The Story So Far

• Chapter One: The Mirelurk Malevolence
• Chapter Two: The Stygian Gambit
• Chapter Three: Reach for the Stars
• Chapter Four: Prisoner 13
• Chapter Five: Tockworth’s Clockworks
• Chapter Six: Beach Day
• Chapter Seven: Masterpiece Imbroglio
• Chapter Eight: Mysteries
• Chapter Nine: The House of the Flayed
• Chapter Ten: Kossin Vale
• Chapter Eleven: Into the City
• Chapter Twelve: Chaster’s Choice
• Chapter Thirteen: Consequences

Prelude: Prison

Neverwinter Prison was fairly pleasant, as prisons go.  The cells weren’t very cold, and the guards brought new rushes for the floor each week.  The worst that could be said was that the prison was far too crowded, with five or six people forced to abide in a space built for two.  The chamber pot filled up quickly, and even if you doubled-up on the bunks, someone was going to be sleeping on the floor.  To address the issue, the magistrates frequently assigned convicts to hard labor, repairing the city walls or working in the mines.  There was a lot of shuffling around, as inmates came and went.

It was not unusual, then, when five of the prisoners were ushered from their respective locations around the prison and placed into a holding cell all together.  What was unusual, however, was the fact that there was a strange object waiting for the prisoners when they arrived.  It was a small music box, ornately decorated in gold filigree.  A small golden key was resting on top of it, just the right size for the box’s keyhole.

The five prisoners looked at each other uneasily.  After a moment, one of them stepped forward and inserted the key, turning it in the lock.  The music box opened and began to play, filling the room with the crackle of a recorded voice.  It was clearly magical and entirely eerie.

After a long moment, each of the prisoners made their decision.  They all gathered near the door, taking the opportunity offered.

Welcome to the Golden Vault.

Chapter One: The Mirelurk Malevolence

After making their choice, the party of five — three elves, a human, and a dwarf — were escorted out by a tired-looking guard.  He led them out into the courtyard, his spear thumping on the floor at intervals.  The courtyard was nearly empty at that time of day, since no prisoners were at exercise or having a meal.  The only person there was a male gnome.  The gnome wasn’t in a guard’s uniform, but instead was wearing dusty brown robes and black fingerless gloves.  After glancing around and visibly taking account of each of the prisoners, the gnome gestured for the party to follow him.  

He led them into the small kitchen of the prison, near the courtyard, moving with the easy familiarity of someone who knew the way.  They walked to the rear of the kitchen, shuffling past three prisoners peeling potatoes, to a stout cellar door.  The gnome knocked four times, then he opened the door and ushered the party down into the darkness.  The stairs descended through an initial dank smell before turning into the light and airy smell of flowers.  To their astonishment, the prisoners emerged out onto a busy city street – and it was not in Neverwinter.  Glancing behind them, they found that they’d exited out of a door marked “privy” in the rear of what appeared to be a Chultish restaurant.  Several large flowerpots were set nearby, flush with vibrant blossoms.  Across the street was a sign for a shop: Varkenbluff Sundries.  They’d been transported to their destination in the city of Varkenbluff in the span of a moment… powerful magic.

A grave halfling messenger wordlessly handed one of the prisoners — Alnitak, a handsome elf with a sword at his side — a sealed parchment, and then promptly wandered off.

“Meet me at the Sage’s Quill today as soon as you can,” the missive read. “I beg your help in a delicate matter whose importance cannot be overstated. I shall await you in a purple hooded robe.”

The note was signed, “Dr. Cassee Dannell.”

Without delay, the party met at the appointed rendezvous.  As they entered the Sage’s Quill, soft light revealed mahogany furniture and luxurious carpets. A few genteel patrons murmured in the lounge. They soon noticed a purple-hooded figure tucked into a corner booth.

Dr. Dannell gestured for them to sit. The party noticed lines of worry etched into a face that seemed unaccustomed to them.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said. “A few weeks ago, I attended a dig in the Murkmire that unearthed a furrowed, light-green stone. I’ll give you all the details, but the bottom line is that it isn’t a stone at all—it’s the egg of an eldritch horror. Moreover, my research indicates it’ll hatch at midnight tonight.

“Trouble is, no one will listen to me. The university ignored me, and I was caught trying to steal the egg from the museum so I could contain it. Now I’ve been fired, the Murkmire Stone display at the museum opens tomorrow, and the egg is about to hatch.

“You’ve got to steal the Murkmire Stone and bring it back so I can save the city!”

After some discussion, the party agreed.  They pumped her for information, and she handed over a crude map she made of the public areas of the museum, as well as what she knew about the situation.  She had a way for them to get in: there was a gala event tonight for the opening of the new exhibit.  She had expensive fancy clothing for them and a set of tickets, so they could scout out the scene and possibly even steal the stone at the party.  To assist them, she gave them a bag of holding for their adventuring gear (and where did that even come from… they were unarmed and unarmored in their cells!).  Spindle, a thin-faced elf in thief’s leathers, took possession of the bag.  From the way he and Alnitak were bantering, they seemed to know each other well.

If the party succeeded in their theft, Dr. Dannell promised them they can keep her bag of holding and she’d give them twenty gold apiece.  Rich pay for a single night’s work at the party this evening, on the third of Uktar.

The former prisoners dressed themselves in fancy clothing, stowed their gear, and went to the party.  They’d been given their freedom, but now they had to earn it.

The party spent a few moments casing the outside of the building, examining what was nearby and what vulnerabilities might exist.  Most of them went inside, excepting only Spindle, who found an entrance to a basement loading dock in the rear of the building.  He popped the lock with a twist of a pick, and entered.

Alnitak and the other elf, an older fellow with hollow eyes named Stasha, went inside.  They were accompanied by the human and the dwarf.  Almost immediately, they ascended to the room where the party would be held, and they found the display with the Murkmire Stone.  It was quite large and heavy, and moreover, there were alarms and guards everywhere.  This was going to be a challenge.

The human, a brash young man named Chaster, began to make a scene.  He swaggered and caroused, badly flirting with the curator.  As a counterpoint, Alnitak smoothly moved from one person to another, chatting them up with a bard’s silver tongue.  He drew information from strangers and explored the surrounding rooms.  Stasha kept an eye out, looking for opportunities, while the dwarf examined the stone’s display case in detail.

Down in the basement, the stealthy Spindle thought he’d stumbled upon the key to the whole mission.  They could get in and out this way, there were no guards, and there was even the promise of a nice bit of loot stored down here.  It did smell odd.  Almost too late, he discovered that this was the smell of a lurking mimic, which took the opportunity to lunge for the tempting elvish meal.  The elf, fleet of foot, sprinted up the stairs in blind haste.

The room above appeared to be a break room for the guards, and it was mercifully deserted.  Spindle searched the room quickly, finding a few unusual passes stamped with the museum’s mark, and then slipped out to join the rest of the party at the gala.  He’d almost become mimic food, but he’d profited: the trio of passes were meant for the guards, and they’d render the holders invisible to the museum’s alarms.

The gala was beginning to wind down, and as Spindle rejoined the rest of the thieves, it was becoming clear that they were running out of time.  Chaster decided to gamble on something risky, and began being quite loud and disruptive.  He climbed the mechanical dinosaur display near the party, shouting and fumbling as though he were intoxicated.  It drew a considerable amount of attention, and perhaps the distraction was why Spindle was able to lift the contents of the curator’s handbag and Stasha was able to sneak off and ascend to the attic undetected.  Unfortunately, even that scene didn’t draw all of the attention away, and the guards gently but firmly escorted almost the entire crew outside at the gala’s conclusion.  Even the dwarf, Durin, who tried a clever ruse with a mechanical marvel in the privy, was brought outside.

Alnitak, Spindle, Chaster, and Durin met in the street as the museum doors slammed shut, and talked worriedly about the best way to get back in.  But it was Stasha, who’d simply hidden in the attic quietly, who was able to pop open the skylight and lower a rope to them.  The whole party climbed the wall except for Chaster, who was left on guard.  They were in.

Once inside, the crew was worried about the difficult task that lay ahead of them.  They knew there were many guards and that they had regular patrols.  Spindle had lifted a guard schedule and a key off of the curator, but none of that would get them past the six guards who were probably between them and the dangerous egg.

Durin chose that moment to reveal a remarkable ability that he had.  Carefully scrutinizing the exact manner in which the stone and marble of the museum fitted together, he analyzed the minute impacts of footfalls and shifts in pressure, and he was able to identify exactly where the nearby guards were standing.  It took extraordinary skill, but he steered the party a path around the edge of the museum’s second floor, around to the cafe.

Outside, Chaster went to visit the nearby city watch station.  Using most of his money (and some he’d borrowed from Stasha), he bribed a guard to let him borrow one of their uniforms, then he returned back to the museum.  If something went wrong, he’d be the one to come “help” the museum guards.

Meanwhile, the crew inside found a single guard who was having a snack, munching on a large loaf of bread and singing a recent popular song (“I love bread, yes I love bread, oh yeah”).  They crept up on her and knocked her unconscious, hiding her body behind the cafe bar.  Then they snuck behind the backs of two other patrolling guards, taking the opportunity to swipe a large rock that was approximately the same size of the Murkmire Stone.  Alnitak used magic to attempt a distraction, imitating the curator’s voice from another room, but the guards were only briefly fooled.  Hurriedly, the whole party stuffed themselves into a tiny custodian’s corridor, then — while a whole gaggle of guards and their captain investigated the suspicious room where they’d just been — snatched the Stone.

They piled back into the custodian’s corridor (barely) just in time to avoid the guards again… but the guards had noticed the missing rock and now saw the switch, and the alarm was raised.  The crew sprinted for their attic exit.

Outside, one of the guards burst out to the street and headed for the city watch station.  Before he got there, though, he saw a human member of the watch standing just outside.  “Help!” he said to Chaster.  “Someone’s robbing the museum!”

“I’ll go raise the rest of the watch,” lied Chaster pleasantly, heading in the correct direction before looping back to the shadows near the building.

The party ran as fast as they could, but Spindle fell behind.  When the rest of the party had reached the attic stairs, he was still at the other end of the corridor… and the guards were hot on his tail.

Thinking quickly, Durin used his mechanical magicks to ensorcel the hall behind Spindle with a snare spell, while Spindle himself dumped a double handful of ball bearings on the floor.  The ball bearings scattered everywhere with a musical tinkling: they’re a trusty tool of the modern rogue, and they never seem to run out.

Spindle might not have made it clear if it hadn’t been for these traps, since the guards were fast but not especially acrobatic.  The captain ended up suspended in the air by the snare, while the two other guards with her went skidding and fell hard on the ground, sprawling.

The crew reunited outside after a rapid descent, and went to rendezvous with Dr. Dannell.  She was delighted to hear that they had the egg, but alarmed at the shouting and stomping outside.  The Sage’s Quill was right near the museum, and the party hadn’t quite made it out undetected.

After reconvening at Dr. Dannell’s (former) office at the university, a safer distance away, they handed over the egg.  She looked at it with fear and appreciation, and handed them each a pouch of gold with trembling fingers.

“I’ll take care of this,” she assured them.  “The crystal case is at my home, and I’ll bring the egg there and seal it up.”

The party was dubious.  Durin pointed out that they’d just stolen the very thing she was caught trying to steal earlier that day.  Dr. Dannell agreed after some convincing, and so Chaster dressed her in the city watch uniform, and Alnitak disguised her appearance.  Nervously but resolutely, the good doctor left.  She’d lost her career and she might yet lose her freedom, but she’d seal away the horror that was only hours away from rising up.

The job was done, and as the tension faded away, the crew looked uncertainly at each other.  They’d met their obligation to their mysterious benefactors, the Golden Vault.  Now, they supposed that they were free to go their separate ways.

Alnitak and Spindle had been captured with Durin while on a job, but the elves and dwarf didn’t seem sure that they’d be sticking together.  Likewise, Chaster had his own business.  Stasha was content to follow the dictates of fate, but what was fate telling him?  It was unclear.

Before parting, the crew agreed that they’d at least go to an inn and share a pint together.  They settled in to a small nameless tavern near the city gates, and Spindle bought a round for everyone.  It was a quiet, pleasant moment.  While each of the crew had tried their hands at crime to a greater or lesser degree, this was most complex heists any of them had ever attempted.  And they’d saved a lot of lives, to boot.  For most of the party — all of the party? — this was one of the greatest feats of their life.  And now it was over.

As Elnitak drained the last of the ale from his mug, though, he felt something metallic bump into his lips.  Puzzled, he lowered the tankard and peered inside.  His eyes widened in surprise as he reached in, and pulled out a glittering, golden key.

Taking it from his mouth, he moved to set it on the table, but it resisted oddly as he lowers it down.  It clinked against the air, as though something were invisibly present on the empty tabletop, even though probing fingers could still find nothing but emptiness.  There was something there, but it’s like only the key could interact with it.

Moving the golden key around, Alnitak discovered that it was an invisible box with a small hole in the front.  Another music box.  He inserted the key into nothingness, and turned it in the invisible lock.  Another music box appeared instantly, the lid opening soundlessly.  There were a handful of papers inside, and another recording began to play, filling the room with the crackle of a recorded voice.

Chapter Two: The Stygian Gambit

 The back room in the Brine Widow was well appointed, with a polished wood table, paintings of local landscapes, and wrought-iron lanterns. Platters on the table were piled with food, and a pot of tea steamed in the center of the table.  It was the thirteenth of the Rotting (Uktar), and it was time for their next job.

The tiefling before the crew had red skin, cobalt-blue eyes, and curly white hair she wore in long twists. Black horns rose from her forehead in tight spirals.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation,” she said, tightly.  “I’m Verity Kye, and what I’m about to discuss with you requires the utmost secrecy. I can’t stress to you enough how important it is that you speak nothing of what you hear within these four walls.”

After only a moment’s discussion, the group agreed.

“The Afterlife Casino is a new Nine Hells–themed attraction just outside town. The owner, Quentin Togglepocket, built it using prize money he stole from me, and I’d like you to give him hell. He’s hosting a tournament there. I want you to steal the erinyes statuette he plans to award as a prize, embarrassing him in front of the big names at the tournament. I also want you to steal back the five thousand gold pieces he stole from me. Bring the statuette and the gold here, where I’ll be waiting for you.”

According to Verity, none of the group would be able to simply get a job at the casino.  Quentin was only hiring tieflings — which had been her idea for the theme! — and obviously none of the crew would qualify.  She wasn’t a thief, and didn’t know what their best plan might be.

Verity had some things to assist the party, however.  She gave them a special bag of holding to carry the gold, but warned them that they wouldn’t be able to take anything out of the bag — to do so would require a command word that only she possessed.  She was a trifle cagy with her explanation, clearly wary of the future moment when she was going to collect a large sum of gold from them and pay them only a fraction of it for their trouble.

She also had a map.  The map Verity handed over was a hand-drawn floor plan of the casino and the employee-only areas. Verity paid Gildur Draak, a dwarf who worked for the construction company that built the casino, to provide her with information about the building’s nonpublic areas.  Of particular interest was the section with the high-security vault and the many security mirrors that had been placed around the casino, where they allowed the guards in the office to keep an eye on everything.

The tournament was only expected to last for two more days, so they didn’t have a wealth of time.  The crew decided to go that very moment to the casino for a first look and some gentle probing.  It was three miles north of Varkenbluff — a short carriage ride.

After they arrived at a landing next to the local river nicknamed the “River Styx,” they found several boats waiting for them.  The tiefling ferrier of their chosen boat ably navigated their boat downriver and into an underground channel. As the cave mouth swallowed the party, they heard music over the echo of a distant waterfall.

The cave’s ceiling rose high above their heads, and dancing lights bobbed around hanging stalactites. The river wound through the casino floor, splitting the cavernous chamber in two and passing under arched stone bridges at various points. Card tables and other gaming stations surrounded by chattering patrons filled the open space. A cheer rose from deeper in the cavern, which was decorated to suggest excitement, opportunity, and excess.

The ferrier steered their boat toward the left bank, and the boat rocked as it bumped up against a wooden dock. The ferrier then raised one hand, gesturing at the glittering sights before them, and intoned in a deep, raspy voice: “Welcome to the Afterlife. Temptation awaits.”

As they exited the boat, each crew member took a different approach.  Prod the place from every angle, they reasoned, and they’d find the weak points.

Chaster took the direct approach, simply walking to the front desk and asking about a job.  He figured he’d test the theory of whether all of the employees really were tieflings.  Verity had mentioned that some people wore makeup and false horns fixed with gum — if an old sea-hand like himself couldn’t get a job on the boats, though, that would be fair proof that the restriction was real.

A guard led him through the back corridors to the employees’ lounge, giving him a glimpse behind the scenes, where Chaster met the infamous Quentin.  The garishly dressed gnome had a devilish countenance to rival Mephistopheles, with ruddy skin (perhaps made redder with rouge) and a pitch-black little beard.  In a friendly but firm manner, he curled his lips in a lopsided smile. “Well, now,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Chaster explained his experience with boats and asked for a job, but Quentin turned him down cold.  The best the affable gnome could do was perhaps work with one of the casino’s suppliers.  Chaster thanked him, and made sure to take a good look around as he was escorted back to the casino floor.

Back on the floor, he spotted Stasha, and had an idea of how to test another aspect of the casino’s security.  The elderly elf had recently been blessed with the ability to change his appearance, thanks to the attentions of his otherworldly patron, and that gave Chaster an idea.  He picked a fight.

Once he’d decked the elf and knocked him into the river, he watched closely as security guards immediately closed in.  He was escorted out of the venue by security, in what was fast becoming his signature move.

In addition to taking a surprise bath, Stasha had managed to examine the security arrangement for the statuette and the tournament.  The betting was fast and heavy, and most of the attention was on the action, so Stasha was able to examine arrangements at his leisure.

Alnitak had immediately begun socializing.  He drifted into the Phlegethosian Spa and Stygian Baths, where a stressed customer could get a moment of luxurious pampering. The air in was warmer and more humid than in the casino proper and bore a sulfurous fragrance — sharp, but not unpleasant. A tiefling seated behind a desk gave him a warm smile. Chintz curtains were drawn behind her.

“Dear soul,” said the tiefling. “Care to enjoy a massage, relax in our sauna, or take a warm bath?”

Alnitak opted for the latter, choosing one of the baths with some students from the university.  They were bluff and hale young men, drinking and joking, and they warmed to the smooth Alnitak immediately.  The handsome elven bard chatted them up glibly, pumping them for information about the casino and what they’d noticed.  Almost at the same time, he ingratiated himself with a gaggle of giggling girls who were also students, all members of the Sisterhood of Rocca Rocca Nim.  He made fast friends (and perhaps more) over the course of a few hours in the spa and on the casino floor.

For his part, Durin hit the copper slots.  And he played some Life and Death at one of the tables.  And he took a look at the tournament.  This wasn’t the healthiest environment for a gambling addict.  However, he was able to look into some of the employees — and he was able to meet with a local thief who knew the lay of the land.

With some shameless, extravagant lying, Durin convinced the thief that he was a candidate to become a member of the illustrious Shadow Thieves.  This was not true and was very likely to result in the local footpad’s death, but the man was sufficiently annoying with his self-importance and unjustified confidence in his own pickpocketing skills that this was perhaps for the best.  For the low price of a deadly lie, then, Durin obtained two of the uniforms worn by employees.

They were on their way, and they went to bed with a sense of excitement — plus a few extra gold, since they’d walked away from the casino as winners.  The odds might be a against them, but they’d already beat them once.

The unnamed crew met for lunch the next day before heading back to the casino, and discussed their findings.  They felt like they’d made progress, and that they’d want to continue with gathering resources.  Rather than doing the job that day, they thought it would be best to wait until the last day, when they might have been able to obtain enough uniforms for all of them, plus security passes.  They might even be able to get one of the crew a legitimate position at the casino — the face-shifting Stasha could impersonate a tiefling with ease.

Chaster felt like he couldn’t go back yet, after speaking so directly with Quentin, but he thought that he could continue to provide useful distractions.  A casino that only hired tieflings, one of the most distrusted species?  That was something he could work with!  Stepping away from the crew’s meeting, he went to a pub full of roughnecks from the docks.  He plunked himself among them, ordered some ale, and began grumbling about the hornheads taking all of the jobs.  He was a cleric of the storm, and it was time to whip up a tempest.

Meanwhile, Spindle and Alnitak took the afternoon to look into the lives of some of the employees.  Spindle had followed some of them home the previous night, and so he’d identified a boarding house where they stayed.  He investigated and found some of their rooms — and staked out a few of them specifically.  He was confident he’d be able to burgle some more uniforms and passes, if they needed them.  Alnitak also bought a powerful emetic for Spindle to use on them, in case they needed them to stay home vomiting instead of showing up for work… and of course Alnitak couldn’t resist charming one of the employees.  Lydia, an employee at the casino, agreed to a date with the dashing bard at Rumpleton and Sons: An Art Place, the next day at noon.

Stasha, meanwhile, assumed the form of an entirely forgettable tiefling of the infernal persuasion, and went to try to get gainful employment.  Quentin was just as affable with Stasha as he had been with Chaster, but he wasn’t quite willing to hire someone off the street without any references.  “You worked in Neverwinter?  Anywhere I might know?”

Stasha tried to conjure up some likely-sounding lies, but it didn’t quite succeed.  Momentarily defeated, he went back to town briefly and visited where Spindle was staking out the boarding house.

Chaster found luck in two separate locations, making angry speeches about the foreign tieflings stealing all of the jobs and corrupting the children.  And while he didn’t have good fortune at a third establishment, he was lucky enough that he was able to start a fistfight with a stout tiefling businessman — and win, handily.  By the end of the afternoon, he’d gotten much of the city stirring with discontent.  They were nearly to the point of rising up as a mob, but even Chaster’s best bigotry couldn’t get them there.  He settled on writing a vaguely threatening letter to Quentin, promising to be able to assist with the issue if Quentin would meet him in town at the fancy restaurant portabello the next day.

At that moment, Stasha was himself back meeting with Quentin.  This time, he’d pulled out all the stops.  He’d gotten a forged letter of reference from Spindle, he’d disguised himself as a beautiful female tiefling with perfectly tousled hair, and he’d begun his charm offensive with a clerk at the cash desk, Travis.  Before the hour was out, he’d been hired as “Alicia,” given a uniform and pass, assigned to the cash desk, and been given five golds’ worth of chips to play with.

Alnitak had dragged Spindle along in the evening to the Afterlife Casino after they assisted Stasha, and they met up with the gals from Rocca Rocca Nim and the bros from the previous evening.  They attended the circus’ lion show, watched the play at the tournament a little, socialized, and took the opportunity with Stasha to test the security on the statuette’s case.  Stasha’s conjured invisible servant tampered with the front of the case and it flashed bright for a moment, paralyzing everyone nearby.  Quentin was apologetic, but Alnitak insisted on a round of free drinks for everyone and made a date to meet back up with the girls the next day.  Not coincidentally, Alnitak’s big fuss gave some space for Stasha to keep examining the trophy case: all eyes were on the elf with an entourage who was making a loud fuss.

And all the while, Durin gambled.

They were all going to have a busy day tomorrow, the last day of the tournament.  Stasha had to report to work, Spindle had to mildly poison and rob some employees, Chaster had to finish out his racist rabble-rousing, and Alnitak had two different dates to get to (as well as a robbery to help with).  The stakes were high, but they were out of time.

The final day of the tournament, each member of the party got busy.  Spindle had a harness made for his choice of magical item (an immoveable rod), so that a number of people could all be buckled into it, and then proceeded to burgle the rooming house used by some of the casino employees, making off with three more employee access cards.  Alnitak, on the other hand, had a lunch with Lydia at the same time that Chaster met with a contemptuous Quentin.  Lydia was pleasant but not helpful, and Quentin was rude and dismissive of Chaster’s rabble-rousing, recognizing him from the previous day and mocking him as “boat boy.”  Ironically, Chaster had in fact rented a boat to use on the lake near the casino that very morning, acquiring it from a lovely wizened lampreywoman for a small handful of gold.  (She promised a pair of lamprey pies to go with it.)

As the tournament began at noon, the party put their various plans into play.

The manipulator, Alnitak, gathered his group of Rocca Rocca Nims and guided them over to the high-stakes room where the tournament was unfolding.  He knocked into Quentin, spilling the gnome’s drink.

“I’m so sorry,” the bard said graciously, but Quentin remembered this troublesome (and influential) patron from the other night, and apologized with a tight smile himself.

“No, it is I who am sorry — I am happy to see you again.  Please, when I have this refilled, may I offer you and your friends a complimentary glass?”

“Thank you,” said Alnitak… and as soon as the wine arrived, he poisoned Quentin’s draught.  Within minutes, Quentin’s smile became even more strained and he started to look distinctly green under the reddish pancake makeup.

Spindle waited in the wings for his chance to get at the prize statuette, watching the tournament unfold.  There were only four players left, and one of them busted even as he was watching.  They were running out of time.

Stasha, the inside man, learned about how the cash cage worked.  The coins and chips were magically exchanged by the enchanted desks, and so there would be no opportunity to simply shove money into Verity’s bag of holding.  He was going to need to get directly into the vault.

Asking for a break, he used his disguise and position to go to the back rooms, and reported to the security team that there were some problem players who Travis needed help with.  This lie would only buy him a moment, and he used it to flirt and distract the one remaining guard while his magical unseen servant floated around and explored.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a way to get rid of the last guard.

Chaster had his own specialty, and it was rioting of various kinds.  He took this moment to sneak into the circus holding pen and hide in a storage bin briefly until he saw the chance to free some circus animals and start some fires.  One way or another, he would give the rest of the party the distraction that he knew they would need.

At this moment, all hells broke loose.

The remaining guard rushed to help with the loose lion and baboons and fire, shouting for more assistance, leaving Stasha behind.  The disguised elf slipped through the nearby door and glanced into the vault.  Inside, the hulking remains of a minotaur stood guard, baleful blue light glimmering in the hollow sockets of its horned skull.  He sent his unseen servant to begin stealing, and then stepped up for combat, joined a moment later by a breathless Chaster.  The minotaur’s eyes shone, and it lunged.

Back at the tournament, Quentin began violently vomiting, rushing to throw up into the nearby Styx even as people began to rush out of the circus, fleeing a loose and bloody lion.  Alnitak used the opportunity to trigger the trap on the statuette’s protective case again, paralyzing the remaining guard (and his posse of sorority girls), allowing Spindle to nimbly spring the lock open and swipe the statue.

In the vault, the minotaur skeleton shrugged off the attacks of the cleric and warlock, lunging forward and goring Chaster brutally through the chest.  It tossed the broken body aside, and rounded on Stasha.  Stasha, however, still had some tricks.

“I got you,” he said, and called upon assistance from beyond.  There was no one to see, thankfully, as his face filled with unholy might, distending and hollowing as fell forces poured into his aged frame.  He seized Chaster’s prone form by one ankle and hurled him back out of the vault.  Only his unnatural power saved him when the minotaur skeleton dealt him a crushing blow to the chest.  The attack thundered into his chest, wrought with a club the size of a table, knocking him against the wall… but the warlock simply rose again.  Death could not claim him, since it was already filling his soul.

Stasha slipped out of the vault and hurriedly healed Chaster, and the cleric rose to his feet, renewed and angry.  He burst back into the vault and faced up to the hulking monster again.   Snatching the dagger of Silvanus from his side and holding it before him, he poured forth nature’s power, the power that had a place for the storm’s roar and the glade’s calm.  The holy light scorched the undead, and it cowered away from the pair, giving them a chance to clear the entire vault.  They fled.

Alnitak and Spindle sprinted out of the tournament room at the same time that Stasha and Chaster arrived back at the main floor.  And unfortunately, that was also when Quentin saw them and understood what was happening, and also when the lion arrived.  Quentin ducked into the water of the Styx to hide while guards rounded on the lion with spears, and all the while dozens of people fled, screaming.

Alnitak thought that someone should do something about Quentin, so he skipped forward with his dagger and smashed the gnome in the face, trying to knock him out.  The blow only broke the gnome’s nose, however, and he yelped in fury.  Quentin’s cry took the form of something hellish and unintelligible, the scraping sibilance of damnation.  He invoked powers to which he had been compacted — it turned out that not all of the brimstone he flaunted was fake: Quentin had indeed made some sort of deal with devils.  Two spined devils clambered out of the water beside him, their twisted limbs horrifying the few guests who yet remained.  Long tongues lashed from their fanged mouths, and bulbous eyes looked for innocence to despoil.  “Boat boy!” screamed Quentin as they hauled him from the river, blood streaming from his face and casino patrons running and screaming.  Chaster was the one who’d threatened him earlier that day, and now here everything was going wrong.

Chaster and Stasha fled into the crowd, burrowing into the mass of dozens of patrons who poured into the boats to leave.  Chaster simply dove into the water and swam upstream with strong strokes, while Stasha shifted his appearance yet again and lied his way onto a boat.

That left Alnitak and Spindle, who were cut off by a pair of devils, a wounded lion, and one increasingly infuriated gnome.  Left with no other options, they sprinted for the waterfall at the edge of the casino.  They strapped themselves into Spindle’s harness as they went, and then leapt out into nothingness.  The roar of the waterfall accompanied their plunge downward — the lake below was a hundred feet down.  Spindle violently slammed his thumb on the button of the immoveable rod, though, and their drop halted abruptly.  They hung in space in the middle of nothing, dangling from the rod.  Above them, Quentin gaped in shock and screamed curses in a foul language, unheard.

The pair plunged ten feet, then stopped, then fell again, over and over in nauseating repetition.  It took a while.  At the bottom, they hung there while Chaster and Stasha rowed over gently, and the four then sculled off across the lake, admiring the statuette and enjoying fresh lamprey pie.

They’d come close to getting caught, or possibly even dying, but in the end they’d stripped the entire vault and ruined the casino.  No one would forget the open appearance of hellish minions — it wasn’t just objectionable, it was an actual crime, and Quentin would need to flee or face prosecution.

Verity had been avenged beyond even her wildest expectations.

And all the while, Durin gambled.  It might have been a bad idea to bring a gambling addict to a casino.  After a while, he noticed that everyone else was gone, and quietly cashed himself out with a shivering and horrified Travis.  Devils and an injured lion and a mounting fire all remained, but the crew had gotten away as free as birds.

Verity was very happy, needless to say.  She had promised 100 gp apiece, but upon receiving back her bag of holding (suitable precautions having been taken to ensure everyone’s safety), she ended up offering triple that, throwing each of the crew a heavy sack of three hundred pieces of gold.  In addition, she offered the other items that were in the vault: a gold and ruby necklace (250 gp), a jade rabbit figurine (75 gp), and an enchanted rapier.

“Thank you so much,” she said.  “You succeeded beyond even my wildest hopes.  Quentin is ruined now, and I heard that he’s already fled with whatever he could scrape together.  In fact, since the casino is only a little damaged and I have the capital for it… I might see if I can step in and save it.  It was my idea, after all.”

She has something else for them, too: an elaborately decorated music box.  This time there was no key, however.  Spindle took the box for safekeeping, but it remained silent.

Days turn into weeks, and weeks into a month.  The crew stayed in Varkenbluff, unsure of when (or if) they’d receive another assignment.  Chaster asked to have the lion if it survived, and Verity was happy to oblige.  He hired someone to watch it and attempt to train it.  Alnitak caroused around the local taverns while working at improving his skill with herbs — that emetic had been very useful! — with studying and experimentation.  And they all waited.

Then one morning, without prelude or introduction, there was a key under Stasha’s pillow when he awoke from an uneasy slumber.  He assembled the rest of the crew — did they need a name? — and turned the key in the music box’s lock.

Chapter Three: Reach for the Stars

It took the party a tenday to travel to their destination of Delphi Mansion, a manor home in the hills of Cormyr.  Regrettably, they also had to leave behind Durin.  Old habits had gotten the best of the dwarven artificer, and he was unwilling to leave the three-dragon ante tables.

The younger elves purchases horses to ride while stolid Chaster and inscrutable Stasha were content to trudge alongside, assisted only by a pack mule.

