Broken Crown Arc

== Arc Summary == After saving Balgrus, the party is flush with cash and ready to spend it. They split up upon reaching Port Valor, wherein Slumberjack visits a tavern called the Twisted Nail and gets into some nasty business. Returning to the party, Slumberjack convinces the party the attack was motivated by their drow heritage. The party bands together once more to get some revenge in the form of a bar fight.

Arriving at the Twisted Nail, half of the party enters through the back entrance while the other half takes the front. There's a brief fight resulting in most of the bar dying aside from one man who the party managed to knock unconscious. They learn afterward these men were a part of the Broken Crown, a crime organization in Port Valor. The barkeep luckily has a ledger the party obtains that has a list of the lieutenants of the Crown: Kargath the Butcher, the Siren, and Nivex the Poisoner. Later, they learn that the Crown has hired divination wizards from Atemcester to uncover who slew the barkeep and associates at the Twisted Nail.

After much discussion, the party decides to take the fight to the Broken Crown by slaying the lieutenants and trying to uncover the identity of their enigmatic leader. A halfling named Victor introduces them to Jorah, a bounty hunter who might be able to help them. They luckily befriend one of the lieutenants - a half-orc named Kargath the Butcher. Kargath clues the party in on the true name of the leader of the Broken Crown in the hopes that they might be able to take him down so Kargath can get out of the business. Moving forward, the party decides their next target will be the Siren as she has the most ties to Tyrian. They quickly slay her and are greeted by a suave half-elf with a band of ruffians - Tyrian Vordt in the flesh. He decides to have the party killed then and there, but they make their escape. Jorah offers to hold them off to buy the party time to run.

Their next target is Nivex the Poisoner, who gives all the party a bit of pause. After tracking him down and slaying him, they manage to rescue Jorah and the halfling Victor. Here, they find out that the Poisoner was working with Tyrian to get Count Corvus, leader of Port Valor, killed so that Tyrian would be next in line. They warn the count and are given a bounty: slay Tyrian. The party accepts.

Later on, they meet Tyrian outside of his office, dressed and ready for battle. Ensuing is a lengthy battle in which Tyrian is slain, finally toppling the Broken Crown. Curiously, Kilwin hears a voice as he examines Tyrian's body. An ominous voice saying, "He will find you." Putting that aside for the time being, the party makes their way back to the Count, who pays them the bounty and gives them two offers: take a letter to the imperial seat at Falas, or take care of the orcs nearby Port Valor. The party decides to follow the first offer.

Session 2

 * Google Document (3-22-19)

The party is on their way back from the mine and takes a long rest at the goblin camp so that we don’t die immediately. On the road, Erak, Reides, and Marcyra discover that they all speak Draconic. As dusk falls, the party starts to set up camp in a clearing off the main path. Slumberjack and Marcyra check the area, but they both botch their rolls so they don’t notice anything, so the party starts to goof off a bit. Erak does the sickest handstand anyone has ever seen and gets lots of applause.

Kilwin hears a twig snap somewhere, and loudly alerts the rest of the party. Marcyra goes to check it out and hears an animal sniffing around and someone speaking in what she thinks is Goblin. She casts Message to tell Reides that he might need to translate, but it turns out that it’s two orcs with two wolves that they’re using to track us from the mine. We absolutely own them though. Erak pees on one of the orcs and successfully harvests some meat from one of the wolves to cook later. Balgrus didn’t even roll initiative, but he’s okay, we kept him safe (: The squad discusses how it’s a little worrying that the goblin and orc gang from the mines tracked them this far out and wonders about Thorak (Thorax? Lorax??) for a little bit before turning in for the night. Reides takes first watch and gets distracted studying the remains of the wolves.  Erak also botches his perception roll, but Marcyra and Kilwin are very attentive during their watches (Kilwin gets a little queasy around the dead wolves, though).

In the morning, the party gets ready to get back to Port Valor. Erak briefly flirts with Balgrus a little bit, but Slumberjack shuts that down immediately. Kilwin offers one of his rations to Balgrus, but he has his own food.

Back in Port Valor, Balgrus and Alexandrius are reunited and each member of the party receives 40 gold as payment. Balgrus and Alexandrius are probably very happy to be away from these people now. Erak buys everyone a round of ale (and like 3 tankards of milk for Kilwin (!!)). The gang hears about the help board in town and Slumberjack privately interrogates the barkeep about the less savory guilds in town. He directs them to a place called the Twisted Nail and they depart on their own.

The party splits up to attend to individual business. Reides visits a temple of Alethus on the outskirts of town and buys a brazier and some incense. The priestess (a pretty elf lady) tells Reides he can buy the herbs he needs for his Find Familiar spell and also tells him about how she’s heard strange noises from the temple graveyard around midnight and asks him if he would check it out at some point. When he visits the general store later, he buys the herbs and a dusty spellbook to use as a backup for his current one. Erak visits a weapons store called Dwarven Delights and asks if there’s any special weapons or magical items, but the storekeeper is a huge jerk about it, so Erak leaves and stealthily pees on the store. He visits the general store and meets the shopkeeper, who is a halfling with a lot of earrings and a necklace with Kiyala’s symbol. Erak buys 10 rations and asks the shopkeeper if there’s somewhere to get special weapons and magical items. The shopkeeper directs him to the docks, where he meets up with Marcyra. They find a shop called Bai’s Baubles, which is run by a tiefling. The baubles are extremely expensive (100+ gold each) and include a Trident of Fish Command. The tiefling (correctly) guesses that Erak and Marcyra don’t have enough money for any of this stuff, so they just look around and leave. Back at the tavern, Kilwin finishes chugging his tankards of milk and heads to the general store to restock on rations (he buys 2). He also asks the shopkeeper if he’s heard anything about Thorak and, although the shopkeeper doesn’t pay much attention to gossip, he learns about roving orc bands in the area talking about him.

Slumberjack goes to the Twisted Nail, a tavern in the seedy underbelly of Port Valor. They ask for information about guilds in town, but the barkeep isn’t willing to give information without being given gold first and Slumberjack doesn’t wanna pay. 50 silver is Slumberjack’s final offer, which isn’t enough, and apparently they aren’t scary enough for this dude so a fight breaks out. Slumberjack kills a dude, but gets overwhelmed by the barkeep and another man at the tavern. (Meanwhile, Kilwin is taking a leisurely walk back to the first tavern. Marcyra looks at some fish at the docks. Erak drinks some ale. Reides sees a butterfly.)  Slumberjack loses both of their handaxes in the fight and is forcibly ejected from the Twisted Nail. They’re passed out for 3 hours, but they know they’re coming back here later for more, they’re MAD.

Back at the less seedy tavern, the party has met up again. Reides tells everyone else about the graveyard noises and suggests that it’s ghosts and everyone is interested in checking it out. Erak and Marcyra tell Reides about the Trident of Fish Command since they thought he’d be interested. Reides seems conflicted about something, almost like he decides against saying something, but he says it’s fine and everyone just kind of lets it go.

Slumberjack enters the tavern, later than everyone else and noticeably wounded. Everyone is extremely concerned! Kilwin tries to heal them while everyone asks what happens. Slumberjack says that they went to a tavern where they didn’t like their kind and pulls back part of their mask to reveal gray skin and a pointed ear. Erak says some drow stuff that no one else understands and immediately asks if anyone is up for a bar fight. Kilwin is the only one not 100% on board with it, but he still goes because he can’t really bring himself to oppose beating up on violent racists and also he doesn’t want his new friends to get hurt. The group puts off the graveyard quest for another time.

Back at the Twisted Nail, the gang finds a backdoor leading to the kitchen that Marcyra manages to unlock. The kitchen is empty so everyone checks it out. Reides takes a potato. As the only human in the group (he’ll blend in), Kilwin offers to go in through the front door and see who’s inside. Erak follows him with the idea that he’ll make a distraction so Slumberjack, Marcyra, and Reides can ambush the barkeep. As soon as he walks in, the barkeep sneers at him and tells him the bar’s closed. Kilwin apologizes but points out that the door was open, the front door specifically. The barkeep immediately looks toward the kitchen and notices that someone is in there. Slumberjack leaves the kitchen to enter the tavern proper, and Erak closes the front door so he can bust it open when he enters the tavern. Kilwin fails to dodge the door and it hits him on the butt for 4 damage.

Combat starts very badly and Kilwin actually doesn’t accomplish anything besides healing Erak and Slumberjack for the whole fight. Reides throws his potato at the barkeep for 1 damage, but Marcyra follows it up with a Fire Bolt that goes right through his head, killing him. Erak kills another guy during his rage. Slumberjack spits blood in a dude’s eye, blinding him, and Marcyra covers him in alcohol to do what would’ve been some very cool stuff with flammable materials, but Slumberjack cuts him in half before she can do that. Marcyra almost kills the last man as he’s running because she didn’t get the memo that we want information from these guys, but fortunately Erak knocks him unconscious first. Erak drags the unconscious man back into the Twisted Nail.

Session 3

 * Google Document (3-30-2019)

After the tavern fight, the gang investigates the bodies of the people they killed. Marcyra finds several gold on the innkeeper, along with a cracked crown insignia that seems to freak her out a bit. She explains to Reides (and the rest of the party overhears) that if someone has one of these insignias, they aren’t a very good person. Slumberjack kills the last guy who we knocked unconscious. Kilwin and Reides try to stop them but it’s way too little, too late. Since Marcyra used her fire magic to kill the innkeeper, she’s eager to hide the evidence so the killing can’t be traced back to her. Slumberjack beheads the innkeeper and burns the severed head.

As Marcyra starts pouring alcohol on the bodies to prepare to burn them, Reides, Slumberjack, and Kilwin head upstairs to check the rooms. (Kilwin is very much trying to get some space from the burning smell and murder and obstruction of justice.)  Reides knocks on the first door and immediately gets called a gobshite. Slumberjack tells the guy that the boss is waiting downstairs, but he doesn’t know what they’re talking about because he’s genuinely just a random peasant guy. Kilwin saves everyone involved by saying they just got the wrong room and the guy buys it. The next room is empty, but Slumberjack finds some copper and takes it. The man in the next room had ordered room service, but Reides and Marcyra tell him that it got burned because of the ruckus downstairs and he’s satisfied (?) with that. There’s one more room left and Erak breaks the door open and goes to threaten the guy inside because he’s just here to Fight. The man holds him at knifepoint, and the rest of the party begins to crowd into the room. Slumberjack asks him about crime guilds, and the man takes out another cracked crown insignia, which is the symbol of the Broken Crown, a criminal organization in Port Valor that does shakedowns and protection rackets, but possibly has larger ambitions. Slumberjack asks if they need one of those insignias to join the guild, Marcyra is desperately trying to stop all this because Slumberjack can just ask her for this information, and the guy mentions that there’s a recruiter downstairs and wonders how they missed him. Reides lets it slip that we killed that guy! The dude starts running, Marcyra is trying to kill him, Slumberjack and Erak are just trying to stop him, while Kilwin and Reides are just trying to stop this whole thing from happening. Erak knocks him out in the hallway and Kilwin casts Spare the Dying to stabilize him. The man waiting for room service peeks out to see if his food is there, but it’s not, so he goes back inside. While the lads bring the guy back to his bed, Marcyra asks Slumberjack if they told the truth about getting attacked here. Slumberjack shuts her down with a good Deception roll and acts offended that she would even think to ask that question and struts away after saying that clearly they aren’t a team right now.

