Our story opened on a party of four adventurers having gathered in the Explorers’ Guild of Tulesa for a briefing on a rather special mission they had just accepted. The party included a human paladin named Khida, a goblin kineticist named Mud, a human inquisitor named Zakiya, and an odd-looking human kensai named Blade. The four waited in the dining hall of the Explorers’ Guild for the guild master to make his appearance, which came soon enough. Before long, Rufus Blackwell entered the room and addressed the group, indicating they should follow him to a private briefing chamber off the main hall. Following him in, the group took their seats where Rufus indicated that they should sit. He began the briefing for the mission that they had selected, explaining their total payment from the guild would be 3000 gold pieces: half now for equipment and half on completion of the work. They would also each be allotted 100 gold pieces per day for expenses, and they would get the standard deal from the guild that allowed them to keep any loot they found that was not a mission objective. Rufus explained that their work would take them to the now abandoned city of Latpasa, near the desert edge. There, they would be tasked with locating and exterminating the remaining shamblers that infested the city so that people could return. The mission was straightforward but exceedingly dangerous. To get them on task quickly, the leadership of Tulesa had made available for them the desert trimaran Plainsrunner, captained by Zedin Alasan, one of the settlements most gifted pilots. The Plainsrunner would be ready to depart as night fell that evening, and the group would have until then together what supplies they needed and meet the ship at the docks near the base of the hill.

After an afternoon of buying supplies and food for a long journey into the desert, the group met and boarded Plainsrunner at the docks. Following some brief introductions with the crew, the ship departed for the deep desert. The transit for the next three days was relatively uneventful, with Plainsrunner taking up an easterly patrol route from the settlement before a slow turn to the north. At 6 AM on the third day, the ship slowed and began preparing the experimental new deployment sled for the party. The sled would allow the party and their gear to safely depart the ship without the ship stopping, by stepping onto a platform that would be extended from the back of the ship as a line paid out. The party loaded their gear, stepped onto the platform, and were soon dumped unceremoniously off the back of the ship and onto the white sand. The ride was a bit bumpier than they were expecting, but soon enough they came to a stop on a sled with a long rope attached to it that had been dropped from the back of the ship, now slowly disappearing into the distance.

They would have the next 27 days in Latpasa to complete their mission, at which point Plainsrunner would return to pick them up. If they were not ready to leave by that point, they would be assumed dead. Another ship retracing Plainsrunner’s patrol route would be along in 18 days if the party was done early. With a long trek across the desert ahead of them, the party set out. It was only a few hours of early morning hiking before they were stopped and attacked by wildlife in the desert – an enormous pack prowler, a giant hyena that was likely the companion of a Dune giant. A fierce and frenzied fight ensued, the pack prowler leaping from party member to party member trying to take someone down for a neck-breaking killer bite. Alas, he never succeeded, though he did manage to inflict a few wounds that would last before he was laid low by the party.

Weathering the hottest part of the day in their partially buried tents in order to rest, the party departed again as the sun began to dip low on the horizon, marching toward Latpasa. For the next three days, the party trudged, closing the long miles toward the town without marking much excitement. While marching on day six, they observed four bright dots in the sky to the south moving East to West. They never quite figured out what the dots were, and so kept moving toward their goal. By day seven, they were 8 miles out from the city and the tall, legendary walls and road gates of Latpasa were visible in the distance. As they march closer, they observed an explosion in the city, followed by a column of smoke. Other less intense columns of smoke were observed rising from various parts of the city. Blade released his bird, Bolt, to take wing and scout the situation ahead of them, looking for trouble that might be marked by the sighted explosion. Quickly returning, Bolt spotted debris on the far side of the wall near the sight of the explosion, but no movement. He did report that there was lots of movement near the wall, saying he saw many slow-moving people.

As the group moved closer to the wall, they saw that the people Bolt had observed were actually herds of shamblers moving along the outer wall, tracing a path through a trench they had worn walking the circle again and again over many months. The party attacked, easily dispatching the two groups of shamblers closest to their point of approach of the wall, using a series of careful and methodical attacks. As they drew to the wall, the group worked together to get up and over it, landing atop the wide parapet and making their way along to the nearest tower. Arriving at the tower, they entered to commence a search from top to bottom before emerging at the ground level inside the city. Near the very top of the tower, they found the remains of the commander of the city watch, who had apparently died defending the stairs from shamblers, now evidenced only by the piles upon piles of clothes and loose sand that made the stairs down treacherous. They learned this commander’s name was Basren Najafi.

Emerging quietly into the street from the guardhouse at the base of the tower, the group consulted their city map about where they might try first. Settling on a nearby trade compound, they moved out. Sure enough, the trade compound was overrun by shamblers, shuffling to and fro in an endless loop of unimportant activity until they saw their target. When they saw the group, they rushed to the attack, but there simply were not enough of them to properly challenge the party. In short order, the way was cleared and they searched the compound. The trade compound itself was arranged as a pair of large warehouses, with a common yard between them intended for vendor stalls. The trade houses each contained a series of independent compartments, originally intended to separate the goods of specific owners. The group found a few interesting items within the warehouses, but they had mostly been stripped of anything of value. Eventually, the western warehouse yielded the most interesting find of the two buildings: an intact barrel of the compound used to create the shambler disaster. After securing and disposing of the barrel, the party moved on to a pair of strong rooms in the back of the western warehouse. In the strong rooms, they found two large groups of wholly burned bodies. Evidence in the room indicated some of these people had been burned alive and someone had entered the room to search them for valuables after they were murdered. There was a small collection of personal effects left in the corner, apparently collected but found to be of little value. Among the collection, they found several holy symbols of Mahari, several holy symbols of Rustum, and one holy symbol of Ahura Mazda. It seemed this had been the collected clergy that still remained in Latpasa when someone very evil came calling.

The party left the compound, disgusted and somewhat disheartened by their find. Moving north, they came across a larger group of shamblers but were able to pick them apart with careful tactics and patience. Immediately after this group was dispatched, the party was threatened by another group of shamblers, at least 60 strong. This group, unlike the others, did not simply charge in a mad rush. They seem to fragment, coordinating their movements. Some held back until the party showed a weak flank, and then moved to take advantage of that gap in their defense. Through coordination of their own, Blade, Khida, and Zakiya were able to hold various fronts as Mud tore through the groups from afar. This horde took longer to dispatch and it was a close thing, but the party prevailed.

They continued to move carefully through the city, attacking groups of shamblers when they could do so safely, and avoiding others. Eventually, they made their way to the south gatehouse and entered to take a brief respite. The inside of the gatehouse appeared to have been repaired sometime after the initial attack, with new timbers used to shore up damaged walls and some doors replaced. As they rested inside the gatehouse, the party heard noises of a battle nearby. Theorizing this battle may involve cultists, survivors, or both; the party rushed to intervene. They found a small group of Riyaqan people under attack by shamblers in the street. Lending aid, the party was able to help them dispatch the group quickly and end the battle. The man leading the group introduced himself as Salyat Qarda – an officer of the Latpasa city guard and now the leader of a small group of refugees living inside the city and hunted by cultists that took up residence here some time after the first attack. Sizing up the party after a brief interrogation, Salyat agreed to give them a place to sleep for the night in his safe house inside the city. Once they arrived, not everyone at the safe house was happy to see the party, worried they might be cultist infiltrators. This led to some measure of tension the party bedded down for the night and got to know their new friends.

By the following morning, the party learned that Qarda and the other refugees intended to remain in the city until they found a woman named Zari Najafi. Zari was the daughter of Basren Najafi, the guard commander the party had found dead earlier, leaning against a door, when they first entered the city through one of the towers. They knew she was still alive and had been kidnapped by the cultists. Once she was found they would consider leaving, but they did not intend to escape with any living refugees left behind. Reasoning that their goals aligned in this matter (as hunting for her should bring them into close contact with the cultists that were no doubt responsible for maintaining the threat of the shambler presence in Latpasa) the party agreed to add findings Zari to their goals and set off for the last place that she had been seen – being dragged off by cultists toward Queen’s Keep in the middle of the city, months ago.

It was not long before the party came into contact with a large herd of shamblers standing stock still in the streets that would otherwise allow them access to the keep. Blade sent his companion skyward to scout, who quickly located two cultists standing on a nearby roof, easily identified by their black and red robes. The party was simultaneously attacked by the herd of shamblers and the cultists, one of whom seemed to have some measure of control over the shamblers actions. Intelligently focusing their opening efforts and attacks on the cultists, the party fought hard to dispatch the pair. One of them seemed to be a spellcaster, while the other was a skilled melee combatant. He charged the party with blades out, moving with incredible speed as he landed the first of several blows with his jagged black short swords. Meeting his charge had on, Blade and Khida cut him down in short order. Meanwhile, Mud had blasted the spellcaster out of existence while Zakiya held the first of the arriving shamblers at bay. With the cultist dispatched, the party fell into a well-practiced pattern of retreats and attacks in order to dispatch the now leaderless mob. Returning to check the bodies of the cultists, the party found a few items of value and one piece of intelligence – a note scrawled with the numbers “7358”.

The party returned to the safe house to drop off the loot and information that they had located before heading back toward the keep. When they arrived this time, they found several cultists standing on a balcony of the Queen’s Keep. One of them introduced himself as Ibrahim – the new master of the Children of Ahriman. His demand was simple: leave now if you want to live. He claimed that Latpasa now belonged to the Children, and they would enforce that claim with violence if necessary. Hordes of shamblers marched into the streets like highly disciplined infantry in response to Ibrahim’s commands. Sensing that this might not be a fight they could win, the party began looking for options. Soon, Mud found one. At his coaxing, the party began working at an extremely heavy grate that led into the sewer below the street, as the shambler army marched forth. It was a concerted effort over several valuable seconds, but the party eventually dislodged the grate and dove into the sewer below. With a little luck, they could use the sewers to get under the keep itself before anyone caught up to them.

As they navigated the confusing sewer tunnels, they could hear the thumps of the massed footsteps in the streets above them. Shamblers seemed to be spreading out, trying to cover all of the entrances to the sewers to ensure they were there when the party poked their heads above street level again. When the party did not reappear, Ibrahim upped the ante a bit, sending some special surprises into the sewer after the party. As they arrived at an intersection in the sewer, pipes leading in from the street above began to stream wet sand just ahead of the party. It piled onto the floor with a sloppy slapping sound and began to move and slide of its own accord. Within seconds, it had assembled itself into a massive body well over 10 feet tall, with a fist larger than their goblin companion. And as they stood in awe of the size of this new sand shambler, the thing lashed out. The tunnel rumbled and cracked as the beast smashed about, trying to flatten members of the party against the walls or floor. The few times it managed to connect with a blow proved devastating, straining the party’s ability to stay on their feet. From afar, Mud poured hot damage into the thing as the rest of the party attempted to split its attention and prevent it from focusing on any one person. In the end, their tactics worked and the violently motivated pile of sand was dispatched back into just a pile of muddy slime. Moving on, the party soon came to a series of rooms that seemed to have some engineering purpose for the tunnel system.

Hearing faint noises ahead, the party began sneaking as they moved into these rooms. The light was poor and the floor slick. They would need to be cautious in order not to be seen or heard before they were ready. Soon enough, they came across a cultist as he worked alone in a room. Jumping him from stealth, they immediately subdued him. A few moments later, they came across a much more capable cultist. This man was dressed similarly to the martial expert they had faced in the streets above. He moved quickly and with purpose, but was not evenly matched against the party working on his own. Though he connected with a few blows, he was easily dispatched. Checking him, they found a set of keys on his person which would prove invaluable as they moved further in and further up into the keep.

A few hallways later, the party got the drop on a cult librarian named Lelan. He was sleeping when the party approached but woke as they drew near. After a brief parlay that uncovered little, the battle was joined. Immediately learning he was a capable spellcaster, the party went all out trying to kill him quickly. Unfortunately, the fight drew the attention of other cultists nearby in the complex. Within a few seconds, four more showed up and joined the fight. As the fight moved out of the room and down the hallway, Blade bit off a little more than he could chew and fell to the onslaught of two of the cultists. He momentarily regained consciousness, electing to press the attack rather than retreat. His sacrifice was noble and no doubt bought his companions time rally and force a victory, but in the end, Blade paid with his life as he fell a second time. A cruel spell from the librarian struck Zakiya blind moments before the librarian’s life was snuffed out. The party was victorious, but at great cost, and weren’t in any shape to press the attack further into the keep. Collecting their fallen and everything of value they could find, the party retreated back into the sewers. They followed the sewer tunnels as best they could further south into the city, and toward the safe house, before returning to the surface.

Arriving back at the safe house, the party took refuge and arranged a proper cremation for Blade. Distributing what they did not need of the captured equipment to the various refugees, the party arranged a barter of Blade’s valuable armor with a cleric named Javon, in exchange for lifting the curse on Zakiya and restoring her sight. The party had managed to return with a single live captive, whom Salyat questioned aggressively during the night. Awaking in the morning refreshed, the party met a man named Tavor who agreed to accompany them back to the keep, since they were now one shy and the odds were stacked even further against them. They accepted his company, reasoning they would need all the help they could muster. And with that, they set off for another go at Ibrahim and his remaining cultists.

Again taking to the tunnels, the party arrived back the engineering levels below the keep with little trouble, meeting only a couple of large, slime-covered serpents in the sewers. In a room full of mud they had previously cleared, the party found two cultists bathing without their clothes, and attacked while their guard was down. They quickly subdued and knocked out the pair, venturing further into the complex after binding them. As they made their way through the confusing array of halls and rooms, the party eventually came to a door guarding an abnormally cold section of the compound. Proceeding in, they found an eerie subterranean cathedral – long since converted from the wholesome worship for which it was designed into a blasphemous altar of death. 12 cultists knelt in the room facing the altar. The party challenged them, and then investigated when the cultists failed to respond. They found that all their bodies were held in place by creative binding with wire. The entire lot was long dead.

Upon this discovery, the party was immediately confronted by Ibrahim and four seemingly intelligent shamblers. They quickly discovered that Ibrahim was projecting himself via some illusory magic, but that hopefully meant he was at least nearby. The four shamblers were very real and very dangerous. They charged and tore into the party, with the melee spreading about the dank chamber and stirring up a great quantity of dirt that reeked of rot. A couple of the party members narrowly escaped falling during the combat, with Tavor proving his worth as he tore into shamblers with reckless abandon alongside his new comrades. Soon enough, the chamber fell silent as the last of these new shamblers was put down. But even as the party watched, their bodies were slowly reassembling themselves. It was obvious they would not be down for long. Looking around the chambers, the party located four small containers that appeared to be canopic jars. Reasoning that these might serve as phylacteries for whatever foul magic animated the four shamblers, the party did not hesitate to destroy them. With their destruction, the reanimation of the scattered piles ceased. The party was given only a moment to enjoy the victory, as the illusion of Ibrahim taunted them before vanishing. Searching the room, they found piles of clothes – probably the old clothes of converted cultists who no longer needed them. Rooting around in the clothes for suitable bedding material, Mud found a curious circular object, decorated with evenly spaced runes and hieroglyphs. Of little interest to him, he handed it off to the other members of the party as he searched for just the perfect pants to incorporate into a new nest.

Deeper in the complex, the party found what appeared to be a jail block. Hanging in irons, the bodies of several flayed men made for grim decor on the walls. As they examined the men, the party determined one was still barely alive and they did what they could to stabilize him. They learned his name was Silas, and he had been lashed here as punishment for failure to deal with the refugees. In exchange for information about exactly where to find Ibrahim and how to confront him, the party healed and freed Silas. They sent him on his way with a few potions and tools to make his way into the city. Following Silas’s instructions, they struck out upstairs to the courthouse on the keep grounds, and toward their confrontation with Ibrahim.

They found the man waiting for them on the main floor of the courthouse, surrounded by several versions of shamblers that he had created. It was apparent that the man had been hard at work perfecting the craft that Sadeesh had started. As the battle commenced, he sent his minions forward to block the party’s advance as he cast spells from the air in the center of the courthouse. Sandy corpses exploded right and left as the minions threw themselves at the party, each seeking the best advantage for its own sacrifice to serve its master. Ibrahim’s harassing spells eventually turned to direct damage as the party worked their way closer to him, paying for each inch of gain with more bloodshed.

Escalating to ever higher levels of rage, Tavor was knocked low several times. Each time he was brought back to his feet by the party as they continued to advance, rapidly drawing Khida’s healing reserves to dangerous lows. After a couple of solid strikes on Ibrahim, Mud found himself targeted by a particularly nasty spell, which literally drained all the strength from his body. To the horror of his companions, he collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Together Tavor, Khida, and Zakiya pushed for one final charge and brought Ibrahim down. Knocking him unconscious, they tied his hands and feet and gagged him.

Searching the remainder of the courthouse, the party soon found Zari imprisoned in a chamber on the second floor. Literally collared and chained to the ceiling in the center of a large lab, she had been forced to continue Robert Pinan’s work for Sadeesh. She was surrounded by detailed notes on many versions of the shambler serum, and exact plans for the explosive barrels that had delivered most of the shambler apocalypse. She also had recipes for some of the advanced serums that Ibrahim had her create, and some journals on what things might cure this terrible plague. Collecting Zari and her notes, the party returned to the safe house and made plans to eradicate the rest of the shamblers inhabiting the city, now that the cultist threat had been dispatched. After the refugees removed the magic afflicting Mud, they joined forces and spent the next few weeks completing the mission, street by street and building by building.

Three and half weeks later, the party, Tavor, and Zari made their way back into the desert to rendezvous with Plainsrunner for the trip back to Tulesa. The Explorers’ Guild and the settlement leadership would be very interested indeed in what they had found and accomplished in Latpasa.

Our story opened as the party entered into a dank, bloody dungeon filled with painful looking restraints that had obviously received a lot of use in decades past. They sensed that the environment around them was a powerful illusion, but it took several minutes before they could find a way to penetrate the spell. At length, they were able to reveal a door leaving the room and leading into the rest of the complex, instead of one leading into a void. Pressing forward, the group found a room that must be Arstad’s normal entry and exit from the complex, given the arcane teleportation target etched into the floor. The door beyond was sealed with the magnetic lock of some kind, powered by a small collection of stones on a platform just in front of it. Though they tried for a while, the group just could not come up the combination of stones that would unlock the door. Hefting his weapon, Tarsus decided to engage in an alternative approach to gain the door’s cooperation, quickly smashing it into a pile of junk that could be pulled away from the frame. Normally upset by such antics, the rest of the party accepted the damage from the ensuing lighting trap as the best alternative to turning back now.

The hallway beyond led into a large torus-shaped room guarded by a crypto lock. Having seen these earlier in the complex, the party made short work of this one, even though it was more complex than those they had seen before. In the room beyond, the party was immediately challenged by the charging mass of a large adamantine golem as it tore through them and sent party members flying. The broken ground left in its wake slowly started to mend, but not quickly enough to keep up with the damaged the thing was causing to the ring. This complicated matters, as every place the beast went it was more difficult to move while compensating for the broken and sharply tilted tile. Tarsus did his best to stay in thing’s path and keep its attention while the others rained damage upon it. After a bit, the party realized that no amount of damage they did to this thing was going to win the encounter, as it was repairing itself almost as quickly as they could damage it. Instead, Zayn came up with a new plan and opened a pit beneath the thing large enough for it to fall in. As the golem’s regeneration fought with the constant damage of the Hungry Pit, the group made their escape into the chamber in the center of the torus.

Beyond they found the library, with rows upon rows of shelves full of arcane volumes long forgotten by others. A suspiciously shiny full suit of armor stood just inside the doorway, positioned as if it were a guard for the room. An investigation revealed that it only hid a suit of wizard’s mail, but did not seem to be animated or otherwise magical in its own right. The group did find that many of the bookshelves, instead, were the guardians of the door beyond. They had a strange property of scattering their books around the room if they were not properly stacked and only opening the door if all four shells were properly stacked at the same time. Once they figured this out, the party proceeded through. On the other side of the door was a massive stairway that disappeared down into utter darkness.

At the bottom of the stairs, they found a large circular room, with furniture of fine dark wood and floored with rich red carpet. The floor was arranged as a continuous curving ramp that led to the lowest point of the room at its center. Lit by floating magical lamps, the party could see a single long bookcase that wound around the room again and again as it followed the ramp to the center, covered in tomes that Sindar, Finn, and Zayn had only imagined might exist until now. At the center of the room, far below them, the party could see the frail form of an old man frantically packing what must be his most valuable belongings and books into a bag of holding. He was screaming commands at servants they could not see. All at once, a half dozen tall bronze-skinned men burst into view just in front of the party. Fully 7 feet in height and at least half that in width at the shoulder, the men were decked head to toe in golden armor plate that seemed as thick as a door. Each held the shield that was their full height when set upon the floor, with a shining pike and the other hand. They moved to challenge the party, before the one in the lead spoke, asking them who they were.

Finn and Zayn took turns speaking at first, attempting to explain that they meant the old man no harm and only sought information from him so that they could fight a great evil threatening the world. The armored man speaking to them focused in on Finn, asking more about who he was rather than what he was doing here. Finn explained that he was a priest of Rustum and the six armored men relaxed. Their leader gazed down the sloping room at the old man, telling him, “These are not enemies, and we will not fight.”

The old man was livid, but the armored leader was steadfast in his determination that he would not take up arms against the party. With a wave of his hand, he and his contingent were gone. It took the party a good several minutes to calm the old man, who seemed constantly on the verge of bathing the entire room and destructive magic. At last, he seemed to calm enough that the party could confirm that he was indeed Nathaniel Arstad and he had been running his entire life from Arturo Ducet since a fateful encounter where he learned the truth about the Headmaster of Necromancy. Arstad’s story was long and filled with details that were painful to listen to, but he did, at last, tell the party the exact location of the place that Ducet guards so dearly – the cave that represents a nexus between the Prime Material plane the Shadowfel. In this place, he explained, the hold of Xazat over each of his subjects is weakened to the point that they can decide their own actions freely. They can commit acts of good and evil. Because the realities merge there, what is true and not true can take on entirely different meanings in that place. What is alive and not alive can switch places. What is evil and what is good can do the same.

Having what was available of the old man’s trust, the party asked for a few hours to rest within his refuge before they moved on to confront the Elder Knight in this cave. He allowed them this respite, stating he would need to leave himself soon, as their coming here no doubt had attracted the attention of Arturo Ducet. Before they left, Arstad gave Finn a dark wooden box, telling them that what was inside was extremely precious and should be kept for just the right moment. As soon as they were outside of Arstad’s company, Finn opened the box and revealed a long, sharp-edged black stake. It had a crudely carved handle and the blade just looked cruel in its sharp and jagged angles. A note was included: “Only one of these exists, as hellstone is so very difficult to mine and work. He knows it exists, and will likely kill you without a word to take and destroy it. Make sure he doesn’t know you have it until it is in his chest.” The party made off quickly for the island in Caera Ausa that housed the entry to this nexus they needed to find next.

Unsurprisingly to some members of the party, when they arrived at the threshold of the cave they found Arturo Ducet waiting for them. He warned them against entering into the chambers beyond but did not make any overt moves to stop them. The party persisted that this was what must be done to defeat the Elder Knight and remove his distraction in the battle to come against Sayoni. Ducet gave a final warning as they entered the cave, "You’re not going to find what you think in there.”

As they attempted to enter the cave, the party learned that some of their equipment preferred to stay outside. Dervish refused into the cave entirely, and certain items carried by Sindar seemed to exude dangerously high levels of power this close to the Shadowfel. Doffing the offending items and hiding them safely at the cave’s entrance, the group proceeded inside. Ducet seated himself on a large boulder several feet from the entrance, suppressing a thin smile as he waited for the group to return.

Wandering inside the cave, the group came across what appeared to be an abandoned fountain built within, complete with a worked stone dome that cordoned it off from the environment beyond. The fountain appeared to be derelict, long since empty of any waters that ran from it. Childlike voices and giggles haunted the party from the darkness beyond. At last, they came to the source of the small voices – a trio childlike Shea stood in front of the party in a long cave with a low ceiling. Without further warning, they attacked. Using a combination of rending claws and spell attacks the trio tore at the party. They did some damage before they were dispatched, but seemed no more than a moderate challenge for the experienced adventurers.

Exploring further they found another fountain, very much similar to what they had found before. This fountain, however, was not entirely abandoned. Near the elevated intricately carved stone lip of the fountain, a dead body lay. It was the body of a man, apparently dead only a few weeks, though the robes and dark clothes it wore were in tatters. Turning the body over, the group was shocked to see the face of Arturo Ducet, but a much younger face of the man they despised. Knowing that time flowed differently in this place, they decided to attempt a Speak with Dead spell to see if this corpse could tell them anything. To their horror, they discovered that this man was Arturo Ducet, or at least what was left of him. The man that they knew outside this cave, was apparently Arturo Ducet’s Shea counterpart. When the man the world had known walked into this cave 3200 years ago, he had never walked out. As terrible as this seemed, it was a distraction for the time being. It would need to be dealt with later.

The party delved deeper into the confusing cave complex, constantly getting turned around by twisty passages that changed shape and dimensions as they moved through the cave. At long last, they came to an expansive cavern where the far wall was another worked stone dome – this one with an arched doorway leading into it. As they looked on at it from a distance, Tarsus saw the Elder Knight, Leofren Umberos, step through the arched doorway. With no apparent deception in his voice, he asked, “Why am I here?”

After an all too brief exchange, Tarsus attacked. The rest of the group intended to help him, but as the two men clashed, their figures blurred together. It became impossible in very short order to tell one from the other, like looking through a large pane of frosted glass at something far away on the other side. The group could see them struggling back and forth, blades flashing, but neither slowing. Within that void, Tarsus knew none of this. From his perspective, the universe fell to calm as the two men came together. There was a conversation, but he had difficulty recalling the details. When the diffusing fog lifted from the area, the Elder Knight’s remains lay leaning up against the side of the well the center of the room. Tarsus calmly strode toward the party, power flowing outward in every direction and washing over the four friends. The group asked if he was okay – did he feel all right, was he himself? Tarsus simply replied in a calm voice, “Everything’s fine. Let’s go.”

The entire party felt innervated as they parted from the area, somehow feeling more powerful than they were when they entered here. It took a long while, but they eventually wound their way back to the cave entrance, where Arturo Ducet was waiting for them. Opening his eyes and hopping down off his stone, he told the party that he hoped what was in there had been worth the cost – now he was going to have to kill them and search for new champions of Riyaqa. As he strode toward the party, Sindar snatched up his bag from the ground and held it open toward the advancing vampire primarch. Bidding Ducet to look inside, Sindar summoned his courage and announced, “If you kill us, you’ll have to deal with this on your own.”

