summon eight swarms of ravens, which descend upon the thugs in a swarm nightmare.
• Mickle superhero-smashes Brandi’s Blessing into the ground, casting a third-level Bane on the attackers and Hexing Heinrich.
• Drathus arrives on the scene, delivering a monstrous 54 damage turn by combining Divine Smite with his executioner’s axe to instantly pulverize a brute.
• Mickle utilizes Catapult to launch a R.I.P. Bomb at the group’s heavy hitter; the explosion is so intense it immolates the upper half of the target.
• Blu methodically clears the area, eventually finishing an attacker with a “home run” swing from the butt of his rifle (the “Butt Stick”).

Heinrich Voss, seeing his crew decimated, dives into the river to escape. However, Blu snipes him from 150 feet away, “red-misting” him as he surfaces. The party retrieves the bleeding Voss and stabilizes him.

Under interrogation, Heinrich Voss produces the stolen item: the Shanghai Slicker, a jet-black cloak soaked in blood. The party decides against execution, instead choosing to return the mangled “Voss” to the flower shop bookie joint as an “olive branch” to the local mob.

While identifying their spoils from the bodies, the party discovers a massive haul:

• The Shanghai Slicker: A cloak with 12 magically sealed, undetectable pockets.
• Encyclopedia (S through Z): An item allowing the party to automatically succeed on investigation checks regarding topics within those letters.
• The Highest of Fives: A legendary wooden ring that grants powerful magic (like Heal or Globe of Invulnerability) when paired with its counterpart, the “Lowest of Lows.”
• Ultra Mega Maxi Vita Pills: Experimental drugs with potent temporary buffs but a severe physical come-down.
• Cloak of Death: A garment that grants the wearer an undead appearance to confuse other undead.
• Shanghai Lightning Moonshine: A potent whiskey that allows the drinker to cast high-level lightning spells.

Returning to the city, Mickle utilizes his broom and enhanced hearing to eavesdrop on the original client at the Burnt Bridge Tavern. Inside, the client is conspiring with several others, accusing the party of rigging the fights and colluding with the thieves.

The conspirators realize that the party are not the easy “marks” they initially anticipated. As the men flee the room and move down the hallway, the party realizes they have stumbled into a larger scheme involving potential robbery and the mysterious presence of a Medusa within the city.

The session begins with the party waking up in a marshy clearing on a small island, approximately 5-10 miles square, following the banishment of the demon Makalo (the Demon of Surprise). The party realizes the dark carnival was an illusion. Nebish flies up and determines that the main continent lies to the south, though the boat is not immediately visible.

The trek through the mangrove swamp is arduous:

• Everyone makes Constitution checks with the Gatling gun in tow (Mickle had successfully retrieved it before the carnival vanished).
• Mickle is the only one to emerge unscathed; others take 5 points of slashing damage from the rough brush.
• All rations spoil during the trek, with the exception of Grundel's.

The party reaches the beach and finds the Sloop Dogg. The hired crew, Ormus and Gil, have made significant progress, leaving the ship approximately 70% repaired. The Dragon Turtle shell remains lashed to the hull.

While repairs continue:

• Nebish and Grundel consume Potions of Flying and Swiftness to scout the island.
• Mickle spends his time finishing Lofta 3.0. This new version of his homunculus is built from scraps and powered by a blue sapphire eye which glows under shard light.
• The party discusses their next move, ultimately deciding to set sail toward the east while continuing repairs en route.

During their scouting, Nebish and Grundel find a small cabin with white smoke. Inside, they discover tiny furniture scaled for someone larger than a gnome but smaller than a human. Nearby, they find a massive Bugbear caught in a large trap.

After a brief interaction, the creature reverts into its true form: a disheveled halfling hunter named Belos. He reveals he has lived on the island for ten years and warns the party of a “darkness” coming from the east. After a meal of “amazing” stew, the party returns to the ship to depart.

The party sets sail, naming the ship's motor “Siri”. During the journey:

• Blu crafts 12 Holy Bullets by engraving wings into rounds and filling them with holy water.
• Mickle and others use Mending and fire magic to rebuild Grundel's shattered wrench, the “Big-ass Crescent Wrench.” It is now a jagged, welded weapon dealing slashing damage.
• Nebish assists in mounting the Gatling gun to the front of the boat.

As the journey continues, Mickle becomes obsessed with “optimizing” Siri. Believing the recently enchanted Shardisite propeller is under-performing, he begins tinkering with the engine's hydrogas-mix—a dangerous habit previously established during his attempts to “huff” hydrogas and siphon fuel into his Bag of Holding.

While attempting to bypass a pressure valve, Mickle inadvertently triggers a catastrophic “Shard-surge event.” The engine emits a high-pitched, metallic shriek, and the Shardisite core flares with a blinding, toxic emerald light. The Sloop Dogg is violently jerked as a localized rupture in reality swallows the ship.

Following the disorienting transition, the party emerges on the other side into a picturesque landscape of rolling green hills. Scanning the horizon, they spot a massive sprawling city on a coastline coast which Grundel identifies as Gorgon, the “capital of Nepal”.

The party docks at a major gantry (docking tower). They pay 400 gold for spare fuel, 200 gold to fill their tanks, and a 20 gold-per-day docking fee.

In the city:

• Mickle utilizes Comprehend Languages to read the first chapter of his Tome of Stories of Legendary Weapons, discovering the legend of the Norse sword Tyrefin.
• The party visits an Exotic Carcass Dealer. They strike a deal to trade half of the Dragon Turtle shell and 50 gold for four Flail Snail shells, which provide illumination when rubbed.
• The dealer informs them of a Neolithid—a gargantuan, psychic-oriented “big worm”—living in the sewers. The creature has been taking the local homeless population, and the dealer offers “thousands upon thousands” of gold for its carcass.

The session ends with the party returning to the Sloop Dogg to rest and prepare for their hunt in the sewers of Gorgon.

Following the combat with the armored constructs, Captain Barnaby Harrier urged the party to flee toward the foothills as more metallic screeching echoed from the hole the beasts had emerged from.

• Scouting the Compound: Nebish scouted from an altitude of three hundred feet and spotted a steady gray trail of smoke inside a band of green trees roughly two miles away. He discovered a man-made palisade compound built on a raised stone pedestal featuring primitive Mongol-style huts.

• Mickle’s Inventions: While waiting for Nebish to return, Mickle Cobblelob used his tinkerer's tools to forge an iron codpiece that doubled as an ear-horn listening device. He also successfully identified Grundel's new magical items as the Gloves of the Bear, which allow the wearer to pass a failed Strength saving throw once per day.

• First Contact: The party entered the village, which was identified as Lobo Village. They were met by a hesitant older man and a sixteen-year-old youth named Embry, who bore a striking, deep-crevice scar running down his jawbone.

The village was in a state of mourning following the brutal death of a resident named Raze, who had been killed that morning.

• The Crime Scene: Nebish and the party inspected the body inside a hut that functioned as a shop. Raze’s arm had been practically ripped clean off, and he suffered a monstrous gash from his neck to his chest. The wound appeared fresh, and a piece of his shoulder had been bitten out by a beast.

• Clues Recovered: Nebish used his tracking skills (rolling a natural twenty) to find four-toed claw marks in the dirt floor. However, there were no landing or takeoff prints outside the hut, suggesting the attacker had leapt a great distance or flown. An older man named Ozzy produced a tuft of wiry hair found in the victim’s wounds that smelled distinctly like a dog.

• The Lobo Connection: Grundel recognized the village name Lobo as the Wolf Clan, an ancient rival to his own Bear Clan. He realized the village likely had a lycan problem, as the locals admitted the name was inspired by the howls they heard at night.

As evening fell, the party tracked the creature into a thick brush clearing half a mile from the village.

• The Howl and the Hunt: A loud, close-range howl signaled an attack, and a dire wolf wearing a crude leather collar lunged into the clearing. As the fight progressed, two more wolves emerged to support their injured pack-mate, utilizing pack tactics.

• Combat Highlights:
  • Nebish deflected a lunge with his silver saber and later investigated the collars, finding them to be crude iron-buckle straps with no markings.
  • Mickle unleashed a Witch Bolt, connecting a sustained arc of lightning to one wolf, and later used a fire-based Chromatic Orb to ignite the hair of another.
  • Bludarious attempted to discipline a wolf with an empty leather pouch before shooting it in the neck with a silver bullet, nearly incapacitating it.
  • Khalid (who gave the villagers the name Khalid al-Mazouz Ibn Fazira) attempted to speak with the animals. In an act of compassion, he used Healing Word to close the wounds of a dying wolf, hoping to make a friend.

Despite Khalid's attempts at domestication, the wolves remained hostile. They appeared to recognize the word Master but refused to comply. Khalid eventually ended the suffering of the most wounded wolf with a musket ball to the head.

The session ended with an ominous howl from deep in the distance. The party heard a voice, understood through magic, respond to the death of the wolf with the words: “Come to me, my son.” This suggested that a leader—perhaps an ascendant entity of some kind or the father of the pack—was aware of the party’s actions.

The session begins in the immediate aftermath of the Baron’s capture, with the party engaged in a violent barroom brawl within the dark, wind-shattered wreckage of the Baron’s compound. Mickle Cobblelob’s homunculus, Lofta, attempts to fly out of the compound while carrying the Bag of Holding containing the captured Baron. Captain Barnaby Harrier charges through the line of guards to create an escape route, successfully shoving several enemies prone. Khalid rises into the air and unleashes a massive psychic blast in a cone, knocking henchmen across the room and filling the area with a palpable sense of dread. Bludarious utilizes his modified musket and “violent shots” to methodically eliminate the remaining professional soldiers and criminal guards. Mickle executes a guard with a second-level Ray of Sickness, causing the target to fester and collapse in a scream of agony. Grundel, the Goliath barbarian, engages the Baron's Goliath bodyguard in a brutal exchange of blows involving a massive crescent wrench and a billy club.

As the room clears, the party surrounds a mesmerized Fire Genasi wizard who had been incapacitated by Khalid’s magic. Bludarious executes the wizard with a point-blank musket shot to the face, reducing the mage's head to a pink mist. Upon the wizard's death, his blood acts as a magical fuse that ignites his body, triggering a localized fireball that engulfs the room and leaves only a scorch mark behind. Meanwhile, Nebish takes to the air and intercepts the fleeing Lofta over the water, successfully securing the Bag of Holding. The party loots the compound, securing 800 gold pieces and several sets of scale armor from the fallen guards. As they prepare to leave, they observe the Amazonian Navy beginning a thunderous artillery bombardment of the western, Cordoban-controlled side of Caracas.

The party regroups outside the city to secure the Baron’s person and assets before the military arrives. Grundel hauls the Baron out of the Bag of Holding by his leg, and the party immediately threatens him with readied weapons. To prevent the Baron from using his magic rings to escape via Dimension Door, the party forces him into a large bear trap. The trap successfully clamps onto the Baron's neck and legs, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable to fight back. The party strips eight magical rings from his person, including the Ring of Lies and the Ring of Truth. After Bludarious fires a signaling flare, an Amazonian airship descends and deploys twenty-four soldiers. The high-ranking Colonel (Rear Admiral Annatar) takes custody of the trapped Baron and informs the party that a requisition for their reward—a private airship—has been placed at the administrative headquarters in Petrolina.

Returning to the city's gantry, the party finds the facility deserted and manages to recover their hydrogas engine, which is now fully loaded and repaired. The party decides to travel south along the railroad tracks to reach the crash site of the Spring Wind. During their trek through a corridor of refugees, they encounter a group of weary travelers at a campfire. Among them is Hargrave Umfridus, a 60-year-old scholar and former intelligence advisor to Captain Dashan. After Khalid and Grundel present a rare Primordial book containing legends of elemental spirits, Hargrave is persuaded to join their crew. During a long rest, Bludarious utilizes his tinker’s tools to reattach a specialized telescopic sight to his rifle, granting him advantage on long-range attacks.

The party continues their march for several miles until they hear the rhythmic sound of tools striking steel. Nebish flies ahead and discovers a maintenance train and a squad of a dozen soldiers conducting repairs on the tracks. Further off the tracks, the party spots the wreck of the Spring Wind, which is being guarded and patched by a unit of the 18th Cordoban Light Infantry. Captain Barnaby Harrier, agitated by the sight of soldiers touching his vessel, charges toward the ship with authority. The Cordoban soldiers, caught off guard by Barnaby's sudden approach, level their rifles and order the party to halt in the name of the nation.

The session began in the cavernous arena beneath the big top, where the party was divided between the arena floor and iron cages suspended 30 feet over 10-foot-high magical flames. The Ringmaster—a purple-skinned, horned entity with flaming eyes—welcomed them to his “macabre game,” revealing that he had intended for the entire group to be imprisoned.

Before combat intensified, the Dungeon Master provided a meta-level explanation of the world's theology: there are no “true” gods, but rather Angels and Demons who serve as physical embodiments of mortal emotions. Empowered by collective belief through Shardisite, these entities are sentient but not omniscient; they are banished to their home planes of “Heaven” or “Hell” (distinct planes of existence) upon defeat.

The Ringmaster initiated the “show” by twirling a dual-bladed scepter that, upon hitting the ground, split into two sentient, laughing flaming skulls. The party scrambled to secure their freedom and neutralize the new threats:

• Toots Bagoots: Cast Fear, manifesting a terrifying image of the Angel of Courage (Jasiri), which successfully frightened the Ringmaster and forced him to keep his distance. She later utilized Wall of Water to extinguish a 30-foot line of fire beneath the cages, creating a gout of steam that obscured the area but mitigated fire damage.
• Drathus: Eschewing subtlety, Drathus used his mallet and Divine Smite to smash a “big ass gash” through the bars of his cage. He jumped 30 feet down, landing prone in the steam and flames before joining the fray.
• Mickle: Utilized Gaseous Form to seep through the cage bars and hover outside the immediate danger zone. After reverting to his physical form, he used a C.R.A.P. hook (a makeshift grappling hook) to snag a flaming skull, pinning it to the ground.
• Grundel: Utilized his “baiting strategy” once more, dousing a flaming skull with four pints of fermented tanning solution (aged urine). While the liquid only momentarily doused the flames, he followed up by crushing the skull into dust with his “Thoughts” and “Prayers” brass knuckles.
• Nebish: Utilized a magical wand to batter the bars of Toots Bagoots' cage, successfully tearing them open to free the Triton bard.
• Bludarious (Blu): Suffered a string of mechanical failures as both of his revolvers jammed in quick succession, leaving him temporarily disarmed during the opening skirmish.

The Ringmaster escalated the performance by introducing a “technological marvel” from the old world: a machine gun (Gatling gun). He fired wild, maniacal arcs into the crowd, damaging both the party and his own flaming skulls.

The spectacle was further complicated by the arrival of Boom Boom the Juggler, a larger-than-life clown juggling four bombs. Boom Boom hurled a bomb that exploded into bolts of lightning, dealing 17 points of damage to those caught in the blast. Mickle retaliated by shooting a fire bolt at one of the bombs still in the Juggler’s hands, causing it to detonate prematurely and deal massive necrotic damage to the clown.

As the Ringmaster grew frustrated, the arena floor began to crack and sway like a wave. Pieces of the floor dropped into a void, replaced by a massive, bubbling lava pit that filled the air with a sulfurous stench.

Driven to a genuine state of worry by the party’s resilience, the Ringmaster's illusory showman facade peeled away. He revealed his true form as Makalo the Demon of Surprise with massive leathery wings, horns, and the ability to fire arcane beams from his eyes.

The final confrontation was swift and brutal:

• Nebish delivered a devastating strike with his demon-slaying sword (Nat 20), dealing 54 points of damage and leaving the demon “flashing” on the brink of death.
• The Demon attempted to hurl Nebish down the 90-foot center hole, but the birdman maintained his composure.
• Bludarious (Blu) unjammed his weapon and delivered the killing blow: a dead-center bullseye to the back of the demon's head as it tried to fly across the arena. The demon's head exploded in a spray of black tar and ichor.

Upon the demon's death, the music stopped and the entire carnival began to dematerialize into dust. Mickle acted with incredible speed, successfully grabbing the abandoned Gatling gun just as the world faded to white.

The party awoke at dawn in a clearing within a dank, swampy jungle on an unidentified island. Nearby, they discovered a glinting chest containing the remnants of the Ringmaster's “spoils.”

Loot Acquired:

• Gatling Gun (Mickle - currently lacks ammunition)
• Vial of Alchemist's Fire
• Winged Boots (They hum with magic and grant flight/levitation)
• Gas Filtering Respirator (Gas mask without eye protection)
• Dust of Sneezing and Choking
• 100 Feet of Gold Wire (Worth approximately 10 GP)
• One Juggler's Bomb (Retrieved by Drathus via boomerang)

Session Conclusion: The party, now safe from the carnival but lost in a hostile wilderness, began tending to their wounds as they realized they had no idea where they had been transported.

The party departed the smoldering ruins of Caracas at sunset, taking to the air in the Sloop Dogg (formerly the Conquerante). Following the coastline toward the west, the crew caught a jet stream that provided a significant tailwind for their initial travel. During the flight, the party successfully identified several magical items recovered from the late Baron Harvey Proudbottom’s vault: the Accorder Shield, the Pendant of Purity, the Delver's Jewel, and the Airstep Boots. However, they failed to identify a mysterious magical blunderbuss and a curious object.

During a period of downtime, Mickle utilized a bolt of silk to craft a “silk banana hammock” (loincloth) for Grundel, which the Goliath immediately used for a session of yoga on the top deck. Nebish maintained a scouting perimeter around the ship, noting that the night air felt unusually clammy.

The journey was plagued by inefficient piloting during the second watch, which resulted in the ship fighting against heavy chop and burning through more hydrogas fuel than anticipated. By the third watch, an investigation of the fuel tanks revealed that only an eighth of a tank remained. To conserve their remaining fuel for potential emergencies, the party decided to descend and sail the rest of the way. The landing was ungraceful; despite a successful proficiency check, the Sloop Dogg splashed “hard, hard, hard” into the ocean, jarring the resting party members and causing some to fall out of their beds.

Stranded in relatively calm waters with no wind and a non-functional engine, the party debated several methods of propulsion, including robotic hamsters and the creation of makeshift sails. Eventually, they settled on a high-risk plan to enchant the ship's propeller using their newly acquired ingot of Shardisite.

The party performed a ritual of collective will to infuse the propeller with magic, intending for it to respond to verbal commands. The process was physically taxing, as the Shardisite drew power directly from the party's life force, dealing 14 force damage to each participant as the crystal turned to dust. The enchantment was successful, granting the ship a top water speed of 120 feet per round. However, the magic carries a 10% chance of failing to respond to verbal commands and a 10% chance to “overboost,” potentially causing bludgeoning damage to those on deck.

While the others worked on the engine, Grundel engaged in a “baiting strategy,” chumming the water with steaks and mackerel caught with his fishing tackle. His efforts eventually attracted a silver-sheened swordfish, which lunged onto the deck. Immediately following the swordfish, a young Dragon Turtle—roughly half the size of the ship—attacked the Sloop Dogg, splintering the railings with its massive jaws.

The ensuing combat was chaotic:

• Bludarious (Blu) opened fire with his revolvers, though the bullets initially struggled to penetrate the creature's thick carapace.
• Drathus delivered several brutal strikes to the creature's neck with his executioner's axe, carving deep wounds into the meat.
• Mikkel utilized a Potion of Swiftness to climb onto the turtle's shell, eventually using a Wand of Web to “glue” himself to the beast to avoid being thrown off.
• Nebish provided aerial fire with his hunting rifle, successfully exploding one of the Dragon Turtle's eyes.
• Blu ended the shipboard phase of the fight by jumping onto the creature and jamming the unidentified magic blunderbuss into its neck wound. The resulting “violent shot” and thunderous shockwave blasted the turtle off the boat and into the water.

The creature attempted to flee into the depths, but Grundel dove into the blood-stained water, swam to the front of the shell, and used his great axe to cleanly sever the Dragon Turtle's head.

With the threat neutralized, the party used ropes to lash the massive shell to the side of the Sloop Dogg. Mikkel used fire magic to cauterize and “cook” the internals of the neck wound to gain access to the stomach cavity. The party members took turns diving into the acidic stomach to recover treasures from the turtle's past victims:

• Blu recovered two bright, shiny magical metal bands.
• Drathus found an oversized silvered boomerang.
• Grundel retrieved a leathery magic belt.
• Mickle salvaged a spring-loaded wrist dagger.
• Nebish found a magical lantern with a flame that appeared impossibly lit.

The party set a course to beeline for the shore to properly secure the shell in shallow water. During the transit, they took a short rest to reflect on their survival against the young dragon turtle. The session ended with the crew bandaging their wounds and preparing for the next leg of their journey toward Mana.

The party began leaving the vault of the late Baron, Harvey Proudbottom, but was attacked by the four bronze statues Grundel had vandalized on their way in. Opting to run instead of fight, the party along with their new found riches, reemerged from the compound only to discover that Barnaby had stolen The Wind's Revenge leaving Ormus and Gil tied up on the deck of the Sloop Dogg. Having left the ｱ尺ﾑﾉ丂乇り 乃ﾘ ｲん乇 ᄃんﾑﾶｱﾉの刀丂 with Gil, Hargrave Umfridus and Rufus Massey appear to have left with Barnaby.

The following letter was left by Barnaby:

'' My compadres,
I have met you all at a tumultuous time in my life. As friends, you have learned a lot about me - the good and the bad - and as your friend, I have done the same. But the thing that I have not shared with you, has been what has occupied most of my thoughts and energy.
Miranda.
When Miranda was taken from me, I thought my life was over. If it weren’t for you guys it may have been. But lo and behold you boys found me and lifted my spirit back into the skies where it belongs. I am eternally grateful for that. Thank you.
But Miranda’s memory haunts me, every minute of every day. It consumes my thoughts and even my dreams. Now I know why. Now I know what I must do. I must find those who took her from me, and I must exact a swift and final retribution upon them.
I will not ask you to join me in this quest as it is my burden alone. But know that the times we have shared will be with me on my journey.
My apologies for liberating The Revenge from y’all but I will not leave the last remaining piece of Miranda that I have in Wheeler’s filthy hands.
I pray that when my task is complete you might perhaps consider taking to the skies with me again.
Your friend,
Captain Barnabus Harrier
PS: Please tell the new guys I said sorry.
PSS: Also please tell the crew of The Sanguine Saber I said thanks for the gas… ''

Seeing the city of Caracas still burning and crumbling around them, the party decided to go to the market district to check up on their old friend Alara. When they arrived, Alara was being attacked by mutated brigands seeking to pillage her store. Perhaps the only store still standing unharmed among the rubble of the city. Alara proved to be a very skilled mage utilizing some very dark magic to dispatch at least one of the would be looters. When the fight was over, the party had Alara identify some of the loot they acquired in the vault, bought some supplies, and decided to leave town towards Mana.

With fuel running short and piloting a ship without any armaments, the party decided it would be wise to follow a conservative route along the coastline in case they need to touch down in the water…

Following the defeat of the demon Makalo, the illusory carnival vanished, leaving the party in a swampy, marshy clearing. Exhausted from their trials, the group established camp and took a necessary long rest. However, the sleep was far from peaceful; the party awoke in the dead of night to a cold, pale fog and an overwhelming sense of dread.

Utilizing their magically enhanced senses, Nebish and Drathus detected a lingering fiendish presence nearby, obscured as if behind a “veil”. More significantly, they felt a powerful, clean beacon of celestial light pulsing to the south. Drawn by this light, the party began a wordless march into the mist.

As they traveled, the world seemed to shrink and become “fake,” the trees and marsh vanishing into an ethereal haze. They eventually encountered a blinding silhouette of a figure seated at a massive, ornate wooden desk. The entity was revealed to be Brandi, the Angel of Relief.

The encounter prompted a deep exploration of the party's spiritual standing:

• Theology of Belief: Brandi explained that in this shard-touched world Angels (The Choir) and Demons (The Legion) manifest from collective mortal devotion.
• Drathus's Past: The trial forced Drathus to confront his history as a fallen paladin. He revealed that he abandoned his faith in Jasiri (Courage) after his wife was killed by zombies and the church failed to intervene. He now feels a draw toward Sarabi (Rage).
• The Stance of the Party: Blu expressed a post-war disillusionment with the divine, while Nebish voiced a disgust toward both sides for their manipulation of mortals.

Brandi offered the party a trial within a “realm of their own making” to determine if they could serve as champions for the Choir. The party accepted and was transported to a floating island shaped like an inverted cone.

The physics of this realm responded entirely to willpower:

• Uncanny Environment: The ground felt like wax, and the “dirt” tasted like buttery mushroom cake. Mickle sustained damage after taking a large bite of the landscape.
• Flight of Will: The party discovered that physical laws were secondary to thought. They were able to fly, run at superhuman speeds, and stand on vertical walls simply by visualizing it.
• The Revelation: After several failed attempts to escape by flying “up” or imagining their ship, the party realized the core of the test: they had to explicitly acknowledge none of it was “real”. Once stated, a stone archway appeared, leading deeper into the trial.

Passing through the archway, the party (now stripped of their gear and wearing commoner's clothes) entered a stone cavern inhabited by three shambling figures representing internal conflicts:

The party was confronted by their fallen comrade, Khalid, who accused them of forsaking him and lacking honor. He violently spun Drathus around when the paladin tried to turn his back. However, the group responded with compassion, embracing the manifestation and reassuring him they were brothers. This act of genuine fellowship caused the manifestation to dissipate.

A grotesque, bureaucratic figure berated the party for living “worthless lives” and turning from opportunities for greatness. He attacked with a lash of dark energy, dealing psychic damage to Blu, who jumped in the way to protect his teammates. Later, the entity fired necrotic blasts; Drathus heroically intercepted a shot meant for Nebish, which resulted in Drathus being stunned and suffering a temporary memory wipe of the last few hours. The figure vanished when the party fully embraced their weaknesses as a source of their individual strength.

The final figure was a chiseled, “Fabio-like” warrior who mocked the party as weak and ugly. He used a force push to slam a blind Nebish into a wall. Blu and Drathus engaged in a verbal duel, defining greatness not through personal glory, but through teamwork and sacrifice. Drathus delivered a final “cutting” argument that physically lacerated the entity, causing it to dissolve into mist.

The cavern dissolved, and Brandi reappeared, expressing surprise at the party's ability to prioritize the greater good over personal greed. She granted them her blessing—though she warned it was fickle and could be revoked if misused.

The party awoke at dawn in their bedrolls, feeling fully rested. Upon waking, Nebish, Drathus, and Blu each found a magical gem on their person, dripping with power.

Loot Acquired:

• Purple Gem (Nebish)
• Yellow Gem (Drathus)
• Blue Gem (Blu)

The session begins with the Wind's Revenge and the Sloop Dogg fleeing the massive Cordoban Navy galleon. Captain Barnaby Harrier, spurred by the impending combat, snaps out of his depressive stupor and begins shouting navigational orders to optimize the ships' speed. Despite the galleon being faster in a straight line, it lacks maneuverability. Bludarious de'Tempoon identifies a vast canyon system—a “gully”—that offers significant shelter from the galleon’s broadside cannons.

The party executes a rapid descent. The Sloop Dogg lands admirably, but the Wind's Revenge scrapes the sandy bottom in a wide arc, slamming Gil and the Tabaxi, Rufus Massey (Furball), into the handrails, causing them minor injuries. The Cordoban galleon, unable to match the sharp turn, lazily lists over the top of the canyon, training its cannons downward from 100 feet above.

The galleon's commander, acting under orders from Governor Scarborough of Cordoba, demands the party surrender their vessels for “crimes against the state”. While Amnon uses Thaumaturgy to amplify his voice and buy time by claiming the party is already his “bounty,” Nebish stealthily flies beneath the Cordoban warship.

Nebish discovers the galleon’s ballast systems are held by simple ropes and methodically cuts 18 counterweights. This sabotage prevents the galleon from descending to board and causes it to list and rise uncontrollably. As the Cordoban crew descends into confusion, Nebish is spotted and takes a “million-dollar wound” bullet to the butt cheek while fleeing back to the party's ships. Leveraging the chaos, both the Wind's Revenge and the Sloop Dogg rocket out of the gully and escape toward Caracas.

During the three-day journey east, the party engages in several activities:

• The Scimitar's Contract: Hargrave Umfridus advises the party on the Abyssal-cursed scimitar, noting it likely requires a sacrifice or offering to fulfill a contract with a demon. He suggests seeking experts at the College of Arcana at Caracas.
• Industrial Mishaps: Mickle Cobblelob attempts to bottle the explosive hydrogas from his Bag of Holding into jars. The attempt is mostly a failure; he loses half his fuel, shatters his jars, and accidentally poisons himself while attempting to “huff” the gas to see if it has recreational properties.
• Tailoring: Mickle and Amnon successfully sew a secret pocket into Amnon’s ankle cuff to hide his thieves' tools.

Upon arrival, the party finds Caracas heavily scarred by the recent Amazonian naval bombardment, with entire districts smoldering and refugees living in tents. They dock at the damaged gantry, where Mickle and Grundel use their combined engineering and strength to repair a buried air compressor for the facility's young attendant.

The party travels to the Baron’s compound (now an Amazonian military outpost) to fulfill Abraham Wheeler's contract and open the Baron's vault. Bludarious successfully bluffs the Amazonian guards and Midshipman Royden, using his reputation and the name of Captain Dashan to gain “free rein” of the castle.

They find the captured Baron (Harvey Proudbottom) in a dark top-floor cell, mangled and beaten from interrogation. Under a Zone of Truth, the Baron reveals his vault is hidden beneath the private booth in his basement bar. After the interrogation, Grundel decisively ends the Baron’s life by using a massive crescent wrench to twist his head nearly 180 degrees. To prove the kill to Wheeler while leaving a dummy body for the Amazonians, the party harvests the Baron’s head and hands, stuffing the remains of a bedroll and a piton into a bag on the stump to mimic a hooded prisoner.

In the ruins of the basement bar, the party finds a magical rune etched into the private booth’s oak table. After identifying it as an Arcane Lock of the school of abjuration, Grundel bypasses the puzzle by hacking the table into kindling with his great axe.

Descending the secret stairs, they navigate a gauntlet of traps:

• The Statues: They vandalize four bronze statues of the Baron to prevent them from animating.
• The Pillars: A hallway of color-coded pillars (Yellow, Red, Green, Purple) blasts the party with Thunder, Fire, Poison, and Psychic damage. They eventually solve the trap by hitting the pillars with matching magical damage types.
• The Secret Office: They reach a furnished office and trigger several mechanisms, including a pitfall trap beneath the guest chairs and a hidden blade in a desk drawer.
• The Bookshelf: By knocking books off the shelves in the correct order, they reveal a secret closet containing a “dollhouse” table. Lighting the four tiny candles on the miniature table triggers a mechanical stone-scraping sound, revealing a final chamber.

The session concludes as the party enters a room where five featureless stone statues sitting at a dining table spring to life and take up combat positions.

The session began with the party on a mysterious island shrouded in a shimmering magical fog and absolute darkness. They found themselves in a deserted carnival midway populated by strange creatures manning stands. In an attempt to clear the area and draw out enemies, Mickle and Grundel attempted to set hay bales on fire using fire bolts. However, the extreme humidity and cold air prevented a major blaze, resulting only in a large amount of thick, smoldering smoke.

A disembodied, cackling voice invited the party to play a macabre game. Following the sound, the group navigated a labyrinthine queue of velvet ropes for half an hour until they reached a large track-mounted clown cart. The cart featured a giant smiling clown face on one end and a frowning face on the other. Despite some internal debate and Mickle having to use a Wand of Web to prevent an enraged Grundel from smashing the vehicle, the party voted to face the frowny direction. The cart then rocketed through the fog at incredible speed, reminiscent of a tunnel ride.

The cart stopped at a 30-foot-wide, ancient wooden spinning platform pivoting over a void. The party attempted to transition from the cart to the disc, with varying degrees of success:

• Drathus (Draftus): Failed his acrobatics check, tumbled off the side, and disappeared into a void.
• Toots Bagoots: Successfully jumped onto the disc but eventually chose to leap off into the fog while playing her flute.
• Grundel: Performed a “Street Fighter” style uppercut lunge into the air and vanished into the fog.
• Bludarious (Blue): Attempted to repel down the side with a rope, but the line went slack as he was pulled into a different plane.
• Mickle: Utilized a potion of flying to hover before eventually following the others into the void.

The party was scattered into numbered “rooms,” facing individual challenges:

• Room 2 (The Bell): Drathus landed in a small room containing a lever-activated bell. He successfully rang the bell with a massive strike (Nat 27), found a potion of healing, and was flushed into the next area.
• Room 6 (The Poison Cavern): He arrived in a cavern filled with noxious sulfurous gas. Using his potion of flying, he held his breath and crossed a 100-foot gap to reach a T-intersection.
• Room 14 (The Liar's Riddle): Drathus encountered two guard statues and a clown visage that presented the classic “one always lies, one always tells the truth” riddle. He guessed a path and moved to Room 25.
• Room 25 (The Anti-Gravity Arch): Entering a cone-shaped cavity, Drathus ran through a stone archway. The room's anti-gravity enchantment sent him falling upward into the dome, dealing damage before he was plunged into darkness and imprisoned in a cage.

• Room 3 (The Hall of Mirrors): Toots landed in a perfect hall of mirrors. She successfully shattered a mirror (Nat 20) and moved to Room 8.
• Room 8 (The Key Room): She found a room filled with hundreds of clinking keys and an iron door. She successfully located the correct key (Nat 20), recovered a potion of water breathing, and moved to Room 18.
• Room 18 (The Maze of Overthinking): Toots navigated a T-intersection maze featuring the word “Overthinking” on the walls. After several turns, she reached Room 27.
• Room 27 (The Teeter-Totter Ladder): She entered a room with a ladder leading to a trapdoor, but the floor was a precariously balanced disc. She slipped off the edge and fell into a void, ending up in a cage near Drathus.

The remaining members, often referring to themselves as “Team Foreskin,” faced a series of collaborative puzzles:

• Room 4 (The Teeter-Totter Board): The group attempted to cross a 40-foot teetering board over a pool. After multiple failed balance checks, everyone fell into the water.
• Room 9 (The Teardrop Room): They landed in a teardrop-shaped room containing a hideous clown statue. The statue manifested as Grundel's worst fear (thousands of children), leaving him magically frightened. Mickle used Lesser Restoration by smashing a beaker on Grundel’s knee to snap him out of the trance.
• Room 20 (The Lever Gauntlet): The party pulled eight levers in an Abyssal numerical order (1, 8, 5, 2, 4, 6, 7, 3) provided by Blu. Despite the floor dropping out in sections, they used flight to bypass the danger and found a potion of flying.
• Room 28 (The Fountain of Blood): They found an oval room with a fountain of “clown tears”. Mickle was sucked down a drain when the water turned to blood. Grundel attempted to smash a mysterious wooden cube with his massive crescent wrench, but the tool shattered against the “odd wood”. Blu eventually used a mithril gauntlet to punch the box open, revealing a mithril key and a magical pearl.
• Room 30 (The Ring of Keys): The group faced a massive ring of thousands of “squishy” keys that were all too small for the locks. Grundel solved the puzzle by squishing the entire ring into a single large ball, which opened both a stone chest (containing magic makeup) and the exit door.

The final challenge took place in Room 32, a massive chamber where five large D6 dice fell from the sky, covered by illusory hands. The party had to guess the values of the dice to proceed. Grundel acted as a “meat shield,” repeatedly attacking the hands to reveal the dice while sustaining heavy bludgeoning damage from the hands' retaliatory swats. They successfully identified the dice as 5, 5, 3, 2, and 3.

Upon guessing correctly, the floor dropped one final time. The entire party—including those previously caged—landed in a heap in a large cavernous arena. Spotlights revealed three cages hanging over fire and a wicked Ringmaster with purple skin, curled horns, and flaming eyes. The session ended with the party facing the Ringmaster in his domain as a battle was about to begin.

Following their departure from the ruins of Caracas, the party traveled west until they encountered a mysterious island shrouded in absolute darkness and a thick, magical shimmering fog. Upon landing, the crew discovered a deserted carnival midway populated by strange, twisted creatures manning various stands. Throughout their exploration, the party was taunted by a disembodied, evil, cackling voice in their heads that spoke with a high-pitched tone reminiscent of Mickey Mouse.

The party investigated several areas of the carnival, including a shooting gallery, a food area, and a stand for “buying crap”. At one of the food stands, Mickle engaged in a tense “alchemy off” or showdown with a creature while attempting to acquire food, which ultimately turned out to be rotten. Nearby, the group discovered an illusory spit that appeared to be roasting a beast but provided no heat when touched.

The eerie atmosphere turned violent when the party discovered and engaged two mimics. One mimic had taken the form of an owl-bear, while the other was disguised as a juggling kit. Upon their defeat, the mimics lost their shapes and dissolved into gelatinous, “Ditto-like” goo.

During the skirmish, additional threats emerged:

• The Rug Ambush: Bludarious (Blu) was repeatedly stabbed by a mysterious enemy hiding within or appearing as a rug.
• Goblinoid Abominations: The party faced “demented, twisted abominations” described as mutilated, goblin-like creatures. One was killed by a gunshot to the head, while others simply “popped out of existence” during the fight.

Once the dust settled from the combat, the disembodied voice returned to the party's minds, sounding gleefully happy to finally have company. The voice officially invited the crew to participate in a “macabre game”. The session concluded as the party began to follow the sense of the voice deeper into the fog toward a maze of velvet ropes.

• The Climb: Following the destruction of the mechanical fire-breathing hounds, the party identifies the only exit as a ledge 40 feet above them. Nebish flies up to scout, discovering a dark corridor leading deeper into the complex.
• Scaling the Face: Bludarious (Blu) utilizes his Gloves of Climbing but falls twice, sustaining bludgeoning damage before successfully reaching the top. Drathus uses a climber’s kit to anchor himself and scales the wall with ease. Grundel struggles initially, losing his footing and falling once, but eventually manages to crest the ledge with the rest of the party.

• The Descent: The party follows a spiraling stone corridor that descends deep below the level of the previous rooms. The air grows cold and damp, and the stone begins to emanate a faint, sickly green glow reminiscent of Shardisite.
• The Armory Room: They enter a lavish, masonry-carved armory filled with polished weapons and four stone pedestals (daises).
• Magical Acquisitions: Mickle utilizes Detect Magic to identify several items, though most pedestals are protected by poison gas traps:
  • The Ale of Flying Fist: Grundel retrieves a gold-fitted wooden keg. Despite triggering a trap and taking 4 poison damage, he acquires several servings of an ale that grants temporary hit points and the effects of a Bless spell.
  • Assassin's Glass Daggers: Blue and Nebish recover a belt of six obsidian daggers. They trigger a trap during the “switcheroo,” sustaining 11 poison damage from the resulting gas.
  • The Baron's Shield: Mickle uses a gas mask to safely retrieve a teardrop shield emblazoned with the Baron’s face, which hums with magical energy.
  • The Quarterstaff: Tucked away on a rack, Mickle finds an unidentified magical quarterstaff.

• The Statue Ambush: In the next chamber, the party finds a five-foot-tall, twice life-size solid silver statue of The Baron holding a massive amber jewel. Drathus snatches the jewel, causing the statue to animate as a Silver Golem and enter a combat stance.
• Brutal Combat: Grundel finds his non-magical wrench ineffectual against the silver construct. However, Drathus delivers two consecutive critical hits with his magical morningstar, enhanced by a second-level Divine Smite, carving deep gashes into the golem's silver “flesh”.
• The Molten Maneuver: The golem retaliates by slamming Drathus, its fists turning “molten” to form a silver net that constricts and restrains the Paladin.
• The Execution: After Mickle paints a “frowny face” on the golem's butt as a distraction, Blu borrows the “Executioner” great axe from Drathus. Blu leaps from the stairs and splits the golem in half, causing it to hit the ground with the sound of a massive gong.