In the man’s room, Erak takes a little rest on the bed next to the unconscious man. Reides explains what he knows about the Broken Crown (which is just the basics but that’s SO much more than Kilwin knew going into this). Marcyra explains that this guy reports to higher-ups who WILL want the party dead for doing this. Kilwin suggests making sure that this guy’s wounds are tended and writing him a letter of apology for the misunderstanding and for beating him up, so maybe he won’t tell his bosses exactly what happened. Marcyra appreciates his idealism, BUT points out that that’s not gonna fly. Erak points out that the party would have stood out on their way here since they’re in the slums and the residents are probably very alert to outsiders. Someone knocks on the door (Erak didn’t totally break it, I guess, we’re not gonna worry about it too much), Marcyra invites them in and Reides and Erak strike some poses on the bed. It’s two more guys here to see what’s going on here!! Slumberjack kills one of them almost immediately out the gate and the second one starts running. Slumberjack and Erak chase after him, while Kilwin blocks the door to stop Marcyra from joining the chase and killing someone else. She just kind of accepts her stay in gay baby jail and sits down at the table, very non-threateningly goes through the unconscious man’s pockets to grab the Broken Crown coin, and sits back at the table. Kilwin releases Reides from gay baby jail no problem, and Reides casts Minor Illusion to make it sound like there’s a 6th party member downstairs and make the guy stop running so we can explain ourselves, but he sees through it and keeps going. Slumberjack kills the second guy too and drags the corpse into a closet in the empty room, and then lies down for a little nap. Kilwin says some rites for the people they just killed and just generally feels awful that he couldn’t stop it even if they might have been genuinely bad people. Marcyra (genuinely sad because people are mad at her) asks if the body by the door has a Broken Crown coin on it- Kilwin finds one and gives it to her. Erak asks if she connected to the Broken Crown and she lies that she isn’t, but Reides calls her on it. She explains that she grew up in the slums, which is how she knows about them. She also says that she wishes she knew that these were the people who messed with Slumberjack ahead of time since she would’ve tried to avoid a fight if she had known and also could’ve answered any questions that Slumberjack might have had about the Broken Crown. Erak confirms that Marcyra has the useful information and that’s all he hypothetically wants out of the unconscious guy, so he kills him and then proceeds to read us all for filth because there was absolutely no communication between any of us for that whole fight and some of us were trying to kill people, some of us were trying to NOT kill people and it was really just an enormous mess and we’re really more of a group of people just doing things right now than an actual adventuring party. As we prepare to leave the Twisted Nail, Marcyra uses her magic to clean the blood trails (while also collecting the remaining Broken Crown coins) and Reides moves the dead guy in the hallway to the bed so it maybe looks like the two guys in the bed maybe just died in their sleep. Marcyra wakes up Slumberjack by poking them with the blunt end of their dagger and the gang heads downstairs. Reides searches for his potato and finds it behind the bar, along with a health potion and a journal. Reides flips through the journal and finds a ledger of money that the barkeep extorted from people asking about the Broken Crown and a list of the Broken Crown’s lieutenants who know The Boss (Kargath the Butcher, Nivex the Poisoner, and the Siren), along with a list of their usual haunts. Marcyra knows the names and keeps the journal initially, but puts back the bread that she stole last session because she doesn’t want to have anything that can be tied back to this place. She also says that we should try to lay low for now and not get into any more fights or cause disruptions until she can find out what kind of waves this caused in the crime world. Erak asks if she knows a good place to lay low and she invites everyone back to her house. We try to stealth there and nothing happens so maybe we were successful? Marcyra’s house is pretty small and humble, but it has some very nice things in it that seem out of place because she stole them. Reides asks Marcyra for some real answers, since we are kind of all partners in crime now. Marcyra says that the Broken Crown hasn’t killed or fired her yet, so she guesses that’s being on good terms with them. She also starts kicking herself about not staging a robbery to make the murder seem less suspicious, but Kilwin and Reides reassure her that she DID steal the Broken Crown coins and the journal and health potion are missing, so there WAS stealing. Marcyra suggests burning the journal since it ties them to the scene, but Erak points out that if someone finds out that the party has the journal, they’re probably already in deep trouble. Reides ends up hanging onto the journal and suggests that we could go after the lieutenants first since we know where they hang out and since they’re bad people, we might be doing a good thing by taking them out. Erak is very on board with the idea, but Marcyra is reluctant to stir up more trouble and points out that there’s more ambitious people in the Broken Crown who will step up to be the new lieutenants and try to take us out to advance their own careers. She also really doesn’t wanna lose her job. Reides suggests that she can just find a new job where her bosses aren’t assholes because he’s literally a fish and he deals with it. Erak points out that it’s a little different for tieflings and drows (unless this was Blee OOC, lemme know). It starts lightly raining and Erak asks for tea so Marcyra makes some for us. We decide to table the Broken Crown stuff for now, take a rest until around 2 AM when we’ll head out to the temple on the outskirts of town to get a little distance from what we just did and deal with the graveyard sound problem and pretend like everything is normal. Marcyra loans Kilwin her bedroll since she can sleep in her regular bed and also Erak distributes the rations he bought earlier in the day because they were for everyone. Kilwin forgoes the offer since he went shopping for himself, but is sincerely touched by how nice Erak is, so Reides and Marcyra take an extra ration each. We all take watches (except for Marcyra who actually gets to try to sleep) and Kilwin very quietly has a crisis about if he’s been making the good choices and if he’s been disappointing Alethus lately.

We head to the graveyard (not particularly stealthily, we’re fine and everything is fine), and cautiously go to check it. Reides expects ghosts, Marcyra expects grave robbers, Erak is really hoping for no ghosts because he can’t deal with that. We enter the graveyard and immediately see an undead creature (a ghoul) eating a hand. Erak screams and grabs onto Kilwin, which alerts the ghoul to our presence. Reides gets ready to take some notes! Slumberjack and Erak (who had to rage to stop being scared shitless) go in to attack it and it’s got some wild poison stuff going on, but fortunately they manage to resist it. Marcyra goes as far away from it as she can and launches a Fire Bolt, but accidentally hits a crypt instead. The original ghoul goes down and another larger undead creature with an uncomfortably long tongue (a ghast) emerges from the crypt and this guy hits WAY harder. Erak almost goes down against it but Kilwin heals him. Also it apparently smelled really bad so Erak had to roll to not get overpowered by the smell. While the ghast is still going, two more ghouls appear near where Marcyra and Reides have been keeping their distance. Marcyra gets attacked in melee and casts False Life to not die, while Slumberjack abandons the ghast fight to help with the ghouls. Fortunately, Reides absolutely destroys the ghast with Ice Knife so Kilwin and Erak are free to assist with the ghouls too. He channels the divine powers of Alethus to remind the ghouls of their mortality and turn them away from the holy light (and get them to stop attacking everyone for a turn). One of the ghouls runs, which lets everyone beat up on them, and Slumberjack slaughters the other one. Erak attacks a ghoul so bad that his axe flies into the woods. It worked out! We stopped the noise! Erak got his axe out of the tree! Reides studies the undead in more detail and learns that we got lucky on those constitution saves. Investigating the crypt, the party finds that the undead have been eating the bodies and it’s trashed in there. Slumberjack finds an offering of 15 gold and a magic sword and takes them both. Kilwin tries to stop them because we came here to investigate the noise and help these people, not rob graves! But Slumberjack like… doesn’t really care. Since he can’t talk them out of it and he’s not ready to start physically fighting Slumberjack just yet, Kilwin leaves his own offering at the grave of 5 gold and a stick of incense. (In his defense, he doesn’t know how much gold Slumberjack took.)  Reides also leaves the grass he found in the first session as an offering, and we get ready to leave the graveyard.

Session 4

 * Google Document (4-5-2019)

As the gang leaves the graveyard, they contemplate their next moves (and Kilwin heals Marcyra for real just in case). They decide to tell the priestess at the temple that they took care of the noise in the graveyard and ask if they can take shelter in the temple. Since it’s about 2 in the morning, the temple is locked. Marcyra suggests picking the lock and breaking in, but Kilwin puts his foot down on this one and knocks. Eventually, the priestess answers the door and is a little afraid of us until she sees Reides and recognizes him. He tells her that there were ghouls and a ghast in the graveyard. She expresses surprise that the undead have wandered so close to town, but thanks the party for their assistance. She briefly leaves to get the reward (although some of the party start wondering if there IS a reward), and comes back with a pouch with 500 gold, which Reides distributes evenly across the party. Kilwin offers to help more with the ghouls, but the priestess says that ghouls and ghasts just tend to wander and that there’s not really much else to help with, since the temple can’t afford to hire guards. Before the priestess leaves, Erak (hiding behind Slumberjack) asks if we can take shelter in the temple. She lets us inside and tells Erak to “be at peace” in Elvish. Slumberjack and Marcyra bite the gold to make sure it’s real and Reides tries to take a taste too but he doesn’t like it. The priestess is a little weirded out but goes back to bed. As everyone else gets settled to sleep, Marcyra gets ready to go back out and get in touch with her contact. She tells everyone that if she’s not back after a few hours, assume she’s dead and don’t go after her.