This was one of the first times they’d actually been forced to spend any time together, since they have otherwise kept to themselves, and the party got to know each other on the journey a little bit more.  Spindle shared with Alnitak a bit of news he’d picked up from the thief rumor mill: there was a big robbery back home on Evermeet.  The family library of the widespread Pyloreine family was thoroughly looted last month, with unknown thieves stealing numerous books and valuable items.

Cormyr was one of the most prosperous countries in Eastern Faerun and a very well-regulated country with vigorous law enforcement.  Unusually, at the border to Cormyr, the party must even wait in a queue to enter the country so they could register with the officials of the local garrison and receive their papers.  As they waited their turn in line, they had ample time to read some of the laws that had been posted for their perusal.

1. All persons entering Cormyr must register with the officials of a border garrison.
2. Foreign currency can only be used in certain locations. Please exchange your coins for Cormyrean golden lions at your first opportunity.
3. Adventurers must acquire a charter before undertaking any operation as a group.
4. All weapons must be peace-bonded. The only persons exempt from this law are members of chartered adventuring groups and members of mercenary groups that can offer proof of employment.
5. Harming cats is forbidden.
6. Bow your head to royalty and the local nobility.
7. Purple Dragons have the right to search you upon request.
8. Hunting on private land is forbidden.

The party registered uncomplainingly, got their paperwork, and let their weapons be peace-bound with pink ribbons and a special seal.  If they were going to use their weapons within Cormyr, they’d need to be willing to pay a fine or explain themselves convincingly if a Purple Dragon Knight spotted them.

It was the fifth of Hammer and bitterly cold by the time the group reached the isolated Delphi Mansion, a stately manor home that was so isolated in a Cormyrean forest that it was a full day’s travel to the nearest town or farm.  As the rounded a bend in the road under the dappled afternoon light of the forest cover, however, a ray of sunlight shone from above and illuminated a tree stump by the side of the road.  The disembodied head of a human woman appeared gradually, floating above the stump.

The woman was blond and unremarkable in appearance, except of course for the fact that her severed head was floating in the air, bloodless, and seemingly alive.

“My name is Elra Lionheart,” said the head. “My companions and I died trying to retrieve The Celestial Codex. Heed my words, lest you too fall prey to the dangers of Delphi Mansion. Markos is using the book to conjure an otherworldly being not meant to exist in this world. Meanwhile, his purple-robed cultists busy themselves with eldritch experiments. Beware creatures that look like puddles of eyes and mouths. Beware the thing that has hooks for hands. And beware the mansion itself, for it transforms weirdly. Most of all, stop Markos before it’s too late!

“My companions and I had a camp on a bluff due south of the mansion. If you go there first, you’ll find a backpack containing a map of the mansion and some notes we acquired from a dubious source. These might help you plan your approach.  Should you succeed, seek out the Rashemi in Mirabar – tell her of our fate.  Best of luck!”

The party was unnerved by the apparition.  It faded away before their eyes, but they moved forward with appropriate caution.  Ahead, they could see that a three-story mansion stood alone in a clearing. It had alabaster walls, windows on all three levels, and a closed double door on the ground floor. The area around the mansion seemed unnaturally quiet.

Carefully, they skirted the clearing, keeping to the cover of woods, and located the bluff that the head of Elra had spoken about. There was indeed a crude map, and some notes about a third-floor ritual room and a password for the locked windows. The password was “Krokulmar” — a word that sent a shiver deep into Chaster’s spine, although it was unclear why.

Stasha took this opportunity to introduce the party to a new friend of his that had been silently accompanying him, perched on his shoulder: a dusky-feathered raven named Ludwig. Ludwig knew a few tricks, like how to croak out some warbling words (mostly four-lettered ones) and how to follow commands.

“Go and fly around the top floor there,” said Stasha to his familiar, and the raven replied something simultaneously agreeable and unpublishable. It took wing, hooking around the building rapidly, and alighted back on Stasha’s shoulder.

After a moment, Stasha reported to the rest of the group the situation: “There is indeed some manner of transformed creature on the third floor.” Ludwig had seen two, in fact: a hook-handed monstrosity and a robed creature with one leering eye and a large book in its hands. Perhaps the latter was Markos Delphi?

As the party discussed different approaches, Alnitak decided that the best way was the direct way. He marched towards the Delphi Mansion with forthright steps.

“Are you just going to the front door?” hissed Spindle.

“Yes,” Alnitak replied, airily. He knocked, then opened the door and called inside. “Hello?” He turned around, shrugging. “No one’s answering.”

There was universal agreement that it would be a bad idea to just go in through the front door (more than they just did, anyway) , and so the party agreed that it would be best to just climb directly to their goal. Alnitak threw Spindle’s grappling hook over the edge of the roof, and the party hauled themselves up to a mostly-empty room on the third floor. The window yielded easily to the password, and they entered without incident. The walls were plastered with intricate star charts with Celestial labels — Spindle identified the Thousand Eyes, the Great Snake, and the Owlbear.

Peering under a gap beneath the door, Spindle also reported that the next room was unpleasant-looking. This room was empty except for a circle of vile symbols on the floor. Standing in the circle was an eight-foot-tall, bipedal creature with two long arms, each one ending in a sharp hook. The hooks appeared as though the fingers of the hands had been twisted and melded together, and the monster had wet, red pits where eyes should be. The creature wore the tattered remnants of a butler’s uniform.

The group had a hurried discussion about what to do, but their discussion was interrupted by the creature. It lunged into the door, smashed through the top half with a splintering chop of one of its horrid hands, and attacked.

It battered Spindle and then Stasha as the rest of the party flailed at it. They did damage, but not enough to slow it down. The former butler’s hooked hands were terrible weapons, and it had no regard for its own safety as it hacked at the nearest target. There was a brief pause when it was driven from the room by a dissonant whisper from Alnitak, but it returned with fury, burying its hooks into the bard’s shoulders.

The hook-handed horror only fell still when Spindle, defending his friend, brought his daggers across the creature’s hands in a scissoring motion, severing the hooks at the wrists with a wet crunch. Hissing feebly, the thing collapsed to the ground.

The tattered butler uniform had a pocket containing a locket and a note. The plain silver locket proved to be under the effects of a magic mouth spell; when opened, it spoke in a hissing voice: “وœ๘ ذשھ๒.”

“Forever changing,” Chaster translated.

The note contained a sketch of a wine bottle and a row of four circles. The second circle from the left was crossed out.

The party advanced, but unfortunately someone’s foot smudged part of the design on the floor. As though in response, the door and windowframes grew teeth. They were teeth of every size and ilk, ranging from blocky cow’s molars to the huge sawteeth of a great shark, and they quivered in anticipation.

“Ludwig,” said Stasha, in his gothic voice of command, “you go.”

The familiar said several unpleasant things, flew through the door, and was immediately smashed by giant teeth and then stabbed by a flurry of pouncing stirges. It had just enough time to hiss complainingly before it expired. When it died, its flesh folded in on itself over and over, disappearing from sight by the seventeenth fold.

A little more carefully, the party used their immoveable rod to block the snapping of the huge, horrible mouth and advance to the next room. They could see from there into the room where the robed creature with a great green eye had been spotted by the late Ludwig.

Rubble lay scattered across the floor where part of the roof had collapsed. Perched atop the rubble was a hunched figure wrapped in a cloak. It gazed out at the sky through a window, unaware of anyone. A stack of books rested on a nearby stone, but Spindle’s careful theft revealed only that they were irrelevant tomes on stars and planes (as well as one unintelligible journal).

“ђљท?” rattled the odd creature — a nothic — taking them by surprise.

“แװĥĝœذשھ๒ ٌوжج ыס?” replied Chaster smoothly in Deep Speech.

The creature replied, “Ŧłฬำ ๆљ๑وœж ๛ֻבฯ. ฿๘ζΐ.”

“װĥذĥذ,” said Chaster, nodding. He turned to the rest of the party. “She says to look in the bedroom or his office, downstairs.”

A quick glance around the bedroom found only a hidden closet with a small lockbox — one so secure that none of the party could breach it. Still no Celestial Codex or Markos Delphi. They were going to have to keep searching, and hope that they didn’t meet the same fate as Team Aleph.

Exploring the rest of the second floor was similarly unfruitful. Eldritch energy continued to cause strange effects in the mansion, with multiple rooms becoming toothier than was natural. At one point, Spindle found that his shadow had become animated and hostile, mimicking him even as it menaced with shadowy knives. Fortunately, it was also amenable to his charm, and he developed a rapport with his other self.

Descending to the first floor, though, the party soon found themselves matched with a more dangerous enemy. Spindle and Alnitak, exploring one of the bedrooms, saw that the environs of one of them had been warped oddly. The bed was slumping in place and the floorboards were shifting as though soft. An amorphous mass of mouths and eyes lolled out from under the bed, propelling itself by oozing forward, fastening several mouths to the ground, and pulling its bulk behind. The mouth mouths began to murmur and chatter, each with a different voice: deep or shrill, wailing or ululating, crying out in agony or ecstasy.

Spindle and Alnitak sped away back down the hall, past Chaster and Stasha. Chaster set himself in place with his shield and began to hurl his spear at the mouther, while Stasha bombarded the creature with bolts of eerie light. It moved slowly but steadily towards them as the younger elves joined the fusilade, but ignored the damage in its relentless hunger. A whispered word of power from Alnitak was the only thing to drive it back momentarily, giving the party the chance to pelt it into submission. The mouther expired, leaking bilious clear fluid from its wounds. It had melted much of the room and hallway, and while the doughy effect ended with the creature, whatever items had been near it were ruined.

After searching through the first floor, the party located a kitchen that had been visibly subject to days of neglect. Flies covered foul-smelling messes of several meals stacked on a worktable in the middle of the room, and the congealed remnants of what might have been stew was moldering in a pot over the cold fireplace. The pantry had some good foodstuffs, as well as a trapdoor to the wine cellar.

Left with only one avenue forward, the group descended.

The faint aroma of grapes filled the cellar air. It appeared to mostly be left over from the past, however, since the three wine racks were empty. Four large wine casks stood against the west wall, a fine layer of dust covering each of them.

Remembering the note from before, Alnitak examined the second cask from the left. It sounded hollow. He raised his sword to smash it, but Spindle grabbed him. “Wait!” he said. “I feel a draft from behind it.” He heaved the cask out of the way with Stasha’s assistance, revealing an ironbound door. It wouldn’t move, but there was no lock to be seen. Sorcery was at work.

Pondering for a moment, Spindle plucked the silver locket from the butler out of his bag of holding, held it up to the door, and opened it. “وœ๘ ذשھ๒,” said the locket, and the door opened.

The next room was filled with quiet murmurs. Four wooden pews faced a stone statue in the middle of the torchlit chamber. The statue had a roughly bipedal shape, something like a human, but it was carved to look like it was coming undone, like a frayed rope. Its form was covered with mouths and outstretched tongues.

Standing before the statue were four purple-cloaked figures, their faces hidden by cowls. They were writing on pieces of paper and muttering to each other, oblivious to the opening of the door or Spindle’s presence. To Alnitak’s learned eye, they appeared to be taking notes on how the eldritch energies were affecting the mansion and this space, carefully observing the statue in particular.

“I have an idea,” said Chaster, and he ran back up the stairs. To the horror of the rest of the party, he returned draped in the battered corpse of the mouther. It left a trail of fluids behind him as he moved forward into the room ahead, heedless of the looks of dismay on his companions’ faces. “Whub-whub-whub,” he said, in imitation of the mouther’s murmurs and ululations as he tried to move in the same disturbing manner the beast had displayed.

I’m nailing this, Chaster thought, as he utterly failed in his attempt at camouflage.

The cultists barely took notice, sparing the capering cleric only a glance or two. Their focus was utterly on their work. One of them gave a small sigh, as though this were just one of many oddities that had attempted to distract them over recent days. They were here to study the greater mysteries of the world beyond the Realms, and not to consort with corpse-carrying madmen.

Nonplussed, the party cautiously crept by, searching the room across the way while the cultists pointedly ignored them. They found a grim harvest in the adjacent storage room: four severed heads and three bodies, neatly stacked. One of them was the head of Elra Lionheart, the apparition that greeted them when they arrived at this place. The party had found Team Aleph.

Deciding that there was nothing to be done for them for now, the group turned to the final way forward: a seat of carved stairs going down deeper into the earth.

The staircase led to a roughly circular cave, empty and unlit. Opposite the stairs, through a twelve-foot-wide archway, they could see a similar cavern lit by purple light emanating from four large crystals jutting from the floor. All of the crystals flickered in concert with the chanting that echoed through the caves.

The chants came from a sallow, dark-robed figure who stood near the edge of a circle of arcane runes inscribed on the floor. The figure recited an eldritch passage from a book, then carefully set the book atop a wooden crate near the back wall. As the party watched, the figure turned toward the circle, wherein knelt a headless body in plate armor. A sluglike creature had attached itself to the body’s neck, almost like a makeshift head. The slug’s form was covered with mouths and eyes that opened and closed in and out of existence.

This was Markos Delphi. And he was bringing something terrible into this world.

As he spotted the party, Markos whirled to regard them with contempt, and then drew an intricate dagger from his pocket. He stabbed it into his own hand, and a ripple of purple surged across his body, encasing it in translucent armor that faded from view after a moment. Chaster and Spindle charged into the fray immediately, wielding a spear and knives, respectively, while Alnitak kept his distance, casting spells to try to keep Markos occupied.

Seeing that Markos was continuing to chant and build a connection with the unborn monster that was forming in front of him, Chaster slapped the symbol of his god Silvanus on his shield, and the clang of metal became hollow and potent. His silence spell cut off Markos chanting, and the enraged cultist whirled on the cleric in fury. Markos lashed out at Chaster, and lunged towards him with his dagger. He buried his dagger in Chaster’s shoulder, cursing inaudibly as his attack was greeted with a surge of retributive electricity.

For his part, Spindle snatched up the book — it was indeed The Celestial Codex! — from the wooden crate, then wheeled around and began stabbing at Markos’ back. Aided by distractions from Alnitak, he and Chaster slashed the cultist repeatedly. Markos slumped to the floor, blood pouring from his wounds.

Stasha slid to the side of the room and began pounding one of the crystals with blasts of coruscating electrical power. He hammered away repeatedly on one of the crystals with his eldritch power until it shattered, exploding into hundreds of dull purple chunks.

The remaining crystals, however, pulsed with power as the squirming otherworldly slug reached out a pseudopod and touched Markos. The warlock gasped a shuddering breath and his wounds closed; he heaved himself back up, his face dark with hatred.

“The crystals!” Stasha shouted, snatching up one of the broken chunks from the ground and gesturing at the others. Spindle obligingly whirled and buried one of his blades into a crystal to the hilt. It split apart with a crack, and the energies within subsided.

Markos raised his hand to Spindle and twisted it, and pulses of invisible power surged from him. They narrowly missed the rogue — perhaps Markos was still finding his footing, but he’d find it soon.

Dropping his spear to the ground with a soundless clatter, Chaster released his hold on silence, and the sudden din was all the louder for the end of the magic. Markos raised his voice in a blasphemous chant and fragments of crystal splintered free as Spindle withdrew his dagger. The frozen limbs of the corpse stirred.

Chaster would have none of it. “I am the storm!” he shouted. He clapped his hands together. The thunderous clank of his gauntlets resounded like the fierce wrath of Silvanus, detonating the space around him as shatter swept over that half of the room.

The two remaining crystals exploded apart, the sluglike fragment of the ancient evil wwa crushed into a wet smear, and Markos collapsed, his head near-pulped by the concussion.

The room quieted. The presence of Krokulmar receded. The danger was past.

After the confrontation in the hidden grotto, the party returned to the upper floors of the mansion. They found a group of disgruntled but nonviolent cultists, as well as a penitent former nothic named Zala. She explained that Markos had been corrupted by his research, and that she had helped him interpret the stolen Codex to contact Krokulmar. She had been rewarded for that with a cruel transformation, and she knew now that she had been foolish.

Zala ushered the cultists away, driving them off with the obliging assistance of a group of bloodied adventurers who were willing to stand nearby and look intimidating. She volunteered to look after the mansion for the moment while contacting a cadet branch of the Delphis to come take possession. If the party sensed that she might hope to retain some position and perhaps even continue her illicit research, they opted not to notice. For her part, Zala was helpfully blind to the group’s thorough search for useful valuables that might remain in the Delphi Mansion. Sometimes everyone just reaches an understanding.

The party liberated a carter’s wagon and hitched their horses to it, and loaded up the corpses of Team Aleph. The cold winter air would keep them fresh, which was fortunate, since they had a long journey north ahead of them. They had a rendezvous in Mirabar. It was time to meet with the Rashemi.

Mirabar was a small, dense city with steeply sloping walls. It was famous for its mineral and gem exports, and the dwarven majority who ruled its halls were fierce in their watchfulness. In the winter, they used screw-pumps to redirect water from the nearby river to elevated cisterns and then onto the city walls. By the middle of Hammer, the walls were covered by incredibly thick and slippery sheets of ice.

A brisk young elven man was waiting at the gates for the party’s cart, and after a quick exchange of coin, the guards waved the cart through without inspection. The elf directed the group to a third-floor apartment in a tenement in the north of the city, and kept an eye on their cart as they ascended to the cramped, gray rooms.

Sitting at a table of rough pine was a stout woman of middling years, dressed in studded leather armor and wrapped in a thick cloak. The dark skin of her face was elaborately tattooed in a geometric design of bright blue, and she watched the party with eyes as cutting as blades. One hand rested on a closed book. With the other, she wordlessly offered Stasha a small, golden key.

Chapter Four: Prisoner 13

The Rashemi is cold and thickly accented as she addresses the party.

“I am the Rashemi. I have maps of Revel’s End for you, as well as some notes from the Helmsguard, the crew that produced the map. We will talk before you meet with Varrin.”

The crew had many questions for the Rashemi, but though she was perfectly willing to hold forth on the injustices of society and even frankly admitted the inequities of their situation, she was not very forthcoming with details about the Vault or herself. She thanked them for bringing Team Aleph all this way, and consented (after considerable pressure) to arranging for care for their mounts. She delivered them their new broom of flying. She gave them a diary from Sara Deepdelve, a member of the Helmsguard team that met a tragic end recently. And eventually, she fetched their employer for the mission, Varrin Axebreaker.

Varrin was a dwarf of advancing age but obvious vigor. His braided hair and beard were black with streaks of gray, and he wore a loose, comfortable robe over a steel breastplate. He settled uneasily into a seat, while the Rashemi sat in the corner, slouched, and folded her hands over her belly.

“Thank you for hearing me out. My name is Varrin, and I have a proposition for you. My clan has located wealth stolen from us many years ago, but it’s sealed in a vault that’s magically locked. If you can recover the key—whatever it is—you’ll gain the undying gratitude of Clan Axebreaker. And I’ll cut you in for a percentage of the recovered treasure, of course.

“The catch here is the person who knows how to open the vault is rotting away in the prison of Revel’s End. She’s proved uncooperative with my people in the past, but a few months ago I discovered the vault where she hid what she stole from us. I need you to question her and learn how to open the vault. How you do that is up to you; if you need to spring her from the prison in exchange for this information, please do so. We care more about recovering the money that will give a future to our clan. I can provide you with a way into the prison, and I have learned a good number of details as to how it works, so I can answer questions you might have.”

Varrin discussed security features of the prison, how it operated, and what he knew about Prisoner 13. He reluctantly disclosed her name, but emphasized that only the warden knew the names of any of the prisoners in Revel’s End. Everyone else just went by their prisoner number.

The dwarven leader was able to get them into the prison as new guards or cooks, and to offer them transportation — but the crew were going to need to find a way to get the information (or the prisoner herself) out by themselves.

The Rashemi retrieved a faceted sapphire the size of a small orange and places it on the table. She waved her hand over the gem, and a glowing blue image of a building floor plan appeared in the air above it. She tapped the gem, and the image vanished. The sapphire split into sections, and she passed one fragment to each of the crew. The fragment grew warm in their hand, melted as though it had been only ice, then vanished, leaving a warm, tingling sensation behind. “Think about the map of Revel’s End, and you’ll be able to see it,” she said.

Before departing, the Rashemi asks the crew if they have a name they want to go by — a title for their team.

“Judging by the track records of those teams, I’m not sure we want to do the same thing,” wisecracked Alnitak, laughing.

Spindle concurred. “We’re just Nameless,” he said.

And so the Nameless they were.

It was an uneventful trip to the “pirate city” of Luskan, but it was achingly cold. The Nameless had gotten some cold-weather gear before they left Mirabar (as well as, oddly, a side of caribou for Alnitak), but the icy wind seemed to gnaw at even the slightest exposed skin. The city seemed nearly deserted in the harsh winter weather, but that may have been what helped them find rapid lodging with Niels.

Niels Sovereign-Save was an obese dwarf who works as a brewer and innkeeper here in the city of Luskan. During the months when the city is ice-locked, he is glad that there are not so many pirates around, but unhappy that their gold isn’t around, either. So he was quite happy to see the Nameless and to offer them warm rooms and tall glasses of spiced mead. He was quick with gossip about the occasional prisoner transport or Lord’s Alliance counselor who pass through Luskan, as well as warnings about the depredations of the wolf packs that have been harassing the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, but during any conversation, he never seemed to quite reach his point.

As it turns out, his advice about the wolves was well-taken. The crew was on the alert as they traveled further north the next day, taking great care as they marched overland across snowy hills and plains. It was no surprise when Spindle saw wolves at work: three huge direwolves, tearing apart the corpse of some great antlered beast.

Spindle had been scouting ahead on their new broom of flying, and he had a clever plan to handle the problem. “I still have the harness for the immoveable rod,” he noted. “I can fly in relays, carrying us past the wolves.”

Chaster was too heavy, unfortunately. A sturdy fellow already, his metal armor and weapons made him such a burden for the broom that he wouldn’t be able to ride with the rest of the party. “Take me first,” he said. “If the wolves attack, I can defend myself until you arrive.”

This plan seemed like a good one, even though Spindle and Chaster saw that the wolves were no longer visible when they flew over the scarlet splotch where they’d been at play. Spindle dropped Chaster down into the crunchy snow of a hilltop, where there’d be good visibility, and brought the broom around at top speed to head back for the other two.

Unfortunately, the wolves arrived for Alnitak and Stasha first.

One white-furred wolf approached them from the base of the hillside they occupied, while two others loomed from above. The white-furred wolf was more aggressive, growling and stalking towards them. Alnitak cast an illusion to invoke several duplicates of himself, but the animals were not deterred. Stasha fired a blast of magical energy towards it, but missed, even as the other two lunged from above.

Almost at the same time, three things happened:

Alnitak ripped the caribou off the side of his pack and hurled it past the two beasts attacking him, and they wheeled to pounce on it.

Stasha called upon something dark within himself, and his face distorted and hollowed like a ghoulish parody, driving away the white wolf with another blast of energy.

And Spindle arrived, swooping down from the sky, the leather harness dangling from his broom.

The two spellcasters seized the straps and were yanked into the air, legs kicking. Alnitak’s duplicates flailed in the emptiness next to him and Stasha as the trio rose into the air, and the wolves snapped fecklessly at their heels. They were safe.

In the small town of Bremen, a sizeable contingent of guards and a few hireling cooks arrived for their posting, trickling in ahead of the Midwinter departure of The Jolly Pelican. Joining them were Mink (Spindle), Pops (Stasha), Tak (Alnitak), and Plower Haven (Chaster). Mink and Pops had been assigned to Revel’s End as guards for unspecified wrongs that they were not inclined to share, and Tak and Plower accepted a contract to work as cooks.

The Jolly Pelican was an agile caravel, with a single mast and a lateen sail. It had a forecastle for a small amount of tightly-packed goods and two dozen hammocks, and a sterncastle for a surly crew of five and the ship’s supplies. An iron cage was bolted to the deck for the prisoner being transported. The journey, the passengers were told, would not be pleasant. Their choice was between the unbelievably bitter cold of the exposed deck or the cramped, smelly confines of the forecastle. No expense could be spared for a better ship or magical spells to ease the three-day trip – not for the likes of them, anyway. They and their future “coworkers” were a motley bunch, sent for a posting at Revel’s End through some combination of bad luck or ill humor. The Lords’ Alliance wasn’t going to pay extra just to keep them (or a prisoner) comfortable.

Over the day of waiting, Alnitak, in his guise as Tak, played music idly, while the others kept to themselves (even as they listened for information here or there). Then, the next day, they were all ushered onto the ship. It was a miserable experience, spent mostly freezing in the sub-zero temperatures, but it was hardest on Spindle — a self-described “city boy” who ultimately just wasn’t happy on the sea. He got almost no rest the entire three-day voyage, and as the ship inched through a mess of floating ice near the end, the poor elf was exhausted beyond bearing.

Perched on a high cliff overlooking the Sea of Moving Ice was the bleak stone fortress, Revel’s End, carved from a gigantic, blade-shaped rock. A central tower loomed above the rest of the fortress, and light leaked from its arrow slits. Four smaller towers rose from the outermost corners of the fortress, and guards could be seen atop them.

As the ship made fast, the sailors sent the new crew into a wooden box strapped to a framework at the base of the cliff. It creaked and shuddered as it rose into the air, thick ropes pulling it upwards along the thousand-foot cliff. An elevator, and another way of ensuring that no one could ever escape or break into the prison… who would ever dare a thousand-foot climb, battered all the while by screaming winds of ice?

At the top, a one-eyed elf with a scraggly beard gestured them in from the cold. He waited until the elevator had brought everyone up, and then led the new guards further inside. Briskly, he marched down the hall and into a large hexagonal space. Cells lined the walls of this space, with a room studded with numerous arrow slits in the center. The Nameless who were posing as guards, Spindle and Stasha, heard a few prisoners hoot at them in derision, contrasting with others calling out friendly greetings, but the sergeant didn’t slow as he leads them into a central room. This hexagonal room was the base of the prison’s central tower. A spiral staircase rose to the tower’s upper levels. Several guards watched through the arrow slits, observing the cells, while one sat at a metal desk and console with a myriad of switches and dials and a brass tube with a funnel-like flare.

The sergeant continued up the central staircase. A door in the spiral staircase led into a large room filled with wooden bunk beds. There were arrow slits in the north, west, and south walls. Footlockers and armor racks accompanied each bed. The spiral stairs continued up past the door.

“All right, you lot,” said the gruff elf. “I’m Sergeant Bruga. I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t care. You’re here to keep an eye on the worst bunch of ruffians on this side of Faerun, and don’t forget about it. Because them that’s in the cells, they won’t ever forget. Some’s here for a long time, and they might be of the sort who don’t care about tacking on another tenyear. What’s a tenyear to an elf or a dwarf, eh?

“No magic, first off. There’s always some arse who learned a spell at their uncle’s knee, and they think it makes them king shit. But it ain’t the thing here. You don’t have to worry much about the prisoners unless they’re on duty, cause them cells is antimagicked. But no magic from you. Anyone sees any magic, from a prisoner or a guard or whatever the fuck but the warden or cleric, and you report it. There’ll be silver for you, if it’s true.

“Next, don’t talk to the prisoners. They’s not your friends. They talk to you too much, you give them the stick. They ask your name, you give them the stick They tell you their name, you give them the stick. You’re each getting a list of prisoners by number, and you only ever call them by number.

“Twenty-five on for each shift, three shifts a day. You won’t get called in off your schedule that much, unless there’s an alert. If you hear a horn and the lights all turn red, then head to the armory and get yourself kitted with something heavy.

“All right, then. You’ll have the next twelve hours to get suited up, look around a bit, find a bunk and a trunk, and get some sleep. In the morning, some of you will go on-duty. Any questions?”

There were few questions, and the new guards were all issued uniforms of coarse broadcloth and chainmail cuirasses, as well as lead-tipped bludgeons. Their uniforms bore the symbol of the Lords’ Alliance (a crown on a red field).

Sergeant Bruga took a moment to speak kindly to Stasha, assuring him that he would be duly respectful of the elder guard’s years, and that he wouldn’t be on outside patrol. It was a pleasant surprise, even if it was shortly followed by a nasty confrontation as Spindle sat down on a bunk.

“That’s my bunk!” snarled an ill-favored human fellow, sauntering up to the elf with two companions.

Spindle looked around, and leaned over to pop open the trunk at the foot of the bed. “Your stuff isn’t here.”

“I keep it under the bed, maybe,” snarled the human. “Or whatever. Fuck you. Get off my bunk.”

Spindle went back and forth with the rude veteran guard for a bit, but finally decided that it was pointless to fight over a bunk that was the same as every other bunk. He shrugged and found a new spot.

“Sorry about Twisty,” said a friendly female voice. An orc was cleaning her mail, sitting on a trunk as she scrubbed at it with a scouring cloth. “He doesn’t know how to act.”

“Yeah, what’s his problem?” asked Spindle.

The orc just chuckled and shrugged. “His problem is he’s here, I guess.”

She introduced herself as Legha — “Lae,” to her new friend — and said not to worry about the grumpy human. No one was in Revel’s End because they were an angel, whether in the cells or out.

The cooks, on the other hand, were brought to the kitchens by a timid little man. The kitchen was large, flanked by three side rooms on one side and the mess hall on the other. The largest room has seven pallets on the floor, with large gunny-sacks piled against the wall for your possessions. The little male human, who introduced himself as “Mousie,” said that this is where they’d sleep or rest when not cooking breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Prisoners do most of the cleaning, he warned, but they shouldn’t make a mess on purpose, or they might regret it.

It’s good pay here, Mousie told them, but there’s a reason that none of the cooks from the last stint all opted to take the Jolly Pelican out of Revel’s End. “One of them got knifed.”

Don’t talk to the prisoners, and don’t wander the prison too much. Be friendly with the guards during meals, since you’ll fraternize with them in the mess hall, but rendezvous aren’t a good idea.

“No work tonight,” he said, tremulously. “I’ll wake you for breakfast prep.”

There were no angry confrontations among the new help, unlike in the barracks. The other new cooks were three dwarven sisters who pretended to be triplets (Bryony, Antigone, and Hephestia), and young human Trevor, and none of them were interested in trouble. Everyone accepted their shift orders from Mousie and went to bed, exhausted from the trip.

Chaster, true to his saint-or-smash bipolar approach to the world, began carefully organizing the kitchen. Mousie told him that he didn’t need to work so hard, but Chaster brushed him off and diligently rearranged the serving dishes and chafers to be much easier to reach. Mousie was duly impressed.

He was much less impressed with Alnitak, who became ill after the second meal service of the day. Mousie sent him to the hospital, not knowing that the bard had swallowed some emetic to very effectively make themselves violently ill.

Alnitak was tended to by Billy, a cleric of Ilmater. The elf didn’t know whether or not Billy really needed to massage and smell his feet quite so much in order to cure nausea, but the cleric seemed to know well enough what he was about.

Chaster, Spindle, and Stasha had a quick moment to talk, afterwards. They didn’t have a plan yet, but their infiltration had gone smoothly. Everyone had a place and was settling into their new jobs. They had nine days before the hidden ship waiting offshore would leave them behind. Now they just needed to get the key.

The next day, the growing tedium of their routine positions was broken up by a high alert. A klaxon began loudly sounding throughout the entire facility, the lights went red, and the guards — asleep or awake — all mustered to the armory en masse to get heavier weapons. The spectator hovered, eerie and silent and staring, while a grumpy Lae explained to the new guards that this wasn’t anything to worry about. Alerts happened regularly whenever there was a fight or outsiders were spotted approaching the prison.

In the hospital, Alnitak witnessed Billy barricading the door, which he explained was routine during these alerts, while in the kitchen, two of the other cooks hid behind Chaster.

It was ultimately an uneventful moment, and Spindle and Stasha found out the cause: prisoners #230 and #216 were discovered trying to cut prisoner #104, apparently hoping for a future reward. Their only reward was being beaten nearly to death, guards dragging their limp bodies away to the hospital afterwards.