Terror gripped the party as Arturo Ducet flew into a visible rage. His skin darkened to coal black as his eyes flashed bright red. His fingernails grew into long sharp claws as his teeth elongated into fangs and he drew back for an attack. Our story closed as Finn leapt into the middle of the party, grabbed collars and pulled everyone close as he whispered his Word of Recall, instantly teleporting the party back to Tulesa and out of danger for now.

Our story opened as the three-way battle between Imperial ships, Khasif ships, and Blue’s Tulesan fleet wound down on the open surface of the ocean, most of the casualties hidden by the twilight early dawn. Friendly ships were securing the remaining Imperial forces, the Amaxia having surrendered to their now overwhelming presence. Back aboard their own ships, the group arranged a Sending to Willie in Tulesa to have engineers and bodyguards meet them in Hansen, now known as Perstiva, having been renamed to its original regional moniker upon being liberated from Imperial control. Another Sending to Julian Carmeno informed him of Imperial soldiers that were to be released soon near Perstiva, so he could arrange safe passage for them as he deemed necessary. Speaking with the Khasif Commodore, Zayn secured an agreement from her to tow the Amaxia back to Perstiva in hopes that Daso Enna may be interested. A brief Sending to Daso confirmed his interest, but he acknowledged that Khasif possessing such an asset may spark a new war among Riyaqan nations.

After a bit of research, Finn dispelled the Forbiddance affect on the Sealion and the group got the ship underway with the assistance of the sailors still on board. Sindar spent some time underway chatting up the Imperial engineers during transit looking for information or recruits, whichever might be available. Searching the ship for more information, the group came across some research material of Mueller’s that seem to relate to the same puzzles they were pursuing themselves – puzzles that seemed important to the intricate complex Arkeles al Farin had created for Sayoni in the desert. The documents referred to a man named Geffo- a name they not heard before. They also found plans belonging to the Empire detailing an intercept plan for an incoming Quo Lao fleet, documents relating to the hiring of the mercenaries that were dogging the party, and finally a document identifying the source of Mueller’s intelligence on Sayoni’s tomb – Kaito Sanders.

As the fleet slowly made its way toward Perstiva, Sindar broke away for a few moments to send a bird token to Philip Greymonte, the man in charge of the Imperial Geographers’ Guild. Zayn completed a Sending to communicate with Lia Dailan, ruler of the settlement of Qi Lai in western Riyaqa. Zayn asked her for a meeting about the assets that they had taken on the ocean, and Lia informed her that she had a delegation near Perstiva now and they could meet her there soon. That delegation would then decide whether to some Lia. Zayn also completed a Sending with Daso Enna, informing him of the same matters and asking for a similar meeting. He replied that he had people in the city already and that they would find the party when they arrived back in town. Leaving the crews the ships to complete the transit on their own for now, the group completed a series of teleports to drop off some of the invaluable adamantine ingots with their own people, drop off supplies and money in Gol Asad, and make the necessary exchanges for the materials to resurrect their friend Tarsus.

While obtaining the scrolls of resurrection that they would need, the group asked Dezil if he could look up the name “Geffo” and see what relevance this person may have to the puzzles they had yet to locate. Returning to the Sealion, the group chose to resurrect Tarsus in the very spot he had fallen in order to minimize his distress and confusion about the events that had just transpired. The process was protracted and stressful, leaving the man shaken, tired, and quite confused. Finn did what he could to help, but Tarsus would simply need time to recover fully.

As the days wound on the party was eventually ready to teleport to Perstiva to carry out their meetings and decide the fate of the unique ship now making its way to the city. As they made contact with their troops near the north wall, the party discovered that they had captured a pair of Khasif spies near their camps the previous night. The spies were two women, Osana and Kali. Both were being held in custody now, and the soldiers promptly agreed to take the party to interrogate them. Upon meeting the two women, the party quickly determined that these were Daso’s agents, sent to meet the party and negotiate on his behalf. Making their excuses, the party freed the two women and took them to the rendezvous point. They waited briefly at the battered north gates, finally spotting a camel caravan proceeding down the road from Herlish. As caravan drew near, they saw that it was populated by Quo Lao citizens – likely the retinue that Lia had spoken of.

After initial introductions were completed, the group conferred with the Quo Lao retinue on the details of what they were offering. They decided this needed Lia’s personal attention, and so they summoned her magically. A short few hours later, representatives of the three nations had drafted a deal on what to do with the fabled Amaxia. Although the details still needed to be worked out among the rulers, Quo Lao agreed to take the ship back to their settlement in Riyaqa, and eventually on to safer waters. They would provide a share of the profits generated by the vessel back to Tulesa, while using it to better arm themselves and their allies against Imperial aggression abroad. For all of this to work, they would need a supply deal with Khasif for the adamantine ore they now had access to. The Khasif representatives agreed to this in principle but would need to draft a specific deal to be bargained later. The negotiating done, the party returned to their own town for the night.

The party awakened the next morning as Sindar was returning from the open desert, having spent the night on the sand instead of in his bed. Shortly thereafter, Finn and Tarsus met with Briar in the Explorers’ Guild, providing him with the final agreed-upon payment to send the mercenary group back to the dark hole they had crawled out of. As those details were wrapped up, Zayn asked Nadji to help her select a leader for an orphanage and school within the settlement, giving the woman one of the remaining instant fortresses and telling her to select a location to set up the facility. Tarsus conferred with Falat as he returned from the field exchanging reports on the conditions and movements of various troops. Finn asked Squeaks if she might be able to reincarnate Dingo- a request she eventually agreed to perform.

Again unable to resist the draw of the artifact powering the town’s reactor, most of the group drew one more card from the Deck, hoping for some luck. The Deck’s response this time was much more muted than before. The party spent the remainder of the day making preparations for the next task: teleporting to the location that Dyphonaira had shown Zayn to confront the wizard Arstad.

When the next day dawned party was off. Zayn succeeded in targeting the exact location the Dyphonaira had shown her. The landscape around was an exact match for what she had seen before, down to the many waterfalls streaming from the jagged cliffs above them. Making their way up the slopes, the party picked their way along the rocks looking for some hidden entrance. The search was disturbed by the approach of a living mountain – an aggressive elemental Colossus that descended upon them, smashing trees and tearing up ground as a came after the party. As fearsome as the creation looked, the party had little trouble finally defeating it. It managed to tear up equipment and pound out some bruises, but in the end, it fell with a rumbling quake.

Finding the entrance to the cave, the group proceeded inside. There were supplies scattered about, but it did not look like anyone and come this way in a long time. The group called out to Arstad, but received no response. They ventured further into the halls beyond, finding a maze of deadly traps and constructs obviously intended to explain with extreme prejudice that visitors were not welcomed. As they crept ever deeper into the complex, they eventually came to a strange stone in the middle of the hallway. When Tarsus touched the stone to brush away old dirt and real its markings, he was teleported away in an instant. He found himself deep in the earth, trapped on a narrow ledge above a lava seam. As the ashy air and heat began to take their toll, the group above searched frantically for a way to save him. Zayn soon hit upon the idea of changing herself into an earth elemental to reach him. Tarsus was so deep in the earth that it would strain the limits of her endurance to be able to hold the form long enough. Nevertheless, she rushed off, diving with all the speed she could muster through the rock to get her friend. Meanwhile, below, Tarsus was working his way through a doorway that led off of the ledge. Although he found the door went nowhere, he did find that guarded a golden key which obviously seemed to be of some value. He collected the key as Zayn arrived, out of breath from nearly a mile of traveling through solid rock. The two quickly teleported back up to the passage above and safety.

The next serious challenge they faced was a large monster hidden behind a broken wall in a room that contained two powerful magnets, threatening to immobilize anyone in metal armor. Realizing the danger, Finn quickly slipped out of his mail. Such a maneuver was not an option for Tarsus. It took focused effort for Tarsus to free himself from one of the magnets and get back into the fight as the monster started to tear through members of the group. It was a bloody fight, but the group managed to prevail and defeat the monster. Searching the room beyond, they quickly found the mechanism to disable the large magnets and rendered room safe, opening the rest of the complex beyond to further exploration.

Our story ended as the party gathered their wits and their breath in order to press on.

Our story opened as the party climbed the stairs to the command deck of the small ship they now knew to be the Sealion. As they climbed the stairs, Finn felt the force of a field of Forbiddance pass through the party. It seemed Mueller had triggered an effect on board that would prevent anyone from escaping as long as it persisted. For their part, the party considered that to be just fine.

Upstairs, they did not immediately find Mueller in any obvious location, and so commenced to search room by room. In one of the state rooms near the stairs, they searched closets and found a nicely appointed greatcoat of rich blue fabric trimmed in gold. In the pocket was an old letter exchanged between Thura Pelt and what could only be Horace Mueller. The letter was read and passed from person to person, arriving in Sindar’s possession last. As he read it and reread it, his rage began to burn and grow. The letter’s contents were disturbing, to say the least. Sindar wordlessly resumed the search for Mueller, and the party set out in tow.

In short order, they found Mueller on the bridge of the ship. The party launched an attack without hesitation, but Mueller immediately evaporated into some sort of mist form, sinking through the gaps in the pipes and the deck plates to the deck below. The party ran to intercept him, and Sindar led the attack with a barrage of bombs as soon as he saw the misty vapor again. The bombs landed to significant effect, and even in the mist form Mueller was badly hurt. He responded with a defensive spell and then went on the attack, turning Sindar into stone with his opening counterattack. Other members of the Sealion’s crew joined to help Mueller against the group, splitting their efforts as they tried to take on the Imperial High Colonel. Zayn moved to save Sindar from the encroaching stone form as the other members of the group quickly dispatched one marine, forcing surrender from a second. This left Mueller and another spell caster as the only enemies standing against the group as Zayn recovered Sindar and Tarsus charged.

The sorcerer assisting Mueller quickly learned a lesson that many casters had learned before him: do not let Tarsus Thornbane into melee range. Once Tarsus managed to close with sword in hand, the sorcerer quickly ceased to be a factor in the fight. Now free to focus on Mueller, the group went to work. As Tarsus closed with him, Mueller formed a blade of pure energy from the air and engaged him in armed combat. As spells flew between Mueller and the group, Tarsus continued to harry his efforts until Mueller had had enough of the master swordsman. Taking a step back, Mueller let loose with a spell of black energy. As it impacted Tarsus, the large man convulsed and then exploded violently into a cloud of dust. The rest of the group lost a valuable second of the battle as they stood slack-jawed at the disintegration of their friend. Putting all of his remaining power into boosting Zane’s the potency of Zayn’s magic, Finn fell back, clearing the lane of fire for the ruler of Tulesa.

Zayn loosed her own black bolt of energy at Mueller. He was already significantly weakened, Sindar having stripped away many of his magical defenses with specialized bombs. The man never stood a chance as the black bolt hit him squarely in the chest and he erupted into another cloud of dust. A fading scream echoed off the pipes in the cramped middle deck of the ship, and then it was quiet.

The group quickly moved to secure the ship and the rest of the crew, ensuring they would not be attacked from the shadows and the ship would not be purposely sunk with them aboard. Satisfied they had control of the vessel, they turned their attention to carefully collecting the remains of their friend and Horace Mueller. They then ordered the remaining crew to surface the ship. The senior officer left alive on board agreed to pilot the ship on their behalf, in accordance with naval customs requiring his compliance for noncombat tasks when the ship is legitimately captured. But he made it clear that he would not fight the ship for them, and the crew would need to be put off at the first opportunity at a safe harbor. With the ship surfaced, Finn used a Clarion Call to demand the surrender of the Imperial fleet that remained, announcing the death of High Colonel Mueller.

The fight on the ocean seemed to be going badly for the Empire. No longer able to escape without protection, the Amaxia could be seen trading blows with Gyredancer as the smaller ship harassed it from the stern. Only one of the Imperial barques remained, and about half of their sloops had been lost. One of the Khasif dreadnoughts was dead in the water and aflame, and the floating remains of two of Blue’s ships were now supporting survivors that were treading water.

Our story closed as the group considered their next steps, and whether they could move forward without their friend.

Our story opened as the group, hanging mid-air just after the battle with the Imperial mages, paused to survey the scene below where their allies were engaging in a battle of their own. The lead Imperial frigates and the Khasif dreadnoughts were exchanging fire, with several smaller ships still jockeying for position in between their lines. Gyredancer appeared to have taken a few bad hits already. It was on fire, but still keeping up with the main battle line. Sloops from both sides swarmed the larger ships. Having the advantage of numbers, the Khasif ships seem to be slowly edging the early battle to their favor. The majority of the medium-size ships were still moving into engagement range, the group in the air having already sunk the only barque that was close enough to fire with one of the instant fortresses.

Diving to the burning and sinking remains of the Expedition below, the party touched down on the deck and began working their way below, seeking out Horace Mueller. It was only a few seconds before they made contact with the first marines attempting to defend what was left of the ship. The two marines met them on the upper gun deck, and attacked swiftly. They were capable combatants, dealing serious blows, but were hopelessly outclassed by the party as they advanced through ship. The two marines dealt with, the party moved through the gun decks in search of their prey. As the party made contact with more soldiers on the second gun deck, Zayn took the form of a water elemental when she realized these men were not mere human marines. A moment later, the rest of the party realized the danger, as it became obvious these marines were not human, but mermen wearing Imperial armor. They moved with amazing speed and attacked with ferocity, slipping in and out of the gun ports, as the second deck was already completely submerged. One of the mermen made several attempts to dispel the water breathing magic protecting the party, turning to his trident when that failed. The hit and run attacks of the two mermen were proving to be a bit too effective, so Finn turned more powerful magic to deal with the problem. The mermen were routed as a giant octopus summoned by Finn joined the fray, smashing its way into the hull to get at the amphibious soldiers.

Several times, the party had to dispatch Marines left defending ship, but they were encountered in contingents small enough that they provided only brief delays to the group as they continued to search the sinking decks. Finally on the lowest deck of the forward hull, the party found what must be the armory. Crowded with racks of adamantine weapons and armor, the armory also contained several crates large enough to be of interest. Initial attempts to open the crates delicately failed. Feeling the pressure for time, but hoping there was something useful inside to help with their hunt for Mueller, Tarsus did what Tarsus does – he decided to open the crates the fast way. As Dervish crashed through the first crate, he was the first to realize his mistake, spotting the peculiar orange and green vials of the Naval explosive the party had come to know so well. First the armory, and then the passageways outside the armory interrupted in a massive shock wave and momentary fireball that was immediately collapsed by the surrounding water pressure. The force of the shock wave was magnified by the water as it slammed into the party, scattering them around the deck after flinging some of the through bulkheads. Everyone survived- a couple of the party members just barely so. Gathering themselves and their bearings, the party tried to get back on the trail as Finn did everything he could to get them back in fighting shape, nearly exhausting his power. He took out the Revelation cloth again, hoping they were close to their goal. The cloth indicated Mueller must be nearby, and so they continued on.

Pressing forward to explore the lowest deck of the ship, the party finally came across what they thought they were seeking near the remains of the midsection of the ship. A formerly hidden hatch led down. That seemed problematic, seeing that they were already on lowest deck of the ship. Beyond the hatch, now slipping out into the open ocean beneath the remains of the Expedition, the party saw an amazing vessel. Shaped like an enormous fish made of metal, with slowly undulating fins made of solid ribs and heavy fabric, the ship was sinking ever so slightly away from the Expedition and beginning to move away from its stern. Thinking quickly, the party threw a grapnel at the ship and one by one, grabbed onto the line as it paid out behind the unique vessel. They were torn away from the Expedition, and began the slow climb along the rope to reach the hull of this new ship, certain that this must be Mueller’s escape plan and he would be aboard.

Assembling on the alien hull at long last, the party made their way to what appeared to be a door into the vessel hidden on the bottom near the root of one of the massive fins. The hatch was guarded by an array of mechanisms that looked wholly unfamiliar. Fortunately, Sindar’s experience with matters of engineering paid off, and it took him less than a minute to sort out the mess and get the door open. The party crowded into a small room on the other side of the door, learning how a pressure equalization chamber operated as Sindar sped through the mechanisms to close them off from the ocean and drain the seawater. Opening the door to the inside of the vessel, the party began to sneak about, still hot on the trail of their prey. The Revelation cloth indicated that their instincts had been correct and Mueller was close by.

Some members of the party were better at sneaking around than others, as is commonly the case. As always, sneaking worked for a short time, but only a short time. Soon enough, the group came into conflict with the first marine on board. They killed him quickly, but not before being spotted by another guard, and then another. On such a small ship, word spread quickly among the guards and the group was soon swarmed. Not to be put off so close to their goal, the party fought back ruthlessly. They had seen the damage these Marines could inflict if given even the slightest chance, and they were in no condition to weather those types of blows and still face Mueller. Seconds later, eight of the small ship’s complement of marines lay dead around them when a voice crackled from the walls, seeming to come from every direction. It was a voice every member of the group now knew, “A fine show, but perhaps it’s time you came upstairs.”

The story closed as the party slowly made their way along the passageway to the stairs up to the command deck. At last, the battle they sought was at hand.

Our story opened as Finn completed a sending to Lion, stating that the party had no quarrel with the mercenaries, only wanting to deal with Mueller. Lion responded, saying he would agree to a single meeting to discuss the matter, but after that there would be no quarter given if an arrangement could not be reached. Zayn followed up with an additional sending to Lion in order to arrange a meeting place. Lion replied that the Explorers’ Guild in Tulesa was as good a place as any, since he seemed to already be there. The party rested for the evening under the watch of Dyphonaira in Chamber Valley, plotting their next move.

The next morning, Dyphonaira informed the party that she made contact with Nathaniel Arstad. He was unwilling to meet with the party or discuss any details about the Elder Knight and the Shadowfel. Mere mention of the Elder Knight seemed to make him more edgy and less willing to meet than he already was. Recognizing the importance of what the party was trying to accomplish, Dyphonaira agreed to show Zayn the location of Arstad’s hideaway psychically. From there, Zayn could use her expertise to arrange transport for the party herself. Touching Zayn, the Watcher transported both of their psyches to the edge of a brook at the base of a large hill. The hill was covered in tall grass with a few stands of trees scattered up slope. Near its top, jagged rocks marked the lowest reaches of the nearby mountain range. Several tall, slender waterfalls shimmered over the edges of the closest cliffs. Dyphonaira turned to face Zayn and said, “This is as close as you can come magically. His lair lies behind one of these waterfalls. There is no need to announce yourself, but take care to avoid the appearance of hostility.” Shortly after, Zayn found herself again with the party in the Watcher’s valley.

Taking their leave, the party teleported back to Tulesa to meet Lion in the Explorers’ Guild. True to his word, they found the man sitting and waiting at a table. A few of his crew were very obviously nearby, making no attempt really hide themselves from the perceptive searches of the party. Sitting down to negotiate, the party eventually reached a deal with Lion to pay 50,000 gold now in exchange for one week of not being hunted by him and his crew. That would give them time to hunt Mueller, instead. After Mueller was dealt with, the party would have to pay an additional 100,000 gold to complete the terms of Lion’s original contract. At that point, his business with the heroes would be done and they would not have to see him again. As a show good faith, Lion answered some questions to which he knew the answers about the Expedition and the Amaxia. As a party discussed amongst themselves that they needed a better way to track Mueller to get this done quickly, the druid Snow produced a lock of hair from her belongings at Lion’s direction, and gave it to the party. She said this was a lock of Mueller’s hair and should help them. It seemed Lion and his crew may have their own reasons to want Mueller out of the way. Rising to depart, Lion handed over a list of the bombs that they had scattered around the city to set off in the event they needed a distraction after a betrayal by the Tulesans.

After conferring briefly about the tools that they would need to complete tasks ahead of them, the party teleported together to the Lacy Death in Gol Asad to speak with Dezil once again. They asked Dezil to seek out some scrolls a greater teleport for them, as well as an elemental metamagic Rod. They also asked for any physical piece of the AES expedition that he may be able to come across, as component for a spell that Finn was working on to track the well-known vessel. Dezil told them to give him a few hours to contact sources. In the meantime, the party arranged several sendings with Daso Enna, in hopes of coordinating tactics and gaining some naval assistance afloat. They asked if he had a fleet or any ships near Gol Asad, and he replied that he did have some ships returning just now from Qi Lai. Finn explained to Daso that there was an Imperial war fleet to the south and they would need help taking the fleet down. He replied that he would be all too happy to oblige and would have his fleet loiter nearby.

While Dezil continued to work on their requests, the party headed to the docks to check in on some old business of a former associate. There, they mustered the help of some dock employees after they came across some worrying remnants of the original plot the Children of Ahriman to destroy the city. Not long after, Dezil reported that he could get five scrolls of greater teleport for the party if they were willing to pay a little extra. He could also acquire a greater elemental rod of cold, which would fulfill the requirements the party had set to some degree. He was still working on their final request for a piece of the Expedition. The party set off for the Asad building itself, just now being reoccupied by the politicians of the Asad. Meeting with Ahti Ato and Speaker Raha Delina, the party inquired after the possibility of acquiring a small ship for one more mission against the Empire. Speaker Delina agreed to to find them a small sloop with a crew that could be trusted.

Returning to the Lacy Death to touch base with Dezil, the party stopped to communicate with Daso Enna one more time. They told him that they had acquired a ship, they had another fleet in route to assist, and that they would be leaving shortly. He relayed that the Khasifi fleet would be under the command of Aiesta Reselen, and she had been informed of the basics and was ready to assist. Returning their attention to Dezil, the party was happy to learn that he would have their supplies very shortly. Then he surprised them with the last item he had recovered. Dezil explained that it turned out the Expedition had docked twice in Gol Asad during the war, and had required battle repairs one of those two times. Many destroyed timbers were taken off the vessel during that visit. Dockworkers being the thrifty people that they are, many of those timbers have been converted into tools and other implements. He showed the party the handle from just such a tool that had earlier been converted from one of the Expedition’s broken framing timbers. Finn took up the offering and use that to commence his spell, intended to locate the ship to which the wood had originally belonged. Comparing the input that he received from the spell to Sindar’s charts, Finn revealed that the Expedition was a little over 300 miles from shore almost directly to the south of their position. The party communicated a final time with Daso to give him the coordinates of the ship. Daso responded that his fleet was in route, with two dreadnoughts in company.

Returning to the docks, the party boarded their sloop, crewed by two women that they had not met before. They departed quickly and the crew told them it would be two days underway to get to their indicated destination. Their best guess was that the Khasifi fleet was about three days away, and blue was still about four days out. The next day or so passed without trouble. With their ship about a day out from the Empire fleet, the party used magic to spy on the Imperial fleet. From their vantage point above they could see 12 ships in company: the Amaxia, the Expedition, three frigates, four barques, and what appeared to be three sloops.

As they closed with the Imperial fleet, the party decided to initiate the battle from aboard the Gyredancer, Blue’s flagship. Unfortunately, Zayn missed the teleport onto the difficult moving target, dropping the party unceremoniously into the ocean. Finn was able to use a word of recall to return the party instantly to Tulesa, and allowed Zayn a second attempt which was successful. Aboard the Gyredancer, the party learned from Blue that he had four other ships now, all bigger than the ships of the ragtag fleet he had before. Hope peeked ever so slightly over the horizon, as they started to feel like they may have a chance in the battle to come. Many hours later, their fleet rendezvoused with the Khasifi fleet. Boarding the lead dreadnought, the Flaming Wave, the group spoke with Commodore Reselen. After a brief coordination of tactics, they returned to their ships and prepared for battle.

The party took quietly to the air as the two fleets neared engagement range. Below them, Imperial ships began maneuvering against the visible threat. They formed a battle line between Amaxia in the approaching outlaw vessels, allowing the Amaxia room begin maneuvering to escape. From the air high above the ships, the party pulled from a bag one of the Arstad’s Instant Fortresses they had recovered earlier. Pressing the small activation button at its apex, they dropped the tiny object. It tumbled through the air for some time before finally activating, instantly surging outward in all directions to the size of a four-story stone pyramid, mere feet above the rigging of the Expedition. The ship, its crew, and its captain had no chance to react as thousands of tons of stone tore through the rigging, the sails, and the hull in a rush to get to the bottom of the sea beneath it. With a great rending noise and churning of the ocean, the flagship Expedition was no more. The bow section had been left floating, but was sinking fast, as the rest of the hull was either destroyed outright or immediately forced under the surface by the bulk of the pyramid.

A few moments later the party took out a second ship with a similar attack as alarm calls blared below. Finn’s eagle eyes spotted a half dozen figures from the Amaxia lofting into the air below them – no doubt mages of the grand Council sent to counter the unseen threat above. Naval gunfire began to bellow out below as the battle was joined for true.

Reaching the vicinity of the party, the mages spread out and attacked. Blasts of lightning and force projectiles rocketed across the gap as the two groups closed the final yards. The mages were obviously adept at flying, as well as fighting in the air. Zayn released a chain lightning spell into the group to demonstrate her prowess, and was immediately met with twin chain lightning spells from two of the mages in response. Nevertheless, several of the mages began to prove brittle once battle was joined, as mages are wont to do. The group was able to overcome many of them in due course, with Tarsus eventually identifying the leader cutting him from the sky. They caught the body of one or two of the mages before they fell into the sea below, but the rest plummeted into the deep. The threat passed, they turned their attention to the battle unfolding below.

Our story closed as the Flaming Wave and Gyredancer finally closed to gun range with the Imperial fleet, and the massive dreadnought unleashed a torrent of fire and thunder from its facing guns.

Our story opened as the party awaited the arrival of their own troops led by Jirem Nambasa to retrieve the prisoners they had taken in the cave on the palace grounds, within the former city of Hansen. When the soldiers arrived to take custody of the prisoners, the party informed them to be wary of the spell caster among the group. As the party prepared to depart, Intz the Rosaga informed Zayn that his people would like to keep all of the meat from Mason, and any other meat they may have generated while taking the cave. Zayn sadly informed him that he already has all the meat there was to offer. Having collected the loot that they were concerned with, the party gathered together and teleported to the Lacy Death in Gol Asad to speak with their contact, the Broker.

Arriving at the Lacy Death, the party made their way upstairs. Finding no one about, they knocked on Dezil’s office door and his assistant immediately came out, somewhat out of sorts. Telling them to wait downstairs for a few moments, the assistant vanished into another room. Soon enough, Dezil arrived downstairs to speak with the party. They informed him of the assassins that have been dispatched to deal with them and asked for his assistance in researching either the assassins or their employer. Dezil agreed to look into the assassins, informing the party that he would charge them for anything the Sun Council could not cover. Answering further questions from Tarsus and Sindar, Dezil told the party he regretfully did not know much about the Elder Knight or the Shadowfel, though he was able to give them the name of the researcher he believed got the closest to the truth about the nature of that place – Nathaniel Arstad.