Marcyra’s contact is a halfling man named Victor who lives fairly close to her house. She sneaks across town and finds his lights out and his door locked. She looks inside and sees that there’s no one inside. She picks the lock to go inside and it looks like Victor left to go somewhere. On her way out, Marcyra relocks the door, which Victor catches her doing when he comes home. Apparently, Marcyra has broken into Victor’s house a few times before, but she doesn’t want anyone else getting in there. Victor tells her that the Broken Crown is in an uproar over what happened at the Twisted Nail and that the Boss wants to call in divination wizards from Atemcester, the city of magic, to find out who did it. He is apparently taking it very personally and it’s become the focus of the Broken Crown. Victor asks where Marcyra was, since he was out looking for her. She explains that she was helping a church with some weird stuff with ghouls. Victor points out that that doesn’t sound like something she’d normally do, but she says that some weirdos pushed her into it. (Meanwhile, back at the temple, Reides sneezes). Marcyra keeps Victor off the party’s trail by lying that she was asked to look into the Twisted Nail incident, partly because of her affinity for fire magic and partly because they’re desperate for manpower, which he believes. After learning all this, Marcyra thanks Victor for his help (and for looking for her, even though it’s his job and she pays him) and he goes right to bed. Marcyra sneaks back to the temple and sees some Broken Crown people on her way, but manages not to be noticed by them.

When Marcyra comes back to the temple, Reides is the only one still awake. He’s copying some spells over from his main spellbook to the one he bought at the general store. Marcyra passes on what she learned from Victor to him. She says that the best thing to do is to leave town before the divination wizards can show up, and Reides thinks that sounds like a fun roadtrip. Reides also suggests that Marcyra could still leave her job and start her own business.

In the morning, Marcyra tells the rest of the party what she knows now, much more calmly than last night. There is a brief discussion of the habits and moral alignment of ghasts (they’re not uncommon, jfc I was really hoping to never see one again) and Kilwin decides to broach the subject with the priestess again. The priestess, named Lathendria, gets up and when asked, insists that the noises have been going on long enough for the ghouls and ghast to have caused the damage that the party saw in the graveyard. On that note, Kilwin offers to stay and help repair the damage, and Reides says he’ll help. Marcyra, on the other hand, says she doesn’t want to cause trouble for the temple (also, she doesn’t want to wait up for Kilwin to do some yard work if they’re all skipping town) and Lathendria says that while the help would be appreciated, it doesn’t have to be right away, especially since people seeking shelter in temples usually have bigger problems to deal with. Kilwin makes a mental note to come back later, and the party starts discussing how to deal with the Broken Crown. Since it takes a week to travel from Atemcester to Port Valor, the party has at most a week to decide, possibly less when teleportation circles are considered. Kilwin has a bad idea and asks Marcyra what she knows about the city guard since he’s not from Port Valor. Port Valor’s city guard is moderate for the city’s size, but is distributed unevenly throughout the city, with few guards (who tend to be more corrupt) in the slums, and more guards focused on the upper-class areas of the city and the Count’s Palace. The Count, who leads the city, is named Corvus. Marcyra, who has never had a good encounter with the city guard, talks Kilwin out of it by pointing out that a lot of the guard is corrupt and even if they weren’t, they would almost definitely throw her, Erak, and Slumberjack in jail because of racism. Erak does a little dance to underline her point but he does it so good that Kilwin and Reides are just totally distracted from Marcyra’s very good points for a second. In the end, Kilwin agrees not to get the city guard involved.

Erak isn’t interested in running away from the Broken Crown forever (an idea that seems to disturb Reides). He’s all for taking the fight to them. Reides wonders if we could talk to them, and Erak smacks him on the head. Marcyra asks Kilwin what he wants to do, hoping that he’ll be on board with running away. While Kilwin admits he’d rather none of this was happening at all, he says that if the Broken Crown will follow them wherever they go, then there’s places that he can’t have them following him. He’s still not a fan of murder, but he’s on board with fighting the lieutenants given the circumstances. Erak wants to kill the divination wizards to stop them from tracking the party, while Reides would rather focus on the actual criminals in case the wizards are just normal people doing a job. Marcyra thinks we need to go after everyone to actually be safe. Reides pulls out the barkeep’s journal to review the information. Erak compares the Broken Crown to a wolf pack- If enough of the leaders are killed, the pack will become disorderly and other predators will kill the survivors. This fits in with what Reides has read about history and warfare. Reides slaps Erak on the back and Erak pretends to fall over and takes a nap. Kilwin casts Spare the Dying because he’s Convinced, but it doesn’t do anything because Erak is fine, which makes him a little nervous. Reides asks Marcyra to pick the least terrifying lieutenant to slap, but she has some trouble picking one who isn’t as scary because they all are. While Marcyra thinks that Nivex is the lieutenant most likely to handle something like the investigation, he tends to be a little unreliable, so the Boss might not ask him for something that he’s taking personally like this. Marcyra asks Erak if he knows about any rival gangs they might ask for help, but he’s still snoozing. Reides splashes some water on him to wake him up, but Erak doesn’t know a thing.

Nivex tends to hang out in the alleys in the slums, but he’s the one Marcyra is the most afraid of. The Siren is the lieutenant that Marcyra deals with the most, since she’s in charge of the regular ruffians. She’s very buff and has a big axe. Kargath the Butcher is a half-orc who is also an actual, literal butcher. Apparently, he’s a pretty chill guy from what Marcyra knows. Kilwin briefly suggests going after the Boss directly, but since no one knows who he is, it’s not really a viable plan. Slumberjack thinks all this violence will be therapeutic. Marcyra thinks that Nivex is the one most likely to have contact with the mages, since he’s very into chaos, but before she gets too deep into this, she wants to tell Victor what’s happening. While the party thinks he might help (and Marcyra agrees), she doesn’t want him to get in trouble, so she’s going to tell him what’s happening and let him make his own decision. The group makes their way across town to visit Victor (Kilwin and Slumberjack make dumb amounts of noise on the way, but no one seems to notice).

Marcyra knocks on Victor’s door because she wants to be polite this time. He answers and asks if the rest of the party is cool since apparently the last group of strangers that Marcyra brought to his house went badly, but Marcyra manages to convince him. Marcyra tells Victor what really happened at the Twisted Nail and is very much freaking out while Victor starts packing, assuming that he and Marcyra need to leave town. Marcyra explains that the others want to stay and actually fight the Broken Crown and kill everyone. Kilwin objects that HE doesn’t want to kill EVERYONE, and Marcyra concedes that he only wants to kill a few of them but that’s even dumber. Victor stops packing and decides that he wants to stick with Marcyra. They’ve been through worse together! Marcyra is gonna be okay! Victor does a cool dagger flip! Reides shows the journal to Victor, but Victor tosses the journal under his bed since he has much better information. Reides retrieves the journal anyway because he wants it.

Victor gives us a more detailed rundown of the lieutenants. The Siren is closest to the Boss, so she might be the one trusted with the investigation. She’s extremely protective and tends to get violent if people try asking her directly for the Boss’s identity. She tends to spend her time near the docks. Nivex the Poisoner is mostly likely to be found near the intersection of Maple Street and Elm and has a dagger we need to watch out for. Kargath the Butcher is confirmed the chillest lieutenant, although he’s apparently mellowed out over the years and something may have happened to prompt that. Still, we’re probably not ready to take him on yet. His shop is just down the road from where Victor lives.

Session 5

 * Google Document (4-12-19)

Victor prepares to leave his house to do what he can to delay the arrival of the divination wizards, but before he leaves, he mentions that he met someone who might help us. He leaves to find this mysterious person. Erak says he kind of smells and Reides gives him a sniff. Marcyra wonders aloud that if this new guy hates the Broken Crown, does he hate her? The party tries to reassure her that he can’t personally dislike her since he hasn’t met her, but she points out that the Boss hasn’t met any of them and he seems to really hate them.

Victor returns with a human man armed with a crossbow. He introduces himself as Jorah and says that he’s heard we might need his help. The party readily accepts any offer of help they can get at this point since they kind of did some murder. Kilwin points out that only some of them committed murder, but also concedes that it’s kind of a moot point now. Erak asks Jorah what he does, which turns out to be “finding people and usually shooting them.” He says that he’s good with his crossbow, but not always as good as he needs to be. Erak tosses a copper coin in the air to test those crossbow skills. Jorah manages to unholster his crossbow and nail the coin to the wall. Everyone is wildly impressed. He collects his crossbow bolt and Erak takes the coin to keep it. Victor heads out for real.

Kilwin wants to meet Kargath since there’s a pretty good excuse to visit him at his base and if Kargath is the least terrible lieutenant to talk to, Kilwin wants to get a feel for how bad he should expect the others to be. Reides wants to go too, but he knows he’ll stand out since he’s a triton, so he stays at Victor’s house and starts summoning his familiar. Marcyra doesn’t think this is a good idea, but she doesn’t want to let Kilwin go by himself, so she tags along. They also take Jorah along, just in case this goes badly. Kilwin asks Erak what kind of meat they should buy from Kargath, and Erak recommends horse meat. Erak tries to poke Reides’s gills while he’s concentrating on his spell, but Marcyra stops him before she leaves.

Kargath’s Butcher Shop is a short walk away from Victor’s house. The store is very shabby. One of the r’s on the sign is backwards and the inside is pretty grody, with flies buzzing around. Kargath himself is a huge half-orc man- about 7 feet tall, with the sides of his head shaved, wearing a blood-stained apron and chopping meat with an enormous butcher’s knife. Kilwin also notices that there’s stairs leading up to another floor and hears giggling from upstairs. Kargath asks Kilwin what he wants and Kilwin asks for horse meat. Kargath doesn’t carry horse meat, but presents Kilwin with an ambiguous meat chunk for 3 silver. Kilwin buys it. He tries to get a read on Kargath and gets the vibe that he’s gruff but honest and he’s just been doing his job. He thanks Kargath for the meat and Kargath tells him to come back soon. As the group is leaving the store, a young girl who appears to be a half-orc runs downstairs and gives Kargath a hug. As soon as they’re away from the store, Kilwin says that he can’t kill Kargath and Marcyra gets so mad because when she doesn’t want to do murder, everyone else wants to, but when she does do murder, everyone else starts having moral conflicts about it! Jorah is extremely confused because we didn’t really brief him on anything and he doesn’t know that Kargath is a Broken Crown lieutenant. Back at Victor’s house, the group who went to Kargath’s tells everyone else what happened and what we’re disagreeing about now. Kilwin doesn’t want to kill Kargath because 1.) he seems nice and 2.) he has a kid who he seems to have a really good relationship with. Marcyra can’t believe the standards for not wanting to do murder (on a person who has otherwise done bad things) are this low because who hasn’t killed a dad before. Kilwin thinks he hasn’t killed any dads, but then he starts to wonder if the goblin he killed in the mine has kids. Marcyra, resident goblin expert, says he probably did because goblins fuck constantly. Reides, the other resident goblin expert who is still intensely focused on summoning his familiar, nods vigorously to confirm that goblins fuck. Kilwin feels awful. Reides also points out that there are two other people to go after, but not very effectively since he’s still concentrating on his spell. Erak unfortunately continues needing to be the voice of reason and suggests making Kargath an offer that if he’ll stay out of this, we won’t have any other reason to fight him. Marcyra asks what if the other two lieutenants also have kids, and Erak says we can make all of them the same offer and fight anyone who doesn’t take us up on it. Around this time, Reides finishes his spell and summons his familiar, Pepega the owl. Everyone loves Pepega because she’s small and adorable and she gets several pets from the party. Erak asks Kilwin about the meat, so Kilwin shows it to him and admits he’s not sure what kind of meat it is. Erak licks the raw meat and discovers that it’s heavily salted and comprised of several different kinds of meat. He thinks it’s awesome. He also manages not to get sick off of it. Reides gives the meat a little sniff. Reides thinks that Kargath sounds like a good dad, and he doesn’t want to take that away from Kargath’s kid. Erak agrees that he cares less about Kargath and more about what killing Kargath would do to the girl. Marcyra thinks that this is reading too much into a single hug, but she’s being obtuse on purpose. Slumberjack just wants to get this over with and suggests threatening his daughter to keep Kargath out of the fight, possibly trying to track her habits so we can threaten him with specifics. We kind of decide to not do that, but the whole party heads over to Kargath’s to talk to him.