Billy’s attentions to Alnitak’s feet were noticed by one of these guards, who angrily denounced the cleric for his repeated predations; the cleric agreed to pay three weeks of his pay to keep the guard quiet. When Warden Marta Marthannis came to visit the two miscreant prisoners, later, she too had some pointed questions for Billy. A soft-faced human woman of middling age, she wore a red robe with golden trim. A keyring with seven tiny keys tinkled on her hip.

“Billy,” said the warden, scrutinizing the cleric. “Just wanted to check on these. You’re behaving well?”

The cleric nodded, sweating, but the warden had turned her attentions to the prisoners. “I think it’ll be an additional year for each of you, after the Council of Absolution has a chance to discuss it. Trying to skin someone?” She listened patiently to their protests, but seemed unsympathetic when she departed a few minutes later.

Alnitak, feigning unconsciousness, paid careful attention.

“I’m thinking,” he said, sitting up after the kind warden departed, “that I shouldn’t work with food for a few days. Since I’ve been so ill.”

“Um,” said Billy, nervously. “I think I understand. You need bed rest.”

“No,” replied the bard, lightly. “I can get up and do things. Just not my job.”

“Um.”

“I don’t want to have to talk to the warden about anything, so in a little while, I’ll just go, but medically I won’t be able to do my job.”

“Um, okay… but you’re going to stay for a little bit yet, right? And so you don’t need to put your boots back on yet.”

“Sure,” said Alnitak with an easy smile, lying back on the bed.

That morning, Stasha and Spindle were assigned tower duty. “I’m not going to assign you to an exterior patrol,” Sergeant Bruga reassured the elder elf, “but you’ll be okay up on a tower for half a shift, right? Put on your warm-weather gear. There’s extra in the armory if you need it.”

The tower was miserable for the pair. The wind was like a blade of ice right through their warmest gear, whipping past them as they hunched over the battlements thirty feet in the air. The wintry whiteness was unbroken except by the prison towers, the sharp spire of mountain behind it, and the vast Sea of Moving Ice stretching out beyond the cliff. Fortunately, postings outside were only for half a shift, and then they were set to duty in the panopticon.

The panopticon was the heart of the prison: a fortified room with a dozen arrow slits directly in the center of the cell block, where there was an easy view of all the cells at all times. Prisoners were under almost constant surveillance, except for when they left their cells to perform the many chores needed to keep the prison tidy.

The walls were hung with manacles, and a staircase led upstairs to the barracks and to the warden’s office. Loaded crossbows were kept ready, and a large console next to the staircase was covered in switches and buttons.

Spindle studied the console’s operation over the course of the shift, deducing what most of the buttons did. Each cell could be opened from here, and the lights adjusted. Some toggles remained a mystery, though, so he asked the guard manning the console about which one sounded the alarm.

“No, none of these,” replied the guard. “The warden can do that from anywhere. She does it magically.  If something happens, we send a runner to go tell her.  Usually she’s just upstairs in her office, though.”

“Huh,” said Spindle. “At my last posting, I was used to a big red button for that.”

“Where are you that had buttons?” asked the guard with scorn. “You just a giant fucking gnome?”

“I mean, you know, bells.”

“What bells are you talking about?  What?” The guard exaggerated his skepticism, waggling his eyebrows mockingly and laughing.  “Twisty was right about you.”

“I’m going to twist his nuts off,” said Spindle, frowning.

“Ooh boy, listen to this guy!” laughed the veteran.  “Spicy! Hey guys, you hear that?” They all laughed.

By the end of the shift, everyone had begun calling him “Spicy.”

“Korda,” came a voice from outside Prisoner 13’s cell.

The tightly muscled dwarven woman had been lying on her bunk, staring off into space, but on hearing her name, she swung her legs down and sat up. She had short red hair, and her bronze skin was covered in tattoos everywhere it was visible outside of her prison tunic. “Yes?” she said, her face a bit surprised but her voice steady.

Spindle, invisible thanks to Stasha’s invisibility spell, said, “What if I had something to offer you about how to hurt someone you hate?”

“Are you one of those pathetic Axebreakers?” said 13, squinting out at the apparently empty space in front of her cell.

“No. But if you could hurt Varrin Axebreaker, wouldn’t you like to do that?”

“Hurt him like by taking all of his clan’s gold and then tricking him into putting me somewhere incredibly safe? Because that was basically my Tuesday,” said 13, smirking.

“Would you like to get out of here and hurt him more?” asked Spindle, uncertainly.

“No, I’m fine here, thanks,” said 13, stretching insolently. Her tattoos rippled over muscle. An excerpt from a poem in Dwarvish script on her neck and across her shoulder blades read, “Endless dreams entombed in stone,” and black and gray smoke and shadows coiled down her left arm, ending in runes on the fingers of her left hand. Similarly, purple and blue knotwork and runes run down her right arm, across the back of her right hand, and down the length of each finger.

“In fact,” she continued, “I guess that you must be invisible out there or something. You must work here, but you’re casting spells and sneaking around. That means you’re afraid of getting caught, and I could raise an alarm at any time. Or just report you later, and they’ll start hunting for you. There’s no place to go out there, so you’re stuck. So I think you better help me out with something I want.”

Spindle listened, alert and thoughtful.

“The warden has a ledger, probably in her office,” 13 said. “It contains all the names, crimes, and prisoner numbers of everyone ever incarcerated at Revel’s End. Bring me that list, and I’ll see to it that you get your key.”

She may have continued speaking threats or demands, but Spindle left her talking to the empty air. This complicated things.

Rising early that morning, Chaster had decided to establish a useful cover routine. He had impressed Mousie with his diligence — and the others with his stolid stoicism during the alert — and so he was easily able to get permission to go fishing regularly.

“There’s no rules about it,” said Mousie, shrugging. “But it’s cold out there and… hey, listen, you have your head on straight, so tell me… how do I strike you? I mean, I sometimes feel like I don’t even care anymore or… no, never mind, sorry. Yes, sure, go fish.”

Unfortunately, there was no gear, and the oddments around were so pathetic that not even the handy seaman could assemble them into something useful. He went down to the docks anyway with something that at least looked like a rod and line. And what was more, he shucked off his warm-weather gear right before ascending the creaking elevator to return inside, swaggering past the guards nonchalantly.

He found that Alnitak had returned, and was chatting up Hephastia. And what was more, the bard had a plan.

“I want to play some music during meals,” he said. “I’m excused from duty for five days for, um, reasons. But yeah, how about it, Mousie? I’m a bard by training, and that’s always been my dream.”

“I had a dream, once,” said Mousie, distantly. “I would be the executive chef at a big inn.”

“…right. And I believe in you.”

“I would be famous for my dumplings. But now, where’s my passion gone?”

“Well…”

“Sure,” said Mousie, staring off into space. “Yeah, it’s fine, um, but you have to check with the warden first.”

“Can we deliver her breakfast?” asked Alnitak, gesturing at Chaster.

“Sure,” Mousie said. “Do whatever. I have to think about some things. No, wait, I better get to prepping… Antigone, come help!”

After everything was ready, Chaster and Alnitak brought the councilors their breakfasts, including the warden.

“Hello,” said the human woman. Her chestnut-brown hair was in a firm bun. “I’m Warden Marthannis. You’re both new?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Alnitak, handing her a tray. “It’s been fine here so far. But I did have a request.”

“Ah, well, yes, the rumors are true. But you needn’t worry… the Council knows and everything is under control. I am very capable of doing my job,” said the warden, reassuringly.

Alnitak glibly moved right past that mysterious comment. “Of course. Well then, I also wanted to know if I might be able to play music during some meals. I’m a bard by training, and I’d love to be able to bring a little warmth to the guards and staff.”

“I see no problem with that,” said the warden. “You won’t receive any extra pay and you’ll still need to attend to your duties, but that sounds pleasant.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, and have a good morning,” said Alnitak, smiling… and making a mental note to check into the “rumors.”

Back in the kitchen, Alnitak tuned his lute, musing about what he’d learned: the warden routinely had long fits where she spoke only in Dwarvish and sought drinks from a hidden cask in the kitchen. Odd.

Meanwhile, Chaster was set to peeling potatoes with Trevor. The young man had wet himself in panic yesterday during the alert, and he reddened with silent embarrassment as Chaster settled in with a peeler next to him.

They peeled potatoes together quietly for a while.

After some time, Chaster said in a low voice. “Trevor. I’ve seen boys like you before. Men like you before.”

Trevor paused in his peeling, stiffening where he sat but not looking over.

“Men who froze up when something happened, but then moved on to a new berth and made a discovery: a new person within themselves, waiting on that new ship.”

In a whisper, Trevor said, “They did?”

“They found that they could be the person they wanted to be. Everything else was past. Yesterday was another ship. Today, we’re here, headed for a new harbor.”

“…yes?”

Chaster turned to regard him with steady eyes, like a calm sea. “Trevor died yesterday.  You’re Trev now.”

“Yes,” said Trev in a hushed voice. “Trev.”

Alnitak’s music filled the room with swelling chords, and something rose within Trev to match.

That evening, the Nameless had time for a quick meeting (after an unpleasant encounter with Twisty in the meal line). Pops, Spicy, and the two cooks who were transforming the kitchen staff sat and chatted.

Alnitak gave doses of emetic to Stasha and Spindle, as they agreed that they needed to have another chat with 13. She had made a demand, but she’d need to escape if she got it (otherwise, where would she keep the book once she got it?). Maybe there was a solid deal to be made. The broom of flying would be their escape route, regardless — abetted by Chaster’s new fishing routine.

“Oh,” said Spindle brightly, “also there’s one more thing. Let’s mess up Twisty before we go.”

The next morning, Chaster went back down to the docks to try his luck fishing again. He carefully set down his pretend rod and tackle, and then leaned out over the bitterly cold water. He threw a handful of crumbled bacon into the water, and watched eels come to nip at it. Then he slammed his hands together, and a bloom of water imploded on itself under the surface.

It sounded like a muffled boom of thunder, but Chaster’s Thunderwave didn’t sound that different from the grind of one iceberg on another. He picked out several fat eels from those that floated to the surface, and then picked up his fishing gear and headed back to the prison.

They had seven days remaining.

That day, the guards were assigned to latrine detail. This required no labor from them, but they did have to supervise the prisoners as those unfortunates carried buckets of refuse out to a pit in front of the building. It actually got a bit exciting — prisoner #34, a sour-faced elf, was all set to stab serene #90. Stasha and Chaster averted the issue. As it would turn out, #90 was once a paladin, and she had put #34 into the prison once upon a time. By her own request, she usually worked with him. “Better for no one else to be in danger,” she said, calmly.

They had somewhat less luck with #13, when Spindle invisibly visited her that afternoon for a repeat visit. Lost in thought, she only reluctantly conversed with him, and repeated that she’d give up the key to the vault in exchange for the warden’s ledger.

“There’s nowhere to hide a ledger in here,” Spindle pointed out.

“Yes,” she said, her tone condescending, “I’m just going to be reading it.”

She was rude and abrasive, lavishing Spindle with outright insults. He did have some satisfaction, however, when he left her mid-conversation for a second time, talking to the air. He headed off to share with the group: they’d just have to make the trade. Someone would need to steal the ledger.

“Are you still there? Hello? Damn it.”

The warden was as gracious as usual when Chaster visited that day, bringing a meal of fresh eels for her. “A tradition on me ship,” he explained to anyone who asked. “First catch goes to the captain. Arrr.”

They had a cordial conversation, but it took a return visit from Spindle and Chaster before they could get their hands on the ledger. They had been directed to file a report on the incident that morning by the sergeant. The warden explained some of the background and accepted their affidavit, but near the end of the conversation, her demeanor completely changed. She spoke in a deeper voice in an abrupt transition, her Dwarven rolling with the native accent of Mithril Hall.

“Ho there you fellows Lets get some ale!” she cried, merrily.

“Certainly,” answered Spindle. “Lets go.”

They went down to the kitchens, the warden speaking in a steady stream about companionship and mirth… but not before Spindle swiped the ledger, sweeping it into his Bag of Holding with a deft motion.

In the mess hall, the warden made merry with the ale from the special cask set aside for this purpose, drinking until she was vomiting on the floor and completely intoxicated.

It was a perfect moment to sneak away and make the trade. Spindle handed the book over to #13, and then waited while she read it. It was a tense half-hour, under continual scrutiny by the guards staring out from the panopticon only fifteen feet away, but the self-satisfied dwarf made no fuss as she read the book out loud to herself in a quiet voice.

After going audibly through every entry at a steady pace, occasionally pausing to repeat herself, she returned the book. Then she raised her hand, displaying the tattoo along her right knuckles.

“Give me the key,” Spindle demanded.

“Here it is,” she said. “6942012345.”

As she spoke, some of the symbols on her fingers vanished, the ink slithering out of her skin and away. A magical weight settled on Spindle, and he felt something change. He couldn’t see his own invisible hand, but he was sure that he’d have a new tattoo when he could.

As usual, he abandoned her mid-conversation.

They had the key, but now they needed an excuse to return the book — and they needed to make a quick exit. As the Nameless convened to discuss their options, Mousie went to make a batch of dumplings. Alnitak urged him to seize the moment and turn out the best batch that he could. Weeping with the strength of his dream, the head of kitchen was trying his best to make his new friend proud.

How could they find an excuse to visit the warden’s office again? It was late at night and they’d just watched the warden drink herself into a stupor before being carried away by the guards.

“We could just take it with us,” offered Spindle.

“That would maybe draw a lot more attention,” said Alnitak.

What possible reason could they have for going back up there?

“Here are the dumplings!” said Mousie, proud but hesitant. As one, they all turned to look at him.

Down the halls of Revel’s End marched a procession of great pomp and moment. In the lead marched Mousie, wearing a clean apron for the first time in years. His eyes were wild with euphoria. Behind him came Chaster, a platter of dumplings atop a cloth-covered tray. Following them was Trev, who was holding an elegantly folded napkin in the shape of a swan. He held it aloft like it was a precious thing, and rightfully so. And in the rear marched two guards, “Pops” and “Spicy,” their truncheons in hand ceremoniously.

“What is… what the… what?” said one of the guards in the panopticon, rising from his seat. “What’s…”

“DUMPLINGS!” announced Chaster, grandly. “MOUSIE HAS MADE DUMPLINGS!”

Not waiting for a reply, they swept up the stairs and into the warden’s office. She lay asleep on the floor, boots off, while Sergeant Brugha wiped her face with a cloth.

“What the fuck?” he demanded of the two guards.

“We have brought dumplings!” said Chaster.

Brugha ignored the kitchen staff, saying harshly to Stasha and Spindle, “It’s eleven bells. Get them out of here!”

“I can take over here if you want,” said Spindle. “If you want to take a break.”

Incredulous, the sergeant said, “Get them out of here. It’s… very nice, but take them back. Look at her. This isn’t a good time. Everyone accepts the warden for who she is, but this isn’t okay.”

“I just mean… I can take over here?” said Spindle, sidling over to the desk and deftly depositing the ledger with the swift-fingered skill of a master thief.

“What the fuck?!” roared Brugha. “Get them out!”

“Time to go,” said Stasha. The crew grabbed what they needed. But Alnitak and Chaster weren’t ready. They had the key and they’d returned the book, but they needed something else.

“Mousie,” said Chaster. “My lad, we’re going to go fish. Come down with me and get some eels. For a new batch of dumplings.”

Mousie, scrubbing a pan, was still glowing with joy. With a fond smile, he said, “In the morning? Sure.”

“No, now,” said Chaster, glancing over at Stasha and Spindle. It was time to make their getaway.

Mousie chuckled. “No, maybe tomorrow. It’s very late and it’ll be very cold out there. Midwinter was just last week.”

Chaster shrugged at Alnitak. The bard frowned, then stepped over.

“Mousie,” he said. “What’s your dream?”

“To… to open a dumpling restaurant. In Baldur’s Gate,” said the cook, hesitantly.

“So let’s do it. Let’s go. Let’s go now.”

“Now?”

“You only get one shot,” said Alnitak, putting a hand on Mousie’s shoulder and looking him in the eye. “Do not miss your chance. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”

The words hung in the air, tense.

“Let’s go,” said Mousie in a whisper.

The crew — and one addition — swept out of the building in a rush. They made it as far as the exit before anyone even noticed. One of the guards rose and demanded they halt. He stared at the three cooks and two guards who wanted to go out down to the docks in the middle of the night, when the howling ice had the temperature down to ten degrees below zero.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“Going fishing,” said Chaster, merrily. And after some convincing, the guard was willing to let them go.

“But I’m going to let the sergeant know about this,” he said, uncertainly.

Out of nowhere, Stasha leaned forward. In a clear, cold voice, he said, “Tell anyone about this and I will kill you.” There was iron in his words, and the guard could hear it.

“O-okay,” he said, sinking into his seat.

The Nameless took the lift down to the docks, signaled for their ride, and disabled the lift. A half hour later, they were at sea with two grumpy dwarves. They’d made it out of Revel’s End.

It was two miserable days to Luskan, with Chaster making a nuisance of himself as a backseat sailor and Mousie getting ill from the cold, but they arrived without any real trouble. They took shelter again at the inn of Niels Sovereign-Save. Varrin Axebreaker was waiting for them.

Varrin was pleased to get the key, which Spindle transferred to the Axebreaker’s own hand, and didn’t insist on knowing any details. He rebuffed their efforts to ask for a further reward, but promised them a percentage of the recovered treasure, as well as some magical items. He’d reach them through the Rashemi, he said.

“Thank you,” said Varrin. “You have saved my clan.”

Within the day, the Nameless had set sail for Waterdeep, hiring out berths on a ship. It was a 12-day journey over 600 miles or so, and so the cost was considerable. But the expense was well-worth it. Almost the moment they arrived, stepping onto one of the vast docks of the greatest city of Faerûn, a courier found them. They had barely said goodbye to Mousie, having made arrangements to help him set up his shop, when the halfling courier approached them.

The courier was lugging a small strongbox. It contained a considerable treasure in coin and gems. The coins were all marked with the Axebreaker coat of arms, but they were standard weight and would spend well enough. They were topped with a cap of water breathing and slippers of spider climbing.

And of course, there was a key.

Chapter Five: Tockworth’s Clockworks

Before they’d even finished listening to the recording, and examining their new treasure, a halfling man with a rapier at his side and a long silken scarf approached the party. Behind him, the courier — who always seemed to have little trouble seeking them out, no matter where they were — was watching. He did not linger as the rakish strange gentleman approached.

“Greetings,” said the halfling, giving a floppy bow. “It seems you are in need of speed. I have been directed to accommodate you. My name is Fitz, and I’m your ride to Yartar.”

Spicy — he’d adopted his nickname as his own — affected his own floppy bow in return, and Fitz grinned.

“Whoa now,” objected Alnitak. “We’re not even sure we’re going to Yartar!”

But his protests were swept aside by Fitz, who told them that he was obliged to the Vault and here to convey them to the high walls of Yartar, far faster than they’d ever traveled before. “Meet me at the docks,” he said, “within the hour. The winds are good.”

There was barely time enough for a last word to Mousey and some brief shopping for supplies before the Nameless reconvened at the Waterdeep docks. (Chaster arrived early enough to spend some time idly criticizing local sailors for their slipshod efforts.) There, they discovered the Wild Blue Yonder.

The airship was a sleek-looking craft. It’s long and skinny, made of dark wood that’d been so lovingly polished that it practically glowed. A gray balloon was rigged to the ship at a dozen mounting points. The Wild Blue Yonder was tied with thick cables to mooring posts, holding it a few feet above the ground. There was a ballista mounted in the stern, with a rack of wicked-looking javelins nearby. Two other halflings and a gnome were currently operating a hoist, lifting a cask marked “oil of vitriol” up from a wagon. Captain Fitz briskly mounted a ladder dangling from the ship’s side as the party approched. “Come!” he cried. “We must be off!”

Captain Fitz spoke to the harbormaster, leaving the party just enough time to load their gear and coax their reluctant mounts aboard. Chaster, bemused, discovered that one of the three stalls aboard the two-decked ship was occupied by a large and cheerful mastiff. Then Fitz loosed the anchor ropes, and the Yonder rose gracefully into the air. Bellows alongside bumped rhythmically and steered them west, and they soared off in style.

The party had meager but clean spots with the crew, and there was no expectation that they’d pitch in on the trip. The leisure and the novelty were a welcome change of pace, and it left them time to stand at the deck-railing and look down at their birds-eye view of the world. And at dinner that evening — a thick stew of mutton and vegetables — Captain Fitz was happy to chat.

“You work for the Vault? They’re good people,” he said. “Saved my sister.”

“Really?” said Alnitak. “We weren’t under the impression they were that sort.”

“No, they saved her,” said Fitz, nodding. “She married a rough but pleasant man when she was young — a mason — and it was good for a while. Then he started putting his hands on her. She wouldn’t leave him, though. Just kept getting hurt. But the Vault took care of it, and her and her two kids are fine now.”

He warned them about Yartar, which was led by Highlord Cooper, a corpulent man in advanced years, and which was known for being unfriendly to anyone who wasn’t human. The Shields of Yartar kept an eye out for all crimes, but they were energetically attentive to the crimes of anyone who was different.

It was nice to spend an evening with someone who had good stew, friendly advice, and no ulterior motives. These days, it was proving all too rare for the Nameless.

Fitz alighted at the Temple of Lathander in Yartar the next afternoon, and then the Yonder swept away into the sky. Fitz gave a floppy bow from the stern as he soared off, and he called out his well-wishes in his high-pitched voice. The party hurried with quick steps out of the temple and out into city. The elves had taken the precaution of disguising themselves as humans, using wax and gum to alter the shapes of their ears and facial structure. Spicy had even tried to grow a beard, although this amounted to just an effort of will… without a lot of results.

They bought some items in the city, and they had a couple of close calls with suspicious townsfolk. Their disguises seemed to be effective, though, and presently they were approaching the city gate. A low whistle attracted their attention… it was the Rashemi’s messenger, that same young halfling they’d seen the previous day in Waterdeep. He’d beaten them to Yartar, implausible though it seemed.

“What’s your name?” asked Spicy.

“Strauss,” answered the halfling, leading them into a teashop nearby. He said little more before departing, leaving them with their handler. The Rashemi sat alone before a steaming teapot and set of small cups, and examined them carefully with expressionless eyes.

“You have had no trouble here in Yartar, I hope,” she said in her sharp Rashemon accent. “The people here are not accepting. Even I have some difficulties, though I am human,” she said. “Because of this,” she added, tracing her fingers across the intricate blue tattoos that covered her face.

“Is it the people, or their leaders?” said Spicy, rhetorically.

“Yes,” agreed the Rashemi, fiercely. “The people should throw off the chains of bigotry here. But anyway, I am here to assist you with this next mission.”

“I like this better than threats of jail,” said a skeptical Stasha.

“Well, you have proven to be cooperative and helpful. Jails will still be there if we need them,” replied the Rashemi, tartly.

“Since you’re here to assist us, could you assist me by sending my new dog to my lion-keeper?” asked Chaster, gesturing at the mastiff that was sitting happily at his feet. The Rashemi rolled her eyes, but acquiesced to send the dog to join Chaster’s lion at Gregor Silversworth’s kennel at Varkenbluff.

She proceeded to detail what was known of Little Lockford. They already had a considerable amount of information from the last time they intervened, a month previously; the Helmsguard had investigated the situation before their own tragic end. They had her diary to assist them — it had a great deal of helpful information. Further, the Nameless would have two possible allies within the town.

Ignus Flint was the first. He was a gnomish tinkerer who often undertook work for the Golden Vault. He was the one who made the music boxes, for example. He had not contacted the Vault this time, and didn’t appear to be among the injured among the refugees. He was presumed dead. If he had survived, the party could reveal themselves as allies by using the passcode “Golden Compact” in a sentence. If he was dead, the party should clear out his workshop, especially getting any papers and any music boxes that might be there.

The guildmaster of the miner’s guild, Guildmaster Deepdelve, was another possible ally. She was the mother to a member of the Helmsguard, Sara Deepdelve. She was also presumed dead, but if she survived, mentioning that they were friends of her daughter might convince her to trust the party.

“Good luck,” said the Rashemi.

They’d been advised that time was limited; every day that they delayed, the automaton forces in Little Lockford would be growing in number and strength. Tixie had been sealed inside the town by what remained of the populace, but she had ample resources within. So the Nameless wasted no time and pushed themselves hard. Chaster and Stasha rode the broom, uncomfortably crammed together on it, while the young elves trotted the paths on their mounts. They went as quickly as they dared down the muddy road of slush towards Little Lockford, which lay in one of the more accessible caverns of the Underdark.

Despite their haste, each evening, the two Evermeet elves spent time setting up precautions at their camp. Spicy would rig a thread with a bell on it around the camp, while Alnitak would scatter a handful of caltrops in the grass nearby (away from his beloved horse, of course).

They frequently felt exhaustion at the end of the long days on the trail, but they met no trouble. And when they arrived at the wide, muddy cave entrance to the “Grand Stair” descent into the earth, their entire journey had taken them a mere half a tenday.

The Grand Stair was a series of connected, descending caves. Each one was relatively flat, and so the effect was of nothing so much as an immense staircase for some titan. Their descent took a couple of hours, and before they were an hour in, they’d already begun to feel a rawness settling into their bones as the magical radiation that permeated the Underdark began to affect them. It was the faerzress — according to legend, the corruption left by the passage of countless fiends in the ancient days when the Underdark was formed. The faerzress sustained the omnipresent phosphorescent fungi, but it also interfered with many magics of transposition.

In time, they arrived at a ramshackle collection of small huts, thrown together from trash and rubble, outside of an immense brass wall and gate. They’d reached Little Lockford.

Mayor Broadfoot greeted them, smoothing formal finery that was looking rather bloody these days. “I can’t tell you how pleased we are that you’re here to help us! We’ve sealed the gates of Little Lockford to contain the threat that has claimed so many innocent lives.”

“Some weeks ago, Tockworth, our security overseer, ordered her clockwork automatons to attack her fellow citizens. Not knowing what else to do, I ordered an evacuation. But Little Lockford is our home, and I am determined to reclaim it.”

“After you lost it, right? You were warned, and you did nothing.” said Spicy, witheringly.

“I went to fire her from her position, and that’s when she lost control!” said the mayor, defensively.

“What else can you tell us?” asked Alnitak.

“Tockworth built a fail-safe device to shut down the automatons in the event of malfunction. The device is in her workshop, protected by a magic symbol on the floor that messes with the mind of any creature that sets foot on it. To activate the fail-safe, you need a security key that Tockworth keeps in a safe in her workshop. We need you to retrieve the security key and use it to shut down the clockwork automatons. How you deal with Tockworth is up to you.”

Spicy didn’t relent, again prodding her with accusing words and seemingly looking for some acceptance of blame. The mayor broke down, sobbing. As she wept, shoulders shuddering, she promised them a fortune if they would help rescue the town. She shoved a hand-drawn map into their hands.

Alnitak found a svirniblen girl, Carolyn, who agreed to watch their horse. She also began weeping as Alnitak spoke to her, saying that she’d also tried to watch out for her brother in the town, and she hadn’t been able to. He’d been left behind. Chaster promised they’d look for him: Corey, a little svirniblen boy with a streak of white in his hair.

The highest-ranking member of the militia to survive, Sergeant Cragknuckle, opened the huge gates for them. There were supplies in the infirmary that automatons wouldn’t be interested in, he advised. When they needed to get out, they should knock seven times.

The gates closed shut behind them with a heavy sound of finality.

A wave of heat washes across the Nameless, revealing a grim town bathed in hellish light and periodically brightened by flashes of lightning. This area of town had worn cobblestone streets and charming little homes, each rather small to the eyes of the tall visitors. Many of them were visibly damaged, and several gnomish bodies lay nearby.

Spicy scouted ahead, and they easily found the town hall, as well as some supplies — potions and a bit of dust of disappearance. Chaster remembered reading about how the automatons of the town had treated the diary’s author differently because she was a resident, and he thought it might mess with that system somehow if they burned the town’s property records (plus it might create a distraction). They stoked a fire and lit it, and then headed out.

There was some conflict about the best way to go, and the party agreed to split up. Alnitak and Spicy headed south towards what their map called the Cavemouth district, while Stasha and Chaster headed towards the abbey to the east. They figured they could meet up later. “I really want some bonding time with my buddy,” said Alnitak, over Spicy’s protests. He also took the time to prepare some traps, enchanting two books with glyph of warding explosive runes.

They were both fortunate and unfortunate to find that the bridge to Cavemouth had been raised. It was unfortunate, since it meant they’d have to take the Slagline to go south. This was a huge suspended chain-and-bucket system meant to transfer ore. It accommodated them easily in one of the huge buckets, but it also meant they’d need to wait. Fortunately, this also meant they were near enough to help when they saw a battle break out from back the way they came. Magical bolts of energy blasted down from a hovering figure high in the sky.

When they returned, they found that Stasha and Chaster hadn’t gotten far from the town hall before being accosted by two automatons. They were large clockwork beasts, looking similar to dogs, with bright lights for eyes and an electrified bite. Both of the embattled Nameless had been hurt badly; Chaster was fighting both automatons on the ground while Stasha blasted them with magic from a perch atop the Broom of Flying. Spicy and Alnitak joined the fight, and before long the automatons were dispatched. Spicy showed himself a deft hand with the crossbow in the process, eliminating one of the automatons as well as a little flying spy-bot that had come to investigate.

The whole group now proceeded with caution across the bridge to a platform made from an immense stalagmite that had been severed and leveled off into a platform, where there was a squat stone building capped with a stone dome. The building’s entrance was a double door carved to resemble interlocking hands, and centered above the doorway was a golden pick with a short handle. According to the mayor, this was a temple to Callarduran Smoothhands.

As they approached and discussed what to do, a clutching hand emerged from the wall of the temple. It was followed by an arm and then the rest of a robed svirfneblin, who tumbled out onto the ground. He confided that he was the abbot of the monastery, and thanked them. He had been hiding for a week in the walls of the temple, and was near to starving. There were escaped prisoners in the temple, he said — a goblin and a bugbear. The party gave him some food and water, accepted a scroll of magic weapon in return, and sent him on to safety.

Alnitak, with a confidence verging on recklessness, loudly knocked at the door. Hesitantly, a goblin and his gruff friend answered. They were named Slonk and Yuzzik, and they were indeed escapees. They had the broken manacles to prove it, although the party helped them with that (and gave them a bite to eat). They weren’t eager to leave through the main gate, suspecting that they’d be captured again if they did so. They were more willing to go with the party and lend a hand — and maybe slip away later, where the gnomes wouldn’t grab them again.

The enlarged party moved on to what the map indicated was Turbine Heights. The streets of this district were filled with steam. Through the haze, they could see bright streetlamps and abandoned buildings. Every fifteen seconds, a bolt of electricity arced from a metal tower in the middle of the district to similar towers in other districts. The party headed straight to it, moving stealthily through the steam-clouded streets. They saw another pair of automatons moving around, their eyes like lanterns in the mist, but evaded them.

The interior of the power station was one big room filled with billowing clouds of steam. Four howling turbines took up most of the floorspace. Iron steps led to a six-foot-high iron balcony on the west side of the room. At the north end of the balcony was an iron ladder that climbed to a trapdoor in the roof. The balcony also supported a metal console. Alnitak stood watch outside, while the rest of the party investigated.

Up on the balcony, the party discovered the body of a dead gnome and a burst section of railing. Down below, they could see that there was a still-moving automaton caught in one of the turbines. Stasha blasted it with a dozen bolts of magical energy until it stopped twitching, and then Yuzzik climbed up on the turbine to pry it free.

With a grunt, he managed to yank out the broken automaton. But the next instant, his foot was caught up in the turbine’s whirling wheel. He vanished inside of it with a scream, and died instantly in the interior of the merciless metal machine. His blood sprayed the ceiling.

“Yikes,” said Spicy. Slonk began swearing and lamenting his friend.

The console turned out to control the power systems in the whole town. From here, they could control all of the other bridges and alter the power flow to the each district. They opted to raise all of the bridges except the one to Smoldertown, their next stop.