Shortly after, the party headed to the former Imperial consulate, now an abandoned building in the South Central area of the city. Using a key provided by Ducet, they were easily able to gain entry to the building, finding it abandoned and mostly devoid of the furniture that had been there previously. A few items remained here and there, but nothing of great value or interest. While exploring the stairs between levels, the party was attacked by a trio of wraiths, apparently left behind by someone as a security measure or a booby-trap. The fight with the wraiths was not a long affair, but was a violent one. Each attack from the wraiths made their victims weaker and weaker, the very life draining from their limbs as they struggled to carry on the fight. Zayn found herself overcome by the deadly power of the wraiths, falling dead to the floor after one attack too many. In an instant, Finn diverted his attention to save her with a Breath of Life as her body fell, bringing her back into the fight. Shortly after the wraiths were defeated, and the party took a few minutes to recover their energy before proceeding.

Reaching the roof, the party found that the brazier they were familiar with is actually an aspect gate – a focus used by powerful spell casters for inter-planar travel. It is an expensive method, but not unheard of, only found among those with the extensive means to acquire one. Atala asked to keep the brazier to assist in her hunt for Ducet and the party agreed. Inspecting the remainder of the roof, Finn saw that the dais upon which the throne stood was not attached, seemingly floating upon some mechanism just over the floor. Enlisting the help of the others to move it, Sindar realized that the mechanism beneath appeared to be a giant clock counting down to some unknown event. Knowing Ducet is they did, the party assumed it must be a device to destroy the building, and them along with it. Operating on this assumption, they placed a time limit on themselves as they finished exploring the structure.

In a basement closet, the party found a secret door to another room. Crossing over the threshold of the door, they realized they were not in another room of the same building, but another copy of the building they just left. The door did not send them to a room in another basement, but rather sent them to a different floor of the building, mostly identical to the one they left. Returning to the secret door in the basement in this new copy of the building, they found yet another building beyond. Again and again they went through this exercise, realizing this must be some sort of multidimensional trap devised by Ducet or one of his ilk to be used against any interlopers in the building. In one of the copies of the building, they found stashed away a bag of small sculptures resembling crude pyramids, and a book entitled “Intermediate Planar Manipulation”. Investigation revealed that the small pyramids were of the work of the mage whose name they had heard only shortly prior – Nathaniel Arstad. These items were called Arstad’s Instant Fortresses, and seemed to be quite powerful, indeed.

Exploring through various versions of the building, the party came across a figure resembling Ducet sitting on the rooftop throne, utterly unresponsive. This figure stared blankly ahead, bleeding from its eyes and mouth. The party theorized for a moment before agreeing that this must be a version of Ducet from earlier in his life, perhaps when he was turned to what he is now, or a version that was killed to power the being that they knew and loathed. In this same version of the building they again found the ghosts they had fought, but these were frightened rather than aggressive, running from the party when they saw them as if the party were frightful monsters.

After playing through some recursive loops of the building, the party finally began backtracking to the version that occupied their own reality. Satisfied they had fully explored the complex, the party left, departing through the front doors onto the street. Leaving just a few minutes ahead of the time Sindar had calculated to be the expiration of the clock, they stopped to examine the box of pyramids that they had retrieved. While in the act of doing this, they witnessed the entire consulate building begin to collapse in on itself, folding and crumpling noiselessly until it reached a tiny point, finally disappearing with a pop. That bastard, he did it again.

Teleporting back to Tulesa, the party relaxed for a few hours to catch up on administrative work. Finn completed a sending to Dyphonaira, asking for an audience. She told him he should come in a few hours. Atala spoke to Balasar about the aspect gate they had retrieved from the consulate. He told her it would still work, needing only to be mounted and refocused, which would cost a crisp copper or two. The party spoke to Nadji, who provided some advice on how to place pressure on these assassins in order to get to Mueller, their assumed employer. Balasar recommended storing the aspect mirror (linked to Mueller’s mirror) somewhere it would not work. After some thought, he settled on the reactor room, which should siphon off the power of anything close enough to it. By way of offhand conversation, he indicated that the reactor should be able to keep the mirror disrupted for another 873 years, until its eventual destruction in a maelstrom that will release both the mirror and the artifact that powers the core now. And with that, the party set off to the reactor room.

Opening their treasure stitching in the reactor room, the party found the hammers of Mason difficult to move once they were made real and whole again. After a few failed attempts, they decided the reactor complex was probably the safest place for the hammers and elected to leave them in place. A quick bit of augury with the aspect mirror discovered that the companion mirror operated by Mueller was currently some 800 miles off the southwestern coast of Riyaqa. They put the mirror away, hoping that their revelation cloth could guide them more precisely once they were at short range to his mirror. Before leaving the reactor complex, the group found themselves drawn to the potential power of the artifact currently supplying the reactor. They decided one more time to draw from that fateful deck before proceeding topside. While most of the party kept their fates relatively private, Tarsus revealed that the card he had drawn, The Compass, was guiding him to a cave entrance on a bleak mountainside somewhere in Caera Ausa.

Still trying to figure out what to do about the hellfire halo they had recovered earlier, Finn finally settled on summoning a planar ally to help him destroy the halo for good. Completing the summoning, he is met with Ayandi, a half-dragon Solar. Speaking to Finn with undue reverence, Ayandi agreed to take the halo from him, promising to destroy it, and observed Finn with a deep bow before departing.

The group then decided to teleport to Chamber Valley to check in with Dyphonaira, per Finn’s earlier request. Arriving, they checked in briefly with Robert Pinan at his residence on the south slope. Robert now enjoyed the company of two young capybara, working with him as assistants. Listening to information from the party and going over the results of a previous blood test supplied by Finn, Robert informed them all that he believed Finn had reptilian markers in his blood, and is probably were-alligator, although he likely does not realize it. Rolling their collective eyes, the party thanked him for the warning and moved on to meet the Watcher.

In conversation with the Watcher, Tarsus found out the truth about what the Elder Knight was and how their two futures were intertwined. In this information, he thought he saw a method he could use to defeat the Elder Knight. Dyphonaira’s explanation left many questions unanswered about the specifics, however. And so, Dyphonaira agreed to reach out to the paranoid and often delusional Nathaniel Arstad. She hoped to pave the way for the party to introduce themselves to him, and acquire his aid in learning what they would need to know to defeat the Elder Knight, even with Xazat’s influence washing over him.

Sitting once again to relax for a bit, the party completed a sending to Blue, asking for his location. He informed them that he and his fleet were four days away from Gol Asad at best speed, and the party asked him to rendezvous with them. Another sending to Arndt informed him that the Amaxia, the newly discovered Imperial vessel of high value but unknown purpose, was somewhere in Riyaqan waters off the south coast. Arndt informed them that the Amaxia was a smelting and manufacturing ship, monstrous in size, and its presence could only indicate that the Empire was not yet done with the war. One last sending to the paladin Julian Carmeno to seek advice did not yield much information. However, it did earn a quick response from Arneta Bladerunner, a druid in Carmeno’s company.

Our story closed as her words sunk in with the party: “The Amaxia is the single most valuable vessel in existence. Its loss would be a crippling blow to the Empire’s ability to project force abroad, setting them back years at the very least.”

Our story opened as the party arrived back in Tulesa and began contacting local craftsmen with an eye to improving their gear. Finn contracted the mage Selkirk to work on a cloak for him. Sindar and Tarsus negotiated with the local armorsmiths for some needed improvements to their personal protection, especially given the results of recent days of fighting. Finn consulted with a local enchanter about the development of specialized longsword.

Consulting with Nadji, who was now the head of their finances, Finn and Zayn worked at setting up magical protections for the vault deep below the Tulesti estate. Placing a Forbiddance spell on the area of the main crypt, they deposited the bulk of the money and loot recovered from Port Miller there. Graja agreed to head up construction of physical traps to cover the blind spots of the spell, and would be in charge of keeping Nadji informed of the status of the protection of the vault. After several meetings with their resident engineering staff, the group laid out plans for the construction of a construction yard for more efficient repair and construction of the desert trimarans. Sindar further contracted them to begin developing plans for the construction of an academy for the city, to serve as a replacement (and improvement) for the now-defunct IGG in Riyaqa.

Now turning their attention to some of the more specialized loot recovered from Imperial coffers in port Miller, the party began investigating an overly large suit of extremely heavy adamantine armor. Though humanoid in shape, the armor seemed to be sized to cover a large horse. The interlocking adamantine plating was something more extensive than any of them had ever seen, and would certainly turn anyone capable of bearing that weight into an unstoppable juggernaut. Having captured or killed no one yet who would fit such a monstrous suit of armor, Finn elected to scry on the former owner of the suit to see what he could learn.

His spell showed him a dark-skinned male orc with long black hair that was pulled into a greasy ponytail. The dark skin was mottled, the deep gray tone being interrupted by spots and scars of black skin. Finn watched him walk into a cave and attempted to discern additional information about his alignment as he moved. He detected a strong evil aura from the orc, who seemed to be aching to destroy something. The surroundings at the mouth of the cave indicated that it was located somewhere in a tended garden, massive in scale- possibly a palace garden. As the orc walked into the cave, it met a human man who was garbed in blue and gray robes. The man looked at the orc quizzically and then waved his hand to cast a quick spell, then looked directly at the viewpoint Finn had from overhead, as if he were gazing into Finn’s eyes. With another wave of his hand, the scry was cut short and Finn found himself back in his own surroundings.

After Finn filled the rest of the group in on his findings, they elected as a group to teleport directly to Hansen to attempt to get to drop on this obviously dangerous detachment of secret Imperial troops. Deciding that they need more information, the group asked Finn to entreat his god directly for assistance. Finn made his preparations, casting a Divination spell to speak directly with Rustum about this new threat. The information was slow to come to him, but Rustum did answer his call. Rustum showed to him a group of five people led by an imposing human male. The man wore field plate and an array of weapons, and was called Lion by the rest of his group. Beside him stood a smaller man that cut a lithe figure. This man was dressed in black leather, also sporting an array of weapons, though much smaller and more concealable. This man was called Briar. Beside Briar stood a serious looking human woman. She was a bit taller than Briar, light-skinned with nearly white blonde hair. Dressed in layers of hides and leathers, she carried no weapons except for a wooden staff. This woman was called Snow. Standing behind Snow, barely obscured by her presence, was the hulking figure of the orc that Finn had seen earlier. He learned now that this orc was called Mason. Off to one side, standing away a bit from the rest of the group, was a short woman. It was difficult to discern whether she was human or half-elven, but she was dressed in relatively light armor that bore an array of pouches and pockets. She leaned for support on a long firearm that was taller than she was. Her name was Wind.

Deciding to move as quickly as they could, the group wrapped up business at Tulesa before teleporting to their military encampment at the north wall of Hansen. There they met with Jirem Nambasa, their commanding general of troops in the region. He brief them on conditions in the city, telling them that troops were still dealing with a few Imperial stragglers, but the most serious threat was the extensive population shamblers roaming the city. The former Operatives’ Guild agent Atala met with the party here, offering to accompany our heroes into the city on condition that they take her to the abandoned consulate in Gol Asad once the Empire gives back at city. She seemed hopeful she might acquire knowledge there of a weakness she might exploit in Arturo Ducet, and devise a means to kill him. The party agreed, setting off into the city.

Quickly meeting resistance from shamblers wandering through the city, the party elected to divert into the underground sewers. They knew the sewers to be populated by the xenophobic Rosaga, but felt they now stood a better chance against the Rosaga than threat abov,e and it was important that they arrived at their destination ready to fight. Sindar took the lead as they moved through the sewers, using his wayfinding abilities and technological prowess to guide them to their destination near the city center. As they proceeded, Finn could hear the Rosaga alarm calls in the sewer at a distance, announcing their presence, but thus far no attack came.

At length, it became obvious that Rosaga scouts were following them closely. Zayn decided to attempt to communicate the party’s peaceful intent. They were not here to interfere with the Rosaga, but only wished to deal with the threat above and reach it quickly. One of the Rosaga scouts (named Intz), stepped out to treat with the party, asking for details in his broken common about the nature of this threat above. Zayn described to him the orc Mason, and his eyes went wide with fear. He told her that this orc comes into the sewers to hunt Rosaga for fun and has killed many of his friends. The party would have their safe passage and he would help them find the orc they sought. They set off with renewed speed behind their new guide.

Sometime later, the party arrived at the location in the tunnels were Intz told them Mason most often attacked after he entered. A quick Locate spell offered Mason’s exact position and it seemed the party would not have to wait long before he was back in the tunnels to hunt his new favorite quarry- apparently a way to pass the time until he could hunt the quarry he was actually hired to kill. A short time later, as Mason entered the tunnels, the party confronted him. Tarsus charged into the fight, bringing violence to Mason before he could get his weapons ready. Nevertheless, the towering orc proved amazingly fast, apparently accustomed to working in much heavier armor than he was now wearing. As he and Tarsus tore into each other, Mason finally got one of his massive hammers fully deployed, the head of the hammer dropping to the muddy tunnel floor on a length of chain paid out from the handle as he pressed a hidden switch. It converted the bulky hammer into a flail that looked heavy enough to demolish buildings. The first swing of the flail that finally connected with Tarsus convinced him that it wasn’t just for show, bowling him backwards into the mud.

The party’s usual tactics fell into place, with Sindar and Zayn dishing out explosive and electrical damage to the enemy as Finn split his time between harrying the orc and healing Tarsus. With a second shot from one of the twin flails the orc was now wielding, Tarsus felt his power begin to drain away. This was a new challenge, as it seemed this orc’s weapons could temporarily block access to some of the extraordinary powers the party possessed as a result of their interaction Mithras. This made it all the harder to keep Tarsus on his feet long enough to kill an orc that could absorb a seemingly endless amount of punishment. At last the orc’s defenses buckled, and he ran. Surprisingly, he ran deeper into the tunnels instead of running for the exit behind them. Although badly pummeled, the party felt obliged to pursue. What damage might he wreak on the Rosaga in vengeance if he were to get away?

After a lengthy chase, the party cornered the orc as he tried to pound his way through an iron grating blocking the tunnel. He almost succeeded, bending it sharply out of place before the bombs began flying again. Disregarding their own safety, the party fell upon the orc, who was now desperate to escape. Realizing this was fruitless, he turned like a cornered wild animal and attacked with reckless abandon. He smashed hard into several members of the party, sending people flying across the tunnels, but there simply was not much life left in him. He fell in short order. The Rosaga were quick to come out of hiding with offers to deal with the remains, which the party accepted. The group stripped the remains of equipment as the Rosaga made off with the body, but Tarsus found it difficult to even move the massive hammers that the orc had been wielding. To deal with the troublesome mass, the party turned to their oft-used treasure stitching, producing a tapestry that they carried for just such an event.

Using the tunnels to move back to the entrance that Mason used, the party scouted exits into the gardens above before selecting one and climbing through into an emptied decorative pool on the lawns. Nearby, after searching for a bit, they located the entrance to the cave that Finn had seen in his scrying. As they approached the entrance, a rifle shot rang out from the distance, nearly taking Finn to the ground. The rifle shot had come from the nearby tower of the keep, and Zayn dimension doored the party to the top of the tower as they gathered together. Arriving there, they found the gunslinger Wind as she was completing a spell that caused her to dissolve into the breeze, floating off of the exposed floor of the tower and escaping the party’s retribution for now.

The party returned to the cave entrance, with Atala disarming several entry traps as they worked their way inside. Their quiet entry allowed them to get the drop on the Imperial support staff that waited inside the cave. Although there were several them, none seemed capable of presenting a significant threat to the heroes as they rounded up and bound captives. Finn saw among them the mage who had canceled his scry spell earlier, and special measures were taken to secure him. They interrogated the staff, learning that they were there to provide support for the five person party who had been hired to kill these very heroes. Though the support staff did not know the specific identity of their employer, they knew he was an Imperial man of great importance. Finding no true evil among these people, the party elected to turn them over as captives to Jirem’s troops at the north wall. Searching among the supplies in the cave, a magical mirror drew the party’s attention, concealed behind some other supplies. Uncovering the mirror, they discovered it was an aspect mirror used as an instant communications device over large distances with other mirrors to which it was linked. Investigation revealed that the mirror had several companion mirrors: one located at the Gol Asad consulate, one located at the Grand Council’s Splendid Terrace, and the third which activated during their investigation. It was apparently aboard the AES Expedition, as the visage of Horace Mueller came into view. He scowled, saying only “well, then,” before breaking the connection.

Our story ended as the party collected what supplies from the cave they could carry and escorted their captives out toward their own nearby troops.

Our story opened with the party in Tulesa, conferring on their goals before the coming peace talks. Although they had wished for more time to prepare, the moment was soon upon them, with the Asad guardians arriving to usher them to the talks. The guardians opened a portal to bridge our heroes to the secret location of the talks deep in the desert. The party arrived to find themselves literally in the middle of nowhere, the only feature of the terrain being the large artificial deck obviously built for these talks. Several of the other delegates were already on hand, and with only a few more minutes of waiting everyone was present and talks were ready to begin.

Speaker Delina opened the talks, thanking all of the delegates for the inherent risk they’ve undertaken to arrive at these critical but tense negotiations. With that, the peace talks to end the Second Adamantine War were underway.

The delegates from the Javad opened the talks, stating unequivocally that they wanted the town of Nahran back. Being a critical adamantine or mining hub, Nahran had been a key strategic location during the war. The Javad had taken it from the Benisaga at great cost. Later in the war, the Benisaga had managed to rest it from the control of the Javad, but the Javad were convinced that they would have taken the town back, given a few more days of fighting.

Vilif Almasi, the Benisaga delegate, stated that his people liked the borders as they were and were unwilling to give up Nahran. The town was won fairly under the rules of warfare and if the Javad were unhappy that the war had ended, that was a different matter. As this impasse continued to develop, Daso Enna entered into the fray with a separate claim on part of the territory now held by the Javad. He stated that his people wanted their islands back and stipulated that no incursion would be tolerated for a full century without invitation.

For their part, the Javad were willing to agree to the terms of the Khasif, as they were already suffering the ill effects of trying to occupy Khasif territory without exterminating the Khasif people. This willingness to negotiate by the Javad softened the position of the Benisaga somewhat, and opened the door to some economic dealing. Feeling militarily exposed, given the relative strengths of their own military versus the might of the Javad machine that still waited at their doorstep, the Benisaga sought a solid military alliance before they would agree to any territorial exchanges.

At some length, Vilif Almasi he made an offer to General Tarsus of Tulesa. If General Tarsus would agree to a marriage of nobility, Almasi would consider that to adequately cement the ties between Tulesa and Benisaga, allowing Benisaga to deal freely with the militarily superior Javad. After considering for some time, Tarsus agreed. In two weeks time, Benisaga would send representatives to begin preparations for the marriage between Tarsus Thornbane and Aza Almasi, the daughter of Vilif Almasi. With this diplomatic marriage arranged, Benisaga agreed to give up Nahran to the Javad, provided Javad continues to provide them with 15% of the adamantine ore mined in and around the town for the next five years. As a stipulation, the Javad stated that they wanted everything north the Great Road, agreeing to cede everything south of the Great Road and the adjoining settlements to Benisaga. After some consideration, the Benisaga delegates agreed and it seemed the new political boundaries of Eastern Riyaqa were settled.

As usual, waiting for the key moment to make his interest, Arturo Ducet arrived at the peace talks with his typical flair for the dramatic. Before taking his seat at the table, he asked for private conference the delegation from Tulesa. Warily, our heroes agreed. He offered them a deal. He would immediately begin pulling Empire forces on south coast back to Gol Asad. After the heroes had time to prepare Port Miller for transition, he would agree to trade Port Miller for Gol Asad. This would place Port Miller as the only Empire stronghold on the continent. Making the party suspicious, he openly stated that he needed the next four months to frustrate the Emperor himself into coming to Riyaqa personally, which would make him vulnerable. Though he did not go into detail about what he would do with his vulnerability, such a thing was not hard to imagine, considering the source.

Tulesa would immediately take control of everything south to Nassira, including stewardship of the city of Hansen, or at least its remnants. The most important parts of Tulesa’s new political boundaries established, one final agreement was on the table to restore the strength of Gol Asad security forces. All powers agreed to an equal tithe of troops and funds to rebuild these troops, with the exception of the Empire. With the principal negotiations complete, delegates began saying their goodbyes as the guardians prepared portals to take them back to their places of origin. Coming to shake hands the party from Tulesa, Daso Enna greeted Finn personally, congratulating him on the victory of Tulesa. He told Finn he had a gift for him, drawing out a long beautifully crafted dagger made of pure silver before handing it to the priest of Rustum. As the dagger changed hands, Finn thought he saw something odd about the hand of Daso, but decided to ignore it in present company.

As delegates began to depart, several of the portals were suddenly disrupted, collapsing in series of hard thumps. Attempting to reach out with their individual powers to determine the source of the disruption, many of those present simultaneously arrived at the same conclusion. An anti-magic field of unknown origin had descended over the region. The field seemed stable and huge, the boundary being undetectable from the platform where the talks were held. Several groups decided to separate and walk in different directions to locate the edge of the field, each escorted by a group of guardians. The Benisaga and Asad delegates proceeded south with the representatives of Tulesa. After a long walk they spotted three female figures approaching them from the open desert at a frightening rate of speed. Their arrival coincided with locating the edge of the anti-magic field. At once, the guardians began establishing their transport portals again, telling our heroes that they would need time to evacuate the civilians present. Tarsus drew his sword, Sindar drew his bombs, and the party charged together toward the approaching figures.

One of the three figures was obviously different, being larger and more hideous than the other two, but still bearing enough traces of femininity to be identifiable as such. The other two were smaller, more feminine and very nearly beautiful, if not for their insanely twisted features. As the trio closed to attack, Tarsus did his best to intercept all three, but allowed one to get behind him as it seemed intent on circling around to get to his comrades in the back. The two that he did intercept viciously tore into him as Sindar and Zayn dealt with the third in relatively short order. Finn had quickly identified the smaller two females as succubi, serving as crowd control for the larger of the three, which seemed entirely focused on tearing organic matter into the smallest possible pieces.

Turning their focus on the remaining two, the party was able to disrupt enough attacks to keep Tarsus on his feet. He delivered huge blows to the largest of the creatures, but simply was not able to bring it down on his own. As it tore into him, Finn found himself entirely focused on keeping Tarsus alive, effectively removing any crowd control he could offer. Both Sindar and Zayn fired away with all the power they could muster. A short series of lucky blows from Sindar earned him the temporary focus of the large female avatar, subsequently buying him an unpleasant nap at the hands of the creature, as he was unable to sustain its focus the span for even a few seconds. With Sindar down, the injured avatar turned back to Tarsus to finish the job. Focused fire from Zane was able to disrupt the final succubus and without their support the avatar soon folded, and was banished. Very quickly, Finn was able to get Sindar awake and cursing. The guardians completed evacuation of the civilians as the anti-magic field began to lift from the surrounding region. Signals from the other groups of guardians and delegates confirmed that they were okay and evacuating, as well. With that, the party decided to teleport straight to Port Miller to prepare the city for return to Empire control.

After checking in with their agents in the city the party split up to take care of various odds and ends around Port Miller. Finn sought to provide what relief he could to any temples of Rustum or Mahari that were located in the city, ahead of Imperial occupation. Finding the major temple of Rustum, he met Taj al Sam some, who was the head priest at the temple. Being greedier than Finn would like, Taj failed to impress the man. Nevertheless, Finn agreed to arrange safe passage for any supplicants of the temple that wanted to leave the city.

Sindar went to the IGG headquarters. There, he found evidence that someone was rifling through the former guild college under the cover of darkness. Summoning some assistance from the party, he headed upstairs to confront the interlopers. Upon finding them, he discovered a small band of brigands led by Willie who were rifling through offices and collecting matter they deemed interesting in the corridors. Willie explained that (at least for the moment) he was no longer with the Guild on an official basis, but was collecting material in their interests before it was destroyed or claimed by others. Sindar offered him a job in Tulesa, assisting its fledgling engineering team with widening its war advantage in technology. With no hesitation, Willie accepted the appointment. He agreed that all the materials they were collecting in the Guild would come back to Tulesa with him rather than be left in Port Miller.

Meeting back up, the party made arrangements for a seaborne fleet and what desert trimarans were available to converge upon Port Miller to evacuate personnel and materials ahead of the agreed-upon Empire occupation. Falat, Tulesa’s officer in command of forces in Port Miller, showed the party a hidden Imperial treasury he had located containing over 100,000 platinum pieces. The chests were heavy and would require special transport, but there was enough money here to rebuild an entire city. With a major port city in ruins in their territory, it was a treasure too good to pass up.

As the final arrangements were made to abandon Port Miller, Sindar hired some of Willie’s workers to help him secure the large plaques from the front of the college that had labeled it as a building of the IGG. With the plaques removed, he set fire to the campus, burning the entirety of four city blocks to the ground within an hour.

Our story closed as the first of the desert trimarans arrived at the outskirts of the city to take on personnel and loot.

The Asad

Major negotiations to end the Second Adamantine War are complete.

The following was delivered to the players in the days before this session:

Returning to Tulesa, you check in with Falat and introduce him to Nanji. He has two of the house staff arrange to supply her with quarters in the barracks close by, and tells you he can arrange for the old reeve’s office to be updated to a comptroller’s office and find her nearby quarters in the main house if you wish. Going about your business for the rest of the evening, you begin to receive reports of success stories here and there: people being found alive under rubble, valuables being recovered from toppled buildings, and so forth. It’s difficult to know if you should take solace or not in the accuracy of the initial reports, but the tally does not shift much as the moon climbs higher in the sky.

You head to bed for the night, recovering peacefully, each in your own way. Before sunrise, Zayn’s sleep is disturbed by the voice of Ahti Ato. As she wakes, she realizes Ahti has been calling her name for some time. “Yes, Ahti? I am here.”

“Highness, I have disturbing news. We have reports that ships are bombarding coastal towns near Port Miller and Qisaga. We are unable to get reports from either city directly, and are assuming they have both been more subtly captured by the Empire.”
“Not entirely unexpected,” Zayn replies. “Are you safe?”

“For the time being, yes. Guardians have secured the citadel and began preparing something they call ‘escape protocol’, though I do not know its details. Speaker Delina is back in contact with the Khasif, or at least one faction of them, led by Daso Enna. War was underway there already. We have no idea what effect this will have, but it does not appear the Empire has attacked there directly just yet. There is one further complication, however.”

“I’m listening.”

“A Javad patrol on the road near Jaleraba was attacked several days ago by men bearing arms under Benisaga colors. We originally thought the report to be in error, or a small faction from the deep jungle acting independently. Considering the information you presented on the state of Qisaga, it may be more serious. It’s possible the expulsion of Benisaga nobility and merchants from Qisaga has prompted them to more direct resistance, including a renewal of their old feuds about trade route control. Now would be a very bad time for them to attack the Javad, as it is the only principal source of military might the Asad has left.”