Kargath welcomes Kilwin and his companions back to the store and Erak immediately asks for more of the meat. He buys 3 more meat chunks from Kargath and they bond over their love of good meat. Slumberjack is also very excited about getting more meat. Kargath is not a fool and asks what we actually want. Kilwin dithers for a bit, but eventually just says that they have some information for him and really they’re just here to talk. Kargath visibly relaxes when he hears that. After that prelude, Kilwin lets Marcyra take over the talking. She tells him that we want his help with what happened at the Twisted Nail, since we’re responsible for that. Kargath admits that he really just wants out of this business since he had his daughter. He thinks that taking out the other two lieutenants would be enough to disrupt the organization and keep us safe, and he's fine with us doing that. He mentions that the Boss wouldn’t shut up about the Twisted Nail and also offers us the Boss’s name as the only help he can really give us. The Boss is a half-elf named Tyrian Vordt, a half-elf with ties to the Count, poised to become an advisor. He has designs to take out the Count and become the regent. Tyrian was appointed to his advisor position ten days ago and is probably just biding his time before he strikes. Eventually, he’ll probably send Nivex to stab the Count. We thank Kargath for his help and make a mutual agreement not to backstab each other. He jokingly kicks us out of his store. We also ask and learn that his daughter’s name is Zenine. As we’re leaving, Erak casually tosses a javelin to Kargath. Kargath says he has his own weapons and doesn’t need it, but Erak says it’s for Zenine. Kargath gives the javelin back and tells Erak that Zenine’s already has an axe bigger than the javelin. We thank Kargath for his help and tell him to stay safe and that we’ll come back to visit after this blows over. As we’re leaving, Slumberjack says “Wow, I can’t believe you wanted to kill him, Erak!” because they are a jokester.

We decide to take on the Siren next since she’s closest to the Boss, and according to Marcyra, she’s mad dumb so we might be able to trick her somehow. After meeting Kargath, Marcyra is now pumped up to kill some bad parents! Does the Siren have kids? Probably not, but we don’t find out this session! We head to the docks and Reides wargs into Pepega to scout. He finds a tall, buff human woman ordering some ruffians to move some boxes that sound like they have metal inside. Erak pokes Reides’s gills while he’s warging and while Reides doesn’t feel it at first, he puts two and two together when he comes back. He fills the party in on what’s going on and jokingly(?) suggests that someone try to seduce the Siren. We run through Reides (gay), Marcyra (can’t because that’s her boss), and Kilwin (a priest who has never actually flirted with anyone in his life) (also gay) before Slumberjack steps up with the cover story that they’re a lonely sailor looking for love. Slumberjack takes off their cape, revealing that they are extremely muscular, and, (after a little debate) while facing away from the party, takes off their mask. Reides follows them over through Pepega and gets to be the first party member to see Slumberjack’s actual face. While the rest of the party is waiting, Erak challenges Jorah to a dance-off, but Jorah doesn’t take up the challenge.

Slumberjack comes in heavy with a lot of fantastic pickup lines. The Siren doesn’t seem swayed by their charms, but offers them a job moving crates, which they accept. (“Work, you, either one is fine.”) As it turns out, the Siren is taken (in her mind at least) by a fancy man with pointy ears. Slumberjack tries to scope out the warehouse for theft opportunities, but it doesn’t really pan out. The Siren spots Pepega flying around and Slumberjack pretends to not know what owls are. The Siren calls them on it and asks why they’ve gotten so quiet. They counter that they’re many things but they’re not a cheater, so they’re not pursuing the Siren anymore. A distance away, Reides returns to his own body and tells everyone else that Slumberjack has a job now and the ruffians seem to be guarding the warehouse. Jorah suggests burning it down. Back at the warehouse, Slumberjack drops a crate on purpose to see what’s inside and finds a ton of swords. They get yelled at and clean up the swords. They learn that the Siren’s man is married to his job but apparently the Siren thinks that’s really sexy. Slumberjack finally introduces themself to the Siren as Gerard Whey, which also happens to be the name of a famous bard. Slumberjack says that they just happen to share the name and that they’re a dairy farming sailor for real. The Siren buys it because she really is dumb. Slumberjack asks why she’s called the Siren and the Siren says that it’s because her war song is the last thing you’ll ever hear. Slumberjack asks if she sings and finds out that she doesn’t, she just kills people. Her axe also has a lot of notches on it. Slumberjack and the Siren briefly bond over the fact that they both sleep a lot to keep their muscles in good condition, but then Slumberjack decides to just quit their job because it sucks and they think they’ve gotten what they can from the Siren. As they walk away to get to the rest of the party (forgoing their pay for the partial day’s work and also putting their mask back on), the Siren runs after them and grapples them to the ground. Hearing the commotion, the rest of the party gets ready to assist. The party’s spellcasters attack from a distance, and while Kilwin and Reides are well-positioned, the Siren sees Marcyra and accuses her of being a traitor. Erak cuts down two of the ruffians and Jorah shoots another one through the eye, but not before one of them manages to bring down Slumberjack. Kilwin is close enough at that point to manage to revive them quickly. Because the Siren thinks Slumberjack is taken care of, she changes her focus to Erak. Kilwin finally gets his first melee hit in after 5 sessions, he did a good hit on the Siren’s arm and gets her attention. Erak does a cool flip but almost trips on one of the guys he killed. He gives the killing blow to Slumberjack, who drops the cool one-liner of “The Siren is silent” on us before cutting her down. We divide the gold that she had on her among ourselves. Reides and Jorah snoop in the warehouse. They find a lot of weapons, like the Broken Crown is preparing for something. Reides shows everyone the swords, while Jorah takes a longsword and some crossbow bolts. Marcyra collects the Siren’s Broken Crown coin, bringing her collection to 7. The proximity of gold to boxes also reminds Kilwin that we still haven’t divided the loot that Balgrus gave us at the mines. He gets out the box and we split the gold evenly among the 5 party members who were there for the goblin mine adventure. Marcyra gives the sleep scroll that she took to Reides because he can make better use of it and calls dibs on the onyx. Reides takes the turquoise and the rest of the party splits the electrum pieces (including Jorah even though he says he doesn’t need it and he’s being paid in promises right now because Kilwin feels weird leaving him out completely and also it makes the math nicer).

A fancy man with pointed ears appears, backed up by six ruffian dudes. We’re pretty sure this is Tyrian Vordt, folks! He says that he wants to talk. He’s not necessarily happy that we killed the Siren but he’s willing to recognize that we have skills and that he’s in need of a new lieutenant. He’s offering us a job! He doesn’t recognize Marcyra so he doesn’t know he already employs her. While the rest of the party is hesitant to say anything at all and is mostly thinking of way to run away, Marcyra points out that she’s already familiar with the Broken Crown’s organization as a point in favor of her getting a promotion (with the plan to get closer to Tyrian and double-cross him). Realizing that Marcyra has betrayed his organization, Tyrian rescinds his offer and leaves, ordering his minions to take care of us.

Session 6

 * Google Document (4-19-19)

After rescinding his offer of employment, Tyrian leaves the docks with one of his backup ruffians. Examining them, the party realizes that these ruffians are tougher than the average Broken Crown members they’ve been dealing with. Marcyra casts Fog Cloud around the ruffians to obscure their vision, but gets shot by someone with a crossbow anyway: She’s eager to get out of here. Jorah manages to shoot back through the fog and volunteers to hold them off while the rest of the party escapes. Kilwin casts Sanctuary on him and tells him to stay safe before he starts to run. The ruffians begin to emerge from the fog cloud and swarm Jorah, eventually grappling him to the ground. As Marcyra leaves, she flashes the ruffians the finger circle, which is the Alethustrian equivalent of the middle finger. Reides calls Pepega back to him and cradles her as he runs. As he’s running, Kilwin launches a few Sacred Flames, both at the men attacked Jorah and at the one ruffian who broke off from the group to pursue the party. Since Marcyra recognizes some of the men in Tyrian’s group, she figures her hut has been compromised. The man chases the party into the main town. Erak tosses one of his javelins at the man, and also is the first to come to a maze of barrels, which he tries to leap through but fails. Reides manages to solve the maze and loses the ruffian. Slumberjack succeeds where Erak failed and also makes their escape. Since Kilwin has been trying to shake their pursuer with Sacred Flame, he’s taking up the rear and manages to shake off a grapple, but also gets stabbed a little later. Marcyra and Kilwin both manage to solve the barrel maze, but the ruffian fails to. As he starts to clear the maze, Marcyra sets a barrel on fire, but it’s slow to start. Kilwin attempts to douse the fire by breaking open another barrel with Sacred Flame (just in case it’s going to spread), but the barrel he aims for ends up being filled with flour. The ruffian dashes ahead of Kilwin to get closer to Marcyra. Instead of running more, Kilwin attacks him one last time with Sacred Flame and knocks him down and into a side alley (but leaving him alive), giving him and Marcyra plenty of time to escape.

The party heads back to the Silverbass Inn, where they first met, since it’s in a populated area where the Broken Crown is unlikely to try something. The innkeeper, Fortus, welcomes us back and Erak orders a round of drinks for everyone. He tries to order five tankards of milk for Kilwin, but Kilwin insists that he can’t drink that much, although he would gratefully accept one. Slumberjack wants tea instead of ale, so Erak attempts to convince Fortus that he actually does serve tea, but it doesn’t work and Fortus confiscates his ale. Slumberjack orders water and some split pea soup instead. Everyone gets a room at the Silverbass (Kilwin and Reides split the cost of a double room) for the night and gets some much-needed sleep. Reides stays up a few extra hours again to study the magic scroll he got from Marcyra and work on his spellbook.