The acrid stench of hot metal hung over this district. Buildings here had no decoration, and nearly every surface was caked in decades of grime and soot. A few more gnome bodies lay face-down in the grit. A soot-stained foundry stood at the edge of this district, overlooking the magma lake far below. Its large door was open and smokestack belched black fumes, revealing that its fires continued to burn. A raised loading dock allowed access to the dangling buckets of the Slagline, which delivered unrefined ore to the foundry.

Further down the street, they could see a tavern that still appeared, oddly, to have a customer. Hanging above the entrance of this grimy stone building was a painted wooden sign that depicted gemstones pouring from a flagon. A minor magical effect caused the gemstones to glitter invitingly. There was a svirfneblin sitting at one of the tables out front, her back towards the party.

Drawing close under cover of stealth, Alnitak could see that one of the svirfneblin’s hands had been replaced by a mechanical claw, and with it she was clutching an empty beer mug. She muttered quietly to herself as she sat there, “Going to fix it all… fix it all up good… you and me, Poots… get it all perfect.”

Gingerly, Alnitak opened the door to the nearby inn and slid inside. The gnome started and looked at the motion, then dropped her mug and sprinted down the street towards a squat gray blocky building at the end of the street, hooting, “Break’s over, Poots!” It was a windowless structure, with a large metal statue on the roof and a hulking figure standing out front.

Spicy took a desperate shot, more than a hundred feet away from her, but the bolt sailed wide and clattered off of the cobblestones. She vanished inside of the door of the building. The figure in front lurched into movement awkwardly., building speed until it was in a full sprint. As it drew closer, the Nameless could see that it was an eight-foot-tall, bipedal construct made of chipped stone, rusty metal, and green copper. Its heavy iron gauntlets were clenched into fists, and the ominous helm that formed its head glowed with an inner fire. Two other automatons unfolded themselves from the door and pounded down the street after it.

Slonk hunched down miserably behind a large metal pipe, and the rest of the party prepared for action. Chaster and Stasha positioned themselves near the entrance to the drawbridge they’d entered from, while Spicy found a good sniping position nearby. Alnitak emerged from the inn he’d been investigating, and flanked the enemies as they ran past.

The patchwork automaton absorbed several crossbow bolts as it charged towards Chaster and Stasha. At one point, Spicy’s missile clipped off one of the rothé horns on its helm. But the injuries were undone almost as quickly as they happened, with a horn of metal unfolding from the depths of the monster and rivets reforming moments after they were sheared off. Chaster threw a palmful of flame at the creature, and Stasha hit it with bolts of furious energy, but it barely slowed.

As it got near, Stasha leapt onto the broom of flying and took off into the air, soaring upwards. But even as he took flight, the creature — barely breaking its thumping heavy stride — bent at the knees and leapt. It seized Stasha from the air with huge mismatched limbs, thundering back to the ground with a crash. The broom went flying far out of reach. Stasha was pinned in place.

“Drop,” commanded Chaster, at the same time that Stasha vanished from the creature’s embrace with a misty step. It stood, stunned, for a moment.

Alnitak hurled his trapped books at the other automatons, and Spicy eliminated one in the aftermath as the explosion faded from the other. Then he resumed peppering the more formidable patchwork creature, trying to overwhelm whatever healing capabilities it was deploying.

Chaster blocked one blow after another from the creature as it lurched back into motion, retreating tactically back across the bridge as he did. The others rained projectiles down on it, but the fight didn’t end until Chaster lunged to the side and brought his gauntlets together with the crash of a thunderwave. The creature staggered backwards under the assault, teetered for a moment at the edge, and then plummeted downwards. It vanished into the bubbling magma, below.

Barely pausing to catch their breath, the Nameless headed towards the workshop at the end of the street.

“That gnome must have been Tixie,” said Chaster. “She said something about ‘Poots,’ and that diary we got from the other team mentioned that as Tixie’s imaginary friend.”

The workshop was quiet, with walls of riveted metal. There were no other doors or windows, only a few odd-looking gratings and the like. The statue on the roof was a huge automaton with weapons for hands, its limbs posed as though it had been caught mid-motion. A column of steel supported it.

Spicy and Chaster charged inside, followed soon by Alnitak (who had been exploring other nearby buildings). Stasha, meanwhile, alighted on the roof with his broom to examine the statue. He identified it as a golem of some sort, and the column was actually an arcane conduit that would transmit things. In other words, they were in serious trouble.

Inside, the other three members of the team found that Tixie had vanished. The inside of the workshop was littered with tools and parts and consoles, with one large metal ladder leading upwards to a roof access panel. The floor was decorated with a large geometric design that glowed a dull red. While they had been sure from the outside that there must be another level, and that Tixie had just run inside here, it seemed to be their imagination. Chaster climbed the ladder and found only Stasha on the roof (“This thing is going to move,” Stasha warned, pointing at the huge statue). Where had Tixie gone?

Inside, Spicy and Alnitak had decided to take different approaches to the problem. Spicy was using his slippers of spider climbing to clamber over all of the surfaces inside, scrutinizing closely for hidden passages or compartments. Alnitak, on the other hand, was using mage hand to flip random switches near the ladder. The conjured appendage gamely endured electrical shocks from trapped or damaged equipment as Alnitak diligently kept flipping, but with little result. He avoided the sigil on the floor, carefully.

Halfway up the wall, however, Spicy found that there was something strange, His eyes told him there was nothing in the upper portion of this huge room, but he could feel a hidden lower ceiling, as though there were an enchanted surface above. He climbed around all over it, looking as though he were walking upside-down on the bare air, before determining that there was a hidden second floor, made invisible through artifice or enchantment. He also found a hatchway, although it was sealed and had no means of opening that he could locate.

Chaster climbed back inside and conferred with Spicy. Together, they located two thin ventilation slots at the top of the hidden chamber. Chaster conjured fire and began to blow smoke into the vents, while Spicy climbed outside and along the outside of the building, looking for access. There was still no sign of Tixie.

Alnitak discovered that one of the switches made the insignia on the floor flare brightly, and then turned it off again. Afterwards, the small box with a visible keyhole was more easily visible. Some of these switches were useful!

Stasha was still examining the golem when he saw that some automatons were approaching from the bridge they’d lowered. He began striking them with bolts of eldritch energy from his vantage point on the roof. Then he heard the giant automaton begin to whirr and creak, and the support column lit up with purple light.

“Oh no,” he said. “I told you!”

Spicy had found a set of thin louvres on the outside, and he tore them open. There was a narrow ventilation shaft inside, and he poured into two whole flagons of oil. Then, grinning, he poured in one of the flasks of alchemist’s fire. The liquid ignited itself as it flowed down the ventilation shaft, then liquid fire poured down into the hidden room.

Inside, there was a muffled thump as the oil ignited– something inside must have been equally volatile. The floor of the hidden room bulged, and rivets strained.

Outside, more automatons had arrived, pounding on the door to the workshop. Chaster used the immoveable rod to block it on the inside, and Stasha was blasting them with magical energy even as Spicy dropped them with expertly-aimed crossbow bolts. The huge golem-statue lurched into motion. It was so huge that its movements shook the building, and it wielded an axe and a hammer for its hands. Blue eyes glowed from a head that was set low in its torso.

Moving nimbly, Spicy dipped in and slashed at it with his shortsword, dodging away as it hewed at him with its enormous axe. It missed him, and the blow it struck the roof shook the whole surface again. Stasha took to the air, raining down energy on their enemies, but neither of the two was suited for hand-to-hand combat with a living engine of war.

With Stasha out of reach, the immense machine focused on Spicy. For a time — almost impossibly long — the rogue dodged one blow after another. Then he lashed out with his sword and retreated down the front of the building, running along its surface with his slippers of spider climbing.

The machine didn’t hesitate, and followed him down. It didn’t have his abilities, but it did have enormous mass and strength. It fell like a meteor, smashing into Spicy before impacting the ground. The elf barely kept his feet, knocked violently in place with a blow that rattled the teeth in his head. Another hit like that and he’d be done for.

Fortunately, he was able to run back up the side of the building, and Stasha was airborne. The giant automaton, on the other hand, was grounded and without a target. The two Nameless began peppering it with attacks from an unreachable distance.

The automaton lurched over to a pile of debris, and snatched up a huge discard gear. It launched it at its enemies. The chunk of metal whistled as it hurtled through the air like a train, aimed unerringly at Spicy and deflected only at the last moment by a desperate cast of shield. The magical shield sent it clanging away, still close enough to ruffle the rogue’s hair. The machine had found a way to reach them from afar.

Inside, Chaster saw the smoke that was now billowing out of the hidden room. It was time to get this done. He hooked his legs around the ladder, leaving his hands free, and slammed his weapon into his shield, calling upon the Greenfather as he did so.

His shatter spell was aimed right inside the hidden depths of the room. If they couldn’t get in, he’d scramble whatever was in there from afar.

The room shook, and then exploded downward. The floor burst open with a cacophony of fire, and burning oil poured down into the main room. Alnitak agilely leapt towards the ladder and seized hold of it in an elegant flip, avoiding most of the flames.

“Thanks a lot,” he called out, sarcastically. He plucked his decanter of endless water from his belt, and unleashed it as a geyser, clinging to the ladder as a roaring column of water blasted into the opening of the hidden room.

The torrent of water scoured the inside of the workshop room, violently. Debris and machine parts and the maimed, burned corpse of a gnome poured down from the ruptured hole in the ceiling, along with gallons of water.

Chaster dropped down onto the floor, which was covered in water and burning oil. He shrugged off a few licks of flame, and seized the corpse. Searching it quickly, he found a compartment built into her flesh, and tore it open. The key was inside. He held it up, and Alnitak snatching it with another mage hand.

There was another crashing impact on the building, and the two glanced at each other. “I’m sure they can handle themselves,” said Chaster. Alnitak peeked through the door, which had been bent inwards by the blows of the assaulting automatons.

Outside, just at that moment, he saw Stasha hit the ground hard, landing on the stone a moment after a huge metal gear. The warlock was broken and dying, and the giant machine still had a pile of enormous gears at hand. The broom of flying was nowhere to be seen — perhaps fallen over the nearby edge, and down into the magma. And in the distance, a pair of humanoid automatons were approaching, their steel legs pumping tirelessly. Things were going badly.

“Well,” said Alnitak. “Just in case…” He thrust a hand towards Stasha and sang a single proud chord. The music thrummed through the warlock, magical healing knitting together bones and sealed ruptured organs. The healing word had saved Stasha’s life.

Turning then to his mage hand, the bard maneuvered it to the lock, and inserted the key. He still wanted to keep his distance from that sigil on the floor. With a twist of his wrist, he turned the key in the lock.

Outside, the humanoid automations froze mid-motion, toppling over like puppets whose strings had been cut.

This didn’t stop the huge automated statue, however, which continued whipping one enormous gear after another at the party. They spun through the air like monstrous discuses. Stasha crept away, taking cover behind a building to recuperate, as Spicy exerted every power at his command to evade and dodge each devastating projectile. The goblin Slonk was less fortunate; one huge brass gear sheared through a pair of stalagmites and crushed the poor fellow without prelude or warning.

Chaster picked up the ruined meat that was once Tixie, sticking it through the gap in the door and trying to imitate her voice. “It’s me, Trixie! Stand down.”

The enormous automaton turned to regard the macabre puppet. In a warbling facsimile of a voice, made from the hiss of steam and grind of gears, it said, “I am no longer that meat. I am perfected.“

Chaster shoved through the door, disengaging the immoveable rod and dropping the gnome’s ragged body. This thing was Tixie herself. Damaged now by a dozen crossbow bolts and blasts of magical power, leaking oil and steam, but still immensely powerful.

The automaton struck like a bolt of lightning, smashing into Chaster — and the building, which shook from the blow — and bringing him to his knees. The party was almost entirely out of resources. Almost every scrap of magic expended, injuries compounding.

Taking a ragged breath, Chaster dropped his shield and weapon. “You may be perfected,” he said, “but I am the storm.”

He brought his gauntlets together one last time with his last shreds of the Greenfather’s favor, and shattered the automaton. The rivets across its entire front burst and it exploded into broken pieces, collapsing into a pile of ruined crankshafts and broken gears. Tixie Tockworth gave a last grinding wail, and then became silent as the light in her eyes flickered off.

Little Lockford was safe.

Chapter Six: Beach Day

Little Lockford’s residents showed a mixture of grief and relief when they returned to the town. They were grateful to the characters for saving so much of their home with so little additional damage, and they took up a collection to raise statues in the characters’ honor. The Nameless were all happy with that, although Chaster insisted that they also honor Slonk and Yuzzik. “They also helped save you,” he said. “And they should get a full pardon.”

Mayor Broadfoot agreed, red-eyed and grateful. She handed them their reward, treasures that the town had held for generations: an heirloom ruby ring, boots of striding and springing, a driftglobe, and a stone of good luck.

The party stopped to check on Guildmistress Deepdelve, the mother of the journal’s author. She was dead, fallen in combat with a dismembered automaton. Ignus Flint, the other contact, was still alive. He’d been hiding for weeks in an automated drill he’d invented. He’d been unable to escape with it, since Cavemouth was surrounded by magma veins, he explained, but it had made a secure hiding spot.

Ignus wept when he found out about the Deepdelves. He gave the party some finished Golden Vault music boxes, and Alnitak thoughtfully gave him Sara Deepdelve’s journal. “Here,” he said. “She would have wanted you to have this, more than us.” The gnome accepted, still weeping.

The journey back up out of the Underdark via the Grand Stair was quiet. They became aware again of the constant presence of the faerzress, which they’d forgotten about, as it faded from the air.

As they emerged, collecting their mounts, the same dwarven courier found them as usual, seemingly unerringly. He did not ask about whether or not they’d succeeded. He did not ask about their well-being. He only said, pleasantly, that the Rashemi had requested to meet them at the Persimmon Pools as soon as possible. None of the Nameless had heard of it, but he said brightly that it was on the banks of the Dessarin River, near the town of Beliard (which they had indeed heard of). Passage from Yartar had already been arranged with a river barge company. The whole experience should be a nice change, he said with a charming smile.

After some discussion, the group agreed. They headed into the woods, but only a few moments later, Alnitak called a halt.

“We need to have a meeting,” he said.

The Nameless settled down in a forest clearing, brushing a thin layer of snow from old logs or sitting on their packs.

“What in the hell just happened?” asked Alnitak, glancing around. “One minute we’re dancing around in casinos, getting lions, stealing from a fancy house… and then the next minute we’re engaged in all-out war. That wasn’t our kind of scene. We’re sneaky sneaks, but that was a fight!”

“There could have been more sneaking around, but you left us,” Chaster pointed out. “Remember? You and Spicy went off by yourselves. Then we got attacked.”

“We could handle it,” says Stasha, coolly.

“Plus, it’s nice to be able to let loose every now and then. That was one of the fun parts of being in a gang in the city – we didn’t always have to hold back. We all know how to handle ourselves in a fight, and sometimes a fight is a good thing,” added Spicy, glancing over at Alnitak.

“Fine, fair point. Maybe that one’s on me. But here’s something else. We need to talk about the Vault.”

“What about them?” asked Spicy.

“We all read that same journal. We read about Sara. We all read about how she was worried that they were going to use her up, and they did use her up. All of her group died in that horrible place. And the Vault didn’t even both to try to recover the bodies.”

Chaster shrugged, but Spicy nodded.

“That place… look, I didn’t sign up for fighting. This face isn’t made for melee,” declared Alnitak, gesturing at his chiseled features. “If they keep putting us in these situations, we’re going to get killed.”

“I do think it’s fair to say that we have paid our debt for getting out of prison,” replied Chaster, thoughtfully.

“So that raises the question: do we even need to keep working for them?” said Spicy. “Maybe we’re done.”

“I’m not saying that, necessarily,” said Alnitak, cautiously. “But I think it depends on where we’re headed. We can’t keep going to war.”

“Seems like that might have been a suicide mission for us,” noted Stasha, suspicion kindling in his eyes. “Maybe they didn’t expect us to return. They might have expected us to die.”

“They’re pretty powerful. We’ve seen the thing with the magic doors. But I am curious to see what else they might have to offer,” says Spicy. “If we’ve earned our freedom.”

“I just don’t know if this is the way I’m looking to end my life,” said Alnitak. “When I think about that, I’d like there to be more alcohol, beautiful people, feather beds. I’m just asking that we keep an open mind.”

There was a long pause, and then Spicy added, grimly: “There’s also the potential that we just don’t get to quit. That they make us keep going until we’re used up, too.”

The Nameless sat for minutes more in the quiet forest clearing, silent except for snow sifting down from the branches above, and thought about that.

As it turned out, the Golden Vault was on the level about at least one thing: the trip to the Persimmon Pools was quite pleasant. Before they even reached Yartar, they met a new friend: a pleasant little pup that they named Waist. Waist appeared to have come from some settlement at some point, but now he’d been hungry and lost for weeks. He was happy to join the party and snack on treats that the Nameless provided. With the broom lost, half the party now had to walk, but it was getting warmer every day.

At the city, they found that a pair of charming old dwarven women had been hired to take them down the Dessarin River on a raft. They could simply relax as they floated gently along. Chaster got to unwind with his favorite pastime of criticizing the seamanship of others, and Alnitak played pleasant songs on his lute.

The Persimmon Pools was an unusual inn, set on a manmade lake off of the Dessarin River. It was a large place, surrounded by low wooden walls that were decorated with regular whorls and patterns and extended out onto the lake. As the party disembarked onto the dock, they could see that areas of the bank had been built up by natty stone walls, and some of the artificial pools within were steaming. They must be magically heated to be so warm, considering the snow that lingered on the ground early in this month of Ches.

“Welcome to the Persimmon Pools,” said a slender halfling woman who gave them a hand off of the raft. “First time visitors?”

She explained that there were hot baths, masseurs for hire, and a small Chultish cafe. The accommodations were elegant and luxurious, and there were well-appointed meeting rooms. The Pools were a popular destination for diplomacy and vacations, with many visitors in particular from Silverymoon. There was also a small boutique with fashions from as far away as distant Evermeet and Calimshan.

There were several other parties already at the Pools. There was a small group from Yartar, with six women visiting for a bachelorette party. There was also a contingent of emissaries from Silverymoon and Yartar, there to discuss trade.  They were relaxing in one of the heated pools, prior to departing tomorrow. And there was a man in a mask in the cafe, sipping chilled wine.

Each member of the party found interesting things to do: drinking, relaxing in the hot pools, gambling with the diplomats, or shopping. Alnitak and Chaster discussed the cleric’s steadily-developing menagerie (he wanted an elephant, if he could get one). Spicy stopped by and chatted with the masked man, who called himself the Sphinx.

“Would you care for a pastry, Spindle?” asked the Sphinx, though they hadn’t been introduced. He offered a glazed croissant. Cautiously, Spicy accepted. To his surprise, there was a fortune instead: a little paper that read, “Thou shalt find riches.”

He was surprised, but even more surprised when — only moments later — he stumbled over a loose gem that was lodged between two floorboards and covered in dust. “Wow!” he said, with delight. He showed the rest of the party what had happened.

Stasha eagerly went and got a pastry of his own, from an obliging Sphinx. His face fell as he read his fortune. “Mine wasn’t as fun,” he said in his thick accent, declining to elaborate. Likewise, Alnitak found little to be happy about with his fortune, and kept it private.

Chaster fed his pastry to Waist. He didn’t bother to check inside, and the happy dog gobbled up both food and fate.

The next day, everyone continued to relax. There was still no sign of the Rashemi, so Stasha and Chaster went on a day trip to the nearby town of Beliard. They took a look at the stock, and purchased horses. Chaster bought a big strapping warhorse, Bellisarius, while Stasha picked a skittish mare named Skillet.

Finally, that evening, the Rashemi arrived. She apologized for her lateness, and praised them for their work. When it came time for a tough conversation, the Nameless told her of their concerns. They didn’t want to be used up like Sara had been. They wouldn’t be slaves.

The Rashemi admitted that she thought they had probably paid their debt, but also that she didn’t think that her superiors in the Vault would agree yet.

“I’ll make you a deal,” the Rashemi said. “Do another job, and then you are free. At that time, I will wish to hire you to do a job for me, instead, if you are willing. But one more for the Vault.”

The party agreed.

“I need you to get a painting.”

Chapter Seven: Masterpiece Imbroglio

Rain was beginning to fall as the coach pulled up beside an open barn surrounded by fields of dead corn, the stalks sticking up through a thin layer of snow. Two horses trotted along behind the coach, their hooves slapping quietly into the mushy mix of mud and brown slush in the road.

A tall, well-dressed human woman emerged from the barn as the party arrived, greeting them as they alighted. “Thank you for coming,” she said with a gracious smile. “I’m Adrisa Carimorte. My organization would like to hire you to retrieve a painting that was stolen from us by a thieves’ guild. For the painting’s safe return, I’m prepared to pay you two thousand gold pieces. Let’s go inside to escape the rain, shall we? There’s someone else I’d like you to meet.”

The Nameless followed her into the barn and up a ladder. In the middle of the loft, tied to a wooden chair, was a scrawny human man with patchy facial hair. He was sweating profusely and chewing nervously on a cloth gag.

“This is Grinky,” she said. “We caught him outside of the Cognoscenti Esoterica warehouse. He was keeping watch for the thieves, but our people managed to waylay him before he could escape with the rest of the miscreants.”

Adrisa offered a map, smudged with rain (or sweat), which laid out the Agile Hand’s guildhouse — two large buildings. “He drew this for us.”

The party had an initial few questions for Adrisa before they spoke to Grinky, asking her what she knew about the painting and what their timeline was like.

“The portrait is the work of famed artist Dkesii Kwan and was commissioned by the late Daiyani Grysthorn, a grand dame in the criminal underworld. The painting is sentient and was made to eavesdrop on conversations and pass along secrets to its owner. Like its beautiful subject, the painting is notoriously vain.” Adrisa looked thoughtful. “It’s likely that the Agile Hand has a buyer for the painting,” she mused. “Therefore, it’s vital you recover it as quickly as possible before it ends up in an even more secure location. It is an important work of arcane scholarship, as well as key to our upcoming symposium on male beauty.”

Chaster, however, was immediately confrontational towards Adrisa, implying that she was responsible for being neglectful and allowing the painting to be stolen — or perhaps that she might even be complicit in the theft itself. “Where were you when this was happening?” he asked. “How do we know you were involved.”

With an acid tongue, Adrisa snippily gave her alibi and pointed out that she was hiring them to recover the painting, which she surely wouldn’t do if she’d stolen it. Then, huffily, she announced that she’d be downstairs if they needed her.

The party turned their attention to the pathetic figure of Grinky. Spicy secretly used the hand signals of thieves’ cant to check on some of what Adrisa said, and Grinky’s clumsy responses seemed to confirm.

They pulled down his gag, and cast zone of truth. He immediately began spilling his guts, enthusiastically and fearfully. He wasn’t even a full member of the Agile Hand, he said with some dismay. If they wouldn’t hurt him, he’d tell them everything he could — as long as it wouldn’t get any of his friends hurt.

“The windows of the guildhouse are boarded up,” he stammered, “and its doors is usual locked. At least three guild members have master keys: Guildmaster Dusk; Elix the Saint, one of Dusk’s lieutenants; and Jaymont the Sinner, the guild’s resident spy. The master of ravens, Gwish, might have a key as well. If you want to get your hands on a master key, your best bet is to snatch it from Elix the Saint, who’s off always at a seedy tavern called the Tipsy Tankard. He likes one of the barmaids.”

“Where’s the painting now?” asked Alnitak.

“I don’t know where the portrait is, but I’m guessing it’s either in Guildmaster Dusk’s quarters, which are on the second floor of the guildhouse’s tower, or hidden in the basement, where new guild members are trained.”

“If we wanted to start a fire,” asked Spicy, “where would it be most likely to catch?” He glowered down at Grinky, but the thief shook his head, mutely, even when the question was repeated with more threats. He wouldn’t help them burn any of his friends.

Their best bet was at night, he said. By late evening, most guild members went to sleep. Low-ranking thieves like himself would be on watch.

After a thorough and harrowing grilling, the Nameless descended the ladder to Adrisa once more, and determined that their best bet was to waylay Elix the Saint. Grinky described him as a “sword saint,” which Alnitak and Spicy knew was a term usually used for particularly fearsome warriors trained in the ancient elven art of bladesinging. It might be dangerous, but it was a good first step and they outnumbered even a sword saint considerably.

The Tipsy Tankard was a local roadside tavern like many others, serving travelers headed to Varkenbluff as well as a handful of locals. When several members of the party entered, staggering their arrivals so they would seem unconnected, they saw it was not particularly crowded. Elix stood out among those who were there, drinking at the bar and leering at Karyssa, one of the servers.

Elix had two scimitars strapped to his back, although the more observant members of the Nameless, Spicy and Stasha, noted that they were rusty and appeared poorly cared-for. This man was no real sword saint, whatever name he might claim. Their task might be easier than they thought.

A delicate dance ensued. Some members of the party kept their distance and their weapons ready, while Spicy “stumbled” into Elix long enough to determine that he’d be unable to pickpocket the key from the man without him noticing. As this was happening, Alnitak chatted with the thief, testing out whether it would be possible to pose as potential buyers. Nothing worked. The key remained in Elix’s pocket.

The eventual solution was rather less elegant, although it had the virtue of directness: as Elix tottered home, drunk and happy, the Nameless simply mugged and kidnapped him. They knocked him out, emptied his pockets of coin and key, and trussed him up like a Candlemas turkey.

Before the night was through, they had deposited Elix alongside Grinky, safely stowed and tied to a chair, watched over by Adrisa and a redheaded guard working with the Cognoscenti.

It was time for a little breaking and entering.

The Agile Hand’s guildhouse was situated at the end of a winding, cobbled street that runs parallel to a small river. The back of the stables faced a grassy embankment scattered with mulberry trees. To the north, a wooden tower was visible, atop a high hill a couple of miles away.

The guildhouse was a wooden complex consisting of a main building with an adjoining tower, as well as a livery area that includes stables. From all appearances, the map that Grinky had provided was accurate.

“I’ll go check it out,” said Spicy, sidling into the shadows as he moved through the brush towards the house from one side. He moved expertly and quickly, arriving at the base of the tower in a few minutes. A boy of perhaps twelve was standing guard on a balcony that extended over the front porch. He looked just old enough to get into trouble, with apple cheeks and frizzy brown hair that could use a good picking. He didn’t see Spicy as the rogue crept up the side of the tower with his boots of spider climbing.

Carefully, the rogue crept up to the top of the tower, peering in through narrow window-slits. This tower chamber was lit by a pewter chandelier suspended from beams that supported a conical roof. A cluttered writing desk and a padded chair were positioned opposite the descending staircase. A gold-framed painting of a beautiful, well-dressed man hung in a shallow alcove near the top of the stairs. As he tried to move the painting with mage hand, Spicy noticed minute movements on the man’s face — even though it was a painting! — and ducked out of sight before he was seen.

He moved up to the tower roof. A ceramic tile slipped free under one of his feet, skittering down, but he leaned backwards and snatched it before it could make any noise.

Spicy turned and waved to Stasha. The warlock rose into the air like a soap bubble, floating aloft on malign energies, and flew over to Spicy. Stasha took a circuitous route to stay out of sight, and alighted next to the rogue.

“There’s the painting,” Spicy whispered.

Stasha spoke an arcane word, and vanished, appearing again within the room. He glanced around, then took hold of the painting. The man in the portrait looked shocked, his eyes wide, then he began shouting, “Help! I’m being assaulted! Rape! Help!”

Stasha ignored him and yanked on the painting. There was a quiet hiss, and then caustic gas began pouring into the room, flooding the space. The warlock had moved beyond the need for breath, but the corrosive vapors still begun and burn and blister his skin. And the painting still wouldn’t budge. It only scream for aid.

The warlock cursed and vanished again outside, flying away and out of danger.

Only moments later, as the gas settled and cleared, a slender young half-elven woman slid into the room, nude but for a silken robe she was still tying. She searched around, coolly, and then walked to the portrait.

“Constantori, someone was here?”

“A horrible, terrible figure. Nightmarish. It tried to assault me,” moaned the man in the portrait. “And terrible clothing, too.”

“Well,” said the woman, clicking her tongue, “no one is here. No place they could be hiding. Maybe the trap just went off by accident? Did you have a nightmare? Wait, do you sleep?”

“I don’t sleep,” said the image of the beautiful man, but the painting no longer sounded sure. “He just appeared and disappeared.”

After further discussion, the two agree that they’d put everyone on alert. Someone might be happening, after all. The trap did go off, even if there was no sign of an intruder.

Meanwhile, Spicy turned from the spectacle to see the boy standing sentry was staring directly at him, eyes wide, frozen in place. He stalked towards the boy across the roof, looming down over him. “You didn’t see anything,” he said. “It’s always a test.” His voice was calm and cold.

“A t-test?” repeated the boy, terrified.

“Yes,” confirmed Spicy, holding his gaze. “What’s your name?”

“Minty,” said the boy.

Stasha nodded again. “Always a test, Minty.” He backed away, holding a finger to his lips. The boy nodded back, pale. He remained quiet, and stayed quietly at his post.

Elsewhere, Alnitak moved smoothly around the house, circling until he reached the back. He noted a sentry standing guard, as well as a rear entrance. He didn’t, however, notice Chaster enter the stable.

Chaster glanced around, his armor clinking quietly as he stepped inside. Ten horse stalls and a hayloft lined the walls of this barn, which had an open doorway at each end. Flies swarmed around a full dung cart that exuded a horrible stench. Above, there was a sleepy snort of breath as someone awoke at the noise.

By the time a young man climbed down from the barn’s hayloft, hay sticking out of his hair and eyes still heavy with sleep, Chaster was gone. The stablehand picked up a pitchfork as he glanced around, pursing his lips. Then he leaned forward and suddenly stabbed the pitchfork deep into the manure several times. There was no reaction, and he shook his head, looking around again.

He didn’t notice that one of the stalls was open, and didn’t hear it swing open behind him. He did hear the heavy sound of a horse surging forward and rearing, but by then it was too late. A double-beat of hooves caved in his skull before he could even turn around, and he toppled in place like a marionette.

Moments later, ten horses streamed out of the barn, charging out and down the lane. Alnitak moved to the side of the house as two of the Agile Hand ran out from the front porch, chasing after the horses and calling them plaintively. The horses didn’t slow, but the thieves kept chasing them until they were out of sight; nearly a thousand gold in horseflesh was too much to let go.

Alnitak slipped around to the front after they’d gone, finding Stasha and Spicy were already there. Stasha’s appearance rippled and shifted: he took the form of the absent Elix the Saint. Spicy handed him Elix’s scimitars, and Stasha strapped them on his back. Then both Alnitak and Spicy made themselves invisible, vanishing from sight.

Just as they were ready to enter the guildhouse, shrouded in falsehood and magics, there was a clopping sound. A horse stepped awkwardly up onto the porch, watching them.

“Hello,” it said with Chaster’s voice.

“You’re a druid, too?” said Alnitak.

“Yup,” whinnied Chaster cheerily, and clopped on into the guildehouse.

The rest of the party paused, and then gave a collective shrug. Okay then. They followed.

Inside, they found traps and a large adjacent room. It appeared to be a meeting room, containing several unmatched chairs situated around a long oak table scarred with knife marks. On the table sat a half-eaten cheese wheel, four clay wine jugs, some wine-stained flagons, and some sheets of official-looking paper.

They were ledger entries about stolen goods. They revealed a moderately prosperous group of thieves with several big scores over the past two months. Most of the ill-gotten gains had already been sold off, but some were marked “prizes for the maze,” while others were too recent to have been fenced.

Moving upstairs as furtively as a large horse was capable of, they found what appeared to be a storage area for many of the ill-gotten goods. Deep scrapes crisscrossed the floor of this spacious room, and wood shavings scattered the perimeter. A string of oil lanterns dangled from the ceiling, suspended on block and tackle above several containers—mostly small casks and crates, although there was an earth-encrusted coffin, as well. Quiet investigation found casks of elven wine, as well as poisoner’s kits, thieves’ tools, and spyglasses. Shockingly, it appeared that the Agile Hand had also robbed a grave. The dirty wooden coffin contained the moldy corpse of a human priest wearing a copper holy symbol shaped like the sun, a sun-shaped death mask made of gold, and a Necklace of Prayer Beads.