• The Exploding Chests: The party discovers two large chests near the golem's dais. Both are rigged with high-yield explosives:
  • Chest One: Explodes for 32 damage, pelting the party with 36 gold bars (25 lbs each).
  • Chest Two: Explodes for 25 damage, releasing 12 platinum bars (25 lbs each).
• The Haul: Realizing they cannot carry the full weight of the treasure, the party fills the Bag of Holding to its 500-lb limit with all 12 platinum bars and 7 gold bars, leaving the rest of the “riches” behind.

• The Hidden Contraption: Mickle detects a massive object hidden behind a magically reinforced, regenerating stone wall. After failed attempts to chisel through the stone or use Dimension Door, they resort to the “Big Boy” bomb provided by Grundel.
• The Reveal: The explosion shatters the illusion, revealing a large, now-defunct mechanical contraption. Mickle identifies it as a specialized Projector designed to cast “illusions of grand power” over vast distances. The machine features three empty slots meant for jars—presumably the resting place for the Hag Eyes the Baron intended to use to intimidate the Amazonian Navy.
• Conclusion: With the machine destroyed and the vault picked clean, the party prepares for their final escape as midnight approaches.

• The Ambush: The session opens with the party in a 30×30 foot room within the Baron's vault, facing five featureless stone mannequins that spring into combat positions after Mickle Cobblelob attempts to feed them. These constructs are revealed to be incredibly nimble, utilizing “Matrix-style” dodging maneuvers to evade initial attacks.
• Combat Progression: Nebish opens fire with his hunting rifle, while the new party member, the Paladin Drathus, accidentally has his oil flask splash across the feet of both Grundel and one of the constructs. Amnon capitalizes on this by casting a Twin Firebolt, which ignites the oil and sets Grundel's feet on fire.
• Bulking Up: Two of the constructs undergo a physical transformation, growing iron bands across their bodies and shifting their hands into hammer-like fists at the cost of their agility.
• The Kill Count: Drathus demonstrates the power of his magical Morningstar and Divine Smite to dismantle one construct. Bludarious (Blu) uses his revolvers to “canoe” the forehead of one mannequin and later shoots a bulky construct through its back, causing its internal clay and stone to explode out of its torso. Amnon finishes the final construct with a Firebolt that causes it to burn from the inside out until its components crumble.

• Investigation: Following the fight, the party investigates the “featureless” room, noting a fireplace with a functional flue. Drathus uses a maul to smash through a “false back” in the fireplace, revealing a small crawl space containing a shoebox-sized chest.
• The Shardisite Chunk: After Mickle successfully disarms a tripwire trap on the chest, Amnon opens it to find a glowing ingot of Shardisite. The party recognizes this as a massive find, as it is ten times the size of previous shards they have encountered, though its “radioactive” nature raises immediate concerns about mutation and Shard Blight. Amnon discovers that even his small shard necklace has already left a burn mark on his skin.

• The Hallway: The party advances into a 25-foot hallway containing a seamless iron door on the left and a locked wooden door at the end. While they cannot budge the iron door, they hear an “odd sounding” barking coming from behind it that sounds like complete gibberish rather than “dog ease”.
• The Levers and the Gas: Blu unlocks the end door, revealing a room with a desk, a jail cell, and three floor levers. Grundel pulls a lever that triggers a dark green toxic gas trap, poisoning both himself and Mickle.
• The Escape Route: Pulling the remaining levers opens the jail cell and causes the iron door in the hallway to slam open. Mickle uses a Potion of Flying to ascend through a hole in the cell ceiling, discovering a false floor that leads back to the Baron's statue room from the previous session.

• The Natural Cavern: The party enters a large, cold natural cavern where they encounter two large mechanical hounds with fire burning in their eyes.
• The First Dog: Combat erupts as the first dog bites Blu, prompting Amnon to summon a Hound of Ill Omen and cast Blink. Drathus successfully gimps the dog's leg with his Morningstar. In a turn of “Mickle mischief,” Mickle uses a Wand of Web to restrain the dog, but inadvertently webs Grundel and Drathus to the creature as well.
• The Second Dog and the Death of Lofta: A second mechanical hound jumps down from a ledge and breathes a 60-foot line of fire onto Grundel, singeing his remaining chest hair. This hound thunders forward and swallows Mickle's homunculus, Lofta, whole in a single massive critical bite.
• The Conclusion: Nebish dive-bombs the first hound with his new demonic magic sword, identified as “Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar,” and cuts it in half. Mickle retaliates for his “sister” by hurling a jar of hydrogas at the second dog's head, engulfing it in blue flame before Nebish delivers a final lethal strike through its spine.
• Aftermath: As the session concludes at midnight, Mickle searches the mechanical entrails and recovers Lofta's “soul stone”—a blackened shardisite stone—to preserve her essence for a future 3.0 rebuild.

The session opens in the back room of the Watchdog Casino in Manticore, where Grundel and Bludarious de'Tempoon engage in a high-stakes game of three-card stud (using a three-die progression system) against the Deep Crimson Syndicate underboss, Abraham Wheeler. The primary objective is to win back the Wind's Revenge. Mickle Cobblelob, operating under his “chubby Bludarious” disguise and heavily intoxicated, attempts a reckless intimidation tactic by jumping on the table and shouting, “Check these nuts!” He is immediately pinned and dragged from the room by Wheeler’s bodyguards, leaving his companions to finish the game.

Despite the chaos, Grundel demonstrates surprising card skill. He wins a massive pot by revealing a “trip fives” hand, leveraging his gambling proficiency to adjust his dice rolls. The party concludes their gambling spree with a profit of over 5,000 gold pieces. Impressed by their card prowess, Wheeler eventually departs, leaving the remaining 16,000 gold pieces sitting on the table for the party to collect.

Following the game, Wheeler offers the party a formal contract. He reveals that The Baron (Harvey Proudbottom) was also a Syndicate underboss, and his capture in Caracas has left a power vacuum that Wheeler intends to fill. Wheeler tasks the party with returning to Caracas to investigate the Baron's status; if he is still alive, Wheeler wants him eliminated to ensure he is no longer “in his hair.”

As a gesture of faith and payment, Wheeler returns the Wind's Revenge fully repaired, gassed, and provisioned. He also provides the party with a specialized key to the Baron’s vault—an ornate object cast in the likeness of the Baron’s own face—noting that whatever “nest egg” remains inside belongs to the party.

While the group prepares for departure, Mickle engages in several “industrial acquisitions.” He successfully steals 20 feet of copper piping from the casino’s unventilated bathroom. Later, at the city’s gantry, he attempts to siphon hydrogas fuel directly into his Bag of Holding. The attempt causes a massive leak of green neon gas that briefly poisons Mickle but successfully secures 40 cubic feet of explosive fuel. To cover his tracks, Bludarious alerts the facility's simple attendant, Henry, that a pipe has “come loose,” allowing the party to escape suspicion as the attendant rushes into the vapor to fix the valve.

To bolster their numbers, the party recruits a Tabaxi bard they caught counting cards on the casino floor. After the Tabaxi is beaten and evicted by Wheeler’s enforcer, Willis, the party hires him for 100 gold up front. The crew, now including the Tabaxi (nicknamed “Furball”), Hargrave Umfridus, and the visibly depressed Captain Barnaby Harrier, prepares to move out.

At midnight, the party departs Manticore, maintaining two vessels: the Wind's Revenge and the Sloop Dogg. They tack against the wind, heading toward Lobo Village to drop off the Sloop Dogg as a hidden backup vessel before proceeding to Caracas. Amnon, Nebish, Bludarious, and Mickle crew the Wind's Revenge, while Grundel keeps a close watch on Barnaby and the new Tabaxi recruit aboard the Sloop Dogg.

As dawn breaks, Hargrave spots a shape on the horizon. Using his rifle's scope, Bludarious identifies a massive Cordoban Navy galleon tailing them from approximately half a mile away. Unlike the party's ships, the galleon utilizes magical propulsion rather than sails and is heavily armed with four cannons on each broadside. The crew members are standing at attention on deck, their spyglasses fixed on the party's vessels.

The session ends with the party preparing for an aerial confrontation. Realizing they cannot outrun the galleon while sailing against the wind, the group deliberates several tactical options:

• The Suicide Lofta: Mickle proposes opening a Dimension Door portal to roll a barrel of explosives directly onto the enemy's deck.
• Propulsion Sabotage: Nebish suggests a stealth flight to apply thermite to the enemy's propulsion units to “melt them shut.”
• Grounding the Fight: The party considers landing on the ground to force the Cordoban ship into a ground-based bottleneck, potentially negating its broadside advantage.

With the warship gaining ground, the party prepares to roll initiative at the start of the next session.

The session began with the party standing outside their disconnected train cars, debating how to assemble the massive brass cannon they had discovered. Mickle, the gnome artificer, successfully supervised the assembly process, which took approximately six minutes of heavy labor from Grundel and the others.

Simultaneously, Bludarious devised a plan to turn the remaining train cars—which were filled with crates of volatile gunpowder—into a massive bomb to attract attention or deter pursuers. He laid a seventy-foot trail of gunpowder leading away from the train. When he ignited the trail with his musket flint, the resulting explosion was catastrophic, completely destroying the cars and the tracks and sending a massive plume of black smoke into the sky. The shockwave was so intense it caused Mickle significant injury and temporarily deafened Grundel.

While the party dealt with the train, Nebish flew into the air to scout an approaching glint in the sun. He observed a large airship engaged in a firefight with the engine of the train that had previously abandoned the party. The airship, eventually identified as the *Spring Wind*, took heavy damage from the battle with the train engine and Nebish assumed that the Spring Wind was an enemy, so he decided to puncture the Hydrogas envelope and it began a slow, unintentional descent, ultimately touching down roughly 1,500 yards away.

The party approached the wreckage cautiously at night. Nebish used a Minor Illusion of a gunshot to flush out any survivors, prompting a panicked volley of return fire from beneath the collapsed canvas of the ship's balloon. Eventually, the ship's captain, Barnaby Harrier, emerged.

The party discovered that the rest of the crew had perished, mostly upon impact. They learned that among the crew was Barnaby's partner and lover, Miranda. Despite their rough introduction, the group spent the night helping Captain Barnaby. Mickle utilized his Mending cantrip and a sewing kit to repair the twenty-foot tear in the airship's canvas, while the others dug seven ten-foot-deep graves for the fallen crew. Following a somber funeral ceremony, the party took a long rest.

In the morning, Captain Barnaby offered the party a place on his crew, explaining that his ship was a privateer vessel. He revealed they were roughly thirty miles from Caracas. The airship's hydrogas engine—a shardisite powered device—was damaged and needed a magister at a port to be repaired for approximately five hundred gold.

The party decided to camouflage the *Spring Wind* with canvas and sand, detach the engine, and head toward the mountains to avoid Cordoban patrols along the rail line. Before departing, Barnaby distributed equipment to the party:

• Bludarious: A double-barrel shotgun and thirty silver bullets.
• Mickle: A long dagger (functioning as a short sword).
• Grundel: A pair of magical leather gloves that made him feel stronger and more powerful.
• Nebish: Recovered an ornate silver rapier from the initial crash site.

As the group navigated a canyon that bore a haunting resemblance to the site of their shared premonition, they were ambushed. Two massive, twenty-foot-long arcanotech beasts fused with metallic armor in the shape of ankylosaurs—burst from the rock face.

The ensuing combat was brutal:

• Faerie Fire: Khalid cast a purple Faerie Fire, outlining the beasts and granting everyone advantage on attacks.
• Bludarious: Used his revolvers and violent shots to shatter the metallic plating on the constructs' heads, eventually splitting one creature’s head open.
• Nebish: Executed a dive attack, plunging his silver rapier deep into the back of one construct.
• Grundel: In a display of raw barbarian rage, he used his daggers to pry and eventually rip the head off one construct and the tail off the other.

Upon the destruction of the beasts, a sickly, green necrotic smoke dissipated from their remains. Mickle and Grundel scavenged two stones of shardisite from the constructs' bodies.

The session ended as Captain Barnaby, hearing more metallic screeching coming from the hole the creatures had emerged from, urged the party to flee the area immediately.

The Panama Premonition was the introductory scene that set the stage for the world at large. In spite of it being a session zero, the events that transpired at the table during play are considered canon although at the time the players did not realize it.

Overall it was a collective psychic event experienced by a group of diverse conscripts—Bludarious De'Tempoon, Mickle Cobblelob, Xilleth, Grundel, Khalid, Professor Clank, and Nebish—while in transit to the front lines of the American Foreverwar. The vision served as a prophetic warning regarding the lethality of post-shardisite-era combat and the unstable nature of the divine manifestations that haunt post-meteor Earth.

In the vision, the group found themselves as involuntary conscripts in the Cordoban Military, marching through a desolate desert canyon in East America. Choked by the heat and the jangle of scavenged gear, they were led by a clean-cut human commander in a gray uniform with blue insignia.

Each conscript was armed with standard-issue gear reflecting the scavenging economy of the Age of Conquest:

• Muskets: Late 19th-century black-powder weapons.
• Survival Kits: Bedrolls, three days of rations, and waterskins.
• Personal Totems: Khalid carried a lute and ball bearings; Mickle carried a material component pouch; Professor Clank held a spyglass and an artificer's wand.

While passing through a thirty-foot-tall rock face, the column was halted by the commander, whose horse had grown spooked. As Mickle cast Dancing Lights to illuminate the shadows, a hidden force of scraggly guerrilla fighters—resembling the desert nomads of ancient myth—opened fire.

The ensuing combat established several canonical “Laws of Reality” for the Apocalyptica Arcanum setting:

• Firearm Lethality: The muskets proved devastating but mechanically unreliable. Bludarius and Khalid utilized “Dead Eye” precision to deliver lethal headshots that left pink mist silhouettes against the desert sun.
• The Kaboom Effect: Xilleth attempted to fire a high-capacity six-shot revolver recovered from the slain commander, but the weapon suffered a catastrophic squib failure. The bullet jammed in the barrel, causing an arcane thunderclap explosion that injured Grundel.
• Manifestation of Belief: Mickle Cobblelob demonstrated the setting's core principle that belief shapes reality. He manifested Magic Missile not as abstract energy, but as shimmering, chromatic “angry ducks” that battered an ambusher into the canyon wall.
• Divine Support: The cleric Vladimir Vladislav manifested a Spiritual Weapon in the shape of a petrified, rock-stiff dog—a grim echo of loyalty from the afterlife—to bludgeon the remaining hostiles.

Following the defeat of the ambushers, a sickening silence fell over the valley as the remaining Cordoban company deserted into the wastes. The survivors experienced a localized distortion of reality. Each felt a cold tap on their shoulder. Upon turning, they were confronted by the Dead Commander—the man they had just watched die with a bullet hole in his forehead.

The entity, a manifestation of the Legion or a spectral echo of fallen soldiers, pressed a revolver to each of their foreheads and fired point-blank, plunging their consciousness into darkness.

The group was startled awake simultaneously aboard a moving steam train. They realized that they had never made it to the front, nor had the march in the canyon yet occurred. They remained in transit, conscripted and heading toward their first true engagement, but now bound by a shared memory of their own deaths and the changed nature of the world's magic.

Session Zero Recap

Session One Recap

Session Two Recap

Session Three Recap

Session Four Recap

Session Five Recap

Session Six Recap

Session Seven Recap

Session Eight Recap

Session Nine Recap

Session Ten Recap

Session Eleven Recap

Session Twelve Recap

Session Thirteen Recap

Session Fourteen Recap

Session Fifteen Recap

Session Sixteen Recap

Session Seventeen Recap

Session Eighteen Recap

Session Nineteen Recap

Session Twenty Recap

Session Twenty-One Recap

Session Twenty-Two Recap

Session Twenty-Three Recap

Session Twenty-Four Recap

Session Twenty-Five Recap

Session Twenty-Six Recap

Session Twenty-Seven Recap

Session Twenty-Eight Recap

Session Twenty-Nine Recap

Session Thirty Recap

Session Thirty-One Recap

Session Thirty-Two Recap

Session Thirty-Three Recap

Session Thirty-Four Recap

Session Thirty-Five Recap

Session Zero

Session One

Session Two

Session Three

Session Four

Session Five

Session Six

Session Seven

Session Eight

Session Nine

Session Ten

Session Eleven

Session Twelve

Session Thirteen Missing

Session Fourteen

Session Fifteen

Session Sixteen

Session Seventeen Missing

Session Eighteen

Session Nineteen (Audio) Session Nineteen (Video)

Session Twenty (Audio) Session Twenty (Video)

Session Twenty One (Audio) Session Twenty One (Video)

Session Twenty Two (Audio) Session Twenty Two (Video)

Session Twenty Three

Session Twenty Four Missing

Session Twenty Five

Session Twenty Six Missing

Session Twenty Seven

Session Twenty Eight

Session Twenty Nine

Session Thirty One

Session Thirty Two

Session Thirty Three

Session Thirty Four

Session Thirty Five

Set more than a millennium after the fall of The Meteor, this campaign explores a world where nations have reformed, magic has stabilized, and the scars of apocalypse have hardened into ambition. The age of survival is over; this is the Age of Conquest.

The journey begins in the devastated ruins of East America, the central battleground of the American Foreverwar. Here, the superpowers of Amazonia and Cordoba fight an attritional proxy war across shattered cities and poisoned skies, reducing the land to blood-soaked ash.

Spanning 36 sessions, the campaign follows a group of conscripts who escaped a military mutiny to become one of the most notorious mercenary crews in the hemisphere. Their journey is defined by several major narrative arcs:

• The Fugitive Arc (Sessions 0–2): Following a shared psychic vision known as the Panama Premonition, the party escapes a Cordoban prison train and salvages the crashed airship, the Spring Wind.
• The Father of Werewolves (Sessions 3–7): The party investigates a lycanthrope outbreak in Lobo Village, culminating in a confrontation with Shusiva, the Father of all Werewolves.
• The Pirate Lord of Caracas (Sessions 8–12): Operating out of the smog-choked city of Caracas, the party enters the service of The Baron (Harvey Proudbottom) before ultimately betraying him to the Amazonian Navy.
• Voyage of the Sloop Dogg (Sessions 13–25): The crew renovates their own vessel, the Sloop Dogg, survives a Skracken attack, and navigates treacherous waters to slay a Dragon Turtle.
• The Macabre Game (Sessions 26–29): Transported to a nightmare island, the party defeats the demon Makalo in a dark carnival and undergoes a spiritual trial by Brandi, the Angel of Relief.
• The Gorgon Sewers (Sessions 30–35): After a Shard-surge transports them to Gorgon, Nepal, the party hunts a gargantuan, psychic Neolithid within the city’s narcotics-infested sewers.

Captain Barnabus “Barnaby” Harrier: A Lemurian privateer and former Cordoban officer who served as the party’s founding mentor and employer. Haunted by the death of his partner, Miranda, his personal quest for resolution drove much of his early guidance of the crew, culminating in his decision to reclaim the Wind's Revenge and depart on a solitary crusade of vengeance.

The Baron (Harvey Proudbottom): The halfling pirate lord and ruler of Caracas who initially employed the party as a strike team before being betrayed by them. His capture by the Amazonian Navy and eventual execution by the party in a prison cell fulfilled a contract for the Deep Crimson Syndicate and resolved the Caracas narrative arc.

Abraham Wheeler: An influential underboss of the Deep Crimson Syndicate operating out of Manticore. He served as a high-stakes antagonist at the gambling tables before becoming a primary employer, returning the Wind's Revenge to the party in exchange for the assassination of The Baron.

Marshal Yasmin Santiago: The Captain of the Guard in Petrolina whose contracts for cleaning out the city's infested cemetery granted the party official status as “Heroes of Caracas” and paved the way for their acquisition of the Sloop Dogg.

Shusiva: Known as the “Father of all Werewolves,” this telepathic entity served as the campaign's first major supernatural antagonist. His confrontation with the party in the mountain vaults established the high-lethality stakes of the world's emerging manifestations.

Makalo: A demonic entity of the Legion known as the “Demon of Surprise” or the “Ringmaster”. He subjected the party to a macabre “game” within an illusory carnival on a nightmare island, serving as the bridge between the Caribbean and Nepalese chapters of the campaign.

Brandi, the Angel of Relief: A powerful celestial entity of the Choir who intercepted the party following the defeat of Makalo. She conducted a spiritual trial of their souls within a willpower-based realm, ultimately providing the party with a meta-explanation for the setting’s theology and granting them celestial blessings.

As the first modern campaign in the setting, this story served as an experimental testing ground for the world's mechanics and lore. During active play, the theology of the Choir and the Legion was in flux, and many early details were later retconned in the recaps to align with finalized setting canon.

The campaign is characterized by its high lethality, “wildly out of balance” homebrew weapons, and a reliance on random tables that reflected the chaotic nature of a world still being reshaped by Shardisite.

Recorded sessions are available here.

Narrative session recaps are available here.

André Palmier

When the party arrived in Murmansk, they entered a frontier town fueled by Shardisite mining and corporate control. What began as infiltration into the operations of Viroc Industries quickly escalated as they uncovered the family secrets of the Drekanov dynasty. Subtle reptilian mutations among staff, warehouses and basements filled with unstable experiments, and an open-air assault led by Lucien Drekanov’s right hand, Anton Erekson, revealed ambitions that extended far beyond profit into dangerous arcane manipulation.

The conflict carried the party to Drekanov Manor, where events spiraled when Lucien initiated the penultimate goal of his experiments, resulting in the violent birth of the first dragon. The party fought through guards, cultists, automatons, and collapsing structures as reality strained under the forced creation of something that had never before existed. This was no longer corporate sabotage. It was the moment myth was driven into the material world.

As if in response, the first angel manifested as a divine counterweight to artificial creation. The party witnessed dragon and angel clash, mutation against manifestation, ambition against divine rebuttal. Lucien fell, but his death did not close the wound. The dragon escaped. Angelic presence left its mark. The world had permanently crossed into a new era.

The party confronted Lucien Drekanov in a brutal aerial battle within the shattered great hall of Drekanov Manor. After retreating into the Verdant Nexus Prism to regroup, they returned to finish Lucien, only for the first dragon to roar into the world, shattering the hall and the manor itself. Bogdan was transformed into the Avatar of Radiance, and the party began their first desperate battle against the dragon and its shardborn echoes.

The session opened with Lucien’s disembodied voice taunting the party while the proto-dragon stirred in the chapel. Lucien eventually revealed himself, suspended in the air and hurling powerful spells. Much of the fight focused on bringing him down from the sky, while he pressed his advantage with devastating magic supported by balcony cultists and fleeing laboratory scientists. Several party members were knocked unconscious and revived multiple times, significantly draining the group's resources.

As the fight against Lucien raged, the dragon’s roar split the air and shook the manor to its foundations. The shardstorm outside surged, shattering the great stained-glass windows of the hall in a rain of emerald shards. The ground trembled and the manor began to fracture as the beast’s presence grew, signaling the imminent birth of a global threat.

With Lucien preparing to execute Carl, the party activated the Verdant Nexus Prism. Inside the pocket dimension, the group took a long rest, identified items, and discussed strategy. During this time, Bogdan’s patron spoke for the first time, urging him to endure for a light that would rise to counter the darkness. Upon returning to the manor, the group suffered the Prism’s side effect: ravenous hunger and disadvantage on Constitution saves until a large meal could be consumed.

The party reappeared directly behind Lucien just as he unleashed a devastating spell into the empty air where they had previously stood. Seizing the opening, Thorun struck from behind with his Emerald Rift Glaive, beheading Lucien Drekanov and ending his reign of terror over the hall.

With Lucien slain, the dragon was fully born into the world, tearing through the chapel and filling the sky with its shardstorm. Each party member was gripped with fear as the enormity of the threat became clear; the beast was a force of nature unlike anything they had faced before.

In response to the dragon's arrival, Bogdan was engulfed in radiant energy and lifted into the air, transforming into the first Avatar of Radiance. As the divine counterforce to the dragon, he engaged the beast while the rest of the party found their attacks doing negligible damage. Both the proto-dragon and the Avatar showed signs of instability, unleashing unpredictable area effects across the battlefield. The dragon twice split itself into “shard-born echoes”—shade-like fragments of its form. While Bogdan destroyed one with a well-timed Hellish Rebuke, the echoes proved formidable.

The session concluded after two full rounds of combat with the manor collapsing around the party. Though Lucien is dead, the dragon remains alive and the battle for survival continues amidst the fracturing ruins of the hall. The party has been warned that their survival in this historic confrontation will depend entirely on tactical precision.

The group navigated the immediate aftermath of the battle at Drekanov Manor, dealing with shifting power dynamics at Viroc Industries and the emergence of new world threats. Between strategic discussions at the Gilded Gull and a tense visit to Viroc HQ, the party transitioned from company employees to free agents, eventually accepting a high-stakes delivery mission from Dr. Minerva Sedgwick.

During a period of transition, André introduced several updates to the campaign's mechanics, including a quantification system for Shardisite power levels and a new party inventory feature. The group discussed the aftermath of their recent battle, noting that despite the appearance of the first dragon and the Avatar of Radiance, the world remained largely unaware of the full scale of the event. During this time, the party was introduced to Noctis, a Bloodhunter Rogue with a dark and volatile past.

The party met for breakfast at The Gilded Gull, discovering that their company badges were no longer active. A local newspaper reported only the death of Seraphim Drekanov, conspicuously omitting the dragon's appearance and the deaths of other family members. Viktor gathered intelligence from the Maitre'D, Tomasz Brenner, regarding the remaining Drekanov brothers—Ernst and Harold. The atmosphere in the restaurant was one of palpable fear as middle management braced for a potential power struggle within the company.

While preparing for their next steps, the group visited the Viroc Canteen. Viktor successfully navigated the rationing system to purchase five boxes of Viroc Meal Biscuits through negotiation and subterfuge. However, as the party departed, Noctis stayed behind to barter with the proprietor. When the negotiation reached an impasse, Noctis executed the proprietor with a point-blank shot to the head, collected a vial of his blood, and quietly rejoined the group.

The party traveled to Viroc Headquarters to meet with Commander Ellard Crosse. Crosse expressed a grim relief that the dragon threat had been temporarily mitigated but acknowledged the massive power vacuum left by the Drekanovs' departure. The conversation highlighted the instability of the company's leadership and the desperation of those left to pick up the pieces.

Dr. Minerva Sedgewick joined the meeting and offered the party a new contract: the delivery of a critical package to Harold Drekanov, the Regent of Continental Affairs, who is currently returning from a diplomatic mission to Atlantis. The group negotiated for significant individual rewards upon successful completion, including a shop for Thorun, an observatory for Bogdan, and a promotion for Carl.

The session concluded with the party preparing to board an 8:30 PM train to St. Petersgrad. Their objective is to meet Harold Drekanov upon his arrival on the VSS Dominion in three days and deliver the package directly to him at the Viroc refining facility.

The group embarked on a 16-18 hour train mission from Murmansk to St. Petersgrad to deliver a high-priority package to Harold Drekanov. Aboard the modern Viroc locomotive, the party navigated through luxury cars, casino entertainment, and armored security, ultimately uncovering a global cult conspiracy and a deadly corporate trap.

The mission began with the party boarding a Viroc train, noting the sharp contrast between the advanced transport and the surrounding wasteland. During the journey, the group spent time identifying magical loot, including a Ratcheted Autokey, a magical brooch, and a Crystal Dagger. Lusat utilized the downtime to copy spells from Anton Erickson's spellbook, while Victor experienced a strange pulse from his amulet during meditation.

The party split up to scout the various cars: * The Lounge and Casino: Viktor and Carl engaged in gambling and drinks, while Bogdan and Thorun investigated suspicious patrons. * The High Ground: Noctis chose to scale the exterior of the train to reach the armored car independently. * Crowd Control: In the dining car, Viktor used a Hypnotic Pattern spell to incapacitate guards and diners, allowing him and Carl to pass through the galley and galley cars unchallenged by persuading staff they were on an inspection for Commander Crosse.

Bogdan and Thorun intercepted two hooded figures whose glowing green eyes and amulets identified them as shardisite-touched cultists. After a brief skirmish and a successful bluff using a forged Viroc badge, the party moved the cultists to a private cabin for interrogation. * The Interrogation: Mentally probing the captives revealed they belonged to the Cult of the Verdant Light, a globally spanning organization embedded within Viroc's infrastructure. * Key Figures: The interrogation identified Petyr Sarnov (involved in illicit trade) and Sister Elsbeth (an Atlantean network leader) as rising figures in the power vacuum following Lucien's death. * The Outcome: Deeming the cultists a liability, the group threw them from the moving train after stripping them of their gear.

Noctis, Viktor, and Carl successfully infiltrated the armored car. They bypassed a lethal magical barrier by triggering it with a dead body, causing a massive arcane ward to explode. Inside, they discovered a highly volatile, glowing cube suspended by chains. The explosion caused a surge of energy that was felt throughout the entire train, disrupting the concealment charms on their other gear.

The arcane disturbance from the armored car revealed the true nature of the parcel Minerva Sedgewick intended for Harold Drekanov. The party realized the parcel was a sophisticated trap designed to trigger a catastrophic event the moment a member of the Drekanov family opened it. As the train hurtles through the night toward St. Petersgrad, the group remains divided on whether to complete the delivery and trigger the trap or keep the dangerous artifact for themselves.

The party continued their investigation aboard the train to St. Petersgrad, navigating moral dilemmas and high-stakes gambling before arriving in the industrial heart of the region. During the journey, Viktor experienced a transformative encounter with raw magical energy, and the group uncovered the true, lethal nature of their delivery mission.

Viktor experienced a powerful encounter with shardisite energy emanating from the volatile cube in the armored railcar. Utilizing his Angelic Favor and his amulet, he successfully pushed back against the overwhelming force to prevent Viroc from weaponizing it. The encounter left Viktor with visions of the ruined manor and a burning sensation on his palm. Following this event, the cube disappeared into an unstable, temporary location, effectively cutting off Viroc's access to the artifact and causing a localized disruption in gravity.

As the arcane disturbance from the cube faded, the glamour concealing Minerva’s parcel failed, revealing it to be an assassination device designed specifically for Harold Drekanov. The group engaged in a heated debate regarding the ethics of the delivery: * The Pawns: They questioned if Minerva had intentionally placed them in the crossfire of a corporate execution. * The Plan: After considering drastic measures—such as amputating Harold's hand to prevent him from opening the box—the team decided to proceed with the delivery but vowed to warn Harold of the danger, presenting themselves as hired professionals who had discovered a threat.

To pass the remaining hours in the casino car, the party engaged in a unique game of poker. André introduced custom mechanics where Charisma and Intimidation checks allowed players to manipulate dice rolls (D6, D12, and D20s) to simulate hands. While Carl suffered significant losses at the roulette tables, Viktor dominated the poker game, winning a massive pot of gold and leaving the NPC opponents dejected.

The Captain of the train reported smooth progress despite worsening weather, though he noted a growing security concern regarding three missing guards and the breach of the armored car. Viktor spent the final hours of the trip communing with the newly born force of good, strengthening his resolve against the corruption of the world. After 18 hours of travel, the train pulled into the smoke-choked skyline of St. Petersgrad.

Upon arrival, the group observed the city’s industrial atmosphere, characterized by magical neon signs and a permanent layer of smog. They navigated the two-tiered streets—businesses on the bottom, apartments above—and visited a tattoo parlor. There, a woman named Anya recognized Lusat and began work on a magical tattoo for Viktor.

The session concluded in Lusat’s office near the docks, where the party found several pieces of correspondence: * The Paycheck: A $500 payment from Viroc Fiscal Affairs for the original contract with Anton. * The Denial: A formal rejection from Viroc Internal Oversight regarding their previous information requests. * The Lead: A handwritten letter from Marta Skelland seeking a discreet investigator for a private matter.

From the second-floor window, the party observed the cold, smog-filled docks, noting the absence of any Viroc ships as they awaited Harold’s arrival.

The party settled into St. Petersgrad before boarding the quarantined VSS Dominion, where they uncovered Minerva Sedgewick’s attempt to assassinate both them and Harold Drekanov. By the end of the session, they tentatively accepted Harold’s offer to become his personal strike team, received a list of five possible dissenters aboard the vessel, and witnessed the proto-dragon attacking a Viroc refinery in the city.

The session opened at Anya’s tattoo shop. Viktor revealed his new arcane tattoo and settled his payment, though he has yet to attune to the ink. The group secured a base of operations in St. Petersgrad by renting an additional room in the building for the month. Anya shared rumors of a new “crimson-robed” cult interested in individuals with supernatural abilities, which the party recognized as a sign of expanding Verdant Light influence.

While crossing a bridge toward the docks, the party noticed a lone figure trailing them. When confronted, the man fled and wild-shaped into an eagle. Lusat’s hawk familiar tracked the bird to a manor in the Corporate Heights, where it disappeared inside. The only physical clue left behind was a dropped American cigarette.

Learning the VSS Dominion was offshore under quarantine, the party negotiated a 25-gold dinghy ride from a drunken sailor to reach the ship immediately. Arriving alongside the massive vessel at midnight in rough weather, they were taken aboard under heavy suspicion by Viroc security.

The party met Harold Drekanov and revealed their suspicions regarding Minerva’s parcel. Harold confirmed the “gift” was an assassination device designed to trigger a chain reaction with the ship's Shardasite stores, which would have destroyed the Dominion and the surrounding waterfront. Following this revelation, the party was politely confined to a cargo hold, where they took a long rest inside a Tiny Hut.

During the rest, Bogdan’s augury warned that “All are corrupt.” The next morning, Harold met the group for tea and used Detect Thoughts to probe them. The party carefully curated the memories they shared—showing the dragon and the newborn god—while successfully hiding their direct involvement in the deaths of Lucien and Seraphim.

Harold positioned himself as an opponent to Minerva, offering the party high-paying work as his personal strike team. As they spoke, the proto-dragon attacked the Viroc refinery in St. Petersgrad, an event Harold viewed as potential leverage in his struggle for corporate control. Harold’s undersecretary provided the party with a list of five individuals aboard the Dominion suspected of disloyalty to be “removed” before the ship docks at noon.

The party held conflicting views on the task. Viktor, as a paladin, objected to executing a priest (“Father”) on the list. In a private meeting, Harold attempted to charm Viktor into viewing the task as “necessary surgery,” but Viktor remained unconvinced. Meanwhile, Harold approached other party members with promises of extra rewards if they completed the job despite their friends' hesitations, clearly treating the group as pieces on his corporate board.

The party carried out a targeted purge aboard the quarantined vessel, confronting and eliminating four individuals identified as threats to Harold Drekanov and Viroc Industries. While most targets were removed with finality, one was interrogated and released under mysterious circumstances. As the operation concluded, a powerful presence manifested, leaving the party with a rare sense of clarity and hope.

Harold Drekanov provided the party with five specific names to be dealt with while the ship remained under quarantine. This task was presented as a necessary internal purge of the VSS Dominion, serving as a test of the party's lethality and loyalty. Harold indicated that this was only the first phase of their cooperation, with further assignments expected once the party reached the shore and the corporate landscape of St. Petersgrad shifted.

The party methodically hunted down and executed Father Alexei Krovic, Mikhail Dren, Evgeni Karsov, and Silen Koresh. Each encounter was handled with clinical efficiency, and the targets offered little resistance once they realized they had been cornered by Harold's new strike team. These swift removals emphasized the cold reality of the mission: these were not individuals meant for interrogation or detention, but obstacles to be erased before the ship docked.

Kaz Vetrov was the only individual on the list taken alive for questioning. Visibly terrified and bordering on instability, he revealed that the VSS Dominion may have harbored a dark intent during its voyage to Svalbard. Despite his obvious fear, he provided limited new information beyond confirming the deep-seated corruption within the crew. Following the questioning, Viktor asked Kaz if he could swim; upon receiving a positive answer, Viktor allowed him to flee. Kaz was last seen running through the ship's corridors in a desperate attempt to escape before the rest of the party or Harold’s loyalists could intervene.

Following the final execution in Silen Koresh’s stateroom, the atmosphere shifted as a powerful presence manifested during Viktor's prayers. The air grew heavy and warm, a physical sensation that was unmistakable to the entire party. While Viktor was the only one to speak directly with the presence—though its identity and specific demands remained shrouded in mystery—the effect on Bogdan was profound. He received no audible words but was instead left with an overwhelming sense of hope, providing a stark contrast to the ambiguity that has defined his previous spiritual encounters.

By the end of the hour, the party believed their task was complete and the internal threats to Harold’s command were neutralized. At approximately 11:00 a.m., with only one hour of quarantine remaining, the party stood prepared for their imminent release. They now wait to reach the docks of St. Petersgrad, anticipating further instructions from Harold Drekanov as they step into a city already reeling from the dragon's arrival.

After arriving in St. Petersgrad aboard the VSS Dominion, the party moved ashore to carry out Harold Drekanov’s directives against dissident elements within the city. Navigating the widespread disruption caused by the recent dragon attack, they successfully infiltrated the Viroc Industries campus, located the Arcane Affairs building, and eliminated all personnel inside before withdrawing to reassess their next targets.

Upon disembarking from the VSS Dominion, the party began their journey toward the Viroc Industries campus. They quickly noticed they were being followed by a local—the same blackout-drunk sailor who had ferried them to the quarantined ship the previous night. To neutralize the potential tail, they provided him with money and redirected him to Donny’s Bar, effectively removing him from their path.

The party navigated the post-dragon attack chaos to reach the main Viroc office. Using a scrying globe, they performed long-distance reconnaissance to identify the specific location of the Arcane Affairs building on the St. Petersgrad campus. Their approach was marked by a series of environmental and security hurdles including clearing massive iron conduits and navigating a localized shard-dust storm. The party used social engineering to bypass posted Viroc security and utilized their arcane knowledge to see through the illusion magic concealing the Arcane Affairs building.

Upon entry, Viktor immediately chained the doors shut to prevent any escape or reinforcement. He cast Hypnotic Pattern, effectively incapacitating the majority of the scientists and guards and dictating the flow of the subsequent slaughter. One scientist was vaporized by Lusat’s upcast Fireball, while another was killed when an interrupted experiment destabilized and detonated. The explosion triggered the emergence of a shard-born being—a grotesque fusion of flesh and crystal—from an experimental structure. It attacked with crystalline projections from its chest but was swiftly brought down by Thorun. By the end of the confrontation, all Viroc personnel within the building were dead.

As the party withdrew toward Donny’s Bar, they observed a city in total moral and magical collapse. The air in St. Petersgrad had become dense and oppressive, saturated with raw magical and emotional resonance following the dragon attack. Escaped shardisite, fueled by the widespread fear and despair of the populace, has made magic volatile and no longer subtle. Darker forces have begun to stir just beyond the edges of perception as the environment itself now tangibly reacts to the collective emotional state of the city.

The party regrouped at Donny’s Bar after their assault on the Viroc Arcane Affairs building. St. Petersgrad remained unstable, with the air thick from residual magic and raw emotion following the dragon’s attack. While the city struggled with a newfound heaviness, the group began a series of high-stakes investigations into the remaining names on Harold’s list, leading to a miraculous manifestation and a confrontation with an otherworldly entity.

During a scouting phase, Lusat’s familiar investigated the Graybridge Apothecary and reported the presence of Kaz Vetrov. However, a second scouting mission to Grigor’s Exchange ended in the familiar's death. Before departing Donny’s Bar to address these leads, Lusat used the Radiant Transmuter to summon a lesser angel. The being, a corporeal entity of radiant light with piercing green eyes, marked only the second recorded angelic appearance in history. Bogdan used this divine backdrop to preach a message of hope to the stunned patrons; while many fled in terror, others were deeply moved, taking his words to heart as the angel eventually faded into a path of light through the clouded sky.

Unnoticed by the rest of the group, Viktor traveled alone to Graybridge Apothecary. There, he confronted Kaz Vetrov and his wife, Lenadra. The encounter was interrupted by a ripple in a cursed mirror behind the counter, out of which an entity began to manifest. Viktor moved the couple to safety, casting Sanctuary as the mirror shattered. During a brief interrogation, Kaz insisted he was targeted merely for speaking out against orders, eventually handing Viktor a journal containing his knowledge of the Drekanovs’ cruelty. To cover their tracks, Viktor instructed the couple to burn the shop and disappear, providing them with a signet to seek help in his name.