As Zayn ponders the news, and the state of Tulesa’s own wounded military, Ahti speaks again. “The emergency alarms! My gods- there are Imperial ships in the sea beyond the harbor wall, firing into the city! Who has guns that reach that far?! My Lady, I must go. I fear we will be recessed for a state of general war within the hour. I will find a way to reach Tulesa, if that happens. Godspeed.”

And then she is gone. Zayn notifies the house staff to rouse the rest of you and the council. Several minutes later, you are all seated around the oblong council table, doors to the room standing open as house staff and senior military officers look on from the adjoining rooms. Clearing her throat, Zayn stands to be heard clearly, “I have, moments ago, received word from our Asadin Ahti Ato. Gol Asad, and other settlements in Riyaqa, are under open attack by Empire forces. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war.”

---

Our story opened immediately after the debrief from Zane to her counsel about notifications of war. The party decides to recruit the free children into lesser to assist them in the war effort. Deciding to sue for allies abroad, they sent Teagan and Reese north to talk to the Dune Giants. Soon thereafter, the war began.

3231ER Rannmont 15:
Several Benisaga noble families, living under Empire rule in Qisaga, completed their final “summatint” meeting, coming to an agreement to move forward with their plans to organize rebellion against Empire occupation, and pay back Riyaqan nations that did not come to their aid at the end of the Adamantine War.

3231ER Mishamont 02:
Acting on intelligence received from an unknown ally, Khasif Unified Nobility forces begin a secret march south from Nadju, using old trade roads to enter the northern reaches of the forests.

3231ER Mishmont 10:
Khasif Unified Nobility forces officially become Khasif Republic forces as news spreads that the Regent is dead and the nobility have rallied behind a man named Daso Enna as their new sovereign. He claims that once their borders are secure, the Khasifi shall have a republic of their own, in the model intended for the dysfunctional Asad.

3231ER Mishamont 11:
Empire forces assault Port Miller in what was intended to be a campaign coordinated with the assault on Qisaga. Both attacks were meant to be shows of force without serious bloodshed outside the local nobility, as the Empire held effective control of the local governments already. This action catapults the Benisaga nobles’ plan into action far ahead of their intended schedule, at a fraction of the military strength they had planned. With the first Benisaga counter attack against an Empire formation attempting to secure the road into Qisaga, the Second Adamantine War began in earnest.

3231 Mishamont 28:
Empire assaults in both Qisaga and Port Miller have failed spectacularly. In Qisaga, the open revolt of the nobles gained steam among the populace far more quickly than anyone had imagined, and the several thousand Empire soldiers stationed there found themselves quickly overwhelmed. Many were saved, as the local commanders organized a mass evacuation onto the nearby fleet, but most of the Empire occupation forces perished in this assault as Benisaga re-asserted control over Qisaga.

The planned Khasif Republic assault into Benisaga and Javad lands does not go well in its opening days. Ill-suited for jungle and steppe warfare, they find themselves rebuffed several times, despite inflicting significant losses on defending troops of the Benisaga. Javad forces sidestep their advances almost entirely, intent on advancing to what they thought was the Khasifi border to prevent their civil war from spreading into the rest of Riyaqa. Early in the war, Khasifi forces find themselves landlocked near the edge of the western scrublands that open into the Mah Hari Sea, in control of a series of small settlements.

Acting on intellgence they gathered about the impending assault of Port Miller, Tulesa made a monumental effort to gather allies in the desert for an advance on the city. Their most powerful ally of the war came early, in the first known military alliance between mankind and dune giants as the Garronokka dune giant tribe joined the attack on Port Miller. The Empire had expected only light resistance here, and had already moved the bulk of their troops back onto ships for amphibious assaults further southeast. As a result, the relatively small, if surprising force, took the city quickly. They found many of the Imperial armament shipments still sitting on the docks, and began training everyone who wanted a place in the rapidly growing army.

Empire reinforcements joined the remainder of troops from Qisaga and those dispatched from Port Miller in an amphibious assault of Gol Asad. The intent was a shocking upset of the native political system, which would make diplomatic outreach to isolated states much easier to accomplish. Early reports indicated that nearly all of the Asad members successfully fled the city and returned to their territories, probably enabling rapid mobilization against the Empire threat as control of that narrative spread far and wide out of Empire hands. Within days, the Empire had captured the nearby port capital of Haralin.

3231 Chislmont 28:
Javad forces accomplish something that no one has done in the last aeon as they take military control of the entirety of the Khasif Islands. Now having a solid base of raw materials, they begin expanding their forces and edging south along the mainland coast, taking settlements one at a time as Benisaga and Khasif forces tear each other apart nearby.

Benisaga forces push out from Qisaga, taking much of the nearby countryside and securing vital roads through the region. Their advance is eventually checked by contact with Empire forces operating out of Gol Asad, as well as Khasif forces moving south from the central continent.
The Khasif take early control of every settlement near their forces, eventually mustering enough firepower to enter and capture Tahuk from the Javad.
Empire forces quickly move northwest along the coast from Gol Asad, taking the remnants of Sutif and Hansen, and begin shipping in building materials to build fortresses all along their axis of advance.

Tulesan forces, now mostly concentrated in Port Miller, push outward both east and south, collecting up settlements for their cause and rallying new allies. Briefly, their army fragments into four main divisions to accomplish these goals. The main division, under the leadership of a relatively unknown former mercenary, pushes south across the desert. The other three, smaller division, are each led by an odd assortment of characters with mysterious intent. Rumors abound that they are searching for sources of power in the desert that might help them dominate the continent.

3231ER Bran:
Javad and Khasif forces have their first major battles in the regions between Tahuk and Ghabi. Khasif forces are intent of severing the Javad supply line to check their advance south. It is clear to both the Khasif and the Benisaga that if Javad takes control of the adamantium mines between Nahran and Ghabi, while they still control the natural resources and conscripts of the Khasif Islands, they will be unstoppable. Both nations briefly forget their own skirmishes to focus on disrupting this advance.

Skirmishing begins between the Empire forces near Hansen and the Tulesan forces probing southeast from the desert. Tulesan commanders solidy their control of the western regions of the continent.

Benisaga and Empire forces repeatedly clash in the jungle interior near An Samir and Jaleraba. Thousands more soldiers die, but little territory changes hands.

3231ER Corij:
Benisaga forces take decisive control of everything from Nahran to Jaleraba to Qisaga, very nearly replicating the ancient boundaries of their homeland. Content that they have blocked access to the adamantine mines in the south, they begin focusing on stabilizing their position, rather than further conquest. Benisaga probing assaults against Empire forces continue.

A series of major battles among the east coast finally end with Ghabi in the hands of the Javad, and both Javad and Khasif forces seriously depleted. The Khasif Republic, militarily in control of Tulesa’s original capital settlement, begins building up and rallying forces there to prevent a Tulesan incursion into their territory. There are a series of skirmishes between the two powers in the deserts north of Tulesa, but no major settlements change hands.
Capitalizing on the momentary lapse in eastern hostilities, the exiled Asad government (led by Raha Delina) calls for peace talks. The Javad agree quickly, and Khasif and Benisaga forces follow suit.

In the west, Empire forces clash with Tulesan forces just north of Hansen. In the initial stages of the battle, the Empire apparently underestimates the volume of Tulesan troops bearing down on them, noting the Tulesan commander’s banner is absent on the battlefield and assuming this is a probing assault. As they fail to commit a majority of the their troops to the battle, a ruse is discovered when the Tulesan commander and a small cohort of heroes appears inside the fortress, even inside the anti-teleportation field maintained by Grand Council mages. This interior attack achieves complete surprise, routing the Empire command element as the commanding General is slain in personal combat with the Tulesan commander and his allies. It is not long after that the battle for the north wall of the city is lost. In a complex move and countermove campaign stretching out for several days, Tulesan forces pick apart the Empire defenses before the most serious battle occurs on Corij 15th. Thousands die on both sides, and the Empire is forced into a tactical retreat to Sutif.

3231ER Carjet 09:
Tulesan forces near Tulesa and Hansen continue building up, despite no visible effort by the Empire to recover nearby territory beyond a few probing assaults.

The Khasif begin sending diplomatic warnings to the Tulesan commanders in response, informing them that a military incursion into their former capital would cost many, many lives unnecessarily. The Tulesan commanders signal a willingness to talk, bringing them to the peace table along with the other Riyaqan powers. Attempts to contact the Imperial leadership go unheeded.

3231 Carjet 12:
The peace talks begin in a secret location. All commanders and sovereigns are asked to not leave their current locations, and bring their respective former Asadins to their sides. The peace talks consist of the sovereign of each power, a single Asadin they select, and no more than 5 additional people in retinue. They are contacted at sunrise, and given instructions from there.

---

The following morning, theTulesan envoy and her cohort are ushered to the site of the secret peace talks. The peace talks largely go expected, except for the surprise arrival of the Imperial envoy, who repeatedly failed to respond to earlier requests to participate in the talks.

With territorial exchanges, movements of troops and refugees planning on the table for the coming weeks, the various nations parted from the talks with an air of hope about them. Final negotiations were scheduled to occur soon. After some administrative tasks back in Tulesa, the party was able to finally get back on to their primary mission after months of delay.

During the war, our heroes were given two pages of key puzzle documents by the Sun Council. Each of these pages contained riddles that were relatively easy to decode, but whose meaning (for now) eluded them. They were sure that the puzzles related to the methods that Arkeles al Farin used long ago to imprison Sayoni. If they were to progress in their mission, the party would need to find a way to locate the remaining riddles, and thereby clear the way to Sayoni, resting deep in her tomb.

Deciding they needed a new audience with one of Arkeles’ former companions, the party ventured into the Tulesti crypts to find a suitable object to assist in scrying on the spirit they had contacted earlier while venturing into the Boneyard. Successfully completing the plane shift to the plane of the wandering dead, the party makes contact with a death demon, who assists them with the ritual of scrying on the spirit of Sanget Denatro. At long last, the party meets the spirit of Sanget, who relays to them all of the information that he has, seeking to assist in their quest.

He tells the party about a family in Khasma. He believed the family name was Korocet. He told the party about a man named Vilago that held one of the pages in Kaleska. Finally, he recalled a family in Latpasa, but could not remember their specific name. Then he regaled the party with a story of a long boat ride to a strange island nation. There he gave a scroll to a tall woman named Cerixa. He described her as the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was tall and thin, pale skinned with reddish-brown hair and on the day he met her and wore a sparkling green gown. Sanget could not remember any further details save that the rest of the documents that Arkeles dispersed were taken by his partner, Rhea. When the party describes to him the pages that they have, he tells them that he believes they have the pages from Latpasa and Corix.

Surprising the party, the death demon immediately addressed Sanget as the conversation with the party ended. He informed Sanget that he has finally completed his calling, and it is time for him to be judged and pass into his afterlife. The thing spreads its arms wide and passed judgment upon Sanget Denatro, the brave ally who fought alongside Arkeles al Farin and defended him to the last. He judged the man worthy of passing into the realm of his god and with that, the spirit of the man faded before their eyes as it was ushered into the lands of Rustum.

The death demon told the party, upon their request, that the full name of the woman they sought of whom did not throw spoke was Rhea Narbada. Happily, her spirit had already passed on to the realm of Verethraghna, and so could not be contacted from here by the party. If they wanted to speak with her, they would need to find some other way. Thanking their host, the party departed and completed the plane shift home.

Discussing the matter in their estate, the party was happened upon by Nadji as she sought them for countersignatures in the financial books she was preparing at their request. Overhearing a bit of their conversation as she approached, Nadji spotted familiarities in what they discussed and so was forthcoming with her new employers as they asked her about the lead from Kaleska, where they had rescued her. She knew the name that Sanget had given the party and knew that her former master had already stolen the valuable documents that the party would seek from him. She volunteered that she had also stolen those same documents from her former master, among a few other petty thefts intended to annoy. She turned over the documents in question to the party, bringing the total in their possession to three.

Our story closed as the party, in the privacy of their chambers, poured over the documents to attempt to decode their secret contents. The final peace negotiations loomed just around the corner.

The Asad

The war in Riyaqa has been successfully brought to an armistice, if only temporarily.

GM Note: The events of this session take place immediately following the Assault on Tulesa, an interlude between sessions 48 and 49.

Our story opened as the party roused from fitful sleep after a moderately horrific night. Their minds recalling the tumultuous events of the last few days, they realized as one that the twin cursed skulls had not been accounted for following their incursion into the Shadowfel to destroy the SkullSoul. Racing to the citadel tower, they found Balasar sitting with a cursed skull in each hand, speaking the audible half of what seemed to be a very engaging conversation with the skulls. He surrendered the items without incident, shuffling off to the next bit of weirdness. Before he left, Finn asked him to look into methods of destroying the Hellfire Halo the party had recovered recently, and Tarsus asked him to spend any spare time he had helping to recover fragments of whatever gem had been used to open the Shadowfel portal that nearly destroyed the town.

The party held a short briefing with Falat and his men to better coordinate search and rescue efforts where some of Tulesa’s few permanent structures had been turned to rubble. Finn summoned an earth elemental named Jod to assist with moving and piling stone to speed the rescue efforts along. In bargaining with the thing for its service, Finn discovered the Jod had a particular fancy for magic items made from metals or gems that he might be able to consume, and thus was able to greatly extend his agreed service in exchange for an enchanted suit of evil armor.

With search and rescue efforts underway where needed, and medical care for the wounded moving at a good pace, the group convened and Falat sent summons for the other members of the settlement’s ruling council. It became clear that some councillors were missing when Falat finally closed the doors with two seats remaining empty. Having collected the reports from what sources were available, Falat began reading through the lists of lost citizens and resources. Nearly a thousand citizens were lost, with many more wounded. Very nearly half of the combined house military and city watch had been lost, and damage to structures and tents was wide-ranging. Hearts sank around the large table as Falat began reading the list of notable officials lost in the fighting. Arastea Ghomesh, Avendi Volok, and Dingo had all died, among others. The gravity of the situation soaked in for a moment, before some of the council began to ask why this had happened. What brought such tragedy to their doorstep? For their part, the party answered honestly, stating this was revenge from a deranged segment of an Imperial elite force that sought payback for an earlier slight against them. As the logistics of recovery were discussed, Kaso recommended instituting martial law to combine the remnants of the army and the city watch, and to institute service conscription to restore their ranks. After much deliberation at the table, Zayn ultimately decided in favor of the announcement of martial law, but against conscription. The council meeting adjourned, and Zayn prepared to deliver a public address to the population of Tulesa.

In her address, Zayn told the populace about the attackers and who they were, stating that there may be more coming soon, but that she and her allies would do everything they could to keep the citizens safe. To help secure that safety in the short term, she announced the establishment of martial law, combining the guard and army under the leadership of Falat, and in turn, Tarsus. In closing, Zayn encouraged increased enlistment in both the guard and the army, so that martial law could be more quickly ended once they were at renewed strength. During the speech, Finn disappeared. He had made his way to the temporary morgue, claiming the body of Avendi Volok and taking it to a secluded area over the protests of some of her fellow priestesses. There, Finn resurrected Avendi, calling her soul back to her body from the beyond. He returned to the party soon after, telling them what he had done and crossing his fingers that it would not spark political controversy in the town’s populace. A short time later, Sindar and Tarsus walked through the settlement to be seen and help where they could, lending credence to Zayn’s claims that they would do all they could. Sindar stopped to check on the reactor engineers before the group reunited to go find the newly arrived Teegan.

They located him at the Explorers’ Guild, and listened as he told them what he had been up to since they parted ways. Arriving in Qisaga after many days trekking on his own across the desert and hitching rides of all sorts, he found himself drawn to a large estate to the south of the city. The group recognized its description as the very same al Farin estate they had recently visited. He showed the group a large, red gem he found there, apparently the object the deck had sent him after. It was being examined by Imperial engineers and mages, and stealing it was no mean feat, requiring Teegan to flee from the city after taking it. From there, he wandered, trying to keep a low profile and track down the party until receiving Finn’s messages. Finn closely examined the item, using spells to try and divine more information about it. At once, he found himself in contact with a powerful consciousness sequestered within. Now, it made more sense why Arkeles’ soul could not be found in the the Boneyard, and had never been seen there. He had somehow made himself something akin to a phylactery or a soul jar, cheating death when his body was burned by invading Imperials. And now, Finn could speak to him. He invited the rest of the group to lay hands on the gem, as well, and they all found they could participate in the conversation, albeit more slowly.

Arkeles explained a number of puzzling things to the group when they asked if he had summoned Teegan or if the Deck had done it. The Deck of Errant Destinies, it turned out, was an instrument of influence for the goddess Mahari, stolen once upon a time from another god and slowly turned to her interests. It has guided a great many things in her interests as she slumbers, awaiting her call back to the world. Releasing the gem, the group offered Teegan an enchanted weapon for the gem, which he accepted.

Upon hearing more about the incredibly powerful Deck, now powering their arcane reactor core, the group had an impromptu footrace to the reactor chamber in a clamor to draw again from its richly textured box. Although some resisted at first, each eventually selected a card, experiencing a variety of effects. Finn found the text of his card to be especially puzzling, considering what it actually did to him. After conferring about next steps, the group decided to spend some time contacting allies. Finn contacted War, asking for an update on Port Miller. War told him he was in the desert on the move with refugees, Port Miller having fallen to Empire invasion that morning. They had managed to do serious damage to the encroaching Imperial fleet before leaving. After that, Finn contacted Dezil Calish, inquiring about a comptroller to help with managing the estate resources, what with the upcoming recovery. He pointed Finn to Nanji Arwala, a Riyaqan woman currently working for the Satrapa of Kaleska. She would need “rescuing” as the Satrapa would not part with her willingly, and was not the kindest of employers, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile, Zayn communed with Ahti Ato, seeking to update her on their new information and get an update from Gol Asad. After informing Ahti that Port Miller was under full Empire control, Ahti told her other disturbing news. The Empire had expelled the Asad’s ambassador in Isamon, and closed the Imperial Consul’s office in Gol Asad. Communications had also been lost with most agents in Qisaga, and there were reports of wealthier Riyaqans there having property and money seized. It seemed very much as if the Empire was gearing up very quickly for a war.

Finally, Finn used a Sending to attempt to reach Dyphonaira, with questions about what was happening to him, and what he really was. She told him only to sleep well, and that she would explain everything soon. After a group discussion about what to do next, they elected to go after Nanji Arwala, and contacted Dezil again for more specific information. Using Zayn’s teleport, they moved quickly to within 15 miles of Kaleska, as close as they had ever come by way of the Seachild. She summoned spectral mounts to get them the rest of the way. Arriving in Kaleska, they found a moderately sized town mostly full of beered up fishermen, many of whom were already sleeping off the night’s festivities in the streets. The Satrapa’s Seat was not a difficult building to find, easily being the most elaborately built among the rather plain structures around it. A guard challenged them at the door, but they miraculously talked their way past the guard using information Dezil had given them about Nanji.

Finding her toiling away, forging duplicate books in the throne room, they told her who they were and who had sent them. Gleefully (which, by anyone else’s standards would be considered “moderately interested”), she gathered a few things and asked for help to set some of the forged records on fire to teach the Satrapa a lesson. Sindar very, very, very happily obliged. Finn used water to protect the rest of the throne room from the inferno of financial records as guards came through the front door of the building.

Our story closed as the throne room was found empty, the party and their new comptroller appearing safely in Finn’s chapel in Tulesa, very far away.

The Asad

Civil war rages inside Khasif, as evidence is found of impending war with the Empire. The Empire breaks off diplomatic contact with the Asad government, presumably to opening stages of war!

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as Finn abandoned all tasks except simply keeping Tarsus right side up on the blood-slicked flagstone floor of al Farin estate’s east summoning room. No matter how quickly soldiers fell, more were waiting to take their place in the entry of the room. Spells became more valuable by the second as Tarsus began to tire and stumble under the onslaught. A plane away, Zayn and Sindar rocketed along the thread that marked the path of Arkeles’ binding spell through the astral mists, making their way back to the starting point. After a long while of zooming along, the ghostly ground beneath them came back into view as they neared a projection of the estate. Finding the location where Arkeles’ house staff had completed the ritual, and where their physical bodies waited for them. As they closed in, they could see an apparition of the battle nearby, as it marched toward an unavoidable and unfavorable conclusion for Finn and Tarsus. The confusion and pressure of the situation made it difficult to quickly align themselves to reinhabit their bodies, but both managed the task in just a few seconds.

A brief break between finishing one group of soldiers and the arrival of the next allowed the party to rally near one a soldier who had been knocked unconscious. A second later, they were gone, blinking into existence in Tulesa in Finn’s nearly-finished chapel thanks to his Word of Recall spell. Searching their prisoner before turning him over to Falat’s men, the group found a few items of interest and a piece of intelligence in the form of a coded note. Decoding it, they realized that it indicated several Imperial Regimental forces were preparing for something in two days. Taking into account the huge number of troops attempting to hide in Qisaga, this was extremely bad news. The party contacted Speaker Raha Delina to inform him, asking for a meeting near the Asad. He told them the Asad was not safe, and that he would be with them shortly in their own town.

The Speaker arrived several minutes later by way of an unusual portal opened by one of the guardian constructs, which accompanied him. This construct looked remarkably different from the models seen in the halls of the Asad, but was similar enough to tell they shared a common origin. It maintained a quiet vigil as Raha and the party went deep into the Tulesti crypts to get away from prying eyes and ears. As they entered the lowest vault, Zayn momentarily saw one of the crypts empty, with her own name clearly emblazoned on the plaque. The vision gone, the party got to the business of exchanging information with Raha, showing him the information they retrieved. He was greatly disturbed, but did not seem overly surprised. Raha informed them of the progress of the Khasifi civil war, which was still far from certain in outcome. The good news was that the Regent (which the Empire had hoped to ally with) had been assassinated, and his control of the region was gone. A short time later, Raha and his guardian departed, citing a need to get moving on war preparations, if the Empire was determined to come to arms.

Finn and Zayn decided to communicate with a few allies of their own, Sending first to War to ask about events in Port Miller, as the note they found seemed to reference the city. War told them an Imperial army began beaching and setting up camp north of Port Miller two nights ago, numbering in the thousands. Next they contacted Captain Blue, asking him to start building a fleet to defend what was left of Khasif from possible Imperial attack. His reply indicated that the instructions to help the Khasifi did not come a moment too soon. Lastly, a Sending to Kopala informed her of their success in performing the ritual and locating the site of Sayoni’s prison. They asked for further instructions. She asked that they meet very soon on the southern slopes of Chamber Valley, where she was attending to business. The party arrived there soon, after a slightly awkward arrival in a distant, but similar area of greenery somewhere else (deep in Javad territory, by the looks of the stars, Sindar reckoned).

Meeting in Robert Pinan’s shack on the southern slope (and he was none too happy about giant druid cats taking up residence in his only shelter), Kopala took their report and discussed the fate of the ritual book Arkeles had written to detail the workings of the prison. Most was intentionally separated and scattered, and the Sun Council had succeeded in gathering only a few pages. She would see them safely into the party’s hands soon, and they could get on the trail of the rest from there. Kopala suspected that the people or families holding the rest could be traced to Arkeles or his compatriots in some way, and that a pattern might emerge as they gathered more. Dyphonaira greeted the group on the slope, joining the last of this briefing before inviting the party to overnight in her grove before leaving in the morning. On their way out of the valley, Robert informed the group that their “elf-blood discovery” did not work. The valley residents had provided him with elf blood, though it was anyone’s guess where they got it, and none of the procedures Sindar had described to him had any effect on the process he had created. Helping with the analysis in his own, horrifying way, Sindar determined that the elf blood Robert was given had virtually no similarities with Finn’s blood, which had presumably become elvish due to interference from the Deck of Errant Destinies. While they researched the problem further, Finn left Robert with a sample of his own blood to work with, instead.

From there, Zayn teleported everyone to the Seachild, which they had left hidden in the open dunes near Kaleska. After spending a while digging the trimaran free, they turned it for Tulesa and began sailing. Discussing as they sailed, the party decided that they needed to find some shamblers to test out the two hopeful cure attempts Robert had managed to come up with so far, and they needed to do it sooner rather than later, given the new wrinkle of the blood mystery. Zayn teleported ahead to Tulesa, taking a few minutes to round up a skilled crew to take over the Seachild, then teleporting them all back aboard. Once the Seachild was in their hands and on course for Tulesa, the group made use of Air Walk to travel to nearby Latpasa, known to be overrun by shamblers. Arriving there, they selected a likely cluster of the beasts and engaged them at range. The herd stripped neatly away from the mass that were shuffling in a slow orbit around the abandoned city walls, bleeding members as it made its way toward the party. Eventually whittling them down to just two remaining shamblers, the party first tried the destruction serum Robert had created, which worked instantly, rendering an unharmed shambler to dust in just a few seconds. When they tried to reversing serum on the second, the result was a half-success, at best. The shambler stopped and fell, apparently “dying”. Unlike other shamblers, it did not revert to loose sand when it fell, but remained solid. Not what they had hoped for, but progress. Taking the body with them for further study, the group teleported back to Tulesa and Sindar informed Robert of the test results via a feather token.

From there, the group departed for the area of Sayoni’s tomb, finding it quickly through memory and magic. Though the rocks and ridges seemed to match what Zayn and Sindar had seen in the astral visions, the area looked more weathered now. Breaking up to search thoroughly, a good amount of time passed before they finally found a small mark carved into an unremarkable rock spire. Sindar translated the mark to mean “queen” in the old mahari pictographic script. Searching the area for magic, only faint traces of a huge grid of divination magic showed themselves through the sand. This certainly seemed to be the place. Finn summoned an earth elemental, asking it to find what it below. When it returned, it reported a massive cavern about 90 ft straight below them. The group decided to check nearby Aridesa as night began to fall. They found that the activity Selkirk reported had moved on- nothing was moving here anymore, and everything of interest seemed to be gone, unless big holes in the ground were interesting.

Restless and not wanting to finish the night without making more impact somewhere, the party elected to teleport to Port Miller and see what could be done to sabotage these Imperial soldiers that War reported earlier. They arrived at the Tarred Crow, expecting the link up with War or his people there. Instead, they found the place empty and shuttered. They decided to head north of the city and see this army for themselves, using a combination of flight and invisibility to investigate the encamped regiments. Finding an enticing array of siege engines and flammable ordinance stored on the hardpack flats, they hatched an attack plan and went to work. Soldiers began scrambling after the first cart of fire cauldrons blasted skyward. For the first time in his life, Sindar truly felt he was in his element, summoning truly gargantuan explosions with his hastily mixed bombs as others in the group when to work on the trebuchets and battering rams. One by one, the tall machines broke up and tumbled to the ground. Just as the gleeful destruction was reaching a fever pitch, Finn heard a voice in his head. It was Hana Daea, using a Sending spell to reach him: “Help us, PLEASE!” Finn’s blood turned to ice as he gathered the rest of the party and they suddenly appeared back in Tulesa.