Alnitak immediately seized on the golden mask, popping it right on. “Hey now, that’s not just up for grabs!” said Chaster the horse.

“I’ll pay everyone else for it,” said Alnitak, as he looked around the room for a reflective surface.

There was a noise from the next room on this level, and they all were alerted. Stasha settled himself into his best approximation of how Elix was standing in the pub, and pushed into the room. Chaster craned his long neck around the doorframe and stared inside at the slack-jawed thief standing guard inside.

“Hello,” said Stasha, his voice thickly accented and utterly unlike Elix’s.

“Elix? What’s wrong with you?”

“I was at the tavern. I may have overdone it,” said Stasha, uncertainly.

The guard stared at him. “Okay, well… so what was that commotion before? No one came to relieve me, so I thought I better stay here.”

“Ah, yes,” said Stasha.

There was a long pause, as “Elix” and the guard stared at each other.

“Should I… go and check it out?”

“Um.”

Send him away! sent Chaster with a quick Message.

“Yes,” said Stasha, finally. “Go.”

“All right,” muttered the guard. Still staring, he left to go downstairs.

The rest of the party crowded into the office, half in disguise and half invisible. It contained a plain wooden desk, a simple chair, and a fireplace. A door in the south corner sported a plaque that says, “Private! Enter at your own risk.”

On the desk was a variety of papers addressed to the guildmaster. One contained a diagram of a complicated trap to release a vitriolic gas — clearly related to the trap on the painting. The other was a short letter addressed to Guildmaster Dusk from her predecessor, the founder of the guild who had retired to Chult to escape being retired with a blade. In addition to mastery of the guild, he bequeathed to her a nearby retreat called the Crow’s Nest. He also gave her a piece of advice: if things ever went sideways, knife the traitors and flee to safety.

They were near the tower. “Elix” opened the private door and walked in. The same half-elven woman as before rose from a canopied bed with a leather trunk at the foot of it, walking past a cold fireplace filled with ashes. A young man lounged naked in the sheets, packing a pipe. Wooden staircases hugged the walls—one leading up, the other down. The scent of tobacco hung in the air.

The guildmaster, for surely it was she, approached Stasha. She stared at him, and asked him what he was doing there. “What is going on, now?”

A pregnant moment passed, and then Dusk continued, stepping closer. She stared at Stasha, tilting her head and frowning. “Jaymont, is that you? This isn’t funny. Get out of here.”

Before things could go any further sideways, Chaster barged inside the room, charging into Dusk wildly. He tried to trample her, but succeeded only in knocking her aside. The agile thief barely paused before leaping next to the hearth, snatching a sword from the ashes. Sizing the situation up — including a smear of ash on Alnitak’s invisible shoulder — she seemed to conclude that things were out of control. She bolted through the door.

The naked man attacked, jumping at the horse ineffectually, and was clubbed unconscious with little ceremony. At the same time, Spicy sprang nimbly up the stairs and snatched the painting from the wall, disarming the trap and freeing it. He stuffed it into his Bag of Holding, ignoring its cries.

Chaster reared, smashing his hooves through the boarded-up window, and the party leapt.

Spicy hesitated on the way out the window, as he glanced to the left and saw a body crumpled atop a spreading pool of blood. Dusk had knifed the boy — Minty — on her way out.

“Okay, she’s going to die,” said Spicy, bitterly.

Alnitak floated them to the ground with Feather Fall, and they headed back to the Cognoscenti barn.

The party argued about what to do about the guildmaster, Chaster and Spicy both advocated for chasing her down to the Crow’s Nest and killing her for murdering a child. Whatever misdeeds the Nameless might get about, they were some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Stasha was ambivalent, on the other hand, while Alnitak thought it was a waste of time.

“We can’t save that kid, anyway,” said Alnitak, as they rode back to meet Adrisa.

“We might be able to save the next one,” said Stasha, thoughtfully.

They eventually agreed that they would kill Dusk, winning over a reluctant Alnitak eventually.

At the Cognoscenti barn, Adrisa was very pleased to see them. She eagerly took control of the painting, scolding it for its shouting and complaints. “Thank you, thank you… ah, there, you wicked thing. Hush now.” She glanced back at the party as she carried it away to stow it elsewhere. “Sorry, I think he thinks it’s beneath his dignity to be studied.”

Returning, she offered each of them a small leather satchel. Five hundred pieces of gold apiece, each one new and shining with the crest of Cormyr.

Turning away, Adrisa suddenly paused, staring at Stasha. Her eyes widening, she peered at him with close scrutiny. She scanned the air around him, then turned to regard Alnitak, slowly. She turned back to Stasha. “My, my, that is intriguing. You… you draw power from… his blood, in some way?” She gestured at Alnitak.

Stasha blanched, and Alnitak’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?” he asked, his voice sharp.

Adrisa waggled her fingers in the air between the two of them again. “Whatever arrangement you have is interesting. He’s pulling energies from a spiritual source linked to you by blood.”

“How do you know this?” asked Chaster, curiously.

“I am a scholar of the arcane,” she said. She pursed her lips, and studied patterns visible only to her for another long moment. “Well, then. You may release the two in the barn at your leisure… I leave it to you. You have been consummate professionals, very deserving of your reputation. I must be off with the painting. A stronger stronghold this time, I think.”

The party stood in tense silence as Adrisa’s carriage pulled away. Eventually, Alnitak spoke, his voice harsh. “What are you?” he asked.

“I am… well…”

“We’ve noticed you stopped needing to breathe or eat at some point,” said the bard, advancing with narrowed eyes.

“I am as you see,” said Stasha.

Alnitak, wordlessly, handed a slip of paper to Stasha. It was the fortune he’d gotten from the Sphinx, and it read, “One of thy companions grows fat on thy loss, though yet unwittingly.”

After a long pause, he said, curtly, “You need to tell me what’s going on.” He glared at the warlock.

“I have gained power, but not from you. My wife. She passed. I am in service to my wife,” said Stasha, reluctantly. He related some of the details about how his beloved wife had died, but had returned to him after he spent years languishing in a prison cell, bestowing upon him new arcane powers. There was no connection to Alnitak, as far as he knew.

He showed Alnitak his own fortune, which read, “Neglect not those who are most important to thee, for in time, neglect turns into abandonment.” And he related how his powers had begun to feel hollow — he needed to aid his wife, but hadn’t yet gathered all that he needed to help her with a ritual she would perform with his assistance. “I swear, I am not a threat to you,” he added.

Alnitak nodded, slowly. He accepted the explanation… for now.

“All right, then,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s go after the guildmaster.”

Right from the start, it was apparent that the Crow’s Nest would be a tough nut to crack. It was a sheer, tall series of peaks, with a fort affixed to the top. The only access was by scaffolding and a ladder secured to the side of a high column of stone. There were at least two guards visible, with probably more hidden away, and very little cover. A bloody corpse could be seen lying motionless at the bottom of the scaffolding — at least one other had been claimed by the guildmaster’s paranoid vengeance.

Crouched behind a large rock, the party discussed in urgent voices what to do. They could obscure their approach with Fog Cloud and possibly Misty Step to higher levels, but their best bet was probably Fly. No matter what they did, though, this was going to be dangerous.

Stasha summoned Ludwig, his disgruntled familiar, to try to drop some alchemist’s fire on the fort. “We can force them out, perhaps,” he reasoned. But all that earned them was a quick and nasty death for Ludwig, with the alchemist’s fire abandoned on the fort’s roof, hundreds of feet above.

Chaster and Spicy went in first, after this tactic failed. Stasha enchanted Chaster to Fly up towards the tower under cover of Spicy’s Fog Cloud. Meanwhile, the rogue flitted from cover to a slender tree along the road, and from there towards the base of the peak. He took an arrow in the side for his trouble, but he made it there at the same moment that Chaster swooped up through the air above him.

Spicy attempted to charge up the scaffolding, but the apparent corpse was a ruse, and its flesh rippled and melted into a gape-mouthed monster with amorphous features and an iron grip. The doppelganger lunged for him as he strode by, and Spicy staggered to a stop, grappling with the creature. It was difficult work as he fought the creature and ducked arrows; by the time he’d dispatched it, he’d been hit again.

The defending thieves were using poisoned ammunition of a particularly potent version, and Spicy was gasping from the discomfort as he closed the distance to the others. He set to work with his blade. He was hard-pressed, however, and Chaster couldn’t stop to help. Spicy called for Stasha and Alnitak to make the dash across and help.

Chaster, meanwhile, flew upwards, soaring at a rapid pace as he ascended to the fort. The air rushing past his face made his eyes water as he rocketed skyward. Unfortunately, Stasha was hit by two arrows as he dashed forward towards cover, and the Fly slipped from the warlock’s mental grasp. The spell ended, leaving Chaster motionless in the air for a long moment.

The cleric scrabbled at the stone in front of him, but couldn’t catch his grip — he fell seventy feet, straight down to one of the wooden platforms. Spicy heard a smash and saw bits of wood fly free as Chaster’s heavily armored form cracked into the wood like a falling meteor.

Everyone paused for a moment, staring. Then there was a creak and a grunt as Chaster leveraged himself up, rising. The cleric was hurt and his armor was dented, but he was alive and moving. Combat was rejoined, and Spicy locked blades with his opponent, ducking arrows with desperate Shield spells as he fought.

Alnitak had also advanced towards a tree for cover, fighting to make his way in close, but was besieged by falling phials of alchemist’s fire, dropping down on him and exploding in great pools of flames. He was unharmed as he worked his way towards the Crow’s Nest, but the field was all ablaze.

As Spicy, Stasha, and Alnitak joined in all-out combat at the base of the scaffolding, they found that they were very nearly outmatched. The poison on their enemies’ blades would drop them to their knees at a touch, and they were expending spells and potions rapidly. Stasha very nearly died, paralytic numbness spreading across his whole body, before Alnitak saved his life.

There were five of the foe, and only three of them.

Chaster had climbed to his feet and started ascending back up the tower the hard way, one rung at a time.

When he reached the top, the cleric stood on a precarious edge, and began a prayer to the Greenfather. He called on the raging rains and wild winds of nature. He called on the storm.

When an enemy — a scar-faced thug — appeared over the edge to loose an arrow at him, Chaster released Shatter, and the entire fort above cracked asunder as the cacophonous roar burst within it.

Below, the rest of the party managed a narrow victory. Almost every spell and resource was gone when Stasha annihilated the head of the last thief with a final Eldritch Blast. All five enemies lay broken and dead around the three outnumbered Nameless when they looked up to see the thunder in the sky. They saw someone on the fort, high above, scrabble to hold onto their position, only to lose their grip and plunge towards the ground below. They hit the ground with a wet crunch.

Peering over the edge, Alnitak saw that it was the guildmaster. She lay crushed and broken. Up at the fort, Chaster began the long climb down. The fight was over.

A search of the corpses turned up a few doses of the potent poison that they’d been using. They also found a clutch of gems worth 200 gold pieces and an elegant rapier with a basket hilt worth 120 gold pieces.

It was a nice reward for the risk, but something still felt different. This hadn’t been a heist. They hadn’t been bullied into this task, or lured with the promise of payment. Instead, they’d fought to avenge someone’s death. They’d fought for a reason.

It felt… different.

Chapter Eight:  Mysteries

The Nameless took a well-deserved rest in an inn back in Varkenbluff, recovering from serious injuries thanks to good sleep and some healing magics. They’d come near to death, and it had left them all shaken up. Chaster opted to stay in bed — he’d plummeted five stories to the ground the day before, and even magic hadn’t quite rid him of his aches. The rest departed to look for information and decide on next steps.

In the morning, Stasha stopped Alnitak before they headed out. “I want to thank you,” he said. “I’ve never come so close to death. You saved me.”

“I’m sure if I ever screw up and end up in that same situation, you’ll do the same for me,” replied Alnitak, lightly. They headed to the Cognoscenti Esoterica. They had questions for Adrisa.

The salon of the group was just down the street from the Varkenbluff Museum of Natural History and the university, in the wealthier quarter devoted to such academic pursuits. To the party’s surprise, as they approached the tasteful doors marked only with a flowery “CE,” they saw their old ally, Dr. Cassee Dannell. She was leaving the salon, a stack of books in her arms.

Once, Dr. Dannell was frantic to prevent the hatching of the eldritch egg she’d accidentally unearthed. Now she seemed calm and happy.

The conversation was pleasant; Dr. Dannell was still between positions, but routinely checked the spells supporting the crystal enclosure that held the egg in stasis. She’d been working on ways to destroy it, since it seemed too big of a risk to leave it lying around. “I thought maybe I’d take it to Chult and throw it into a volcano. That would also give me a chance to study some of the fascinating ruins left by the civilizations that once thrived there.”

“You could put it inside of a Bag of Holding, and then put that into a Portable Hole,” suggested Spicy. “It’d implode and throw everything into the Astral Sea.”

“Nothing ages there, right?” said Dr. Dannell, intrigued. “That would keep it permanently safe. Although then there’d just be a floating trap wandering out, waiting to cause disaster someday.”

“Eh,” said Alnitak, shrugging. “There’s a lot of dangerous things out there. Not all your responsibility.”

They bid Dr. Dannell a good day, and went inside the salon. It was a luxurious, thoughtful environment with wood paneling, comfortable leather armchairs, courteous servants, and the rich smell of pipe smoke in the air.

They asked for Dr. Carimorte, and soon Adrisa appeared, looking delighted. (She was perhaps even more delighted to see that Chaster wasn’t with them.) “Ah, here you are! You did such excellent work!”

She showed them graciously into a side room, chattering about the upcoming symposium with the recovered Portrait of Constantori. There was a large plate of apple tarts on a side table, which she gestured for them to help themselves to. Stasha accepted one, Alnitak turned away in revulsion, and Spicy took two and ate them as obnoxiously close to Alnitak as he could manage.

“You wanted more information about your connection?” inquired Adrisa, looking curiously at Stasha and Alnitak.

Alnitak nodded.

“Well, what can you tell me?” said Adrisa.

He shrugged. “Not much. Nothing’s free, not even information.”

Frowning in confusion, Adrisa turned to Stasha. “How about you?”

Stasha haltingly explained his background. His second wife, Lucretia, had attempted a ritual to become a lich. That would let her remain at his side, though she was human and he was an elf. Unfortunately, the ritual had failed, and she had seemingly vanished. But only this past year, she began appearing to him as an apparition. His beloved Lucretia had returned, and was granting him power.

Adrisa mused thoughtfully. “Fascinating. And this happened at the same time as something significant for you, you said?” she said, turning back to Alnitak.

Hesitantly, Alnitak began to divulge his own history. His twin sister, Astocia, had died last year in a magical accident while attempting the Ritual of Seldarine’s Ascension. He didn’t know much about the finer details, although he’d tried to help her in the end, but he did know that it was very powerful magic that Astocia had stumbled onto by accident. And he knew that while he’d tried to save her as the ritual spiraled out of control, he’d failed, and she’d been consumed by the spell.

“The ritual of… hmm…” said Adrisa, and vanished for a moment. She returned with a thick text, which she pored over for some time. She drew out a large bowl of sand and fixed sticks of incense in it, lighting them. Thin tendrils of smoke rose into the air, but rather than dissipating, they twined their way sideways, following an invisible path between Stasha and Alnitak. When she rang a tuning fork on the table, the line of fragrant smoke vibrated in place and thrummed like a waveform. “Fascinating.”

Adrisa turned back to them. “This is remarkable, but it does explain a great deal. I can infer some of what must have happened.

The ritual enacted by Stasha’s wife, Lucretia, was like a gate thrown open to try to draw in power. This power would then be used to raise Lucretia up and exalt her into immortality. It was one form of a ritual used to fix a soul in place, but it required an enormous amount of energy, and this part of the spell failed badly. Her soul was torn apart and suspended in the unfinished spell form, instead, and remained incomplete and gradually decaying.

Three hundred years later, Astocia was attempting to access the divine magic of the Seldarine through an arcane ritual. Divine magic is granted by the gods to their followers, never meant to be manipulated by arcane lore, and so this Ritual of Seldarine’s Ascension was uncommonly dangerous.

“She was a wizard of uncommon brilliance,” said Alnitak.

It was foolhardy nonetheless, Adrisa said frankly, and Astocia lost control as a result. She opened access to a fraction of divine power, and it surged forth and devoured her.

However, this surge of power happened to be the same frequency as Lucretia’s unfinished spellform, and they linked up together and joined into one new, potent enchantment. It was incredibly unlikely, like finding a stone in the river that happened to be just the right shape to unlock your front door… although on a timeline of centuries, even unlikely things became quite probable.

“So then… our connection?” asked Stasha.

“Well, you draw power from your wife, and Alnitak is deeply connected to his twin… it makes sense that the secondary link between you would be apparent. In fact, it might explain why you ended up in the same — group? That magical bond would tend to pull you towards each other, even unconsciously. Events would just happen to occur that end up with you drawing physically closer.”

However, Adrisa warned, Lucretia’s ritual was never designed for this, and so it probably wasn’t stable. There was no telling what might happen in the future. Most likely, Astocia’s soul was annihilated by her part in the ritual this year, and even Lucretia might have been fundamentally altered. But whatever the case might be, the spellform was incomplete. It would need to be repaired and finished, or else it would dissolve and whatever might remain of Lucretia and Astocia would vanish. The ritual must continue to its end – whatever that might be.

Stasha already has a list of what would be required, provided by an apparition of Lucretia. For the next phase of the magic, they would need a dried dog’s eye, the phalange from an undead, a gram of powdered chasme wing, a human wart, a mimic’s tongue, a minotaur’s horn, a displacer beast’s entire light gland and thorns, and a crystal from the Far Realm. While Stasha had successfully obtained some of these items, others would be difficult to get.

“I will do whatever it takes,” said Alnitak, his voice like iron. “Anything.”

“I will begin to do some research to prepare. And if we are successful, well, then… I suppose these grand rituals always need to purge impurities from the spell. Some sort of crucible is usually involved. We’ll need one,” said Adrisa. She smiled. “Such intriguing matters!”

The Nameless discussed what they would do, briefly, and then stepped outside to get started. Before they’d taken another step, however, the Rashemi’s courier found them. The placid goliath led them to their handler. She had a request.

“Welcome,” said the Rashemi. She’d softened over the time she’d known them, changing from the hard-edged woman who’d implied that the alternative to service was prison. But though her voice was milder, her eyes were still flinty and sharp. The intricate blue tattooing that covered her face writhed as she pursed her lips. “Tea?”

First of all, the Rashemi said she had a note from Chaster’s animal trainer, Gregor Silversworth, here in town. They could give it to him when he had recovered — apparently Gregor wanted to meet.

Secondly, she told them that they could choose a rare item as a reward from the Vault for their last act of indentured service. They chose an enchanted lyre with some spells available: a Cli Lyre from the Moonshae Isles. The Rashemi agreed, and also said that henceforth they would be free to do as they wish. That last mission and its reward marked their freedom. If they chose not to continue their work with the Vault, then that would be an end to her association with them.

But first, she had a request.

“I have been thinking of what you said,” she said to Alnitak. “About using people up. And about what could be done.”

She took a deep breath. “This next task is on my behalf, should you wish to undertake it. Not the Vault. Five thousand gold from my own pocket, instead. For a good cause.” She sighed, looking down. Then she steeled herself and looked up at them again. “I want you to retrieve the bodies of Sara Deepdelve, Lucille von Caravel, and Finnegan,” she said. “The Helmsguard. I want you to retrieve them from the House of the Flayed.”

Alnitak, when he was first reading Sara’s journal months ago, had a very pronounced opinion on that last adventure of the Helmsguard: “Fuck the House of the Flayed,” he had said with great seriousness. Now they would be returning.

They’d need the journal back, in all likelihood, which meant a long trip back down to Little Lockford and then right back up the other direction. Even without any delay, it would be a journey of two months. It was Ches 11 now, but they wouldn’t be able to expect to get up to the Spine of the World — where the House of the Flayed was located — until mid-Mirtul. At least it would be spring, which would make it somewhat less fearsome climbing up into the greatest mountain range in Faerûn.

The Rashemi advised that they’d still be able to complete the original assignment of the Helmsguard, if they so chose, freeing the solar of Ilmater that was said to be trapped within its walls. The undead seemed likely to be their greatest obstacle: the mummy which had claimed the lives of Sara and her companions must still be wandering the halls of the abandoned temple.

To prepare, the Nameless spent some time shopping. They bought holy water, alchemist’s fire, potions of healing, and armor. They also gave some thought to their other plans, asking Adrisa to acquire the common items necessary for Lucretia’s next ritual, while tasking the Rashemi with obtaining the displacer beast organs as part of their payment for rescuing the bodies of the Helmsguard.

Chaster did check up on Gregor the animal trainer, after hauling his aching body out of bed. Gregor was pleased with himself, since he’d taught Eltys (the lion) a basic level of training. The beast was well-fed and capable of being around others, although not quite to a level where he wouldn’t still need a lot of care. Gregor was happy to keep taking care of Eltys — as well as the mastiff that Chaster had sent to him — but he’d need more coin. “That lion’s eating a gold’s worth of meat each day!”

The cleric/druid was happy with the progress, and paid for another two months of care at the steep rate of 200 gold a month. Gregor threw in care and feeding of the mastiff and the new dog Waist, as well. “And keep an eye out for any other exotic animals that might come your way,” Chaster said.

The party reconvened. “I am deeply committed to getting this ritual done… before we go on this mission to the House of the Flayed, which will get us the displacer beast parts, anything we can get locally?” asked Alnitak.

“I know where we can find a mimic’s tongue,” offered Spicy. “From when we were here the first time. The museum.”

The Varkenbluff Museum of Natural History was much the same as the Nameless remembered it from five months ago. That seemed like such a long time ago, even though it wasn’t much by the calendar.

As they headed over to the museum, they passed a well-dressed woman that Alnitak and Chaster only recognized belatedly… just a bit too late to cross the street without being conspicuous. It was the museum curator, walking and chatting with a well-dressed gnomish woman.

The curator didn’t seem to recognize them, although she did squint at Chaster thoughtfully as she walked by. But she only shook her head and continued, not even slowing her steps or stopping her chatter.

The museum was better-secured these days. The loading bay doors had a much bulkier lock on them – a thick band of steel shackled through the door handles. It’d even been painted a bright yellow. Spicy still didn’t think it would be a problem for him, but it turned out to be quite the challenge. The new lock was so stiff that the rogue just couldn’t turn it, breaking his favorite tensioner in the process. It wasn’t until Alnitak whispered a few lines of a song, casting Heat Metal and turning the metal of the door red-hot, that they could force it apart and break it open.

The basement of the museum was calm and cool. It was less cluttered than before, when Spicy stole some passcards. Now there’s only a handful of wooden crates and barrels stacked along the walls of this large room, plus a few pieces of old furniture. In one corner, a large wooden chest sat by itself. There was a door on the far wall. Something yellow was sticking out from where it’s been shut in the door – a piece of ribbon or something. Everything had a thick coat of dust.

Spicy was cautious, glancing around. Anything could be the mimic.

“Could be everything,” called out Alnitak, cheerfully. “Maybe it’s been breeding.”

Spicy scowled and crept along the wall with soft steps using his boots of spider climbing. “Hmm,” he said, and waggled his fingers. He cast Detect Magic. There was almost nothing magical, except for one big crate in the corner. It read as having at least fifty small enchanted objects, each with illusion magic. Spicy walked along the wall and paused above it, then used his knife to force it open. It was full of racist dolls, each representing a clumsy stereotype about people from Chult.

Spicy was annoyed. As it happened, he knew a considerable amount about Chult. The Chultish were people just like anyone else, not these crude bits of racism. He picked up one and squeezed it, and a little illusion of a speech bubble appeared with a phrase in a Chultish dialect of Common — “Tie them up and put them in the soup pot!”

He snorted in disgust. A note in the crate directed that they not be put out in the gift shop, since they were “a little too on the nose.” Spicy pocketed one, and turned his attention back to the room.

It seemed quite a puzzle. Anything in the room could indeed be a mimic. Eventually, Alnitak and Spicy settled on a slapstick approach: they each cast Mage Hand and started using the ethereal hands to slap each of the items in the room. It only took a few slaps before one of the bigger barrels opened a big, toothy mouth and lunged forward, waggling a large and wet tongue.

Alnitak was prescient in another way, as they soon found out: the mimic had been breeding.

The lone chest and a large table were also hidden enemies, and in short order the party was ensnared in a fierce fight. It was short, since the mimics were no longer fearsome does to adventurers of their recent experience, and in a matter of a few minutes Stasha had blown holes through two of the enemy and a third was chopped to pieces by a Cloud of Daggers from Alnitak.

The party collected two mimic tongues — an extra one, just in case — and some chunks of unfinished gems and silver they found in another crate. They were worth perhaps 150 gold… a fair price for an extermination job of this magnitude!

Spicy investigated the odd ribbon on the door before they departed, and found that it was affixed to a warning note on the other side. The door had been loosely chained, leaving enough of a gap for Spicy to nab the note. It warned that there was a mimic infestation in the basement, and that the area was temporarily sealed off until they could take care of it.

Stasha wrote out an invoice for their services and noted the payment they took, then stuck it back on the door. Then they were off.

Before leaving, the party visited the shops again, and Chaster purchased a large coach carriage for the Nameless to use. They could hitch up their horses to it, and then one of them could drive the team while the rest took their leisure inside. It would give them a space of their own for their belongings and opportunity to work on their skills during their long journey. It would be two months, although with duties and interruptions and the like, they’d probably each only have two tendays of time to work.

Chaster directed the wainwright to decorate one door of the carriage with the words, “Herein lies,” with nothing written afterward, and Stasha asked for them to paint yellow stripes on the other door. The confused wainwright obliged, after clarifying several times that they were sure that was what they wanted.

Then the party was on their way, Stasha driving the team and the rest lounging inside. They were off to Little Lockford.

Only two hours into their journey, they saw a small hamlet with some burning buildings. They stopped on Alnitak’s insistence (“I have a Decanter of Endless Water! I want to use it!”), only to find that there was no real fire… just the smoldering remains of a raid by a dozen bandits.

A sobbing man, injured by a cut on his head, clutched two children and explained that the bandits had taken five from their village and ridden off to the west, not long ago.

“I really hate slavers,” said Spicy, looking at the rest of the party.

“Listen, I think we each get one of these — one thing we get everyone to help with. We’re bound to have more things happen along the way,” said Chaster, reasonably.

“He’s thinking of getting us to help him grab some weird animal,” noted Alnitak.

“Let’s go,” said Spicy.

The bandits proved little match for the party. Their reward — even aside from saving the lives of four of the five villages — was significant. The man from back at the village, overcome with gratitude for the rescue of his wife, insisted on giving the party an heirloom dagger. It was a Dagger of Venom named Fangtooth. Quite the prize, indeed (despite the name).

The party was visibly uncomfortable in the role of heroes, standing awkwardly after Chaster healed the injured, and they were glad to return to their coach.

The journey to Little Lockford was fairly peaceful. The party settled into a regular routine.

Chaster did most of the cooking and washing-up. He frequently cooked mismatched foodstuffs, experimenting and trying new things: a fried fish and fruit salad, pâté of squirrel and watercress, and acorn bread and seaweed sandwiches were some notable choices. He also frequently would add a berry or two from his own belongings, to make sure it was properly nutritious. Chaster merrily ignored all complaints.

For his part, Spicy had learned enough in their travels that he was finding new connections within, and had begun to experiment with calling forth a fae spirit that was connected with his elven soul — perhaps a friend from a past life. His eyes would change as he held a feather on a necklace, and then the spirit would surge forth from within him. The spectral creature, named Cotton, would assume the form of an owl appropriate to the area.

For most of each night, Spicy and Cotton would keep watch until first bell, at which point he’d settle into trance while another member of the Nameless stood guard over the party.

Stasha and Alnitak took responsibility for supplementing their rations. Stasha had taken to letting the enthralling magics of his wife fill his body to a greater and greater degree, and had found that he could will his very flesh into new forms. He would force himself into the shape of a huge wolf, gaunt and haunted in appearance, and then he’d prowl the plains. Sometimes he would bring back game for the pot, a rabbit or a groundhog. Often he did not, though, since each day Chaster was mischievously warning every animal in sight about the wolf that would hunt them in the evening.

Alnitak foraged for herbs and berries at dusk and whenever time allowed, becoming more and more familiar with plants as time wore on. And of course, he played music to help the long days pass.

There were occasional interesting incidents. They met a man with a broken cart, and Stasha repaired it for him with a moment’s Mending, refusing any payment. Spicy found a rich woman’s necklace, and returned it to her for only a small reward.

They kept on their way.

Little Lockford was different from their last visit. Over the past couple of months, most of the damage done by Tixie’s rampage had been repaired. Not everything was fixed, but the worst had been cleaned up. And other changes were, positive, as well. When Sergeant Cragknuckle welcomed them back into town, he introduced them to the new mayor: Ignus Flint. The artificer had apparently taken their warnings to heart, and had run to replace the feckless Mayor Broadfoot. (He hinted that he might have gotten some help from the Golden Vault.)

Ignus gave them a tour, showing them how most of the city was in good order. They had sealed off Cavemouth, which was overrun with wandering Underdark beasts, and posted a reward for adventurers who might want to tackle the hook horrors and otyughs that lay within. Until it was cleared, he’d had the bridges raised to that part of the city, and the militia kept the Slagline clear of any pests who might have hitched a ride.

When he heard how they were off to retrieve Sara’s body and her companions, he offered them some holy water and anything else he could help with. He had built some special grappling launchers for the Vault recently, and was very happy to offer to build them one, too.

And of course, he gave them back the diary. It was time to head to the Spine of the World… and the House of the Flayed.

As they headed away from Little Lockford and crossed a tributary of the Dessarin River, the rope holding the oilcloth satchel with the provisions broke. The whole thing fell from the carriage and split open on a rock. Most everything was ruined by the water or lost in its current before anyone could even alight from the coach. The party was about equidistant from Yartar and Little Lockford, though, so it didn’t make any sense to go back.

Alnitak had his and Stasha’s provisions in his Bag of Holding, and Spicy had his in his own Bag of Holding. It was only Chaster’s that were lost to the water. The cleric/druid didn’t seem to mind, though, and offered that a berry a day was all he needed. As it turned out, he knew the spell Goodberry. Those were the berries he always added to his mismatched food. While it was not a pleasant experience and wasn’t fulfilling, a single magical berry a day would suffice for the needs of anyone in the party. There was no need to worry about sustenance.

The rest of the long journey was uneventful, filled with only the minor moments of any extended time with others: disagreements over detours, laughter over ale in a roadside tavern, and careful questions about the past. They’d been adventuring together for half a year now, and yet only now were they really starting to get to know each other. Perhaps it was the fact that they were no longer bound by service: they were together by choice, now. And they had common cause.

Traveling to Mirabar, at the feet of the Spine of the World, felt like time was going backwards. It was spring everywhere else, but snow still lay thick on the high hills of the mountain town. They made their final preparations, getting out their furs from when they were at Revel’s End and getting their packs in order. They arranged for a stable to care for their horses and carriage.

Chaster hired a guide. The first person he asked, Tekulve, was friendly enough. But once he heard that they were going to the House of the Flayed, he declined to take them. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever gone in there. Adventurers like you sometimes go, but don’t come back. My brother might be willing to take you.”

Tekulve’s brother, Murtagh, asked for more money but was willing to take them the short distance up the mountains to the abandoned temple. He warned them that he would not take them the entire way, but added that it was not a very long journey. Tekulve piled several amulets around Murtagh’s neck, and told him to be safe.

The journey was not long, but every trudging step up the snowy, steep mountain paths was difficult. The footing was treacherous, with footholds cut roughly and irregularly into a sloping rockface. The wind was sharp, and the cold got worse every hour that they forced themselves upwards. The sheer physical exertion and the bitter, driving cold gnawed at them.