Viktor faced the creature that emerged from the glass alone. The entity proved to be a drain on his very vitality, reducing his maximum hit points with its unnatural touch. Using Fire-Eye Whiskey to ignite the room and his Channel Divinity to empower his strikes, Viktor fought a brutal battle amidst the flames. He eventually split the creature in half with a radiant glaive strike, receiving a vision of the Vetrovs escaping safely as the beast died. As he retreated across the bridge, the city felt colder, and the distant screams echoing through the streets suggested that this mirror entity was not the only horror unleashed that night.

The party reunited at Anya’s tattoo parlor, where Bogdan continued to debate philosophy and hope with the skeptical artist. His words triggered a brief, visible magical flare in Anya’s tattoos before she suppressed the reaction. By morning, the sky over St. Petersgrad was unnaturally clear, yet the city felt hollowed out by grief; for the first time, the industrial forges remained unlit. While Viktor reviewed Kaz’s journal, Thorun and Lusat spent the downtime preparing equipment and spells for their final target: Grigor the Ghost.

The party traveled to Grigor’s Exchange, a shop tucked beneath the Argent Spire that was protected by potent illusion magic. After negotiating with a surly, partially undead clerk and testing a volatile proto-draconic reagent, the group’s core members were escorted into a back room to meet Grigor. Inside a surreal, magically isolated space, Grigor expressed delight at the news of the Drekanov deaths but denied any role in the dragon's release. He warned the party of “Crux,” an island of immense Shardisite wealth tied to Harold Drekanov’s ultimate ambitions. Refusing to simply die to satisfy Harold’s list, Grigor instead prepared to propose a counter-offer: a new target for the party to eliminate in exchange for his cooperation.

After securing an agreement with Grigor to eliminate his quarantined lover at Brassalo Hospital in exchange for his staged death, the party left the Argent Spire with multiple objectives still unresolved. Choosing to move down the list before addressing the hospital, they traveled into the Warrens to confront Irina Talovska at the Shardveil Reading Room. What began as a controlled exchange over dragon-related volumes quickly escalated into a full arcane lockdown, culminating in the destruction of the Reading Room’s defenses and the banishment of Talovska herself.

While Thorun and Carl remained upstairs negotiating with the clerk, Viktor and Bogdon concluded their private discussion with Grigor. Grigor revealed that the woman he loves is being held in quarantine on the 12th floor of Brassalo Hospital. According to him, Viroc doctors discovered that her blood contains transferable magical properties and have been exploiting it. She was taken four weeks ago. Grigor does not want her rescued. He believes she would not wish to return in her current state and instead asked that she be killed and told that he sent the party and never abandoned her. The agreement reached was direct: the party will eliminate her, and Grigor will convincingly fake his own death and disappear. He declined to provide inside access to the hospital but assured them he would handle the “being dead” portion of the arrangement. Reunited upstairs, Viktor and Bogdon informed the others of the deal. With Telepathic Bond cast as a ritual, the party left the Argent Spire and chose to proceed first to the Shardveil Reading Room.

The mood of the city had shifted again. Corporate Heights lacked its usual arrogance. Movement was thinner, conversation quieter. Crossing into the Warrens, the emotional weight intensified. Despair felt heavier, more concentrated. The party arrived at the Shardveil Reading Room.

A bell announced their entry. A male clerk sat at the front desk. Posted rates included five gold per hour for access. The shop retained its reputation as one of the region’s major collectors of magical texts, spellbooks, and arcane manuscripts. Lusat informed the clerk he had rare material for Irina Talovska. The clerk referenced an overdue book Lusat had not returned. Lusat assured him it would be handled and implied the value of what he now carried exceeded the previous debt. Talovska agreed to see Lusat alone. Carl attempted to bless Lusat before he entered and was immediately counterspelled by the clerk. Lusat entered Talovska’s office.

Inside, Talovska greeted Lusat while magically stirring tea. Lusat presented dragon-related texts and stated plainly that he had been present at the dragon’s birth. He emphasized that only a handful of individuals possessed that knowledge, increasing its value significantly. Talovska’s demeanor shifted. The office locked. Across the Reading Room, suits of armor animated simultaneously. Combat begins.

Viktor immediately engaged the nearest animated armor after casting Shield of Faith. Bogdon pressed the clerk with Hex and Eldritch Blast. The clerk responded with Shield and later Hold Person, briefly paralyzing Bogdon before he broke free. Multiple animated suits engaged the party across the shop floor. Bystanders fled, including one who escaped via Dimension Door. Inside the office, Lusat banished Talovska after countering her attempt to counterspell. She was removed to another plane of existence, if only temporarily. As each suit of armor fell, it left behind a pulsing green orb. At the end of each round, these orbs detonated in shockwaves of force and magical backlash. Scrolls ignited. Books burst with uncontrolled arcane discharge. The Reading Room’s carefully warded collection became a cascade of unstable magical effects. The clerk attempted to reposition and was killed by Carl’s reaction strike. Thorun destroyed one of the armors and hurled one of the unstable orbs across the room before it detonated. Viktor and Carl absorbed repeated blast damage as the chain reactions continued. Lusat exited the locked office via Dimension Door, consumed a Sharddust Vial, and rejoined the fight. One detonation triggered a brief presence that answered Viktor’s unspoken question with certainty: Was releasing Kaz and Lenadra the right choice? The presence responded in the affirmative. One by one, the animated suits were destroyed. The final orb detonated. The Reading Room fell silent.

The clerk lay dead. All animated armors were destroyed. The Reading Room sustained significant structural and arcane damage. Irina Talovska remained banished, with less than half a minute before her return. The party regrouped outside the sealed office door, preparing for her reappearance. The session ended with the banishment about to expire.

In Session Nineteen, the party—Lusat “Lews” Valthorne, Thorun Darkstone, Viktor Pucovskivich, Bogdan Moravec, and Carl J. Winslow—engaged in a high-stakes battle at the Shardveil Reading Room in St. Petersgrad, followed by major character developments and investigations across the city.

The session opened with the party positioned outside Irina Talovska’s office. Lusat cast Knock to bypass the locked door, triggering combat against an Animated Armor and Irina herself.

• Summoning the Acolytes: Viktor activated his amulet to cast Echoes of Kaali, summoning five acolytes with the command to kill everything that isn’t us.
• The Shadow Demon Appears: Behind the office door, a swirling smoky entity—later identified as a Shadow Demon—emerged. The acolytes destroyed the Animated Armor, but its destruction triggered a Shardisite explosion from a glowing green orb that injured everyone nearby.
• Irina’s Retaliation: Irina vanished into mist before reappearing and casting Fireball. The party survived with minimal damage, but the blast incinerated all of Viktor’s summoned acolytes.

• Carl maintained a Moonbeam in the doorway to restrict enemy movement.
• Thorun attempted to grapple the Shadow Demon’s spinal cord but failed, suffering necrotic damage while partially inside the creature’s form.
• Bogdan used Hex and Eldritch Blast, though one blast went wide and accidentally struck Thorun.
• Viktor wielded his Emerald Rift Glaive with Spirit Shroud, striking both Irina and the demon.

Irina attempted to cast Cone of Cold on Viktor, but he survived the blast and delivered the final killing strike with his glaive, shattering her skull—and her teacup—in the process. Bogdan finished the Shadow Demon with two Eldritch Blasts that reduced its skull to dust.

With the Reading Room in chaos, the party spent roughly an hour searching the premises.

• Irina’s Personal Effects: Her spellbook, spell components, a never-ending pen, a magical ledger filled with illegible entries, and her glasses, which functioned as her spellcasting focus.
• The Safe: Bogdan discovered a hidden iron safe beneath the stone floor. Lusat used Stone Shape to expose it, and Thorun stored it in his Bag of Holding to open later. Inside they eventually discovered 750 gold pieces.
• The Scrolls: The group recovered 24 spell scrolls, including powerful magic such as Chain Lightning, Wall of Force, and Magic Jar.
• The Codex: Two important books were found: The Shardveil Codex (magically sealed) and a damaged tome titled The Power of Names.

During the search, a student wandered into the shop. Viktor briefly paralyzed him with Hold Person while Lusat informed the boy that the shop was under new management before letting him leave.

Before departing, Lusat cast Arcane Lock on the door with the passphrase: “The Angel of Radiance Brings Hope.”

While crossing The Graybridge, the party observed a city suffering from despair and exploitation in the aftermath of the dragon attack.

They returned to Anya’s tattoo parlor, discovering the shop vandalized and its window smashed by a local gang.

• Comforting Anya: Anya spoke about her fear and loss of hope. Bogdan offered her a strong drink of Nyx Pearl and words of encouragement.
• The Gift: Bogdan, Carl, and Lusat pooled 5,000 gold to commission a special angel-themed tattoo for Lusat.

During a long rest, Viktor meditated with his amulet and experienced a profound spiritual vision.

The familiar emerald glow of Shardisite within his mind was replaced by pure white light. A faceless presence appeared—not judging Viktor, but judging the amulet itself.

The entity spoke of the need for a vanguard with unshakable faith to lead the world through the difficult times ahead and to pierce the darkness. When Viktor questioned its motives in a world driven by greed, the presence replied that it sought a better world for all before vanishing.

• Thorun spent two hours cracking open the bookstore safe, recovering the 750 gold within.
• Bogdan visited a local shop to purchase whiskey and cigars. When confronted by locals demanding a visitor’s tax, he de-escalated the situation by buying them a bottle and gathering information about the gang responsible for vandalizing Anya’s shop.

In the final moment of the session, Lusat used the Radiant Transmuter to summon a Lesser Angel.

The room filled with warmth and brilliant light. Mesmerized by the sight, Anya began fervently sketching the angel’s form directly onto Lusat’s arm and neck, beginning the design of his new tattoo.

The party began their time in Murmansk under contract as “extra security” for Viroc Industries, stationed at The First Cut quarry. Their assignment seemed routine until a violent midnight blast ripped through the pit, collapsing scaffolds and tunnels. Out of the smoke surged Shard-warped miners, grotesquely mutated—including their foreman, Clem Torson.

The sudden assault forced the party into their first desperate combat. Fighting amid falling rock and dust, they cut down the twisted miners, though several party members were dropped before the mutants were defeated. In the aftermath, inspection of the bodies revealed puncture wounds identical across each victim, alongside a shattered injector still glowing with refined Shardisite. The blast site bore scorch marks and Shardisite residue, evidence pointing to deliberate sabotage rather than an accident.

In the quiet hours following the battle at the Shardveil Reading Room, Bogdan Moravec and Viktor Pucovskivich engaged in a profound theological debate regarding the nature of the newly manifested angelic entity. Drawing from his research into a treatise (The Power of Names by Dr. Alaric Shimmy of Tindar) acquired at the Shardveil Reading Room, Bogdan proposed that the act of naming a shard-manifested being does not merely describe its current state but dictates the direction of its future evolution. He argued that since the entity was born from collective intent and the party’s own aspirations, they possessed the unique opportunity to curate its development. Bogdan suggested the name “Nadine,” an old-world term meaning “hope,” believing that providing the downtrodden citizens of St. Petersgrad with a beacon of hope was the only way to balance the scales against the established evil forces in the world, notably the legion.

Viktor remained respectfully skeptical, citing his history as a paladin of a collapsed Shardisite religion and the inherent danger of imbuing any powerful being with further influence. He expressed concern that even the most benevolent intent could be twisted into a tool for manipulation and greed, much like the corporate interests of Viroc Industries. However, Bogdan maintained that Viktor’s very trepidation made him the ideal guardian for such a path, as a warrior with a cautious spirit would ensure the entity’s purity. Ultimately, the two reached a tenuous agreement to feed the manifestation with the ideal of hope, while Viktor vowed to remain vigilant against any sign of corruption.

Simultaneously, the specialist tattoo artist Anya continued the arduous process of etching an arcane design into Lusat Valthorne’s arm and neck. Using the Radiant Transmuter to summon a Lesser Angel as a corporeal blueprint, the room was filled with a heat and brilliance that bordered on the divine. As she worked with Shardisite-laced ink, Anya was overcome by a rare display of raw emotion, weeping and muttering to herself about a past love also named Nadinya who had died years prior in a hospital bed. The connection between the name chosen by Bogdan and the personal tragedy of the artist suggested a resonance that transcended mere coincidence, implying that the seeds of hope planted by the party were already taking root in the city’s spirit.

The tattooing process proved physically taxing for Lusat, as the magical energy being imbued into his flesh fought against his own willpower. Despite his resilience, the pain eventually became overwhelming, and he passed out in the chair. By dawn, the party found Anya transformed; the cynicism that had previously defined her was replaced by a quiet self-actualization. She confessed that speaking her lost lover’s name for the first time in sixteen years had released a burden she had carried since the city fell into shadow. Though the tattoo on Lusat’s arm was finished, it remained unstable, having bound itself in a way that left him in lingering physical pain and requiring several days to fully acclimate to his spirit.

Seeking supplies for their upcoming mission at Brassalo Hospital, the party traveled to the Frackwater Facility, a large private security compound on the northern edge of the city. Recognizing the need for heavy ordnance should their “surgical” approach fail, Viktor utilized his formidable presence and social engineering to bypass the facility's rigid security. After checking their overt weapons at the gate, the group navigated the pompous, medal-heavy atmosphere of the administration building to find the Quartermaster.

Through a high-stakes negotiation involving a refined Shardisite shard recovered from a previous encounter, the party secured approximately two hundred pounds of dynamite and a specialized long-burn fuse. The Quartermaster, a mustachioed veteran with a mechanical leg, made it clear that the transaction was strictly “under the table,” demanding that no record of the explosives ever be traced back to the facility. With the explosives secured in their bag of holding, the group departed the compound unchallenged, having successfully navigated a military installation without a single act of violence.

As the group moved through the city’s Warrens, they encountered the street preacher whom Bogdan had previously defended. The man appeared revitalized, beaming with a new sense of purpose as he and his son distributed hand-written pamphlets to the weary populace. He invited the party to a gathering scheduled for six o'clock that evening, promising bread, soup, and a message of inspiration for all who wished to attend. The preacher credited the party’s presence in the city as the catalyst for his renewed faith, noting that a “new wind” was blowing through St. Petersgrad. While the party focused on their lethal objective at the hospital, the encounter served as a reminder that their actions were beginning to foster a burgeoning movement of resistance among the common citizens.

The party arrived at Brassalo Hospital, a massive fifteen-story white stone structure that smelled of sterility and hidden rot. To gain entry, Viktor faked a severe illness, utilizing his amulet to give his clear mucus a magical, glowing green tint that suggested an uncontrolled arcane contamination. The deception immediately caught the attention of the medical staff, who bypassed their standard coldness and hurried Viktor into a sick bag. During the transition, the party utilized a Telepathic Bond to coordinate their movements and maintain their cover as a Viroc internal security detail.

When a skeptical Viroc official arrived to scrutinize the group, the party doubled down on their ruse. They claimed to be personal agents of Harold Drekanov with a “vested interest” in Viktor's outcome, insisting that they accompany him to the restricted floors for “dark care.” The bluff, supported by their Viroc armor and forged credentials, proved successful. The official led them to an elevator, where they ascended to the twelfth floor, leaving the crowded lobby and the suspicious nurses behind.

The doors of the elevator opened to reveal a hallway that stood in stark contrast to the sterile lower levels of the hospital. The twelfth floor was ornate and heavily carpeted, lined with real plants and decorated with the unmistakable opulence of Viroc’s upper management. However, the air was thick with the metallic scent of unrestrained Shardisite magic, and the atmosphere was one of high-security isolation. Guarding the entrance to the wing were two Atlantean warforged, their stoic forms pulsing with internal green light. As the party stepped onto the floor, the sound of distant, echoing screams suggested that the “research” conducted within Brassalo was every bit as horrific as the rumors suggested. The session concluded with the group positioned at the heart of the enemy’s laboratory, prepared to face whatever twisted experiments Harold Drekanov had seen fit to hide from the world.

The session resumed where Session 20 left off: the elevator opening onto the twelfth floor of Brassalo Health & Research, escorted by a greasy and self-important Viroc liaison officer named Aldric. The floor presented itself as opulent with velvet chairs, mahogany trim, and real flowers in vases, but the air was thick with coppery Shardisite magic and the shard lamps gave everything that particular green-white sterility that made the eyes work too hard. From somewhere deeper in the wing came the sound of someone in serious distress. Aldric walked past it without comment.

The reunion the party anticipated did not happen. While the rest of the group was ushered toward Aldric's office, Viktor was wheeled on a gurney to the far end of the hallway, where four trained nurses moved to sedate him without explanation or ceremony. He resisted, managing to deflect two of the four syringes before the sedative found him twice in succession. Paralyzed and poisoned, strapped to the gurney, he could only listen as his comrades navigated the entirety of the situation.

Lusat attempted to intervene by announcing the party as Viroc internal security under Harold Drekanov and ordering the nurses to stand down. Aldric's casual demeanor cracked. He whistled, signaling the two Atlantean sentinels to step forward with blunderbusses raised. Lusat informed him he would take no further questions, and cast an upcast Fireball down the hallway. The nurses scattered. The Warforged did not.

What followed was a grinding, punishing engagement across the entire twelfth floor. The Warforged proved brutally resilient, their internal Shardisite cores emitting periodic force pulses that stunned and hammered the party throughout. Aldric cowered behind a desk and directed the sentinels between shots from his shard-laced revolver, while Thorun worked through them methodically with hammer and bayonet, ultimately bringing down three of the four. Lusat was knocked unconscious and required stabilization. Viktor, paralyzed on his gurney, could do nothing but watch flashes of gunfire from the hallway while his teammates fought without him.

Early in the fight, Bogdan cast Invisibility on himself and began working the edges of the ward. Using Ghostly Gaze to see through walls, he scouted the surrounding rooms and got his first look at the shard-blighted patients, men and women in the advanced stages of exposure with crystalline structures growing from their skin and faces, their outcomes already decided.

Midway through the fight, a wild-eyed head-physician arrived from deeper in the ward and threw a shard grenade into the melee, detonating a blinding pulse of green force magic. Bogdan, seeing the threat, planted dynamite beneath him, and the resulting explosion tore through much of the ward's interior walls. When the dust settled, the head-physician injected himself with something that set his eyes and veins glowing, then cast a spell that erupted beneath Bogdan in a mass of inky black tentacles that pummeled and restrained him. Thorun eventually confronted the head-physician directly and shattered his spine with a hammer strike. After his death the ward went quiet except for the distant wailing of blighted patients and Aldric's ragged breathing from behind his desk. Viktor, the sedative finally wearing off, came to on his gurney feeling like hell but conscious.

Carl approached the desk. The terms were simple: possessions on the table, honest answers, and this ends cleanly. Aldric had no viable alternative. He surrendered his revolver loaded with two remaining shard-laced rounds, a knife, a Viroc-issue sending stone, and a Department of Arcane Affairs sigil key: a filigree iron coin, obviously magical, bearing the unmistakable insignia of Dr. Sedgewick's department.

When pressed about the ward, Aldric confirmed what the party had already begun to suspect. Most of the patients were nobodies, shard-blighted individuals deemed terminal and therefore expendable. Viroc's researchers would develop a serum or a prototype and they needed test subjects who were going to die anyway. As for the sending stone, Carl asked where it connected. Aldric confirmed what the insignia already suggested: directly to the Department of Arcane Affairs.

But he knew what the party was really there for, and he said so. She was in the far ward. They'd know it when they saw it.

The physician was stripped of everything useful. From his person the party also recovered two additional shard grenades, three syringes filled with glowing green liquid of unknown purpose, a magical scalpel, and a second sending stone bearing the same Department of Arcane Affairs insignia as the one taken from Aldric. A quick search of the pharmacy turned up a tin of magical salve and a set of arcane ear coverings. Viktor also found the nurse who had stuck him first and handed her a bundle of dynamite to hold while he unlocked the surgery room door with the sigil key. The remaining staff, Aldric, the physician, and every nurse still on the floor, were sealed inside under Arcane Lock. Nothing was getting out without the key the party now held.

Before moving to the far ward, Viktor turned his attention to the patients in the open beds. A combined arcane and medical assessment confirmed what Bogdan had seen during the fight: these were people at the terminal stage of shard blight, past any threshold of return. If they were out in the world they would mutate beyond recognition or die. In here, Viroc had simply decided to extract whatever value they could before the end came. The empty beds showed where others had already reached one of those two conclusions. Viktor confirmed there was nothing to be done. Shard blight was shard blight. It had been true for a thousand years.

The sigil key opened the warded door at the back of the ward without resistance. The room beyond was a dedicated laboratory of alchemical apparatus, extraction tubing, and instrumentation stations, every piece of it organized around the single occupant of the sealed pod at the room's center.

She was alive. Her chest rose and fell. Her blood was not simply red; it carried green flecks through it, a Shardisite-laced plasma being drawn from her body in measured drops every thirty seconds, collected into a vial that had barely begun to fill. She was not shard-blighted in the conventional sense, showing none of the crystalline wasting or uncontrolled mutation that defined the ward population outside. Whatever had been done to her was different: deliberate, controlled, and she had clearly survived it far longer than anyone else on this floor. The entire room existed for her.

She was unconscious and entirely unreactive. The fight had not reached her. She did not stir.

This was the woman Grigor the Ghost had asked the party to find. The agreement had been to kill her. No one said that out loud. Viktor assessed whether she could be safely disconnected from the apparatus. She couldn't, not without causing immediate and severe harm. There was no clean way to move her.

Viktor lit incense. Bogdan opened his scripture. Lusat stood at the foot of the pod. Each of them, in their own way, reached out to the entity they had named Nadine, the being of hope they had been feeding with intention and belief since their arrival in St. Petersgrad, and asked simply if there was anything that could be done here.

The oppressive weight of the ward shifted the moment she answered. The ambient Shardisite saturation that had made the air feel thick and wrong since they stepped off the elevator was gone. Out on the ward floor where Thorun and Carl were quietly placing dynamite charges, they felt it too. A full breath where there hadn't been one. A faint humanoid outline took shape at the foot of the pod. No wings, no radiance, just a presence unmistakably there, turning to each of them in turn. And with no face to express it, it conveyed sadness clearly.

Nadine told them she had no hope to offer here.

The words carried a gravity that briefly shook the connection. Something wavered, doubt or grief or simply the weight of what that meant coming from the being of hope itself. Viktor held. And Nadine held with him.

Without another word, an arm extended and touched the woman's foot. A spirit lifted from the pod, gently, without struggle, without pain. Grigor's lover took Nadine's hand. Viktor spoke to the spirit as it rose: Grigor had sent them. He had not forgotten her. He would not leave her in this place.

The spirit and the angel departed together. The light receded.

Bogdan then reached into the apparatus and plucked the collection vial free. The moment he touched it, the machine sealed it automatically, engineered to preserve whatever had been harvested. The vial buzzed with concentrated magical energy that was immediately palpable. At the drip rate they had observed, it represented at least a week of extraction. There were no other vials anywhere on the floor.

With the charges set and the surviving staff sealed in the surgery room, the party moved to evacuate. Viktor sent the others to the elevator with a head start. He cut the fuse short, lit it, and jumped through the leaded-glass window in a heroic burst. He fell twelve stories and reminisced on his miniature coma as he rapidly descended to the courtyard below.

He landed fist-first in the courtyard directly in front of the lobby entrance just as the rest of the party walked out the doors. Above them the twelfth floor detonated, windows blowing out across the entire face of Brassalo, holes opening in the stonework, dust and smoke pouring from the upper structure. Viktor laid on hands, recovered the damage the fall had cost him, and brushed himself off.

As the party walked away from the courtyard, the sun was setting over St. Petersgrad. For the first time since they had arrived, a true shaft of light broke through the city's permanent smog and struck the ruined twelfth floor directly, illuminating the wreckage like a beacon visible across the whole city, shining two to three full minutes before the light shifted and the sun continued its descent.

The weight that had defined this city since the dragon's arrival, the despair, the grief, the hollowness of a population running on fear, lifted just slightly for the first time. Someone checked a pocket watch. 5:30 PM. The street preacher's gathering started at six. They could still make it.

The destruction of the 12th floor of Brassalo Hospital was still settling into the city's bones when the party made their way to the riverfront. Tucked between two warehouse walls near the water, something impossible was happening: people were being kind to each other. A market without prices. Food passed hand to hand without ledger or debt. The doors were thrown wide open — which nobody did in St. Petersgrad, not anymore — and from inside came the sound of a piano.

The man at the piano wasn't playing anything joyful. The songs he knew were sad. He played them anyway, and something in the room refused to let them land as sorrow. People were dancing. A woman moved alone near the wall with an expression on her face like something long-calcified was finally coming loose. Two women on the far side of the warehouse were laughing — not politely, not carefully, but with their whole bodies, the kind of laughter that hasn't been safe to make in years.

At an intersection outside, between the open warehouse doors, Tomas Brek and his son Milo stood on literal soapboxes and addressed whoever would listen. My friends, we were not meant to live in such agony. There is a better life for us. I have seen it. It has walked these streets. He was shouting at the mountaintops. The crowd around him was enthralled in a way that went beyond words — something more than just listening was happening.

The party moved through it separately, quietly, like people who recognized something rare and didn't want to disturb it.

Carl slipped into the warehouse and found the piano player lost entirely in his own world. He laid something on the music without the man knowing — and the pianist's back straightened, his fingers quickened, and what had been almost a dirge became something genuinely joyful. The man started singing. The people who hadn't been dancing before started dancing.

Bogdan followed and added his own thread to the pianist's performance, deepening what Carl had started. Then he made his way toward Tomas.

Thorun went straight for the food cart, manned by a grizzled dock worker who smelled of the ocean and wore the finest mutton chops he had ever seen — the kind of facial hair that communicates a life of considered decisions. The man was eating a tomato sandwich with the expression of someone experiencing genuine luxury. He looked over at Thorun with an old man's smile and said, Pretty great, isn't it. Viktor shared a sandwich and heard him talk about what it felt like to not be afraid for one evening.

The party did not discuss what they were about to do. It assembled itself between them the way decisions sometimes do when everyone in a room is thinking the same thing.

Bogdan climbed the soapbox. He began orating about finding the tome in the monastery. He talked about hearing an otherworldly voice that gave him hope the world could be different. He kept returning to a phrase: Nadine is the light that pushes back the dark. He told the crowd that she did not have one messenger — that she could manifest within all of them, that each person standing there was capable of carrying that candle forward through their own actions. He gestured to Tomas and told the crowd that this man had been her voice before any of them had names for what they were feeling. The old man wept openly. People pressed their hands to their hearts.

When Bogdan reached the crescendo of the sermon, the air itself began to draw in the daylight and form — just at the edge of visibility, in just the right light — the shape of spread wings. Everyone standing in that courtyard saw it. When Bogdan stepped off the soapbox and turned back to look, it was still there. She was present. She was listening. She was unquestionably pleased with what she saw.

Lusat pressed his hands to the cobblestones of the courtyard floor and shaped them. The stone rose and formed itself — slowly, then with gathering confidence — into the figure of the angel they had named. While the crowd chanted the phrase Bogdan had given them, Bogdan pressed a chip of refined Shardisite into the statue's chest and performed a Ceremony of dedication. Lusat felt control of the magic leave him, taking on a presence of its own. The statue did not collapse. Instead it solidified, Loose cobblestone fused into shaped stone. It took on details of the face of Nadine that hadn't been there before. The cobblestone construction became a permanent effigy. The air around it became charged with radiance, like dust drawn by a magnetic field, channeling into the figure. When it was finished, the statue was a conduit to a divine magic and an otherworldly presence, as though the stone had become a gap between here and wherever Nadine existed. The crowd was enthralled by it.

Bogdan stepped back to Tomas and suggested it might be time to invite people forward to share their own troubles and their hope. The old man's face lit up. “Of course. Of course. Why didn't I think of that. I have a few people in mind.” He motioned to his son Milo to help him. The evening had arrived at that particular fullness where nobody wanted to leave and the conversation and laughter flowed freely.

The old man with the mutton chops was at his post near the entrance, deep in conversation with another man, two sandwiches still in hand. Tomas Brek was mid-sentence, rallying the crowd toward open testimony, Milo already moving to round up volunteers. Then the sound of heavy bootsteps filled the gateways to the alley.

Eighteen Viroc soldiers, six at each gate and one officer — clean-cut, badged, wearing the full pomp of institutional authority — holding in each hand the leash of a shard-enhanced Doberman pinscher. Their fangs dripped and glowed faintly. Their eyes caught the light wrong. They were a little too muscular, a little too aware, the enhancement visible in every inch of them without needing to be announced. The official touched his throat — a small gesture, nearly bureaucratic — and his next words carried through the warehouse at a volume that ended every other sound in it.

“By Viroc mandate, I order you to disperse.”

The dogs growled. Unphased, the old man turned to greet the soldiers. He still had the sandwiches in hand. He had been handing them out for an hour and the gesture was so thoroughly part of him now that he carried it forward without thinking. Walking toward the officer with the easy openness of someone who believes that any conflict could be diffused with a hearty meal. “Hey, this is a happy time. Come on. Come in. Join us. My wife grew these tomatoes.”

The official drew his sidearm and leveled it at the old man's head. He had already given his warning. That was all the old man would get. He pulled the trigger sending a ball straight at the man who offered only welcome.

Viktor was fifteen feet away and was already moving before the hammer dropped. His Aura of the Guardian reached across the space between himself and the old man and took what had been meant for him. The gun discharged. Black powder smoke bloomed. The old man's magnificent mutton chops were blackened with gun smoke and singed at the edges from the muzzle flash. Viktor stumbled where he stood, the bullet shattering in his chest plate instead. The sandwich vendor was still standing, now with a black burn on his forehead. The old man coughing and blinking, neither the officer nor he fully understood what had just happened.

The official did not wait to find out. He dropped both leashes. A soldier in the line, already jumpy from the shot, raised his repeater and fired a second round at the old man before the echo of the first had faded. The music had already stopped. Now the room understood. Mothers grabbed children. A father grabbed his daughter. The horses outside screamed. Bedlam arrived in the span of a single breath, and the party moved.

Bogdan reacted to the second shot by invoking the Wings of the Savior — feathered light tearing from his back and carrying him across the warehouse in an instant, folding himself and his wings around the vendor and his family, getting them clear before the soldiers could reacquire a target.

Lusat stood near the podium where Tomas had been preaching minutes ago. He felt the rage — white-hot, entirely justified. He took a breath instead. He looked at what they had built in this room and thought about what these people needed to see. He brought out the Radiant Transmuter, pointed it at the statue, and summoned the Lesser Angel.

The stone chipped away in all directions. Light beamed outward from the figure at once, flooding the entire courtyard as the perfectly carved cobblestone Nadine crumbled like an eggshell and left behind something else — a faceless aspect of Nadine herself, not the statue's features, not Nadine's face as it had manifested, but something that had used the statue as a doorway. The crowd gasped in the middle of their panic. Some of them stopped running.

Lusat, emboldened by the presence of his new patron, cast Fireball through the angel's aura, scooping as much of her presence as he could to infuse into his arcane devastation.

The spell changed in transit. What arrived among the Viroc riflemen was not fire — it was pure radiance, collapsed into a single terrible moment of fury. From behind Lusat, Tomas Brek had seen his new patron form and began to actively channel her might in a clumsy and unpracticed effort to confront the soldiers. He had already begun to chant as Lusat cast his fireball. Nobody had asked him to. Nobody had told him what words to use. The chanting came out of him unbidden, and it layered something onto the blast — like silvery barbs threading through the radiance — and the soldiers in its path discovered that the people of this warehouse had opinions about what was permitted inside it.

Viktor, still seething from the attempt of the sandwich vendor, singled out the officer with righteous precision. The divine smite that followed was not a controlled thing. It was the accumulated weight of the entire evening; the piano, the tomato sandwiches, the woman dancing alone with sorrow of a lifetime melting off her face, the statue rising from cobblestone, the wings in the daylight air, the old man who had only wanted to offer someone a seat at the table, all of it discharged through the point of a cutlass into this man's chest. The outburst of of divine energy could not be contained by the body it was intended for. It couldn't even be contained by the walls that surrounded them. It sent a forceful shockwave through the entire neighborhood. Every single person within a quarter mile radius on their feet was forced to the ground. Not hurt outright, but abjectly humbled by a new force in this world claiming its followers and their home for its own. Anyone who could get up did. Most ran. The officer and most of his detachment remained lifeless on the ground.

The representatives of Viroc were dead. On the bodies: a weapons, some pocket money, and a Sending Stone stamped with the insignia of the Department of Continental Affairs. Harold's department. The raid had not been a rogue patrol stumbling across an unauthorized gathering. It had been an intentional directive.

Lusat told the angel to return to the statue. It acquiesced but it lingered for a few moments first, moving through the warehouse and alleyways, passing from person to person among the shaken survivors releasing, with each pass, a wave of serene light that did not heal wounds but addressed something underneath them. Witnesses would later reach for different words to describe how it uplifted them after such a harrowing attack. The joyful mood of the gathering was gone, but the conviction that replaced it was quieter, heavier, and built to last.

Tomas Brek picked up a pitchfork from the warehouse floor. He looked at Bogdan, and with calm but unwavering conviction he said: “I will never let this happen again.” It wasn't a wish. It was a fact about the future of this new congregation. The party took a short rest in what remained of the evening and began to think seriously about the future of Viroc Industries.

Following the routing of the Viroc raid, the atmosphere at the waterfront warehouses shifted into a state of “sanctified” peace. The party observed the city’s edges “rounded off,” as a general feeling of goodness permeated the immediate area despite the surrounding industrial decay. Viktor and Lusat delivered sermons to the enthralled crowd, officially naming the manifested angelic presence Nadine. Lusat’s cobblestone statue, initially intended as a rough effigy, transformed into a perfectly chiseled conduit for divine energy, thrumming with a palpable heartbeat that connected all who defended the space.

To ensure the community's future safety, the party took direct action to arm the survivors. Viktor identified a man named Galvar, who had struck the Viroc captain during the conflict, and formally placed him in charge of the warehouse defense. In a gesture of significant trust, Viktor provided Galvar with his own branded Studded Leather Armor, which Galvar donned with immense pride. Viktor then approached Tomas Brek, who was struggling to channel his newfound healing magic. Recognizing the need for a conduit, Viktor gifted Tomas a wooden round amulet that Tomas used as a Divine Focus. With this holy symbol, Tomas successfully channeled a flash of light to heal a wounded bystander, marking the birth of the first localized cleric of Nadine. Before departing, the party paired two repaired Sending Stones scrawled with the new sigil of Nadine and provided one to Tomas to ensure a direct line to the party.

The group retreated to Anya’s Tattoo Parlor, which had become an unofficial sanctuary filled with women, children, and even members of the new militia. During a long rest, the party identified several pieces of high-end Viroc medical and defensive technology including a Shard-Infused Scalpel:, a Frostbite Salve, Prism-Tuned Ear Cuffs, and Shard Splinter Bombs. Lusat then checked his mail and found a paycheck from the Viroc Department of Operations, signaling that the cogs of corporate finance we're still in fact turning, if slow to update their roster.

During the night, Lusat experienced a breakthrough with his angel-themed tattoo. While he failed to fully attune, he unlocked the ability to automatically succeed on one charisma-based check to inspire hope within the next 24 hours, though at the cost of having disadvantage on death saving throws. Before sleep, each party member received a simultaneous vision from Nadine, a single spark of light granting a silent blessing for any violence they might enact upon the world's darkness.

The party traveled to the Docks Quarter, observing a massive buildup of mercenary forces and “mismatched” soldiers heading toward the Viroc quarter. The VSS Dominion was found moored and undergoing a rapid transformation into a dedicated warship, with crews hastily fastening armaments to its deck. Aerial reconnaissance from Esper (Lusat's familiar) revealed the ship appeaered to be loaded for a long-term siege and featured a singular, massive shard-powered arcane cannon fastened to the aft deck.

As the party boarded unaccosted, they witnessed a test firing of the arcane cannon. The weapon released a plasmic arc of green energy that sailed over the bay, crackling with enough energy to be felt by the entire party.

The party located Harold Drekanov on the aft deck, where he was sipping tea with his back to the group. The ensuing conversation revealed a total collapse of the party’s standing with the Regent. Harold justified the raid on the waterfront as “necessary surgery” to ensure his home was free of complications before he went on the “war path” against Minerva Sedgwick. Harold expressed zero tolerance for the party’s decision to stray from his kill list, specifically citing their failure to execute as instructed. To the party’s horror, Harold revealed that their “altruistic” deals were meaningless; he had used his superior divination magic to track and neutralize their targets anyway. The session concluded as Harold threw the severed head of Grigor the Ghost at their feet, declaring the party “former friends” and preparing to treat them with the same “zero tolerance” he applied to his rivals.

The party is standing on the aft deck of the *VSS Dominion*, face-to-face with a hostile Harold Drekanov and his elite security, with the head of their former contact as proof of his reach.

The sun was setting over St. Petersgrad harbor when Harold dropped his teacup.

It didn't slip. He heard it shatter against the deck without looking down. The sound of it brought six weapons cocking simultaneously — the bodyguards spread across the aft deck of the VSS Dominion. Behind the party, the arcane cannon traversed slowly in its housing, its barrel sweeping a lazy arc over the harbor. The metallic scent of a recent test firing still hung in the evening air. Fog was rolling in off the water — not enough to hide anything, just enough to frame it.

Harold looked at Viktor. “It's been a while. I think I'm going to enjoy this.”

Lusat had been waiting for this. He pulled out the pocket watch — the Rift-Flicker, taken from Lucian Drekanov, Harold's own brother — and held it where Harold could see it. Then he cast Haste on Thorun and told Harold, in the flat tone of certainty: “Only through death will you find the hope you seek.” Harold did not flinch. What followed was not clean.

Thorun, hasted and furious, made for the arcane cannon. He scaled a crate, used his friend's new horse as a step stool, got his footing, and swung his hammer true, triggering its Shard Forge Resonance. The cannon housing detonated along its fault lines. Brass fittings and wrought iron blew outward in all directions. Thorun turned his hammer on the gunner and finished him with a single swing. The cannon and its operator were gone.

So was the horse. Mutated and panicked by the shard-infused explosion, it bolted across the full length of the deck and trampled directly into Viktor and Carl, knocking Carl prone. Harold laughed — the most genuinely amused anyone had seen him all night.

The explosion left Bogdan completely unharmed. A phial in his pocket had absorbed the shard magic entirely and Harold clocked it immediately. Using powerful psychic magic he singled Bogdan out and forced him overboard into the water between the ship and the docks.

Viktor summoned the Echoes of Kaali — five spectral figures that rushed the remaining bodyguards at his direction. The bodyguards pulled bayonets and started slashing. One echo dissolved.

Lusat unleashed a Fireball at Harold. Three bodyguards who had line of sight on Lusat fired their revolvers in defense of their charge, all three connecting. Viktor reacted and shielded his friend from one shot while the other two landed. The fireball engulfed Harold — and both port-side cannons caught in the blast cooked off simultaneously, a cascading detonation that sent Harold's tea table sailing off the stern into the harbor. Harold's smirk held, but it was costing him something now.

What Harold did next nobody saw coming. He reached out psychically to the mutated horse — still loose on the deck, still panicked — and issued a mental command it had no fortitude to resist. Harold directed it back into the party. Carl planted his polearm and stopped the charge cold, but the horse still connected a hoof strike before it ran out of momentum. Viktor erupted: “Every single one of your side quests has fucked us in some way!” Harold, bleeding and singed, laughed maniacally at the chaos he had authored.

Thorun, hasted, leaped down from the cannon platform and charged Harold directly. Two bodyguards fired as he came off the platform. Both missed. Thorun hit Harold like a freight train. For the first time the smirk twisted — the arrogance becoming anger, if not rage. Thorun kept going: a second attack, a third, then a full action surge. Harold finally responded with an arcane command that twisted Thorun's mind at the last moment, redirecting his final attacks into a bodyguard instead of Harold himself. Harold Drekanov stood bleeding and battered in the light of Carl's Moonbeam. The smile broke.