They found a settlement in chaos. The entire north wall of their estate house was in flames. Other fires burned across the tent city below them, and the hospital had been blasted to oblivion by a large explosion. Bodies littered the streets, including the bodies of many of their soldiers and city guards. Finn magically boosted his voice to call out to Squeaks as the group ran toward the signs of battle, imploring her to use the weather control stone to douse all these fires, if it was available to use. Reaching the streets, they followed the trail of dead and injured before reaching the market, where they found a badly hurt Falat crawling toward a cart. Nearby, a woman’s body in familiar leather armor lay face down, her head removed by Falat’s sword. Finn quickly stabilized and healed him, but they were attacked before any substantial conversation was possible. Across the market, they saw the small form of an Imperial woman in leather armor. Half the group had met her before- what seemed like an eternity ago now. It was Sparrow, leader of the Grand Council Operatives’ Guild. She immediately charged, and the group quickly realized she was aided by another woman and a large wolf. Ducking in and out of invisibility and stealth, the trio did some real damage to the party, but were no match, in the end. Tarsus learned the hard way that the second woman and her wolf were some sort of vampires, as he quickly lost vitality to bites that seemed to heal both of them. The party pursued them across the market, even in the face of fearsome injuries, to deny them the opportunity to continuously attack from the shadows. Their tactics paid off, and soon Sparrow and her associates fell in battle. Kando and what remained of his party arrived on the scene, reporting that other attackers had been killed elsewhere in the settlement.

Our story ended as the party took stock of the extensive damage to their beloved home. Sparrow’s dying words echoed in their heads: “I don’t care what happens to me anymore. I know what you did. A home for a home.”

The Asad

Civil war rages inside Khasif, as evidence is found of impending war with the Empire. The Asad prepares for war.

Advancement

The party has advanced to level 11, mythic tier 2!

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as the party sailed east aboard the Blue Beagle, forging their way along Riyaqa’s southern coast toward the city of Qisaga. With several days underway, Finn and Zayn used the time to catch up on Sendings to the party’s remaining allies, inviting several to come to Tulesa to take up residence and join their efforts to locate and defeat Sayoni. Teegan and Emi both seemed to be out of any serious trouble and were making their way there. Atala’s response seemed as if she may take a bit longer, saying she was still busy with other matters. The group spend their considerable free time either crafting consumables or training.

On the morning of the third day at sea, the Beagle caught sight of another sailing ship of Riyaqan coastal design. Not an unusual sight in these waters, but the ship seemed to be maneuvering to force a close pass- an aggressive act, considering the circumstances. Finn used his spyglass to take a close look at the vessel, quickly discovering that the crew aboard were disguised Imperials pretending to be a Riyaqan merchant vessel. Keeping their cool at Finn’s warning, the crew of the Beagle allowed the vessel to close after it fired a few warning shots. The ships raised flags to warn the Blue Beagle that Qisaga was under a disease quarantine, and should not be approached. The Beagle asked for an alternative port, and the ship told them to head to Mimmam, instead. As the ship sailed on and the sun set, Finn contacted Dezil Calish via Sending to tell him of the interception and new destination. Dezil was worried by the development, and asked that the group assess what they could about the truth behind this obvious lie.

Under the dark sky of early morning, the Blue Beagle slowed as it entered the mouth of the river that would eventually wind its way to Mimmam. As it slowed, a rowboat quietly descended to the water’s surface, and four people transited to shore. The rowboat was pulled back to the ship via rope. and the Beagle continued upriver. Climbing up the bank of the river the group proceeded overland toward Qisaga on the backs of magical steeds summoned by Zayn. Their only contact along the way was with Riyaqan men who were members of the city guard of Qisaga. When the party provided their cover story, the men just rolled their eyes and moved along, apparently assuming the group to be yet another mission of Imperial spies, for some reason pretending to be something else. Zayn contacted Ahti Ato shortly after, asking if any odd reports of Qisaga had made their way to the Asad. Ahti said the only thing she had heard was that a colleague has recently lost an agent there to unknown causes, but that wasn’t terribly out of sorts when spying on the Empire. Arriving at the gates of Qisaga, the party was accosted by the guards, intentionally escalating the encounter per Dezil’s plans. They were quickly taken into custody, stripped of their gear, and placed in holding room. Through it all, they played along, despite being able to at least fight through the guards near them at any given point.

Soon enough, interrogating officers arrived, intent to discover what trickery the party was up to. As the party provided excuses for the men to get angry, one finally took the bait and they dropped the name that would serve as the code phrase. The man calmed and asked his comrade to leave the room for a minute. Shortly after, the man began to tell the party how to get out of the gatehouse and on with their mission. Moments later, they got their cue and left the room. Making their way down the hall and into the basement, they found the drain access into the sewers and escaped. Their gear met them there, being dragged along in large sacks by a street urchin who quickly fled after making the delivery. Checking their gear, they found the scroll case containing directions to the al Farin estate and the ritual scroll they were to use there. Over the next few hours, they picked their way through the sewers beneath the city, crossing dozens of checkpoints and passing by entire divisions of Imperial troops stationed within the city. Eventually finding an access as close as possible to their destination, the group returned to the surface and used Sindar’s fly extracts to close the last distance to the estate house.

Dropping silently onto a second floor balcony, they made their way past the lone guard and into the house. The house had been converted to serve as a headquarters for high ranking Imperial military officers, but only a handful of troops were on the upper floor. The group avoided them with little difficultly using an Invisibility Sphere, and made their way to the room they needed- one of Arkeles al Farin’s ritual chambers. Realizing that the ritual would take time and the patrolling guards may present a problem, Finn used magic to create stone walls and floors in the chamber to confound efforts to get into the room. The group commenced the ritual, under Zayn’s guidance, but it proved too difficult to master on the first try. It met with limited success, pulling Sindar and Zayn away from their bodies and through the twisting ether while leaving Finn and Tarsus behind. At first, Sindar and Zayn were very confused. They could still see a washed-out version of the room they had just been standing in. After messing about for a few minutes, they realized the ritual also summoned help from someone else: a poorly tempered shinigami that was less than impressed to be taken away from his pass-times to help lost planar travelers. Nevertheless, he did help, finding their request to help find a soul such as Arkeles al Farin far too tempting to pass up.

Leading them to the edges of the Boneyard, the shinigami issued a summons for al Farin. After a long while, it remained unanswered, indicating that his soul was not present. He must have long since moved on to the afterlife. The pair wracked their brains to think of the name of any of al Farin’s compatriots, coming up with Sanget Denatro, a barbarian that accompanied the mage on their historic campaign. When the shinigami summoned Denatro, he came out of the mist in answer, hoping to meet his judgement at last and move on. He was greatly disappointed when he learned his judgement day had not arrived, but agreed to help anyway. Zayn and Sindar listened as he recounted the story of their party meeting Sayoni in her lair, and the events that followed.

Meanwhile, in the former al Farin estate, Finn and Tarsus listened as a patrolling guard broke his pattern of patrol, spotting something amiss. Very soon, the sounds of alarm passed through the house as the first guard came face to face with Finn and Tarsus. Finn threw an emergency stone wall over the doors to the room to buy a few seconds of preparation as boots thumped across the floorboards downstairs. Seconds later, the first blows began hammering against the stone from the other side, and the soldiers began to break through. Tarsus and Dervish met them, and the fight was on. The soldiers delivered solid strikes, obviously trained well to aim for vulnerable areas on an opponent. Finn harried their efforts as more soldiers and guards arrived. As the seconds passed, the situation became more dire. A handful of Imperials were easy enough to handle, but several handfuls were on their way up the stairs.

Denatro completed his story, walking Sindar and Zayn through the memory of the events from his perspective. In this place, the experience was far more literal than elsewhere, and they watched as the events of the ritual unfolded before them. As it completed, they saw the connection form between the body of Arkeles al Farin and some faraway place. Willing themselves to move, they followed it out of the house and into the air. As they moved, they picked up speed,eventually unaware at all of how fast they were skimming over an ethereal Riyaqa below them. Minutes later, they arrived at the point where the thread disappeared into the ground beneath them. Slowly, they drifted down into the ground alongside the luminous red thread. After some distance, they came into a monstrous cave that was nearly filled by an entirely subterranean ziggurat. A soft, feminine voice called out to them, simply saying, “I see you, there.” Reasoning that Sayoni could somehow detect them across both planes and time, they fled. Sindar had enough information to determine the location in the real world. Willing themselves to return, they began to fly faster and faster back along the thread.

Our story closed as a fresh squad of Imperial Regiment soldiers descended on the beleaguered Finn and Tarsus, who were considering their escape options under the pressure, and how they might get the still-unconscious bodies of Zayn and Sindar out with them.

The Asad

New delegates begin to arrive the Asad, with a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa scheduled to take place once enough members are present. The Khasif bloc has left the Asad, as civil war rages within the Khasif Kingdom.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as the party finished their exploration of the Singed Halls, recovering valuable intelligence on the intentions of the cult. Completing their ransacking, the party made for the Lacy Death to speak with Dezil before their impending meeting with Talia. A teleport trap caught them at the front door of the well-travelled inn, so they made their way inside by more conventional means. Inside, neither Tabina nor Dezil were anywhere to be seen, so the party settled into rented rooms for the evening and purchased the King’s Feast package for the attached private dining hall. At the stroke of midnight, Talia arrived, flanked by a pair of women that were obviously armed, and could obviously handle themselves in a fight. Sitting down to their table with the party, but not partaking of any food herself, Talia answered their questions about the Sun Council, explaining that they were a small, but world-spanning group dedicated to keeping tabs on the creeping power emanating from the Shadowfel. She admitted that she is occasionally employed by them, though she did not know directly for whom she worked. She agreed to contact her handler, and see about arranging a meeting.

While Talia worked on that, the party headed to the nearby Imperial Consulate to answer the summons they received through Dezil Calish and Ahti Ato. Arriving, they were ushered up to the airie that Ducet frequents. Once there, he asked them why they had come. In the brief confusion, the party discovered that Ducet had not sent for them, and Calish had some explaining to do. The group left and headed back for the Lacy Death, not wanting to grace Ducet with their presence any longer than necessary. On the way, Finn realized someone was shadowing them from the rooftops nearby. Finn cast a Daylight spell at a piece of rooftop near their stalker, just to screw them up a bit as the party made haste away.

Arriving back at the Lacy Death, the party found a new occupant at the inn, waiting to meet them. A large, spotted feline waited in the dining hall they had used earlier, alongside Talia. She introduced the cat as Nasreen Kopala, a powerful druid, and member of the Sun Council. Kopala offered that she was very impressed with all the party had accomplished thus far with only a few pushes here and there from the Council, tipping her hand that it was the Sun Council Calish had been referring to as his “employer”, not Ducet. She offered continued assistance, though some on the Council would look down on such direct measures, feeling it was too early to interfere in “the cycle”. In exchange for an explanation of how to find Sayoni’s prison, she asked that the party sequester any information they uncover, and turn it over to the Council if they succeed. The knowledge, and its secrecy, might one day prove crucial. Reluctantly, the party agreed to her terms, and she explained:

Gain entry to the former estate of Arkeles al Farin, the man who imprisoned Sayoni’s spirit when she nearly escaped. There, find his ritual chambers and carry out the ritual Kopala provided on a scroll. This would catapult the party into the astral nether, allowing them to travel and view events tied closely with that location. Mastery of the travel might allow them to directly view the ritual that Arkeles and his people performed long ago, and trace the link between Arkeles and Sayoni to her physical location. Assuming it had remained unchanged since that time, they would then have her location. All that would be left is to escape a well-monied estate likely to be in use as some high-ranking officer’s headquarters, in a city held by the Empire.

Accepting that this was probably as good a chance as they would get, the party set about developing a cover to get inside the city of Qisaga, where the al Farin estate resided. Dezil instructed them on how to make contact with his man in the city guard of Qisaga. Their cover would be Finn traveling as a religious figure attempting to bridge cultures through faith. Zayn would be his local guide, Tarsus his security, and Sindar the chronicler. Concluding this meeting, the group settled down for the night before heading to the Asad in the morning.

Arriving at the Asad early the next day, the party made their way through the varied security layers before finally meeting with speaker Raha Delina. Their arrival interrupted an argument between the Speaker and Horace Mueller, but the details were too difficult to overhear down the hallway. The group exchanged information with Delina, informing him of their progress. Finally asking about the exchange with Mueller, Delina informed them that Mueller came as a representative of the Empire, who were upset that the Asad were not doing more to support the Khasif Regent in his civil war. Concluding their meeting, the group returned to the Lacy Death. There, Dezil informed the group he had received word that Horace Mueller had put a minor price on their heads. Not enough to attract any real talent, but meant to harry their way.

Finn stepped out to visit the local temple of Rustum, where the local priest accosted him for a donation. He asked that pilgrims looking for service be sent to the Lacy Death to get directions to Tulesa from a trusted source, and then returned to tell Dezil what he did. Dezil assigned dealing with the pilgrims to Cassandra, a bar maid who seemed to ask a lot about Finn and was somewhat taken with him.

Their business in Gol Asad concluded, the party made for the ship that Dezil told them to catch, boarding the Blue Beagle in the dock district just a few minutes before it cast off to get underway. Once aboard, Zayn communed with Ahti Ato to ask her to locate a comptroller of some sort for Tulesa. Ahti agreed to get to the task, saying she had someone in mind.

Our story closed aboard the Blue Beagle, underway for Qisaga, as Finn sent Blue a message to pass on information about the war front near Ghabi that they had learned from Speaker Delina. The waters near Ghabi were about to get a lot more profitable, if one were okay with preying on Imperial shipping.

The Asad

New delegates begin to arrive the Asad, with a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa scheduled to take place once enough members are present. The Khasif bloc has left the Asad, as civil war rages within the Khasif Kingdom.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as Sindar worked through a few books he had brought with him from Tulesa, learning all he could as quickly as he could about the Shadowfel and its denizens. Working in his notes as he did so, he took some time to review the many challenges they had faced in the last several weeks. Clarity rang in him mind as he came to a decision, and decided to Send a message to Willie Burton, who had briefly been his ward. He offered Willie a home at Tulesa, if things did not work out for him at the IGG. Willie said he was fine for the moment, but appreciated the offer. He told Sindar he had come across some interesting things in the boxes of documents evacuated from Port Miller College, and was posting them back to Sindar. He had no idea when they might arrive. Shortly after, Sindar penned a letter to the leadership of the IGG, sending it off via bird token before returning to his studies.

Having made their preparations and rested up, the group steered Seachild to a rocky crag and stowed the ship before Teleporting back to Tulesa. Once in town, Finn retrieved a number of holy symbols of Rustum from Kando, whom he learned has been ordering large numbers of them to nail them into “sinners”. They only had time for a short talk about that, and maybe easing of the inquisition “just a bit” before Finn had to meet the rest of the party back at the Tulesti Estate. Tarsus had consulted with Falat in the meantime, selecting a dozen of the best house troops to help the party with their plan. Everyone else was quickly evacuated from the house, and the party triggered the “defensive” system that planeshifted the entire estate to the Shadowfel. The sky outside quickly dimmed to darkness as glowing eyes lit up in the distance, one after another. Massive, winged blots of utter blackness swam low on the distant horizon. As the party got their bearings, figures came running across the dimmed wasteland toward them. Soon, an assault would be at their doorstep.

Finn first set down the twinned skulls, seeing a wave of odd energy pulse outward from them as they created hallowed ground where they touched. He felt ill in his stomach, but was mostly unaffected. The rest of the party moved downstairs to meet the incoming attackers and keep them away from Finn. Carefully placing Skullsoul in the center of the sanctified earth at his feet, Finn drew the vorpal blade and lined up his attack. The blade crashed down, but failed to shatter the skull. In the main hall below, the front doors buckled, but held against a mighty crash as the first wave of shae reached them. A moment later, their efforts pay off as the doors shatter and shae spill into the room. A mix of martial attackers and spellcasters fell upon the party and their soldiers. Their assault was fierce, but manageable as the party moved to block their advance. For every shae that fell ,two seemed to take its place. Before long, Tulesti soldiers began to fall as the attack intensified. Trying to deflect attention from their troops, Sindar and Zayn both got into serious trouble briefly as more vicious attackers joined the fray. Upstairs, panic crept into the back of Finn’s mind as his repeated attempts to destroy SkullSoul failed.

Through the broken doors, Tarsus spotted something landing among the amassing shae that he could only describe as a “shadow dragon”. A figure leapt to the ground from its back before the thing lofted again, and he knew instantly who this was: The Elder Knight had arrived. Continuing to barely hold their ground against the shae incursion into the main hall, the party could only watch as he strode closer, a new contingent of shae falling in behind him. Sooner than they would have liked, the Elder Knight entered the main hall and went straight for Tarsus. Upstairs, Finn focused his mind and the power of Rustum that flowed through him. Raising the sword one final time, he struck true and SkullSoul exploded in a wreathe of blue flames. The blade shattered in his hands. As he rushed down the stairs to aid Tarsus and the others, Zayn rushed up. In the main hall, the Elder Knight was proving too much for Tarsus to handle, at least in this place. Using every trick in his arsenal, Tarsus was holding his feet for the time being, as the alchemist behind him flung ordinance like a madman. Through the doors, they could all see the new wave of shae approaching. With the Elder Knight here, it would easily overwhelm them. As Finn made it to the bottom of the stairs, Zayn slammed the control crystal home in its sheath, and the world outside dissolved into light. The bright, mid-morning sun over Riyaqa blasted light across the main hall of the estate, bathing dead shae and dying Tulesti soldiers in its glow. As the shae bodies began to wither away, the Elder Knight ceased his assault on Tarsus and looked at the scene around him. Driving his massive blade into the stone tile of the floor, his staccato, otherworldly voice said, “I submit,” before he faded from view.

Quickly summoning help, the group stabilized the soldiers they could as small fires were put out and the injured were carried to the hospital. Their mission was accomplished, and now the clean-up began. Balasar was summoned to examine the blade left driven into the floor. He determined it to be a powerful artifact blade, but more a remnant than the blade itself. He said the owner of the blade knows it as “Arugal’s Kiss,” but the name held no special meaning to Balasar, himself. Out of an abundance of caution, Tarsus swung Dervish at the weapon, which transformed mid-swing as it smashed through the embedded blade. Only a piece was left protruding from the floor, which faded from view. Balasar said the piece could be used as a dimensional anchor with the proper rituals, allowing them to locate the holder of the real blade at will. The Elder Knight had surrendered initiative for their next encounter to Tarsus. The group convened to discuss next steps, and continue with sendings from the day before.

A message to Daso Enna revealed that it was not safe to return to Zacat, as the civil war in Khasif is now near that town. A message to the Watch revealed that she could provide no direct help in locating Sayoni’s tomb, but she believed an organization called the Sun Council was their best chance of finding a lead. Zayn contacted Ahti Ato, getting an update on the war inside Khasif. It seemed the war was precipitated by the Regency attempting to undermine and ignore the great houses of Khasif nobility, though who initiated the attack on the Regent was still unknown. Ato also had a message for Zayn: Dezil Calish was trying to reach her. Shortly after, she sent a message to Dezil, who informed her that his employer had requested a meeting as soon as possible. Finally, a message was sent to Talia, who agreed to meet the party at the Lacy Death in Gol Asad on the next evening.

From there, the party broke up to complete various tasks in Tulesa, including state visits to the families of soldiers they had lost in the Shadowfel incursion. Sindar visited Graja in the reactor complex to inquire about developing a special weapon for him. Following that, the party decided to teleport back to the Singed Halls directly, seeking evidence of where they might be able to next root out the remnants of the Children of Ahriman. Within the halls, they found evidence of the blasts the Sindar had arranged before the last departure. What areas remained relatively untouched were now guarded by hasty barricades of furniture and shattered doors. Behind the barricades, they found the place abandoned. It seemed the remaining cultists had been unsure if the party still lurked in their halls and tried to protect their flanks while they evacuated what was left. Exploring the rest of the compound, they found a few items of interest, along with some intel in the form of maps and ledgers. The materials had been soaked in oil as if to be lit of fire, but the fire was never struck.

Our story closed as the group too stock of the information they recovered, learning that more attacks had been planned by the cult, and one was supposed to be executed today.

The Asad

New delegates have been assigned to the Asad, with the old missing members declared dead as the body schedules a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa. The Khasif bloc has left the Asad, as civil war rages within the Khasif Kingdom.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as the party caught their breath following a fierce battle with Sadeesh, deep in the subterranean complex known as the Singed Halls. A brief search of the nearby rooms turned up little of true consequence, save for a scroll that seemed to detail a ritual involving the SkullSoul artifact they had just recovered. Careful study over the next few minutes revealed that the ritual concerned retrieving the soul (or at least its power) stored within, and its various steps were profane beyond belief. When further searches of the area turned up no more cultists or traps, the group decided to bed down for a while in a secured room to rest and recover some measure of their power.

Some hours later, Tarsus heard a scream echo through the passages. Roused from their rest, the party geared up and started stalking the source of the scream. Moving through the complex, the group became aware one by one that they were being shadowed by something. Deciding the dim light was hindering their ability to see whatever was following them, Finn lit of the hallway with the brilliance of Daylight cast on Tarsus’ armor, and the aggressors finally showed themselves. One of the three ashen-skinned humanoids attacked immediately, while the other two took a few seconds to blink away the blinding light of Finn’s spell. Going immediately for the heaviest threat he could see, the attacker laid into Tarsus with sharp blades. The extra tingly sting of the rather small weapons announced the presence of poison as the energy was sapped from his limbs with each hit.

As the other attackers recovered, Zayn and Oxyr were pushed onto the defensive at the rear of the fight while Sindar and Finn hammered the first man, eventually reducing him to a fine mist against the far wall. Seeing their comrade go down, the remaining two retreated momentarily and lobbed their own bombs into the group. Purple gas violently flooded the hallway, to no apparent effect for most of the party. Tarsus, however, suddenly realized an enemy stood where Sindar had been a moment ago, and lashed out. The lucky blow from an unexpected aggressor put Sindar out of the fight. Ever the man ready to rescue the situation, Finn went to work with his spells, clearing the various poisons from Tarsus and aiding Sindar to his feet. Able to focus again on their aggressors, the party dispatched another of the trio. The last of the three attackers found himself cornered in the narrow hallway and lashed out, doing considerable damage before dying in a hail of blasts and blades. In the confusion, Zayn momentarily did her best to barbeque Tarsus before the last of the purple gas faded from the air. Searching the rapidly decaying bodies, the group came away with a compass that had been stolen from Sindar, an assortment of poisons, and a long knife with a strange black blade.

Oxyr instantly recognized the weapon, confirming the identity of their attackers. These people were part of a shae assassin clan, which had apparently accepted a contract on the party. Unfortunately, clans accepted contracts as a whole, meaning the party would need to find a way to cancel the contract or expect to have the kill the entire clan to put an end to this for good. It would be a while til they struck again, but they would be back. Deciding it would be better to not be here if the clan went for another attempt quickly, the group prepared to leave the Singed Halls. As a parting gift, Sindar rigged every stash of barrels he could find of the noxious compound that Robert Pinan had unwittingly helped to make. The party winked out of the caverns as the first of many explosions ripped through the stockpiles.

A moment later, they were standing on the southern entry slope to the lush valley marked in Sindar’s notes as SR-7, called Chamber Valley by the few that knew it existed. Again meeting Guardian at the boundary, they led a procession of curious denizens to the Watcher’s Grove, waiting patiently for the Watcher to arrive. After a short while Dyphonaira was with them, listening intently as they relayed all that had happened. With SkullSoul safely in their custody, the Watcher told them the name of the man trapped within: Haigo. He was one of the two consort priests originally interred with Sayoni many centuries ago. He would be a powerful lich, if released from his prison. Released on Sayoni’s terms, he would be instantly absorbed into her own pool of fel power, making her even more dangerous. She advised disposing of it quickly, and explained the ritual needed to destroy it. Summoning the armory master from among her followers, Dyphonaira presented the party with a powerfully enchanted longsword and explained: “With ordinary weapons, this charged skull is invulnerable to any damage that might be inflicted on it. This sword, though, is special. It is made to claim the heads of the most powerful evils that walk the land. With a perfectly struck blow, it will overcome the protective magic of the skull and claim that head, too. It is likely to destroy both the skull and the sword in the process, but it’s a worthy sacrifice.” As with most artifacts originating in the shadow realms, it would need to be destroyed there, on hallowed ground. Destroying it here would only return it home.

With their next task set before them, the party turned their attention to the fate of Oxyr. He explained all that he had done, seeking power in the name of Mahari, but falling prey to Sayoni’s whispers instead. He claimed responsibility for all the damage done by Sadeesh, and asked for a chance to continue to make things right. Dyphonaira, acting in her role as the majordomo of Mahari’s only remaining realm on Geosa, accepted Oxyr’s pleas. The clemency she granted him was perhaps not what he sought, as she breathed deep and bathed his kneeling form in a storm of fire that was blindingly bright. An instant later, only the scorched earth remained. She explained that his suffering was at an end now, and others would carry on the work of restoration. Looking to Finn, she asked that the Blazing Sun artifact be delivered to Hana Daea, as Mahari selects her to be the new head of her clergy. Dyphonaira would soon need to return to sleep for a short time to usher Oxyr’s soul home safely. As the group departed, Dyphonaira transformed to her elven form, and Finn gave her a beautiful necklace. She allowed him to place it around her neck as she smiled, and he thought to himself that it seemed a warm smile. Then he remembered that mouth had just incinerated a man into nothing but airborne ash. And then they left.

Arriving back in Tulesa by way of another Teleport, the party met with Falat, giving him some of the better equipment they had found to use himself or distribute among their troops. Falat reported his progress on the growing army- small still, but progressing. Finn spoke privately with Hana Daea, telling her what had transpired and what was coming next. Calling their council, the party took updates on the goings-on of Tulesa, and arranged a public address for that afternoon to officially name Hana Daea as the new leader of Mahari’s priesthood. After the address, the part consulted both Selkirk and Balasar on the task they had been given. They learned that the blade the Watcher gave them was the most powerful vorpal blade Balasar had ever even heard of, and he took some entertainment from the fact they had intended to use a vorpal weapon to destroy a skull in a ritual. Formalizing a plan, the party commandeered Plainsrunner and ordered it into the deep desert, toward coordinates Sindar gave the crew once they were underway.