By the end of the day, when they stopped and Murtagh put up a small tent and lit a fire, Stasha in particular was exhausted beyond measure. Chaster put a friendly hand on him and helped him with a Greater Restoration, clearing out the weariness from the old warlock’s bones.

The next morning, Murtagh pointed them towards a long, narrow slope up the mountainside. “This is where I leave you. You’re almost there, though — just straight up here, and then a switchback to the temple.”

He thanked them and wished them luck, and offered them one of his amulets to keep them safe. “Here,” he said, offering Stasha a necklace with the holy symbol of Lathander the Dawnlord, “you seem like you might need this.”

Stasha gratefully reached to accept it, but his face twisted in pain when his hand closed around the amulet. Startled, he dropped it. There was a sunburst-shaped burn on his palm.

Slowly, Murtagh leaned down and picked it up. He handed it to Spicy instead, and then left without a word. His face was frightened.

The party packed up the remains of camp, breaking the tent out of encrusted ice, and got moving up the slope. They didn’t discuss what had happened.

The march up the slope took an hour. As it turned and doubled-back in a switchback, there was a flat area that had been cut into the side of the rock. The remains of a rock balustrade were visible. Alnitak spent a moment repairing a few of them, and nodded in satisfaction. Against the rock wall was a big drift of snow, piled up, with two black sticks, oddly knurled and twisted, sticking out at the top.

Strange to find wood up here. Spicy investigated, using Mage Hand to tug at one of the sticks.

It didn’t move. But all of the snow shifted and split as a huge figure rose from within it.  It was something like a giant ape, but with shaggy white fur, bloodshot eyes, and two twisting black horns rising from its skull.  It was an abominable yeti. The beast opened its fanged mouth and roared with a sound that shook the mountainside.

Chaster called out in guttural growls of speech, holding up soothing hands as he tried to placate the beast. It hesitated long enough for Alnitak and Spicy to flee up the slope, shoving through knee-high snow with difficulty.

Stasha scorched the creature with the decaying burn of Eldritch Blast, and then joined Chaster in full-on flight. The monster hit the warlock with savage, raking blows from its claws, and desisted only momentarily when Chaster Commanded it to flee.

The entire party surged up the slope as quickly as they could, churning through the snow, pausing only to fire pot-shots at the yeti as it followed them with great clawing strides. They made an impression, but apparently only enough to anger the beast, as it only stopped when shied away with fire or when frightened by Stasha’s supernatural enchantments.

Fully a half hour of flight later, the Nameless staggered the last feet to the top of the crude path. The yeti was right behind them, and without pause they leapt inside of the open doorway visible in the mountainside. Even Cotton the owl seemed exhausted as it flapped into questionable safety.

It appeared to be an antechamber to the temple, with a large depiction of Loviatar done in a mosaic on the wall. The Maiden of Pain was dancing, knives at her fingers and a wicked smile on her cruel face.

Behind them, the yeti tried to force its way past the doorway carved into the rock. It roared in fury, spittle spraying from its mouth, and lunged into the opening. But the passage was too narrow, and it could only fit in its head and one grasping arm. They’d escaped. But to what end?

The room was almost empty except for some stray scatterings of snow, picked clean of everything but a few rotten boards.  Through an open doorway to the east, they could see a larger chamber with an intricate mural depicted on the far wall. It looked finely-detailed and horrifying in equal measure.

Through another open doorway to the west, they could see a small room with several corpses slumped against the wall.  One of them began to stir into motion.

Chapter Nine:  The House of the Flayed

Behind the Nameless, the yeti howled, clawing wildly at the stone. It didn’t make much headway, but the din of its shrieks of frustration was deafening. It would have to be a problem for another time, though. The party turned to face the new threat of the undead.

All three corpses had risen to their feet. One of them moved awkwardly, with a slack jaw and empty gaze, but the other two were nimble and their eyes were sharp with the deathless hatred of the unliving.

“Wights and a zombie,” muttered Chaster.

One of the wights leapt to the attack, a dull shortsword in its hand. It hacked at Alnitak, who ducked the blow before casting Cloud of Daggers: plucking a sliver of glass from his component pouch, the bard whipped it at the monster. The glass became a whirl of flying blades, carving into the wight’s flesh.

The other wight followed, closing with Spicy. It paused only to whirl and slash through the air to its side, baring its long yellowed teeth in a smile of hatred as it carved Cotton out of the air in a burst of feathers. Spicy cursed the thing and began pelting it with crossbow bolts at close quarters, ducking its blade. He was so exhausted from the cold and the run that he could barely see straight, but he still managed to lay bolts into its cold body. The wight attacked Chaster, ignoring the bolts, but found little purchase for its sword on the frost-rimed steel plate of the storm-worker.

Alnitak retreated to the next room, the one with the mural, but the wight followed. He tried to fend off the wight’s attacks, shifting the Cloud of Daggers to flense the creature again with its storm of blades, but lost his concentration when the wight stabbed him with fingertips of bare bone. He felt some of his very life ebb away at the touch, and the spellform fell from his mind.

Stasha was barely able to keep his feet, leaning on the wall of the entrance corridor behind Chaster. The yeti was only a few paces away, clawing at the air. If he’d still needed to breathe, the warlock would be gasping for air.

“I can’t do much,” said Stasha, “but my familiar will help.” He conjured Ludwig in a shape that seemed like it might help: a tiny sphinx.

“What the fuck?” asked Ludwig’s gruff impish voice, looking down at its current body: a winged cat, luminescent with starry light. The confusion only lasted a minute, then he pawed through the air awkwardly to the wight in front of Chaster, and batted at its back. “Ha ha, this is great!”

Chaster grunted as the wight drew away from of his life, and caught another sword-blow on his shield. His spear wasn’t very useful against the wight in such close quarters, although he was able to pierce the zombie through. In frustration, he slammed his helmet’s visor up and opened his mouth wide; magic surged from the symbol of Silvanus on his shield. His teeth lengthened and began to drip a caustic slop, and he lunged forward to bite into the monster’s chest, tearing out a chunk and spitting it out. Behind it, Ludwig began scratching wildly at the wight’s back, cackling with glee.

Spicy sent two bolts through the wight attacking Alnitak, and one of them clipped through its spine. The creature had already been cut a thousand times, and this final injury broke whatever magics bound it together. It collapsed to the ground.

The other wight turned aside from Chaster to attack the flying little sphinx behind it, out of sheer malevolence, cutting a second familiar out of the air with its sword in as many minutes. Ludwig died yet again, as he had so many times before, a snarl of annoyance caught in his throat. Chaster took the opportunity to tear out the thing’s throat entirely, however, and then another bolt from Spicy took it out of commission.

The undead had been returned to their rest. They had a moment to think, finally.

The party paused and took inventory. They consulted the diary of Sara Deepdelve to see if it had any clues about their next steps. It had lots of chatter from the artificer author and old scraps of Loviatarian hymns, but nothing for the present moment.

Outside, the yeti had stopped trying to force its way in, but it was still audible huffing and snarling outside. Chaster threw one of the wight’s heads to it, but it didn’t seem to like the treat. They were stuck in this hellhole, and they were in bad shape. Each of them was either staggering with exhaustion or sapped of their vigor by the wights’ cold touch.

“We need to take a rest,” said Alnitak, surveying the group. “Stasha looks even more dead than usual. And we know that this place is serious… the Helmsguard never made it out.”

They looked around these first few rooms of the temple. There was almost nothing useful aside from a few rotten boards. The simple wooden door to rest of the complex was moldy and old. Alnitak did notice that there was an odd metal seam along the doorframe, warning everyone not to touch it, but it wouldn’t be any help in keeping them secure while they rested. The mural was unpleasant: a wild-eyed bald woman in an outfit of red leather, wielding a whip and a knife. Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain.

It would be risky to rest here, but there didn’t seem to be any alternative. Spicy build a crude barricade composed of the corpses of the slain, the few available old boards, and the Immoveable Rod, but it wasn’t very secure. They set a watch — Alnitak was first — and the others fell into an uneasy sleep.

The risk paid off, and the party was able to recover their strength over the course of an uneasy afternoon. It was evening when they shoved aside their makeshift barrier, gathering themselves for the challenges ahead. The last party of adventurers to intrude on these halls had never returned… could they do better?

They all stepped carefully over the metal rim around the door to the next area, and none of them were harmed. As they stepped through, though, a large steel plate slid from a recess within the doorframe. It thumped loudly into place and sealing the passage behind them. The impact shook the wall. They remembered this from the journal, where Sara had written about the Helmsguard’s failure to get around this barrier. The steel plate had a number pad recessed into its surface, and eight blank spaces above it. They’d need a code.

The small room had a considerable amount of detritus piled up, plus at least a dozen corpses. The junk appeared to be the remains of adventurer’s gear, with rotten leather backpacks and broken potion bottles. The bodies lay motionless in various stages of decay. Searching through everything, they didn’t find corpses that matched what they knew of the Helmsguard. They did find a potion of healing and a handful of small rubies, at least.

The mural on the wall depicted petitioners on a long journey through a wandering, dangerous path. At several points along their journey, the artist had shown allegories for different things that might distract the petitioners. A rosy-cheeked cherub hoisted plates of roasted meats and steaming pastries at one turn, while a kind-faced mother held her arms wide for a hug at another. At the end of the path, the petitioners’ goal was shown: a grim image of a nude woman lounging on a throne of barbed iron, her flesh torn in many places and her face contorted into a rictus of ecstasy and horror. She wielded a whip with nine barbed ends.

The Nameless turned back to the sealed door and examined it and the surrounding wall. They looked for clues in the mural and in the journal, but didn’t see anything helpful.

At last, they decided to move forward. Maybe there’d be another way out, if they could penetrate all the mysteries of the House of the Flayed, Chaster suggested. Just like the yeti, an exit would have to be a problem for another time.

Spicy led the way into the next room, moving with subtle steps and a careful eye. This small chamber looked like it had been the site of some fierce battle, and the room reeked with an unearthly stench. A corpse was curled up in the middle of the room. It was bloated with rot and blackened with burns, and the remains of several shattered phials were scattered around it along with the dismembered corpses of several wights. Almost everything in the room was dark with soot.

As they watched, the bloated corpse in the middle stirred into motion and rose to its feet. The reek of its flesh is beyond bearing, and most of the party held their breath instinctively as it lurched towards them. The unbreathing Stasha didn’t have that problem.

It was the work of a few moments to hew down the undead creature, and none of them were harmed as they carefully worked together to keep it at bay. Even surprise attacks from above — dismembered hands, animated by the foul magics of the temple and clinging to the ceiling — came to nothing. Chaster spotted them before they could attack, and they bounced ineffectually off his shield before he shredded them with short strikes of his spear.

The Nameless moved on. The next room was broad and long, and (mercifully?) almost completely empty. They recognized it immediately from the journal’s description. The floor was covered with large stone tiles, neatly set out in a five-by-five grid. At some point, each tile must have once had an engraving on it, but their surfaces had been gouged and scarred until they all become completely illegible. A broken shield was lying on top of some manner of junk on the far side of the room. There was a closed door to the next part of the temple there, as well.

The challenge was an old conceit, familiar to many adventurers: a trapped path. At one time, symbols or words or letters would guide the faithful to the other side, but intruders would be barred from passing (or at least slowed down). Unfortunately, with the tiles all defaced, there was no way to even guess the safe path. Sara had illustrated the challenge.

They immediately began trying different things, throwing ball bearings or using Mage Hand to probe the path. But every single space seemed to react to their probing, with the entire area above each tile invariably erupting into a column of surging fire. It seemed impossible that there even could be a safe path.

The puzzle seemed impossible to figure out. Eventually, Spicy just gritted his teeth and used Misty Step to cross the space, hoping that he wouldn’t be barbecued by the maneuver. He’d read about how this room had badly hurt the Helmsguard when they’d crossed.

Spicy was unharmed when he appeared with a puff of owl feathers on the other side, however, and he let out a sigh of relief before examining the junk that had been dumped there.

The shield was a stout metal-rimmed shield of modern make, but it’d been split apart along one side. The edges of the damage were blackened and curled. On the front of the shield was a depiction of a gauntlet with an eye painted on it.

Underneath, he found an odd artificer’s device – something like a crutch in appearance, but with a metallic plate on the end and a box mounted at its middle. There were two crystals set into the surface of the box, as well as an aperture with little prongs open to accept something. This must have been what Sara had engineered to cross the room. He remembered that it hadn’t worked perfectly, but maybe it would be a help. At Chaster’s suggestion, he inserted one of the rubies they’d found into the prongs, and the crystals lit up.

He waggled the device, but it didn’t seem to do anything. A small crack appeared on the ruby’s surface as it began to be consumed.

Stealthily, Spicy put it down and regarded the door next to him. It had a large crack in it, and the rogue was able to peer through it. He could see four figures standing within the next room, moving around with slow, random steps at times. There are also a considerable amount of scattered detritus, including a couple of weapons, some bedrolls, and the blackened remains of old food.

They’d need to move quietly as the rest of the party crossed the challenge, or they’d have another fight on their hands before they were ready.

In the end, they resorted to magic. Why solve the puzzle when they could simply skip it? Chaster climbed into Alnitak’s Bag of Holding, and then the bard and warlock joined Spicy with their own Misty Steps. They appeared on the far side of the tiles, moving silently with agile steps.

Chaster, on the other hand, got his foot caught as he was climbing out of the close confines of the enchanted bag, and landed with a loud clatter of armor on the stone below.

“Oh no,” said Alnitak.

Spicy peered through the crack again, and saw that all four figures had turned to regard the door. He also got a better look at them.

One of them was a shade – the shifting shadow of a hulking goliath, but with most of its chest crushed. In the corner he could see the corpse that yielded the shade.

The shadow shifted from side to side, looming over a much smaller undead. This one was a female gnome, her face and torso distorted by some manner of horrible rotting. Her one remaining eye glittered with hungry light, and her slack jaw occasionally snapped shut with ravenous intensity.

Across the room was a third figure, formerly human and still clad in dingy plate armor. A greatsword scraped behind her as she stepped forward a pace.

Last of all was the fourth figure, a horrifying figure of exposed muscle and bone. Barely any shreds of gray skin remained on this pitiable flayed creature, and it visibly winced with every hesitant step on the stone below. It appeared that when the followers of Loviatar wrought this poor monster, they ensured that it would spend the ensuing centuries in constant agony. The Maiden of Pain must have been pleased.

They’d found the Helmsguard: Lucy, Sara, and Finn. And the mummy that killed them.

Spicy cast Invisibility and pushed through the door, sneaking past the monsters with silent footsteps. He positioned himself in the rear of the room, and readied his crossbow.

The shade of the goliath Finn swooped forward, followed closely by the reanimated Sara. The gnome skittered along the floor with both her hands and feet, exposed bone clicking on the stone. Finn lunged for Stasha, while Sara attacked Alnitak.

There was a moment of surprise and dismay, as the two Nameless who were least prepared for frontline battle had to fend off their attackers. Chaster gestured at the ghost and Commanded it to flee, but that only allowed space for the undead Lucy to lurch into the cramped room, wielding her greatsword clumsily.

Things were dissolving into chaos, but Stasha used Misty Step to escape into the next room. He lightly stepped off to the side, vanishing in a glow of black mist, putting distance between himself and the paladin. That gave space for Chaster to cast another spell, bringing his gauntlets together and casting Shatter on the two undead in the room with him. Sara was burst asunder, exploding into two halves with a shower of rotten gore, while Lucy’s helm was battered and dented from the force.

In the next room, Stasha was out of the frying pan and into the fire: the mummy attacked him, walking with painful mincing steps and staring at him with wild, pained eyes. As it began to batter him with its bloody flayed hands, the warlock could feel a rotting numbness set in with its first touch. He’d contracted the curse of the mummy. Spicy sent a crossbow bolt through the mummy’s head from behind, but the creature didn’t stop. It battered Stasha until he stopped moving.

Nearby, Chaster shoved Alnitak behind him, and fought tooth and nail with the paladin, matching it blow for blow. Alnitak cast Heat Metal on Sara as she fought, and the wight began to sizzle inside of her armor as it glowed with a red heat.

Chaster and Spicy finished the fight nearly at the same time. Right as the cleric battered the smoking corpse until it fell, Spicy met the mummy with blades in hand. The rogue took one glancing blow — enough to bestow a rotting curse on him, as well — and then felled the mummy with a slash of his dagger.

In the aftermath of combat, one of them was hurt and two of them were cursed. But they’d defeated the reanimated Helmsguard, and that meant that their bodies could now be returned. They’d succeeded in their task. It was a grim business to take the corpses, stuffing their pieces into Spicy’s Bag of Holding, but a necessary one.

There was urgent business on hand for now, though. Their warlock was dying from his injuries and the mummy rot exacerbating them. The party gathered around Stasha, trying to help him. Spicy managed to stabilize him, but they didn’t think any healing would work. Finally, Chaster used his Necklace of Prayer Beads, casting Greater Restoration on the warlock. Then they were able to soothe his broken body with a healing potion, and get him back to his feet.

The passage forward was blocked with icy water. Chaster braved the chill, jumping in and powering forward with long strides. He discovered that it was short — only ten feet or so — and he was easily able to hold his breath and make it to the other side. Unfortunately, the water was so frigid that it was clearly going to be dangerous for everyone to cross. They’d need a solution.

In the room on the other side, Chaster shook off the water and frost that was accumulating on his armor and looked around. This room was thick with the dust of long disuse.  There were a few fractured remnants of chairs and a crumbling old bench.  There were closed doors to the west, south, and east.

Cracking the door to the west, Chaster saw nothing much of interest. The shadows in this room were wrong, shifting oddly as he watched.  There wasn’t much to be seen within, except the rotten remains of what appeared to be pallet beds, as well as some scattered bones.

Behind him, the rest of the party brainstormed a variety of ways to get through the icy water. They used Message to communicate back and forth, trying to decide on whether to simply leave. Alnitak was firm: they were done here, they had what they needed, and he wanted to proceed with helping his sister. They had a ritual to do and a crucible to find.

Ignoring the debate, Chaster continued on his own. He opened the next door, the one to the south, and paused.

This room appeared to be some sort of worship site. There were narrow wooden pews and a stone altar decorated with the nine-barbed whip of Loviatar, plus a pitted and stained wooden table — clearly used as a location to torture those sacrificed here to the dark goddess.

To his right, however, there was a hulking metal cage. It glowed with a pearlescent light from a solemn figure who stood within, looking back at Chaster attentively.  The light seemed to dim and turn crimson as it passed a boundary just beyond the cage, graven into the stone. It was the angel.

The angel was unnaturally tall, something like seven feet in height.  He was visibly male, with thick masses of lustrous black hair and taut slabs of muscle.  Two wings were furled behind him, gray speckled with white.  He was exuding a gentle glow.

The party had come immediately once they heard that the angel had been found, using a Wind Wall from Alnitak’s Cli Lyre to do it, and they gathered in front of the cage. Chaster spoke. “Hello?”

When the angel replied, his voice was a madrigal of rich harmonies.  “We are happy to see you, mortals. You have our thanks for your very presence, which relieves our long tedium.  Will you speak to us?”

“We’re here to free you,” said Stasha.

“Do you have a name?” asked Chaster.

“Thank you for your intent and courage, venturing into this place. We have been blessed with the name Saint Dennison the Lingering,” said the angel, bowing his head. He was a planetar — mighty among the ranks of the celestials.

As the party got closer, St. Dennison held out a warning hand when it looked as though Chaster might be about to touch the cage. “Be careful,” the angel warned. Spicy crouched down and used Mage Hand to scrape a stone on the graven enchantment, but there was no effect.

“Do you know how to open this?”

“We do know the means by which this enchanted cage can be opened, yes.  We were never given an instant’s freedom during the centuries of our imprisonment, but we were often taunted by the clerics of the Maiden of Pain.  They took great delight in their pettiness when they told us that only a master of the Chamber of Trials would have the ability to free us. We don’t think that gender is relevant, and that a mistress of the Chamber would also have such power… that was only casual sexism.” He shook his head. “We believe that this Chamber is at the end of the hallway, as we understand the design of this cursed temple, unless the passing of the years has altered it.”

Chaster frowned. “Why would they want to give someone the power to open the cage?”

The angel regarded him with kind brown eyes. “Your question is a wise one. We aren’t sure, but we think that the head of the temple must pass these trials, and that they would have power over all the lasting rituals of this place.”

Chaster took a step back. “Okay, then. Let’s get some help.”

Chaster put his hands together, and magic began to build between them. He spoke words of divine supplication — the careful prayer of a cleric of one god who was calling upon another. He cast Planar Ally, and sought the aid of Ilmater to rescue one of his own.

There was a moment of wordless communication within Chaster’s heart, and then his request was granted.

A slender thread of light appeared in the air above his fingers, and a bare foot stepped out. It was followed by the white-robed figure of another angel — a deva. More similar in stature to her summoner, her form was that of a woman of slight proportions. Her wings were downy and white, and she held a warhammer with the slight grasp of a few fingers, as though it were made of air. She wore a blindfold, and yet she seemed able to see them as she turned to regard them.

“You have called, and the Maimed God has answered,” she said. “I am Saint Rhylia the Unyielding.” She turned to the cage, and bowed her head. “My brother, you have been missed, but your suffering has done you great honor.”

“Rhylia,” said St. Dennison, who bowed his head as much as he could. “We are grateful for your presence.” The communed for a moment, and it sounded like golden bells to the mortals. Then St. Rhylia turned back to them.

“As you can see, we need your help to free your friend,” said Chaster. He gestured at the cage. “Will you help us?”

The deva smiled at him. “It would be my passion and my privilege to do so, yes. I must ask something of you in return, however.”

“What?”

“I must ask you to make a donation to the next temple of Ilmater that you encounter,” she said. “All of your gold.” Everyone looked unhappy at her proposal. Spicy looked stricken. “If you agree,” she said, “then I will join ranks with you, and render all the aid I can.”

Chaster frowned. “We understand how organized religion works,” said the cleric, archly. “But I thought you might help us for free, since we’re trying to save your friend.” St. Dennison smiled down at him.

“I wish that I could, crucible, but there is a balance in the world. You must know this, for I see that you have already experienced the touch of a god.”

The Nameless looked around at each other, gauging how everyone was feeling about the bargain. Alnitak’s purse was light already and this might help his sister; he agreed. Stasha placed little value on gold itself; he agreed. Chaster’s philosophy was that “gold comes and goes;” he agreed.

Spicy shook his head. He didn’t give up gold. Gold was money. Gold was power. Gold was safety. “Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

“Can I talk to you?” asked Alnitak, ushering him aside. They had a quick whispered conversation.

As they discussed, the deva turned to regard Stasha. “You are pained,” she noted. “Would you like a hug?”

Stasha looked surprised, and agreed almost before he thought about it. The angel approached him and gave him a warm embrace. It felt nurturing and calm, and as she released him, the warlock realized that he was breathing again, and he felt warm as he had not. Stasha felt as though he’d been reconnected with something that had been gone so long that he’d forgotten what it was, and even now he couldn’t exactly name it. The others saw color in his cheeks.

Alas, by the time Alnitak and Spicy returned from their heated whispering, the effects had faded. Stasha felt cold once more.

The two young elves had reached some kind of accord, and Spicy had been won over. “It’s fine,” Spicy said, grudgingly.

There was a moment of silence, then Alnitak spoke up to St. Rhylia. He pursed his lips impishly. “Why are you wearing a blindfold if you can see?” he said. “Isn’t that maybe a little… pretentious?”

The deva smiled fondly at Alnitak, and reached up to remove her bandage. Beneath, her face was marred with scars and burns, as though a line of flame or burning sword had been laid over her eyes in battle. “My sight was taken from me, but through the glory of my Lord, I yet can see. This is the miracle of sacrifice: it exalts you.”

“I’m cursed,” said Spicy. “From a mummy. Can you heal me?”

“I can do this, but my powers of healing are not unlimited,” the angel said, as she turned to him with a gentle smile. “May I have permission to touch you?”

Spicy nodded, and St. Rhylia stepped over to him, and folded him into her embrace.

Her hair smelled of honey and sunshine in a way that was oddly familiar. It took him a moment to place.

Spicy remembered a time long ago, when he was just a child and the world was simpler. It was before everything had come between him and his family — before they’d become ashamed of him.

He’d been maybe seven or eight, playing outside. He’d gotten a splinter in his knee, and he’d wailed, and his mother had swept in and scooped him up. She’d taken him to a pavilion near the beach, sunny and bright, and she’d taken the splinter out, and she’d hugged him close and sang to him a song of his people. He’d sat with her afterwards, snacking on crackers with honey. He’d felt safe.

The deva whispered in his ear. “There are scales in life. We put in and we take out. Long ago,” she said, “you decided that your scales were tipped too far, and that you would never put enough good into the world to fix that. You almost stopped trying. But I am here to tell you that is not true, and you have done more good than you know. You can be more than you know. I love you.”

When St. Rhylia released Spicy, he was smiling and silently weeping, and he was healed. He’d been cleansed not only of the mummy’s rot, but even the aches and tiredness. Even some of the scars from his past injuries had vanished.

“Now then,” she said, turning to the rest of the Nameless. “Let us do what must be done.”

The party and their new holy companion set out with quick steps. They advanced up to the next corridor, but Spicy raised a warning hand. He’d found a trap ahead. The walls were studded with many small holes. He didn’t know what would emerge, but if this trap was like the others in this place, it would be deadly.

Carefully, he leapt up to the ceiling, sticking to it with his enchanted boots, and then crept along. He crawled to a door down the hallway, and then swung his way inside this next room. The space was mostly empty, but for the decrepit remains of what must have once been fine furniture. Spicy also found a switch inside, which he flipped off.

“I think the trap is safe,” he called back, testing his proposition with a few ball bearings. He was right — the path was clear.

The room had almost nothing within, but Spicy’s close examination found a torn scrap of paper caught inside of a drawer.

We will leave this place with all due veneration when we depart, said the paper in a spidery hand. We will make it a place of danger and horrors and pain for those who might come skulking upon the sacred stone of Our Lady. Every ward will be made impassable, and we will destroy anything that might assist intruders. Let this place become a ruin to haunt the dreams of all nearby with whispers of hidden agonies. As we cannot bring the angel with us, we will leave it here in torment, and work a ritual to feed upon its holiness forevermore. It will spend the endless centuries knowing that its trapped energies are the cause, and yet helpless to stop the pain its light wreaks.

“These people were serious,” noted Alnitak. Maybe we should go back and check that room we passed already, to see if there’s anything in there that can help us with this ‘Chamber of Trials.’”

Everyone agreed after some discussion, and they backtracked. At the last minute, Chaster warned that the shadows seemed odd in that room, and indeed they were: barely had they stepped foot inside than one of the shadows lunges at them, hissing malevolently.  Then several others surged forward, clawing with talons of shifting darkness.

The fight was a short one, with Alnitak using a Cloud of Daggers, Chaster using Shatter, and St. Rhylia swinging a warhammer that hummed with divine power. Before too long, they were able to move into the next chamber.

An elven man was strapped to a wooden bench in this dead-end room.  He was perhaps thirty years of age, with long brown hair and wide eyes.  He was lying there, shivering, staring at the ceiling.  The bench and ground beneath were rust-colored with old and frequent bloodstains.  A metal tray of torture implements were set on a small table nearby.  A brazier for coals was empty and cold next to it.

They all tried shaking the man, and Spicy tried to pour a healing potion into his mouth. There was no reaction from any of it. St. Rhylia studied him, in the end, and declared that there had never been any soul here. “I believe he was created to suffer, and that he has never been sentient.” She turned to the rest of them. “May I take care of this?”

They assented, and she laid hands upon the man. Her fingers began to glow gently, and then intensely, and then to smoke with heat of her radiance. When St. Rhylia drew her hands away, nothing was left but ashes.

They returned to the final door. This room was a large chamber.  Each of the four corners of the room was enclosed by domes of transparent crystal.  Inside of each dome was a different, fascinating scene.

One dome was filled with arid sand, swirled around frequently by what must have been a hot wind inside.  Several fire elementals churned and jostled inside, crackling with flames, as well as a red-scaled snake-person, with angry black eyes and a sharp spear in the grip of its muscled arms.  When it saw them, it cracked the butt of its spear sharply against the crystal dome, threatening them. 

The next dome had no apparent floor, with its bottom instead dropping away into a pit with no visible purchase.  There was a roaring sound within, although through the deadening dome, you heard only a muffled rumble.  They didn’t see anything inside except the occasional swirl of color or shift in the air, but they did see the dome shudder as invisible beings pounded on its surface as soon as they stepped into sight.

Opposite the dome of sand, the third dome was covered in thick frost.  A swirl of icy crystals spun within around a trio of ice mephits, which gamboled and flitted around the snowy air.  A hulking ice elemental moved incrementally to study them, its featureless face managing to convey its hostility.

The last dome was more like a terrarium than anything, with a thick mud filling it up to waist-high.  An eight-legged reptile with crystalline eyes sat quiescent in the mire, while a curious creature with three stumpy legs and three arms was gradually moving beneath the surface with slow clawing motions.  Ripples in the muck indicated that other creatures must also lie within.

In the center of the room was a dais with five wheels and a magical sigil.  One was in the center of the dais, empty, while the others were spread around on the dais in a way that matched the four habitats.  They didn’t know what the wheels do exactly, but they sensed that they should be careful about their choices.

“Should we… do them one at a time?” Alnitak asked. “Or maybe open them all up, and let them fight it out.”

“I will do it,” offered St. Rhylia immediately.

“Want to do it invisibly?” asked Alnitak, grinning.

Once they were all arrayed in the hall, St. Rhylia spun the wheel in the center of the dais, and launched herself into the air. She surged invisibly out of the room as the domes all opened and the chamber filled with shrieks and explosions. By the time she dropped into place just past the door, nothing was visible but a chaos of violence. She slammed the door shut.

Several long minutes passed, and the door shuddered and shook at times. Then it began to smoke and blacken.

“Guard yourselves,” said St. Rhylia, and she opened the door.

It looked as though fire had carried the day, and the only occupants of the room were a towering fire elemental, a salamander with a spear in hand, and a fire mephit. The rest of the creatures had died gruesome deaths, and their innards — flesh and elemental both — covered the walls.

After exchanging a few blows and spells, the mephit was dead. The elemental surged down the hall, flowing over the Nameless like magma and scorching them, but St. Rhylia followed in its wake and cracked into it like a divine hammer. It erupted into cinders and ash as she smote it.

The last remaining creature was the salamander. It was slithering forward to do battle when Chaster called out in Primordial, “Wait a second… truce?”

The salamander paused in surprise, and replied, “How to trust you?”

“Just go on by… we won’t hurt you,” he said.

St. Rhylia frowned and tapped Chaster on the shoulder. “Did you tell him about the traps?”

Chaster lied and said that he did, but she jabbed him in the ribs. “Tell him,” she said.

The cleric did so, rolling his eyes, and the salamander hissed his gratitude. “What do the traps do?” it asked.

“Burn you,” said Chaster, and the salamander laughed. Without further word, he slid on by and towards the exit.

A few moments later, the party heard a roar of flames and a sharp squeal of pain. It appeared that its elemental nature hadn’t been enough to save the creature.

They all turned to face the dais again. The central wheel was lit with a sickly, reddish glow.

“I’ll just do it,” said Spicy, gritting his teeth. He touched the glowing metal.

Instantly, they heard a strained, wincing voice pronounce triumph: Congratulations.  You have gained her favor.  You are now Paingiver of the House of the Flayed, and you command in these halls.  The paindoll is yours.  The mastery of the heavenly fool is yours.  The ritual and cant is yours.  Punish those who doubted you.  Slay those who stood in your way.  Flense them of their skin, leave them raw, and dedicate their agony to the Maiden of Pain.  All hail the Scourge Mistress, all hail the Bloodied Smile, all hail the Willing Whip.

Shocked and pleased, Spicy grinned. “Cool!”

Alnitak got to work recouping some of the money they’d promised to donate, hunting around the room. He recovered a basilisk stone worth 30 gp, plus 60 gp worth of salamander parts.