Harold pushed into Thorun's mind again — pricking, finding weak points — and cast Dominate Person. The thousand-yard stare settled over Thorun's face and everyone could see it. Harold walked slowly across the burning deck, placed his hand on Thorun's shoulder, and said quietly: “Kill them, please.” Thorun turned toward the party with white knuckles.

Bogdan pulled himself up from the water below onto the docks. He placed Hex on Harold, then cast Wall of Fire upcast and centered it on Harold, catching Harold, Thorun, and a remaining bodyguard inside the inferno. Harold tried to Counterspell it and failed. The wall went up. Harold Drekanov's final inhale was choked with fire. His last breath was a guttural wail that rolled out across the bay. He went down on the aft deck of the VSS Dominion in a pile of burnt shardisite-lined coat and bent filigree, his derringer still in his hand, unfired.

The remaining bodyguards set their arms on the deck. Then a slight, imperceptible nod passed between them — and one by one they went over the railing into the water below. They were loyal to who they were loyal to. It wasn't the party. They were not pursued.

Lusat looted the body. The shard-filigree derringer had survived the fire. Harold's Department of Continental Affairs lapel pin — magical, intact — was still on what remained of his coat. Everything else had burned.

Viktor picked up Harold's skull by what was left of the hair and walked with purpose to the bridge.

Harold's second-in-command was behind the glass when he arrived. He saw the skull pressed against the window — burnt flesh, scorched hair, still recognizably Harold — and wet himself. The captain, standing beside him, looked at it differently. There was no fear on his face. What was there looked more like resignation, or maybe readiness — the expression of a man who always knew there would be a reckoning. He looked down at his Viroc insignia, pulled it off, set it on the table. He then opened the door for Viktor.

The second-in-command was escorted off the bridge by the captain's personal guards at Viktor's request. Viktor informed the captain that the destination was still Murmansk. That the purpose was still to confront Minerva Sedgewick, the captains face hardened. But, when Viktor told him the purpose of this voyage was not to restore authority over Viroc but to bring hope to the people Viroc had been trampling for decades, the captain's entire identity was reorganized in that moment. Whatever remained of his loyalty to the tyrannical institution of Viroc Industries died in that moment. With that reform it appeared as though years of hardship and tribulation melted from his features. His eyes refocused on Viktor and he replied matter-of-factly that they could be ready to embark as scheduled in three hours.

Viktor raised the question of rechristening the ship — the SS Nadine. When he explained why, there was no longer any question about where the captain's loyalties lay. He was their man. This was their moment. In twenty minutes, the flagship of Europan authority would proclaim itself anew as a beacon of hope for the world.

The party finalized their takeover of the VSS Dominion, rechristening it the SS Nadine as they embarked on a high-stakes voyage toward Murmansk. Amidst the discovery of horrific corporate secrets and unstable shardisite artifacts, the session was defined by a miraculous sacrifice from Viktor and a direct divine intervention from the angel of hope.

The session opened with Viktor performing the ritual of command, hucking a bottle of champagne against the ship’s bow. The gesture, performed without a formal speech, was met with a genuine cheer from the crew of sailors and mercenaries. As the ship prepared to sail, the party noted an uncanny, miraculous soothing of the crew's fear and uncertainty, as if their very presence was cutting a path through the atmospheric despair of St. Petersgrad.

Before departing, the party visited the brig to interrogate Harold Drekanov’s second-in-command, a man contemptuously referred to as “Piss Pants” (Mr. Fisher). Under duress and the threat of Harold’s severed head, Fisher revealed the dark purpose of the ship's voyage to Atlantis. He detailed a failed “vision” of Harold's: the destruction of the village of Svalbard in Atlantis through an aerosolized mutagen tested on the local population. Fisher confirmed that Dr. Minerva Sedgwick was the recipient of this research and that the ship's hold #2 contained the “waste product”—the horrific, mutated remains of those who failed to survive the experiments.

The party moved to Hold 3, the Viroc Arcane Affairs section, which was modeled like a miniature corporate campus within the hull. Lusat utilized a *Knock* spell to breach a secure container, revealing hundreds of well-documented and contained shardisite chips and slivers. Inside, they encountered the R&D team: Ansel, a specialist in animatronics, and Rhonda, a clerical researcher. Ansel revealed a second secure cube, identical to the one the party encountered on the train, which was coded to the handprints of the Drekanov lineage and Ansel revealed that it contained three, high-purity Shardisite Ingots.

In a move of desperate intuition, Viktor attempted to open the secure cube by pressing Harold’s charred, severed head against the lock. The contact triggered a catastrophic necrotic backlash, manifesting as a manifestation of Harold Drekanov's face surrounded by inky black tendrils which enveloped everyone in the secure container. Utilizing his Aura of the Guardian, Viktor took the full weight of the necrotic explosion to save the two scientists and the junior officer from certain death.

The blast nearly killed him, leaving his flesh eaten from his bones, but he was held from death by his Relentless Endurance. In the moments he hung between life and death, Viktor experienced a profound vision of Nadine. Unlike her previous featureless manifestations, she appeared as a classical angel of hope with piercing green eyes. She healed Viktor’s flesh with a touch, thanking him for his deeds and reaffirming the party's final mission before vanishing back into her light-filled realm of hope.

With the security features of the box now neutralized and converted into a plain steel container, the party turned their focus to the war for Murmansk. Ansel, realizing the party was “on a mission from God,” agreed to assist. The party commissioned him to use one of the shardisite ingots to construct what they called a “Razzle Dazzle Bomb”. A remote-detonated device based off of their experiment in Svalbard, capable of erasing the Viroc HQ in Murmansk from existence. In exchange, the party promised to fund Ansel’s dream project: an animatronic line of archanotech transport elephants.

As the SS Nadine stabilized its speed toward Murmansk, the party sent a final sending stone message to Galvar the Pugilist at the St. Petersgrad waterfront. They officially placed him in charge of local security and instructed the militia to protect Anya and grow the faith of Nadine. They received an immediate and hopeful reply: “The horizon is bright. The house is being built… May hope guide your path”. In addition they sent a message to Minerva Sedgewick asking her to meet to discuss the future of Viroc Industries leadership, which went unanswered.

The engines died an hour and a half out from Murmansk.

It wasn't a collision. It wasn't an explosion. There were no screams. The crew of the SS Nadine woke because the one constant sound of the voyage — the low, bone-deep drone of the engines — simply stopped. The captain had given the order: cut the engines, drop to silence, let the ship drift the rest of the way in. They knew the party was coming. There was no sense handing them any more advantage than they already had.

Topside, the water lay so still it looked like black ice, and the great hulking vessel slid across it without a sound. Behind the party the sun was just beginning to color the eastern horizon — that suspended moment of dawn when the sky bleeds from black to purple and the stars are still out. Ahead, a mile and a half off, sat the skyline of Murmansk, lit far brighter than it had been the night they left. By the time the ship drifted to a stop, it would be just outside heavy cannon range — and the city's guns would be pointed right back.

In the Viroc hold below, Ansel and his shard-addled R&D crew had worked through the night. They presented the result with wild eyes and wider grins: a makeshift contraption of glass baubles, frozen gears, and a single pull-pin, all three of the remaining refined Shardisite ingots suspended inside on delicate needles. It was a bomb. They had never built one before. Pull the pin and it would reach out for the strongest intention nearby and try to make it real — in this case, the total annihilation of Viroc HQ, contained within a seven-hundred-foot field. Probably contained. They were fairly confident on the containment.

Because raw, untapped shardisite “reaches out for potential,” the device couldn't be carried near loose shard slivers without risking premature detonation. The party stripped their unpurposed shards and handed them off. Then, rather than carry the thing in his hands, Viktor stored it inside the cavity of his chest — the shardcube tattoo that lives on his skin. There was a one-in-one-hundred chance it simply went off and ended everything right there. He did it anyway. The moment held. The world drew inward with a deep, collapsing pulse, and the bomb settled inside him.

The ship's lifeboats were unpowered and would never reach shore in time under oars. So the party did what they always did. Five of them piled into a raft, each pressed a chip of shardisite to the hull, and together pushed a single shared intention into it: go fast.

The shards melted into the wood. The raft lurched, stalled, and then a green light bled out into the water and a massive wave rose up behind them. They surfed it toward the center of the city at 80 knots, wind tearing at them, holding on for their lives — until the wave reached the shallows and broke. The raft barrel-rolled. Half the party went under. But when the wave crashed across the waterfront it washed out an entire platoon of soldiers, leaving fourteen of them coughing and prone in the surf, with no idea what had hit them.

The party recovered first. Viktor rode the wreck off the raft and cut down eight of them with his rift glaive in a single sweep before they could rise. Carl, Thorun and Bogdan finished the rest — a thunderstep here, a slash there, a hammer to the skull of the last man standing. But the alarm had been raised. Troops were mustering somewhere close. They had perhaps fifteen minutes before the bombardment began, and four hundred feet of patrolled streets between them and Viroc HQ.

They went quiet. Bogdan went invisible. Hunkered into the cover of boarded-up storefronts and barrel-fire shadows, they began the trek toward the great black brutalist cube standing dark and silent at the center of the city.

Lusat and Viktor split off and dimension-doored ahead into Anton Erikson's old office — four floors down, a nearly abandoned sub-basement that the party had never properly found, still reeking of charred mahogany and the burnt bodies they'd left in the fireplace days before. In the corner sat the directory globe, no longer hovering but still faintly enchanted, settled on the floor.

Before setting the bomb, Lusat placed his hands on the globe and reached through it, the way he had once done in St. Petersgrad — searching the building for Minerva. His mind spilled across the city, shrank down, pressed through the black concrete of Viroc HQ. The moment it entered the building, something seized him. A hand closed around his throat and pulled him in until he was inches from the face of Minerva Sedgwick. She spoke, but he was warded in silence and could only read the words on her lips “You're mine now” as her nails dug into the flesh of his neck.

Lusat answered with a fifth-level Mind Spike. In a world where belief manifests reality, a spell cast at a scrying-image is not a spell cast at nothing — the magic tore through the veil between them, and suddenly Lusat's feet landed in her actual office, eight floors up, the two of them locked in a real duel. He poured arcane force into her mind; veins stood out on her neck, blood ran where her nails dug in, and green energy welled up from beneath her coat to shield her. She answered with a curse and a magical command. He resisted both, which only enraged her further. Something in her unhinged. She let go, stepped back, vibrating with fury, and reached for the pendant at her throat. Somewhere in the building, heavy doors slid open — shink, shink, shink — but Lusat was already gone, dimension-dooring back down to Viktor with her curse-mark burning on him, marking his location wherever he fled.

Erikson's office was as good a place as any — deep in the building's bones, eight floors below Minerva. Lusat and Viktor set the device down and Viktor gripped the pin. The whole world filled in another notch as he drew it. Time froze. Dust hung motionless in the air. One by one the tumblers turned, the needles pierced the ingots, and a containment bubble began to swell — one foot wide, three foot wide, larger — as the device started drinking in every source of magical energy it could reach. It reached for Lusat and Viktor too, clawing at the magic they carried, and for a genuine moment there was fear that it might take them. Then a radiance rose up between them and the machine. Something greater than themselves decided they still had a few more steps to take. The bomb was set. Time snapped back. They started a stopwatch and agreed to hold for ninety seconds before teleporting clear.

When the time came, Lusat grabbed Viktor's shoulder and cast Dimension Door for the rendezvous point where they'd left the others — and the curse-mark yanked the spell off course. Instead of the alleyway, they coalesced at the front foyer of Viroc HQ, beside the rest of the party, who had since fought their way to through the doors. Short time no see. There was no time to explain. Thirty seconds left. Everyone ran.

They made it fifty feet from the building before it happened. A massive inward rush of air, a sucking implosion, and then a single deep thunnnggg as everything within a hundred feet of the building — dust, debris, anything not bolted down — flattened to the ground at once. The party felt it on their backs like a sunburn. The bombardment from the SS Nadine had already begun; shells were dropping across the waterfront, cannon fire screaming in both directions, eardrums near to bleeding.

But it appeared that Viroc HQ still stood. Heavily damaged, crumbling, floors collapsed and gutted — but its external walls standing. And Lusat was no where to be seen.

The curse had caught him at the threshold and held him at the door while the others ran. When the bomb went off, Minerva's voice whispered in his head — “if I go down, you're coming with me” — and a white flash took him out of the world entirely.

Viktor turned around, did the math, found it short by one, and charged back through the doors into a building that no longer resembled the one he'd left — floors missing down to the fourth sub-level, rubble and open sky, embers drifting down. Lusat's crumpled body lay against a wall, breathing but unconscious.

In the space between, Lusat opened his eyes to the smiling face of his divine patron. Nadine — no longer featureless, manifest and present in a world of her own making. She placed a hand on his shoulder. There was a sadness in her smile. “You've done well. If you want, you can rest now.” Lusat asked if the task was finished. Told that it wasn't, he refused: “Then I can't rest yet.” The gentle hand on his shoulder became a gentle nudge, and he was sent back.

Viktor was inches from his face when he woke, screaming obscenities while casting Prayer of Healing. Rather than trusting his own limits as a healer, he called out to Nadine directly for the help he knew he couldn't give. Lusat came back to the world of the living carrying the heavy, sobering knowledge that his god had been fully ready to receive him, job done. Carl slathered restorative ointment over him as he contemplated his resurrection. They turned back toward the heart of the ruins.

As Lusat caught his breath, the click of a woman's boot heels approached across the shattered marble.

Minerva walked out of the rubble half-limping, disheveled, maniacal — magic literally dripping from her fingertips, her eyes lit with green fire. She had survived the blast wrapped in the highest-grade Viroc wards, and the detonation had burned through every protective trick she had. There was no taking her alive, and it showed in her face. Viktor had promised that she would die today. She had every intention of taking the party with her.

She opened by throwing everything she had — all that dripping rage coalesced into a single wave of necrotic force that splashed over the whole party, burning flesh, eating armor. But she let out more than she could hold. Viktor replied with Rebuke the Violent, and the wave of necrosis was returned in kind. It roiled back over her, Viktor channeling the Minerva's own power back into her. She howled, her magic went wild, her cold, calculating visage was erased in an agonized fury.

In the roofless ruin of fallen floors and drifting embers, she stood up coughing blood, magic tears running from bloodshot eyes, hair singed wild — she saw the writing on the wall. The maniacal confidence collapsed into an insane sorrow. “Look what you've done. It was going to be mine! All mine! I would have changed the world!!”

She tried one more time — three Scorching Rays thrown towards the party. Lusat counterspelled them from the ground, burning last ounce of ability die to do it, the rays curling in on themselves and dissipating into nothing. Lusat took the last of his shard slivers, stepped into the body of his freshly summoned lesser angel. It's wings spreading from his own back, saying as he raised his hands high: “With this, my task is complete. I can rest.”

He cast the fireball through the angel's aura. It arrived as pure radiance and engulfed her. In the final instant — refusing to leave no mark on the world, determined to brand herself onto her killers — Minerva reached for one last Hellish Rebuke. But she had already given her last, her spell never came. Her final gesture of revenge, her last ability to leave any impression on this world at all, was snuffed out utterly and completely. Surrounded by her enemies, her once great influence and greed was reduced to this crumbled marble rubble. The divine fire erased her from this world, and with her demise, the last of Viroc Industries leadership was gone.

The stain of Viroc Industries on the world was not gone. The marks of unchecked ambition and inhuman greed left by the Drekanov dynasty — Seraphim, Lucian, Harold, Ernst — would take years, perhaps decades, to scrub away. The world had been changed irreversibly: an entirely new species of magical being was already spilling out across the countryside, born of what those men had done. A still-coalescing dragon was birthed onto the Earth, somewhere past the horizon, far beyond the party's reach.

But in answer to that terror, something else had been born into the world. A force for good. A force for cleansing. A hope the world could rally around — the promise that things could be better. Made real in a tattoo parlor, in a waterfront warehouse, in a cobblestone effigy, in a colossus of evil rechristened in an angel's name, and in the people who had named her and carried her light all across Europa. As the sun crested the horizon behind them, the survivors stood in the ruins of the legacy they had come to unmake.

The task was complete. They could rest now.

Jonas Lasker, head of the cleanup crew arrived on site. Publicly, he relieved the party of duty; privately, he warned them of deeper dangers—sealed directives signed by Lucien Drekanov, mysterious night shipments, and disappearing workers. Jonas urged the group to keep digging, pressing a few incriminating scraps into their hands.

From the collapsed shaft staggered Thorun Darkstone, a dwarven engineer who had just slain a lone mutant below. Wounded but resolute, Thorun confirmed the collapse was no accident and joined forces with the party, binding his fate to theirs.

Later that same night, while escorting Jonas near the Murmansk docks, the group was ambushed by one of Lucien’s escaped prototypes. A massive reptilian mutant released to silence Jonas. The brutal fight ended with the creature slain, but Jonas suffered mortal wounds and died on the pier. His final act was entrusting the party with his suspicions and scraps of evidence.

After defeating a large monster, the group plans to report their success and seek compensation, with members agreeing to meet at a bar the following day after a rest period. They discuss inconsistencies in a newspaper article about a recent incident and debate whether to investigate further or play along with the company's narrative. The group eventually meets with a high-ranking company official who tasks them with investigating a warehouse on the docks, leading to various planning and preparation activities including acquiring weapons and magical items.

The group discusses their next steps after defeating a large monster, including how to report their success and seek compensation. They decide to take a long rest at their respective lodgings before meeting at the Lantern Tap Room bar the next day. During the rest period, one character plans to cast a “find familiar” spell. The party agrees to meet around 1 PM after getting 8 hours of sleep, with Thorun noting his usual work shift would start at 2 PM if circumstances were normal.

The group discusses the newspaper article about the recent incident, noting inconsistencies in the reported numbers of casualties and the cover-up of the true events. They consider their options, including investigating further or playing along with the company's narrative. The team debates whether to report what really happened or simply collect their payment. They decide to visit the Gilded Gull, a local establishment mentioned in the paper, to gather more information and possibly enjoy a meal.

The group visits the Gilded Gull restaurant, which is empty except for them. Bogdan investigates the kitchen and finds no signs of recent use. A well-dressed woman enters and sits at a table set for tea. The group causes a commotion, leading the host to ask them to leave. One member casts a charm spell on the host and offers gold, allowing them to stay. The woman makes her presence known loudly, and when approached, she questions their presence in the restaurant. Lusat explains they are associates of Mr. Laster, who was killed the previous night, and they came to relieve their sorrow.

The group meets with a woman who appears to be a high-ranking company official. She questions their employment status and reveals that Anton Ereckson, who hired them, is not to be trusted and works for Lucian Drekanov, the Executive Regent of Operations. The woman expresses frustration with Anton's actions, including his pilfering of supplies, and seeks information about his activities. She offers the group direction, implying they could be useful to her in uncovering Anton's motives and plans. She Identifies herself as Dr. Minerva Sedgewick, Regent of Arcane Affairs.

Dr. Minerva Sedgewick, Regent of Arcane Affairs at Viroc Industries, tasks the group with investigating a warehouse on the docks that she suspects Anton Erekson is using for illicit activities. She provides them with identifying Department of Arcane Affairs badges but warns that if caught, she will deny involvement. The group discusses potential strategies for accessing the warehouse and shares information about missing syringes and mutated creatures. Dr. Sedgewick expresses concern about the potential catastrophic nature of the situation and examines a tooth from the creature tagged P-03 that attacked them the night previous.

The group meets with Dr. Minerva Sedgewick who takes possession of items related to a dangerous creature they encountered. She instructs them to investigate a warehouse and provides them with a sending stone for communication. The woman also arranges for the cook to supply the group with black market weapons. During a private conversation, she informs one member that there is no known cure for shard-blight, but offers to research it if they prove useful. The meeting concludes with the group preparing to carry out their assigned task.

The group discusses their recent acquisition of weapons from the cook's shady dealer, including a revolver and a hand crossbow. They debate the best time to investigate the warehouse district, considering the pros and cons of going during the day versus at night. They ultimately decide to send a hawk familiar to scout the area before making a decision. Lusat plans to cast Mage Armor in preparation for their mission.

The group discusses plans to infiltrate a heavily guarded warehouse. They consider various approaches, including using disguises and forged paperwork, but encounter difficulties with their magical badges that resist concealment. After debating options like waiting until nightfall or attempting a direct assault, they ultimately decide to visit the employee canteen first. At the canteen, the proprietor recognizes their badges and becomes much more welcoming and eager to assist them.

The group visits a magical shop where they purchase various items, including silver daggers, a map, and a bag of holding. Bogdan buys an expensive exotic potion called “Nyx Pearl” from Lemuria. He takes a shot at a nearby bar, experiencing magical effects such as enhanced vision, the ability to see magical auras, and temporary camouflage-like skin changes. The potion appears to grant detect magic and darkvision abilities, with nine doses remaining. The group considers deception at the warehouse with their newly acquired antique badges, from the canteen.

The group discusses their plan to infiltrate a warehouse guarded by Viroc security. They initially try to cause a distraction and use magic to unlock the door, but this fails and nearly gets them arrested. They talk their way out of that. putting the guards on high alert. After observing a shift change via boat, they debate whether to forge paperwork, use disguises, or directly assault the guards to gain entry. They note the guards seem well-equipped and formidable. The group decides to take more time to observe and plan rather than rushing in, potentially waiting a day to gather more information or acquire better resources like invisibility spells. They are conflicted about using violence but acknowledge it may be necessary to complete their mission of gathering information from inside the warehouse.

The group plans and executes a surprise attack on two guards outside a warehouse. Meek casts Pass Without Trace to enhance stealth, then Lusat launches a fireball as the opening move. The rest of the party follows up with gunfire and spells, quickly dispatching both guards. After the successful ambush, they approach the warehouse door. When lockpicking fails, Lusat casts Knock to open it, revealing glimpses of green glowing lights inside.

The team discussed welcoming a new player and addressed the aftermath of an explosion, including examining bodies and finding unusual items. They explored a warehouse, discovering various rooms and magical locks, while also finding a ledger of cargo movements that stopped abruptly six months ago. The group found a refined shardisite stone that required special handling, and after preparing for potential combat, they engaged in a series of intense battles against various enemies, ultimately emerging victorious with new weapons in tow.

The team discussed the aftermath of the attack on the guards, examining bodies and finding some plus one ammunition. They entered the warehouse where they sensed a strong presence of raw magic in the air. The group explored the warehouse, discovering it had functional windows and a catwalk that wasn't visible from outside. They found disturbed cargo and a large bone in a crate of straw, which Lews failed to identify with a nature check. Meek and others attempted to pick locks on various doors, with limited success, leading to suggestions of using brute force or magic to open them. The team discussed the possibility of using detect magic to reveal hidden items but decided to explore further first, considering the potential for combat.

The group explored the warehouse, discovering a series of offices and a hidden cache of glowing powder-filled jars. They encountered a magical lock on one door, which Lews was able to open with a successful knock spell. In another office, Lews found a complete ledger of cargo movements that stopped abruptly six months ago. The team discussed whether to investigate the green-lit door or continue searching the building, ultimately deciding to prioritize the green door due to a perceived time constraint. They also noted movement outside in the city, suggesting they may have attracted attention to their investigation.

The group discovered a warehouse containing specialized tools and a large piece of refined shardisite stone, which was glowing with a green light. They attempted to secure the stone but encountered difficulties due to its raw magical properties. After some discussion, they considered contacting Dr. Sedgewick to safely transport the stone away but decided against it. Meanwhile, they continued gathering jars and preparing for an impending threat from a mob approaching outside.

Thorun was affected by handling the shardisite such that time had slowed slightly for him while their friends appeared to be moving faster from his point of view. They encountered 8 ununiformed and unbadged figures emerging from shadowy streets outside, with 4 moving in robotic lockstep and 4 following behind. The group decided to bar the warehouse doors and prepare for combat. They assigned initiative roles to team members, with Meek taking the first action. The group planned their strategy, considering window positions and potential escape routes, as a feminine-voiced person outside threatened an “easy” or “hard” way.

The group discussed a tactical situation involving an armed confrontation. Silas fired his rifle through a broken window pane, but the shot missed and the woman showed no reaction. The team then debated whether to stay put and ready a fireball or move upstairs, ultimately deciding to move to a catwalk. Bogdan used a thunder step ability to attack the automatons, causing damage and temporarily locking the door. The group also noted that the building was unstable, with a girder falling from the ceiling.

The group engaged in a detailed role-playing session involving a combat scenario where characters used various weapons and abilities against multiple enemies. André narrated the action, describing how characters moved, attacked, and used spells, including a dramatic fireball that partially destroyed several automaton enemies and caused significant damage to others. With the building unstable, and spells flying in all directions, Lews found himself restrained beneath a fallen steel girder, and Meek and Bogdan incapacitated. The team encountered automatons, a breacher, and a mysterious woman who cast spells that incapacitated some members. Silas was hit repeatedly by a magically focused sniper.

They used tactics like smoke bombs, sneak attacks, and healing to overcome their enemies. The combat was intense, with close calls and strategic decisions made on the fly. The players faced illusions and had to determine which targets were real. André clarified the rules for certain abilities and spells, such as Hunter's Mark and magic missile. The fight progressed with the group working together to defeat their opponents, though some confusion arose about the effectiveness of certain actions. They successfully defeated most of their opponents but the shadowy woman and the ranged attacker escaped mostly unharmed. Meek then picked up the breacher’s shotgun and the session ended.

The group engaged in a series of strategic discussions and intense combat scenarios, focusing on enhancing their equipment with a powerful substance called Shardisite and confronting various adversaries. They encountered mysterious characters, explored magical artifacts, and uncovered evidence of unauthorized activities, leading to a climactic battle against high-ranking officials. Throughout their journey, the group demonstrated teamwork, adaptability, and tactical prowess, ultimately emerging victorious in their confrontations while navigating complex political and magical landscapes.

Following the confrontation at the warehouse, the team discussed using the refined Shardisite to enhance their equipment. Under André’s guidance regarding the risks of energy release, Thorun successfully split the material into four fragments using a delicate approach with a rock hammer. The process triggered a blinding white light, granting Silas a vision of his past connections with Thorun , while Bogdan channeled the energy into his tome. Thorun and Silas successfully imbued their weapons, though Lusat’s attempt to enchant his cloak resulted in the cloak itself becoming invisible due to a moment of doubt. During this process, a man named Carl claiming to be from Harbor Security arrived, but the group remained suspicious of his true intentions.

The team successfully secured the warehouse by convincing the night watchmen to evacuate, citing a Shardisite leak and potential contamination. With the area cleared, they returned to Viroc HQ to meet with Dr. Minerva Sedgwick. They turned over the mysterious bone, the jars of powder, and the inventory manifests they had recovered. Sedgwick appeared notably relieved to see the manifests, which were initialed by Anton Erickson, providing a direct link to his unauthorized activities.

Dr. Sedgwick reviewed the evidence of illegal cargo and the team's encounter with the automaton attackers. In recognition of their work, the group received payment in platinum coins and was advised to keep a low profile. While offered housing in the Department of Arcane Affairs dormitories, the team opted to remain at their current lodgings for the time being. During their rest, the party experienced vivid dreams that provided insight into their personal histories and emotional states. The group also spent time adjusting their gear and familiarizing themselves with the mechanics of their newly enhanced Shardisite items.

The team received sealed messages from the Department of Operations, summoning them to a meeting at the Administration Tower. After a magical breakfast at the Gull restaurant—which granted them temporary tactical advantages—they proceeded to Suite 4C to meet with Field Officer Anton Erickson. The meeting was intended to discuss their recent activities, but the atmosphere was immediately hostile.

In a luxurious underground office, Anton Erickson accused the group of stealing from the warehouse. Tensions quickly escalated into a violent confrontation as Anton and his associate, Galina, unleashed magical attacks. The group responded with a coordinated defense, utilizing spells like Haste, Moonbeam, and Mind Spike. Despite Anton's attempts to charm and control members of the party, the team adapted their strategy to overcome his high-ranking status and magical prowess.

Through strategic spellcasting and focused fire, the team managed to defeat Anton in the fourth round of combat. His ally, Galina, attempted to hide and launch counterattacks but was eventually finished off by a Mind Spike spell. With both enemies eliminated, the group discovered Galina's true appearance and a significant scar on her face, signaling a decisive but likely complicated victory against the company's internal corruption.

The group explored various locations and discovered magical items while dividing loot equally among members. They encountered dangerous situations and covered up incidents, leading to discussions about defense strategies and plans to exit the area. The team investigated the Department of Arcane Affairs, gathered intelligence about Drekenov's activities, and planned their next steps while managing inventory and supplies.

The group explored a room containing a magical globe with glowing city spots, a bookshelf with ancient tomes, and a deceased woman's belongings. They discovered a spellbook filled with low to mid-level spells, a black glass memory crystal, and various magical items including a choker, a ring, and a pistol with regenerating properties. The group decided to divide the loot equally, with each member receiving 66 gold pieces and the ability to copy spells from the spellbook. They also discussed the need for better defense against potential guards who might arrive soon.

The group encountered a dangerous situation involving Anton, who was killed during a confrontation. They decided to cover up the incident by burning the bodies in the fireplace. The group took various items from Anton's office, including a wand of counterspell and a magical cloak among others. They left the scene after ensuring that any evidence of the fight was hidden or destroyed. The group then returned to Dr. Sedgwick’s office, where they planned their next steps and discussed the need for extraction from the area.

The group discussed a plan to create a distraction and leave the building without being detected, using deception and minor illusions. They successfully convinced a receptionist that Silas was Anton using Disguise Self and he was needed on the 4th floor, allowing them to exit unhindered. Upon entering the Department of Arcane Affairs, they found it bustling with activity and encountered Minerva Sedgwick, who examined a syringe containing a viable embryo splice. She confirmed their suspicions about the department's involvement in hijacking shipments and using mutagenic catalysts. The group also found ancient books about dragons and elder worms, which Dr. Sedgwick found intriguing but not impossible. They concluded that they had evidence linking Drekenov to the activities, but needed to determine their next steps.

The group discussed their options after a battle, focusing on tracking down the creature that attacked them. Dr. Sedgwick offered advice on where to look and shared her research on Shardisite refinement techniques and safer shipment methods at the facility. Despite not having official authorization, the team planned to investigate the Department of Operations' buildings to find a boat for their pursuit.

The group identified several unique magical items recovered during their investigation. These included a silverspun quill that serves as an arcane focus, a cloak of veiled steps for enhanced stealth, and a silent spell-focused choker that enables spellcasting without components once per day. Other discoveries included a glass dagger dealing additional psychic damage, and a coat of hidden scripts that functions as mage armor. The group also examined a suspicious fake badge, suggesting a potential conspiracy beyond Seraphim Drekanov.

The team managed their newly acquired inventory, which included the signet pen, badge, ring, and various potions. They visited a canteen to cash their payroll checks, receiving additional gold. Taking advantage of their Viroc employee status to secure lower prices, the team purchased essential supplies, including Shardisite handling tongs, beast skin armor, and a brass compass.

The party explored the bustling docks of Murmansk, observing various vessels for their mission. After debating several magical and persuasive approaches to obtain a security boat, the group decided to forge a Viroc requisition document. By utilizing a special pen activated by a “message” spell and a successful deception, they successfully fooled the guards and secured a security vessel.

Setting out to sea, the team passed a burned-down warehouse and observed the city's mining scars and pollution. As night fell, they spotted a structure with a strong magical presence: Drekenov Manor. They observed a hardened security team of 12 members at the docks but remained undetected as they scouted a nearby landing area to dock their boat.

The group devised a plan to investigate the manor, opting to berth their boat at a nearby beach and take a long rest within a tiny hut. The plan involved sending a scout to sneak into the manor to gather intelligence on facility operations and delivery patterns. They established a watch schedule to monitor the area for any unusual activity or potential new warehouse locations in town.

During the night watch, the group observed a mysterious green light pulse at midnight and a winged figure at sunrise. They discussed how their exposure to Shardisite was beginning to change their perceptions and senses. The session concluded with the team weighing the risks of immediate action versus continued caution as they prepared to infiltrate Drekenov's domain.

The group reflected on their previous actions, including the killing of Officer Anton Erickson and the forging of documents, before traveling to Drekanov Manor where they set up camp and observed suspicious activity. They discussed magical item attunement and planned to use a newly attuned cloak for infiltration, while also discovering new capabilities with their Viroc sending stones. The session concluded with combat encounters against enemy patrols and the group's subsequent exploration of Drekanov Manor, where they uncovered clues about the missing Seraphim Drekanov.

The group spent time attuning to recovered magical items. Silas successfully attuned to the Cloak of Veiled Steps after several attempts, integrating it into a plan for an invisible infiltration of a nearby fortress. The team also discovered that their Viroc sending stones could be linked to form a communication network, a tactical advantage for their upcoming mission.

Following a concerning message from Dr. Sedgwick indicating that the party is now wanted in Murmansk, the group realized they could not return to their base. Lusat suggested using his familiar to survey Drekanov Manor from the air, providing a safe way to gather intelligence. The team also clarified the limitations of their sending stones, noting they can only be used once per day, which forced a more cautious approach to their next moves.

The party engaged a Viroc patrol on the beach, initiated by Silas unleashing a devastating level 3 fireball. While some guards managed to protect themselves with shield spells, the blast left the unit dazed and smoking. An intense skirmish followed, featuring shotgun blasts, rifle fire, and Bogdan’s Eldritch Blasts. During the fight, one enemy injected himself with a mysterious substance to gain enhanced abilities. Ultimately, the party emerged victorious after Victor delivered a final crushing blow to the last guard.

Following the battle, the group opted to use the guards' heavy plate armor as a disguise, debating the trade-offs between protection and mobility. They recovered several items, including Shardisite Infusion Vials and a “proto-draconic reagent” capable of causing draconic mutations. After a short rest to heal and bury the enemy bodies, the team finalized their plan to pose as a returning patrol escorting a prisoner.

The group approached the imposing, castle-like Drekanov Manor. Despite ill-fitting armor and some initial skepticism from the sentries, the party successfully bluffed their way past the gates. Once inside the courtyard, they observed that the guards possessed unsettling reptilian features, such as scale-like markings on their skin. The team noted several guard positions and entrances while maintaining their cover.

Inside the manor, the team entered a massive chapel dominated by a suspended T-Rex fossil and a giant statue of Seraphim Drekanov. The area was eerily devoid of guards but filled with a pervasive smell of death and an omnipresent, oppressive humming. Though they considered using the fossil as a distraction, the group decided the space was too large for the plan to be effective and moved deeper into the residence.

Exploring the residential wing, the group found evidence that the manor had been in decline for months. They discovered a resignation letter from the servants dated half a year ago and portraits of the Drekanov family. The team noted the continued absence of Seraphim himself, whom no one had seen for a significant amount of time.

In the upper living quarters, the group discovered the desiccated body of a man they identified as Ernst Drekanov, the Regent of Financial Affairs. Moving to the basement, they encountered a pantry and a room sealed by a magical barrier. Using a knock spell to enter, they found a horrific chamber filled with the decaying remains of failed reptilian experiments, many still in Viroc uniforms. As they exited the room, they were intercepted by four Viroc guards preparing for a fight, bringing the session to a climactic halt.

The group explored various areas of Drekanov Manor, including a chapel and an arcane laboratory, while discovering magical items and facing challenges like extracting gemstones from a massive statue. They encountered multiple combat scenarios involving guards and other enemies, using a mix of stealth, deception, and direct confrontation to progress through the facility. The session concluded with the group attempting to escape a prison complex after an intense confrontation with the manor's leadership.

The team investigated the south wing chapel, noting the absence of a dining hall in the basement level. While observing guard patrols, the group considered using disguises to blend in. During their search, they recovered several magical items, including various potions, Boots of Elvenkind, and an Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location. Uncertain of the building's exact layout, the team debated splitting up before deciding to investigate the massive statue of Drekanov.

The group encountered a 60-foot tall statue of Seraphim Drekanov and attempted to extract two Shardisite gemstones from its eyes. Using specialized tools and potions, they faced several near-misses. Bogdan successfully caught one falling stone, but Viktor dropped the second, triggering a Shardisite explosion. Following the blast, a high-pitched chime echoed through the chapel, and Viktor utilized a prayer of healing to restore the wounded party members.

The group discovered alcoves within the chapel protected by magical barriers. They brainstormed ways to bypass the seals, including the use of Misty Step or finding a steward to unlock them. After successfully securing the spinning Shardisite gemstone in a jar, the team decided to scout the upper floors, feeling that the courtyard below left them too exposed to enemy eyes.

While exploring the mansion the party began to smell the telltale scent of decay. Upon entering a bedroom, they discovered the desiccated corpse of (presumably) Ernst Drekanov with some suspicious evidence concerning its state. They party was unable to properly confirm the cause of death but the state of the body suggested foul play and that the corpse had been left alone for quite some time.

The team focused on an iron door guarded by two elite sentries. Viktor suggested a social approach, using his persuasion to convince the guards they were escorting a captured agitator to Lucien Drekanov. While they noted a dinosaur-like skeleton in the floor and staff in a nearby dining hall, they prioritized the guards. The group prepared for the possibility that the deception would fail, requiring a forced entry.

The group entered an arcane laboratory converted from a chapel and confronted Lucien Drekanov. Their attempt to present a fake prisoner failed when Lucien’s keen senses saw through the ruse. A powerful spell was unleashed, forcing a desperate retreat. Thorun managed to escape by jumping from a balcony, but the rest of the party was captured and subdued.

The party (minus Thorun) awoke in individual cells with their equipment missing. While some used Misty Step to bypass the bars, others used brute force to break out. Simultaneously, Thorun attempted to scale the manor walls to reunite with the team, but he was intercepted by two guards in the courtyard. After a failed attempt at deception, a fight broke out between Thorun and his pursuers.

As the rest of the group progressed through the prison corridors, they engaged a wave of guards. Silas and Bogdan unleashed spells while Victor and Carl provided defense via Sanctuary. Thorun, despite being grappled, defeated several guards with powerful melee strikes. The battle moved into a circular room where Bogdan cast Wall of Fire, trapping the enemies in a lethal ring of heat.

The combat concluded with the deaths of the prison guards, including one shot point-blank during the chaos. The group hurriedly discussed hiding the bodies to maintain the element of surprise. However, as they prepared to make their final exit, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed from a distance, signaling that their escape was far from over.

The group navigated through various sections of Drekanov Manor, encountering guards, automata, and a bedridden Seraphim Drekanov while completing tasks and acquiring items. They engaged in combat scenarios and magical duels, using spells and abilities to defeat enemies and influence cultists at a party. The session concluded with the group successfully defeating all the cultists and guards in a final battle in the great hall, as Lucien Drekanov unleashed the first dragon unto the world.

Thorun moved through a grand hall, overhearing guards discuss a password change to “Amberfall” at 1700. In the library, he disabled a brass automaton using an override pin before discovering a bedridden Seraphim Drekanov. The elder Drekanov was connected to a network of crystals scrying the manor's surroundings. In a botched attempt to stabilize him with a potion, Thorun inadvertently caused Seraphim's death. After failing to pick a bedside safe, Thorun crossed an arcane-charged courtyard. Though the energy arcs destroyed his stabilizing bracers, he emerged otherwise unscathed.

Thorun entered a chaotic kitchen and managed to earn the trust of the cooks by violently beheading a goose during a frantic encounter. Moving back into the corridors, he intercepted a guard by slamming a locker onto him, preventing an alarm. From the guard, he recovered a magical cutlass, several ampoules, and a cache of gold coins.

The party reunited in the dungeons, recovering several powerful items: Verdant Shard Capacitors, a Tesla Rod, and a Shardwind Cutlass. Lusat identified the Verdant Nexus Prism, an artifact allowing the group to retreat into a pocket dimension. With a shard storm approaching, the group also gathered Shardshock Ampoules—explosive devices capable of dealing massive damage—before planning their exit from the lower levels.