In the morning, a man approaches Kilwin outside his room and says he heard about him from Balgrus. A lumberjack by trade, he’s lost his grandfather’s axe in a part of the forest heavily populated by giant spiders. Kilwin apologizes that he and his companions are busy with another matter at the moment, but says he’ll tell the others and see if they can’t do something about it soon. The man is disappointed but thanks him for the thought and then asks who Kilwin’s companions are. Kilwin introduces him to Reides and says that his other companions are also staying at the Silverbass. He’s not sure where they are, but says the man might have seen them around the inn. The man says he hasn’t seen anyone except “a disgusting drow creature,” which makes the Kill Bill sirens go off in Kilwin and Reides’s heads even if they manage to remain relatively cordial. Kilwin informs the man that Erak is one of his companions and, when questioned on how he can keep company with a drow, says Erak is one of the nicest people he’s ever met and almost finds the idea that he’s on the surface to sow destruction almost laughable. Erak arrives on the scene and the man flees in terror. Kilwin asks Erak if he’s okay and Erak dismisses the whole thing as something he’s used to.

Over breakfast, Erak plays with Pepega and gives her some food (that Pepega can’t eat but appreciates nonetheless) as the party discusses their options. Since Tyrian Vordt has close ties to the count, the party can’t really try to eliminate him or even approach him without getting into serious trouble with the city guard. Without evidence that he’s tied to the Broken Crown, the party doesn’t really have a way to confront him or approach the count. Someone floats the idea of someone creating a distraction outside while someone goes into the palace to get evidence. Slumberjack suggests using a disguise kit to make themself look like a more socially accepted type of elf to infiltrate and gather evidence, especially since Tyrian doesn’t know what they look like under their mask, although they don’t like the idea. Kilwin asks Marcyra why she’s been collecting the Broken Crown coins, and she admits that she doesn’t really have a reason at this point, but she was originally trying to cover up that the dead men were part of the Broken Crown. Kilwin says he was wondering if there was a use for the coins, which creates the idea that they could either be planted on Tyrian or used to pass off a party member as a Broken Crown member and send them in. While Erak could use the grease he keeps for cooking to dirty Kilwin up and make him fit in with the human Broken Crown grunts, and Slumberjack or Erak might be able to pass for criminals (Erak protests this suggestion), the party passes on the plan because it’s too dangerous for whoever goes in. Kilwin suggests just going after Nivex like they originally planned, since Kargath said Tyrian was likely to send him to kill the count and that would keep him safe longer. Reides also suggests that if Nivex is responsible for contacting the divination wizards, we might be able to intercept them and convince them to work for us instead of the Broken Crown. If we can do that, we might be able to expose Tyrian Vordt and pay the wizards with part of our reward from the count. While no one expects that plan to work all the way through, the party decides it’s worth a try and that finding Nivex should be their next step regardless. Marcyra is worried about Victor, but can’t find a safe way to contact him and tries to put her worries aside for now.

At the intersection of Maple Street and Elm Street, most of the buildings are run-down houses. Marcyra tells everyone that Nivex is a lanky, scarred human man who wields a strange dagger. Kilwin volunteers to go door-to-door offering blessings from Alethus to try to see if he can find Nivex. At first, Kilwin knocks on a gate in a fence, where he hears men’s voices and a rough-looking man (one of Nivex’s henchmen, but Kilwin doesn’t know that) answers. When Kilwin offers his blessing, the man says they aren’t interested and closes the gate on him. Reides asks if Kilwin will give him a blessing, so he does. The person answering the next door Kilwin knocks on asks if a blessing is food and Kilwin decides to give them some copper instead. Reides sends Pepega to scan the alleyways and spots Nivex and his crew, one of whomst’s first reaction when seeing an owl is to try to shoot it. Fortunately, he misses Pepega. Reides directs the party toward where Nivex is, but a fence is blocking the way. Erak hits through the fence but doesn’t quite knock it down, so one of Nivex’s men goes to see what’s going on. Erak says he’ll finish breaking the fence and Kilwin can take care of the guy after, but Kilwin misunderstands and hits the guy with Sacred Flame through the hole in the fence. Kilwin also tries to finish taking out the fence and hits it ineffectually, but the fence just kind of mercy-collapses for him. We put the heat on Nivex early on, but he sneaks away in the middle of the fight to take a potion break. We almost get severely owned: Kilwin’s shield gets a really nasty scratch from Nivex’s dagger, Erak spends most of the fight bloodied, and Slumberjack experiences their second almost-death, but everyone manages to stay alive. Erak impales Nivex with a javelin through the gut and he asks us to wait before killing him. Marcyra does not wait and incinerates him (and any evidence tying him to Tyrian that might have been on his person). His dagger, however, survives the fire undamaged. One of the remaining henchmen backs up and opens a cellar, threatening to shoot someone. Victor and Jorah’s voices come from the cellar, and they’re both obviously injured. Kilwin holsters his mace in response, but Erak rushes the man with the crossbow and kills him, but not before he takes a shot at Jorah, almost killing him. Marcyra runs past the last henchman to check on Victor, and Slumberjack basically just destroys him, and keeps going after he’s dead. Kilwin rushes over to heal Jorah back to consciousness.

Reides examines what’s left of Nivex, getting some gold and his dagger, which Reides can tell is magic somehow. Marcyra immediately sets to work on freeing Victor, and Jorah finishes healing himself. As it turns out, Victor’s attempts to delay the divination wizards became obvious after the Siren died and it was clear someone was coming after the Broken Crown from within. Marcyra asks Kilwin if he can do anything for Victor. He’s out of spell slots, but he non-magically examines Victor and finds out he has a broken arm and some cracked ribs, but should recover as long as he’s treated soon and rests. Marcyra and Jorah go into the cellar to get Jorah and Victor’s belongings back and investigate. Marcyra spots a tripwire trap and warns Jorah, who sees that it’s connected to a hammer hanging near the ceiling. They find a pile of dessicated corpses, a locked chest with Jorah and Victor’s things, and a letter in fancy script in a language that Marcyra can’t read. Jorah and Marcyra both fail to pick the lock on the chest, so they figure they can ask Erak to try to break it. Jorah gets Erak, but forgets to warn him about the trap, so Erak gets lightly tapped in the head by a hammer. He pretends that it was a fatal wound and falls to the ground screaming, fooling Jorah and bringing Kilwin down into the cellar. Kilwin examines Erak and discovers that he’s okay, and he admits that he was just messing with Jorah. Erak manages to open the chest without damaging the contents with a crowbar he was carrying, and Kilwin translates the letter that Marcyra found, which was in Elvish. The letter is signed only with the insignia of the Broken Crown, but details a request to develop a poison that acts over 30 days while causing few to no obvious symptoms as it acts- probably how Tyrian is planning to kill the count. Kilwin looks around and finds a rack of daggers and lots of poisons. He also determines that the bodies have been dead for a long time. Marcyra takes one of the daggers because it’s way cooler than the one they’ve been using. Reides, Slumberjack, and Victor also come down to the cellar. Reides examines the bodies and notices that they’re riddled with stab wounds, which have obvious corrosion on them, similar to the mark that Nivex left on Kilwin’s shield. Victor confirms Reides’s suspicion that these people were used as test subjects for Nivex’s poisons while they were alive. Kilwin is extremely creeped out by this and admits that he’s okay with Nivex being dead. Marcyra says “You’re welcome.” With a new lead on Tyrian’s plot against the count, the party prepares to leave the cellar and plan their next course of action.

Session 7

 * Google Document (4-25-19)

The party discusses their next move while still in Nivex’s cellar. Kilwin suggests staging a fake attack on Kargath to take suspicion off him, but the group is also need of supplies. Before making any major decisions, the group (minus Marcyra, who takes Victor back to his house) heads back to the Silverbass Inn for a short rest. Fortus offers to fix what “ales” Erak (who is visibly beaten up), while the rest of party relaxes and tends to their wounds. During their rest, Slumberjack leaves the inn without anyone noticing where they went, we just don’t know. Jorah stays behind at the inn for a few more drinks while the rest of the party splits up to run some errands.

Erak needs a totem for his new barbarian powers and is also interested in getting some armor since he’s been taking a beating lately. His only thought on where he could go for armor is Dwarven Delights, the smithy where he pissed off the blacksmith (and also pissed on the storefront after). He’s extremely nervous because the blacksmith kind of scares him a bit, so Reides offers to go with him. On the way, Reides jokes that Erak probably did something to make the blacksmith mad, but Erak insists he just asked about magic items and the guy bit his head off. At the store, Reides enters first and tells the smith that his friend wants some armor. Erak is so nervous that he ends up being overly polite, visibly disturbing Reides and making the blacksmith ask him if he’s all right in the head. He tells Erak that someone like him failed to save his son and that he hasn’t made weapons in a long time. Reides notices that the blacksmith is currently making a fish hook, and notes that he wasn’t supposed to touch those but sometimes he did anyway and they really hurt. He also wasn’t supposed to talk to the fishermen but he did and most of them were nice, but there were a few who were creepy. Erak begs the blacksmith for help, but he kicks Erak out of his shop instead. He also tells Reides to go after Erak, since Erak clearly isn’t right in the head. Taking one last look around, Reides notices that most of the wares at Dwarven Delights are fishing equipment and boat parts.

Erak and Reides go to the docks to look for a totem for Erak and maybe an alternate armorer. On the way, they talk about how they didn’t like that interaction at Dwarven Delights at all and Reides tells Erak that his grovelling performance was freaky- Erak doesn’t know what he’s talking about. At the docks, Erak finds a shop selling carved bone necklaces and he gets so excited that he accidentally calls the half-elf woman running the shop “sir.” Erak asks her if she has anything wolf-themed and she says that she doesn’t but can make something in about an hour. Erak enthusiastically agrees to wait. Reides examines the necklaces she has out, which are carved from fish bones, and is drawn to one with a charm shaped like a shark tooth because it reminds him of home. He buys it. Erak also asks the woman if there’s anyone who deals in armor, since the local blacksmith apparently doesn’t. She directs him to a man named Javier.

Javier is a dwarf, but unlike the previous dwarven blacksmith, he’s very cool and eccentric and has a cool beard that he can do party tricks with. He can immediately tell that Erak needs armor. Erak asks if he has scale mail, which he doesn’t but Javier pulls out a chain shirt (?? I think, my audio absolutely cut out when Cody said what he had) that Erak decides to buy. Erak haggles the price down, but ends up paying the amount that Javier originally requested after Javier agrees to add in a titty window for him.