Finally, they returned to the chamber of St. Dennison the Lingering. He smiled beatifically at them.

“Lay a hand on the bars,” he said to Spicy. The rogue did, and he found that the metal was as soft to his touch as cheese. He was easily able to tear away the cage, opening it up for the angel to emerge. The celestial stepped forward with a trembling foot, tears of gratitude trickling from his big brown eyes.

“From this point forward, we shall be known as St. Dennison the Unleashed,” the angel intoned. He spread his wings — a feat that filled the room, given his immense wingspan — and shuddered with joy.

Turning to regard them and furling his wings once more, he intoned solemnly. “Call upon me in need, and I will be there, mortals. Thank you.”

Then St. Dennison the Unleashed vanished with a flash of radiance, and he was gone.

St. Rhylia accompanied them to the final door. They stood there, staring at the number puzzle once more. Spicy used his Ring of X-Ray Vision to examine the surrounding stone, and saw that there was no trap rigged for a wrong number. Neither, however, did he see any clues.

Paging through the diary once more, Chaster paused. “Try 74,” he suggested.

74

O Loviatar, thou art our one true light,
In shadows deep, we seek thy path untrod;
We offer hearts to feel thy keen delight,
For pain’s embrace shall leave us unflawed.
With lashes nine, thy scourge does mark our skin,
Our souls ascend through trials fierce and pure;
Too long we’ve shunned the gifts that lie within,
Now pain’s sweet hymn becomes our sacred cure.
In pain’s firm grasp, we find the hidden way,
One step beyond, enlightenment we chase;
To walk this path, our spirits dare to stray,
Embracing fate, we seek thy stern embrace.
O Maiden harsh, we bow before thy throne,
Forever wrack’d, our lives are thine alone.

Before she departed, St. Rhylia took a deep breath, and turned to regard them. “I would speak with you,” she said, with a soft smile.

To Alnitak, she pronounced crisply, “You are on the right path. You are seeking redemption, and you may yet find it. Not only for your sister, but even for yourself.

She gave a kind glance to Spicy, next, saying, “We already spoke. I pray you carry it in your heart.”

Turning to Stasha, she rested her hands on his shoulders. “You should not lose connection with the world, no matter what you seek. Take this.” Her hands glowed with the light of a healing soul, and Stasha started in surprise. Once more, he was able to breathe and some color returned to his cheeks. He could appear living again — this time permanently.

Finally, she regarded Chaster. With a solemn tone and flashing eyes, she said only, “You are being followed.”

Then, with a final smile, St. Rhylia stepped into a line of light which had appeared, moving through it as though it were a door. She departed, leaving only a fluttering, downy feather behind in the chilly air.

There was a long silence. Then Spicy spluttered. “You didn’t ask who was fucking following you!”

Alnitak, on the other hand, burst into laughter. “Should have opened that fortune back at the spa! And she wasn’t going to give you anything nice, anyway… Let’s be honest, you gave that angel a lot of sass.”

Chaster grumbled and stepped out onto the path, boots crunching the snow.

They set off down the mountain. They had rescued both the Helmsguard and an angel. Now it was time to work a ritual.

Chapter Ten:  Kossin Vale

The Nameless were exhausted by the time they reached Mirabar. All of them but Alnitak went right to the inn to rest. The bard, on the other hand, went to check on the horses. They were all in good health, and the groom offered to return the large deposit he’d received from Chaster for the care and conveyance of the cleric/druid’s warhorse. Alnitak happily pocketed it, promising to return it to Chaster.

The next morning, Chaster also checked on the animals. He found them in good order. At the same time, Spindle was doing some shopping. He’d stopped thinking of himself as “Spicy” since his experiences in the temple. He was still the same sharp-eyed person, though, and so he spotted someone in a saffron robe watching him. It was a tiefling with dark skin. A small backpack was at her feet.

Convening together, they decided the best thing was to steal the backpack without being noticed. Chaster turned into a dog and snatched it away from the tiefling’s feet, fleeing with it out of sight as the tiefling chased them. Spindle rifled through it and found mostly odds and ends, but also a sealed letter.

The letter wrote in detail about their journey, but was focused on Chaster. It reflected on his family association with Tyr, and mused why he was a cleric of Silvanus, instead.

On the other hand, perhaps this is the mark of wild flame in his heart. Errtu was not birthed in his flesh as planned, but the touch of the Firefiend might still have changed the boy. That might explain why he found no connection with the mush-bland faith of Tyr… he was yearning for his true fate.

The vessel was shaped in the very womb, wrought with a soul like a steel forge. It can burn and yet not be consumed. If this Chaster is the right one, then we can confirm it upon capture.

The author — identified in the letter as Razath — wrote that they didn’t need to worry about Chaster’s companions. Two flighty elves and one decrepit one wouldn’t be much of a challenge. They could easily enact their plan and ambush Chaster. Once he was in their thrall, they’d test to see if he was the one they were looking for: a soul forged by Errtu the Firefiend.

I will send notice through Sending when they leave, and we can make arrangements to capture them. The informant should prove helpful in that regard – it will only be a matter of coin and the promise of a favor or two.

The party decided that they’d need to put these people on the back foot, and so Spindle resealed the letter and they left the backpack (chewed up as though by a troublesome dog) where the tiefling would find it. Then they laid a trap.

The idea was that the spy would trail them to a remote area, and then they’d be able to ambush them. The Nameless assumed that the mountain guide brothers (Murtagh and Tekulve) were the informants, and so they went to them and asked them if there was any local wildlife that might be worth seeing. Murtagh told them that there was a unicorn glade to the east in the wild, and described the route to get to them. Then Stasha disguised himself as Chaster, Chaster turned into an animal, and they all rode out of town.

Unfortunately, they had little luck. They waited out in a deserted glade for hours, a day’s ride from the town, and the tiefling didn’t reappear. Either she was wise to their gambit, she was tracking them some other way, or she already knew where they were going.

There was nothing to be done for now — except to quiz Chaster on his part. He confirmed that he’d been raised in Fireshear and that his family had a run-in with these people in the past, but was reluctant to say much more. He didn’t know if he was a “vessel” like the note said, or if these tieflings were simply deluded.

The Nameless decided to simply move on, and keep an eye out. They rode to Varkenbluff, leaving Stasha’s horse behind to throw off their pursuer.

The calendar continued its slow march, just as the party did, and it was the seventh of Kythorn when they arrived. The world had become green and verdant, and as they traveled south it became pleasantly warm.

They’d spent more time in Varkenbluff together than any other town, and it was starting to feel like home. Mousie’s shop was in Waterdeep, but it was here that Chaster kept his animals and it was here that Durin still whiled away his time gambling.

The Nameless had barely arrived, though, before they were greeted by the same courier that the Rashemi always used. The brisk and efficient kobold man never gave his name, but he led them to the same gateside inn that the Rashemi usually frequented in Varkenbluff.

Before they met her, they stopped at the local Temple of Ilmater.

“We have a donation we’d like to make,” said Spindle.

The cleric was ecstatic at their enormous donation, thanking them profusely. He’d tell everyone about the “Nameless of Ilmater,” he said. The Crying God would honor them for their sacrifice.

Afterwards, they went to the inn.

“Hello,” said the Rashemi, rising as they entered. “You are returned. You were… successful?”

The party confirmed that they were, on both fronts. They gave their Bag of Holding to the courier to be emptied out of its corpses, on the Rashemi’s direction (she referred to the courier as “Slick”), and handed them each a substantial pile of gold. It was part of their reward (the other part was that she’d obtained the rest of the items on their list for the ritual).

“I will be able to raise Sara, Lucy, and Finn from the dead, in time,” she said, her voice softer than usual. “It will take me some time to save up for that, for only a True Resurrection can restore the undead, but it will happen. Thank you for that. And Alnitak, I am sorry for your loss.”

There was a long silence, and then Alnitak said, “What?”

“Your mother,” said the Rashemi. “You must have heard.”

“…no,” said the bard, slowly.

“She was assassinated this past tenday. I thought you must know.”

Alnitak had no reaction, his face still frozen. And after a long moment, the others turned to him to comfort him. Stasha patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, Chaster turned into a dog and put his head in Alnitak’s lap, nuzzling him, and Spindle ordered a great deal of wine.

They’d already had occasional news from Evermeet. They’d heard about the robbery of a library — they knew the other side of that story, too, since it had been the Helmsguard who’d committed the crime — and about about how the Nameless’ sale of the Revel’s End ledger had caused major conflict.

Ishar Wistwhistle had come up for parole only five years into a life sentence, which was unusual and took a specific request from the Silverymoon representative to the Lord’s Alliance, Counsolor Alara Moonwhisper.

As it turned out, Moonwhisper was patronized by Zaltarish, the queen’s scribe on Evermeet and one of the most powerful people in the High Council. Since Ishar plotted the murder of the entire Selweth family, that favor from Zaltarish’s faction was intolerable for High Admiral Selweth (also on the High Council). These two factions had devolved into open aggression, paralyzing the High Council completely.

This had hurt the Duskhavens, and they had lost considerable influence while the High Council was paralyzed with infighting. They were part of the Selweth faction, along with their patron Grand Mage Olithir. But now it seemed things had gotten even worse, and violence had begun.

It was a horrible situation, and they were far away from Evermeet.

“Could the Vault help us get there?” asked Alnitak.

The Rashemi hesitated. “You have left their employ, and so even if they agreed, it would cost a great deal of gold. But if you did them another service, they’d gladly give you compensation with a favor. I can speak on their behalf and commit to that.”

They didn’t commit to anything, telling the Rashemi that they wanted to check in with Adrisa about the ritual. They’d have everything needed, finally. It was time to free Astocia and Lucretia.

Adrisa was happy to see them, her eyes bright with feverish interest in these high magics. As arranged, she had the goods they needed. Once in private, she handed over a sack with the displacer beast parts and a few other smaller items.

She had advice for Alnitak and Stasha: “You must go to a place of great power, where ley lines are brimming near the surface, and enact an altered version of the original rituals. This will unbind Lucretia and Astocia, and power each of their spells independently. You will need a spiritual vessel of sufficient strength to bear the magics without being destroyed, though. I cannot obtain such a thing for you. I tried and was unable to do so. Be alert on your travels… it’s possible that the same pressure on the skeins of fate that brought you two together will bring the vessel to you, as well.”

To assist them, she’d already prepared a ritual scroll. Most of the complicated spellform was completed, and they need only break the seal and read the rest. She warned them sharply not to break the seal until they were absolutely sure they were ready to enact the ritual, since it could only be done once.

They’d need the proper location, with enough ambient magic.

“I am aware of only two places within easy reach that you could access a ley line of sufficient power.

“You could go east to the old Sembian city of Kossin Vale. It was an independent city-state until twenty years ago, when some magical disaster slew thousands of inhabitants and drove out most of the rest. Magic there is polluted by wildness, but powerful. Dr Dannell, whom you know, suggested it during my research.

“If that does not appeal, the Underdark settlement of Maliamort is the only other alternative of which I know. It is a city of slaves, ruled by an aboleth.”

This wasn’t a hard decision, and they decided quickly after confirming with Dr. Dannell. They’d go to Kossin Vale. It wasn’t a long journey, through Corymr to the Dragonmere Coast. And however dangerous it might be, it’d be less dangerous than an Underdark city ruled by a fish-monster.

To prepare for the journey, they bought some items. These were mostly mundane, such as a new horse for Stasha, but Alnitak also purchased a Bag of Tricks. Once a day, it could summon a random creature. They’d heard that there were giant animals in Kossin Vale, so handy allies might be useful.

The journey was mostly uneventful. They were waylaid by a group of dwarven bandits, but put paid to them with style: Spindle kills the leader after several warning shots, and then Chaster told Stasha’s horse to charge into the rest while Alnitak summoned a giant rat. Resistance melted away, and their way to Cormyr was clear.

At the border into Cormyr, they waited to be checked-in, as they had on their trip to the Delphi Mansion. Cormyr was one of the most rigorous and well-developed of kingdoms in central Faerûn — as perhaps they had to be, since they were bordered by villainous Netheril and chaotic Sembia.

The border guard put peace-bonds on their weapons as he chatted with them about their destination. He was surprised to hear they were headed for Kossin Vale, and he warned them to be careful. “I’m not prejudiced against druids or against technology, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I got a clockwork toy for my kids just last year. But if a place is so dangerous that you need a special machine to survive, then maybe it’s better to leave well enough alone.”

“Have you heard anything more about the place?” asked Chaster, but the guard shook his head. He wouldn’t go near it, personally. He was intrigued to hear their own plans, asking about Evermeet, and marveling when he was told that Spindle was actually a gnome who’d undergone a lengthening procedure on the island.

Travel through Cormyr was briefly, interrupted only by a visit to their camp in the evening by a member of the Purple Dragon Knights. Sergeant Jasper and a comrade were on routine patrol, and had just stopped by to identify the group of strange travelers.

After getting their names and destination, he gives them a look.

“You been drinking tonight?” he asked. “Because we have, and it’s great. Chilly night even though it’s spring. Need something to keep you warm.”

The Nameless made no trouble, and proceeded on to cross the southern border.

“Has anyone been through here looking for us?” asked Chaster, as they checked-in at the crossing. For the price of a small bribe, they found out that a group of tieflings in robes had been asking about them. The tieflings had stood out because they’d carried no weapons beyond a few daggers, which was unusual for anyone traveling into the Sembian city-states.

The road to Kossin Vale was a large cobblestone road, taking them over gentle hills. As they crossed one of the hills, they saw the skyline of a city in the near distance, perhaps ten miles away. There was also a large wooden barrier across the road, blocking the path. It had a painted sign posted: NO PASSAGE TO KOSSIN VALE. DANGER. A new road branched off at this point, heading parallel to the old road. It was packed earth and more recent.

Another hour’s travel along the road brings them much closer to the city. But before they reached it, they found that they’d come to a decent–sized town. It was protected by a tall palisade and a very wide gatehouse. At the top of the palisade walls, they saw an odd sight: three small clouds of objects, swirling gently around blue-white balls of metal. They looked like nothing so much as little galaxies, with items like arrows and small stones just floating in gently chaotic orbits around these balls of metal. These odd little galaxies were posted at intervals along the walls. They could also see the faces of two people up there, posted as more mundane guards.

The gate was open, and they passed through unchallenged into the town. A carved signpost identified it as the town of Grail Fort. There was a large commons in the center of the town, populated with a few sheep. There were a few shops and an inn. There was a blockhouse for guards.

But the most prominent thing they noticed was the only stone building, a boxy building with a tower rising from it, right on the edge of the town common. It was open all along the front, with huge doors folded out of the way, and within and without were several huge machines. They looked as though someone had made huge sculptures of real animals, crafting them of silver and bone and wood.

A little elven boy, maybe ten years old, approached them. “Hello, Gov’nor. Fancy a sweet?”

He sold them a few sweetmeats — mostly honey and biscuit — and then chatted with them. They asked him how many people lived here (“Mebbe a hunnnert.”), what it was like (“Hard ter make a lerving herrah, what wit’ so few traverers.”), what the floating galaxy things might be (“Dangerous! Fill ya fill o’ arrows!”). As he spoke to them, cheerily, his accent swerved wildly, until finally he dropped it with a huff.

“Look,” he said. “I have seven children here and it’s hard to support them in a place like this. I can’t keep this up.”

Taking pity on the fellow — a gnome in reality — they gave him a few gold and let him go after he pointed the way to “Professor Grail,” who was inside the big stone building.

They approached. There was a machine resting inert on the ground outside of the building, and it was easily the size of a large wagon. It was in the shape of an enormous rabbit, and they could see that its head was mostly a huge real skull, and other giant bones were visible elsewhere. But these bones were supplemented with parts made of gleaming silver or smooth wood, and vines wove in and out of them. The eye sockets of the creature were lit with a very faint blue light. They could see two more machines inside, partially disassembled, seemingly being repaired. They were a stag and a bull, and they were damaged by what must have been heavy impacts and large tearing claws. A heavyset elf was astride the stag, hammering on one of its silver horns.

At their approach, he leapt down lightly.

“Hello,” he greeted them. “How may I serve you?”

The party explained that they wanted to go into the city, asking for advice. His earnest advice, he said, was that they shouldn’t go. There must surely be someplace else they could do what they need to do. Kossin Vale was too dangerous. Animals grew monstrous and huge under the influence of the energies, developing nodes of power within them like pearls in an oyster. He pointed to the faintly glowing metal orbs at the center of the guardian galaxies on the walls, and studded here and there on the surface of the huge animal-machines he was working on.

“My beauties can defend us and provide safe travel, but the city is an incredibly dangerous place. Perhaps I can help you with what you need, instead of you risking your lives?”

They explained that they needed a place of enormous ambient magic, and he told them that would be deep inside the city.

“May I see the ritual scroll you mentioned?” he asked Alnitak.

“No, sorry,” refused the elf. “Not going to crack it open until the time.”

“I might be able to help if you give it…”

He stopped speaking as he realized Chaster was staring at him. “Are you okay?” he asked the cleric/druid.

“I was just hoping that the first druid I met wouldn’t be a selfish jerk who was putting others at risk and profiting off of an imbalance of nature,” said Chaster, caustically.

Grail looked taken aback. “I have done what I can to care for these animals, and imagine the good that can be done from studying them. Already I have learned to harness the energies that create them, and soon I may be able to cure their conditions.”

After some negotiation back and forth, Grail told them that he couldn’t lend them one of his “beauties” to take them into the city. There was space inside to ride them, he said, but he couldn’t risk one of his creations — not unless he knew that the Nameless were tough enough to survive the trip and bring it back.

“Show me your skill,” he said. “Slay enough monstrous beasts to find five nodes of power. Bring them to me, and you can ride my beauties to the center of the city and perform your ritual.”

The Nameless stepped away and discussed the situation, but it was a short discussion. “I think we need one of those things, guys,” said Alnitak, and there was no disagreement.

Meanwhile, Grail had returned to work. He grunted as he hit a power node with a wooden mallet, trying to force it into an open socket on the right side of the stag’s neck. It finally popped in with a thunk, and the entire stag shifted slightly as it shuddered to life. Its wicked silver horns gleamed in the light as it shifted and shook its patchwork head, and it turned to regard them with eye sockets that were filled only with a faint blue light.

It settled back onto its rear after a moment, and the bottom of its belly slid open. Inside was a large cavity. It looked like several people could fit inside. It also looked like there was a central seat for one person, with odd gauntlets and boots connected with vines. Grail leaned into the cavity and hammered on a metal ridge with the mallet, trying to bend it back into place. He didn’t have much more help to offer, beyond warnings to be careful and advice that the animals were warped in nature as well as size.

Chaster had wandered away by this point, and was writing rude messages in druidic script on the wall. The gnome from before approached him, lighting up a cigar.

“Hey there,” said the gnome. “I just wanted to say thanks again for not giving me a hard time about the whole thing where I pretend to be a little elven boy. Usually I’d say not to go out there, but I think you guys can handle yourselves. One request, though…would you mind just keeping track of where you kill things? That way I can nip out and try to collect any bits you don’t need. Thirteen kids, you know. McGillicutty’s the name, by the way.”

“Sure,” said Chaster, turning to regard McGillicutty. “And maybe I can ask you to do something for me? Are there any fireworks here?”

“Fireworks?”

“Yeah… I was hoping you might give us a signal if other adventurers show up to go into the city.”

Spindle overheard, and chimed in, “Especially tieflings.”

McGillicutty fell silent, and looked uneasily at Spindle.

“Not like that,” said Spindle, urgently.

“Oh, you’re worried about some specific people? Okay, whew. I was like, uh what?”

Spindle laughed, nodding. “Yeah, absolutely. I’m not racist. Would a racist have something like this?” He held up the extremely racist doll he’d acquired in the Varkenbluff Museum of Natural History.

McGillicutty laughed haltingly, eyes wide, and turned back to Chaster. “So would a whistle work? A very loud whistle?”

“Sure,” agreed the druid.

“In fact, maybe they don’t even need to make it inside the fort at all? Maybe something bad happens and they get marked as intruders?” offered McGillicutty.

“Uh… well, yeah, that’d be great. We’re so used to people offering just a minimal level of help… thanks,” said Chaster, surprised. They agreed that this level of assistance might also merit a little extra consideration in the form of gold, but the cleric/druid handed over five gold for now. If his pursuers made their way here, they’d at least have a hard time.

After that, the party moved out. It was time to go hunting.

Kossin Vale was a wracked ruin of a city. Even here on the outside, beyond the broken curtain wall, they could see evidence that the city’s descent into chaos and ruin was sudden. There were wooden carts left in the middle of roads, the shops still had ragged “open” flags fluttering in their broken windows, and there were bones all over. Whatever happened here was swift and terrible.

Occasionally, they could see a flicker of bluish light appear in the air, or a wash of random sparkles. Magic lay close to the surface in this city. All four of the Nameless had some magical ability, and they could feel random tugs at that part of their spirit, now and then. Any significant spells they cast would have a chance to go awry.

The party spent a short time scouting around near the entrance to the city, which loomed, vast and broken, ahead. Spindle had his owl, Cotton, circle overhead and keep an eye out. Chaster walked below, scrutinizing the ground for spoor.

Shortly, he located thin, shiny scales the size of his hand. They appeared to be from an enormous lizard of some kind, where it was scratching itself against a rock. They were right outside the main town gate, which stood open and shattered.

Only a short distance away, he found more evidence of the local wildlife: the remains of a cow. It looked to have been torn apart by brute force, and then the meaty haunches had been eaten. Someone or something clever seemed also to have used a tree branch to scrape out the skull and consume the brains.

Further away on his meander, Chaster found a shiny track going up the side of an old manor house, visible inside of the town through a broken part of the curtain wall. It was mostly just a skeleton of a home now, but one standing piece of stone wall showed evidence of the passage of something slithering around. He also found the splintered remains of a tree. Something had been sharpening its claws on the trunk, until the tree had been reduced to flinders. There were a few large spines buried in some of the detritus, like from a huge porcupine.

After meeting back up, the Nameless decided to start with the gatehouse. It seemed simplest — a place where they could get a good vantage point and set up an ambush.

Spindle approached ahead of the others, creeping on silently towards the battered building. It had once been forty feet or more, but much of it had been broken. The top was irregular, with half of the gatehouse tower carved away. It resulted in two irregular platforms, one higher than the other, and with the interior visible through a large opening.

The doorway of the gatehouse, at ground level, had been forced asunder. Something large had shoved its way through and broken a few stones in the process. Spindle drew near, and leaned his head cautiously inside. It was a mess of scales, bones, ragged scraps of cloth, and dust.

“I think we found something’s nest,” he called back to the others. It looked empty.

The rest of the Nameless approached, cautiously. Stasha and Spindle climbed to the top of the building, while Alnitak hid behind a tree. Chaster attempted to climb the building, but the weight of his armor and weapons made it awkward. He settled on a sentry position at the foot of the tower, instead.

Spindle leaned down on his belly and slid forward to the opening within the tower. Careful not to silhouette himself against the sky, he peered down. Inside, he saw the beast.

It was curled up along the staircase that ran along the inside of the tower, and it was an enormous, misshapen lizard. It was as though someone had taken an ordinary little house lizard, expanded it a thousandfold, and then warped its body into a bulging, hinged parody. It seemed to be at rest, with leathery-lidded eyes closed and its chest rising and falling slowly.

Spindle gestured to the others to get ready, and then lifted his crossbow into position carefully. He adjusted the sight, fit in a special bolt, and then cranked the windless with silent, practiced gestures.

“Here we go,” he said, and fired.

The bolt whipped down through the tower and slammed into the beast, and it screamed. Then it moved, almost too quickly to be seen, and hurled itself upwards. It assisted its monstrous jump with swipes from its claws against the tower walls, and burst forth up to the top of the tower with a shriek.

The lizard snapped its jaws around Spindle in an instant, crushing him so that he couldn’t breathe and sinking long teeth into his flesh. He gasped. It didn’t drop him even as Stasha, Chaster, and Alnitak pelted it with missiles and magic, and instead lunged down with fearsome speed towards Stasha. It crashed its tail into him, and pursued when he fell.

Chaster interposed himself between the lizard and the warlock, transforming as he ran: his flesh exploded into fur and teeth, and he became a large brown bear. The lizard and he exchanged blow for blow, and Spindle managed to get free in the chaos.

The battle was difficult, but in another few moments, the combined firepower of the Nameless brought the beast down. Its heart finally failed and burst when Alnitak lashed it with a magical insult harsh enough to kill it: “You want to start a street fight with me? Bring it on, but you’re gonna be surprised by how ugly it gets. You don’t even know my real name- I’m the fucking Lizard King.”

The lizard squealed and collapsed, and it was done. They were somewhat the worse for wear: to escape its grasp, Stasha had needed to Misty Step, and wild magic had surged and caught him with a complicated series of effects that ended with his possessions erupting in flames, his skin turning blue, and some of the vitality of his companions draining into him. Still, that complication aside, they’d acquitted themselves well. And in the flesh of the creature, Stasha found three nodes of power. (Oddly enough, they were embedded just under the skin or in the belly cavity; not where he’d expected to find them.)

Three nodes down and two to go. Time for the next fight, which they could only hope would go so well.

The first moment they knew they were in trouble was when the ape-thing pounced on them in a single fluid bound, right from the ground, through the walls of the tower, and right into Spindle and Alnitak. A few moments later, nearly everyone was dying.

Things had started out well. They’d laid a trap with the remains of the giant lizard. There was certainly enough meat to use. Then they’d set up an ambush. This time they were all at the top of the tower, and they were drawing it into them. They’d be ready. Alnitak even summoned a wolf and a boar to assist.

Hours passed. Eventually, something came snuffling along the trail they’d set. Everyone crouched down, and Spindle edged up to the corner, peering around.

It was a bizarre cross between a giant ape and something like an axolotl, with wet, greasy skin, four powerful legs, and two clawed hands. The face was a riot of teeth.

It snuffled up chunks of meat with snaps of its jaws, moving forward with swift motions from one to the next.

“I see it,” hissed Spindle. “Should I wait?”

“If it can’t get us up here, then we should start hitting it now,” advised Chaster. The cleric/druid had taken advantage of the time to get himself up onto the tower this time, and he was ready.

Spindle fired a bolt. The creature was hit square, but it didn’t seem hurt. It didn’t seem angry.

It moved.

With a surge of strength that cracked stones under its feet, it rushed forward and hurled itself upward. It smashed through the top of the gatehouse tower as though it wasn’t there, showering rocks and old mortar around itself and slamming into Spindle and Alnitak. The bard hurled himself aside, but the rogue was less fortunate. He scrambled to get away, as did the bard, but the ape-axolotl was as quick as it was strong, and it rocketed back to the ground to follow its enemies. Almost casually, Stasha was hit with a swipe of a huge paw and went down.

Chaster tried to fight it toe-to-toe-, and the others — the ones left standing — poured on every ounce of firepower they possessed. Alnitak ducked in and healed when he could, and Stasha fired bolts of eldritch energy, but the huge monster was potent beyond belief. It shrugged off attacks and struck with slashing teeth and claws that hit with enough power to shatter bone at a touch. Even the sound of its attacks were enough to deafen them.

Alnitak, Stasha, and Chaster lay strewn among broken stones at the base of the tower, their bodies riven and fractured. The beast set one huge foot at Chaster’s cracked breastplate, and the cleric/druid grunted in wordless pain as his armor creaked and his sternum fractured. Stasha was motionless where he lay, his head split open. Alnitak’s viscera pulsed a wet pink, visible through the gashes in his belly. His face was pale and his eyes were glassy.

The ape-creature turned to Spindle, who stood a few places away, one hand clutching a broken arm.

“Chaster,” called out Spindle, reloading his crossbow with one hand and pulling back the lever with his teeth. “Think it’s time?”

“If not now, when?” gasped Chaster, his face turning red as his armor distorted.

Spindle nodded. “Okay then.” He drew a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice echoed in a space outside of time. “St. Dennison the Unyielding, I call upon you.”

A line of light appeared where none had been before, like a doorway seen from the side, and a shining figure emerged. St. Dennison’s wings pulsed gently, and he floated through and alighted next to the rogue. He had a sword in hand that stood as tall as the elf, and he looked kindly upon him. The light that came from his form washed over Spindle like a soothing balm. “Thou hast called, and we have answered. In the name of Ilmater, the Lord of Suffering!”

In answer to the boon the Nameless had earned, the angel leapt lightly forward. As his light touched each of the party members, their wounds closed and the pain receded. They rejoined the fight, standing next to St. Dennison as the angel absorbed two ruinous blows from the ape-thing. Greasy claws tore into the solar, but he seemed invigorated by the pain, and swept his enormous blade twice into the creature. From behind, Stasha fired bolts of energy to join the attack and Chaster hammered into the beast’s unyielding flesh.

The creature burbled in surprise at the renewed assault, and something seemed to break inside of it. It shuddered, and then sank to the ground. Its face went slack.

“St. Dennison,” said Chaster, holding himself steady against a broken wall. “There is corruption everywhere here.” His voice sounded hopeful. “Let us cleanse this place!”

As the angel considered Chaster’s request, the party took the time to delve into the flesh of the creature that they had just killed.  Cutting into the immense beast, though, they found only one more node of power.  They cut it free of where it was, just under the skin on its belly.  The metal sphere trembled with magical energy under Alnitak’s fingers. They still needed another one if they wanted Grail to let them borrow one of his “Beauties.”

St. Dennison the Unleashed rested the tip of his immense sword on the ground. He smiled beneficently at the Nameless. “It is beyond our remit here to assist thee in cleansing this entire place, Chaster Ovinwave. We will not do that. But neither will we leave thee bereft of that which thee seek. How many more of these fragments of wild magic dost thou require? I will obtain them for you. With this service and the rescue which thou hast received, thou shalt be repaid.”

There was a long, quiet moment. Then Chaster looked the angel dead in the eyes and lied with absolute surety: “We need three more.”

St. Dennison scrutinized the cleric/druid carefully, then nodded. He leapt lightly into the air, and then a powerful stroke of his wings carried him aloft. He soared away, into the city.

Everyone let out a tense breath. Minutes passed, and nothing troubled them. As they waited, the party spent a moment investigating the area.

A short distance away, Stasha heard something mewling. He led the rest of them there, and they discovered an unusually large cat stuck in a broken window nearby. It looked as though its hind leg got trapped between a sharp corner and the window-frame when it was trying to climb through. It watched them with wary eyes.

Chaster Spoke with Animals, and reassured the cat. He asked if he could help it, and the cat acquiesced with dignity. Chaster slipped it free of where it was trapped.

“Where did you come from?” The cleric/druid asked the animal.

Cats don’t see the world as people do, but it was able to describe where it had once lived. “Near a farm, in the fields and woods. There were always good mice to eat out among the wheat.” It had woken up in the city, and didn’t know how it had gotten there.

The cat seemed mostly normal. It was slightly larger than it should be, and its eyes were an odd red, but it was otherwise typical. It must not have been in Kossin Vale very long.

They could see it had recently been injured. Several pink puckered scars were visible on its belly. There were still sutures on them, from when someone had stitched the creature up. There were odd lumps under the scars. Alnitak used Healing Word to help its injuries, but the lumps remained.

When they heard a swooshing sound from above, they looked up to see St. Dennison return. The angel alighted next to the Nameless, and offered Alnitak three more nodes of power. They were covered in blood, as was the solar himself. He also had large gashes slashed into the front of his chest, but the injuries didn’t seem to discomfit him.

“Thank you,” said Alnitak. He gestured at the cat. “Can you do anything for this cat?”

St. Dennison smiled. “Thy request is a noble one, and it shows the nobility with thee.” He leaned down, and the cat lolled onto its back immediately, purring.

St. Dennison stroked its chin, and then plunged his fingers with a sweeping motion through its body. Without harm or discord, he drew his fingers along the cat’s belly, and when he drew his hand away, there were three small ball bearings. They were neither blue nor magical in appearance. St. Dennison examined them, and discarded them. Spindle discreetly picked them up.