Arriving at their destination, the group disembarked and ordered Plainsrunner to return home. They quickly started digging, finding the twin cursed skulls where they had left them. They knew the skulls were cursed here, but were holy relics on the shadow plane, sanctifying any ground there that they touched. From there, the party teleported to the rocky outcropping where they had left Seachild. They boarded the craft and got it ready to get underway, heading for Kaleska and hoping the constant movement would keep them far enough ahead of the assassins tailing them to prevent an attack that might disrupt their plans. While aboard that night, Finn and Zayn caught up on communications with their allies. After getting a status report from Blue and his fleet, they spoke with Emi, who seemed to be well, but busy. They offered her a place at Tulesa. Contacting Atala, they updated her on their progress against the Children of Ahriman, offering her a place at Tulesa, as well. A Sending with Daso Enna reported that they had accomplished their mission and were back outside of the Khasif nation. He congratulated Finn on their accomplishment, promising, “We’ll speak again soon, brother.” Finally, Zayn used her bracelet to commune with Ahti Ato at the Asad. She told Ato of the trouble within Khasif, and Ato told her that the replacement delegates had been selected. A vote would proceed soon.

Our story closed as the Seachild sped across open sand under a waning moon. Ghosts from the shadows would not catch them this night.

The Asad

New delegates have been assigned to the Asad, with the old missing members declared dead as the body schedules a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa. The Khasif bloc has left the Asad, as civil war rages within the Khasif Kingdom.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as Zayn showed Ghomesh to Oxyr aboard the Seachild, having retrieved her from Tulesa shortly before. Ghomesh was able to confirm that Oxyr was lucid, at least for the time being, and did appear to be the genuine Oxyr that she had known and followed the Aridesa. She wasn’t able to get much more out of him, but that was enough information for the party to decide it was worth the risk to take him with them to hunt down Sadeesh within the Singed Halls, deep behind the borders of Khasif.

A short time later, the band of adventurers clasped hands and teleported to the bloodbath that Zayn had scried upon earlier. They found it much as she had seen it, but no living people were present. Footsteps in the adjoining hallway announced that was about to change. Bristling against impending attack, the party relaxed when they saw a soldier wearing the same garb Daso Enna had worn. He announced that he was with House Enna, and the party was expected. He quickly led them through the fortress to the planning room where his master waited. Along the way, he explained that this fortress was occupied by the Regent’s forces, taken at swordpoint years ago from the Enna family. Daso had just taken it back, and started an insurrection in the process. Even as they walked, the banners of Daso’s house were unfurling again above Ennavere Fortress for the first time in years. The party’s meeting with Daso Enna was relatively short, but he was open about his intentions to challenge the Regent and put the Khasif throne back in properly decided noble hands. He was able to supply the party with rudimentary maps of the nearby regions, outlining the best paths north to avoid most people in the intervening countryside. With that, the part headed out.

A short while later, spotting smoke rising in the distance, the party closed with the anomaly to discover a village being burned by troops wearing the Regent’s colors. Deciding that it was worth risking potentially catastrophic contact with army forces to save the village, the party made their presence known and called out the soldiers. As things turned out, the unit attacking the village was relatively small and poorly trained to engage such powerful heroes. About half their number died before their morale broke and they surrendered. The party allowed them to leave on foot, reasoning their mission in Khasif would be over one way or the other before the troops could report back to any garrison that might mobilize a truly dangerous number of troops. Turning over the balance of the soldiers’ equipment and mounts to the villagers, dousing the fires and providing healing where they could, the party mounted back up and moved on; taking only an improved and more current map of the countryside in payment for their services. The map guided them to the point along the northern shore that came the closest to the northern island of the kingdom. The gulf of ocean to cross was still massive, and no bridge or boat was in sight. The overlook did have a single statue built near the railing that guarded the steep drop over the seaside cliffs. Standing nearly nine feet in height, the statue looked familiar to the group. They quickly sorted that the garb and the not-so-subtle symbolism indicated this was a statue of Mithras. Still, something was off. Soon enough, Finn hit upon the source of the eerie feeling. The face on the statue was the face of his companion, Tarsus. A statue easily a thousand years old had the face of a living man standing next to him. The Mithras they had spoken to several times already had mentioned that he moved around the timeline the way they moved around a room.

Unsure of how one goes about revering a shrine to a man that will apparently one day be a demi-god, the group simply enjoyed some silence in the air of discomfort, before Zayn touched the statue and got to preparing a spell to get the group across the water. Power passed into her, energizing her spell casting and granting access to much more powerful versions of the spells she knew. Her communal phantom steed spell could last longer now, and access the ability to fly. If they hurried, and if Sindar could measure a map accurately, it might last long enough to get the whole group across the gap. The group took to the air, crossing the sea in a short while and finding themselves soon safely back over land. They were able to continue on to Zacat unmolested.

Arriving near the town, the party surveyed decent defensive walls and a relatively large guard contingent, compared to the other intact settlements they had visited recently. An evening of sneaking through orchards and fields outside the wall ensued as the party made use of Oxyr’s ability to roughly sense Sadeesh’s presence when nearby. After a couple of hours the group felt they had enough information to triangulate Sadeesh’s location to a compound in the south section of the city. Easily clearing the wall through the well-testing invisible floaty ball method, the group quietly set down near the building in question. The structure was a ruined church of some kind, now little more than a camp for urchins and the drug addled shiftless of Zacat’s streets. Moving quietly through the ruined building, they quickly found a way down to a cellar. Meeting only slight resistance along their way, the group eventually found a storeroom at the center of a small labyrinthine collection of twists and turns. Investigating, Finn located a hidden hatch and ladder, and the group descended once again.

The bottom of the ladder opened into what looked like an ancient and mostly unused storeroom, not terribly different from the one above. Outside, the room opened into a rough hallway interspersed with sublimely crafted stretches of finished stone wall. The craftsmanship and age pointed clearly to elves. Slowly, the gang started to explore the mysterious halls, moving from room to room. At every turn, they found more of the same- old rooms, some recently disturbed, some untouched for at least decades. Finally, in a small complex that resembled an inn of some sort, they made contact with the enemy. The combat was over quickly, such a small contingent unable to present a serious threat to the party. By now, Sindar was beginning to see a pattern in the various glyphs adorning the floor of the hallways near each door. They were markings intended to guide someone unfamiliar with the complex, at least in its original design. It seemed this might have been first intended to be a public area of some sort.

Continuing forward, the party inches through the complex over the next few hours. They discovered a number of interesting areas, and more than one trap that had been left- all of which proved far more lethal than any single cultist they encountered. After what felt like forever, the group happened into a large living area- a central cavern surrounded by a number of individual residences. Doors abounded around them, and Tarsus felt his pulse quicken at the exposure of this tactically terrible position with potential ingresses all around them. Sure enough, his instincts proved correct as cultists stormed the room, having laid in wait for the approaching armored behemoth and his companions.

Immediately, it was apparent these were the elite. They found harder and coordinated better than other cultists the group had seen. Of course, the trouble with elite troops is that there are always only a few available. Over the course of seconds, the party began to gain the upper hand, even though they had been hit hard in the ambush. Just as the party began to breathe easier, a new spellcaster joined the fray. The force of his magic revealed his identity- the party had found Sadeesh. Moments later, an orb floating through the room began to unleash hell, ripping through everyone nearby with blasts of energy. Recognizing the sphere for what it was before anyone else, Oxyr threw himself over the floating Skullsoul in an attempt to wrench it from Sadeesh’s control and render it inert. With his primary weapon now in jeopardy, Sadeesh stopped pulling punches and unleashed everything he had at the party. Swarms of insects poured into the room from his staff as he directly attacked the party with other magic. His troops maneuvered through the room, trying to get to Zayn and Finn and disrupt their spells. Tarsus put everything he had into keeping a meat wall between the bad guys and the cleric keeping him on his feet, while Sindar and Zayn went to work tearing down bad guys. As more cultists entered the combat, Sindar kept flinging a blistering barrage of bombs, keeping a nervous eye on his supplies as the fight wore on.

Suddenly, a cultist slipping around the edges of the fight found an open path to Finn and made good on it. Coupled with the wounds he had already suffered, it was enough to knock him off his feet and out of the fight, though still clinging to life. The rest of the party shifted instantly, clearing the area around Finn to get help to him. Sadeesh capitalized on the disruption, flinging up a force wall through the center of the room to split the party. The move sentenced his man trapped on the other side to near certain death, but it bought him precious moments to push back against the scrambling party. In the ensuing chaos, Zayn was knocked off her feet just as Finn was being helped up. While a confused Finn scrambled to get to Zayn, the gap in healing took its toll on Tarsus. One of the few remaining cultists drove home a well-aimed blade in a blow that would have instantly dropped any other man. While Tarsus kept his feet, it was nearly all he could do. As the rest of the party focused on bringing Sadeesh down, Zayn took a lethal blow just as she regained her feet. Finn watched in horror as the sovereign of Tulesa fell lifeless to the floor, and dug deep to find the energy for another spell. The Breath of Life and healing energy coursed through Zayn milliseconds before her corpse hit the floor, allowing her to awaken in time for the hard thump.

As this happened, Tarsus and Sindar had cornered Sadeesh, pushing through the ferocity of his attacks to wound him mortally. With his focus broken, Oxyr took control of Skullsoul from him, ending his struggle with the artifact. Coming forward as Tarsus scowled at a staggered Sadeesh, ready to end this at last, Oxyr reached out to his twisted inter-planar brother with a hand already darkening with necromantic magic. The defenseless Sadeesh, even now being abandoned by the gaze of Sayoni, offered no resistance to the spell as Oxyr tore his very soul from his body. In the room with the party, the possessive spirit attempted to take control of Zayn, still weak from her ordeal. Luckily, Zayn was yet strong enough to resist the corruption, and the spirit fled through the halls.

Wanting to pursue and destroy the evil thing, the party thought discretion the better part of valor just this once, and instead decided to consolidate their position and recover from this battle first. As they healed and rested briefly, Finn hit upon an idea for the cause of the hunger and discomfort that consumed him. Maybe the ring of sustenance was incompatible with his eleven biology. Attempting to remove the ring, he found he could not- a dead giveaway for an item inflicted with some sort of curse, unwilling to be torn from its host. Nevertheless, once identified, the group was able to suppress its effects through magic, long enough to remove and examine the ring. What had masqueraded as a ring of sustenance was actually a cannibal ring, slowly going about its work of convincing Finn to consume humanoid flesh. Well, that had almost been terrible.

Our story closed as Oxyr fought himself over a decision. He stared for an uncomfortably long time into the empty eye sockets of the Skullsoul before finally summoning the will to hand it over to Tarsus for safekeeping in the bag of holding.

The Asad

The legislative delay while searching for missing Asad delegates has elapsed. A vote to officially declare the missing delegates dead has been called and passed, and the Asad has requested new delegates from their sovereigns before moving to a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa. The Khasif bloc has left the Asad, as civil war ignites within the Khasif Kingdom.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as Finn arranged Sendings to various allies, including a message to Teegan to ask for his aid in Tulesa. Teegan’s reply was terse, but seemed to be an agreement to help. In short order, Zayn returned from her business in Tulesa via teleport, and the Seachild got underway again across the sands. During an evening stop to change fuel cells, Sindar was sure he saw something glint in the sky to the east, but could not make out anything when he looked there directly. Staying alert, he cautiously completed the operation and told the others what he saw as the ship got moving again, but nothing more seemed to come of it.

A few hours later, with Finn piloting and the rest of the group milling about with all the new free time the rings of sustenance granted them, a loud crack disturbed the relative calm of the constant desert winds. Bright pulses of purple and blue reflected off the sands ahead of them as the sky seemed to open up. Tacking the Seachild hard to one side, Finn brought the ship up short as a familiar figure came tumbling out of the void. Selkirk hit the sand with a hard thud, rolling off of someone he had with him. As the figure stood, the party recognized Oxyr. There was no time for questions, however. Moments behind the pair, monstrous humanoids made of shifting, inky shapes tumbled out of the portal and onto the sand, and made straight for the pair of men still getting their bearings. Jumping the gunwales of the Seachild as it skidded to a halt, the party literally leapt into the action.

Though fearsome to look at, the oversized shadow beasts were no match for the party, by now gaining some proficiency in inter-planar combat with beings of the Shadowfell. While Tarsus kept the attention of the things as best he could manage, Zayn did all she could to minimize their effectiveness. With Finn bolstering the party and effecting a rescue from the rear, Sindar began flinging glassy globes of death with wild abandon, ending the fight before their opponents could really organize an offense. As Finn loosed a final channel to halt the progress of any grievous injuries, Selkirk related his journey to complete the task the party had set for him. While Oxyr was still delirious and recovering, Finn quietly removed the Blazing Sun from his neck, and put it safely away.

Selkirk’s investigations had led him first to Aridesa, which he found as mostly a smoking crater. He found one cultists digging through ruins there, and eventually followed him back to a nearby camp, which Selkirk levelled and then sifted for clues. These led him to artifact digs dotted across the desert, and eventually caught up to Oxyr himself. Oxyr seemed to be out of it, trailing some scrolls behind him as he wandered around. Oxyr eventually focused and asked Selkirk who he was, and Selkirk told him. Then Oxyr asked him, “will you come with me?” When Selkirk agreed, thinking to learn more of the mystery the man was looking for, he suddenly found himself plane-shifted to the Shadowfell and almost instantly beset by its denizens. Oxyr ran off jabbering about “find the lens,” while Selkirk burned through spells, scrolls, and wands to keep them both alive. Finding a temple (or being led to it by Oxyr), Selkirk became aware of a voice telling him how to use a reflecting pool in the temple to scry across planes and find the party. He did so, and once he had the proper focus, he used the pool to open a temporary portal back to the Material Plane. Only then, momentarily relieved of his panic, did he realize that whatever had told him how to use the pool was really using him to help find the party.

Oxyr told the party he fled after Sadeesh’s attack on Aridesa, realizing at last the responsibility he bore for Sadeesh. He described to the party the warped nature of the mirror that connects the Material to the Shadowfell, and how much of what is here is also there, in one form or another. Not originally evil, but warped. Now, with the near total takeover of the plane by a single entity, much of what it is has become evil, and many of its denizens have become evil reflections of those that live here. Thus, the party learned that Sadeesh was actually the shae version of Oxyr, retrieved from the Shadowfell years ago by way of a poorly understood ritual. Oxyr’s attempts to control and restrain him have slowly failed in increasingly destructive ways ever since, until Sadeesh finally fractured their cult and struck out on his own to begin an apocalypse in Riyaqa.

Finn made a Sending to Arastea Ghomesh to inform her that they found Oxyr alive. He had initially worried about her reaction, but took comfort in her recommendation to keep him away from the people at Tulesa. Communing with Ahti Ato in Gol Asad, Zayn learned of dire development in the Asad, with the entire Khasif block absenting themselves from the chamber as important votes on the future of the continent loomed. Uncomfortable with the results of that conversation, and needing to conduct other business there anyway, the party left Selkirk and Oxyr to mind the Seachild for a short time while they Zayn teleported them to Gol Asad. After a quick stop by the pricier markets to exchange some items for more useful equipment, the group headed to the consulate on Sindar’s coattails, who was determined to get some answers to a few questions from the Imperial Consul.

In audience with Ducet, while revealing as little as they could get away with regarding the tome Sindar had in his possession, the party learned a few relevant pieces of information. Ducet told the party how the War of Passage was truly started, and that it was denizens of this world that first earned the attention of Xazat with their dabbling in shadow magic and the resultant “theft” of his power. Tarsus also learned that he had indeed been chosen as a champion to wield the mighty Dervish, but it was Xazat who had chosen him, not Mithras or Rustum. The choice had been an indirect one, with Xazat choosing a Shae male as a champion long ago, who was now on a collision course to participate in the rise of Ahriman’s power here, and the eventual full awakening of Sayoni. If the further implications of why this had to be done this way had not been lost on the party, no one gave the secret away.

Offering a way to disrupt Xazat’s hunt for the book he now knew was found again by mortals, Ducet spoke of an ancient and altogether banned material: hellstone. Able to sap magic from the life-force of any spell-wielder that touches it, the material had the ability to absorb, and therefore block, radiant magical energy. Though outlawed by the council and nearly all other civilized governments, there was still some to be found if one looked in the right places. After Sindar asked about his recent communications with the Guild, Ducet told him bluntly to look more carefully at Rinn and Ignus the next time they crossed paths. The two were not what they appeared to be. Parting ways, Ducet told the party to check in with the Broker before leaving town. He had arrangements to make and would have the man fetch something for them before they left.

Beginning to formulate a plan to strike the CoA using new information as it came to light, the party asked Finn to Send a message to Daso Enna, one of the missing Khasif delegates and a recent ally. Finn asked permission to scry on him for use as a teleport target into the heart of Khasif, in order to hunt down a CoA hideout there. Daso told him to wait until midnight.

In the meantime, the party headed to the dock district, searching out the warehouses and holding areas of the Mueller Trading Company to see if they might be able to access the stores of Anton, their former companion who lost a bard battle after being rapped too hard by a musical arachnid. After some administrative runaround, they finally gained access to the stall. Within, the group found several barrels containing thousands of gold value of rare ores and rough gems- all things the goblins at the nearby quarry had promised to send to Anton as they dug out more tunnels for their expanding tribe. Among the barrels, one seemed to be seeping some filthy liquid into the dirt. A bad feeling crept over the group as they carefully checked the barrel and confirmed their suspicions. It was a barrel of the CoA’s toxin, left here. The party assumed it must be a leftover from the recent assault on Gol Asad, and Sindar set about disarming it. Having a bad dexterity day, he instead flung the lid away from the barrel a split second before it erupted in flame, drawing the attention of nearby staff. One happened to be the same man Finn had worked with on these docks to save people during the attack, and the two quickly reconnected. After Finn explained what was going on, the man agreed to search the rest of the warehouse and take care of any problems he found.

Putting space between themselves and the warehouses, the group headed to meet with Dezil Calish, the Broker, at the Lacy Death inn. They found Dezil waiting for them, with a helper unloading a large object from the back of a wagon that arrived minutes earlier. Investigation revealed the object to be a coffin made of ebony wood inlaid with a gold pattern of vines and leaves. The heavy coffin opened to reveal a liner made entirely of pitch black rock that reflected no light at all. The slightest touch seemed to sap vitality. Dezil reasoned that it was a hellstone liner, meaning this coffin must have been used to transport a truly dangerous individual at some point in the past. For now, it was to be given to the party for some secret task Dezil was not privy to. The party asked if he would help determine the best way to move it as they finished up one more appointment.

The group went to the Asad compound, where they were directed to meeting rooms and finally taken to see the Speaker and their delegate in Raha Delina’s office. After catching each other up on their recent intelligence, the party revealed much of their intended plan to Delina. Having no agents to offer that were usefully placed at the moment, Delina instead offer a few items that might be of value in their endeavors, including his personal prayer beads.

When the party met back up with Dezil, he had determined that the coffin could be teleported as long as it was closed. Saying their goodbyes, the party teleported back to the Seachild with the coffin slung over Tarsus’ back like a massive chunk of timber. Finn caught up with a few more Sendings while Zayn began her efforts to scry on Daso Enna. Finding him after a short time, she saw a scene of bloody battle. Dead bodies lay around him in sloppy circles on a dark stone floor slick with blood. The sound of drops falling away from the twin blades he held echoes off the stone walls of the room until he broke the silence.

“This is the old throne room of a fortress that once belonged to my family, but no longer. You have three days before anyone comes looking for these men. For now, the way is clear.”

Whatever else she was looking at, one thing was abundantly obvious to Zayn as she gazed on: Daso Enna was starting a war with someone. After a quick discussion with the group, Zayn teleported back to Tulesa, taking Selkirk with her. He had upheld his part of the bargain, after all.

Our story closed as Zayn sought out Falat. She had earlier given him permission to begin forming an army, but now upgraded her permission to a decree: raise an army- now.

The Asad

The legislative delay while searching for missing Asad delegates has elapsed. A vote to officially declare the missing delegates dead has been called and passed, and the Asad has requested new delegates from their sovereigns before moving to a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa. The Khasif bloc has left the Asad, en masse.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened on Sindar passing the time by trying to ascertain exactly how a baby mimic might learn a language, and experimenting with strategies to defeat its innate tendency to just eat the textbook instead. Zayn, meanwhile, returned to Tulesa to check in with the house staff and Falat. After speaking with her, Falat recommended that the House begin to raise a proper army to deal with the potential strife ahead, and Zayn approved.

As they prepared to leave the infested remains of Latpasa, Sindar gave Tarsus a fly extract to use in conjunction with an Ant Haul spell in order to slowly float the rest of the party back to the ship, bypassing the throngs of sand shamblers below. Returning to the group, Zayn used her bracelet to commune with Ahti Ato and inform her of their plans to head to Kaleska. While not telling Ahti exactly what they were looking for in Kaleska, Zayn did ask her for any help she could provide with a contact there. Ahti was able to provide little help, as the city’s leadership was in flux with their delegate at the Asad missing and presumed dead.

As morning broke, the party decided to make a stop at Chamber Valley to return the insanely dangerous Orb of Golden Dragonkind they had found to the only gold dragon they knew. Zaun gathered the group up and teleported them to the valley, only to be violently yanked out of the teleport before reaching their destination as they hit the magical barrier protecting the valley floor. They found themselves partway down the slope that held the shack from the original expedition by the Pelt family. Venturing to it, they found Robert Pinan in pretty bad shape. Looking closer when initial attempts to heal him failed, the group determined he must be under the influence of some sort of curse. Erring with caution, Finn used an exceptionally powerful version of his Remove Curse spell to push the evil from Robert. The man collapsed onto his hands and knees, retching violently for several seconds before puking up a live black serpent in a pool of dark bile. With a speed only panic can induce, Sindar loosed a bomb on the thing as everyone else was just beginning to register what they were seeing. The bomb, unfortunately, was poorly aimed and a bit too powerful for the shack to contain, blowing one wall completely clear of the structure. Nevertheless, even the incidental damage from the bomb was enough to destroy the vile creature. After a bit more healing magic, Robert seemed to be on his way to recovery from what must have been some remnant of his close contact with Sadeesh and Sayoni’s influence.

As the party moved farther along the slope, Guardian showed himself in greeting. After he learned that the party had cured Robert of what ailed him, Guardian deemed that he would remain outside the valley for a little longer, before being allowed to return and continue his work. Robert had shortly before been exiled to the cabin when he fell ill of the curse, and the keepers had been planning to kill him when the Watcher awakened again, rather than risk meddling with the magic and possibly contaminating a valley denizen. Over the course of their discussion, Guardian took the party to the Watcher’s grove. Tense minutes later, the Watcher made a grand entrance on the wing, shedding her dragon form as she landed for the graceful beauty of the elven features Finn had been dreaming of a bit too much lately.

As soon became apparent, the Watcher had taken a liking to Finn, returning his curiosity and interest. She mused that she might make him her consort, once the work ahead was finished. The party turned over the orb as they brought her up to date on their findings. She could not add much to what they already knew, but the Watcher did tell them that Skullsoul’s creation was tied to the same incident that bound Arkeles al Farrin to the endless dream to bind Sayoni in turn. If either Skullsoul or Sadeesh were threatened, Sayoni now had enough power to back them up considerably. As such, the Watcher recommended finding a way to threaten both at once. Force Sayoni to split her attention, and weaken her hold on both. Then one might be vulnerable long enough to score a victory. Once they recover Skullsoul, the Watcher counselled that their priority must be destroying it quickly. Sayoni will focus everything she has on finding an securing it again. Before the party left to teleport back to their ship, she gave one final warning: keep all of this from Arturo. If he is tempted to help, or tempted to enter the Shadowfell to rescue them, he will fail to resist the force Xazat can bring to bear in there. It would catastrophic for the entire world if Arturo Ducet finally became the leader of Xazat’s legions he was created to be.

Teleporting back to the ship, a loud crack caught their attention as a hurtling boulder the size of a goat carried away part of the deck railing. Out in the distance, a dune was engaged in a fight with Kando’s new party, having cornered them on the rock where they were to rendezvous with the group. The party leapt into action immediately, seriously worsening the odds for the giant as it began to gain the upper hand against the junior party. Seeing the fight turn against him, the dune giant called out. Seconds later, he was joined by a juvenile roc as the monstrous bird swooped in from a fast dive to snatch Tarsus off the sand and carry him high into the air. Tarsus manage to wriggle around in the grip of the massive talons enough to get his arm free, and summoned Dervish to his hand to strike a skyreaving blow against the underside of the roc. The pair tumbled out of the air and the bird crashed hard into the desert floor. Temporarily unable to fly, it charged back into the battle on foot.

Meanwhile, the giant began resorting to magic to win the contest, summoning a minor earthquake to even the field a bit. Both Tarsus and Kando fell into rifts as they yawned open, finding great trouble in climbing back to the surface. Finn’s summoned earth elemental went after Kando first, reasoning he had less chance of surviving on his own when the spell inevitably ended. Kando was quickly tossed back up to the surface from below, landing a bit hard and getting the wind knocked out of him, but still alive. As the elemental turned toward Tarsus, the spell ended and the rifts in the ground began to rumble closed. As the elemental struggled to free Tarsus, the rest of the combined parties concentrated on taking down the roc and then the giant, in turn. At last, the battle was finished as the earth elemental, nearing the limits of its endurance, finally managed to drag Tarsus to the surface.

In the aftermath, Kando explained that they had been ambushed near the Seachild, while waiting for the party to return. Finn asked Kando to return to Tulesa and take up work for the town guard hunting down infiltrators, closing the deal with a bit of negotiation with Kando’s party to ensure they could bear the loss of their inquisitor. Zayn teleported Kando’s party back to Tulesa, where she was accosted by Dingo with news from his “interviews” with the captured cultists. It seemed the Singed Halls, assumed to be Sadeesh and the Children of Ahriman’s headquarters, were likely not in Nadju. Their involuntary informants suggested the compound was further behind Khasifi borders, in Zacat.

Our story closed as, back on the Seachild, Finn began to wonder if his new ring of sustenance was functioning correctly with his new elven biology. It had been days since he had donned it, but the hunger in his belly just kept getting stronger. Was this the curse that did in the original elves?

The Vote

The legislative delay while searching for missing Asad delegates has elapsed. A vote to officially declare the missing delegates dead has been called and passed, and the Asad has requested new delegates from their sovereigns before moving to a final vote on the future of the Empire in Riyaqa.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as the party gathered and secured the cultists that had barely survived their battle inside the core complex. When the efforts of Finn and Sindar set to interrogate them came up mostly empty, Zayn and Tarsus returned to Tulesa via teleport to retrieve the engineering staff and deliver the prisoners to the custody of Falat and Dingo, leaving them to get to the bottom of things.