The party prepared to infiltrate a feast, observing guards mingling with devotees. They weighed the risks of using disguise potions and debated the ethics of using fireballs in a crowded room. Ultimately, they opted for a more subtle approach, using a suggestion spell to peel guards away from the party to secure their uniforms. During this time, the group attuned to several recovered items, including a magical coat and wand.

The ruse was partially compromised when a guard recognized Silas. A chase ensued back to the kitchen, where the group stood their ground against an enemy wielding an Emerald Rift Glaive. A fierce combat followed involving rifle fire and Tesla Rods. The group eventually defeated the high-threat target after incapacitating him with a sleep spell.

Lusat successfully attuned to items previously owned by Anton, expelling his lingering presence from a wand and coat. The group then executed a bold plan using Mass Suggestion on the cultists at the feast, convincing them to leave their robes and belongings in the kitchen. The spell affected over half the targets. While most cultists were oblivious, one who followed the party to the kitchen was swiftly neutralized by Silas.

Preparing for the climax, the group used a long-rest item to regain their strength. They formulated a “scorched earth” strategy, planning to blanket the great hall with Shardshock Ampoules and fireball spells. Despite uncertainty about the room's exact layout, the group committed to the plan, aiming to release total destruction upon the cultist gathering.

The party successfully cleared the great hall of all guards and cultists through a barrage of magical attacks. As the last enemies fell, raw magical energy began to coalesce and flow toward the chapel. The disembodied voice of Lucien Drekanov delivered a final monologue, claiming total authority and promising to rule with “calculus and power.” In the session’s final moments, a dragon—the first of its kind—shattered the chapel walls and began crawling into the courtyard, signaling a terrifying new era for the world.

Set at the close of the Age of Nations, the Genesis campaign follows a group of outsiders arriving in Murmansk, a brutal frontier town controlled by Viroc Industries and built atop one of the original Shardisite mining claims, The First Cut.

What begins as routine work, dockside violence, and local intrigue around the mine soon reveals deeper rot beneath the town’s corporate order. Propaganda masks lethal working conditions. Security crackdowns escalate. Strange anomalies spread through the city, and rumors of hidden experiments refuse to stay buried.

As the party digs deeper, they are drawn into the legacy of the Drekanov family and Viroc Industries’ concealed history. Street-level incidents and official cover stories give way to direct confrontation at Drekanov Manor, where the truth behind the Drekanov’s influence and its fanatical following, known as The Verdant Light, erupts into a world-changing, life-or-death reckoning.

This is an age of miracles and machines and the consequences of Drekanov ambition will endure for generations…

Narrative session recaps are available here.

André Palmier

They struck the Cordoban colors before they entered the weather. Rolled them up, stowed them, and went in flying nothing at all.

Arkady had already put two messages out to Hartemple. The first went by sending stone and came back almost at once: no contacts in Savannah. The second went into the hole of holding as a written note asking Miss K to start cultivating people in Savannah, in Reno, and along the Quebec border, with a bonus in it for her if she succeeded, signed Three Boats & Hoes. Somebody pointed out that the company name would stop being accurate the moment they sold a boat.

Then the cloud cover took them.

Visibility dropped to fifty feet. The light went flat and distant, the rain started somewhere below them, and everyone on deck turned their collars up. Chet stopped looking anywhere but his compass. The cold was the first thing that was wrong, though nobody said so yet, because they had come northwest out of Havana and tropical air does not do that.

The second thing was the thrumming.

It came through the cloud at intervals, from one angle and then another, never the same bearing twice. Far enough off to be deniable and close enough to have a presence. Chet could not place it either. Between the thrums, two of them picked out gunfire, the crack of rifle and pistol work carried on the wind, nowhere near them and coming from everywhere at once.

Arkady lashed himself to the bow beside the harpoon and began throwing ball bearings out into the fog to listen for what they hit. He threw twenty-five of them. They hit nothing.

Chet put the question of altitude to the deck and Tauon called it: go below, and let the rain wash them clean.

Under the cloud there was open water, foamy and kicked up by hard rain, and visibility of about two hundred feet. Icy rain on exposed skin. From the rail they could see the envelope brushing the underside of the cloud and the swirl of it curling away behind the ship, and in among that, every so often, other swirls. Something large doing exactly what they were doing, on the other side.

Tauon caught one for half a second. A pale translucent keel skimming the cloud base, and then gone.

That was when the cold stopped being weather.

Tauon said it out loud to the deck. A place in constant war, in a world where belief manifests, where enough fighting and dying has happened in one place. There was a ghost ship out there and it had been pacing them for the better part of an hour.

Yazan went into bladesong and danced at the wheel, one hand on it and the rest of him in motion, trying to gather the ambient magic the way the crew had done above the Caribbean. Arkady, who had seen it work once, got up and imitated him. It did not take. The storm over the straits had been a magical thing and had fed them. This was only rain. Yazan could feel the difference, the power coming out of him instead of into him.

Arkady opened the Compass of Need. The needle sat dead on the ship's heading and stayed there.

Then a ghostly vessel dropped out of the cloud off one shoulder, and a second dropped off the other, and the Boats N Hoes was under escort.

They did not fire. They did not close. They did not try to stop anything. They held station at fifty or seventy-five feet on either side, and there were figures on their decks, translucent and ghastly and quite obviously not alive, and some of those figures were looking directly into the crew.

They were military. Unmistakably military, and unmistakably centuries out of date in hull and rig. Yazan has spent his life around magically born things and none of it surprised him, except for one detail he had to ask about out loud, which was that in his entire experience something like this did not simply decline to attack.

For half an hour the three ships flew together through the rain.

At one point the galleon on the right dipped far enough below the cloud for its colors to show, tattered and flickering, and the emblazoned puma of Amazonia stood out of the murk for a moment and was gone. Not long after, Chet's nerves moved the wheel a few degrees before he caught it and corrected, and in that moment they came close enough to the vessel on the left to see that every soldier on her deck was Cordoban.

Then the lights of the city came up out of the dark ahead, and both galleons climbed back into the cloud.

The rain thinned to drizzle, then mist, then nothing. The sky opened into a strip of evening, purple on one side and red on the other, and Savannah sat in the middle of a clear eye perhaps fifteen miles across with the weather standing in a wall all the way around it.

It is a city in a swamp. Tributaries and moss and low ground, farms and plantations scattered through the wet country outside it, and more structures than lights by a long way. Whole districts of it are rotted and abandoned and overgrown. Some of it is kept beautifully. The two sit next to each other without apparent logic.

There is no gantry quarter. Airships are moored wherever their owners found room. Circling it, Scout could find no garrison, no barracks, no patrol, and no watchtower anywhere in the city.

They decided to set down outside town and walk in. Arkady put the compass up again and it drifted, roughly, toward the city, which Chet found appalling.

“That is not a trustworthy navigational device.”

He put them down beside an abandoned plantation on the west side, an overgrown ruin of a farmhouse with the old irrigation lines still readable under the swamp, a road running into town just past the property marker. He dropped anchor, then went and made the damaged sloop fast himself without being asked, and said he would stay with the ships and wait for Miyake. Tauon told him to make sure she knew not to open the crates in the hold.

The hole of holding had a reply in it by then. Miss K's note read: “That's a tall order but I'll get right on it. I expect a Christmas bonus.”

They decided to actually send her one. Tauon went looking for ribbon in the workshop and found canvas, and Yazan said there was a Cordoban flag they had pulled off the sloop, grey and gold, and went to get it.

The flag was aboard the sloop. Yazan fetched it, bundled it in one hand, and stepped down off the hull.

The moment his boots hit the ground the air came apart. Rifle fire from somewhere he could not see, branches going, dirt jumping, rounds passing close enough to be unmistakable, and no idea at all where any of it was coming from. He went straight into thunder step and landed on the deck of the Boats N Hoes in a crack of displaced air.

The gunfire stopped the instant he was aboard.

Chet had eyes on it. “Somebody fucking shot out of that house. I didn't see any gun smoke.” His hand had gone to his pepperbox and stayed there.

There was no light in the house. There was no powder smoke anywhere, and there should have been a great deal of it.

Tauon walked down off the ship and started toward the building. Nothing happened. He crossed a hundred feet of wet ground with nothing for company but the squelch of his own boots and the willow branches scraping his shoulders, and stopped thirty feet short of the porch. It is a rotting wreck. Sunken decking, broken planks standing up out of the wraparound, sections of roof sagging in.

He looked down. In all that soft wet earth the only disturbance was his own tracks. Nobody had walked there in decades.

Arkady ran the experiment from the ship. He put on Lieutenant Marin, the Amazonian officer, and stepped off onto the ground. Nothing. He changed into the scrap dealer, neutral and nobody's, and stepped off again. Nothing.

Then he planted a silent image of a Cordoban flag on the ground between the ship and the house.

A flash from one of the windows, the whizz of a round going past, a brief curl of powder smoke that was gone before anyone could fix on it, and the bullet passed through the illusion and into the dark beyond. Arkady left the flag standing and then, because it was there, walked it slowly toward the house in a zigzag.

Tauon went inside. The rotted boards held. He called into the dark and nothing answered. There is furniture still in it, sofas gone to rot and shelves of books gone to rot, and a fireplace set in the middle of a room with old charcoal still in it.

On his way out he set ten silver coins on the end table by the door and said his piece, that they had left their ships in the yard and would like them tended, that they wished no trouble, and that if they were not wanted they would be told, but that until then he intended to pay his fare for parking.

The coins went off the table before his hand had fully left them, and hit the floor one after another.

“That's their way of telling us that we're not wanted here.”

Tauon came back and recommended they move. There was nowhere to move to. The consensus was that every abandoned house around Savannah looks exactly like this one, and there are perhaps a dozen occupied places scattered around the whole ring of the city. They stayed. Chet said he had no problem staying with the boat so long as he didn't have to leave it, and then, under his breath, that this was honestly not the craziest thing he had ever seen.

Tauon cut the gold embroidery off the Cordoban flag and made up a very fancy little package for Miss K.

It was eleven o'clock when they walked in.

Havana had been hot and wet and loud at this hour. Savannah is cold in a way that belongs several thousand miles north, and it is shut. Not gated, not guarded, simply asleep. Boots on a board floor somewhere out of sight, a footfall in an alley, lights going out as they came. Nothing open. It became clear fairly quickly that it is probably not busy during the day either.

Two places had light, and both were closer to inns than taverns. They went into the nearest one.

Woodsmoke, cooked food, good tobacco. Cloth wedged under a table leg to stop it rocking, mismatched stools along what is really a shelf with a window behind it. A man behind a desk with a young face and considerable grey in his hair, mid forties or mid fifties, leaned back with a pulp novella. He clocked them on the way in and went straight back to his book.

Ten silver for a meal. He nodded at the stools and went in back and came out with four plates of something that looked like beef and smelled like seafood, and gave no sign of caring whether they liked it.

Tauon asked him who a man would talk to about unloading a couple of salvage vessels, and left the change on the counter for his trouble.

The man was flatly surprised to be addressed. “Well, it's a little late to be doing business around these parts. Wait for morning. Head down to the docks, where a cargo gets a better hearing. Stay off the east side of town, which is a good deal more cutthroat if what you want is a fair deal. There are shipwrights down there who would be glad to scrap it for you if nothing else.”

Scout does not eat. Arkady spiced the untouched bowl and left it, and the innkeeper said he would give it to the dogs.

On the walk back the moon came up over the cloud wall and put a hard diagonal light across the fields, and from four or five hundred yards out they could see something burning between the house and the ships.

They tried to come in quietly. On the road it worked. The moment they stepped off it into the moss their boots started sinking with an audible slump, and they stopped, and heard voices. Conversation, unhurried.

Tauon went around the house.

Chet was sitting at a campfire with three ghosts, holding a cup from the ship's own coffee service, mid conversation. He looked up.

“Is the coffee good? Oh, it's chicory, but the company's alright. Have a seat.”

They are not specters. They are people, translucent and shifting slightly at the edges, expressive, sitting. They are also in various states of decay, and the wounds that killed them are visible on them. One Cordoban soldier. One Amazonian soldier. One Amazonian officer.

The officer spoke first.

“He told us you would come.”

Then: “What outfit you boys with?”

“We were independent contractors.”

Tauon told him about the ships. That they had been taken, that they had looked like military vessels, and the officer's eye twitched, and then his face came open into something no human face can physically do, rage and terror together, held for a moment and then put away. Tauon kept going. Salvage now. They came at us out of the clouds from nowhere.

The wave passed. “Well, sounds like you did our job for us.”

Nobody laughed.

Arkady sat down and lit a cigarette and watched the smoke drift up and pass straight through the officer.

“I'm sure this fighting is going to start again. But right now we just hold the line.” They were waiting to hear back from Admiral Marchetti.

“Nobody fights,” Tauon said. “Not in this air. Not on this ground.”

The officer's face went to open confusion, as though he had been handed something with no category to put it in, and he glitched, visibly, and came back.

“We sent a courier not two days ago and he hasn't returned. Obviously not, we're still here. Something wrong with your ears, boy?” And then, going: “They don't know what it's like down here. They don't know what it's like in these trenches, these skies.”

“But now there's peace,” Tauon said. “Peace is good for profit.”

Maintain the peace. Hold the line. Until the courier comes back.

It came around again after that, and again. Every time the loop closed on itself, the two soldiers, the Amazonian and the Cordoban both, nodded along together.

Tauon leaned over to Chet and remarked on the company he was keeping.

“He says the same fucking thing every fucking five minutes,” Chet said, very quietly. “I don't know how to leave.” And then, when asked how this had started: “As soon as that moonlight touched the ships he came over knocking. I didn't know what to do.”

“You made them coffee. You did the right thing.”

Chet's trousers were wet.

Tauon stood and made his excuses, that it was late and he would turn in, that they should keep the peace, that there was wood for the fire and coffee to enjoy.

The fire was giving light. It was not actually burning and it put out no heat at all.

When Tauon put a hand on Chet to bring him along, Chet came back into himself like a man surfacing. They went aboard. The three of them stayed at the fire all night, and anyone who looked found them still there.

Once in the small hours, a detachment of ghost soldiers came up the road carrying two flags, one Cordoban and one Amazonian, marching what appeared to be a patrol. They did not look over.

By first light the fire was out, with a thread of ethereal smoke still coming off it, and the officer had gone back into the house.

Morning in Savannah is a different city. A butcher open, a bakery open, fresh bread on the air, a man and his son pushing a cart of produce toward market. People polite with each other. Nobody anywhere looking over their shoulder.

The waterfront is the working quarter. Ship repair, blacksmiths, woodworking, plenty of activity and nothing resembling a warehouse district, a garrison, or a watchtower. It reads like a small town that happens to occupy a large city.

The first yard they came to is closer to a dry dock than anything, with a fishing barge up in it and a field of junked hulls behind, nothing bigger than a caravel in the whole lot. Tauon walked up to the owner and got most of the way through “two Cordoban sloops” before correcting himself to pirate vessels, taken out of the clouds, crew dispatched, towed in, one in rough shape and one sound.

The owner had one question. “And what about their colors?”

“They're not flying any colors currently.”

“Good.”

He hollered for Benny, who came up at a run pulling his trousers straight, fifteen or twenty years old and visibly delighted. “They got two ships they want to sell. You're gonna need to go take a look at 'em. Make sure they ain't flying no fucking colors either.” And then, to the party: “You take Benny with you. Benny knows what he's doing. I trust this boy with my life.”

Benny talked the whole mile.

He asked where they were from, and Tauon started to say Amazonia, caught it, and said Atlantis. Hartemple. Benny had never heard of Hartemple. He asked whether it was in Dixie. He had never heard of Atlantis either, and asked whether that was in Dixie.

Yazan talked over the rest of the question and gave him the whole thing instead, an epic of conquest and heroism told with his arms and his feet as much as his voice, pirates out of the clouds and a boarding and a famous victory, with no Cordobans anywhere in it. Benny hung on every word of it.

“Hot damn, you boys really seem like you know what you're doing. I wouldn't mind having you at my back in a bar fight.”

There are bars. They close at ten. The company gets strange after ten. “Kernel always says, nothing good happens after ten o'clock.” “Kernel Nichols. You might call him like a mayor.” “He ain't in charge of nothing, but just everybody listens to him.”

On the dead: “Most people, they get all their panties bunched up when they see what we got going on out here. But you know what I say? I say it works out pretty good. So many things we don't even got to worry about.”

Benny has never left Savannah. He has lived here his whole life. Sometimes the fishermen come in and tell him stories about the people they meet out there. People like you. He knows a couple of women and all of them are spoken for.

He walked around the house and saw the ships and stopped.

“Damn. Them's warships. Surprised you boys didn't get shot at on your way in.”

“We were escorted in. It was very nice.”

“There's all sorts of boats around these parts didn't have them kind of smarts. They got shot right out the goddamn sky.”

He knew exactly what he was looking at. He said so. “You can use whatever fancy words you want. You shot that shit, we grabbed it.”

He opened at four thousand for the sound one and two for the wreck. Yazan put it to him that the story alone was worth ten. Benny was unmoved and said daddy would never let him go past five for any of these boats, and gave them the reason, which is that the swamp around Savannah is littered with ships exactly like these that do not fly, and if you gather enough of them you can assemble one that does.

Tauon came back with eight and a structure: eight on the wrecked one, less the cost of stripping the hardpoint and the small cannon off it and mounting both on the caravel.

Benny squinted. The work had been slow. Daddy would like it if he brought in a job as well as a hull.

“I ain't gonna give you eight. I'll give you six and the work.”

He spat in his hand and held it out, and Tauon shook it.

So the wreck went for six thousand and the labor, and the sound sloop stays with them to be sold somewhere there is money. The dry dock is occupied until the barge comes out, which is a day, and the hardpoint is another day after that. Scout offered his hands to speed it up and got a few hundred more out of the father for it.

Benny flew the junker in himself, with no instruction and no familiarity, all over the sky and entirely in control of it. The Boats N Hoes went into the yard out back, where there are hounds. They keep to the shadows between the hulls, they are built wrong through the shoulders, and they give off a green light.

The father came out to the ship to say his piece, that his boy was a damn fine negotiator, that it was a wonderful deal, and that he was glad of the work and gladder to see men like them willing to get their hands dirty alongside everyone else.

The barge took the whole next day. Two damaged envelopes, pitch and thread and canvas, and the thing reeks, because somebody lives aboard it and has not been careful about where. They came off it at five or six in the evening with blisters.

Benny wanted to take them drinking. His father had never gone with him.

He took them to the part of town the innkeeper had warned them off, which is three saloons and a few drunks against the posts and nothing worse than that.

Nobody in any of them was rowdy. No shouting, no arguing, nothing close to a fight. There is heavy drinking in Savannah and all of it is the quiet, sorrowful, downward kind. In twenty four hours in this city nobody had yet heard a voice raised in anything but good humor.

A man outside in a vest and rolled sleeves with gold on him watched them go in and did not follow.

Tauon bought whiskey and beer and spent the night telling the room about the world, and Benny drank it in with the look of a young man who wants to taste all of it, right up until somewhere past ten when he caught himself mid slur, sobered noticeably, and said it was a good idea to turn in because there was a hard day of work tomorrow.

The man in the vest was on the porch when they came out, ten feet away, watching them and saying nothing.

Yazan went to him. “Stories of your leadership make their way around to newcomers.”

“Well, I ain't no leader. I'm just somebody who cares.”

He allowed that he enjoyed a great deal of respect around these parts. Asked whether he kept the peace, he said he did not need to.

He checked a gold pocket watch that caught the lantern light.

“It's about nine forty five by my time. You boys are from out of town so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. There is a curfew. Now, it's not enforced by me. You want to make sure you're nice and tucked in by ten o'clock.”

“Why the curfew, if the peace is kept?”

“Nothing good happens after ten o'clock.”

Yazan mentioned that they had enjoyed some very good coffee after ten the night before, outside the city.

“So you met them.” A pause. “They keep the peace. And if they suffered your company and you're still breathing, that's a good sign.”

He sent Benny home, said he had seen them regaling sweet Benny with tales of the outside, and proposed they continue the conversation somewhere with better brandy. He turned on his heel to lead them and his spurs rang on the boards. Gold spurs. There is not a horse anywhere in Savannah.

His house is Victorian, stately, and conspicuously well kept in a city that is mostly not. Two children inside being chased down for bed by a woman who is plainly staff. They came to him for a hug and he returned it and moved them along quickly, and took the party into a drawing room.

“Now, I gather that you boys are here to offload some acquired merchandise.”

He had already had a look at the vessels himself.

“I'm sure you've pieced together by now that these parts don't take kindly to belligerence of any kind. And if you're gonna find success, if you're gonna find fortune in these parts, you're gonna need to give all that up. Or you can be on your way.”

Tauon told him it was a lovely city, blessed to be a place of peace in the middle of a storm.

“I appreciate the attempt. But it's difficult to look on this city and find it lovely. The sad truth is that it exists in a state of perpetual purgatory.”

“But you are not harassed by the war.”

“In the same way that we are sheltered from the war, we are sheltered from the rest of the world.”

Tauon, who has spent his life moving, said he did not understand why a man would stay.

“Packing up and leaving ain't as easy as it sounds for some. Especially more than others.” And then: “I got too many people to care about here.” The children are his wards. The penalty for belligerence in Savannah is a swift and painful death, and that is how their parents died, and the city is not exactly swimming in orphanages, so he does what he can. He is not going to leave them on the street.

On the curfew, in confidence: “Between you and me and the wall, it's really more out of prudence than anything else. You let people drink too long, eventually the voices get higher and passions spring out of nowhere, and next thing you know there's a bar fight spilling into the street. And before you know it you got fifteen, twenty undead soldiers walking through with rifles talking about keeping the peace.”

Tauon said that in his travels he had come to value peace.

“Prison is generally a very peaceful place when the only punishment is death.”

He took a long pull of the brandy, which is excellent and entirely mundane.

They asked him outright whether he would get rid of the undead soldiers if he could.

“Now that's a million gold question right there.”

He nodded toward the nanny getting the children up the stairs. There was something in his face then that was fondness and grief at the same time.

“Keeps me up at night. They'll never know the world. They'll never know what a sunrise looks like, what a sunset can do to your soul. They're trapped here. Just like me. You ask me would I change that if I could.”

He did not finish it.

What he said instead was that the only real salvation for Savannah is that the war ends. Move the dead somewhere else and the city is defenseless. There is no watch. There are no soldiers. There is no armory. Somebody would come, and it would go over like a domino.

“If you could convince the Cordobans and the Amazonians, alive or dead, that it was time to put down the rifles. Well. I think that would be a bright future.”

Marchetti, he told them, has been dead a hundred and sixty years.

Somebody observed that it would take the courier a while to reach him.

Yazan asked what would happen if they could convince the soldiers that Admiral Marchetti had sent new orders.

“That would be a miracle.” Then, immediately: “But if they weren't here, the armies would come.”

Arkady said that at a certain point in a man's life avoiding the problem stops being a solution, and eventually you have to turn and face it.

Nichols took another long pull. “What do I know.”

Tauon told him plainly that it was a dangerous game he was proposing, and that if he wished to play it, they would help him roll the dice.

“No, no. Let's not be hasty. I don't know what I'm saying. It's the brandy talking.” And again, when pressed: “It's the brandy talking. You pay me no mind. I just get these delusions.”

He is lying, and everyone in the room could see it. The want was fully formed and sitting right at the front of him, and he will not say the words. It is not pride. It is fear.

What he asked for instead was something else entirely.

“There is one thing that this city needs that I cannot provide. In my time here, and I've been here almost twenty five years, I've seen priests come and go. None will stay to minister to our people. None will exist in this constant hell.”

“If nothing else changes, and the war goes on forever, and we keep our peace, or we have our peace kept for us. I think it would do this city a lot of good to find some kind of faith.”

Tauon told him he would find somebody and send them.

He also told him that the purgatory might be brighter than he thought.

“Easy to say that from the outside looking in. Easy to say that when you pass all them wrecks out around the city. Easy to say that when you're getting chased by bullets. But when you're here, you're surrounded by it, it's a part of you, you breathe it. I think you might develop a different opinion.”

Tauon allowed that he was a man of the world and had come to enjoy a certain lack of peace.

“Well, just keep it out of my town.”

He chuckled, finished his glass, and told them over his shoulder on the way up the stairs that he would let them see themselves out.

They walked back past curfew, the last few locals hurrying home ahead of them and the town folding itself up for the night. The junkyard gate was shut with the door left ajar. The hounds were out among the hulls. They let themselves in and closed it behind them.

Miyake was aboard.

“You put us in the middle of a fucking war zone.”

They talked about the soldiers, and about whether anything could be done for the city, and at some point Yazan asked her a question that was not about Savannah at all.

“If you could change the world, would you do it?”

“Yes. I would.”

Then he asked how they might get rid of the undead soldiers without leaving Savannah undefended, and whatever had opened for a second closed again.

“That's not why I hired you.” A pause, and something she started and abandoned about what it would mean to be able to do a thing and not do it. Then: “That's not why I hired you. If you find it necessary to stay, I won't stop you. But I won't help you.”

“We're not staying here. One way or another.”

“We're having some modifications done to our ship, then we're on our way.”

“Chet tells me. And probably prudent, considering we're in the middle of a fucking war zone.”

Tauon said they were quite safe here. They keep the peace.

He mentioned that he was looking for someone who might bring the city some faith.

“I don't keep company with priests.”

“Is the coffee good?”

“It's tea.”

They left the casino district around one in the morning to walk to Faust's warehouse, two of them, on foot, with the ship meeting them there.

Her yard is dark and narrow, lit by shard lamps that throw everything green. She was waiting with six constructs standing at the edges of the light. Not warforged. Similar enough at a distance to be mistaken for them, and wrong up close, with nothing behind the eyes.

“You're early and you're short-handed.”

Tauon told her the boat was coming and that they had wanted to be here regardless, holding up their end. She asked about the other two. He said they were with the ship, and then, gesturing at her guards, said they were very nice, that the crew had one themselves, that they made good workers.

“I noticed you had a warforged. These aren't quite the same.”

At two minutes to three the Boats N Hoes came in toward the refueling gantry slip and two fully armed Cordoban military sloops moved to intercept her.

What followed was Chet threading a caravel into a slip under guns, with the party on the dock doing what they could to help from the ground. The ship made it in. The sloops made their point and did not press it. Scout and Yazan boarded and they made their way to meet Erin Faust.

Sixteen well packaged and well protected glass crates of slightly glowing, slightly moving cargo went into the hold, sealed, and stayed sealed. Faust handed over the paperwork with them.

The requisition is a formal decree out of the Hermit Kingdom, issued through the Magistrate of the Northern Steppes, and sealed with the symbol of the Supreme Chairman, it valued the shipment at a hundred and twenty thousand gold. Faust contracted the run at seventy-five, with her quarter coming out of it. Delivery to the southeastern border crossing between Quebec and Dixie.

They lifted at half past four into clear Caribbean sky.

The first day was uneventful, and the crew used it.

Scout worked up a set of his patented atlas maps and handed one to Chet, who took it seriously. Yazan and Scout put two hundred and fifty gold into a scroll of Blur. Scout and Chet laid out the approach: skim the Atlantic coast first, and make their approach to Quebec from the north. Seemed simple enough.

Arkady also opened his Compass of Need. The needle went around in erratic circles, the way it does, and then locked. It did not wander after that. It held steady on Captain Chet Roosso.

“Hey Chet. How's it hanging.”

“Clear skies. Not another ship in sight. Fresh wind, full belly, couldn't ask for anything more.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

He said he'd been meaning to see about the mess they'd made of his deck. Then he told them to keep their eyes peeled, because those sloops come out of nowhere, fast and mean.

Arkady didn't mention the compass.

Miyake was nowhere to be found.

Second day, three thousand feet, flat blue-green water underneath.

Scout and Tauon saw the dark patches in the ocean first, the shapes that mean flotsam floating on the water is throwing shade on the shallows below. Then a Cordoban sloop came up out of the cloud cover and put a ranging shot over their heads.

Arkady threw a Jolly Roger up over the mast in silent image, on the theory that pirates are a known quantity and whatever the caravel actually was might be worse. It did not work.

The sloop fired again and this time connected with a harpoon. Scout put the large cannon on them and missed clean. Tauon returned with the harpoon ballista into them and held.

Then another Cordoban medium cannon rang out as a second sloop came around. Its shot punched through the lower deck, through the laboratory bulkhead, and left a cannonball embedded in the wall.

Chet did not wait to be hit again. He turned the Boats N Hoes into the enemy sloop and rammed her in spite of the two ships being entangled in harpoon lines.

Both ships took it hard, heavy structural damage into their own hull, worse into the Cordoban, and both of them started losing altitude at once. Every person on deck went down. Arkady went over the rail entirely, thirty feet out into open air with nothing under him.

Yazan lit the flametongue and stepped through a dimension door directly onto the second sloop's deck, decapitated him, and sent his lifeless body overboard.

Arkady, falling rapidly, tried to throw a rope back up at a ship that was climbing away from him. It just licked the railing and failed to find purchase.

Tauon went head-first off the deck after him. His boots did the rest. He caught Arkady in open air and slowed his descent to the water below.

Yazan found the Cordoban chaplain in the ship's head, jammed in there, holding a Symbol of Jasiri and cowering in fear. He killed him right there and took the seemingly ineffective symbol from his corpse. In addition to the symbol, Yazan retrieved his now unloaded pepperbox, an ammunition pouch, and a handful of gold and platinum service medals off the disgraced military chaplain.

When it was over the caravel had serious damage all throughout her, an unusable laboratory, and two crippled Cordoban sloops lashed to her hull with hydrogas still in their tanks. A quick pass through the sloops revealed that this particular Cordoban detachment was severely under-provisioned, likely having not had a meal for days. Scout got to work on the repairs to the Boats N Hoes while the crew discussed what to do with their ill-gotten gains and settled on making for Savannah to find out their worth while salvaging what they can from them.

Miyake had not come up once.

The Boats N Hoes came into the party's hands on a gray Hartemple morning at Gantry 4, handed over by a shipwright with more grease under his nails than words in his mouth. He pressed a bottle of something sharp and unlabeled into Tauon's hands, muttered something that might have been a blessing or might have just been relief at getting the thing off his slip, and walked off without waiting to watch her fly.

Captain Chet Roosso took her up first, easing the caravel to two thousand feet for a shakedown run that left him grinning like a man twenty years younger, calling it wild ecstasy under his breath more than once. Below decks, Arkady went hunting through the ship's guts and came up with a full accounting of her: the Workshop, the Navigation Suite, the Laboratory, the Magazine, the Infirmary, and tucked beneath a false floor barely large enough to notice unless you already knew to look, the Concealed Cargo Compartment. From the air, Asher picked out the mouth of their Smuggler's Cave along the coastline, and Chet dropped her low enough on a rope ladder for a quick look before easing back toward home.

She flew a slight list to port. Nothing that would kill her. Chet said as much and nobody argued.

Hartemple was waiting for them when they came back around, and so was someone else.

A woman stood alone on their private gantry when the ship settled home, wrapped in a long duster against the wind coming off the harbor, watching the *Boats N Hoes* come in like she'd already decided what she thought of it. Asher was first down the gangway, first to ask what brought her to their dock.

“You do,” she said. “I was told you were capable men.”

“Not at all,” Asher said.

Something flickered behind her eyes at that, a fraction of impertinence she didn't bother hiding, the look of someone taking a measurement and finding the number came in low. She didn't introduce herself yet. She asked to speak somewhere private, and the party brought her aboard, into the Navigation Suite, where the real conversation started.

She kept her ultimate goal to herself, she said, for their own safety. What she needed was simpler on its face. A man, somewhere in Havana, who needed finding, and depending on how things sat when they got there, possibly protecting, possibly pulling out entirely. He kept company with the wrong sort. That was all she offered up front, and she offered a modest retainer alongside it, seven thousand gold paid out in platinum coin.

Tauon didn't hide his skepticism at the number, and for a moment the woman's composure tightened around it, the closest thing to offense she allowed herself before a little more convincing talk from the party eased her back. She didn't warm exactly. She conceded. Said their caution showed a kind of wisdom she could respect, even if it cost her patience to sit through.

The party took the job. Only then did she give them a name to put to the duster and the flat, unreadable eyes.

Miyake Harrier.

There was something about her age the party couldn't settle on then, and still can't. Crow's feet said one thing. The set of her shoulders, the economy in how she moved, said another. She wore whatever years she'd lived like she'd decided a long time ago that no one else needed to know the count.

They left Monday morning, the thirteenth of July, following a set of navigational charts Miyake had drawn up herself, routing them down past Haspar and on toward a refueling stop before the long leg to Havana.

Scout noticed the charts first, or rather noticed what wasn't supposed to be on them. Alongside the Havana route, Miyake's maps carried detail on Northern Straya and stretches of the Mediterranean, regions with nothing to do with the job in front of them. She caught him looking more than once and said nothing about it, which told him more than an explanation would have.

She was testing them the whole way down, in small ways that never quite announced themselves as tests. On the second morning she asked Asher, almost idly, whether he knew the Low Down, a piece of navigator's craft most working sailors only knew by reputation. He knew the theory. Admitted, honestly, he'd never had cause to fly it.

“That's okay,” she said. “I don't need navigators. I need capable men.”

It wasn't unkind. It also wasn't a compliment.

They put in at Salthaven Tuesday morning, a refueling stop that doubled as a trading post, and Tauon and Arkady worked the local merchants for a load of spices to run as cover, the kind of legitimate cargo that makes a ship's business look like exactly what it claims to be. Miyake didn't like it. Wanted to know who, exactly, they thought needed convincing. Tauon told her it wouldn't slow them down. She let it go, but the friction sat there afterward, the first real crack in how she saw the crew she'd hired, half competence, half a group moving slower and more carefully than her own instincts would have liked.

Later that evening, on watch, Asher said what half the party had been thinking since the gantry.

“You're kind of a bitch.”

“I know,” she said. “I've spent my life sharpening that blade.”

She told him, in pieces, what she was. A privateer. Someone who'd worked alongside military outfits without ever wearing their colors, who'd built a career on picking her own jobs and her own reasons. Everything she'd ever done, she said, she'd cared about the why.

Asher asked what her why was this time.

She smiled at him, practiced, pleasant, and entirely closed, and the conversation ended there.

The Caribbean Straits gave them the first real trouble of the run, a thunderstorm heavy enough on its own before the shard-dust in the clouds turned the lightning green and wrong. The party made the call to climb rather than push through, driving the caravel up toward the edge of what she could take, past what Chet would have chosen on his own account.

She held. Barely, but she held, and above the worst of it the crew leveled out into clear air and looked back down at what they'd just climbed out of.

It wasn't behaving like weather.

Sections of the storm were moving on their own logic, independent of the wind driving the rest of it, patches of cloud sliding against the grain like something underneath was steering. Nobody had a name for what they were looking at. Nobody suggested going back down to find out.

They held their course for Havana, the storm beneath them, the shape of what they were flying toward still mostly a woman's word and a locked jaw. The icy-cold, high-altitude air biting at their heels.

Apocalyptica Arcanum III — Session Zero Recap

Session One — The Woman on the Gantry

Session Two — The Storm and the Broker

Session Three — The Fondeo

Session Four — The Cordoban Interceptor

Session Five — Keeping the Peace

Session Six — Stand Aside

It was eleven at night in the junkyard, a sliver of moon over the hulls, and Miyake was on deck drinking tea.

Her expression said everything she wasn't saying. The crew had found her a local complication that had nothing to do with what she was paying them for, and her contempt for it was real but good-natured. Bemusement, mostly. Something close to entertainment. She watched the coal hounds circle and drop among the wrecks, looking for somewhere to sleep, and gave no sign of wanting to involve herself, least of all to help.

Tauon read her anyway, and for once she was easy to read. There are lines of patience in her face that go back decades. Whatever she is cooking, she has been cooking for a long time. In the moonlight he could see the gold inlay on the handle of her sword and the fact that she was not looking at the junkyard. She never looks at what is in front of her. She looks at what it means further down the road. Tauon could not tell what she is after. He came away certain of one thing: this isn't business. Wherever she is going ends in something personal, tied to who she is.

She finished her tea. The cup was gone from her hand.

“Well, if you need me, just call my name and I'll hear.”

She went below.

The drumming started a little after that, low and far off.

They were not marching drums. Two of them knew it immediately. A marching drum keeps a steady repeat. This one built and cut, built and cut, a call to action. Scout fixed the direction: south, across the river. Arkady, listening longer than anyone, was the first to understand that it was coming closer. Very slowly. But closer.

While it came, they argued about the dead.

Yazan had grown up in one of the most volatile places in the world and knew better than anyone aboard how belief takes hold of a thing and will not let go. “If we convince them that the fight is over, that they did their jobs, they will just vanish. It is the belief that they have a mission that is tethering them to this world.”

Scout would not have it. “If you get rid of this presence, Savannah will be consumed by the war. You're dooming this small community to that war. And you're not even asking them if that's okay.”

Tauon saw a market. A city where both armies already have to come in peace is a port of call, a refuge, a place to hold talks. There ought to be a way to make that pay for the people who live there. Arkady floated a reserve force, and then something larger: give the dead new orders and point them at Concepcion and Petrolina, and let the war be fought on the capitals while the rest of Dixie recovers.

Yazan put a stop to that one. Everything he knew from Arabia said that a manifestation like this is bound to its ground. Nobody has ever seen a shard storm leave Arabia. There would be a catalyst somewhere, a source.

Tauon said that if there was a source, it was shardisite, and shardisite is valuable. Arkady offered him the Compass of Need and reminded him that it does not point at what you want.

Chet had his spyglass out at the south rail. The river had a skin of fog on it and the air was fifty-five degrees, which in this part of the world it has no business being. He searched the far bank for a long time without saying anything.

“It sounds like it should be right there.”

He was pointing at marsh. Clumped grass, reeds, and once they actually looked at it, craters. Old artillery craters gone soft and green. The far bank had been a battlefield.

Then Chet called out again, and this time there was something to see. A long line of ghost soldiers coming through the marsh, straight for the city.

The coal hounds were up and alert, but not afraid. Behind them, under the drumming, came the small sounds of a city closing itself: doors, windows, shutters latched one after another.

“Guys. They're at the water.”

They walked out onto the river, and the fog parted around their legs as they came.

Most of the crew went below. Tauon stayed on deck to watch. Scout kept working on the ship.

Yazan climbed down, crossed the yard, put his hands up, and walked out the gate onto the empty wharf to try to parley.

The line ran as far as he could see in both directions. Not one line, several. Regiments. Hundreds became more than that as they kept coming. They marched almost perfectly in time with the drums, rifles raised, and as they reached the wharf they climbed up onto it, right up to him, and went past without a glance. Not one of them so much as looked his way. Every one of them was looking at the same point somewhere inside the city.

“Gentlemen, what are your orders? Where are you going?”

Nothing. So he fell in and walked with them.

They funneled through the streets in squad formation. Nobody broke step, and nothing distracted them. He passed out of any range that would get him back to the ship and kept going. He believes there were at least a thousand of them. All along the way, faces appeared in windows and vanished. Shutters closed. Candles went out.

They stopped at a house near the center of town. Southern, pillared, a wraparound porch, one of the well-kept ones. Thousands of dead men filled every street around it and stood in silence, leaving a clear ring of about forty feet around the house. For a couple of minutes they did nothing but stare at it.

Yazan called out into the quiet. “Keep the peace!”

The sound that came back to him from the ranks was that of the butts of their rifles slamming into the ground in unison. Whether Yazan instigated that or it was eerie timing was harder to tell.

An officer climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. His hand did not pass through it. It was an ordinary knock, not violent, not even alarming, and given everything around it, that was the worst part. The door opened onto darkness. The officer stepped inside and the door shut behind him.

Yazan walked across the clearing. Nobody stopped him. This close he could see what they were: half decayed, grizzled, beards yellow with tobacco, pieces of some of them missing, and all of them faintly translucent. He went up the steps and raised his hand to knock, and before his knuckles touched the wood, the door opened.