Kilwin visits Finnan’s general store again to buy a healer’s kit for Victor and then heads to Victor’s house. Marcyra has been sitting with Victor, keeping him company and guarding him. With the supplies in the healer’s kit, Kilwin manages to set Victor’s arm in a splint, but can’t do much for his cracked ribs. He does give Victor some advice on his resting posture to avoid further hurting his ribs, though. Marcyra and Victor banter and bicker about how neither of them have jobs now and why she brought Victor back to his house. Victor insists that because he got hurt so badly while doing Marcyra a favor, she should pay his medical bill. Marcyra is pretty sure Kilwin won’t take money, and Kilwin predictably refuses payment. Marcyra owes Victor zero gold now. She playfully slaps his hand without noticing it’s his broken one. Kilwin checks it and there’s no serious damage, but Marcyra feels really awful about it. Despite her best efforts to hide it, Kilwin notices and tries to reassure her that Victor’s going to recover just fine. She insists that she’s not that upset and he doesn’t have to try to comfort her, so Kilwin tries to reassure her that it’s okay to be upset about this!

Back at the docks, Erak gets his totem necklace and (with some prompting from Pepega) tips the woman for her work. On their way back to the inn, Erak and Reides spot some ruffians, but manage to hide from them. They get the feeling that moving around the city might not be so safe anymore.

Back at Victor’s house, Marcyra and Kilwin wonder if they should move Victor somewhere safer. Victor says he’ll be fine since the Broken Crown is definitely more concerned with the people who are actively dismantling them than the halfling with one functional arm and a bunch of cracked ribs, but Marcyra has her doubts. Kilwin has concerns about further injuring Victor by moving him and suggests that he stay put. He tries to suggest that because Victor’s house is such an obvious place to look for him, no one will bother trying it, but he doesn’t inspire much confidence. Victor jokes that if he dies, Marcyra can find a new halfling to help her out, but Marcyra says that she doesn’t want that and that the general store halfling sucks. Victor gets offended because Finnan is his cousin and brought him to Port Valor and is also an extremely competent general store owner. Kilwin thinks Victor’s cousin is quite nice actually. Marcyra gives Victor her old dagger (because she doesn’t totally trust the one she took from Nivex), even though he now has two daggers and one hand that can use a dagger. Marcyra also uses Thaumaturgy to create the illusion of a really difficult lock on Victor’s door to try to deter unwanted guests. On their way back to the inn, Marcyra and Kilwin see a LOT of ruffians, but manage to avoid them somehow.

Back at the inn, the party decides their next course of action. We decide to trust Kargath to figure out that the situation has changed on his own and to react accordingly. We tally up the evidence we have against Tyrian Vordt: Nivex’s dagger, the letter, and the location of Nivex’s cellar (along with the poisons and test subject corpses inside). Kilwin wants some more concrete evidence of Tyrian’s wrongdoing before we act directly, since we will absolutely look like the bad guys if go after him first. Erak thinks the party can just kill Tyrian and then ditch town, although Kilwin points out that this is likely to follow them out of Port Valor. It’s still an option to kill Tyrian first and then find the evidence if that’s how the timeline works out though. Marcyra and Reides both happen to know that, as an advisor to the count, Tyrian works in the advisor’s office, which is a separate building from the count’s manor. Marcyra also knows that Tyrian’s official work day is likely ending around this time. Kilwin suggests visiting and maybe trying to find a sample of Tyrian’s handwriting to match to the letter they found in Nivex’s cellar (which he held onto). Marcyra jokes that Kilwin has some evil in him yet, which makes him feel very bad even though it was really just a joke. With a plan of action, the party heads out.

On the way to the advisor’s office, the party runs into a group of three ruffians. They recognize the party on sight and say “It’s them!” Through the power of their new matching necklaces, Reides and Erak say “It’s us!” in unison and do a sick high-five. One of the ruffians rushes Reides, but he dodges it easily. Erak’s rages now come with a cool wolf howl. The ruffians spend most of their time targeting Erak’s new titty window, but one also takes a crossbow shot at Reides that wounds him badly. Jorah arrives on the scene (fashionably late) to help out. Kilwin tries to attack the ruffian who shot Reides to get his attention, but he misses his swing and it doesn’t work at all. The last ruffian standing tries to run away, but the party pursues him and Kilwin lands the killing blow, bringing his lifetime body count up to two. Predictably, he feels really bad about it.

Session 8

 * Google Document (5-3-2019)

Before walking the rest of the way to the advisor’s office, Reides chugs a potion to heal most of his wounds from the fight. He also asks Kilwin to kiss his remaining injuries better, which embarrasses Kilwin but he figures Reides is just joking around and laughs it off. The party loots the ruffians (and Kilwin apologizes to the corpse of the man he just killed) and finds a few copper between them. The ruffian that Reides searches just has one.

The party arrives at the advisor’s office. It’s a u-shaped building with an entrance on the north side, and the party approaches it from the south. A familiar figure approaches the party, covered in blood, but fortunately they’re good familiar because it’s Slumberjack. Marcyra notes that they must have been taking care of important business and Kilwin, concerned, asks if they’re okay and if that blood is theirs. Slumberjack assures him that none of it is, and he’s not sure if that’s the answer he wanted or not, but he just nods and accepts it. About half of the party hears someone talking nearby, and Reides wargs into Pepega, who flies over to check it out. He sees Tyrian Vordt telling two guards to be extra vigilant, especially around unfamiliar people, since there’s been trouble lately. He notices Pepega flying nearby and remarks on the owl, but doesn’t pay him much mind and leaves.

The party finds two general ways into the building- There’s windows at the street level, which could be broken into, but it would be guesswork as to whether we break into the correct room. There’s also the front doors, which are guarded. The party deliberates, Erak wants to use his rope even if he doesn’t have to, but there may be too many passersby to use one of the windows without drawing attention. Pepega flies around the building and sees three empty offices that seem fancier than the rest, narrowing the number of offices that could be Tyrian’s. Pepega tries to open one of the windows but can’t because she’s not very strong. Marcyra gets the idea to pretend that she and Reides are delivering books to Tyrian’s office, using a regular book from Marcyra’s inventory and Reides’s small on-hand collection. The guards buy it even though Tyrian didn’t mention it because he likes big nerd books, it tracks, and one of them directs Marcyra and Reides to Tyrian’s office and leaves them alone. They share a nice high-five as soon as the door closes, but Marcyra goes a little high and Reides goes a little low, so they’ve both had better.

In Tyrian’s office, Reides opens the window and immediately gets bombarded by darts, taking heavy damage. Pepega flies to Erak and tries to get the party’s attention. Everyone follows Pepega to the office window. Erak tries to do some sick backflips on the way and trips a few times. In the meantime, Marcyra checks the room for traps and doesn’t find any more, and also checks for magic items, discovering that the papers on Tyrian’s desk are imbued with enchantment magic. Reides greets the rest of the party covered in blood and Kilwin immediately heals him. Marcyra examines the papers and can’t read them. She shows them to Kilwin in case they’re in Elvish, but they just look like gibberish to him. Reides takes a look in case it’s Primordial, and as he takes the paper, the letters begin to rearrange themselves, although the text remains incomprehensible. Reides takes out Nivex’s dagger and the letter finishes rearranging itself into regular Elvish. Kilwin reads the paper and discovers it’s about weapon shipments and how the weapons should be distributed between the lieutenants so they can be given to the Broken Crown ruffians. The paper isn’t signed with Tyrian’s name, but it has the Broken Crown insignia as a signature. Reides writes this information down in the ledger he took from the Twisted Nail barkeep. Marcyra checks the drawers of Tyrian’s desk and finds fantasy office supplies in the unlocked drawers and letters sent to Tyrian in the locked drawers, but nothing particularly interesting. She relocks the drawers when she’s done. Tyrian keeps his desk clean and his wastebasket has been emptied recently. Jorah checks the desk for secret compartments but doesn’t find anything. The office also contains a cabinet filled with books and a table with a tea set on it. Reides examines the books and notices one with binding that looks strange. He pulls it out and finds a glowing inkwell, likely enchanted, in there. While there’s nothing concrete in the office, the fact that the inkwell and the enchanted papers are there seems like decent evidence to tell the count about.

Marcyra hears footsteps coming from the hallway and shooes out everyone who’s not supposed to be in there. Reides doesn’t want to touch the window again, but it gets closed again anyway to cover our tracks. The guard asks Marcyra and Reides what’s taking so long and Marcyra makes something up about how Tyrian wanted the book left in a specific spot on the bookshelf but the shelf is full so it took some time to make sense of what he meant. The guard is suspicious, but Tyrian being fussy and wanting his books in a specific arrangement tracks for him, so he just tells Marcyra to leave the book on the desk and get out. She does that, since he won’t leave her alone so she can take her book with her. Outside of the offices, Marcyra opens the window again and gets hit with the darts, but at least she gets her book back. She also uses Prestidigitation to clean up her and Reides’s blood. After closing the window, she realizes she forgot about the darts, so, even though he’d really rather not, Kilwin opens the window again. He manages to avoid the darts and cleans them up. Jorah heals Marcyra from her dart wounds, and his healing magic is noticeably less holy and more nature-y than Kilwin’s. As we start discussing our next move, Kilwin notes that Marcyra seems (extra) tense and asks what’s bothering her. She admits she’s worried about Victor and the party decides to go to his house and do their planning there.

At Victor’s house, there’s a light on and the illusory lock that Marcyra placed is gone. Marcyra knocks and the door creaks open. She walks in quietly and sees Victor lying on the bed, motionless. Marcyra slowly approaches and Victor doesn’t react so she nervously checks his pulse, and Victor sits up and screams. Marcyra bonks him on the head. Victor’s plan was to play dead so that any intruders would think he’d already been taken care of, but Marcyra is so mad about it. Everyone comes into Victor’s house and Marcyra locks the door behind them. Victor asks what everyone has for him, and Marcyra offers him information (“his favorite”), but he was hoping for something more substantial like medicine or gold. Reides offers him the copper he looted from the ruffian earlier, and Victor bites it, revealing that it was fake. The party fills Victor in, and Kilwin asks if anyone knows how to get an audience with the count. Victor tells them that the guards who patrol upper-class neighborhoods tend to be on the level, so that’s not a concern at least, but neither he nor Marcyra know anything about how to meet with the count. Erak suggests that maybe it’s actually not complicated and they just go and ask whoever’s there and go from there. We figure we need to act fast since Tyrian will probably realize someone has broken into his office, and even if he has no reason to suspect that we know as much as we do, we need to move fast before he gets rid of the evidence. Since Victor’s house is pretty small, most of the party goes to the Silverbass Inn for the night, but Marcyra and Kilwin stay behind to stand guard for Victor. Erak and Reides room together for the night and Reides continues work on copying his spellwork, while Kilwin spends some time praying and meditating to refocus his magic (much to Victor and Marcyra’s confusion- it appears to be Kilwin just doing Kilwin things).

