Arc 3

Arc 3 is the fourth story arc in the Malice Campaign.

## Synopsis

With the Grainsboro Catacombs finally accessible after months of digging out the earthquake rubble, Olivia leads an expedition into the area with Belaros's permission to find Sloknek.

The catacombs are surrounded by an antimagical field, so the crew must use adamantine weapons and the magic whitelist orbs present in the mechanical golems to make it through the dungeon. Mauder's condition prevents him from going inside with his normal body, so he leaves Jeremy to guard it and possesses the bodies of golems to progress in the dungeon.

After Thanatos steals some ancient items from the catacombs, Belaros gets angry at him and Olivia for violating the sanctity of the catacombs on her watch. The party also discovers a tunnel dug into the catacombs from the Grainsboro Mercenaries Guild; Aveeno warns Leslie about this using Chance (1) as a messenger.

Chance (1) also warns Jeremy about the discovery, and while he is gone he possesses Mauder's body and escapes. Fueled by an infinite source of lucky rolls, he steals Julian (1)'s Pendant of Destruction and hides it inside the Grainsboro Catacombs so its location cannot be detected. This was done by Chance (1) because he is aware Julian (1) plans to go to the d2 shrine and take the d2; Chance (1) plans to trade the Pendant of Destruction for the d2 later. Unfortunately, Julian (1) having the Pendant of Reflection was a "fated" event, and Chance (1)'s interference in it causes him to be removed from the plane by Order (4). Julian (1) is able to find and store Mauder's body in a Portable Hole. During the night, there is an arcane faltering event.

The next day, Aveeno and Mauder return to the surface to try and clean up the situation, with the rest of the party also joining later. They witness the Grainsboro Mercenaries Guild going into lockdown and burning itself down to remove all evidence, and procure Mauder's body from Julian (1). During this time, Jeremy and Leslie had been communicating, and Jeremy had left to try and print posters of Mauder to look for him. The party also has to brief Graham - a Malicious Order Internal Affairs officer - on the situation without revealing too much info.

Eventually, they manage to reach the bottom of the catacombs, where they find the original resting place of the artifacts. They see Sloknek has been petrified, and fight and defeat Lillian and Richard, who accidentally let slip they were not trying to take the Lead Treads at all. Only Ezekiel is able to claim the Lead Treads, but he decides against it because he wants to force the party, who he sees as dangerous and incompetent, to remove the Kinesis Gauntlets. After this point, the Kinesis Gauntlets must be removed in order to retain the balance between earth and air. Jeremy decides to give up his gauntlet, but Ham, who had been accidentally overusing his gauntlet to this point, refuses, instead fleeing the party and keeping his gauntlet with him but unclaimed.

Olivia reacts to Ham's disappearance by evacuating the entire city into the Grainsboro Catacombs, expecting Ham to overuse the artifact and destroy the world. This doesn't happen, and Olivia is able to successfully sell that the evacuation was because of a Grainsboro University experiment gone wrong; Belaros suspects Olivia has done this before and realizes she must have been behind the Grainsboro Fire, further damaging their fragile relationship.

### Interlude

Olivia works tirelessly to find solutions to sequestering, destroying, or otherwise dealing with the artifacts, but is unable to come up with anything. She anticipates her eventual capture by the authorities and has Aveeno hide the artifacts without knowing where they are; Aveeno hides them with Order (4).

During the interlude, Aveeno has very good luck due to his sorcerous bloodline. Aveeno, Thanatos, and Menira go to the d2 shrine in Death Valley with Julian (1). Julian (1) had found the Pendant of Destruction with Aveeno and Olivia's help, and after retrieving the d2, the order of events Chance (1) had worked to undo was restored. With this, Chance (1) was allowed to return to the plane of existence, causing Aveeno to start repaying bad luck. He is able to manipulate how it is repaid using the d4 and d12, causing him to become old.