The officer was standing in the doorway with his fist knotted in the back of a man's nightshirt, bringing him out of his own house.

The man was not fighting. He did not want to go and he was not going willingly, but he was not resisting either. Yazan saw terror in him, and resignation.

From somewhere inside, a woman was sobbing.

For the first time, the officer looked straight at Yazan.

“Stand aside.”

Yazan stepped back and asked him to help him understand what was happening.

“I've got orders.”

“To keep the peace?”

The officer ignored the question. He moved past Yazan and carried the man down the steps, the bulk of his weight held up by a dead hand, a step taken now and then with his own feet. The ranks opened to let them through and closed again behind them.

The house smelled of a good supper, pipe tobacco, and something more exotic. It was a home, plainly loved. On the wall hung a lithograph of a family: a wife, three young children, and behind them, standing proud, the man who had just been dragged out the door.

The woman was on her knees at the top of the stairs, trying very hard not to wake the children almost certainly sleeping in their beds with her lament.

“Tell me what he did. Tell me everything. How can I save him?”

“He took something from the new boat. And they came and got him.”

“Where is it?”

“They took it.”

“What was it?”

“It had to have been some military something. I don't know. I didn't see it.”

Yazan cast haste on himself and went after them.

The dead were already heading back the way they had come, and they filled every street in every direction. He had to wade through them. They were not solid, but they were physical enough to push aside, and not one of them moved to make room for him. He crossed and recrossed the town looking for the one living man in a crowd of a thousand dead, and it took him all the way to the wharf at the southern edge of town.

From there he saw the officer step off the wharf onto the water, holding the man, and start walking across the river holding his head under.

“Wait! He'll give back what he took! And I know Admiral Marchetti!”

At Marchetti's name the officer's head cocked. He looked back. Yazan watched him size him up and decide he was not worth stopping for.

The river is a hundred and eighty feet wide, a sheer wharf with no shallows. The man was ninety feet out and well beyond any spell Yazan had. He tried again anyway, shouting that the man would make it right, that there was no need to execute him. The officer did not look back again.

Nothing else on the water moved. A thousand dead men crossed that river without leaving a ripple. The one disturbance on its whole surface was a man in his nightshirt, thrashing, choking, coming up for air when he could.

The rest of the crew reached the wharf about then. Arkady had changed into the scrap dealer and come running at the sound of Yazan's feet in the street. They stood there and weighed it. Arkady offered to call out that he was the courier. Yazan said do it. Tauon was more cautious: they knew these dead were here to keep the peace, and he was wary of interfering in any serious way. Justice can be harsh.

“He's got kids.”

While they were still deciding, the thrashing stopped.

The officer dragged the body the rest of the way across, carried it five feet up the far bank, and dropped it. Then he went on with the regiment and left it lying there.

Tauon flew across. The man lay face down in his pajamas with no pulse and no breath. When Tauon turned him over, he knew him. He had worked at Abner's yard. He was one of the men who had been repairing the boats.

His fist was clenched shut. In the moonlight Tauon caught a glint of gold, and when he pried the fingers open he found a Cordoban captain's pin.

There was nothing to dig with, but the bank there is pocked with old craters. Tauon laid him in one, covered him with sticks and branches as best he could, and prayed over him: the profit of death, that justice is sometimes harsh, and that you do not strike a deal you cannot make good on.

Something heard him. It always does. This time the answer reached him as if through a veil, filtered through something he did not know and that felt dirty.

Arkady went back to the ship to start writing new orders. Yazan and Tauon went to the house to tell the woman.

She was on a bench on the porch, rocking. Beside her, one leg crossed over the other, was Kernel Nichols in a white smoking jacket, white slacks and loafers. He was not holding her and was not trying to. He was simply there with her. When he saw them coming, his face was full of a deep sadness and showed no surprise at all. He had done this before.

“I tried to save him, but I was too late.”

“He was gone the moment that he took that trinket.”

Tauon asked whether it was the theft or the thing itself.

“It was the affiliation of the item.”

Then Nichols told them what he knows, which he admits is not much.

“My understanding, which is limited at best, as I've only been here for the last twenty five years. At some point in the war there was a truce. That truce was to be ratified. But the messenger never returned. Those boys rotted out in those swamps waiting for that message to come.”

There is an old farmhouse about five miles south of town. The legend says that is where the deal was struck. Nobody from Savannah goes out there. It is deep in their territory.

“They come whenever you choose a side. And they react harshly to what they call belligerence. Whatever orders they were given before they died have been twisted and misshapen into something beyond reasonable. There is no reasoning with these things.”

Tauon asked whether war would come to Savannah if the dead were dismissed.

“Almost certainly.”

Whether that would be better than this.

“That is the million gold question. One to which I have not found an answer.”

Tauon gave him the trade port idea: a safe haven, open to anyone willing to keep the peace.

“Is it safe? Because there's a whole bay of shot down ships that would argue otherwise.” And then: “What about those who don't even know? What about the veterans who wear their colors just out of pride? Those who just happen to have a piece of cargo with Amazonian insignia on it?”

He knew they had struck their colors before they came in, and he allowed that it might mean something. That the party might be something special.

Tauon said Savannah could be the place where both sides finally come to strike a ceasefire. Yazan said Savannah could go down in history as the place where the war ended.

“Wouldn't that be something.”

Through all of this the woman was coming apart beside them, and they had been talking over her.

Yazan told her he was sorry he had not gotten there in time. She looked up, tried to say something, and broke down. Nichols told him there was nothing he could have done. The man sealed his fate the moment he took that pin.

“I don't know if that's true. I think maybe I just didn't try hard enough.”

Yazan asked her whether she had what she needed to take care of her family. She clearly had not even thought of it yet, and the question broke her further. Nichols saw it land.

“Joanna, honey. Let's go inside and fix you a cup of tea. And let's try not to wake the kids.”

At the door he turned back to them. “It would be hard for her, if that's what you're asking.”

His name was Joseph and he had been the breadwinner. The children are Miles, seven, Amy, eleven, and Daniel, fifteen. They were much younger than that in the lithograph Yazan had seen on the wall.

“The most likely ending to this one is they'll be just like all the rest. These children will become my wards, and Joanna will go to work.”

The crew gave him a hundred gold for her. He pocketed it and promised she would get everything she needed, and said their generosity would be repaid however he could manage it. Then he looked at his watch. It was about one in the morning. He told them he had a long night ahead of him, and that the morning would be a better time to discuss alternatives.

When they got back, they agreed it was the item and not the theft. And since they were the ones who brought that ship to Savannah, maybe they should burn it.

Scout worked through the night and had the Boats N Hoes structurally whole by morning. She looks like she was fixed in a junkyard but she flies. The laboratory has been cleared of what was destroyed and now functions after a fashion, with questionable results.

At nine in the morning Yazan and Tauon took the sloop south. Arkady stayed aboard to work on a white and gold courier's uniform and the orders to go with it. Scout stayed to mount the hardpoint with Benny. Chet stayed with the ship. “Ghost farmhouses don't really appeal to me very much at all.”

Before they left they went over the sloop once more for anything with a nation on it. In several places someone had already pried the insignia off. Joseph, the day before.

The fog was cold and wet, with visibility to about five hundred feet. They flew low, and every so often the marsh below showed them a ghost platoon gathered around a spectral fire, eating breakfast.

They had no idea which farmhouse to look for, so they set down beside a field that was still being worked. Tauon flew down in his boots to a boy of about twelve, shirtless in a straw hat, who had stopped working the moment the sloop dropped out of the fog.

“Gee golly, mister, what can I help you with?”

Tauon told him they were looking for the house where the truce was struck. The boy said that was just a fairy tale. Everybody knows about the ghosts, and you are supposed to leave them be and mind your own. He could not stop looking at Tauon's flying boots.

“That's some fancy boots, sir. How's a kid gonna get a pair of boots like that?”

“First you gotta leave this plantation and go adventure the world.”

“Well, daddy says I'm probably gonna die here.”

Tauon flew back up to the sloop and went through the dead Cordobans' stripped uniforms for the shiniest pair of boots aboard. He brought down a pair of polished black military boots. The boy was wearing straw sandals.

“These keep the mud off your feet, boy.”

“Think I can fly?”

“Not these. But one day.”

“Hot damn. Thank you, sir.” Then, quietly: “You dint here it from me but my daddy says never to go past the O'Neill farm. Three miles down the road. You'll know it cause every place out there is abandoned except the O'Neill's.”

Smirking, “I don't know how I'm gonna explain where I got these boots from. But damn if I ain't gonna keep them.”

They followed the road past the O'Neill farm. The tilled ground ran on another five hundred yards past the farmhouse and stopped abruptly. Then a strip of forest. Then a battlefield.

It was not like the others. This one was not overgrown. The dirt was turned and looked fresh. The air smelled of sulfur and black powder, and they felt in the backs of their throats that metallic tinge that comes with a great deal of shardisite magic in one place. Everything had a faint pearlescent sheen, as if they were looking at a picture of the thing rather than the thing. All the way out they had seen deer, a shard shrew, crows. Out here, nothing alive at all.

The house in the middle of it was weathered with time, but untouched by war.

Two stories. Some windows broken. Abandoned, but nothing falling down. Nothing came out to meet them and nothing reacted when they landed.

Tauon knocked, and the sound ran through the entire house. They could feel the dust they had disturbed settle. It is not exactly sacred ground. It has been undisturbed for a very long time, and they could feel their own presence cutting through it. The door was not locked.

The fog let in only a dim, even light. The light they brought in seemed to physically push the dark back.

A white oak fills the middle of the entry hall. It was once a houseplant; its broken pot lies around the base. It has grown up through the room since then, swollen and twisted, with tumorous growths where no tree should have them. It has shed all its bark. Carved into the bare wood are thousands of characters. Most are initials. Some are full names. Many are only marks, the kind Tauon has seen a thousand times on contracts, made by men who could not write. Thousands of names. Each carving weeps from the low end of its line.

To the left is a library, its books mostly rotted past reading. Almanacs, homesteading manuals, and one set of the Encyclopedia Britannica that might hold together if opened carefully. Several writing desks. Brass-nibbed quills, ink long since dried away, and stacks of very old parchment. When Yazan drew a quill across a sheet he could feel impressions in the paper beneath.

They rubbed soot from the wicks of old candles across the parchment and words came up.

That hostilities between the forces under our commands cease from this hour.

That the City of Savannah and the marsh country within its earthworks be held neutral, belonging to neither Nation, and open to the passage of all persons not under arms.

That the Grey Companies and the Blue Marines shall together bar the entrance of any army, of whatever Nation, and keep the peace within, until this Instrument be answered.

That this Instrument be carried by neutral hand to Admiral Marchetti, commanding His Majesty's forces in the southern theater, and to the Chancellor-General of the Republic, for their ratification.

That the Garrison hold the line until the courier returns.

Signed by a brigadier-general and a commodore. Witnessed by an ensign of a neutral packet service. W. Halloway.

This was not the instrument itself, only its impression in the sheets beneath it. But the dead in the swamp are doing exactly what it says.

The dining room is mostly taken over by the oak's branches. The table is laid for a dozen, with no trace of food. This was never a military building. It was a working farm, comfortable but not rich, and a family lived here.

Upstairs are four bedrooms. In them they found abandoned soldiers' gear rotting where it was left: a pack, a pair of boots. On the bed in the master bedroom lay a captain's uniform, about a hundred and sixty years old. Before it rotted, someone had torn off every mark of rank and every insignia. They folded it carefully and took it.

The storm cellar is on the east side of the house. When they opened the door, pent-up energy rushed out past them, a whoosh rather than a blast, and the rotted hinge gave way. Metal on the tongue. Their own magic felt like it was slipping out of phase with them.

Seven steps down to brick and earth. The oak's roots come down through the ceiling and have broken into the foundations. Beneath the tree, behind a curtain of roots, something green was pulsing slowly.

Tauon reached in to move the roots aside. They wrapped around his arm and drove thorns into it, and they were deliberate about it. Then they began, slowly, to lift him off the floor. The rest of the cellar came alive, thrashing and grabbing at anything within reach, and wherever the roots found the brick pillars they ground into them.

Yazan lit the flametongue and cut him down with a single stroke.

Tauon tried lesser restoration on the tree. He knew he had cast it. He could not tell whether it had done anything, and it did nothing at all.

So Yazan cut a path. Wide sweeping arcs with the burning blade, not aimed at anything in particular, while Tauon threw sacred flame at whatever reached for them. When it was over, a clear path four or five feet wide ran between the writhing stumps to a chest of rotted wood and brass. Its lid was intact. Green light came through every gap, and something was seeping out of the bottom of it. The roots had grown into that seepage, not into the thing itself.

The lid was locked. When they forced it, the whole chest fell apart.

Inside was a globe of brass and glass about the size of a child's ball, heavy and corroded and leaking, and glowing green.

Tauon lifted it in his bare hands, careful not to touch the fluid.

Yazan watched him lock up. His eyes rolled back in his head and his jaw fell slack, and he stayed like that for thirty seconds.

What Tauon saw: the cellar running backward. Roots drawing up into the ceiling, earth and brick falling back into place, until it was a working root cellar again, with baskets and jars of preserves. Yazan was gone. And down the steps came a captain of the Amazonian Navy carrying the brass globe. He shut the cellar door behind him, sealed the globe in the chest, and walked straight through Tauon on his way out. Then everything ran forward again.

To Tauon it had felt like five or ten minutes. In the cellar it had been half a minute. He was holding the globe and it was dripping.

They carried it out into the light, and Tauon cast mending on the corroded brass.

The thing threw the spell back at him with the same intent he had put into it, and he was a child again.

He knew the memory well. He was living on the street and had been entrusted with a crate of apples to deliver. It was his first big job, enough money to keep him fed for a long time. The crate gave way in the street. He had been practicing mending for months under the eye of the bard who taught him and had never once made it work. That day, for the first time, it worked. The crate came back together almost perfectly. That was the memory.

This time the apples rolled into the street and people trod on them. He reached for one and someone kicked it away. He cast mending on the crate, and a few slivers drew together, and then the whole thing fell apart again. He was a little boy, crying, looking up for someone to help him gather his apples, and everyone around him was pointing and laughing.

Then he was back, and the spell had worked. The corrosion ate itself down to pocked metal, the brass reshaped itself to close the gaps, and the leaking stopped. A tear ran down his face. The old memory was already slipping away from him, and the new one was settling in where it had been.

Yazan identified it. It took him ten minutes. When the spell touched the globe, the globe looked back. Every cell of him felt weighed and measured.

It took him back to Bethel, to his testing for the cleansings and for guiding people through the storms. He had failed that test. He had not kept his intent under control, and instead of cleansing the thing he was sent to cleanse, he made it worse and multiplied it, and that failure is where his mirror image comes from. His instructor stepped in. He walked away whole. That was what his memory recalled in that moment.

In this new twisted recollection, he lost track of one of the mirrors of what he was fighting, and it cut him across the face.

Tauon watched the scar form on his friend's face in real time. Not a wound. A scar, already healed. Yazan raised his hand and felt the ridge of it. The pain came back as vividly as if it had happened yesterday, and the memory of walking away unhurt was gone.

The spell had worked though. The globe is a shard dynamo, a containment vessel for shardisite whose purpose is locomotion. It turns raw intention of a pilot into direct movement of whatever it is harnessed to, airships, sea vessels and land vehicles. It has been out of use for nearly a century because it is unstable and has effects nobody intended. Originally designed to be an assembly line produced magical component to warships, it was produced by one of the richer nations to profit off the Foreverwar. The real price of its scaled production being its unstable containment. As it is it almost certainly would not work, but there is a real stone of shardisite inside it. The leaking fluid was the crude buffer that contained and channeled its power.

Even as Yazan held onto what he had just learned, his original memory of his cleansing trial faded, like a dream right after waking, soon to be lost forever. And when Tauon set the dynamo down in the sloop's hold, they both felt the last vestiges of their original memories reduce to oblivion.

Savannah was the only place for miles with any sun on it. Until they flew back into it they had not noticed how dark everything else had been.

Scout's hardpoint did not go well at first. On the first attempt he cut the hole too big and spent three hours undoing the damage before he could begin again. On the second, an earlier repair gave way under the work. In between he went around the other yards looking at old military hulls with extra hardpoints added, and learned that the proper way is to build them into the ship in the first place. On the third attempt it held. It is a little ugly, the failed attempts show, and it is entirely serviceable. The small cannon goes on it.

Benny was ecstatic. The whole yard was in a good mood. After the morning they had had, it was hard to take.

Afterward Scout had Benny take him around to the other yards to find a buyer for the Cordoban sloop. Six people looked her over. One told him to get that hell out of there. Two said they were interested and would follow up.

Tauon asked Benny's father, Abner Rusk, for a lockbox. Abner didn't have one, but he had a thin metal crate, and considering everything the crew had done, he told them to take it free of charge. They packed the dynamo in it with cloth and carried it aboard the Boats N Hoes.

Scout knew what it was the moment he saw it. His maker had worked with devices like it. He felt it the way a child recognizes something in his father's workshop. He told the party that shard dynamos are crude, cheap, and simple to build. Unskilled hands can make them, though not keep them running. The fluid is a sort of oil full of a semi-magical particulate, made to dampen shardisite and channel it, but that it does the job about as well as a hammer drives a screw. The globe is meant to sit in a particular coupling and come out only for maintenance and repair. Two nations built them: Atlantis and Cascadia, the two that have supplied the Foreverwar for centuries. Neither has made one in over a hundred years. The thing is a relic.

What sits inside is a stone of shardisite. Big enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Enough to drive a galleon. In a world where most of the shardisite has been dug out long ago, it is worth anywhere from five to twenty-five thousand gold, and could be far more if the dynamo could be made to run again. There is no safe way to get the stone out without specialized tools and talent, and certainly no one in Savannah has access to either.

Arkady met them in the laboratory wearing a half-finished uniform in white and gold. He has spent the day rehearsing his part with an intensity that impressed even himself, muttering it to himself over and over. Chet spent most of the day muttering that these employers are crazy, though he had been listening to Arkady the whole time and some of what he was practicing actually seemed like it had merit.

Yazan showed Arkady the rubbing of The Hermitage Accord taken from the farmhouse.

Arkady's forgery had been close. It had also been wrong in ways that now mattered. The crest he had drawn was an Amazonian admiral's anchor, and the dead are not waiting for an Amazonian admiral. They are waiting for a neutral courier, under the seal of a Quebecois packet service, coming back with the document ratified by both sides. The Republic's seal is a lion and the Kingdom's is an anaconda. Nobody in the room knows who the Chancellor-General was. Nobody knows what year the dead believe it is.

Arkady walked to the western edge of town having incorporated all of this new information into his plan. He found a dark alcove where nobody was watching, and changed into the white and gold uniform of a peacekeeping force he knows doesn't yet exist.

The bootsteps in the alley were not a rescue party. Nobody in Havana runs toward a killing.

Miyake got Esteban up by the collar, briefly and entirely off the ground, and set him on his feet with the blade where it had been. The ship was north of the city, nestled between two hills, and everything between here and there was the Amazonian quarter. Squad and platoon encampments, roaming soldiers, campfires for a mile and a half past the edge of anything built.

They debated killing a soldier for a uniform. Arkady solved it with disguise self instead and became an Amazonian soldier on the spot. Esteban, out of breath, made his position clear before anyone asked. You just killed my bodyguards, so you need us. He tried to bolt anyway a minute later. Miyake put him back in line without effort.

Then they ran, and they ran openly, because nobody said anything about hiding.

Soldiers noticed. Most did not care. A few clocked Arkady as an officer and got curious, and by three quarters of the way through there was a cadre of mixed officers and enlisted following them up the zigzag road. Miyake was not winded. Miyake was carrying Esteban and was not winded.

Yazan's haste ran out. The lethargy dropped him mid-stride and he lost the group entirely.

Arkady stopped and let the pursuit catch him.

The officer wanted to know what the hurry was. Arkady told him they were transporting a couple of agitators up for detention, and when pressed on which detention, invented an internal security facility and declined to say more about it. The man's hand came off his saber. He stood at attention and apologized for the interruption and started waving his own people away.

Arkady asked for his name on the way out. Lieutenant Marin. He told Marin his diligence would be commended, and asked that the commendation be routed to the 32nd.

Marin scurried. Arkady kept the name.

Further up the road, Miyake reached the squad posted at the north entrance, fourteen men, rifles coming up. She did not slow down. At fifteen feet she took hold of Esteban and leapt clean over the line. The man running with her covered the same ground by opening a portal and stepping through it, which from the guards' perspective meant a thing charged at them and vanished.

Yazan, meanwhile, was cramped up in the mud being laughed at by five soldiers around a stew pot. A grizzled old one with half a beard and open wounds on his forehead asked if he belonged to the men walking past, then healed him anyway when they said he didn't. Somebody announced loudly that here was another one of them agitators, and nobody in the camp thought twice about it.

The last checkpoint had fourteen or fifteen men on it, with a few uselessly glassing the dark. An ensign objected on principle, said he didn't take orders from civilians, and claimed he had winged one of the fugitives already. A murmur went through his own men when he said it. The uniform outranked his single pip in spades. They pointed, he pointed back, and the party walked out of Havana.

Miyake had Esteban bound and gagged on the floor of an empty cabin by the time the rest of them reached the ship.

She showed weariness for the first time, and it was not physical. Something was switching off and leaving her, and her face was softening as it went. She said they could interrogate him in the morning, went into another room, and when someone looked in after her she was gone.

Chet took them back over the city at one in the morning. From above, Havana is a small lit core and then an enormous unlit sprawl, campfires scattered across the landscape for miles past the edge of the encampments. Most of the people who live there do not want to be seen. Somewhere far off, out over the water, they heard what sounded like thunder until it repeated in volleys. Chet cocked his head, checked his pocket watch, and let it go.

He asked where he was setting down. There was a pause before somebody produced Pier Eleven from memory.

Three men were waiting on the dock. The fee was five hundred gold. Arkady tried to buy time with a contact he did not have and the boss cocked a pistol, put it on him, and repeated the number. He shot Arkady before the fight properly started.

Yazan opened him up at the arm, and a potato masher came off the man's belt onto the dock with the pin still in it. He had a second one. He threw it onto the ship, said he hadn't wanted to have to do that, and the deck caught fire.

What followed happened in two places at once. Belowdecks and topside it was boots stamping at burning planking, a blanket conjured out of tinker's work and thrown over the worst of it, and Chet arriving at a run with a collapsible bucket, looking around at the damage and asking the ship what they had done to it. The hydrogas envelope was directly above all of this.

On the dock, Arkady put a rapier through the boss's chest with a hex on it. The man looked down at the blade coming out the front of him and said he had not thought it was going to go this way.

One crony threw his belt on the ground, asked twice if they were good, and ran the moment anyone nodded. The other froze under hold person and wet himself where he stood. They let him up and put him to work carrying crates.

Arkady stripped the body. A hundred and eighty gold, a pepperbox in the boot, a shaving kit with a straight razor, several forged manifests, a pouch of tobacco, and a single cigar with a glittery sheen on it. On the way out he cast a silent image of five hundred coppers stacked neatly beside the corpse.

A lot of people on the dock watched the whole thing. Not one of them asked a question or came over.

Consul Addy was waiting at Pier Eleven at half past two in the morning with his watch already out. He had been there all night and expected compensation for it. The party offered him the surviving ruffian as a gift, explaining that the man had tried to rob them and had been robbed instead, and would make a very good worker.

Addy drew an Amazonian service revolver and shot him in the head before they finished. He said he did not want their garbage labor. He wanted his spice and he wanted to leave.

He paid what he had agreed to pay. Then he handed over a cigar, Manchurian, for the trouble, and told them to get out of his hair. Through the glass they watched him sit down and light one himself. The room clouded up in a way smoke does not, and small fireworks began going off inside it.

His clerk suggested that the Amazonian navy is always looking for privateers to move cargo through the war zone, and mentioned that it might be worth staying out of Addy's way for a while.

Back at the ship, Miyake had come out of the galley looking like the night had not happened at all, having found the regenerative chamber. She and Chet were arguing topside when the rest of them walked up, Chet gesturing at the party, Miyake stone-faced and not turning to look. It ended with Chet throwing his hands in the air and saying fine.

Miyake said she wanted questions answered somewhere that was not the Havana docks. Chet returned them to the valley with an expression that suggested he knew something he was not saying.

It was past four in the morning when they went into the room. Esteban had been on the floor for three hours with nothing to do but wait for this.

Miyake did not bend down. She kicked him onto his back and scraped the gag out of his mouth with the toe of her boot. He looked up at her with nothing on his face but fear, clammy and cold with it.

You are going to tell me what I want to know, she said, or these boys are going to make sure you never tell anyone anything again. Are we clear.

He asked if he could sit up. He asked if somebody could grant him that dignity.

She stepped on his face.

He said fine, fine, fine, fine, over and over until it stopped being a word, and after that he was clay.

She asked when he had last seen the Fondeo.

His face went blank with confusion. It is a small name, the kind that goes on a skiff or a personal boat, not on anything a man would expect to be asked about at knifepoint in a locked room. He asked if it was a place. Then he asked why she wanted that thing, and she told him she did not want the boat.

She wanted its skipper.

The confusion went out of his face and what replaced it was much worse. He said he had not seen or set foot on that ship in over fifteen years. He said he could not imagine it had ever left west America. He said he wished he had a better answer.

I know that you have a better answer.

She asked the room whether anyone had a weak stomach.

He told them he was racking his brain. He told them they could not imagine the amount of drugs he had done in his life. He said fifteen years again like the number would help him.

Her boot had not moved off his face the entire time. She leaned forward and put her weight into it, and he started screaming, and it was not the sound of a man negotiating. It was pain. Whatever she wanted was in him somewhere and he could not find it, and he had gone past compliance into genuine terror for his life.

Someone suggested there were mages who could take it out of him directly. Arkady put suggestion on him to make him compliant. He did not contest it for a second. It changed nothing. He was crying by then, saying the same three sentences on a loop, that he could not remember, that he did not know.

It is in there, they told him.

It was. He simply could not reach it.

For the first time, Miyake showed anger. A white spark with green in it came off the side of her eye. She pressed down and took a knee at the same time, put her hand flat on his head, and her eyes went white with the pupils flickering underneath. Anyone who knows anything about magic knows what that is. She was going through his thoughts, and he offered no resistance at all.

I just needed him fully compliant, she said, while she was still doing it.

Thirty seconds. Then she peeled back.

I've got it. I know where we're going.

She turned on her heel and walked out. What she left on the floor had gone somewhere else and was not coming back on its own.

Chet was waiting topside and he was furious. I didn't sign up for torture. It took real work to talk him around, and what they got was not absolution. It's your boat, he said, and I will captain to the best of my ability, and gave a half salute.

They cut Esteban's bonds and he slumped to his knees. Somebody spent their last slot on lesser restoration, and the fog behind his eyes cleared enough for him to focus on them. They carried him out and set him on the dock.

You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into.

They wished him luck in his travels. He said he would need it.

Afterward, Arkady pulled Chet aside to thank him for the fire. Chet took no credit and gave none. Somebody presented him with the dead man's pepperbox and belt, still tacky with blood, and he wrapped it around his crushed velvet waistcoat and thanked them for it, visibly uncomfortable the whole time.

They put the question of Reno to Miss K over the sending stone. She answered by asking why in hell they wanted to go there, then gave them two names anyway. Domingo Cruz for fuel. Erin Faust for cargo.

They filled the tanks in the gantry district, three quarters gone crossing the straits, and went looking for Faust at seven in the morning on no sleep. The fuel clerk knew exactly who they meant and had opinions about her.

Her operation is a corrugated steel warehouse with garage doors at both ends, racks of surplus out front and a yard of used war material out back with Amazonian and Cordovan airships lined up for resupply. She wears Cordovan gray and an eye patch and used to be navy. Mid to late fifties, some elvish in the ears, hair that used to be red. She was closing deals by dismissing people mid-sentence and walking away.

She clocked the party on entry and ignored them for fifteen minutes on purpose.

When they finally got in front of her, they invoked Kalara Lore. Faust wanted to know who they were to Kalara. When they said they were her employers, she stopped and looked at them properly. She's working for you guys. Oh, honey.

Then she got to business. She had a problem that needed solving, and if Kalara had sent them, maybe they were the shape of thing that could solve it. She wanted to know how much hold space they had, and when they told her, she said that would just about do it. Profit comes from a full hold.

Sixteen sealed crates. Three in the morning, at her warehouse. Destination is the Quebec border, payment on delivery from a Quebecois client, coordinates from her clerk. The crates are sealed here and stay sealed there.

Whatever you do, don't open these fucking crates.

She told them what she knew about the Quebecois government, which is that they skin people alive and consider it a virtue. She told them the job should keep the little ones off their back for a while. The party mentioned having recently moved fifty thousand prophylactics without incident and she declined to touch that one.

Payment is seventy-five thousand gold on delivery. Her cut is twenty-five. They have three months to bring it to her.

When one of them named the split back to her with a little too much practice, her eyebrow went up and stayed up. She had spent the entire conversation in complete control of it, and she walked away from this one with questions on her face.

They slept in the valley while Scout finished repairing the deck.

Ten hours to burn before the pickup. A dockworker with strong opinions about his own boots pointed them at Macee's.

It is a tugboat. Paddle wheels, blacked-out bridge windows, a magical neon sign, and no reason to think it holds more than twenty people. Through the bridge door it opens into a full casino, not a nice one, smelling of cigar smoke and shardisite haze and expensive bourbon and vomit ground into the carpet. Two hundred people. Dice against the wall, roulette, rows of slots, and a lot of faces that had not slept in a while.

Arkady stepped out to an alley, put on Lieutenant Marin, and came back to play cards.

He took a hundred and thirty gold off the first hand with a flush and kept going, and an hour of play left him well ahead. Yazan lost early. Scout fed a single gold coin into a slot machine and rode it up through a series of increasingly good payouts to a hundred, then walked away.

Somebody opened a bar tab under Lieutenant Marin's name, let the bartender take an imprint off the insignia, and bought the entire bumper table a round of strong ale.

When Arkady eventually stepped out alone to drop the disguise, two men from the tables came out behind him. They followed him the entire way to the alley, ten yards back, close enough that there was no telling whether they had seen the change. He ducked behind a stack of crates and refuse, put a silent image of himself at the far end of the alley, and let them walk past.

They are still looking for him.

The thing in the storm was not one thing.

From above the thunderheads the crew could make out shapes in the churn below, separate masses of freezing wind and shard-lit cloud moving against each other with something like intent. Not a single creature circling the ship. Several, and busy with one another, tearing at the storm and at each other for whatever passes for territory among things born out of weather and emerald dust.

Nobody aboard wanted to be noticed.

Scout shouted the obvious question across the deck. Was there any way through this without catching their attention.

“If we make it through this,” Miyake shouted back, “you guys will be worth every penny.”

What followed was not a plan so much as a shared decision to commit to something ridiculous. Yazan started it, a cleansing dance on the open deck in the middle of a squall that should have thrown him overboard, and Arkady joined him, and then the whole crew was in it, hands and voices and absolute conviction all pointed at the same idea at the same moment. The shard-dust in the air did the rest.

The Boats N Hoes went invisible. All of her, hull and gantry lines and the people standing on her deck, gone out of the world as far as anything watching could tell.

The elementals lost interest. The ship skated the roof of the storm through the night with green lightning breaking under her keel, and by morning the weather was behind them and the invisibility had bled away with the dust that fed it.

Belowdecks was a disaster.

Everything not tied down had spent the night finding a new home, and one of the four crates of exotic spice was a total loss, burst open across the deck. Three left. Chet had opinions about the state of his ship that he mostly kept to himself.

Then the hold started smelling like roast beef.

Not spice. Not cargo. Well-seasoned roast beef, rich and unmistakable and coming from a room containing no meat whatsoever. The spilled spice had pocked the floorboards where it landed and left them slick in a way that had nothing to do with moisture. The crew, being the crew, cooked with it.

The results were mixed. The spice was genuinely fortifying, the kind of meal a body remembers during a short rest. It also meant that within the hour every single person who had eaten needed to urinate with an urgency that could not be described as dignified. This was noted. It was not immediately understood as tactical intelligence.

Miyake came up after all this and ate what was offered without comment. When Yazan spoke about the shard-domes of Arabia she let him finish and then told him she knew, that she had been paid by collectors to bring old world pieces out of places like that, and that she had lost her taste for domes a long time ago. They celebrate vices, she said, and did not elaborate.

She gave them the job properly once the weather was behind them.

A man named Esteban Reyes. A broker, in Havana, hiding from Cordoban creditors who had run out of patience. Find him, take him, bring him back.

Do not kill him. He has an answer to a question that I have.

Tauon pointed out that not killing him removed most of what the crew was actually good at. Miyake's lips tightened, and that was the whole of her response.

Three days south and the city came up under them, and Scout took a sketch of the whole sprawl from twelve thousand feet before they ever set down. They put the ship in a hidden valley in the hills outside the city, tucked well out of sight of the staging grounds where Amazonian and Cordoban forces sat glaring at each other across neutral ground.

Havana on foot is gunpowder and sewage and salvage. Everything in it built twice, out of the wreckage of whatever stood there before. A city that belongs to nobody and takes money from everybody.

Arkady put on the scrap dealer. Loud coat, louder manner, a whole personality assembled specifically for the purpose of moving goods in a city where nobody asks for paperwork.

They went to Old Yara's, because that is where you go in Havana when you need to find a man who does not want finding, and also, as it turned out, when you need to unload three crates of magical spice.

Arkady worked the room and came up with four viable buyers inside a minute. Tauon was pointed toward a half-elf named Addy, a man known for taking Atlantean goods off Atlantean hands without asking where they had been.

What followed was a two-man operation of genuine craft. Tauon delivered the pitch, boisterous, flamboyant, the full performance, arms wide, entirely too much volume for the size of the table. Addy was so thoroughly captivated by the show that he never once noticed Arkady drifting in behind him and depositing a sample bag directly onto the table like a man returning something that had always been there.

Addy scoffed at the opening number, the way buyers do. They landed on three thousand gold for the three crates. He spat in his hand and offered it, and the deal was done.

Delivery to Pier Eleven. This evening.

There remained the matter of one of the other prospects, a man who had turned them down and who now had an unattended drink. Arkady is not a man who leaves an unattended drink alone. Approximately seven seconds after the spice went in, the man was sprinting for the door with the particular gait of someone who has run out of options and is now negotiating with time itself.

The crew had, by this point, discovered a weapon. They simply had not filed it as one.

Miyake had been in the bar the whole time.

Yara recognized her the moment she came through the door, which is its own kind of information about both of them.

“I heard your ship went down.”

“Yeah. All hands but me.”

Yara asked what brought her to Havana. Miyake did not answer with words. She looked across the room at a man drinking hard in a corner, badly dressed and worse rested, with two professionals sitting close enough to him to be paid for it.

Esteban Reyes looked like a man three days from the end of something.

His bodyguards clocked the party first, and then they ran, and the crew ran after them, out of the bar and into the dark between buildings where the noise of the district dropped away to nothing. Scout got out ahead of the pack and closed the distance fast.

The powder flash came from the dark ahead, and the alley turned into a killing floor.

Two druidic bodyguards, professional and prepared, one working a rifle and roots that came up through the stones to grab at legs, the other a shotgun and arcane heat that seared into scout's metallic body. Scout put a guiding bolt into the first and there was very little left of him afterward. The second answered with both barrels peppering Yazan's hastily cast shield. When Esteban rounded the corner, he brought with him four summoned lions, big and fast and wrong in the way summoned things always are. The lions attacked as the metal of Scout's body turned into a furnace.

Yazan ended it. Whatever the fire dance is, he found it there in the dark. When his flametongue blade came around, the second bodyguard stopped being a problem, and then the lions did too.

The alley went quiet. Before anyone had a moment to take a breath, Miyake closed the gap and pressed blade to Esteban's neck, knocking him to the ground.

Esteban Reyes was on the ground with his breath coming ragged and his eyes very wide, and Miyake stood over him with the flat of her katana against his throat, perfectly calm, the way she had been calm since the gantry.

She informed Esteban that he would be coming with them. He didn't argue.

Three crates of spice still sat in the hold of a ship parked outside the city. A buyer was expecting them at Pier Eleven by evening. The crew now had a prisoner, and the most dangerous city in the world between them and both.

This session established the foundation for the new campaign, set in the Modern Era of 2124 Anno Meteorum. The party currently operates out of Hartemple, the capital city of the island kingdom of Laurentius within the United Monarchies of Atlantis.

The players are an established team of relic hunters who have worked together for the past five years. Following a major payday, the party invested their windfall of 500,000 GP into a permanent base of operations and a custom caravel airship.

• Scout (Matt): A small bespoke Warforged Artificer and Cartographer built by a greedy scientist. He carries “Magical Maps” (in the form of small compass-like objects) that allow the party to track one another and grant a 1d4 initiative bonus.
• Arkady Ivanovich (Jeremy): A Human Rogue/Warlock and former clandestine operative who ambiguously deployed to the Foreverwar. He specializes in social manipulation and high-damage sneak attacks.
• Asher Winken Peacewood (Curtis): An Air Genasi Druid and former Lemurian Navy navigator. He carries a powerful Staff of the Woodlands and holds the self promoted rank of Commodore.
• Yazan Shamir (Adam): A Human Bladesinger Wizard from the ruins of Bethel, Arabia. He utilizes a rhythmic combat style called the Dance of the Tempest and wields a Flametongue Scimitar.
• Tauon (Nate): A Half-Goblin/Half-Gnome Bard raised in the streets of Hartemple. He follows a merchant cult that views life as a divine ledger and serves as the party's primary healer.

• The Wiki Wins: André established that the Apocalyptica Arcanum Wiki is the definitive source of truth.
• Flanking Overhaul: Advantage for flanking has been removed. Instead, if two or more allies are within melee range of an enemy, the attacker receives a binary +2 bonus to hit.
• Rule Sets: The campaign uses a mix of 2014 and 2024 D&D rules; character sheets will be standardized prior to Session One.

• The Base: An Urban Office in Hartemple with a hidden Underground Facility and a Safe of Holding concealed behind a painting.
• The Staff: The office is managed by Logistics Coordinator Kalara “Mrs. K” Lore, who operates coldly but efficiently and who practically forced her way into the position, and everyone has since been afraid to say otherwise.
• The Ship: A Caravel-class airship registered as the “Boats N Hoes”. It features Reinforced Hull Plating, a Concealed Cargo Compartment, and an Arcanotech Cargo Quirk (Spatial Anchor/Bag of Holding feature).
• The Captain: The party hired Captain Chet Roosso, a career merchant with a 25-year record.

The air in Hartemple smelled of sweet sea salt and rotting fish as the party gathered in their office. It was nearly noon, and for weeks they had negotiated with shipwrights and brokers to commission a vessel that would finally grant them true independence.

A knock at the door revealed a messenger boy: their ship would be ready at 3:00 PM on Gantry #4. With three hours to kill, the group decided to secure a bottle of champagne to christen their new home. At a high-end spirit shop, Arkady used a Minor Illusion of a wine spill to distract the shopkeeper while Asher, transformed into a bee, successfully liberated a mid-grade bottle of champagne.

The party then traveled to a mariner's house to collect their new hire, Captain Chet Roosso. The Captain proved to be professional and confident, making it clear that while the party owned the ship, he commanded the deck. Before heading to the docks, the group stopped at a local Arcanory to gawk at refined Shardisite shards.

Before they could address the shopkeep, a Chaplain of Fiducia (the Angel of Confidence), flanked by three religious thugs, confronted them in the street. He accused the “relic hunters” of stealing a sacred artifact belonging to his establishment and demanded its return, or the financial gain that the party found in selling it.

When negotiations devolved with Asher suggesting the Chaplain “extract his balls”, the priest slammed his staff into the cobblestones, releasing a pulse of divine energy that dampened the party's initiative. Combat erupted. Scout outlined the enemies in a vibrant green Faerie Fire, while Asher assumed the form of a Giant Scorpion, grappling the Chaplain and a thug. Yazan moved with rhythmic grace in a Bladesong, his Flametongue Scimitar singing with booming energy.