Finn delved into the darker end of his divine powers, summoning the incantations to speak with one of the dead cultist corpses. Asking a series of careful questions, he learned the the cultists had not been able to gain access to the core, but they knew that the item currently powering it was an evil item intended to allow priests to utterly destroy one another. Sadeesh had been looking for a specific item, and seemed to have found it before he left. The cultist only knew it as “the key to the one who knows the way”. The remnant spirit knew that arcane cores in An Fallu and Jaleraba had already been searched and looted, and that the next planned target had been Kaleska. Sadeesh was most likely to be found in a place called the “Singed Halls”.

While in Tulesa, Tarsus bartered with Balasar to discover what the Singed Halls were, and discover anything he could about the artifacts taken. Balasar knew only that the Singed Halls were a profane temple to Ahriman, and were once the remains of a temple to Goyetra called the Flaming Halls, which were in turn a repurposed subterranean complex built by an earlier civilization. He did not know much about the artifacts that the party did not already know.

Tarsus and Zayn returned to the Latpasa core complex with the Engineers from Tulesa, led by Graja. After catching up a bit to the work already completed by Sindar and Finn, the engineers sorted out how to access the hidden control room, and in turn, the core. Buried in the access door to the core chamber, they found a large, ancient-looking metal spike wrapped in decorative wire and ringed with mysterious glyphs. It pulsed slowly in the metal of the door. Attempting to remove the spike so they could operate the door latch, engineer Hilo grabbed the spike and was instantly obliterated. A bright beam of light from the spike reduced him to a greasy dust, scattering it across the room and its remaining occupants. Always interested in organic remnants produced in interesting ways, Sindar took a sample of the residue and determined that it was organic, but not human. Attempts at identification from Finn and Zayn, assisted by Graja, revealed the item to be a maleficus spike, which reacts rather violently to the touch of evil outsiders. Hilo had not been what he seemed, but was apparently yet another enemy agent in their midst.

The inevitable result came to pass, with the party and engineers all glaring threateningly at each other until everyone touched the spike one at a time. No further incinerations taking place, they finally removed the spike and opened the core access right after shutting it down from the control room. Quickly making their way to the core bottom, they opened the storage compartment meant to hold the magic item powering the core. The talisman inside at once reached out to Zayn to take it up and wield its power, it so longed to be free of this place. She could sense the pure evil oozing off the artifact, and managed to resist its lure. Quickly closing the compartment, they began to retreat from the room. It seemed everything was in order here, and the power source for the core was in the best place they could imagine for it. Already, deep rumbling from the earth below them was beginning to make normal speech difficult to interpret.

As the last person exited the core compartment, they closed and sealed the door and Finn led the effort to restart the core. A few minutes later, it was again bathed in a maelstrom of heat, sinking it in an ice storm it continuously generated inside the small chamber. Realizing the spike had been placed in the door to stop intruders- likely during the first hours of the city’s fall- the party hammered it back where they found it. Deciding to rest after returning the engineers to Tulesa and before deciding their next move, the party bedded down for the night in relative safety. Before turning in, Finn decided to complete a Sending to the Watcher of Chamber Valley, hoping she might have insight to some of the more troubling artifacts they had uncovered. She told him to dream that night, and they could talk then.

True to her word, that night Finn found his dreaming self in the Watcher’s Grove, with her standing nearby. She confirmed his suspicions about a strange, spherical jewel found among the other artifacts- it was an orb of golden dragonkind, allowing the wielder near absolute control over a golden dragon nearby. She told him that it was the last of such artifacts that remained unrecovered, showing him the vault where the others were secreted away. He swore to return it to her as soon as he was able. She took an obvious liking to the young elf, and told him about the artifact he described Sadeesh fleeing with. It was Skullsoul, an already damnable invention that could trap a soul and turn it to a demi-lich in undying service to the artifact’s wielder. But the soul this particular artifact happened to contain was special, in that it was very likely to be the trapped soul of one of Sayoni’s original consort priests, imprisoned in an attack on their collective tomb hundreds of years ago. While her consort would be a powerful ally for anyone that could control him, that was not his greatest danger. His most potent contribution to the cause of Sayoni (and in turn, Ahriman) was that he still likely knew the exact location of her tomb.

Our story ended as Finn’s dream communication ended, and he instead drifted into less guided dreams of the beautiful feminine elven form of Dyphonaira, the Watcher.

The Vote

The legislative delay while searching for missing Asad delegates has elapsed. Presumably, a vote has been called on the issue of naming new delegates and moving forward with a resolution for the Empire’s offer, but the results are, as yet, unknown.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as the party made their way through the keep dominating what remained of the central district of Latpasa. They had come to the city, now overrun with shamblers, in search of the fate of the arcane core beneath the city. They found the keep mostly abandoned, save for the occasional sand shambler left trapped inside as a revenant of the guard corps that once manned the keep. Making their way to the former governor’s chambers, they discovered the well-hidden relics of his office- the sword, robes, and badged amulet- along with a note of congratulations from Raha Delina, Speaker of the Asad.

Moving deeper into the keep in search of an access or information on the reactor complex, the group began to find dead soldier who had not been turned into shamblers. All bore tattoos on their shoulders of a hawk’s head with the script “first of many”, identifying them as members of Latpasa’s elite guard corps. These guards had survived the initial assault on the city by the poisoned gas, and died later to something else while defending these barracks. The party went over the barracks with a fine-toothed comb, soon locating a secret door, but unable to force it open. Further search revealed the control mechanism in the next room, granting the party access to a large staircase leading down into warm, damp air below.

The reactor complex was far more sophisticated than any they had come across before, with multiple chambers of swirling, heated water connected by channels and unseen pumps. Open pools wafted steam into the air under the dim light of glowing channels along the vaulted ceilings. Searching room to room, the party quickly heard voices in a nearby chamber. Investigating, they found a man and woman arguing with each other. Confronted by the party, the man attacked and was put down relatively quickly, but not before he drew blood. Backing her into a corner, the party offered leniency to the woman in exchange for information on who they were, why they were in the complex, and how many more there were. Reluctantly, she told the party they were with the CoA, and were sweeping this complex (and others like it) for powerful and useful artifacts. She had specifically been looking in the complex library for links to nearby sites that could be plundered. The party found documents in the library that explained why the complex here was so… complex. Rather than powering defensive systems like other arcane cores, this reactor was being used entirely to keep a volcanic eruption at bay, the city having been built atop ancient magma chambers inadvertently, which became active again centuries later. Keeping their word, the party allowed her to escape as they moved deeper into the complex.

Soon, the party came upon another pair of cultists in another room. Zayn baited the pair into following her back to the waiting party in order to ambush them. The plan went well, and the two were overwhelmed quickly. In a desperate effort to call for help, one of the cultists threw a thunderstone hard into the main (and final) chamber of the reactor complex, releasing a shockwave of sound. Soon, more cultists poured forth from the rooms surrounding the main reactor chamber. 2 men armed with menacing blades moved forward against the party, backed up by two others slinging spells and brandishing the holy symbol of Ahriman. Tarsus successfully drew the attention of swordsmen, engaging them in a protracted battle as the two clerics were split up by the rest of the party. The combined assault from the rest of the party finally disrupted the support the cultist clerics were providing to the swordsmen, and they found themselves on the defensive against Tarsus and the rest of party. A fireball rocketed out of the darkness, announcing the presence of a new assailant. Following the trail back to its source, the party saw Sadeesh standing only a few yards away.

Sadeesh and the party volleyed spells back and forth for a few moments as they finished off the remainder of his cultists. Once he was left alone, Sadeesh disengaged with a cryptic statement about losing the battle but winning the war with what he recovered here. As he began to teleport away, Finn attempted to stop him with a Dimensional Anchor, but the spell failed. Sadeesh had prepared a number of defensive spells, including a barrier granting him immunity to such attempts. In a rush of collapsing air, he was gone. Concerned about the state of the core and whether Sadeesh and his followers had disabled it, the party rushed through the remainder of the complex trying to find an access to the core or its controls.

Unable to find access to the core, they did locate viewports that allowed them to see the still-functioning reactor. It seemed stable for now, at least. Sadeesh and his people had not succeeded in accessing it. They had cleaned out a trove of artifacts stored in the complex, however, ostensibly as future fuel sources for the core. The party found logs indicating what had been stored there, and went through the remnants to determine what was missing. A few minor items had been taken, several items had been left behind. The most concerning object that was missing was an evil artifact called Skullsoul. A repository for a powerful evil soul, it was believed to contain the remnants of one of Sayoni’s original consorts, and would spell real trouble if it were to return to her hands.

Our story closed with Sindar eventually locating an access to the core, as Zayn left to bring back engineers from Tulesa to help evaluate the systems and their stability.

The Vote

The legislative delay while searching for missing Asad delegates has elapsed. Presumably, a vote has been called on the issue of naming new delegates and moving forward with a resolution for the Empire’s offer, but the results are, as yet, unknown.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as the party consolidated their position on the small island in Port Miller’s harbor, preparing for imminent attack from their unseen and unwanted guest. Dirt shuffled near the spot where the book lay closed on the ground, and Finn responded with Invisibility Purge. As the sphere of shimmering power expanded around him, it blasted away the shroud of magic obscuring the 9 foot tall beastial shadow looming over them, and the nightmarish thing attacked. War joined in the effort with the party to vanquish this foe. His skills were considerable, though he had trouble integrating with the tactics and timing of the rest of the group. Unable to retreat for fear of losing the book to the interloper, the party pressed forward. Tarsus did his best to stay front and center, absorbing everything he could from the beast. Tremendous injuries were heaped upon him as the thing tore into him with fervor, severing tendons and cracking bones, bleeding the man’s very strength from him. Just as it seemed the thing would be able to hold its position long enough to steal away the tome, the group managed to turn the tide, doing enough damage to distract and enrage the thing. But trading blows with the party of heroes proved an error in judgement, soon costing the nightshade its life on this plane.

After a brief break to collect themselves and figure out how to make Tarsus combat-effective again, the group set out for Port Miller College to rendezvous with Willie and officially send him to his next assignment. The had expected to find the college in the midst of preparations to withdraw from Riyaqa, following an update from the IGG office in Gol Asad. What they found was a campus completely abandoned, except for a bewildered Willie that they found wandering the darkened halls. Spreading out a bit to search the place more effectively, the group eventually came across some puzzling conditions in the Rector’s office. A bit of checking around revealed a message left in a not very obvious place. Reading it carefully, Sindar realized it had been written using the same code he often used in his own messages to the guild. It pointed the way to a group of researchers still hiding on the campus. Finding them in the special projects lab, the party got an update from Autumn, Sindar’s supervisor within the IGG. The rest of the campus personnel had already gone, including Rinn. Only a small team was left behind to finish tying up loose ends, including making contact with Sindar. Facing his refusal to leave the continent until his tasks were complete, Autumn placed Sindar on administrative leave from the guild, to expire upon his return to Farwater. She took supervisory custody of Willie, and sent Sindar on his way after taking his reports and updates. With their business in Port Miller complete, the group teleported back to Tulesa to rest for the night.

The next morning, Finn and Zayn spent considerable effort working on Finn’s non-denominational chapel. Zayn had a conversation with Falat to order that house troops refrain from public worship that might be divisive to other worshippers in the fledgling city. While talking with the newly resurrected Hana Daea, Finn discovered that things weren’t going that well between her and her son, Kando. No longer adventuring with Finn, Kando had decided to sign up for work at the new explorers’ guild in town, worrying Hana about the path her son was taking in life. Going after him, Finn discovered that Kando had signed up for work using Finn’s last name, Dennison, instead of his own. He discovered Kando’s group had headed out north the day before to escort some researchers to a remote site., on a job funded by Mehra Rabadi of Herlish. After that, they were due to head to Latpasa to try and recover arms and armor from the abandoned garrisons there. Learning this, Sindar spent the rest of the day preparing fuel for the SeaChild as the rest of the group made final preparations to depart that evening. A Sending spell between Finn and Kando gave them a rough bearing north of Tulesa, and they were off.

Late in the morning the next day, SeaChild was stopped for a fuel cell change when the party spotted a humanoid form floating along far in the distance. On impulse, they used a mirror to signal to the figure, which responded in kind and approached. Upon his arrival, the man introduced himself as Alexander Selkirk, Imperial wizard at large and non-active member of the Grand Council. He claimed to be on a search for various kinds of information about rumored devices of great power hidden throughout Riyaqa, and was on the trail of a “hidden city” in the desert. After some questioning back and forth, they group came to the realization that the hidden city he searched for was their own Tulesa, and the devices he sought were the arcane cores they had encountered themselves. Not wanting to hand the keys to the shop to a stranger, but intrigued at the possibilities of Selkirk’s assistance, the group struck a deal with him. They offered the location of Aridesa and it’s hidden crypt, asking him to explore and investigate the premises. If he could determine what had happened there that flushed most of its populace in the direction of Tulesa, and help determine the whereabouts of Oxyr and the Blazing Sun artifact, they would help him find Tulesa. Selkirk thanked them for the information and departed in the direction of Aridesa.

As the SeaChild continued on, Finn completed another Sending with Kando, learning that his party’s first mission was scrubbed after losing the researchers to a sand devil ambush. They were now on their way directly to Latpasa. SeaChild turned toward Latpasa itself, intending to meet them there. The remaining journey took them another two and a half days. Somewhere far to the south, Speaker Raha Delina was summoning the Asad this morning to an historic vote that, one way or another, would change the course of many thousands of lives.

Arriving at the edge of Latpasa, the group encountered its legendary gatehouses on the plains of scrubgrass surrounding the city. The wall and gatehouses looked serene in their abandonment. Using Dimension Door to hop atop the wall, the party found a different story within the walls. The streets were alternately empty and littered with swarms of sand shamblers as their gaze passed across the city. A half dozen such swarms lay between them and the likely location of the access to Latpasa’s core- the Queen’s Keep near the center of the city. A nervous run through the street accompanied by liberal use of Dimension Door quickly saw the group to the roof of the keep. Using a grapnel to cover the last of the distance to the tower roof, the party was briefly engaged by a few straggler shamblers- likely the remnants of keep guards.

The story closed as the party slowly and cautiously made their way down through the tower floors. Individual shamblers were very nearly trivial encounters for any one of the heroes by now, but getting caught by surprise could still be dangerous.

The Vote

The legislative delay while searching for missing Asad delegates has elapsed. Presumably, a vote has been called on the issue of naming new delegates and moving forward with a resolution for the Empire’s offer, but the results are unknown.

Quote of the Day

Our story opened as SeaChild arrived a few leagues west of where the party waited. They looked on in muted astonishment as its crew brazenly drove the desert-dwelling trimaran into the surf, and then a short distance out to sea. It seemed the Willie’s modifications actually worked. Upon their boarding, Willie reported to the party that Plainsrunner had caught up to him, and were waiting about an hour away. Arndt, the Vengeance, and company headed back out to open water, intending to sail for Farwater, back in Collosa. Before parting ways, Zayn and Tarsus signed an agreement with Blue, making the Gyredancer an official privateer in the service of Tulesa.

Upon their return to Tulesa, the party went their separate ways for a short while to attend to various bits of delayed business. Sindar set to work on his mysterious plant creature, finally discovering its true nature: an immature mimic. Just the revelation that there were such things was sure to raise hackles around the IGG- potentially the most exciting part of the discovery for young Mr. Pelt. Processing this discovery for a while, Sindar took a break to present Tulesa’s hidden arcane core to the new engineers from Haralin. Inquiring after the treatment and results of the imprisoned cultists in Dingo’s care, Zayn and Tarsus met Goffa: one of Dingo’s newly appointed “special police”. Meanwhile, Finn ordered preparations for Hana Daea’s body, intending to attempt his first resurrection and fulfill a promise to her son, Kando.

Individual business attended to for the moment, the party reconvened to meet with the ruling council they had established to rule Tulesa in their absence. After each member provided updates on their particular areas of responsibility, Zayn and her compatriots tasked them with figuring out ways for the small town’s economy to begin to flourish and become self-sustaining. The contents of the Tulesti citadel’s vault would not last forever. Meeting with Squeaks, apparently now Tulesa’s resident druid, Zayn gave her custody of the powerful item that had been used to temporarily strand their ship- the weather control stone. Squeaks was asked to make use of it as often as possible to help the town develop arable land quickly.

Meeting privately with Arastea Ghomesh, Tarsus came clean about some potential bad blood between her and the original group from just a precious few weeks ago: They had acquired the book that Wils had stolen from her, and turned it over to the Empire before they really had a handle on what was happening in Riyaqa. Ghomesh was bothered, but generally peaceful with the revelation. After some discussion, she revealed that she had been on her way to meet a contact in Port Miller when the book was taken by Imperial agents. She knew only that she was to go to the Tarred Crow and ask about “the war”. With that, Tarsus knew exactly who she was intended to meet, and carried that information back to the rest of the group. If he knew something about that first book, then War might know something about the one they carried now. Needing a night to rest before pressing further, the group settled in in Tulesa. Finn used some of his remaining time to hire the Asad engineers (in town to oversee the construction of the sovereign spire representing the source of power behind an Asad seat) to design a chapel for him, and he took the first steps toward construction. After about a day and a half in town, the group was ready to leave for Port Miller.

Zayn carried the group to Port Miller with a Teleport spell, heading nearly directly to the Tarred Crow tavern. Moments later, they had their audience with War and presented him with the page they still carried from the original book that was supposed to be delivered to him. After some analysis and referring to a couple of tomes he had brought to him, War announced that previous information they had was close, but not entirely accurate. The wards the page described were confusing because they were designed to contain an evil entity on the inside, and ward it from other evil entities. It was a collection of spells meant to contain and conceal. When the group moved on to asking about the cursed skulls and the prayer book they currently had, War stopped the discussion and gave them a more remote meeting location off shore. Before breaking of the meeting, the group gave War some of the crested Black Fleet armor they had collected in Haralin, asking him to put it to good use.

Hours later, the group rowed up to the island War had indicated far out in the bay of Port Miller. War had brought a gift for the party as thanks for the armor they had presented.
Under the more controlled circumstances of the island, War directed Sindar to again open the book and demonstrate what had happened before. Opening it plunged Sindar into a nightmarish recollection of events from the life of the book’s author, living through his induction into the clergy of the Church of Fen somewhere in the Shadowfell. As the vision paralyzed Sindar, the rest of the group saw the portal open to the Shadowfell, just like last time. Only this time, there was an army waiting. Hundreds of shae charged the portal, though thankfully, from a distance. Finn grabbed the book to force it closed before they came though, but found something strong resisting his efforts- something too strong. Seeing his friend’s struggle, Tarsus jumped in. Together, they overcame whatever unseen thing had tried to stop them. The portal collapsed and Sindar snapped out of his trancelike state.

The story closed as the relative peace of the sea-washed island was broken by a low growl from an unseen source. The thing that held the book open was still here. Something had gotten through from the Shadowfell, and would need to be sent home.

The Vote

The vote has been tabled in the Asad while missing delegates are searched for and rescued. An automatic procedural clock of 60 days started when they went missing, with 4 days now remaining before the delegates are declared dead and replaced.

The Black Fleet has been spotted in Riyaqan waters, now heading south out to open sea.

Quote of the Day

The session opened with the party escaping the Haralin dockyards into the open sea aboard a skiff piloted by Ganet Godo, a trial pilot who had worked in the yards. They managed to get underway with two of Haralin’s civil engineers that had focused on researching and using the arcane core beneath the city, now on a slow buildup to overheat and destroy itself in case the Empire reneged on its promise to leave. Once they had a good distance from shore with no Black Fleet vessels in pursuit, Zayn contacted Ahti Ato with her Communion Band and updated her on the last day’s events. Ahti promised to take the news straight to the Speaker, and to contact her tomorrow with an update and the Speaker’s plan. Finn completed Sendings with many of the party’s allies, discovering a variety of information.

Happily, Willie had the SeaChild on a test cruise after completion of his modifications, and could make his way to them within a couple of days, though it would stretch his food and water thin since he had not planned for such a long voyage. Arndt was still covering the escape of other ships with the Vengeance, but would catch up to them directly. Blue was his usual rambling self, but seemed to be in his element and not in immediate danger. A lack of response from Emi worried Finn, but not much could be done at present. After Willie told him to check up on Dingo, Finn checked the goblin glass Dingo had given him to find the little spymaster prodding some prisoners with a sharp stick. Zayn used a Sending to speak with him, discovering that the prisoners were spies for the Children had been discovered. He claimed to be acting on Falat’s orders, so Zayn left him to it.

As their small vessel made it’s way east, the party went through identifying acquired magical items, destroying a marker gem they discovered belonged to a shade lord from the Shadowfell. Removing the damaged enchanted bookmark from the tome it protected, a chill went through some of the party members as they saw not a book revealed, but a book-shaped lockbox very similar to the one they had received from Wils many weeks ago. Even through the enchantments on the box, Finn could detect powerful evil within. The party made plans to find a safe place to open the box and determine the exact nature of what it held. Just then, a small bird fluttered to the ship, alighting nearby with a message on its leg. As it was taken in hand, the bird shimmered out of existence, leaving only the note behind. The note was from Arndt. Vengeance was coming to meet them, and had several refugees from Haralin aboard. He provided a list of names. The party checked them with the engineers aboard their own ship, and Graja identified several of the names as being well-known smiths from the southern reaches of the city. The party completed a Sending with Arndt in response, establishing a place and time to meet.

Two days later under the beating sun, the skiff rendezvoused with the Vengeance, Gyredancer, and two smaller vessels in company. After transferring to the Vengeance, they sank the skiff and headed back out to sea. Zayn had communed with Ahti Ato again, and learned that the Speaker was sending a ship to meet them at sea to retrieve the evidence they had from Haralin. For many reasons, it was dangerous to approach Gol Asad without dire need, and even more dangerous to bring such valuable information near the city without careful preparations. She told Zayn the ship meeting them was the Town Crier, and that it would be bringing mysterious security measures with it. Ahti had also told Zayn that the death of the governor of Haralin presented a political opportunity for Tulesa. If the governor could not be resurrected for some reason, then the independent cities would need to vote for a new governor for their sister satrapy. That would be a vote Tulesa could influence heavily. Zayn rebuffed the offer, refusing to delay righting the wrong of the governor’s murder for political gain. Closing the conversation, Zayn informed Ahti of the declaration of war from the Empire that had been intercepted. Ahti said she would pass the information along, but lack of a formal delivery to the assembly would make action on such information difficult.

As the ships traveled north to drop the party off and meet Willie, Finn and Zayn worked hard to convince the Haralin refugees to resettle in Tulesa, where their skills would be invaluable. When most had agreed, Finn did a Sending with Arastea Ghomesh to send another trimaran with supplies and a minimal crew. They would resupply the SeaChild and pick up refugees to return them to Tulesa. Ghomesh agreed, and dispatched the Plainsrunner under the command of Zedin Alasan, a veteran commander of the trimarans. Arriving in the vicinity of their rendezvous point, the party decided to take a boat to shore for a hew hours to safely investigate the contents of the book container. Vengeance came in close and dropped their launch into the water, allowing them to row to shore as the Vengeance moved back out to a good distance.

The two engineers came along to assist in opening the complex mechanism, which gave way quickly under the combined efforts of Sindar and his two new assistants. Carefully, Sindar flipped the cover open with everyone else standing a good ways back. A wave of vile energy pulsed through the assembled adventurers as a darkened doorway emerged nearby. Beyond, the terrain was unchanged, but was plunged into the darkness of midnight. Figures could be seen standing in the distance, vaguely humanoid and shimmering with fluid darkness. As one, the members of the party all turned to look at the small black-bound volume within as it pleaded to be taken through the portal, offering limitless power for whomever complied. All but one of them resisted the call, and Zayn dove forward for the book. Reacting faster than he thought he could, Tarsus tackled her before she could reach it, absorbing a blast of energy from her before Sindar slammed the cover closed, collapsing the portal and ending the book’s influence. In the time he gazed on the thing, the book had spoken directly into his mind, describing its contents to him in its offering of power. He knew it was a book of rituals, collected millennia ago by a Shade Hierophant of the Church of Fen (though the book did not describe precisely what that was). The rituals grew in power as the hierophant went along, collecting more and more information and moving toward his ultimate goal- learning rituals that could kill gods and take their power. Disturbing as that concept was, even more disturbing was the name of the priest that had owned the book: Arugal Xazat. Realization crashed over Sindar like a breaking wave- that priest had succeeded. He had killed the gods of the Shadowfell and taken their power for his own. Sindar re-locked all the mechanisms guarding the tome, and packed it away in the bag of holding. Quietly, the group returned to the Vengeance.

Back aboard, as the rest of the party worked out the geometry of densely packing treasure onto tapestries for magical storage, Tarsus ran across a man named Kasik who was frantically searching the ship. He discovered a valuable custom-made sword had been taken from the merchant (or was misplaced) and agreed to help him look. Outside, the ship slowed as the wind died off- doldrums were unfortunate, but not unheard of, and should pass within the day. Joining the search, Finn dispatched Kando to help. A while later, Kando sought out his teacher, asking him to come to the ship’s bilge deck. Down there, they found what Kando had found- the sword and its scabbard were lying in the damp bilge. Retrieving it, they found blood smeared heavily on the blade. They wiped a small amount of the blood onto a bit of cloth, and placed that on the revelation cloth they carried in the hope of locating the source of the blood. The cloth glowed, but indicated no particular direction. Moving around bore no real change in the indication. They alerted Arndt, who assembled everyone on deck for a head count and determined a man named Fenno Qurat was missing.

Arndt asked the party to look into the matter, but keep it as quiet as possible to avoid a panic. People were already talking ghosts and curses with the doldrums imprisoning the ship as it was. After asking a few questions, they determined that Fenno had been an apprentice with Arlat Dovesh, a blacksmith in Haralin. Interviewing Arlat and his wife under the cover of a Zone of Truth spell, a complicated web of relationships among the refugees began to unfold, and it became clear they would need to sort this and root out the killer before they sent the lot on to Tulesa. The web started with Arlat, whom his wife (Anda) suspected was having an affair, probably with the hussy that ran the local tavern, Denna Herla. Kasik Vey, the man who’s sword had been used for the crime, owed money for the sword to Arlat, and was convinced that Veno Ardina ( a smithing rival of Arlat) was out to get him because he had started buying from Arlat instead of him. In all of this Fenno seemed to be a more or less neutral party until the group uncovered that Denna had tried to get him laid with a local whore one night to celebrate a victory in his life, only to find that he had no interest. He preferred men, and she had kept her friend’s secret. With this discovery, the truth began to unravel quickly. Anda’s suspicions had been correct, but she had been wrong about the identity of Arlat’s lover.