In the morning, Kilwin uses one of restored spell slots to heal Victor’s ribs, even if he doesn’t manage to fix Victor’s arm. Kilwin refuses to charge Marcyra money for healing Victor again, and Victor whispers to him to try to make her think that she owes him 10 platinum. Instead, Kilwin loudly exclaims that that’s mean. Marcyra promises Victor that she’ll bring one of her less nice friends next time so he can prank her. Victor asks Marcyra and Kilwin for 10 gold each for housing them for the night, which Marcyra pays because she feels bad for what’s happened to him, and Kilwin pays because he’s dumb. Marcyra and Kilwin make their way over to the Silverbass Inn uneventfully. Reides asks Fortus for directions to the count’s palace and learns that it’s in the southeastern part of town, not quite in the corner but close. Reides also reveals that he’s forgotten Fortus’s name and formally introduces himself to him, leaving a little bit of triton slime on him after shaking his hand.

As the party makes their way through the upper-class section of Port Valor, they draw a lot of attention from nobles who think they’re out of place, but no one really tries to stop them. Erak winks at lots of passersby. Jorah notices that there’s two guards following us and lets the rest of the party know we have a tail (Kilwin looks behind him because he’s not SUPPOSED to have a tail, it’s very funny). The guards try to duck out of sight when the party looks at them. Kilwin questions if this matters, since we’re not planning on doing any crimes, and Erak points out that we look extremely suspicious right now. The party decides to keep going but carefully.

The count’s palace is surrounded by a big fence. The party sees servants tending the garden out front and a stone archway, manned by two guards who ask the party to state their business. Kilwin tries to explain that they’ve discovered something in their travels that’s important and potentially life-saving for the count to hear. The guards don’t really pay him any mind and they turn him away. Erak threatens the guards that the count might die if they don’t let the party meet the count and then it’ll be their fault. The guards take this as a direct threat to the count and double down on not letting us through. Reides asks the guards for their names so he can write it in his journal so they’ll know who to blame if the count dies, and they tell him to write that he didn’t meet the count today. Hearing the commotion, an older man with slicked-back hair and fancy clothes and a circlet comes to ask what’s going on. Marcyra tries to take over the talking because the rest of us are sucking. Erak tells the count his guards suck because they won’t let us through even though we have something important to tell him. The count coughs a few times, which catches Reides’s attention. He can tell the count is sick, but can’t identify the cause of his illness. Jorah casts Detect Poison, confirming that the count is suffering the effects of darkbite venom. Kilwin offers to heal the count of his illness if he’ll hear us out. The count says that he trusts his guards with his life and they can hear anything we tell him. The party agrees that they can come with us, but we’d rather have this discussion inside, especially since people were following us. Jorah tells the count that his illness isn’t natural, and the count asks what he means. Kilwin blurts out that he’s been poisoned, catching the count off-guard. Erak reaches into his bag for one of his meat chunks to threaten to toss at the guards, and Kilwin tries to grapple him to stop him but fails. Erak decides to not waste the meat though.

The count doesn’t trust us enough to let us inside despite the party’s protests, but Kilwin starts pushing for someone to explain here since it might be this or nothing. Jorah can’t see anyone around and there IS a chance that the guards tailing us were just regular fancy guards. Eventually, Kilwin just blurts everything out about how we ran into a criminal organization called the Broken Crown and we tried fighting them to help clean up the city (we’re helping!) and we found out that someone close to the count is the leader of that organization and is trying to poison him. The count asks who and Kilwin tells him it’s his new advisor, who happens to have been appointed just before the count got sick about a week ago, Tyrian Vordt. The count is shocked, but says he had some suspicions about Tyrian. He still wants proof though, so Kilwin hands him the letter from Nivex’s cellar. Kilwin explains that it’s in Elvish, but that it’s about the creation of the poison that’s been affecting the count so that Tyrian can become regent (although there’s nothing about the regency in the letter, we found that out somewhere else). As the count takes the letter, the text begins to scramble so Kilwin asks Reides to get Nivex’s dagger, warning the count that Reides is about take out a dagger. Reides exclaims that he’s about to take out a dagger before he actually does so. The count asks Reides to hand the dagger to one of his guards first, which he does. As the count takes the dagger from his guard, the letter returns to its legible state. The count can, in fact, read Elvish and recognizes the handwriting as Tyrian’s. He crumples up the letter and tosses it away in frustration and gives Nivex’s dagger back to Reides. He asks us to bring Tyrian to justice, preferably alive. He also realizes that Kilwin is a cleric of Alethus and asks how Kilwin was planning to cure him. Kilwin asks where the count thinks the poison was coming from to try to stop him from getting re-poisoned, and the count says that Tyrian has been bringing the tea to meetings recently. Kilwin casts Protection from Poison on the count. The count coughs up the darkbite venom that was in his system and is cured. The count tells the party that Tyrian is a very accomplished swordsman. Reides asks if the guards around town can help us, and the count says that he’ll put the word out about what’s happening, but can’t actually help much. Slumberjack asks what’s in it for them and they get threatened with jail time, but we learn that the reward is 2000 gold to be split between us. Erak is begging Marcyra not to incinerate Tyrian. Marcyra asks the count to let us know if he gets sick again and offers some suggestions, but he says he’ll handle it on his own. We all have a big argument on how the count should best stay safe while we take care of Tyrian, and the count just leaves while we’re still going. Erak doesn’t like anything about this and wants to fight someone. For a while, we just kind of walk around while Erak complains about the count and Marcyra supports him. Kilwin very conspicuously checks for the guards following them from earlier, but doesn’t see anyone.

In our quest to find Tyrian Vordt so we can fight him, we head to the advisor’s office. We notice that there’s no more Broken Crown ruffians roaming the streets. At the offices, we find Tyrian in the middle of the courtyard, waiting for us. He says he’s been expecting us, and Jorah asks if he’ll come quietly. Tyrian says he’s spent years building his empire so of course not, so everyone just kind of says “Okay.” Three Broken Crown ruffians come in to back Tyrian up. Marcyra shoots at Tyrian and misses, but tries to play it off as a warning shot. Erak uses Fairy Fire to surround Tyrian and his ruffians, which scares them for a moment until they realize the fire doesn’t hurt. Marcyra burns off some of Tyrian’s clothes, revealing that he’s wearing splint armor underneath. Slumberjack gets downed, revived by Kilwin, and immediately downed again before their next turn. As Tyrian takes more damage from Marcyra’s Fire Bolt, Jorah’s crossbow bolts, and Reides’s Ice Knife, he starts to laugh at the pain and starts talking about how he cannot die. Erak is downed, ending Fairy Fire, and Slumberjack reveals some big scary wings made of necrotic energy, which scares Jorah and no one else for some reason. They tell Tyrian that he’s now met the reaper. Kilwin breaks one of the ruffian’s shoulder and visibly winces. Meanwhile, Jorah is backing away from Slumberjack out of fear, so Slumberjack dispels their wings. Kilwin aims a Sacred Flame at Tyrian, and it does more damage than expected. Kilwin hits him with a second bolt of holy light and black smoke comes out of Tyrian, which tips Kilwin off that he might not be a regular half-elf! Meanwhile Tyrian is screaming at Erak to die, and that almost happens despite Kilwin’s best efforts. Kilwin notices that one of the ruffians near him is on his last legs, but is looking at Tyrian with fear instead of the people who are trying to kill him. Jorah goes down, but Slumberjack heals him because we are really desperate for heals in this fight. In the end, Reides fires an Ice Knife at Tyrian, which Tyrian dodges easily. Tyrian starts to taunt Reides about his aim as the Ice Knife explodes and riddles Tyrian’s body with ice shards, mirroring the darts that hit Reides in Tyrian’s office, killing him. As he dies, he says “This is my kingdom” to which Reides says “Fuck your kingdom.”

After the last ruffian is killed, Jorah goes to heal Erak so he doesn’t die. Slumberjack wants to cut off Tyrian’s head but Kilwin won’t let them so they stealthily take one of his fingers as a trophy. Marcyra loots the body and finds a gold ring, a pouch with 200 gold, and the fact that Tyrian is missing a finger. She asks what happened, and Slumberjack says that maybe Marcyra did it and is trying to cover it up now. Kilwin chalks it up to something that must have happened during the fight and none of this really sits right with Marcyra, but she can’t call Slumberjack on it either. Marcyra takes the ring (which is set with a stone that looks like blood) and gives the gold to Kilwin, who divides it as evenly as he can across the party. Pepega lands on Kilwin’s shoulder, so he asks if she wants the remaining gold, so Kilwin gives a gold to Pepega. Slumberjack also tries to give their share to Kilwin since he kept them alive, but he refuses to take all of it and makes them keep at least half of their share. Marcyra casts Detect Magic and doesn’t find anything on the ring, but does discover that Tyrian’s cloak is enchanted. Erak and Slumberjack take a breather while Reides takes a look around the courtyard. Kilwin examines Tyrian’s body and discovers that the body composition is off somehow. When he touches Tyrian, the holy light that’s normally in Kilwin’s body singes Tyrian and Kilwin hears a sinister voice in his mind saying “He will find you.” Kilwin immediately backs away from the body and tells everyone he heard a scary voice and didn’t like it. Marcyra offhandedly mentions that she knows what that’s like, much to Kilwin’s alarm. Erak wants to check it out, so he kicks Tyrian’s body and nothing happens, even as he keeps kicking. As Tyrian’s body starts to bruise, Kilwin asks Erak to stop before he gets in trouble with someone, and Erak is a little dismissive but stops anyway. Slumberjack plans to tie up Tyrian’s body before moving him, just in case, since Kilwin has alerted everyone that something’s up with this body. Jorah takes Tyrian’s cloak with him.

He’s glad it’s finally over, but Kilwin’s gonna have a lot of questions next time.