The Chaplain, restrained by magical vines, called down a localized lightning storm from the gantries, frying one of his own men in the process. The tide turned when Arkady slipped through the shadows and thrust his rapier through the Chaplain's back, ending the divine assault.

As the remaining thugs yielded, the party collected a shardisite necklace from the dead priest and made their way to Gantry #4. There, twenty stories in the sky, they watched as the clouds parted to reveal the Boats N Hoes swooping down to meet them. A ship born of ambition, ready for its first flight.

Hartemple, 2124 A.M. Five seasoned relic hunters finally have an airship of their own, but their first commission draws them into a mysterious woman’s search for something that does not want to be found. Beyond Atlantis lies unnatural storms, untamed frontiers, sealed cargo, and the weight of the unknown. The crew has earned its reputation. Now they are about to learn what it costs.

—

Apocalyptica Arcanum III - Session Recaps

• Party Assets & Holdings Declaration
• Airship Commission & Outfitting Order
• Nations & Geography
• Atlantis
• Apocalyptica Arcanum I Session Recaps
• Apocalyptica Arcanum II Session Recaps

In the year 2101 A.M., a group of disparate travelers seeking a new life or specialized opportunities in the Europan capital of Dresden secured passage aboard the ESS Albacore. Originating from the port of Nunavut in Cascadia, the submersible vessel was one of the few capable of traversing the treacherous Sea of Ghosts. Because the permanent magical Maelstrom renders airship travel over these waters impossible, the journey required descending into the lightless depths of the ocean, a feat for which Captain Isaac Carver had built a stern but fair reputation. The vessel carried not only passengers but high-value cargo destined for the Europan markets, setting an atmosphere of tight security and professional isolation from the moment of disembarkation. The traveling party consisted of individuals from across the globe, each carrying their own history and motivations for the trek to Europa. Among them were:

• The silver-tongued Tabaxi Mozaddha Theriska, a traveler seeking a fresh start away from Cascadian creditors, who carried himself with the swagger of a seasoned seafarer. A small fragment of shardisite hung around his neck like a talisman, and a leather eye patch sat across one eye — though the sharpness with which he watched the room suggested the eye beneath it worked perfectly well.
• The unkempt Tabaxi rat-catcher Muddy Mittens.
• A Yuan-Ti man of faith known as Stanley the Seer, who favors the precision of alchemical explosives over the steel of blades.
• A sentient gnome-like construct named Lofta
• Barkevius Frumpymelon, a dwarf returning to his home city of Dresden to face the legacy of the stone docks he once fled
• 4032 “Kolg”, an Atlantean warforged veteran of the American Forever War who served twenty-one continuous years in Lt. Smithlock’s recon platoon and was among the rare few of his kind to survive that attrition-heavy conflict.
• Sikro, a kobold who moved through the world with the quiet economy of someone built for terrain that didn't favor his size. His constant companion: a clockwork drake, a construct of articulated brass and shardisite-fed fire. The two operated as a single unit, the ranger and his machine.

While Captain Carver presented an image of Europan discipline, the rest of the ship’s command structure immediately unsettled the passengers. First Officer Drax Trulia carried an imposing and sinister weight, leaving many with a bad taste in their mouths during the initial boarding process. The engineering deck was overseen by the Europan halfling Sampson Hornblower and the Arctican dwarf Hothud Copperhood, joined by his kin and fellow mechanic Drigg Bronzefinger. The Cascadian half-orc Warwick Drutha manned the helm, while the bar-brawling and fiddle-playing sailor Nicola Cornelius, the human Manchurian navigator Miyake Harrier, and the reclusive researcher Zachary Harrow kept a watchful distance from the group, with the latter often remaining confined to his private laboratory.

Security for the Albacore was provided by a specialized Marine Expeditionary Force of six Atlantean warforged led by a human officer, Arthur Langdon. These sentinels—designated with monikers and serials such as Boss (8055), Boo (8000), Bolo (8010), Bobo (8080), Bibi (8181), and Bill (8111)—were noted for their stoic, personality-free adherence to their duties. They were not a standard part of Carver’s crew, having been hired specifically for their lethality and their absolute obedience to Langdon’s command. As the Albacore submerged and left the Cascadian coastline behind, the pressure of the deep sea began to mirror the growing tension between the crew and their mechanical guardians.

The fragile tranquility of the voyage was shattered during the first night underway. The mangled remains of the warforged guard Bill (8111) were discovered hidden within the ship's structure, the wreckage of his frame serving as a grim indicator that a killer was already aboard. The discovery was a shock to the ship’s equilibrium, as the warforged were considered formidable assets, and the perpetrator had attempted a poor cover-up of the mechanical carnage.

Captain Carver immediately placed the Albacore on high alert and called a mandatory muster on the bridge. What followed was a rigorous and tense interrogation as Carver, Trulia, and Langdon grilled every crew member and passenger to determine how a sentinel could be dismantled without a single alarm being raised. While the initial inquiry yielded no definitive culprit, it successfully sowed the first seeds of profound distrust. Observations of the crew revealed a pervasive nervousness, suggesting that the mystery of Bill’s death was merely a symptom of a much larger, darker conspiracy brewing beneath the waves of the Sea of Ghosts.

The midnight assault on the Nightingale Estate served as the violent crescendo of the revolution. As the revolutionary armada, led by the party and Field General Neckett, closed in, they were met by Captain Isadora Nightingale and her elite inner circle in a final, desperate aerial defense. At this stage, it was undeniable that the Nightingales had aligned themselves with the dark energies of the Legion, as a palpable surge of arcane evil settled over the battle, carrying a heavy emotional weight that resonated with the sorrow of Tristessa. The night sky over Dresden was illuminated by the relentless exchange of arcane discharges, heavy munitions, and the burning hulls of falling airships. This was not merely a tactical engagement, but a struggle for the very soul of Europa, with the darkness of the Legion clashing against the desperate hope of a populace seeking liberation from merchant-class tyranny.

The tide of the battle shifted irrevocably when the ground unit successfully delivered its massive, shard-laced, explosive payload to the manor's foundations. The resulting detonation rocked the entire district, shattering the estate's structural wards and sending a shockwave that was felt across the burning capital. This massive shockwave caused the command vessels to crash into one another, locking them in a deadly embrace as they began their uncontrolled descent. In the ensuing chaos, the party boarded and engaged Isadora's command vessel in a brutal exchange that continued even as the ships fell from the sky. Through a combination of tactical precision and the manifestation of divine and demonic energies—notably Muddy Mittens consciously drawing upon demonic resonance to bolster his strength—the party formally defeated Isadora Nightingale and her high-ranking officers during the crash sequence. As the command airships finally plummeted toward the earth, the era of Nightingale oversight came to a fiery and final conclusion.

The party awoke amidst the smoldering wreckage of their crashed vessel on the outskirts of the city, battered but alive. The silence that followed the battle was heavy, broken only by the distant crackle of fires and the groans of settling metal. Looking back toward the skyline, they beheld a Dresden that had been utterly transformed; the capital of Europa was in absolute shambles, its iconic architecture reduced to bombed-out husks. While the Nightingales had been dismantled, the price of victory was etched into every cratered street and ruined monument. The group realized that the revolution had successfully cleared the path for a new world, but it had left them with the daunting task of governing a city that no longer possessed a functioning infrastructure.

Amidst the physical ruins, each member of the party was forced to reckon with their own internal transformations. Mozaddha Theriska grappled with his shifting identity, attempting to reconcile the pirate he had performed for so long with the honorable vanguard he had become somewhere along the way. Stanley the Seer sought clarity in his newfound rededication to Jasiri, the Archangel of Courage, finding his old religious ties completely severed by the fires of the revolt. The most visible change was in Muddy Mittens, who stood among the ruins with the Mark of Tristessa blackening his palm and the weight of a dead captain's promise still undelivered—victorious, yet deeply and perhaps irrevocably scarred by the darkness he had been forced to embrace.

For Barkevius Frumpymelon, the reckoning was quieter and took place far from the ruins of the estate. In the days following the revolution, word reached the party that Bilferrus Frumpymelon was alive—not killed in the bombardment as assumed, but found at a private cabin outside the city. Barkevius went to him. What he found was a man undone: his father, drunk and hollowed out, sat in the ruin of his own conscience. Bilferrus had been aligned with the Nightingales. Not unknowingly, not tangentially—he had been complicit in the machinery of the regime that the party had just bled the city to dismantle. He did not attempt to justify it. He did not ask for forgiveness. He simply sat, and drank, and did not look his son in the eye.

The conversation that followed was known only to Barkevious and his father. Muted words drifted outside to the intensely listening party outside. What is known is that when Barkevius left the cabin, closing the door behind him, he was missing his pistol from his belt. What is also known is that as the party somberly walked back to the city, a single gunshot echoed through the forest. As the party stopped to identify the sound, Barkevious trudged onward without flinching.

The party told the city that Bilferrus Frumpymelon had died in the bombardment. That lie settled into Dresden's collective grief without resistance, and no one looked too closely. Barkevius returned to the capital carrying his father's name and his father's company, and never spoke again about the cabin.

As the sun began to rise over the shattered remains of Dresden, the vanguards of the revolution looked toward the horizon with a mixture of exhaustion and grim determination. The alliances forged in the sewers and the blood spilled over the Nightingale Estate had created the foundation for a new Europan government, yet the path forward remained uncertain. They knew that the Nightingales' defeat was only the beginning; the shadows of the Legion still lingered in the corners of the world, and the task of rebuilding a nation from the ashes would require a courage as fierce as the fires that had consumed the old regime. Standing together on the blood-soaked soil of their new home, the survivors prepared to face the long, cold morning of a new era.

The party woke in the smoldering wreckage of the Nightingale Estate's outskirts, battered and alive in a city that barely was. Dresden had survived the revolution the way a man survives a house fire — breathing, but with nothing left standing behind him. The Nightingales were gone. The Legion's foothold in the capital had been severed. What remained was a skyline of bombed-out husks, cratered streets, and a populace that had traded one kind of terror for the open and unfamiliar landscape of uncertainty.

In the days that followed, each member of the party reckoned with what the revolution had cost them personally. Mozaddha Theriska moved through the ruins with the quiet bearing of a man who had stopped performing and not yet figured out what came next. Stanley the Seer had no such ambiguity — Jasiri's brand still burned on his palm with a clarity that felt like instruction, and he set immediately to work, preaching in the rubble of the Cathedral of Amandine and gathering the first converts of what would become the Church of Jasiri. The most visible change was in Muddy Mittens, who carried the Mark of Tristessa on his blackened hand and the weight of a dead captain's promise still undelivered, moving through the wreckage with the particular silence of someone who has stopped trying to explain themselves.

For Barkevius Frumpymelon, the reckoning was quieter and took place far from the ruins. Word reached the party that Bilferrus Frumpymelon was alive — not killed in the bombardment as assumed, but found at a private cabin outside the city. Barkevius went alone.

What he found was a man undone. Bilferrus sat in the ruin of his own conscience, drunk and hollowed out, unwilling to meet his son's eyes. He had been aligned with the Nightingales — not unknowingly, not tangentially, but deliberately, in the calculated way of a man who had decided that proximity to power was worth the cost of what that power did to the people beneath it. The revolution had stripped that calculation bare. He did not ask for forgiveness. He did not attempt to justify it. He simply sat, and drank, and waited.

The conversation that followed was known only to Barkevius and his father. Muted words drifted outside to the intensely listening party beyond the door. What is known is that when Barkevius left the cabin, closing the door behind him, his pistol was no longer on his belt. As the party somberly walked back toward the city, a single gunshot echoed through the trees. Barkevius did not flinch. He did not slow. He just kept walking.

The party told the city that Bilferrus Frumpymelon had died in the bombardment. That lie settled into Dresden's collective grief without resistance, and no one looked too closely. Barkevius returned to the capital carrying his father's name, his father's company, and nothing else from the cabin.

While the physical work of reconstruction consumed the city's hands, Stanley the Seer turned his attention to its spirit. The bombed-out Cathedral of Amandine was beyond restoration, its stones too thoroughly shattered to serve as anything but a monument to what had been lost. Stanley did not mourn it. He preached from the rubble, arguing that the people of Dresden had not survived the Nightingales through the passive love of Amandine but through the active, defiant courage that Jasiri represented. The doctrine landed in a city that had just fought a revolution and was still too raw to want comfort. It wanted permission to have been right. Stanley gave them that.

He appointed Orliath, a professor of arcane studies who had sheltered the party during the revolution, as his second-in-command to organize the growing congregation. His message reached even into the old priesthood — Reverend Isaiah Windlass, a former priest of Amandine, renounced his old vows and came to Stanley as a high-ranking minister of the new faith. Together they began raising a new temple from the rubble of the old, brick by brick, transforming the site of the city's greatest defeat into the foundation of its new spiritual identity.

This was not the first time the party had dealt with Coalborne. Before the revolution, when the surface streets of Dresden had become a kill-zone and the party needed underground passage, it was Barkevius who had led them to the warehouse district's illicit bazaar. Coalborne had been a small-time peddler when Barkevius left the city — the kind of man a merchant's son found useful during his college years. What Barkevius had found on his return was something considerably more than that. Coalborne had grown into a genuine power in the city's underworld, presiding over an expansive criminal infrastructure that had survived the Nightingale regime by making itself quietly indispensable to it. He had shown the party the catacombs. The arrangement had been transactional and cold, but it had existed. Barkevius had not forgotten.

When Coalborne arrived at the new Merchant Council's first formal session, taking a seat at the table alongside the surviving power brokers of a shattered city, Barkevius recognized him immediately. That was, in fact, the problem. The man who had profited from Dresden's suffering, who had built his empire in the margins of Nightingale oppression, now sat in the same chamber where Barkevius's father's name still echoed — occupying a seat bought with revolutionary blood. The recognition did not give Barkevius pause. It removed the last of it.

Before diplomacy could be attempted, Barkevius moved. The session collapsed into chaos. Coalborne's enforcers and at least one council member caught in the crossfire did not survive the encounter. Coalborne himself escaped.

In the bloody silence that followed, Lavinia Overton delivered her cold assessment. The criminal underworld had the infrastructure the state currently lacked. A second conflict fought entirely in shadows would be worse than the one they had just survived. The party accepted the realpolitik with the grim recognition of people who had already compromised everything else to get this far. Coalborne would have a seat at the table. Both men understood exactly what that meant.

The fragile work of reconstruction was still in its earliest stages when Dresden's recovered breathing room was violently revoked. A massive shadow eclipsed the skyline without warning, plunging the soot-stained streets into an unnatural twilight. Descending from the cloud cover was a colossal floating landmass — a mobile, miniaturized Hydrogas manufactory — that hovered with predatory intent over the capital. The silence of the recovering city was shattered by a booming, magically-amplified voice that rolled across the districts like thunder. Captain Hale Damien, world-renowned pirate and the only known successful assaulter of the formidable Dreadfort, broadcast his demands with the swagger of a man who had never once been told no by a city and expected Dresden to be no different. He demanded immediate and unconditional surrender, mocking the new government's attempt to rebuild from the ashes of a revolution that had, in his estimation, simply cleared the city's bones for easier picking.

Before the Merchant Council or the unorganized remains of the Europan military could coordinate any meaningful defensive response, the invasion began in earnest. Pirate crews rappelled from the landmass above, descending into the heart of the city on specialized rigging. They established a formidable foothold near the Augustus bridge over the Elbe river, securing a strategic chokepoint that divided the city's districts. Upon taking the bridgehead, the invaders established a massive ground-side teleportation circle, intended to serve as a conduit for moving plundered loot and reinforcements between the city below and the floating fortress above.

Throughout a long and bloody night, Dresden was subjected to a relentless wave of opportunistic theft and violence. The party was forced to navigate the chaos of the streets, engaging in desperate skirmishes against raiding parties and opportunistic looters who sought to pick the shattered city's bones clean. The night made one thing clear: while the Nightingales were gone, the city's vulnerability remained a magnet for the world's most dangerous predators.

Moving through the chaos of the occupied streets, Barkevius led a portion of the party toward the damaged remains of the Frumpymelon Docks & Loading Company building. The pirates had already been through it — parts of the structure were looted, parts reduced to rubble by the earlier bombardment. But Barkevius knew something the pirates did not. Behind a concealed door within the building's surviving interior lay a private research and development facility his father had never advertised — a prototype warehouse stocked with experimental arcanotech that Bilferrus Frumpymelon had been quietly developing outside the scrutiny of the Merchant Council. Barkevius opened the door. The party went in.

The facility was intact. Working through a ledger found at the entrance, the party took stock of what remained. The room's guardian made itself known shortly after — an automata, purpose-built to protect the facility's inventory, that engaged the party in a sharp and dangerous confrontation before being dismantled. Among the prototypes recovered was a deceptively simple-looking box of lacquered brass and shardisite fittings. Someone opened it. The interior erupted in a blinding column of radiant light that filled the room instantaneously, leaving several members of the party temporarily sightless and the walls scorched with residual energy. They shut it. They kept it. The party dubbed it the Sunbox, filed it under useful and terrifying, and moved on.

With the Sunbox secured and the streets still churning with pirate activity, the party recognized that the only way to end the occupation was to take the fight to its source. The teleportation circle at the Augustus bridgehead was the island's umbilical cord — the mechanism by which Damien resupplied his forces and extracted his plunder. Seizing it meant taking the island itself.

They moved through the occupied city by night, avoiding pirate patrols and navigating the familiar geography of Dresden's darkened streets toward the bridgehead. The plan going in was simple: get to the circle, get up to the island, and end this. What happened at the circle was considerably less simple than that.

The teleportation circle at the Augustus bridgehead was heavily defended, ringed by pirates who had no reason to expect the people they were robbing to come looking for a fight at the source. Mozaddha Theriska saw an opportunity in that. The entire architecture of his false identity — the eye patch, the nautical swagger, the years of studied performance — had been building toward exactly this kind of moment. He stepped forward and became a pirate captain, authoritative and unhurried, moving through the cordon with the bearing of someone who belonged there absolutely.

Unfortunately, when pressed for details by the brigand leader, the bluff collapsed. The cordon recognized the ruse, and the fight started before the circle could be secured cleanly. In the chaos of the melee, the party hit the teleportation circle under fire and arrived on the island not as a coordinated strike force but as scattered survivors of a botched approach — deposited onto a platform on the belly of the floating landmass with nothing but upward to go.

The interior of the island was a complex network of natural caverns and reinforced industrial tunnels, converted by the pirates into a fortified warren. The transition from the smoke-filled sky to the claustrophobic dark of the island's underbelly was jarring. The party was outnumbered, disoriented, and deep in hostile territory. Mozaddha made a decision.

He had Damien's voice in his head from the broadcast. He had spent a lifetime studying how authority sounded when it did not need to justify itself. With a practiced arcane deception and a massive amount of grit, he assumed the likeness of Hale Damien — not a self-aggrandizing performance of a false pirate cover story, but a hyper-specific replica of a specific legendary outlaw whose crew had every reason to obey him without question. Moving through the tunnels with manufactured confidence, he redirected pirate patrols, rerouted crew members away from their posts, and systematically thinned the island's garrison by convincing a significant portion of its occupants that they were urgently needed somewhere else. The ruse held. The party moved deeper.

The tunnels ascended into the beating heart of the floating landmass — the Hydrogas manufactory itself. The environment shifted dramatically as they pushed deeper. The air became thick with the scent of copper and ozone, the telltale signature of raw shardisite infused into the bones of the island. Emerald-tinted vapors leaked from high-pressure valves and immense shardisite-infused stills, pooling in the low-lying passages and hissing from stressed infrastructure throughout the core. The saturation created a persistently lethal environmental hazard; those among the party who had secured gas masks during their time in the R&D facility navigated the haze with relative ease, while those without protection were forced to endure the disorienting and toxic effects of unrefined gas on sheer resolve.

It was within this emerald-choked labyrinth that the manufactory's primary guardian made itself known. Emerging from the shifting vapors was a massive, steam-powered suit of brass and leather — a mechanical rig piloted by one of Damien's specialist crew, equipped with integrated weaponry and pneumatic limbs designed specifically for high-pressure combat within the manufactory's confined and volatile environment. The party ran. The guardian gave chase, its massive frame crashing through the catwalks and narrow corridors as the group was forced into a desperate game of concealment through the gas-choked tunnels, staying ahead of something that could not be reasoned with and could not be easily killed.

The hide and seek led them deeper into the island's interior, where the pirates had converted a natural cavern into a makeshift strongroom — a treasure room stocked with the accumulated plunder of Damien's career and the early spoils of the Dresden occupation. The party, still running the Damien ruse and still ahead of the mechanical guardian, made the kind of decision that reveals character: they started looting.

It was a calculated risk and it did not pay off. A Hydrogas engineer — one of the technical crew responsible for maintaining the manufactory's volatile systems — came through the strongroom on her rounds and found a group of people who were very clearly not pirates helping themselves to her captain's hoard. The ruse collapsed instantly. She raised the alarm. Within moments the alert had spread through the entire island, the Damien impersonation was burned, and the mechanical guardian, which had been circling the outer tunnels, now had a direction to move in.

The party was cornered in the strongroom with a fully alerted garrison between them and any viable exit, a steam-powered killing machine closing from one direction, and the emerald vapors of the manufactory saturating every surface around them. Muddy Mittens looked at the pooled Hydrogas collecting in the low alcoves of the tunnel outside the strongroom and made a different kind of decision.

Drawing from the darkness he carried within once again, he saw the pirates as yet another sad tale to be told by bards of tomorrow. He decided to burn them all. Reaching into his pack he produced a flint and struck the spark that engulfed the room in emerald-tinged flames.

The resulting explosion was instantaneous and total. The pooled Hydrogas detonated in a violent chain reaction that tore through the tunnel network in a roar of green-tinted fire, the blast wave shattering the manufactory's improvised ventilation and sending emerald flame racing through the corridors. The barracks garrison — dozens of raiders preparing for a secondary assault on Dresden below — was decimated in seconds. The mechanical guardian, caught in the outer corridor as the gas ignited around it, was engulfed, its brass casing warping under the thermal shock and its pneumatic systems rupturing in the heat. What emerged from the flames was no longer a threat that required running from. The party finished it in the charred silence that followed.

Muddy said nothing in the aftermath. His blackened hand and bloodshot eyes were the only outward evidence of the darkness he had drawn upon, and he watched the green fires consume the nest with the particular stillness of someone who has stopped being surprised by what they are capable of.

In the smoke-choked quiet, they heard the voice of Hale Damien belt out from somewhere on the island. Announcing that nowhere was safe for the party to hide and that he would crush them like insects under his heel, the hunt had reversed. The vanguards of Dresden accepted this challenge and pushed upward through the burning interior, toward the surface and the reckoning waiting above.

The burning interior of the island offered no clean path upward. The gas ignition had torn through the tunnel network in every direction, and the party pushed through the aftermath — charred corridors, warped infrastructure, the scattered wreckage of the garrison — toward the surface platforms above. Damien's voice had made the terms of the final confrontation clear. He was not running. Neither were they.

The ascent was a fighting retreat in reverse, the party moving upward through a dying environment while the island's surviving crew attempted to close off their exits. What remained of the pirate force after the conflagration was disorganized and desperate, and the party cut through them with the efficiency of people who had run out of patience for the island entirely. They emerged through the ruined shell of the command tower — already weakened, already listing from the gas ignition below — and onto the open-air surface platforms of the sky fortress, into the howling winds of the upper atmosphere and the full scale of what was waiting for them there.

The surface of the island was not undefended. A massive earth elemental bound to the pirates' service held the platform, and the pirate airship circled the fortress at close range, its crew raking the exposed surface with small arms fire and cannon shot. Greta Ironheart commanded the pirate sloop from its helm with the cold efficiency of someone who had held worse positions under worse odds. Hale Damien was magically airborne, encircling the island, and he had promised to crush them. Gunfire erupted in all directions with the chaos of battle slowly forming into an epic struggle for tactical advantage.

The tide shifted when the party seized control of the island's primary heavy cannon — a fixed emplacement capable of delivering devastating concentrations of fire in any direction. What followed was the kind of sequence that ends sieges. The first volley found the earth elemental, shattering its core and ending the terrestrial threat on the platform. Then the gun swung toward the circling airship, a devastating shot punching through its hull and driving it out of the fight — crippled and listing, but not yet destroyed. A third volley rained down on a formation of pirate reinforcements attempting to teleport back up to the island from the Agustus bridge below, killing them mid-arrival and severing the last link between the surface and the invasion force. The final shot was leveled at the island's primary command spire. The tower buckled under the barrage and collapsed, taking the last of the pirate hoard stored within it and dozens of defenders along with it.

With the island's defenses dismantled and the platform littered with wreckage, the final confrontation resolved into something smaller and more personal. Damien fought with the fury of a man who had never lost and could not process that he was losing now. For Mozaddha Theriska, the moment carried a weight that went beyond tactics. He had spent these last few months on the run, pretending to be a pirate — performing the legend, wearing the swagger, constructing the myth from borrowed pieces. He had spent half a day being Hale Damien specifically, moving through that man's ship wearing that man's authority like a coat. Now he faced the a real-deal pirate shouting profanity across a legendary pirate stronghold, above a city that had refused to break.

The fight was not long. Through a coordinated exchange of gunfire and arcane focus, the party dismantled the last of Damien's defenses and brought the legendary captain down. He died on the platform of his own sky fortress, above a city he had tried to break and failed.

Mozaddha stepped up to the now expired legendary captain and removed his arcane focus, a simple but intimidating skull mask. It was not a casual gesture. The Mask of Hale Damien was a powerful artifact — a legendary instrument of authority and presence that had helped make its original owner into the most feared name on the open sky. Mozaddha had worn that name for half a day as a performance. Now he held the physical remnant of it in his hands, and the weight of what that meant settled over him with unambiguous clarity.

Greta Ironheart did not stay to witness it. Recognizing that the battle was irretrievably lost, she regained control of her crippled airship, got it moving on damaged engines, and cleared the island before the platform finished burning. She did not look back. She did not need to.

The vanguards of Dresden stood alone on the scorched platform of a sky fortress, the wind tearing at their coats, the burning city spread out beneath them, and the floating island, a bastion of wealth and status, entirely theirs.

The floating island hung in the air above a recovering Dresden, its scorched platforms and gas-choked corridors still warm from the battle that had claimed it. The party stood in possession of something that defied easy categorization — not merely a captured vessel or a seized stronghold, but a mobile, self-sustaining Hydrogas manufactory, one of the most strategically valuable assets in the known world. The conversation about what to do with it was not long.

They handed it to the Merchant Council, placing the facility under the direct operational stewardship of Barkevius Frumpymelon. The decision was not sentimental. It was precise. The manufactory solved Dresden's most critical reconstruction problem in a single act — providing the new government with a self-sustaining supply of Hydrogas to power the heavy machinery needed to clear the rubble, restart the industrial economy, and fund the infrastructure projects necessary to stabilize the region. It also gave Barkevius something his seat at the council table had not yet fully provided: leverage that did not depend on Coalborne's goodwill or the fragile mandate of a populace still raw from revolution. With the manufactory under Frumpymelon stewardship, the new government had a foundation that could bear actual weight.

Barkevius accepted the stewardship and did not leave. The wandering stowaway who had fled his family's legacy and returned to find it in ruins made his choice in the shadow of a floating island and the lie of a cabin outside the city. He stayed. Dresden was his now in every sense that mattered, and he intended to rebuild it into something his father's name could not diminish.

On the ground, the work that Stanley the Seer had begun in the rubble of the Cathedral of Amandine was taking shape faster than anyone had anticipated. The Church of Jasiri was not merely growing — it was filling a void the revolution had torn open when it dismantled the old spiritual order along with everything else. Orliath organized the swelling congregation with the precision of an academic who had found a cause worth the effort. Reverend Isaiah Windlass, who had renounced his vows to Amandine and come to the new faith as a high-ranking minister, brought with him the institutional knowledge of how a church actually functioned at scale. Under the three of them, a new temple rose from the rubble of the old, brick by brick, its bells audible across the recovering districts as a signal that the city's spiritual center had not collapsed along with its architecture — it had simply moved.

The smoke over Dresden began to thin. The vanguards of the revolution were celebrated in the streets as the architects of a new era, which was a complicated thing to be celebrated as when you were already making arrangements to leave.

The party had not forgotten Captain Carver. Using a portion of the resources salvaged from the pirate hoard, they commissioned the construction of a specialized airship at the Dresden gantries. They understood it would not be ready before they needed to leave. They commissioned it anyway. Some investments reveal their purpose in time, and Dresden needed to see its vanguards building something rather than destroying things.

When the hour came, Barkevius Frumpymelon made sure the city knew it. He organized a hero's farewell at the docks where the Captain's yacht still sat moored in the harbor, and half of Dresden showed up to send them off. The vanguards of the revolution stood on the dock in the noise of a city that had survived itself, and most of them were glad to be leaving. The ones who weren't had already made their peace with staying.

Barkevius remained. He had a council to run and a city to rebuild and a name to either redeem or bury, and Dresden was the only place any of that could happen. Sikro vanished into the wilderness beyond the city's edge, his clockwork drake at his side, and was not seen again. The enigmatic Professor Harrow slipped away without ceremony, returning to whatever private research had consumed him since before the Albacore went down, offering nothing in the way of explanation.

Miyake Harrier took her place at the navigation station of the Captain's yacht without being asked. The newest member of the group, Grilldis Drummy, stowed his gear and said nothing that needed saying.

The ship in a bottle — its unidentified magic still humming with quiet anticipation — was secured in Muddy's blackened hand. The submersible slipped beneath the surface of the harbor to the cheers of half the city and turned west. Dresden disappeared behind them. The Sea of Ghosts opened ahead, cold and lightless and indifferent, and somewhere beyond it, on the grey coast of Eire, the Carver family was waiting for news of a husband and father that was already months overdue.

The interior of the Captain’s yacht was a cramped gallery of brass valves and humming Shardisite conduits, smelling perpetually of ozone and the stale, recycled breath of the deep. As the submersible cut through the silt-heavy currents of the Sea of Ghosts, the party found themselves suspended in a state of clinical isolation, the world of revolutionary fire and bombed-out cathedrals now a distant, smoldering memory. Miyake Harrier remained at the navigation station, her focus fixed on the sonar arrays with a rigid distance that had defined her since the loss of the ESS Albacore.

It was only in the quiet hours of the middle watch that the navigator’s hardened exterior began to fissure. Miyake spoke of Kyoto, not as a home, but as a place defined by a silhouette that never returned. She spoke of her father, Captain Barnabus Harrier, a man her mother Hanae once described as possessing the “eyes of a man chased by the devil”. She confessed that if she were to find the man who had abandoned her and her mother, she would not offer him a warm daughter’s embrace.

Muddy Mittens, whose own history was a tapestry of Gibson’s industrial slums and the stinging absence of a father he knew only through a Dresden-made pocket watch, felt the resonance of Miyake’s grief. His eyes, perpetually bloodshot and circled by the encroaching marks of Tristessa’s darkness, watched her with a sympathy that bordered on the painful. Seeking to bridge the gap between their shared traumas, Muddy attempted a display of his old-world charm, a clumsy, earnest effort to swoon the aloof navigator. Though his initial words were met with a familiar, sharp-tongued disdain, a sudden, inexplicable moment of clarity and grace, a singular, decisive shift in his bearing, forced Miyake to pause.

He did not ask for her heart, but for a moment of shared movement in the dark. With a sigh that signaled a tactical surrender, Miyake took his hand. As they moved in the narrow confines of the deck, the ship’s sentient enchantment, the artificial personality of “Lucy”, responded to the shift in atmosphere. From the ship’s integrated gramophone, a sober, haunting melody began to play, its notes carrying a weight that was melancholy but not entirely depressing, echoing the quiet, desperate fellowship of those lost in a wilderness of their own making. The dance was a brief, flickering miracle of humanity against a backdrop of iron rivets and crushing pressure, a scene that felt disconnected from the linear march of time.

When the music finally guttered out, the party turned their attention to the gramophone itself, pressing the semi-intelligent facsimile of “Lucy” for information regarding her living counterparts. The enchantment, built by the late Captain Carver to mimic his daughter, spoke with a voice that was eerily innocent amidst the technological rot of the yacht. They pressed her for the location of Agatha and the real Lucy, seeking to fulfill the promise Muddy had made to Carver on his deathbed.

The artificial personality provided fractured clues, whispering of a quiet residence on the outskirts of Belfast and the specific resonance of the “ship in a bottle” they carried. The item, housing a powerful and unidentified magic meant for the Captain’s family, hummed in Muddy’s blackened hand as if in anticipation. “Lucy” cautioned them that Eire was a land beneath a persistent, unnatural haze, a dampening shroud where the shadows of the old magics were said to move with more freedom than in the industrial heart of Europa.

The somber transit reached its conclusion as the submersible surfaced amidst the cold, bone-grey mists of the Irish coastline. The city of Belfast emerged from the fog as a jagged skyline of stone docks and soot-stained chimneys, its atmosphere heavy with a silence that felt older than the Meteor itself. Upon making port, the party left the safety of the yacht, the transition to the solid, unyielding earth of Eire bringing a renewed sense of the gravity of their mission.

Their first contact was with the local constabulary, specifically the City Guard of Belfast under the command of Captain Maeve Aisling. The reception was one of professional distrust; the guards looked upon the disparate band of travelers, scarred by revolution and marked by divine and demonic stains, as yet another symptom of the world’s ongoing hardship. However, the party’s inquiry into the whereabouts of Agatha and Lucy Carver soon revealed a darker thread in the city’s current fabric. Captain Aisling informed them of an alarming string of missing girls across the region, a pattern of disappearances that had paralyzed the local villages with fear. The name of Lucy Carver was found among those lost to the shadows, providing the vanguards of Dresden with a definitive, if terrifying, path forward into the heart of Eire’s darkening legend.

It was only after a grueling session of negotiation and the presentation of their credentials as the “Heroes of Dresden” that Aisling relented to allow them access to her investigation files concerning the missing girls. She then officially deputized the group, granting them access to the sensitive archives regarding the region’s alarming string of disappearances. As they poured over the records in the dimly lit office, the name they sought finally surfaced: Lucy Carver. She was listed among a dozen other girls lost to the shadows over the previous months. Aisling warned that the thread led away from the relative safety of Belfast and into the rural villages of the northern coast, specifically toward a region currently paralyzed by a localized, magical haze that even the City Guard feared to tread.

Leaving the relative order of the capital behind, the party traveled toward the coastal village of Inishowen. The transition was marked by a thickening of the fog until the sun became a mere pale bruise in the sky. Upon arrival, they found a settlement defined by silence and boarded windows. At the local tavern, the group encountered Sean McKilly, a barkeep whose weary hospitality was tempered by a visible fear of the dark. Through him, the party was introduced to Amy Callahan, a widow whose daughter had been the most recent to vanish.

The encounter was a harrowing study in grief. Amy Callahan was initially distraught and distrustful, her eyes reflecting a hollowed-out despair that resonated with Muddy’s own internal struggle. It was only after the party promised, with a conviction born of their oath to Captain Carver, to bring the children home that she provided the final, terrifying direction. She spoke of a darkness that had settled over the region like a physical weight, emanating from the jagged cliffs of the northern coast. The village whispered of a sovereign tyrant who claimed the beautiful and the strong as his own, a figure whose legend had begun to haunt the countryside from the ruins of Dunluce Castle.

The investigation turned violent as the party moved to reconnoiter the outskirts of the village. The environmental haze proved to be an active combatant, dampening sound and distorting sight as they pushed through the scrubland. They were suddenly ambushed by what appeared to be a Wraith, a spectral manifestation of the “Old Magics” that moved with a terrifying, liquid grace through the mist. The creature did not fight for territory; it fought with an ancient, predatory hunger that tested the party’s spiritual and martial resolve.

The skirmish was a chaotic exchange of steel and arcana against a nearly invisible foe. Mozaddha Theriska, drawing upon the cold resonance of his mark of Jasiri to steady his nerves, coordinated with Stanley the Seer, whose explosive alchemical payloads illuminated the gloom in violent bursts of light. Though they eventually defeated the specter, the victory provided a grim revelation. The creature had been watching them, a sentinel for a much larger power. Its presence confirmed that the isle of Eire was no longer merely a land of hardship, but a domain being systematically reclaimed by the island's ancient echoes.

With the path to the north now clear but fraught with peril, the party commandeered a carriage for the final leg of their journey toward the cliffs. The transit was defined by a deepening silence as the landscape became increasingly desolate. The ruins of Dunluce Castle emerged from the fog as a skeletal silhouette perched precariously over the churning Straits, its masonry seemingly fused with the dark stone of the cliffs. The atmosphere was one of high-security isolation, the very air thick with the metallic scent of unrestrained blood magic.

As the carriage pulled into the courtyard, the party felt the weight of their deputization shift into the gravity of a final reckoning. They were no longer investigators; they were the vanguard of a promise made to a dead man. The massive iron doors of the castle opened without a sound, revealing an interior that was both immaculate and redolent of ancient rot. There, they were met by a pale and seemingly frail waif, Rose McKilly, a young woman whose disconnected, melancholic bearing signaled that she had already been affected by the castle’s sovereign. She informed them that a banquet was being prepared and that the “Master” was expecting the travelers for supper, bringing the party to the threshold of the House of Abartach.

The heavy iron doors of Dunluce Castle swung open to reveal an interior that defied the external ruin, presenting a gallery of stone and velvet that was as immaculate as it was redolent of ancient rot. Waiting within the foyer was Rose McKilly, the daughter of the barkeep from Inishowen, though she moved with a disconnected, melancholic bearing that signaled she was more than what she initially appeared as. She spoke with a haunting apathy, informing the travelers that they were guests of a man who viewed the people of Eire as either loyal thralls or mere cattle for the feast. Through her, the party began to grasp the horrific pragmatism of the House of Abartach, where the beautiful and the strong were preserved as favorites while others were consumed in the dark.

Navigating deeper into the masonry, the party discovered a sanctuary that had once been a temple to Gabouray, the Angel of Frivolity, now desecrated and stripped of its joy. Seated within it was Ava Hartigan, a former worshiper who referred to her lost deity with a quiet familiarity — “Gabby”, she called her — and who now existed in a state of suspended despair that had moved well past the stage of tears. She confirmed what they had come to learn: Lucy Carver was alive, held within the castle as one of Abartach's chosen. Between herself, Rose, and Lucy, the Master had cultivated what he considered a collection, she said, binding them to a destiny more terrifying than simple death.

Stanley the Seer attempted to reach her with Jasiri's doctrine of courage. Ava received his words with the hollow patience of someone who had already prayed to one god and watched the altar go cold. Mozaddha sat beside her instead and asked what Gabouray had actually been like — not as theology, but as presence — and got more from her in that minute than Stanley had with scripture. It was Muddy who lingered longest. He knew what it looked like when a prayer went unanswered. Her eyes moved once to his blackened hand. Her eyes moved once to his blackened hand and did not look away from it the way most people did. Nothing more was said about it. They left her in the gutted sanctuary and continued deeper into the House of Abartach.

Amidst the mounting dread, the disparate habits of the travelers asserted themselves as they explored the castle’s functional wings. Mozaddha Theriska and Muddy Mittens conducted a thorough raid of the Master’s smoking room and larder, securing a cache of fine tobacco while noting the presence of featureless stone statues that seemed to track their movements. Their reconnaissance led them into a magical courtyard garden that pulsed with a vibrant, unnatural life amidst the stone foundations. In a moment of bizarre levity that contrasted sharply with the surrounding horror, the party engaged in fishing in the fountain and even kindled a fire within the verdant enclosure, drawing the ire of the castle’s unseen watchers, and a nearby grasping ivy plant.