Confronting Arlat with their discovery, he confessed that Fenno had threatened to tell their secret to everyone if Arlat did not follow through on his various bedside promises, and Arlat had killed him for it shortly after coming aboard, weighing him down and throwing him overboard. The ship’s purser was able to corroborate that several pieces of chain shot ammunition for the swivel guns were missing- handy weights to make sure a body does not resurface. The revelation cloth had been trying to tell the party that the body was not in a specific compass direction because it was, by now, far beneath their feet. In a last ditch attempt to save himself, Arlat pointed out that he could bring master-crafted weaponry to their settlement if they simply let this go, and revealed that he had brought on the doldrums around the ship. He promised to give up the item that had done it in exchange for a promise of commuting any charge against him. The party locked him in a stateroom to confer with Arndt. Arndt laughed and offered up the bag of items he had already found while everyone searched for the missing man aboard the ship. Within, the party found a weatherstone which was active, and shut it off. After recovering various other powerful items from the bag, they discussed how to deal with Arlat. Arndt informed them that if the man were turned over to him, he would be tried according to the ships’ charter, as such fairness of laws at sea were the only thing that held crews like his together with no national flag to sail under anymore. That meant a gruesome and public death for Arlat- murder at sea was not taken lightly. A second option was available, since the refugees had officially accepted status as residents of Tulesa. Zayn could designate the man a prisoner of her government, and take responsibility for him until he could be disembarked.

Agreeing to take the man back to Tulesa to stand trial, Zayn chose the second option. Securing Arlat in the brig, the group settled in for the night to get some good rest. Early the next morning, a call went up as a line of ships was spotted fast approaching on the horizon. There were 10 in total, and they were bearing straight in for the Vengence and her fleet. Unsure of the intent of the ships, the Vengeance beat drums to quarters, preparing for battle. Hearing her signal, the Gyredancer and other ships followed suit and fell back from the Vengeance, gaining room to maneuver for battle. As the line of ships closed, one broke away and raised signal flags when the Vengeance signaled a challenge. It identified itself as the Town Crier, seeking news of Haralin. As the ships maneuvered around each other, the security measure Ahti had spoken of became clear. Each of the ten ships was marked identically- every detail from the name on the stern to the arrangements of gear on deck was the same. One came forward and sent a boat across to the Vengeance, and the party transferred the bodies of the governor and his wife, along with the Remembrance Orb and other paperwork. when the loaded boat was pulled back aboard its own ship, the party watched as ballast was jettisoned to correct for the new weight. These people were serious about their ruse.

The story closed as Finn completed a new Sending with Willie, finding that the SeaChild was only about 9 hours out, and the Vengeance turned toward the beach to deliver the party to their meeting point.

The Vote

The vote has been tabled in the Asad while missing delegates are searched for and rescued. An automatic procedural clock of 60 days started when they went missing, with 7 days now remaining before the delegates are declared dead and replaced.

The Black Fleet has been spotted in Riyaqan waters, now heading south out to open sea.

XP Gain

The party has advanced to level 10. The party remains at Mythic Tier 1.

Quote of the Day

The session opened with the party looting bodies of the dead Imperial marines and consoling a somewhat shaken Graja Helin. Soft thumps through the walls betrayed the battle beginning to rage outside as ship crews fought to retake their vessels and escape the city. From several sources now, the party had information that important prisoners were being kept in the camps outside the city. With fighting getting underway within the walls, this seemed like their best opportunity to take the camps quickly. Seeing an opportunity, Graja interjected that if they wanted engineers for their project in the desert, the east camp was where they would find them. Some of her peers had been taken there, along with an imperial officer who had gone against orders. If the party would go after her fellow engineers, she would continue on her way to the core control bunker the Empire had not found yet, and do what she could to throw them into further disarray. As they parted ways, Graja gave them a question that only one of the actual core engineers could answer, as a way to identify them.

With that, the party was off, using Zayn’s Dimension Door spells to cover ground as quickly as possible when marine forces opened fire on the keep windows. Tarsus opted instead to use the fly and invisibility extracts Sindar had given him, since transporting everyone would overtax Zayn’s magic. Alerted to the movements of the party, Black Fleet archers were quick to adapt each time the group was spotted, changing positions to put arrows on them with urgency. As they moved, a great rumbling shook the entire city like an earthquake. All around them, the city walls themselves were sliding down in to the earth, leaving only the massive gate houses standing. The careful cordoning plan the Empire forces had crafted fell into chaos in a matter of minutes, as all control of the city streets passed into the ground, inch by inch. It seemed Graja had figured out what the party’s new control rod would do with Haralin’s core.

Eventually working their way near one of the inland spires of the city, the group got a few moments to rest while Tarsus got their position again and closed distance with them. Within seconds, a guard in the spire above spotted the party and raised the alarm. They looked on as squads that had been pursuing them closed through the streets. Zayn’s magic was being push to the limit, and if she did much more she might not be able to back up the party if a proper fight started. So they ran, flitting across the roofs of the close-packed buildings to try and throw off their pursuers. The most agile and lightly armored of the marines scaled stairs and ladders of nearby buildings, joining the chase.

As she began to fall behind her compatriots, Zayn chanced another spell to turn herself into elemental air and drift into the sky. Below, the chase across rooftops continued at a breakneck pace, leaping alleyways and dodging shoddy shingle-work with a handful of marines closing in. It did not take too long for the fastest of the marines to catch up, halting the chase as Finn and Kando found themselves hemmed in, Sindar turning to help as Tarsus and Zayn approached from the sky. A few hard blows were exchanged as the party consolidated their position. The marines did the same, but were disrupted by flights of black arrows skewering a couple of men closest to the party. Seemingly from thin air, a black-skinned humanoid in a dark cloak had materialized on a nearby rooftop and engaged the marines, providing an opportunity for the party to escape. Seizing their chance, Zayn and Tarsus came in close, helped the party move to the safety of a nearby rooftop, then lifted everyone away from the roof on the last of Sindar’s flight magic.

Floating gently and invisibly to the customs check office outside the east wall, the group set down near the building and explored the structure. Finding it recently abandoned (probably housing troops that were now rushing into the city), the group used the opportunity to catch their breath and surveil the camp further east across a wide field. They saw a few soldiers, but nothing they couldn’t handle. A fairly thorough search of the building turned up some interesting items, including documents alluding to local citizens that had conspired to help the invaders and some stamped platinum bars probably intended as payoffs. As they debated when to make their move on the camp, Finn saw that the soldiers there were dragging prisoners into a line outside the buildings. They were lining up prisoners- never a good thing when cannon shells are already flying. The party had to move right now.

Charging the camp, the party got close enough before breaking cover to legitimately surprise the distracted marines. The opening seconds of the fight went well for the party as the remaining marines fell back a bit to regroup. Two warbinders were with the troops, and would have to be a focus if the party wanted to end this quickly. As they figured out their tactics, a new wrench was thrown at the party when Imperial Admiral Jonathan Lamarck walked out of one of the buildings, gloves torn and soaked in red and fresh splatters of blood on his breastplate. It was immediately obvious he had been here “interrogating” one of the important prisoners this camp was meant to hold in a coincidence of spectacularly bad timing. He drew a sword crackling with energy from its scabbard and ordered his troops to slaughter the prisoners while he would “deal with this nuisance.” The marines immediately went to work on the manacled civilians present.

The next few seconds were bloody and intense. The two warbinders fell back from the party, making themselves difficult to get to through the layer of soldiers between. And then something happened. The two looked at each other, gave a nod, and attacked the other marines and the admiral. The party had wondered to themselves many times how priests aligned with good gods could participate in an invasion such as this. And here it was- the admiral had taken things a step too far, and the priests turned on him for it. Their betrayal of the admiral and the marines was the only opening the party needed, allowing them to quickly roll up the remaining marines as they worked their way across the camp to try and defend the clerics. Unfortunately, Lamarck’s vengeance got to them first, and both priests paid for their change of heart with their lives. Still many of the prisoners had survived, and now the party stood toe to toe with the commander of the Black Fleet. The air around them darkened, and Finn let out an exasperated sigh. He knew what that meant even before Arturo Ducet opened his mouth.

Sensing that this battle was over, since Ducet wasn’t ripping his throat out, Lamarck sheathed his own blade, prompting the party to relax just a touch, though not quite enough to let their own guard down completely. Ducet informed the admiral that he knew that this attack had been ordered based on false information deliberately provided to the Emperor, and he would see it undone. He advised Lamarck to distance himself from the endeavor before heads began to roll from the throne room in Isamon. Lamarck laughed, telling ducet that the war declaration had already arrived in Gol Asad, and nothing would be undone now, regardless of how it had come to pass. Ducet pulled a torn and somewhat blood-dampened parchment from his cloak and displayed it. It bore the Imperial royal seal. “You mean this?” he asked. “It seems it never made it to the Asad floor.” Doubt crept into Lamarck’s expression, and Ducet pressed his advantage. He informed Lamarck that this battle was already lost, but he would allow the man to pull back from Haralin peacefully. Lamarck begrudgingly agreed, and began the trek on foot back to the city.

Ducet then turned his attention to the party, asking if they had recovered the wayward officer in the camp. A search finally turned the man up hiding in a toilet. A bit a magic cleaning later, and he was ready to travel. The man’s name was Major Anax Amando, and he was a Black Fleet officer who had been given orders to round up and kill villagers, which he refused. He had later helped other important prisoners escape to the countryside once he was stripped of his unit and sent back to garrison- a move which had earned him a bed in this camp and the focused efforts of Lamarck to reveal “who had turned him.” Ducet revealed that the presence of this officer was why he had come personally. He had the spells needed to take Major Amando directly back to the Imperial Palace, and tell the Emperor first hand what had happened here in his name. Ducet could reveal the evidence he had that elements of a shadow government within the Empire had plotted to trick the Emperor into war before it was justified, and hopefully sway the throne to reverse course before it was too late. Hearing a brief from the party of what had transpired within the city, Ducet ordered Talia to locate the governor’s son and his entourage, and get them safely to the Asad. Then she was to assist the party with their next steps. With that, the vampire primarch opened a portal in the road before them. Through it, the immaculate tiled floors of the Grand Terrace were clearly visible. Ducet and Amando stepped through, and were gone.

The party scoured the remaining prisoners asking around about who was who, who was injured, and helping where they could. In due course, through the question Graja had given them, they identified only one surviving engineer, Hota Janelo. They fled with him to the nearby shipyard docks, where they found a man with a boat getting ready to depart. Brokering a deal for passage with him out to sea, they waited only a few minutes before Graja arrived, all the control rods for the Haralin core in hand. The story closed as the boat pulled away from the pier and rowed out to the sealanes, and Finn prepared a series of Sending spells to update their allies on what had transpired.

The Vote

The vote has been tabled in the Asad while missing delegates are searched for and rescued. An automatic procedural clock of 60 days started when they went missing, with 11 days now remaining before the delegates are declared dead and replaced.

The Black Fleet has been spotted in Riyaqan waters, moving east along the southern coast. A secret Imperial occupation of Riyaqan territory has ended!

Quote of the Day

Our story opened with the party settling on accepting the less appealing aspects of Talia’s plan in favor of it being their best option to get deep into the city unmolested. They spent some time carefully preparing and coordinating what resources they might need to succeed once they were inside the city, realizing this might be the toughest fight they’ve encountered yet if things go awry. Satisfied with their planning, the group moved out from the remnants of the Imperial camp and rested. During the night, they spied a shadowy form observing them from the trees nearby, but were unable to learn more about it before it was gone. In the morning, Talia warned the party about the more capable priests backing up the Imperial forces- men called Warbinders. Even just happening nearby, one of these priests stood a good chance of feeling Talia’s presence and unraveling their ruse early, so they were to be avoided at all costs. With their cover story straightened out and disguises applied, the group headed for the city wall.

They met their first resistance at the farmer’s market along the road into the west wall of Haralin. Zayn took the lead in fast-talking their way through the soldiers there, and the group was led into the city by a marine officer named Cardiff. He took them to an inn inside the inner wall district of the city. The city’s original inhabitants had been entirely forced from this zone, and the only traffic on theo roads was occasion patrols and companies of marines moving here and there. Depositing the group in a room at the selected inn, currently in use as an officers’ barracks, Lt. Cardiff left to find the High Colonel commanding the garrison. As soon as they were alone, the group scoured the room for anything useful or magical, and then Finn connected with Blue via a Sending spell to tell him they were close, and to be ready. As usual, only part of what Blue had to tell them came back to Finn as his rambling response was cut off by the limitations of the magic. Zayn used her Communion Band to speak with her Asadin, Ahti Ato. She told Ahti that the occupation of Haralin was done by the Empire, not the Children of Ahriman, and that they were seeking evidence to return to the Asad. Zayn described the breadth of slaughter that had taken place on the island to hide the Imperial secret. Ahti carefully noted all her mistress said, and reported that there had been a little trouble at the Tulesti estate, but it was nothing the council there could not handle. In recognition of their status, a diplomatic spire was being erected there, identifying the estate and it’s town as the home of an Asad Sovereign.

Shortly after, Finn completed a Sending with Thuli Black, informing him of their progress and telling Thuli to move forward with his own plans. Thuli mentioned that the Blackjacks had reported much the same information that morning, but did not elaborate on who they were. He did mention they would be ready to assist when the time came. While all this was going on, Sindar set about forging a new set of orders to get the party through the inner city and into the courtyard of the Tidefall Fortress at the city center, copying much of the formatting of the orders drafted to get them this far. Collecting Talia’s unconscious form and disguising Zayn as an Imperial Lieutenant, the group slipped out of the inn and headed off.

Moving through the streets roughly in the direction of the fortress, the party crossed paths with several sets of soldiers without incident. Eventually, a pair of soldiers approaching them on the street caused alarm in the group as Finn realized one of them was a scout the group had encountered and subdued earlier on the island, but not killed. If he recognized them, the game was up in a very bad way. Thinking quickly, the group ducked into a large shop nearby, and ran headlong into a squad of marines busily looting the place. Feigning anger at such actions unbecoming of professional soldiers, Zayn played the part of a junior Imperial officer impressively. The squad dropped their loot and shuffled out quickly. Alone in the shop, the group re-arranged their disguises to match the original cover story and headed out to cover the last bit of ground to the fortress gates. They soon came across another pair of marines, but were challenged this time since they were in the streets without an escort. Presenting their forged paperwork, the group very nearly convinced the pair of their ruse. Instead, the soldiers decided to escort them the rest of the way personally, and ask the major commanding the gate guard about the unusual orders once they arrived.

At the gate they met Major Kendrick, the supposed author of the order that Sindar had forged. Luckily for the party, he had written many access orders that day and wasn’t entirely sure whether the order was genuine. Unluckily for them, he was a suspicious man by nature, and ordered the party placed in holding cells until he could sort the matter out. Finn talked the guards escorting them to the cells to allow him to respectfully store the body of the “diplomat” somewhere more suitable. They made a stop by the mausoleums on the fortress grounds, where the group respectfully placed the body before Finn snuck in a couple of sharp kicks on their way out, hoping to wake Talia from her torpor. From there, the party was taken to a small dungeon attached to the keep and left in two cells. The resident Imperial jailor was an excessively creepy and sadistic man named Junov Sinn, who seemed to take pleasure in tormenting his charges and made no exception for the diplomatic mission left in his care. After he wandered away to bother other inmates, the group made quick work of the shoddy door locks on their cages and commenced sneaking about the place to get stock of the prisoners.

The most interesting people they found were the son (Dunai Farindi) of the deposed governor of Haralin and his retinue (Rasia Farindi, his aunt; and Odesh Vliae, a favored stable hand and sometime playmate). Just as they were freeing these people, Junov Sinn happened around the corner with a start. Tarsus charged him to stop him from raising the alarm, but a stool flung from behind him nearly took the small man’s head clean off, ending his life in one blow. Odesh clearly did not like Junov Sinn. Guessing they had mere minutes before someone else might happen by, the party moved quickly to interview and free more important prisoners. They struck paydirt with Graja Helin- an engineer who had worked on the arcane core beneath the city and had been thrown in here until she became more cooperative in talking about it. Sindar was easily able to establish a rapport with her after showing her the transmutation control rod from the Tulesti estate arcane core. An idea occurred to Graja, and they developed a plan. There were functions of the city’s core that had never been deciphered because of missing pieces. Perhaps this rod would do something cool with Haralin’s core. The group agreed to let her take the rod and try, in exchange for information about how to deactivate the harbor defenses and release the ships being held in the interior waterways of the city. With that, Graja was off as the party ran for the harbor control console in the southwest tower of the keep.

Arriving at the console at the top of the tower, the party found a pair of guards that they quickly dispatched. Figuring out the controls took a bit longer, but they soon enough had them sorted. The loch gates and arch portcullis began to slowly grind out of the way at the same time that large spikes and the harbor boom retracted, clearing the way to the open ocean. Shots rang out below them as men on the deck of captured ship rose up together against their captors. In the distance, a short line of Imperial gunships closed on the harbor entrance, presuming the cut off any ships taking to opportunity to escape. The battle to liberate Haralin had begun.

The party did their best to smash the console and destroy its inner workings before heading to the keep’s interior. They hoped to see what they could recover, and see what they might destroy in order to further hamper Empire forces. Moving quickly through the keep, they found the lower floors deserted and not containing much of value. They came across the slaughtered corpses of house staff stuffed here and there in rooms that had been barricaded off, and eventually found the governor’s bedchamber. Within were the bodies of the governor and his wife, recognizable from the many painting and tapestries bearing their likenesses. They had been murdered in their sleep. The library produced a curious volume protected by an enchanted bookmark meant to hide it from scrutiny. Some damage had been done to the library during an earlier assault, and the bookmark was apparently malfunctioning. It hid the book well enough, but revealed its own magic, defeating the effort. The party decided to investigate more thoroughly later, and stuff the book and bookmark into the bag of holding for now. Noise from further upstairs drew their attention. A fight was going on somewhere.

Anyone fighting with Imperial soldiers was an ally in these circumstances, and the party got moving quickly to join the fray. They found none other than the engineer they parted ways with earlier, who had been cornered by a scout marine while sneaking through the keep. The group engaged and easily dispatched the single soldier, but reinforcements had already been on the way. In moments, they were surrounded and in a real fight. A few grenadiers, a warbinder, and another man cut off the party’s escape from the area. The grenadiers got in a few good opening shots against clusters of the party members before they spread out and took advantage of magical fire protection. Failing to adapt to that tactic, the grenadiers were all but ineffective after that, which turned out to be critical to the party’s success. The odd man out was soon identified as High Colonel Blackstone, commander of the Imperial garrison. Seconds later, the party learned at the point of his sword that he was a skilled magus as he forced the first of them to disengage temporarily with an electrical discharge from his weapon.The fight ebbed and flowed around the storeroom where Graja had initially been trapped, and into the hallway outside. At great cost to Finn’s healing reserves, the Black Fleet forces were eventually whittled down to just the Colonel, who fought to the death.

Though the party came out ahead in this encounter, it had cost them a lot and left their resources strained while still deep in enemy territory. The story closed as they rushed to pull bodies into the room and secure the scene, ensuring they would have the upper hand if another group came after them before they could figure out what to do next.

The Vote

The vote has been tabled in the Asad while missing delegates are searched for and rescued. An automatic procedural clock of 60 days started when they went missing, with 11 days now remaining before the delegates are declared dead and replaced.

The Black Fleet has been spotted in Riyaqan waters, moving east along the southern coast. A secret Imperial occupation of Riyaqan territory has been discovered!

Quote of the Day

Our story opened with the party moving along the west road of the large island, trying to close distance with the city of Haralin. Careful progress needing to be balanced with a speedy approach, the group opted to remain on the road as long as possible as they moved south. The first several hours was relatively smooth going, suddenly interrupted by the pop of a thin wire at Tarsus’ feet. It had been stretched across the entire road, and seemed to snap back in slow motion toward a hastily hidden tube strapped to a tree trunk several yards off the road. Instantly, paper and pitch wadding ejected from the tube as an alchemical charge rocketed skyward, detonating brilliantly a few hundred feet above their heads. Cursing, the group shuffled quickly off the road and took cover briefly before continuing south by moving through the dense undergrowth.

A little less than an hour later, an Imperial patrol of eight soldiers rounded the bend in the road ahead of them, moving quickly north. They were most likely on their way to investigate the launched flare. Knowing these soldiers were capable scouts, the party hunkered down and hid, waiting for the patrol to pass before moving on. As they continued south, they came across another of the flare traps. Unable to even feign self-control at the possibility of such a prize, Sindar fell upon the device and commenced disabling its trigger in order to collect and study it. Unfortunately, a mix of excitement and impatience overcame his steady hands, and a muffled thud announced the launch of another flare as Sindar blinked the soot out of his eyes. Decided the patrol they passed was far too close for comfort and could be here within minutes, the party lit out at full speed through the woods to get some distance quickly before following their confiscated map to the village of Pato.

They found Pato much like the other villages they had checked: sacked and burned, with the populace massacred. In the distance, the low-frequency thuds of cannon fire disrupted their mournful silence. Tarsus climbed a tree to get above the dense foliage and spied the source. Just south of them, on the coast, a pair of Black Fleet freighters were putting the finishing touches on yet another village. The scene was too far away for the party to get there quickly, and the visible soldier too numerous to guarantee anything but a quick death. While surveying their surroundings, Tarsus spotted red canvas through the dense brush to the east. He quickly climbed down and informed the group, and they headed out.

Closer surveillance indicated the flash of red came from a small Imperial encampment, likely to be the scout headquarters indicated on their map. The group conferred on a plan to gain entry, expecting at least a dozen highly skilled soldiers to occupy the camp. Deciding on a course of action, they put their plan to work. Disguising Tarsus as best they could as a Black Fleet scout marine, the group approached. Tarsus came crashing toward the camp first, immediately attracting the attention of a pair of nearby archers who aimed at him, then relaxed their aim as they saw him clearly. He yelled out to them that he was being pursued, and they tensed again, scanning the woods behind him for threats. One of them raised the alarm, and the party realized their plan may have a small flaw as the nearby tents began to disgorge more soldiers.

Tarsus turned to face his comrades, playing the gambit for all he could get from it. Some of the soldiers shouldered past their “fellow marine” to get a clear bead on the rest of the party, and he attacked. The archer in front of him was taken completely by surprise, and the rest of the party was able to seal his fate before many of the marines could react. The rest, however, recovered quickly. They took up positions in a well-rehearsed pattern, archers moving to the outside and soldiers moving to cover any easy paths to reach them. The opening seconds of the fight saw the party release some devastating shots against the assembled marines. The Imperials identified Zayn as a primary threat, subjecting her to a withering barrage of arrows as putting her on the ground quickly. Finn rushed to her as the rest of the group closed ranks and focused on each marine in turn as best they could.

As Finn tried to get Zayn back into the fight, Sindar did his level best to teach the marines why it was a bad idea to clump up with wide sprays of acid and flame. In response, they sought to teach him why casters and ranged fighters should stay out of melee. The party downed a couple more marines in the exchange, but Sindar fell unconscious in the barrage of blows just as Zayn regained her feet. The group was staying just ahead in the body count, but the raw numbers still greatly favored the marines. For his efforts to get Sindar back to his feet, Finn found himself the focus of the marines’ efforts, and fell next under the onslaught as Tarsus finished off another of the archers. Tarsus called out for the party to disengage, and they fell into a controlled retreat, jamming a healing elixir into Finn to get him up and moving. As he tried to hold the line for his comrades, Tarsus was beaten down and captured. The remainder of the party pulled back into the woods to regroup, heal up as best they could, and discuss a rescue plan. Common sense dictated one course of action, but the prevailing sentiment of “what would Tarsus do if it was one of us” ruled the day. The party rushed headlong into a renewed assault on the camp.

Inside the largest of the tents, the remaining marines began to tie up the unconscious Tarsus. As noise from the new attack arose outside, his guards did the only thing they could do. Turning their back on this armored behemoth was an obvious mistake. One of guards pulled a blade and slit the man’s throat in a quick, practiced swipe as they prepared to counter the rest of the party. Outside, Zayn and Sindar threw absolutely every bit of violence they could muster at the marines, surprising them with the viciousness of the assault. Two marines fell quickly as Finn rushed to the tent. He knew that Tarsus wouldn’t have long, and might already be dead. In a purely technical sense, he was right. Tarsus was dead, but his soul had not left just yet. Without regard for his own safety, and with literally not a moment left to spare, Finn rounded the corner and flung his holy magic at Tarsus’ body, still falling sideways from a kneeling position to the ground.

Tarsus hit the ground unconscious, but alive. A few seconds later, he opened his eyes again, unsure of why the Hall of Heroes looked so much like the place he had just left. Pain wracking his body and the yells of his party brought realization to him, and he rose again. Dervish pressed itself into his hand as he swung at the marine that had cut his throat, and the man’s head came free of his shoulders. Outside, Sindar and Zayn chewed through their limited resources, felling one man after another. The marines finally regrouped outside the tent, but the battle was much more even by that point. Both sides paid dearly for the next few seconds of fighting, but the final few marines surrendered in the end. The severely battered party manacled their new prisoners and searched the camp for intelligence. They found a few useful bits, but relied heavily on questioning the senior prisoner, a cleric. He provided key information on what might prove to be new hope regarding Haralin. It had defenses the Empire occupiers did not yet understand how to activate, which sounded very much like the arcane “core” and defenses their own citadel had. If they could beat the Empire to these systems and use them first, they might turn the city itself against the Black Fleet.

As the party discussed the wisdom of staying here to recuperate versus moving into the woods, and what that might mean for their prisoners, the air nearby darkened at the arrival of their compunctious ally, Talia. Having scouted the city somewhat, she had a plan to get close to the commander of the garrison there, whose assassination would hopefully throw the occupiers into disarray long enough to gain a foothold there. At its core, her plan involved the party masquerading as escorts for an Imperial diplomatic envoy carrying orders for the fleet admiral from the Imperial Banner Hall. Talia would pretend to be the dead envoy (hardly a difficult feat for a vampire), and she would give the party a solid enough story to get close to the garrison commander, claiming her original message was for his ears only. Then she would attack, and the party would be free to accomplish their own goals inside the city.

The story closed with much discussion about the merits and costs of assassination as a combat tactic, and the party eventually agreeing that this might be the only realistic way to keep their promise to Blue and deal a significant blow to the occupation forces.

The Vote

The vote has been tabled in the Asad while missing delegates are searched for and rescued. An automatic procedural clock of 60 days started when they went missing, with 12 days now remaining before the delegates are declared dead and replaced.

The Black Fleet has been spotted in Riyaqan waters, moving east along the southern coast. A secret Imperial occupation of Riyaqan territory has been discovered!

Quote of the Day