Session 9

 * Google Document (5-10-19)

Kilwin casts Detect Evil and Good to try to determine if Tyrian is undead or a fiend (or anything else covered by the spell), but the only entity he detects is Pepega. Kilwin hopes this is a good thing! Slumberjack picks up Tyrian’s body to bring it to the count, but Erak wants to raid Tyrian’s office first. The doors to the building are locked though. Marcyra tries to pick the lock but fails, so Erak tries to kick the door down. The hinges creak, but the door doesn’t budge. Slumberjack tries to use Tyrian’s corpse to knock the door down, but it does more damage to Tyrian than the door. (Kilwin winces a little but ultimately, this is fine). Reides checks Tyrian’s body for a key, but he doesn’t have it, so Reides slaps him a little bit. The party moves around the building to the window, and Jorah learns about a bard named Moderately-Sized Jonathan from Erak. Erak tries to open the window (with Kilwin standing by with Spare the Dying ready), but it’s been relocked since the previous night. Erak smashes the window with his crowbar, and manages to dodge both the glass shards and the darts from the trap. He goes in and discovers that the office has been completely cleaned out, except for a single piece of paper in the middle of the floor. Everyone except Slumberjack and Jorah (who stand guard while pretending that Tyrian is totally an alive dude) Erak hands the paper to Kilwin and Reides and, as Reides takes it, the letters unscramble to say “Fuck you.”

With that venture mostly unsuccessful, the party heads back to the count’s palace. We tell the guards that we brought Tyrian’s body back, since we weren’t able to keep him alive. The guards solemnly lead us into the manor. The interior is sparsely decorated but very high-end- the count is LOADED. After about 10 minutes of waiting, Count Corvus comes in and thanks us for doing what needed to be done. He’s very solemn and grave and tells us that the guards were busy dealing with riots staged by members of the Broken Crown, so we were the only ones who could be trusted to deal with Tyrian. Marcyra is extremely happy with herself. The count hands Kilwin (who happens to be closest to him) a sack of gold, which is heavier than expected. Kilwin thanks him, and then tells the count about what happened when Tyrian was hit with his Sacred Flame and what happened when he touched Tyrian’s corpse after the fight. He touches Tyrian’s body again, but nothing happens this time. Kilwin chalks this up as a good thing, but advises the count to be careful anyway. The count says that Tyrian spent many long nights in the library and may have discovered any number of dark secrets. He then tells the party that the pouch contains 3000 gold (which Kilwin splits among the party evenly) instead of the 2000 he promised, since the party went beyond the call of duty. He also asks two favors of us, but says we don’t have to do either: He’s concerned about the rumors of orc raiders led by Thorak and would like someone to look into them, and he also has a letter that needs to be delivered to Emperor Eurystheos the Fourteenth (Reides wants to call her Eury but she might not like that) in Falas, the largest city in the region. The letter has information about what happened with the Broken Crown. Kilwin and Reides want to deliver the letter (especially since we still don’t know much about Thorak and we might learn more on our way to Falas), so the party agrees to take that job. The count gives the party a map. Going by the main roads, we’ll arrive in Quadroad and Vila's Watch before reaching Falas. Kilwin takes the letter for safekeeping. Erak wants to set out immediately, but Kilwin and Reides insist that he rest before we go. The party decides to chill out for a day and leave tomorrow. The count also tells the party that the Broken Crown has calmed down, but there’s probably still remnants that could come back.

With talk about making preparations and finishing up business before leaving Port Valor, Kilwin remembers that he offered to help Lathendria clean up the graveyard, but he also wants to check in on Kargath. Everyone seems to like the idea, so we head over to Kargath’s shop. He’s there and he’s alive! Kargath observes that we’re alive too! Kilwin tells him that his boss is dead, which is? good news? Kargath admits it’s not Great to be out of a second job, but he’s all good with it. Erak orders 3 meat chunks, which makes Kargath question his appetite, so Erak buys 6 instead and pays Kargath extra. Zenine runs downstairs and Kargath hugs her and we’re all genuinely touched. Kargath tells us to get out of his store and we tell him goodbye and leave.

Kilwin splits off from the party to do yardwork, telling everyone that they can come along if they want, but that they don’t really have to. Everyone except Marcyra ends up tagging along and the gang helps Lathendria clean up the graveyard, with Erak doing most of the heavy lifting (with occasional assistance from Slumberjack). Reides puts flowers on the graves to make sure they look pretty.

Marcyra doesn’t tag along because she doesn’t care for churches and instead goes back to her house to see if anything happened to it. She finds her front door open and a lot of her belongings in the street. She goes inside and hears some sweeping noises before discovering Victor trying to fix up her house. She asks if any of her plants survived, and Victor shows her the only one that did- a small hydrangea that Victor gave her, which Marcyra named Petunia. Marcyra starts cleaning too. She tells Victor that we killed Tyrian Vordt, and also that Tyrian Vordt was the boss, and that he was really nasty and laughed a lot, which was weird. She also mentions that we’re working for the count now and going to deliver a letter for him. Victor tells Marcyra that she can always come back to Port Valor and she’ll always have a friend there. She invites Victor along, but he says he’s not cut out for it, especially with his broken arm. He’s thinking about settling down, working with Finnan, and trying to go above board. Marcyra gives Victor 300 gold as his final paycheck from her, and he tries to refuse half of it, but Marcyra threatens to just leave it on the table, so he takes it. He’s worried about her going broke and starving on her adventures though! Victor teases Marcyra about becoming a goody two-shoes since she’s hanging out with people who fix church graveyards. Marcyra asks Victor for a very important favor (he refuses to marry her, even for tax purposes), and she entrusts Petunia to his care. She also promises to send him letters all the time and makes him agree to not move anywhere without letting her know. Victor suggests stocking up on supplies and looking into getting some horses to make the trip go quicker. Marcyra and Victor hug, and Marcyra asks Victor to find out if her mom (Erena) is around. He says he’ll look into it, but doesn’t promise anything. He also says he’ll see her off tomorrow.

Outside her house, Marcyra spots a dog that she’s seen around the slums sometimes. She goes up to it and starts giving it the best pets of its life, and is in the middle of this when the rest of the party comes back. She pretends she wasn’t just being really embarrassing about this dog, but Kilwin extremely does not care, because he walks over to also pet the dog. The dog gets more pets! The party starts discussing preparations. The first town on the way to Falas is Quadroad, which is about 12 days away from Port Valor. Marcyra suggests getting horses since she thinks people who like walking are crazy, and Reides and Kilwin visibly deflate because they both enjoy walking. For some reason, we are weirdly anti-horse, since Reides doesn’t know how to ride and since Marcyra grew up in Port Valor, Erak insists she can’t either and she’d need time to adjust to riding. Instead, we head over to Finnan’s store to stock up on rations. Everyone buys at least a few to have 15 days’ worth, but Reides buys a ton and then Slumberjack buys enough to last them a month in case they get hungry.

After leaving the marketplace, Reides bolts off to the marketplace to look for scrolls, and most of the party follows him. He finds a man with long flowing robes selling magic scrolls, and Reides asks if he has an Identify scroll. The man has one left and offers it for 100 gold. Reides agrees to buy it, so the man ups the price to 150 gold. This continues until Reides can’t afford the scroll anymore. The man asks if Reides has a magic item to trade, but he doesn’t want to part with anything. Reides is very distressed and Kilwin is flabbergasted because this doesn’t seem Right, so Marcyra steps in and offers 100 gold for the scroll and no more. The man says that the scroll was very finely crafted by mages in Atemcester and the price is actually 4000 gold. At this point, Kilwin realizes that they are being pranked and yells out that the man is joking. Reides is upset and Kilwin tells the man it wasn’t a funny joke, but Reides buys the scroll for 100 gold anyway. The man tells them to come back next time, but we probably won’t. Erak catches up and Reides tells him that he almost got swindled. Erak is ready to defend Reides’s honor if Reides points the guy out (and the guy noticed and runs off), but ultimately, it’s fine. Marcyra looks for Bai’s Baubles, but discovers that her shop has moved on to another location. Reides glances at his new scroll and suspects that a pearl is needed for the spell. He remembers seeing a jewelry store in the upper-class district, so he runs off to try to get there before it closes. He catches the elven shopkeeper just as he’s closing up, but he makes puppy dog eyes and convinces him to sell one last item for the day. Since it’s warmer in the south, we briefly discuss getting a sunhat for Erak, but he doesn’t want one unless he’s dying without it.

Marcyra takes us to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called the Ogre’s Pot to celebrate. It’s extremely rowdy in there! At some point, Jorah left us, so we get a table for five. Reides and Marcyra order fish, Erak orders a meat platter, Kilwin orders fish also (after panicking for a moment because there’s no menu), and Slumberjack orders split pea soup, but settles for whole pea soup. Reides compliments the waiter’s accent and asks if he’s spent time at sea, and he did until a shark ate his leg. Erak goes to the bar to get a round of ale and a round of mead for everyone, and the barkeep is the same man as the waiter, but he’s wearing a different hat. Erak asks if he does everything, but he says that the waiter and the cook are his brothers, which Erak believes. Erak passes this on to the party, and Reides and Kilwin believe it too. Erak immediately gets shitfaced and says a lot of nice things about the restaurant and tells the restaurant men that he loves them. The waiter goes to the back of the restaurant and yells to “Mel” and “Pel” that they’re doing great, and then pretends to yell thanks back to himself. Reides asks and the waiter tells us his name is Bel. The food is very good actually! Reides and Erak order another round of drinks, and Reides passes his drunkenness threshold. It’s a big party! Unfortunately, Kilwin doesn’t feel Alethus in this tavern tonight, but he can feel a little bit of Bacchanal. Reides doesn’t want to go and Kilwin and Marcyra need to promise him we can come back someday before he’ll leave. Marcyra tries to pinky swear, but Reides has webbed hands, so it’s hard. Reides tells Bel good night and also says he wants to marry him, but Bel doesn’t hear the last part. On the way to the Silverbass Inn, Kilwin walks close to Reides to make sure someone can catch him if he falls over.

At the Silverbass Inn, Fortus greets us as the town heroes. Erak asks for ale, but Fortus decides he’s had enough. Erak goes upstairs to find a room without paying first, but before Kilwin can offer to pay for him, Fortus tells them that rooms are on the house tonight. Kilwin asks if Reides wants a roommate tonight since he’s really drunk, and Marcyra points out that Reides is a big boy. Reides agrees with her, but says he’ll never say no to Kilwin, so they take a double room. Reides crashes before he can copy his new spell into his spellbook. The night passes uneventfully. In the morning, a very hungover Reides doesn’t want to talk about how he’s doing and starts pouring over his new scroll and his spellbook. Kilwin runs downstairs to buy him some water to help with the hangover.

Trivia

 * This is as of yet the longest arc in the campaign.
 * The original intention before the Broken Crown entered the picture was for the party to go after Thorak and his orcs.