The exploration was eventually interrupted by the Master himself, who appeared not as a frenzied beast, but as a sovereign tyrant whose civility served as a thin mask for absolute predation. Abartach met the party with a condescending swagger, mocking their legalistic deputization and the small, human promises that had brought them to his door. He did not offer violence, but rather an invitation, confirming that a banquet was being prepared in their honor and that he expected the survivors of Dresden for supper. As he departed, the party was left with the macabre realization that they were no longer guests, but possibly a new course in a ritual that had been playing out for centuries.

The Great Hall of the House of Abartach was a cavernous study in cloying opulence and charnel stagnantcy. Long tables of dark, polished oak groaned beneath silver platters of meat that smelled faintly of copper and exotic spices, illuminated by the guttering light of hundreds of black wax tapers. The most unsettling element of the banquet was not the fare, but the attendees. The hall was filled with the silent, pale residents of the surrounding villages, yet they did not sit as guests. They moved with a rhythmic, hypnotic grace, offering themselves to the Master’s favorites and officers with a terrifying willingness. These were the “cattle” of the Irish coast, thralls whose spirits had been so thoroughly broken by the cloying weight of the haze that they viewed their own consumption as a form of divine service. The party sat amidst this macabre display, the weight of their Dresden heroics feeling suddenly fragile against the backdrop of a ritual that had persisted for centuries.

At the head of the central table sat Abartach, his presence a localized storm of condescending swagger and ancient predation. He did not greet the party with the fury of a beast, but with the weary patience of a bored deity. He mocked their official status, dismissing the authority of Captain Maeve Aisling and the Belfast City Guard as the “small, desperate scratchings of a dying order.” To Abartach, the vanguards were merely a novel diversion, a collection of broken souls who had traded one master in Europa for the hollow promise of a dead man’s oath. He specifically targeted Muddy Mittens, his eyes lingering on the blackened hand and bloodshot eyes of the rat-catcher. He spoke of suffering as a “necessary seasoning for the soul,” suggesting that the Mark of Tristessa was not a curse to be hidden, but a signature of the darkness they were destined to eventually embrace.

The tension reached a breaking point with the arrival of the Master’s favorites. Rose McKilly and Ava Hartigan were led to the high table, their movements disconnected and ethereal, their identities nearly submerged beneath the Sovereign’s will. Finally, the figure they had traveled across the Sea of Ghosts to find was brought forth: Lucy Carver. She appeared not as the frightened child of the Captain’s stories, but as a young woman being systematically “prepared” for a destiny that defied the simple concepts of life and death. Seeing the girl in the flesh, the party felt the full gravity of the ship in a bottle they carried. The unidentified magic within the glass hummed with a frantic, protective resonance, reacting to Lucy’s proximity and the cloying evil of the hall. Abartach watched the interaction with a dickheaded amusement, savoring the moment the travelers realized that their promise to a dead man had brought them directly into a trap from which there was no tactical retreat.

As the feast progressed, the atmosphere in the hall became physically oppressive, the scent of unrestrained blood magic thickening until the very air tasted of iron. Mozaddha Theriska, struggling to maintain his honorable pirate facade, found his grip tightening on his steel, the mockery of the Master stripping away the last of his charlatan’s patience. Beside him, Stanley the Seer sat in a state of vibrating evangelical zeal, the light of Jasiri within him clashing violently against the shadows of the hall. The party was forced to endure the Sovereign’s condescension and the horrific sight of his feeding thralls—waiting for the singular moment where the ritual would conclude and the slaughter would begin. The session reached its final, agonizing crescendo as Abartach rose, a glass of dark, viscous fluid raised in a mock toast to the “Heroes of Dresden,” signaling that the time for civil discourse had ended and the time for the harvest had arrived.

In the wake of the mystery surrounding the dismantled warforged sentinel, the atmosphere aboard the ESS Albacore turned from professional isolation to active paranoia. During a lunch following the initial interrogation, the sailor Nicola Cornelius began openly sowing seeds of distrust among the party members. He revealed that Captain Carver possessed a notorious reputation in Europan naval circles for being a man who frequently returned from high-risk expeditions without his original crew or his vessel, suggesting that the current voyage might be following a similarly tragic pattern.

Further unsettling information was provided by Miyake Harrier, the ship’s 19-year-old navigator. Despite her visible disdain for the passengers, she hinted that the ship's internal stability had been fractured long before the current mission began. She revealed that the vessel had experienced a moment of “near revolt” among its previous security detail, indicating that the simmering dissatisfaction among the crew was a chronic condition rather than a sudden development. Amidst this growing tension, Muddy Mittens attempted to bridge the gap with the aloof navigator by asking her to dance; despite a remarkable display of grace and a perfectly executed lead, Miyake remained unimpressed, maintaining her professional distance from the group.

Seeking to maintain a veneer of normalcy, Captain Carver invited the traveling party to a formal officer’s dinner. The meal was attended by Carver, First Officer Drax Trulia, the Cascadian helmsman Warwick Drutha, and Officer Arthur Langdon. While the scene was punctuated by forced humor and professional courtesy, the party quickly realized the event was a thinly veiled informal interrogation intended to suss out if any of the passengers were involved in the sabotage of the warforged guard. The tension in the room was palpable as the party attempted to flip the questioning, seeking more information about Carver’s previous failed voyages, though their inquiries were largely deflected by the senior staff.

The dinner was violently interrupted by the screeching of metal and the frantic tolling of alarm bells echoing through the hull. The party rushed toward the source of the chaos in the engine room, discovering that the vessel’s complex boiler system—powered by bound water and fire elementals—had been compromised. One of the massive water elementals had been intentionally released from its containment housing, threatening to flood the engineering deck and kill the ship’s propulsion.

In a harrowing and deadly battle, the party engaged the primordial entity amid high-pressure steam and shifting machinery. While they were ultimately successful in re-containing the elemental and restoring the ship's systems, the incident provided undeniable proof that the Albacore was being targeted by a saboteur within its own ranks.

Following the battle in the engine room, the lines of loyalty aboard the submersible became sharply defined. Suspicion fell heavily upon Officer Trulia, who was observed in a series of shady, whispered exchanges with the engineer Sampson Hornblower. Attempting to glean the nature of these meetings, a member of the party utilized magic to turn invisible and follow them; while the exact words remained unintelligible, the conspiratorial nature of the exchange confirmed their deepest fears. The party identified a clear schism in the crew: Drax Trulia, Hornblower, the dwarf Hothud Copperhood, and Nicola Cornelius appeared increasingly aligned toward mutiny, while Warwick Drutha, Drigg Bronzefinger, and Arthur Langdon remained abjectly loyal to the Captain.

The researcher Zachary Harrow and Miyake Harrier remained wildcards, their true allegiances obscured by eccentricity and silence. Furthermore, the party discovered an unsettling detail regarding the security force: the six warforged sentinels were each fitted with an arcane control lock. These devices allowed Officer Langdon to override their free will via a master switch, effectively turning the stoic mechanical soldiers into an absolute extension of his command—a tool that would become a focal point for the coming struggle for control over the vessel.

Sadly, real-life conflicts and restraints prevented this campaign from ever seeing a conclusive end.

It is not likely this party will ever be assembled again.

The DM will leave it to the readers imagination as to the fate of the “Heroes of Dresden”, the Abartach, and the Carver legacy.

As the ESS Albacore pressed further into the lightless reaches of the Sea of Ghosts, the vessel's sonar arrays detected the skeletal remains of a derelict ship resting on the seabed. Driven by a career-long obsession with reclaiming high-value wreckage, Captain Carver insisted on a scavenging expedition. This decision sparked a moment of public and vocal dissent from First Officer Drax Trulia, who openly challenged the Captain's authority in front of the assembled crew. “Every time this happens, we lose somebody, and I don't want to do this,” Trulia declared, citing Carver's notorious reputation for returning from such voyages without his original crew. Despite the warning, Carver utilized the stoic warforged sentinels to muscle the remaining crew into acquiescence, forcing the expedition to proceed.

The scavenging mission required the use of specialized deep-sea diving suits capable of withstanding the crushing weight of the ocean beneath the permanent Maelstrom. The diving team consisted of the entire traveling party, Captain Carver, Miyake Harrier, and the Arctican mechanic Drigg Bronzefinger. They were escorted by three warforged sentinels designated Boss (8055), Boo (8000), and Bolo (8010). As they stepped out into the crushing darkness, the divers navigated a terrain of silt and jagged metal, guided only by the narrow beams of their helmet lamps.

The interior of the sunken vessel proved to be a labyrinth of environmental hazards and predatory threats. Shortly after entering the wreck, the party was ambushed by a pair of vibrant Shocktopuses, one blue and one red. In the chaotic underwater skirmish that followed, the party successfully dispatched the creatures, but the victory was hollow. The derelict’s unstable structure suffered a catastrophic collapse during the fighting, pinning and killing Drigg Bronzefinger. The loss of the mechanic—who was inseparable from his kin Hothud Copperhood—cast a somber pall over the survivors. Recognizing the mounting danger, Carver ordered his team to gather what salvage they could and retreat immediately to the submersible.

The somber return to the Albacore was met with a horrifying discovery. The airlock opened not to a welcoming crew, but to a vessel that had been transformed into a battlefield. In the hours the party spent on the seabed, the simmering distrust aboard the ship had erupted into a full-scale mutiny. The divers found the mangled remains of Officer Arthur Langdon, who had been murdered by the traitors. Most significantly, Drax Trulia had seized Langdon's arcane control device—a master switch that allowed him to override the free will of the remaining warforged sentinels. With the ship at a dead stop and the command structure shattered, the party realized they were no longer passengers, but obstacles to a crew that had finally decided to take the Albacore for themselves.

The party’s return to the ESS Albacore was met not with the professional silence of a submersible, but with the chaotic echoes of a vessel in the throes of a violent coup. In the chaos of the opening salvos of the mutiny, while still in their diving suits, Captain Carver was captured by Trulia and his cadre of warforged. The party, chose to side with Carver and so began their pursuit. They discovered the mangled remains of Officer Arthur Langdon, who had been brutally murdered by the mutineers during the party's absence. First Officer Drax Trulia had seized the arcane control switch, effectively enslaving the ship’s warforged security force to his will. The submersible became a claustrophobic dungeon as the party navigated through flooding corridors and flickering lights, engaging in desperate skirmishes against their former crewmates. During the initial push to retake the ship and rescue Carver, the loyal helmsman Warwick Drutha was killed in a frantic exchange of fire, further thinning the ranks of those loyal to the Captain.

As the party moved deeper into the hull, they were forced to corner and eliminate the primary instigators of the mutiny. The sailor Nicola Cornelius and the engineer Hothud Copperhood were both slain in a series of brutal, close-quarters confrontations as the party fought to reach the captive Captain Carver. Amidst the fighting, the party discovered a profound secret regarding the vessel's construction: the Albacore was equipped with a unique sentient enchantment, a mimicry of Carver’s daughter, Lucy, currently living in Ireland. This artificial soul made the ship uniquely responsive to Carver’s voice, explaining why the mutineers had captured the Captain rather than executing him immediately. They eventually found a relieved Miyake Harrier and she joined with them as they moved to discover the loyalties of the remaining professor Harrow. Within his lab he made it clear he wanted to join in rescuing the captain.

The mutiny reached its violent climax on the bridge and in the engine rooms. In a final, desperate battle against Drax Trulia and Sampson Hornblower, the high-pressure environment of the deep sea became an active combatant. Gunfire and magical discharges punctured the pressure-stressed hull, causing freezing seawater to erupt into the ship. Trulia, realizing his defeat was imminent, fatally sabotaged the vessel's primary systems before he was finally brought down. Captain Isaac Carver was mortally wounded during the exchange, leaving the survivors with minutes to escape before the ship's total structural failure.

In a final act of reclaimed autonomy, 4032 “Kolg” stepped forward to lead his mechanical brethren. Recognizing that the structural failure of the submersible was total, Kolg signaled to the remaining Atlantean warforged sentinels—Boss (8055), Boo (8000), Bolo (8010), Bobo (8080), and Bibi (8181). Utilizing their massive frames to block ruptures and hold back the encroaching weight of the ocean, the sentinels formed a living bulkhead under Kolg’s command. He issued a final tactical directive: buy the party, Miyake Harrier, and the eccentric Zachary Harrow enough time to reach the Captain’s yacht, a smaller submersible attached to the Albacore's belly. As the yacht detached and accelerated away, the survivors watched through the viewports as Kolg and the sentinels stood defiant until the ESS Albacore finally imploded under the crushing weight of the Sea of Ghosts.

As the yacht detached and accelerated away from the doomed vessel, the party watched through the viewports as the ESS Albacore imploded under the crushing weight of the Sea of Ghosts. The journey toward the Europan coastline was defined by a heavy, somber silence. During this journey Muddy Mittens developed a quiet but unashamed fondness for Miyake Harrier which largely went unreturned. They did however share in some deeply personal conversations about both of their estranged relationships with their missing fathers. This marked the first time that Miyake's hardened exterior showed signs of cracks.

During the transit, Captain Isaac Carver succumbed to his wounds. In his final moments, he extracted a solemn promise from Muddy Mittens to deliver a ship in a bottle—which served as the housing for a powerful, but unidentified magic—to his wife, Agatha, and his daughter, Lucy, in Ireland. He wished for them to know the story of his sacrifice and the final fate of his vessel.

The survivors of the ESS Albacore arrived at the Europan capital of Dresden under a pall of exhaustion and grief. Upon docking the Captain's yacht, the party decided to leave Miyake Harrier and the eccentric Zachary Harrow with the vessel while they sought a foothold in the city. The transition from the lightless depths of the Sea of Ghosts to the smog-choked skyline of Dresden was jarring. As the industrial hub of the region, Dresden was defined by a sharp dichotomy: a landscape where the extreme opulence of the ruling merchant class sat directly atop the soot-stained desperation of a massive blue-collar workforce.

Guided by Barkevius Frumpymelon, who was returning to his childhood home, the group navigated toward a district known for its diverse and often illicit clientele. For Muddy Mittens, the trek had personal stakes; his only clue to his missing father was a fine pocket watch gifted by the Frumpymelon Docks & Loading Company, and he sought to uncover the truth of his lineage within the city's industrial heart. Their path took them past the monumental Capital Building, the seat of the Europan Council of Merchants. There, they witnessed the growing unrest of the populace firsthand as a massive protest choked the streets. The workers and laborers of the city voiced their disdain for the wealthy council members—specifically figures like Lord Harrison Blackwood, Isadora Nightingale and Sir Reginald Sterling—whose control over trade and the Guild of Unions had pushed the working class to a breaking point.

The party sought refuge in the Iron Horse Inn, a ramshackle sanctuary described as a chaotic stack of structures built one upon another. Known as a place where both the wealthy and the desperate converged, the inn served as a vital hub for information and underground activity. Inside, the group’s anonymity was briefly shattered when Barkevius was recognized by former acquaintances. It was revealed that he was the son of a wealthy merchant family associated with the Frumpymelon Docks & Loading Company, and that he had left the city years prior on deeply unfavorable terms. Among the party, Mozaddha Theriska maintained his rough, pirate-like persona — the eye patch, the shardisite fragment, the easy nautical swagger — though the facade concealed the truth of a silver-tongued charlatan who had fled Cascadian creditors. Dresden, at least, was Europan soil. Whatever names were being spoken in Cascadia, they were an ocean away.

As the group shared a drink and Barkevius provided a briefing on the city's power structures—including the influence of The Nightinggales, the Clocktower Syndicate and the Iron Fist—the atmosphere of the city outside reached a violent tipping point. Shouted demands were replaced by the sounds of shattering glass, the crack of arcane discharges, and the distinct report of gunfire.

Rushing outside to investigate the escalating chaos, the party witnessed a force of darkly armored elite guards known as the Nightingales moving to corral the dissenters. This “open-secret” police force, commanded by Captain Isadora Nightingale, utilized excessive and brutal violence to suppress the crowd. The tension broke entirely when the party observed a Nightingale preparation to publicly execute an unarmed woman in the street — not arrest her, not detain her, but kill her in front of her neighbors as a demonstration. Mozaddha did not deliberate. He incited, the party followed, and a bloody skirmish erupted in the cobblestones outside the Iron Horse Inn.

The battle was chaotic and ugly in the way that street violence always is. In the noise and press of the crowd, a shot meant for a Nightingale went wide and found a hot dog vendor instead. He had been working the protest the way vendors always work a crowd, and then he wasn't. It was the kind of casualty that doesn't make it into heroic accounts — too mundane, too accidental, too human. The party noted it and kept fighting because there was nothing else to do.

They dispatched several of the elite guards before the arrival of a Nightingale airship deploying reinforcements forced a desperate retreat into the city's labyrinthine slums. The victory was deeply hollow. The woman was alive. The vendor was not. Several others had been caught between the Nightingales and the party's intervention, and the distinction between rescuer and combatant had meant nothing to the people standing in the wrong place. This weight settled over the group as they pushed deeper into the slums, the realization forming quietly that in Dresden, the line between justice and atrocity was exactly as thin as the smog that blanketed the streets.

Following the bloody skirmish outside the Iron Horse Inn, the traveling party found themselves hunted through the labyrinthine streets of Dresden. Despite their efforts to evade the secret police, the elite Nightingales cornered the group near the city's docks. Outnumbered and facing the specialized arcane armaments of Captain Isadora Nightingale's forces, the party was eventually subdued through magical means and black-bagged while they were transported to a Nightingale stronghold outside the city limits. The Nightingale Headquarters — a formidable stone fortress that served as the organization's administrative heart, training grounds, and primary high-security penitentiary.

The party awoke within the cold, damp confines of the Bastion's lower dungeons, stripped of their weapons and gear. The cells were built for people who stayed in them. The party was not those people. Muddy Mittens picked the lock on his cel, and closed the door so it looked untouched waiting for an opportune moment to emerge from his cell. Barkevius Frumpymelon decided a direct confrontation the best route as he exposed himself in a flagrant taunt to the posted guard nearby. This resulted in the guard hitting him with a ray of necrotic energy and Barkevius learning something about the limits of improvisation. In the resulting confusion, Lofta Misty Stepped free entirely unnoticed. After the lone posted guard was dispatched, the remaining cells were opened and the dungeon level was cleared room by room with grim efficiency, the party working their way through the Nightingale guards until they reached the contraband storage where their equipment had been processed. They left armed. The political prisoners they liberated on the way out were a byproduct of the route rather than the objective, though no one said so out loud.

As the party ascended through the facility, they successfully located the fortress's contraband storage, where the personal effects of prisoners were processed. In addition to reclaiming their own specialized equipment, the group discovered several experimental Nightingale assets, including a specialized arcane explosive designed to manipulate local temporal fields—a “Time-Stop Grenade.” Armed once more, they pushed further into the keep connected to the prison, where they uncovered the true nature of Isadora Nightingale’s internal operations. The keep was rife with evidence of forbidden demonic pacts and the unethical manipulation of raw Shardisite, suggesting that the Nightingales were drawing power from the Legion to maintain their iron-fisted control over Europa.

The escape reached a violent climax on the massive stone bridge spanning the chasm between the keep and the outer walls. There, they were intercepted by Isadora Nightingale herself, who descended upon the party while mounted atop a ferocious wyvern. The ensuing battle was a chaotic exchange of magic and steel, with the party struggling to overcome the aerial advantage of the Captain's beast. In a moment of tactical desperation, the group deployed the captured time-stop grenade, creating a localized sphere of frozen time that caught the wyvern mid-lunge. With her mount neutralized, Isadora realized the city was slipping from her grasp and performed a tactical retreat, abandoning the Bastion to return to the heart of Dresden.

Left as the temporary victors of the Nightingale compound, the party recognized that they could not remain in the isolated fortress. They commandeered a small dinghy from the facility’s private wharf and began a somber transit back toward the capital. As they navigated the dark waters of the river, the true scale of the consequences of their earlier defiance became visible on the horizon. The smoke-choked skyline of Dresden was lit by the orange glow of a thousand fires; the unrest they had helped spark had curdled into a full-scale, active revolution.

The party understood that their public stand against the Nightingales had served as the catalyst for the working class to finally rise against the Council of Merchants. The working-class districts were in open revolt, and the sounds of distant bombardment echoed across the water as the state military began a brutal crackdown on its own citizens. Reaching the city under the cover of night, the party reunited with their remaining allies, Miyake Harrier and Zachary Harrow, realizing that they were no longer mere travelers. They were now the vanguards of a revolution that threatened to burn the old world of Europa to the ground.

Following their escape from the Nightingale Bastion and their return to the burning streets of Dresden, the traveling party needed two things: a route to the Capitol Building and someone who knew the city's hidden infrastructure well enough to provide one. Barkevius Frumpymelon knew exactly where to start looking.

Before he had fled Dresden and the weight of his family name, Barkevius had known Coalborne as a small-time peddler working the edges of the warehouse district — the kind of man a merchant's son with something to prove found useful during his college years. What Barkevius found when he led the party back to those same streets was something considerably more than that. Coalborne had grown in his absence. The warehouse district now housed an expansive underground bazaar, a labyrinthine illicit marketplace operating openly beneath the noses of a Nightingale regime that had, it seemed, found the arrangement mutually convenient. Coalborne presided over it from the center of the operation, surrounded by lackeys and the quiet authority of a man who had made himself indispensable to the city's underclass while the revolution burned overhead.

Barkevius had not expected this. The transaction was conducted without warmth. Coalborne, in exchange for the kind of goodwill that men rebuilding a city might one day be positioned to repay, provided what the party needed: knowledge of the ancient sewer network running beneath the river and the means to access it. The surface streets were a kill-zone and everyone in the warehouse district knew it. The tunnels were the only viable route to the seat of power, and Coalborne's people knew those tunnels better than anyone.

With that intelligence secured, the party made their way to the ruins of the Cathedral of Amandine, reduced to a bombed-out husk by Nightingale artillery. There they met several revolutionary contacts who had been using the cathedral's wreckage as a gathering point: Reverend Isaiah Windlass, a priest of Amandine; Orliath, a professor at the local College of Arcane Studies; and Lavinia Overton, an undersecretary for the former Council of Merchants. The contacts confirmed what Coalborne had told them — the sewers were the only path — and provided what the kingpin had not: the political intelligence of what they would find on the other side. To reach the hidden entrance to the tunnel labyrinth, the group would first have to navigate the Tristessawood — a legendary, haunted forest on the outskirts of the city that remained under constant Nightingale surveillance, ostensibly to suppress illegal demon worship. Given what the party had uncovered at the Nightingale headquarters, serious suspicion arose about that mandate.

The transition into the Tristessawood was marked by an immediate, unnatural shift in reality. The sounds of the revolutionary fires and distant bombardment faded into a suffocating, heavy silence. As the party pushed deeper into the twisted pines, they were intercepted by an aspect of Tristessa, the Demon of Sadness. Recognizing the group as the catalysts for the city's upheaval, the demonic entity pulled them entirely out of the material world and into her own harrowing realm. The travelers found themselves in a mirror-version of Dresden—a gray, desolate landscape where the weight of existence felt physically crushing.

Within this realm, the party was subjected to a series of psychic trials that forced them to confront depression and sorrow at a scale beyond human endurance. The environment manifested the collective grief of the city's history, dragging the characters into a state of profound emotional paralysis. As they struggled through these trials, the realm provided fractured visions of the city's past during the early Age of Dominion. They witnessed the ancient celestial battle where the Archangel Amandine descended to challenge Tristessa for the devotion of the people, eventually casting the demon down from the heavens into the very forest where the party now stood.

The transition back to the material world bore a heavy toll. While the party struggled through the psychic trials of the mirror-Dresden, the manufactured spirit of Lofta found themself unable to withstand the physically crushing weight of the Demon of Sadness. As the group was pulled back across the veil, Lofta's essence flickered and faded, consumed by the collective grief of the realm. Muddy witnessed this and called out to Amandine for help only to have his prayer unanswered. When the party materialized back in the living world within the cold stone confines of a massive mausoleum at the heart of the forest's graveyard, they were met with a chilling silence where their companion's mechanical chattering should have been.

Inside the mausoleum, they discovered a grand coffin illuminated by a single, persistent moonbeam. Exhausted, hollowed out, and mourning the sudden loss of their biomechanical friend, the group secured the stone chamber to take a necessary long rest before their final descent into the sewers of Dresden. Through a tactical puzzle involving mirrors to divert the moonlight, they eventually forced the coffin open, discovering a divine token leftover from the battle between Amandine and Tristessa a thousand years ago; a fragment of Tristessa herself, a facsimile of shardisite created in the demon's realm to channel her power into the material world. The party dubbed this arcane forgery “sadisite”. Muddy Mittens took note.

During the quiet hours of their vigil, the party was visited by a second celestial manifestation: Jasiri, the Archangel of Courage. Appearing as a vibrant and commanding presence, Jasiri voiced his admiration for their defiance against both the Nightingales and the Demon of Sadness. He declared the party to be his champions in the coming struggle for Dresden's future and, as a physical sign of this divine covenant, he left an actual brand upon each of their palms. This encounter had a profound impact on Stanley the Seer, whose previous religious devotion to Amandine was completely transformed. He officially renounced his old ties and rededicated his faith to Jasiri, embracing the path of courage as the group's primary spiritual anchor.

However, the blessing took a sinister turn for Muddy Mittens. Still disillusioned by the lack of divine intervention during his recent trials, Muddy walked to the mausoleum door and dedicated himself with “old words” while placing his hand upon the stone. Muddy then walked to the waterfront and witnessed a significant manifestation: the sight of footsteps in the water walking toward him. Instinctively taking a defensive stance, he drew his sword, and the presence vanished instantly. In that moment, he recognized it was Tristessa reaching out to him, and with a searing pain, the divine brand of Jasiri on his palm was corrupted and replaced by the Mark of Tristessa. As the party prepared to locate the concealed entrance to the sewers within the graveyard, Muddy began the difficult task of harnessing the newly found “sadisite” and imbuing one of his shortswords with its power. When his ritual was complete he saw his reflection in the still water and attempted to hide the physical evidence of his corruption from his companions. The marks of darkness had begun to circle his increasingly bloodshot eyes, and his hand took on a slow, unnatural blackening where the demonic seal bound itself to his flesh—a secret burden that he resolved to carry.

Following their harrowing experience within the weeping realms of the Tristessawood, the traveling party located a concealed entrance to the city's ancient underground tunnel system hidden within the forest's graveyard. Descending into the lightless labyrinth, they found a sprawling network of sewers that offered a treacherous but necessary bypass to the heavily blockaded surface streets. The atmosphere beneath Dresden was one of stagnant decay, a stark contrast to the divine brilliance they had just witnessed, and served as a physical manifestation of the city's neglected underbelly. The sadisite-imbued blade at Muddy's hip and the slow blackening of his hand were details he did not go out of his way to explain, and his companions did not go out of their way to ask. Stanley the Seer utilized his newfound faith in Jasiri to act as the group's primary spiritual anchor in the dark, his conviction a counterweight to the oppressive decay surrounding them.

The expedition through the tunnels was quickly complicated by the discovery that the path was occupied by a malevolent necromancer. This practitioner of the dark arts had been utilizing the isolation of the sewers to conduct horrific experiments on the goblin population that dwelled beneath the city streets. Initially, the party engaged the goblins as hostile threats, but they soon realized the creatures were victims of the necromancer's influence. After a sharp confrontation, the party eliminated the necromancer, bringing a grim end to his exploitation of the depths.

Amidst the carnage of the necromancer's laboratory, the party encountered a unique anomaly: an undead goblin they nicknamed Shambly. Unlike the aggressive thralls they had previously dispatched, Shambly was so ancient, withered, and physically degraded that he moved at an agonizingly slow pace, rendering him effectively harmless. In a moment of macabre levity, the party chose to spare the creature rather than destroy him. Shambly became a recurring, if unintentional, fixture of their journeys through the substructure, always lingering far behind the group as he perpetually attempted to catch up to the vanguards of the revolution.

The party emerged from the sewer system after more than twenty-four hours in the darkness, surfacing near the high walls of the Europan military headquarters. The scene that greeted them was one of absolute devastation; the civil unrest they had helped spark had evolved into a full-scale catastrophe, leaving much of the capital in smoking ruins. Recognizing that the Nightingales had effectively commandeered the state's military resources to suppress the populist uprising, the party sought to infiltrate the compound to find a way to tip the scales in favor of the revolution.

Inside the compound, they discovered that the Europan military was no longer a unified force but was instead fractured into warring factions. A violent internal struggle and coup had left many of the high-ranking officers dead, creating a dangerous power vacuum. Leveraging the chaos, the party forged a strategic alliance with Field General Philander Bramwell Neckett, a career officer who had recently self-promoted to command the remaining loyalist elements. Neckett informed the group that the Nightingales were formulating a massive, final strike against the city's dissenters, backed by a palpable and terrifying surge of dark arcane energy that threatened to drown the city in Legion-aligned power. Realizing that the revolution had reached a critical tipping point, the party coordinated with Neckett to prepare for a midnight offensive that would decide the fate of Dresden once and for all.

As the revolution in Dresden reached its fever pitch, the atmosphere of the city began to shift in a way that was both physical and metaphysical. Recognizing that the old world of Europa was effectively dead, the party and Field General Neckett spent the following days consolidating a fractured host of revolutionaries. This desperate coalition consisted of defecting military loyalists, emboldened laborers from the Guild of Unions, notable criminal elements and civilian survivors who had been pushed to the brink by the state's relentless bombardment. While Field General Neckett focused on the logistics of the unified front, Stanley the Seer moved among the ranks, preaching Jasiri's doctrine of active courage and the need for a spiritual vanguard against the encroaching darkness. The alliance was fragile, held together only by the shared understanding that if Isadora was allowed to realize her dark machinations at the Nightingale Estate, there would be no city left to rebuild.

The strategy for the final offensive was born of tactical desperation. The party and the Field General devised a two-pronged midnight assault designed to overwhelm the Nightingales' superior arcane defenses. The first component involved a dedicated ground unit comprised of both seasoned soldiers and volunteer civilians. Their objective was to storm the perimeter of the Nightingale Estate and deliver a massive, specialized ground bomb—an explosive of such magnitude that it was intended to shatter the estate’s structural wards and provide a breach for the secondary force.

Simultaneously, the party was tasked with leading a fleet of commandeered Europan airships to provide aerial superiority. This “Revolutionary Armada” was a collection of salvaged hulls and repurposed merchant vessels, all unified under the banner of a new Dresden. The plan was high-stakes and unforgiving; the ground team would face the brunt of Isadora's elite terrestrial guardians, while the airships would have to contend with the Nightingales' own specialized aerial assets and the unpredictable atmospheric distortions caused by the localized Legion influence.

The attack commenced at midnight, as the orange glow of the burning city served as the backdrop for the revolution's final gambit. The silence of the capital was shattered by the rhythmic thunder of the ground team’s advance and the low hum of the airship engines overhead. As they approached the Nightingale Estate, the travelers felt the dark arcane pressure intensify, a psychic screaming that tested the resolve of even the most hardened veterans.

For Muddy Mittens, the pressure was physical; he felt the darkness of his mark pulsing in response to the Legion energy, and he began to consciously draw upon that cold, demonic resonance to bolster his own resolve and provide the strength needed for the coming victory. Beside him, Mozaddha Theriska tightened his grip on his weapon, finally discarding his charlatan's mask to embrace the role of the honorable pirate vanguard he had spent so long pretending to be. Stanley the Seer fully called upon the resolve offered by his newfound angelic patron and as such became a beacon of courage to his comrades both literally and figuratively.

The air above the estate soon became a chaotic tapestry of gunfire, magical discharges, and the screech of wyverns. From their vantage point on the command airship, the party watched as the ground unit initiated their desperate push toward the manor's foundations. The revolution had moved past the stage of simple unrest and had become a focused engine of war. As the first shells of the bombardment fell upon the estate, the party realized they were no longer fighting for passage or profit—they were fighting to decide the soul of a nation.

Shambly was first discovered within the ancient and decaying sewer system that sprawls beneath the Europan capital of Dresden. He was found deep inside a lightless labyrinth that served as a clandestine laboratory for a malevolent necromancer. This practitioner of the dark arts had been utilizing the isolation of the city's underbelly to conduct horrific experiments on the resident goblin population, transforming them into various forms of undead thralls. While the party was forced to eliminate the necromancer and his more aggressive guardians, Shambly was identified as a peculiar and non-threatening anomaly of reanimation.

The physical state of Shambly is characterized by extreme degradation and advanced age. He is described as ancient and withered, with a mechanical or magical failure in his reanimation that resulted in an agonizingly slow pace of movement. Because of this physical infirmity, he was deemed effectively harmless by the traveling party during their initial trek to forge an alliance with Field General Philander Bramwell Neckett. In a moment of macabre levity amidst the chaos of the revolution, the group chose to spare the creature rather than destroy him, allowing him to persist within the tunnels.

Following the party's decision to grant him mercy, Shambly became a recurring fixture of the campaign’s narrative. As the vanguards of the revolution utilized the sewer network multiple times to navigate between the Tristessawood and the military compound, they frequently encountered the undead goblin. Shambly’s role became one of unintentional comedy, as he was perpetually found lingering far behind the group, still attempting to catch up to them hours or even days after their initial passage. Despite the fires consuming the city above, Shambly remained a constant, slow-moving reminder of the strange arcane secrets hidden within the foundations of Dresden.

Following the violent conclusion of the revolution and the final defeat of the Nightingales, the long process of rebuilding the shattered capital began. In the aftermath of the conflict, Shambly eventually accomplished his perpetual goal of navigating the city’s lightless labyrinth and emerged from the sewer system into the surface world. Despite his undead nature and extreme physical degradation, the unusual creature was not destroyed or discarded by the newly established government. Instead, due to his centuries of observation within the city's foundations and his methodical, if agonizingly slow, pace of operation, he was hired as a formal archivist at the Europan Parliamentary Archives in Dresden. There, the former laboratory experiment found a new purpose among the soot-stained records of Europa’s history, serving as a living—if withered—bridge between the city’s dark past and its uncertain future.

Notes for this campaign were spotty at best so all of these recaps were reconstructed from fragments and memory. Some details may not reflect exactly what happened at the table.

Chapter 1: The Descent into the Sea of Ghosts

Chapter 2: Blood and Sabotage

Chapter 3: The Wreck and the Betrayal

Chapter 4: The Sentinel's Sacrifice

Chapter 5: The Shadows of Dresden

Chapter 6: Breakout from the Bastion

Chapter 7: The Weeping Realms

Chapter 8: Sewers and Sovereignty

Chapter 9: The Midnight Assault

Chapter 10: Ashes and Alliances

Chapter 11: Foundations of Faith

Chapter 12: The Sky Cannonade

Chapter 13: The Emerald Core

Chapter 14: The Fall of Hale Damien

Chapter 15: The Sky's Inheritance

Chapter 16: The Glass Horizon

Chapter 17: The Cursed Shroud

Chapter 18: The Sovereign’s Table

Chapter 19: The Crimson Communion

Chapter 20: Unresolved

Set in 2101 A.M. across the haunted waters of the Sea of Ghosts and the fractured continent of Europa, this campaign followed a crew of unlikely travelers as they were pulled by obligation, by circumstance, and by the dead, through political collapse, divine allegiance, and ancient horror.

The story began aboard a doomed submersible bound for Dresden, where the party found some unlikely allies and made unkeepable promises. Then it moved to the Europan capital of Dresden where the iron grip of a merchant class protected by Legion-aligned secret police had pushed the city to a breaking point. The party's arrival was the spark. What followed was a costly, imperfect, and irreversible revolution.

In the wreckage of the old order, the party encountered Tristessa, the Demon of Sadness, and answered her opposite number: Jasiri, the Archangel of Courage, who marked them as his own. From the ruins of a bombed-out cathedral, a new faith and a new government rose together. Fragile, compromised, but real.

Their promise made aboard the submersible pulled them west, across the Sea of Ghosts to the cursed isle of Eire, where Abartach, a sovereign predator older than the nation that had grown up around him, had claimed the region as his domain.

At its core, Apocalyptica Arcanum II asked what mortalkind are willing to become in the face of the divine, and what they are willing to leave behind when they find out.

Narrative session recaps are available here.

André Palmier

The two days following the fight with the war party are mostly uneventful as the party decides to keep a low profile in their journey, sneaking past both a wagon train and a mutated beast of the prairie.

The party finally comes to the landmark crossing that the Brule elder directed them to but find that the “bridge” is in such a state of disrepair that is seemingly uncrossable. After a few gripping failures and some unintended swims in the ice cold river the party and their horses finally make it across. The party decides to make camp on the far side of the river so they can dry themselves and their gear before they continue.

The party, knowing they are close to their journey’s end, makes haste to the Blackfoot settlement and find it sprawling in the prairie near days end. It is massive and apparently also home to a few different Lakota tribes. The party decides to make contact with the Brule band of indians in the center of the settlement and after some tangling with the language barrier the party is shown that one of the pipes they carry allows them to speak freely with one another.

The party litters them with questions that have been raised along their journey and they find most of them answered. The party learns some of the different pipe’s magic. The party learns of the state of the Lakota nation and it’s peoples. The party learns that most bands of the Lakota wish to end the tyranny of Black Dog and his corrupting magic, brought on by Iktomi, the trickster.

After most of their questions are answered, the party directs the conversation to learning how to control their new powers. Chief Red Crow tells them they must go on a spirit journey to discover their own truths and they will begin their “Hanbleceya” in the morning. They then make camp nearby.

The party awakens to Red Crow describing the “Hanbleceya” ceremony. They will each wait in the wilderness for as long as it takes to begin their journey. They will be naked, alone, without food or water. When it is over they will discover the path forward.

Each in turn is stripped of all belongings and led to a grassy hillside in on the plains. They are left alone.

Each party member is stricken with cold, hunger and thirst on these first days of Hanbleceya. On the third day, they each fall unconscious and slip into the spirit world.

Confused, in pain and weak the party confronts a Lakota woman on a sheet of ice. She tempts them with fruit but none of them accept. When they refuse she smashes the fruit and breaks the ice. All but Jed fall into the crevasse.

Jed plants himself on the hillside and beseeches his creator for help. He finds none. His vision fades to white.

Chow, Raylan and Grimm fall into an endless pool of blood and are attacked by strange creatures. The beasts overwhelm them and each in turn falls unconscious in this dream.

Chow Yun-Phat and Elder Jedidiah Smith arrive in Fargo ND via the Northern Pacific rail line and head to the Senate Saloon to get a drink. Todd Johnson arrives in Fargo ND via the St. Paul rail line and heads to the Senate Saloon to find a card game. Upon arriving at the saloon they overhear an old indian drinking heavily and telling a tale in the corner. The man tells a very dark story and the room is completely enraptured until he is disrespectfully interrupted by the bartender. After finishing his tale and answering some inquiries from the party, he walks around the corner and takes his own life. Aside from the rush of looters to take valuables this does not raise much of a commotion.

Afterwards, Todd invites a patron to a game of cards while Chow and Jed ask some of the other patrons about the nature of the story the old indian told. They learn that it is the Lakota legend of the end of the world. When Todd’s luck at poker takes a turn for worse, he taps into his magic to try and change it. When he does, his spell backfires and he is severely injured. Seeing a blatant display of magic from a stranger frightens the other card player and he runs from the saloon in terror.

Todd decides to seek rest for the night at the Sherman Boarding House. Chow and Jed rent a room at the Headquarters Hotel. Chow and Jed come to find that Todd’s magical display at the saloon wasn’t the only display of arcane ability that night as while they are enjoying fine cigars in the hotel lobby, a lynch mob forms outside to hang a magic user in the street by torchlight.

All three rush to the aid of this unknown magic-user and Todd again uses his magic to chase the mob away with a summoned cloud of locusts, spewing forth from his mouth. After a few words, all four then make their way to the stranger’s camp just outside of town.

Around his fire, Jerome Crow Dog introduces himself to the party and elaborates on the Lakota legend they heard at the saloon. He warns the party that these wonton displays of magic have a tendency to scare those who don’t understand them. He then tells them that there are those who have begun to master using this new magic among his people in the Northern Badlands. Jerome tells the party to seek their knowledge and help in mastering their powers. After they share a pipe around the fire, the party then decides to retire back at the Headquarters Hotel.