“Our debt is repaid. Thou hast done well, and thy quest is a true one. While we may no longer answer thy call, for there are many matters which demand our attention, we will think of thee fondly and look to thee at times.” The angel stepped backwards into a line of light that hadn’t been there before. “Be well.”

He was gone.

The party gathered their things, marked the location in their head, and headed back to the Grail Fort.

Chapter Eleven:  Into the City

Some years ago…

Now

Back at the Grail Fort, they saw McGillicutty the gnome waving at them as soon as they entered. He hurried over to greet them. “Hey there, listen. You asked me to keep a look out for some tieflings. There’s a group of them nearby. They’re all wearing robes, each in a different color. I told one of the guards that I heard they’d been making trouble, so they weren’t let in. Be careful. They look like really rough customers. They had that quiet kind of power that you can just see.”

“You still have the flare we gave you?” asked Chaster.

McGillicutty nodded. “I’ll shoot it off if I see them go in the same direction as you. Don’t worry. Nothing can go wrong.”

The party paused for a moment before approaching Grail with their seven nodes of power.

“Just to be clear — let’s stop for a rare moment of planning — just to be clear, we are going to tell Grail we only have the five he wanted, right?” said Alnitak, pulling the rest of the Nameless aside for a brief conference.

“For sure,” said Chaster.

“He didn’t ask for more than that,” added Stasha.

“Okay,” said Alnitak. They headed over to Grail’s laboratory building, the permanent-looking place made of stone at the heart of the fort.

The big elf was working on the side of the stag Beauty, adjusting some arcane point of magic. He turned to regard them as they approached, and smiled broadly. “You have succeeded – I can tell. Congratulations. You must be potent indeed, to defeat those beasts. Are you well? Can I get you anything?” Grail continued before they could answer. “Actually, would you join me for supper this evening? You can tell me about how everything went, and I can help you plan how to get into the inner confines of the city. Now that I know you can handle yourself, you can take one of my Beauties.”

The dinner in Grails’ austere quarters was simple but hearty. It was mostly a rich venison stew with thick chunks of carrot, leek, and potato. There were also loaves of crusty bread studded with seeds, and a dish of maple pastries for dessert. All of it was accompanied by big mugs of builder’s tea, rich with sugar and milk. Grail had also invited a friend, Shelly, who was a member of the guards. They’re a halfling person.

“We ask everyone rebuilding their lives here to contribute however they can,” Grail said, “and most contribute food. We have little coin, but good dinners. It’s been sixteen years and four months since things went wrong here, but we’ve built up the start of a future. In time, maybe I can figure out how to dampen or reverse the damage and reclaim Kossin Vale.” He pulled on a nearby switch of vines and wood, and the Nameless heard a dull click. A nearby lamp flickered into life, brightening the room. It was one of many small signs of Grail’s magical engineering, just like the enchanted little conveyor belt that steadily trundled the drinks and breadbasket in a circle around the table.

“Now, first you’ll need to find a ley line that’s promising,” he advised them, helpfully. “You’ll be able to follow it right into the city. Be careful – being so close to that amount of power will destabilize anything magical. You may even want to consider leaving your magical items here, so their enchantments aren’t disrupted. However, you may not want to do that – what if someone takes them? And we haven’t known each other very long, so you probably don’t trust me enough to leave them with me. You could also hide them, perhaps? Be assured that I have no interest in them. I just lost a powerful quarterstaff to the effect shortly after the disaster struck Kossin Vale, and so I thought you might want a warning.”

“Where’s the quarterstaff? Maybe we can help,” said Chaster. Grail was a bit surprised, given Chaster’s attitude, but he nodded. He fetched an ornate staff of wood, carved with runes, and handed it over.

“Thank you,” he said. “It was a gift from my first master, and it made me sad when it lost its power.” He nodded. “You can use one of the nodes of power to find a suitable ley line. It should react most fiercely when you approach a line, so it can work as a sort of compass. I recommend going around the edge of the city until you find one. I wish I could just point you in the right direction, but they move from time to time.”

“McGillicutty, who you know, advised us not to let in some tieflings. He said they’d caused trouble in other places. But McGillicutty is a bit of a rapscallion, always hustling to feed his kids. I think there might be more than he let on. And since the tieflings only wanted to know if you were here, I think it may have something to do with you.” His face becomes stern. “Have you led danger to the poor people who have taken refuge here?”

“Not as far as know,” said Stasha. The party explained the situation as they understood it: cultists of a powerful demon were chasing Chaster.

“We think they just want him,” added Alnitak, shrugging. Chaster nodded.

“Very well,” said Grail, his expression uncertain. “Well, hopefully all will be well. There are many who depend on this place for protection. You can go find a ley line in the morning, and then take a Beauty to follow it.”

“Wait,” said Alnitak. “You want us to go out and check for a ley line by ourselves? We almost died out there. We had to call an angel for help! We need one of your vehicles. We can just take one trip, that way.”

Grail shook his head. “That won’t work.”

Initially, the druid failed to explain why not — that if they rode a Beauty, it would block the sensitivity of the node. Chaster and Alnitak grew suspicious when he refused them, and then became argumentative, building into a sharply worded debate.

Chaster, admittedly, might have simply been taking another opportunity to needle the other druid. The cleric/druid had been vaguely offended ever since meeting Grail. Grail was the first ordained druid that Chaster had met since he himself had begun exploring nature’s power, and it was just unpleasant that Grail was using his prowess to construct abominations rather than heal nature.

It rose to such heights that the druid snapped in irritation, “Why am I debating with you about this? You want to take things that I have labored on for years, and dictate terms to me? I’m not even sure I should lend you one of my creations, if you’re not able to defend yourself at all. Do you have any idea what it has been like here, defending this place and these people, trying to learn how to protect them and possibly even heal my home of Kossin Vale? And you have such gall!”

Stasha and Spindle left once things got heated, after reassuring Grail of their skill and good intentions. They left their magical items in their Bags of Holding in his care, reluctantly, and perhaps as a sign of good faith. Alnitak headed out with Shelly, only to find that she was a disconcertingly hard drinker but not a very good conversationalist.

Chaster and Grail finished the meal alone together, sullenly avoiding looking at each other. Chaster inscribed something rude in Druidic on Grail’s table before he left.

The next day, the party headed out after a good night’s rest. They were feeling restored and ready.

Sure enough, they got lucky almost immediately. They were barely twenty minutes from the Grail Fort when they came across a piece of the town wall that had fallen, but was mostly intact. It was like a huge section of rough street, and it crushed everything that was under it when it fell. In a few spots, they could see broken sections that splintered trees back when disaster struck. As they crossed over this area, the node of power in Alnitak’s hand began vibrating wildly.

By moving back and forth, they discovered that it only reacted only when they were over a certain long strip of terrain. After only a few minutes of trial and error, they were confident they’d located the path the invisible ley line took. It pointed right towards the center of the city.

Stasha was suddenly alert to a shifting, snuffling sound of motion drawing nearby. Something had caught their scent and it’s drawing near. They only had a moment to hide, flee, or prepare.

They decided to run, but Spindle tripped, and then the monster was upon them.

A large thing that looked like some sort of monstrous wolverine lumbered into view. Its back was studded with sharp, bright shards of glass, growing unnaturally from its flesh. It snapped its teeth and sniffed the air, then it spotted them.

The combat was fierce and immediate, but simple. The Nameless poured crossbolt bolts and eldritch blasts and melee blows into the creature, and it repaid them in tooth and claw.

It was fast and strong, but they were many. And while Chaster was briefly at its mercy, the others tore the wolverine-thing apart. Stasha finished it off with two blasts of contorting energy right down its middle, leaving smoking holes in the thing’s meat.

“That was easy,” said Alnitak. “Ha, I told that druid we could have just done this in one trip.”

They were feeling good as they headed back… until they saw the smoke.

The Grail Fort had been assaulted. There was a huge hole in the side of the wooden walls, and the edges were burnt and smoking. One of the galaxies that served as a guard was lying in front of the breach; the node of power that was once at its center now cracked and dull.

Grail was sitting with his back to the shattered stone of what was once his home. The roof had been caved in as though from some giant, and the huge rabbit Beauty had been broken into a dozen pieces of bone and wood. Grail raised a feeble hand to greet you.

Five people lie in a row along the wall, their bodies covered with sackcloth. Casualties of a conflict not of their making.

Alnitak, moved by the plight, cast Mass Healing Word. It was a powerful spell, but there were too many people who needed succor to do less.

“Your tiefling enemies… they returned. They have astonishing powers. With a gesture, they were throwing flames from their fingers or smashing through the wall. And one of them… grew to a great height… and destroyed homes like they were toys. Your foes are almost beyond my comprehension, and certainly they were beyond my power.”

Grail forced himself to sit up, wincing. His stomach had clearly been badly lacerated, and Alnitak’s healing only helped somewhat. “They took all of my work that they could find, and destroyed most everything else. Both above-ground levels of my laboratory are emptied. They took the stag and the bull, and they smashed the rabbit.”

He slumped backwards again, gesturing at the shattered remains of his labors. He shook his head, grimacing.

“They must know where you’ll be headed. They must know you need to be in the city, or they’d have waited for you here. When you do go, you’ll be going into an ambush. And worse, now they have some of the Beauties.”

Grail reached an imploring hand to Spindle, who bent down and helped him up. With Spindle’s help, the druid hobbled inside the ruins of his laboratory. He pointed at a large switch on the wall made of vines and branches, and Spindle pulled it.

There was a shudder and a whine as the floor beneath the Nameless began to move and shake. It was slow, so they were able to move easily out of the building before they were in any danger.

A huge hatch, most of the size of the warehouse floor, folded back and away. Rubble skittered and fell into the large hole beneath.

“You’ll need help,” said Grail. “Everything finished is gone, but I have my current projects. They’re different… from the next generation. They haven’t been tested — they’re not even ready for testing — but there’s no time for that. You’ll need help. And these cultists of yours must be stopped.”

Four hulking figures slowly rose into view on an elevated platform which was lifted by the twitching contractions of thick vines. The enchanted machines were not as big as the beauties you’d seen, but they’d still tower head and shoulders over even the largest person.

The devices were made of gleaming blue metal, polished dark wood, and pale bone.

A large bear, a dire wolf, an enormous frog, and a big ape.

“I give you… my Beasts.”

“To operate them, sit in the throne and put on the helm, gauntlets, and boots,” Grail said, his breathing labored. “Do not hit the large red button inside of the cabin. Once you’re seated and connected, the access door will close and you will become the Beast, moving as though it were your own flesh. There is a limited sensorium, but you will not feel pain.”

“What does the big red button do?” asked Spindle, immediately.

“Don’t hit the big red button. The whole thing will… I think it will shut down. It won’t explode or anything,” said the druid.

“Ah. Okay,” said the rogue, obviously disappointed.

“The animals in the center of the city are far more dangerous than the ones you’ve met,” Grail continued. “Be careful. Their sheer brute strength and speed can be beyond belief.”

“Your Beasts will operate within the city, but don’t take them outside Kossin Vale. The wild magic that powers them won’t last long outside of the city. And if they run out of power or they’re disabled, you can become trapped inside. Take care.”

The Nameless got into the machines. They found that they were able to hear each other’s voices, as well as the outside world. And when they moved their arms or legs, they could hear and feel the shudder of the big mechanical creature mimicking their movements. They can’t really feel through the machines, so it was a little awkward… like being numb. They had to look down to see where they were walking, at first, and they moved very slowly and awkwardly.

After about ten minutes of practice, however, they were getting used to the phenomenon. Grail had them outside of the Fort – or what remains of it – and they took the time to familiarize yourself with their Beasts. It was an odd sensation to suddenly be twelve feet tall – able to pick up boulders and hurl them like sling-stones.

Spindle had a large ape, lumbering around on powerful legs and muscular arms. He knocked down a tree with a two-fisted blow, and then climbed to the top of another.

Alnitak had a wolf, bounding with great leaps through the air and wielding teeth like swords. He was agile beyond belief, hurtling around at alarming speeds.

Stasha chose the frog, with thick legs like catapults that propelled him in enormous jumps, an experimental energy shield that could protect him from harm, and a long tongue that was as flexible and stout as the cord on a ship’s great-anchor.

Stasha took the bear, which moved more slowly on its great paws, but was also capable of firing concentrated energy blasts from its chest.

They headed on into the city.

Kossin Vale was a city in ruins, but sixteen years was not long enough to have eradicated all the signs of the thriving populace that once dwelt there. As they marched their Beasts unsteadily into the city, they had to maneuver down streets littered with abandoned wagons, scattered horse bones, and simple trash. They headed down the path of the ley line. They were able to figure out the direction fairly well when they scouted it out earlier – very briefly, since they immediately got lucky – but they’d have to be careful that they didn’t lose the path. The prospect of having to get out of their machines, and maybe not being able to get back in… well, that would be a hard day for them.

Spindle maneuvered his ape-beast up onto the buildings immediately, climbing and jumping to the top of the gatehouse, and then moving forward from one building to another.

Ahead, he saw the remains of a fallen tower across the road here blocking the way. It didn’t prove much of an obstacle, as each of the beast was able to leap the ruins. Beyond, he saw the remains of what looks to have been a fight. A huge monster had been defeated, here. It looked like a giant eel, but with thousands of legs like a millipede. It was the biggest creature he’d ever seen – the size of a small building, easily. It’s head has been stomped in by an enormous foot, like a giant’s foot.

The Nameless approached, cautiously.

The remains of one of the stolen Beauties was nearby – the stag had been torn apart by the eel’s needle-like teeth, with the core broken open. From the look of the splattered blood and flesh, at least one or two of the tieflings died there. They could see scraps of black robes, torn pieces among the torn flesh.

The enemy was here, they were fewer in number now… and the beasts within the city were incredibly dangerous.

They continued on further, broaching into the inner city.

As they moved, they heard a loud, barking laugh. It was harsh and grating. Climbing over the top of a nearby building was a creature that towered even over the enormous ones you fought before. It looked like a hyena, but one swollen to grotesque size and covered in misplaced teeth. Stray canines and yellow fangs grew from patches of pinkish gums along its whole body. They appeared to have disturbed its feeding – the remains of a giant reptile were nearby, and the hyena’s mouth was bloody with purplish blood.

The fight was swiftly joined, and it was not an equal combat. While the hyena was grotesque and shockingly huge, it was outnumbered. And the strength of the Beasts negated much of the monster’s physical power and speed. Stasha lashed his tongue out, and it wrapped the hyena up in its thick corded length, holding it still while the others battered it wildly. It was only able to briefly lash out, savaging Spindle’s ape-beast, before they tore it apart.

After looking around and shaking off the viscera and rubble, the party kept on deeper into the city, following the invisible line.

There was something wrong with Spindle’s machine from the damage he’d taken, he discovered as the construction rumbled forward. One of the joints was grinding as he moved. It still seemed to be working, but there was damage. They didn’t know how to fix it or heal it, though, so there was nothing for it but to move on.

As they drew near what appears to be the city center, they could actually see the ley line itself.  It manifested as a blue glowing energy, zigging and zagging around, but basically moving in a straight line ahead of them.  They no longer needed to worry about knowing when they’d reached an intersection of two lines – it was obvious that they’d be able to see it.  They must be getting near.

They had all been working towards this moment for a long while.  Whatever happened, it was the next step forward for Stasha’s wife Lucretia and Alnitak’s sister Astocia.  They were linked, each by their own aborted magical efforts. 

And so Stasha, warlock of Lucretia, and Alnitak, twin soul of Astocia, were also linked.  It was a union deep enough that it had guided fate to bring the two of them together, despite how little they had in common.

Chaster had his own deep lore and tragic past – was that, too, connected?  And what was Spindle’s role in this – Spindle, who had redefined himself over and over?

Ahead, they could see a large city square, paved with broad flagstones.  There was once a fountain in the center, but it was broken into pieces.  Another ley line was visible, intersecting with the one they’d been following.  The air itself was sparkling with magical energy.  This was the place.

There were four people standing next to the fountain.  Three of them were tieflings in colored robes: red, black, and green.

The fourth person was Adrisa Carimorte of the Varkenbluff Cognoscenti Esoterica. The woman who’d they trusted. The woman who’d sent them here. The woman who had composed the magical ritual itself.

They’d been betrayed.

Adrisa raised her voice, calling to them from across the square.

“You must be inside there – you lot from the Vault team. I’m not surprised you made it here, but I thought your approach would be stealthy, as befits a gang of thieves. Instead that elf with his amateurish magical tinkering had some hidden toys, eh? No matter. I don’t know if those things talk, but this doesn’t have to get ugly. We want the same thing: we want to enact the ritual. I want to see the power consummated. Lucretia and Astocia will be restored. And once the ritual is done, Chaster will go with the devotees of Errtu to meet his own destiny. A good bargain, I think: you’ll just be trading one troublemaking and rude sailor for your wife and sister.”

“I don’t know what you see in him, anyway,” Adrisa added. “Let them have him, and he’ll be hollowed out and put to good use.”

“I don’t trust her even a little bit,” said Alnitak, immediately and without sentiment.

“Yeah, she’s lying,” affirmed Spindle. “I’m going to throw a rock at her.” He lumbered his great ape-beast over to a nearby home, and bent down to sink thick fingers of bone and wood into the foundations.

“From your silence, I take it the answer is no,” Adrisa finally said from across the square. She turned to the three tieflings near her. “Now is the time for you to fulfill your part of the bargain,” she said. “Take him, and once the ritual is done, you can have what’s left.”

The next moment, the house hit her shield. It struck dead-on and with incredible force, and the magic flickered and sparked violently. The house exploded into stones and dust and debris, and for a moment the minions of Errtu and the magical scientist allied with them were obscured from the Nameless’ sight.

When the dust cleared, a layer of broken masonry and dirt remained suspended around Adrisa by the force of her shield. The magic itself still held, but the four inside of it looked as though they’d been injured by the impact nonetheless. Adrisa’s nose was bleeding steadily, covering her chest in red wetness.

The trio emerged from the magical shield. There were three of them. One was dressed in red, one in black, and one in green.

The one in red sprinted away, into the rubble of the fallen buildings on the other side of the open square.

The one in black shimmered with power, and surged in size. He grew and grew, rising well past the height of your Beast machines. As he grew, his flesh warped and blackened, swelling with spikes and spite.

The one in green simply assumed a combat stance.

Chaster blasted the tiefling in red with a burst of energy from his bear-beast, but it went high, and Spindle threw another chunk of building at him, but it fell short. They could see he was running towards one of the Beauties they’d stolen — the bull, the last one remaining.

The tiefling was only a few feet from the big machine when Stasha leapt his frog over that side of the square and lashed him with its fibrous tongue. Rather than wrapping around him, it punched right through him. The tongue speared right through his chest in a burst of gore, and the tiefling collapsed. Stasha reeled back the tongue, and awkwardly tried to paw the tiefling’s body free.

Alnitak closed the distance with the enemy, bounding in close and tearing at the giant tiefling. He thumped back, throwing bursts of flame with his fists, but without causing much harm.

Far more dangerous was the tiefling in green. He met Spindle’s ape in single combat, and he struck with the power of a runaway train. His blows were rapid and unrelenting, and he battered the ape-beast until its joints whined with the accumulated damage.

Spindle attacked back, over and over, and used the superior mobility of his machine to his advantage. Stasha helped as best he could. Neither made much headway.

Meanwhile, Alnitak, who gnashed with huge teeth at the giant tiefling, fighting with Chaster’s bear-beast at his side pouring out energy blasts.

Eventually, the accumulated damage became too great for the Nameless. One by one, they saw lights begin flashing and alarms beginning to sound inside of their beasts. Each time, helpless to know what to do next, they hit the big red button that they’d been warned not to touch.

First Spindle, then Alnitak, then Stasha.

And each time, the entire machine died around them, and then began to emit a mechanical grinding sound. “Don’t hit the big red button,” Grail had warned. “The whole thing will… I think it will shut down.” Sure enough, it had.

The party managed to bring down the giant, but the tiefling in green with the monk’s moves remained, and he smashed Chaster’s machine with a hailstorm of blows. Chaster erupted in energy blasts, but too slow and too clumsily to do any harm. He saw that the other machines were scraping along the ground, moving towards each other, and decided to go with an instinct that seemed right. He lumbered over to the others, and then slammed his hand on the button.

With a scrape of metal and a lurch of motion, the four machines slammed into each other. Bone snapped and magic glowed as something finally began to work properly. The beasts molded into each other, their individual thrones combined into once space, and the compounded machines rose creakily as a single humanoid unit.

There was a long pause, and then the Nameless brought an immense wolven foot down on the tiefling in green. He had time for a yelp of surprise before he was crushed.

Some years ago…

Now

Her face and chest covered in blood, Adrisa shrieked in rage as the last of her allies fell.

She clenched her fists, and her magical shield sparked and sizzled. With a shuddering thump, energies discharged from her in big bolts of light.

In response, every one of the nodes of power on the combined machine cracked and exploded. The entire thing fell dull and silent. It was dead.

“Why must you be so stupid?” she demanded, as the party leapt out of the destroyed machine. And then, as they charged at her, she cast Time Stop.

It seemed as though there was simply a hiccup in events, as though they’d blinked and things had been switched around. When everything lurched back into motion, Adrisa was protected by a glowing enchantment and fiery blasts of rock and rage were hurtling down on them. She lashed out with her hands, and magical energies rained down on them.

Ultimately, however, there could be no contest. She was a scholar, and they were adventurers. Adrisa had dedicated her life to the study of dangerous magicks, but the Nameless lived and breathed them.

Burning rocks cascaded down around them, and they staggered back and winced and took pained breaths. She poured out Finger of Death and Ray of Sickness and other foul incantations, but they’d come too far.

Crossbow bolts thudded into her chest. A shield crashed against her face. Eldritch blasts scorched her and fire blazed on her robes.

With a look of shock, Adrisa fell, defeated… and shocked at this outcome.

The party looked around, but for the first time in a long while, there was no one to fight. They were here. They’d made it.

Now what would they do?

The situation was dire.

They were in the middle of a hellscape of ruins, and their protective machines had been destroyed. Even though there was another one, all of the nodes of power had been shattered, so there was no way to use it. They’d need to defeat at least one of the monsters to gather more, and then there was no guarantee it would work — they didn’t really know much about Grail’s creations.

Or they could try to flee, hoping that they were able to make it all the way out of the city without getting torn apart. The monsters here were tough enough that it had taken angelic intervention to save them last time they faced even one of the weaker ones.

And if they did escape, what hope did they have of returning? Or finding another place to enact the ritual?

On the other hand, could they trust this ritual at all? Adrisa had claimed she just wanted to see it happen, but that didn’t explain why she’d been willing to ally with a demon cult to force it. Would it kill the crucible, Chaster? Would it kill them all?

Should they just risk it?

Some years ago…

Chapter Twelve:  Chaster’s Choice

Chaster turned to the others, wiping blood from his face.

“My friends, we have been on long journeys. I remember fondly saving you in casinos, frozen wastelands, and museums.” Alnitak gave Spindle a look at this claim, but they kept silent as Chaster continued. “Defending you from mummies and machines and monsters. We have traveled long and far and I have come to respect you all.”

He sighed. “As you know, I grew up with only one to call family and she was taken from me. How can I deny a friend a chance to be reunited with their loved one while freeing another from an oppressive bond? What would my mother think when we are reunited in the afterlife? Would she see her son a coward? No… I will do this thing.

“I ask only two things: I require you each to swear an oath to whatever God or thing you hold most holy that if I should perish, you will ensure the protection and dedication to my animal friends continues as long as they draw breath. Second, I require a similar oath that you will kill me before you would see me become a vessel of evil. If the spell goes awry, you must do what is necessary to preserve the life of the world.”

As Stasha and Alnitak began to speak, to pledge him their oath, Chaster interrupted.

“Oh wait… third, if I die, make sure everyone knows it was Grail’s fault… and fourth, i want something from the dumpling menu named after me, and not some shitty appetizer no one orders, like something good.” He touched the emblem on his shield, pausing a moment as he thought, then looked back up at them. “I am with you my friends… to the very end.”

They waited to see if there would be a fifth or sixth condition, but there wasn’t. “Thank you,” Stasha said, and Alnitak nodded. They swore the oaths.

“I really want to see what’s going to happen,” said Spindle.

Alnitak broke the seal on the ritual he and Stasha looked it over. It provided for two casters and a crucible. The spell was incredibly complex for the casters, and minor flaws in their incantations would bring catastrophe. The crucible, on the other hand, seemed to be subject to severe forces that would cause unspecified physical challenges. There was almost no room for error.

Just in case it would help, Stasha summoned his familiar, Ludwig, in the form of a sphinx of wonder. The familiar was disgruntled with the form, a big brightly-colored cat with wings, but agreed to help if he could. Sphinxes had an inborn wisdom that Ludwig thought he might be able to use. For his own preparation, Chaster transformed into a bear, reasoning that it would have the endurance to withstand anything.

Spindle loaded his crossbow and set up watch.

Alnitak and Stasha stood on either side of a kneeling, furry Chaster.

They began to chant.

While their voices felt normal to begin, in moments there was a feeling of something catching on the glittering magic which surrounded the trio. Then their incantation began to feel as though it were rising from within their chests, floating higher and higher as it became something real of its own.

Stasha’s chanting was rough at first, then steadied, lifted from inside of him by the promise of reunion with his wife. Alnitak’s song wavered at the nearness of his goal, on the other hand, and he fumbled over a syllable. There was an immediate backlash of the energies surrounding them, and he felt a surge of pain. In an effort of will, he steadied himself and joined his voice in unison with Stasha’s once more. Their chanting ascended and found perfection. The light from the ley lines began to spread in response, branching out from their intersection like a growing tree, and then redoubling from each branch. The air began to grow dense with blue light.

Spindle stepped back, alarmed, and then whirled as he heard a sound across the square. An immense face peered over a pile of rubble, a horrorshow of bulging eyes and raw teeth and bits of malformed metal. It was curious about the lights. As it slid over the pile of rocks, Spindle saw that it was something like a giant leech or worm, its wet body studded with bizarre limbs and claws. It looked less like an animal than anything they’d seen, so wholly warped was it by the energies of this place. It was the size of a house, and it was interested in them.

Spindle looked around for solutions or ideas or distractions, and found nothing. There was nothing. No resources. Nothing to use or throw or deploy.

Then he looked within. And there, he found what he needed: immediate and unflinching courage.

He raised his crossbow and fired, shouting to make sure he had its attention. Then he drew it away from the others. It pursued him with a cacophony of hunger.

Chaster felt something burning and tearing inside of him. It was raw and angry and hot, and it wanted to be free. When the blue light began to touch his flesh, it started trying to tear itself out of Chaster’s flesh. The agony was excruciating… well beyond anything he’d felt before. Well beyond anything he could imagine.

He shuddered violently in place, and moving made the pain even worse, rebounding within him. He wasn’t going to be able to do this. Despite his absolute best, he wasn’t going to be able to endure. Everything was going to break. He was going to fail.

As the monster attacked, Spindle fled. It moved with terrifying speed, but Spindle was a rogue. His boots barely touched the ground as he sped and leapt, rebounding off of broken stones and sliding through the facade of a broken shop. He fired another crossbow bolt at the monster as it pursued him, the ground shaking with every slither-step it made.

The monster sped after him, breaking through obstacles as Spindle led it out of the square and into the buildings nearby. And even though it moved ten times as fast as the elf, Spindle yet stayed ahead of it. He reached a flow-state of absolute perfection. For just a moment, he was the perfect thief engaged in the perfect escape. For just a moment, he was uncatchable.

The creature trumpeted its frustration, crashing through buildings as it pursued him.

Chaster couldn’t keep himself there. Something hot was tearing him apart inside, and the pain had long ago exceeded the bounds of sanity.

He knew that they were all about to die, but he just couldn’t keep still. Dimly, he perceived Spindle had already gone. The others were locked into their chanting. There was no one to help.

Roaring in pain, he rose to his feet, abandoning the ritual. Blue light swelled and strained. Everything began to break apart.

Eventually, Spindle’s perfect moment came to an end. The beast slashed through a wall and then caught him in a huge, horrid claw like a malformed lobster’s. It hefted him up. He tried to get at his sword, but he realized that it was squeezing him and the claw had scissored deep into his belly. Blood poured from the huge wound.

Spindle was reloading his crossbow when the world faded away.

The two paws slammed down onto Chaster’s shoulders, forcing him back down. Ludwig growled, “Hold on, there” and shoved him into place.

Chaster took the instant of respite afforded by the support, and seized on the spirit of sheer cussedness that had caused him so much trouble for so many years.

The ley lines flared bright again. They branched, intersecting, then branching again. The air filled with fractal blue.

Chapter Thirteen:  Consequences

Centuries ago, a powerful wizard attempted a great feat of magic, seeking to become immortal. She did not succeed, but neither did she fail. She was caught somewhere in between, in suspension. She was cold and alone.

Some years later, a young man was born with a special soul, touched by a fiend from beyond the world. But his aunt saved him from his fate, and fled with him. He was not free, but neither did he become a crucible. He was caught somewhere in between, in suspension. He turned to the wind and the sea.

More recently, a young woman tried to channel the power of her gods, connecting her arcane magic to the divinity of the Seldarine. The ritual was far too great for her to handle, unleashing great power without any control. She seemed to have been consumed, but this was not so. She was caught somewhere in between, in suspension. She has been frozen between breaths ever since.

Most recently, a young man decided to give his life for his friends, leading away a monster so that they could live. He seemed to die, but he hasn’t, quite. He is caught somewhere in between, in suspension. His soul lingers at the precipice of death.

But thanks in part to the timely intervention of a grumpy familiar, when the last chance seemed lost, the ritual had been completed, and now a choice would need to be made.

The Nameless awoke somewhere gray and empty.

Chaster was no longer a bear, and Spindle was no longer injured. Everyone had all of their equipment, but, alarmingly, most of them no longer had access to their magic. Chaster felt no connection with nature, and neither Spindle nor Alnitak could affect the Weave as they were normally able to do.

Stasha, on the other hand, felt like his connection with Lucretia was stronger than ever.

The air was thick with mist, and diffuse dim light came from somewhere overhead. The ground was an indeterminate material, featureless and flat. Nothing and no one was visible around them.

“Huh,” said Spindle. “I really thought that I was dead.”

Far off in the distance, Spindle’s keen eyes saw a speck of bluish light. If there had been a horizon in this place, it would be at its edge. It was the only thing in sight.

“Let’s go,” said Alnitak.

The journey was lengthy. It’s hard to tell how much time was passing, since there were no sun or stars in this place, and Chaster’s beard didn’t grow, and they didn’t grow hungry or thirsty or tired. But it must have been hours of walking, or perhaps days. They walked, chatting occasionally.

As they got closer, at long last, they could see that there were three figures standing around a fizzling globe of electric blue energy.

One of them is Lucretia, Stasha’s wife. Her face was withered and drawn, but she didn’t look the way he’d last sen her. She was no longer old, but rather she looked as though the life had drained out of her. She was alert to their presence, moving her eyes fractionally, but she didn’t not speak.

The second figure was Astocia, Alnitak’s sister. She was utterly motionless, and she looked exactly as when Alnitak last saw her. She was poised where she stood in the same way, her hands raised above her, still positioned as in the last moments of her magic. There was a look of alarm on her face… the dawning realization that something was going terribly wrong. She didn’t twitch at their approach, and didn’t appear to know the Nameless were there. She was frozen in the same instant that she disappeared.

The final figure was a murky figure of fire and shadow. It was indistinct, and faded from view from one moment to the next. It was something in the process of becoming… in the process of being born. But it lacked the power and definition.

The figure of fire showed no change in appearance at their approach, but they could feel malevolence exuding from its form. It was something that may yet take form, and that form would be terrible indeed.

They all studied the situation closely, but it was Chaster who realized what was confronting them. “This is a choice. We can finish this ritual and connect the power of the ley lines to these three, or maybe only two of them. But that’s riskier.”

“I’m going to see this through, no matter what,” said Alnitak, almost immediately. “Even if she dies, it will be better than this.”