Arc 7: Wizards off the Coast

Official illustration for Arc 7 Episode 1

Arc 7 is the One Year Anniversary Arc, with the party from Arc 1 re-uniting as a split-level party to celebrate the first birthday of Arthur Ashcreek, son of Aura and Amara, and hatched from the dragon egg the party helped rescue from the Thymore Mausoleum. It takes place two years after Arc 1, and the Player Characters have gone on their own journeys since then, so the arc is split-level ranging from level 4 to level 15.

As the first Unprepared Casters sequel arc, it is directly connected to Arc 1. Some of the characters have also encountered various characters (or items) from other arcs, including Sasha Rose, Aldrum, and Justicar's second fainting couch. Additionally, they are influenced by the events of other arcs, not just Arc 1: The end of Arc 3 happens about two weeks prior to this arc, and Hope is still distressed by the fact that her mother was arrested.

Like Arc 3, it follows the Reunion trope, but this time, the first adventure these characters have had is already known.

For this arc, the characters have received patreon submitted items again.

## Arc 7 Characters and Players

Characters and Players in order of introduction in Episode 0:

**DM** (Haley - She/Her\*)

**Sir Mister Person** (He/Him) (played by Gus - He/Him), level 8, a Human Samurai Fighter / Oath of the Crown Paladin who had to learn that he wasn't actually a knight, and used the last two years to right this wrong and finally become one. He also got married to a lovely woman named Eliza, but despite living his dream, is jealous of all adventurers, including his old friends.

**SK-73** (He/Him) (played by John - He/Him), level 4, a Warforged Divination Wizard and librarian. After Arc 1, he has done no additional adventuring, just his work in the library, and has thus gained no additional levels, but a few more spell slots and some upcasting options for spells that usually don't have them. He has essentially been named godfather of little Arthur Ashcreek, who adores the scary old robot.

**Hope Lovejoy** (She/Her) (played by Jenny - She/Her), level 10, a High Elf Life Cleric, was away from home for the first time in her 200 years of living in Arc 1 and has not returned home since. She has tried, but keeps finding people who need help, and has thus sidequested a lot, gaining more and more levels. Two weeks prior to the arc, a friend of her was involved in throwing her mother Gem into jail, which has distressed her deeply, but at that point, she had already agreed to coming to the birthday party and couldn't say no anymore.

**Thavius** (He/Him) (played by Kyle - He/Him), level 12, a Shadar-Kai Soul Knife Rogue, originally just wanted to bring a righteous soul found in the Shadowfell back to where it belonged. He is still on that mission, because he hasn't managed to fulfill it yet, but in the meantime he fell in love with the Material Realm as well as his new wife Evelynn, and has also done many quests for people asking him for help, most noteably accidentally dismanteling an assassins guild in Tyle.

**Deb** (They/Them) (played by Pax - He/Him), level 15, a Tiefling Valor Bard, wanted to establish bakeries in towns that did not already have them, and got into adventuring through that. A few months prior to Arc 7, they fell into the Feywild, and emerged with three levels more and very few memories of what happened, what they did, or how much time has passed for them. Distressed by the experience, they moved back with their mothers in Summerview and have not yet told anyone about it.

The icebreaker question for this arc builds up on the one from Arc 1. In Arc 1, the players were asked what DnD class they as a person would like to be in real life, and in this arc, they now continue building their characters by deciding for a race.

* Haley (College of Lore Bard): Lightfoot Halfling, because they are adorable, basically Hobbits, and have the Lucky feature.
* Gus (Circle of the Moon Druid): An Elf, probably High Elf, because he is all about extending his lifespan.
* Pax (College of Eloquence Bard): Gnome, just based on their vibes, and because they are neat, underrated as a race, and can also extend their lifespan pretty far. He would prefer to be a Forest Gnome because they can talk to little creatures and inherently do some magic.
* Jenny (Clockwork Soul Sorcerer): Lightfoot Halfling, because they are friends and Jenny is also short.
* John (Gunslinger): Harengon, because he would like to be Bugs Bunny and would like to play out the old Loney Tunes scene in which Bugs tries to play the piano, keeps getting interrupted by someone, and just turns around and shoots them.
* Kyle (Chronurgy Wizard): Owlin, because he wants to be an old, wise, and silent time owl.

\*Haley has since changed her pronouns to She/Any.

## Arc 7 Plot (Full Arc Spoilers)

### Episode 1

The sun rises over Summerview, and while the town gets ready for the big day, Deb goes to sleep after nearly overworking themselves. In the early afternoon, Hope and Thavius come into town and offer Amara their help with the last minute preparations for the party. In the library, Aura scolds SK-73 for nearly forgetting the day, and brings him out to celebrate with the others and watch the punch bowl. Deb wakes up again, and joins the party together with their moms, who help them carry all the cakes they prepared. Finally, Sir Mister Person arrives on his horse Storius. He gets two punches from Skeventy, rudely tells Thavius that he stacked the presents wrong, and then awkwardly tries to catch up with Amara while seeing Arthur for the first time.

Hope spots Sir Mister and runs up to him, trying to hide the fact that she is having a breakdown by hugging him. At first, he tries to calm her down, but then sends her off, and maneuvers her towards the punch bowl, where they meet Skeventy and Thavius again. Thavius comforts Hope, and Sir Mister tries his best to leave the party, even as Thavius gives him a present. As Aura approaches with Deb, Sir Mister ultimately leaves, and Aura sends Skeventy after him to keep him at the party. Skeventy turns invisible and scares Storius, and as Sir Mister tries to calm him down, Thavius goes after him to confront him about his behaviour. Before he has time to explain himself, they hear something weird coming from the Azure Sea, and as they get out of the stables to look, a Dragon Turtle with riders emerges from the waves.

### Episode 2

The Dragon Turtle, who is ridden by some Sahuagin, comes closer, not being stopped by the bursting docks at all. The Sahuagin jump off its back and chase after the children that were playing in the water, or together with their parents on the beach. Amara takes a claw attack to the face and a Sahuagin steals Arthur, while Aura turns into a dragon to fight the Dragon Turtle, and the party runs towards the beach to help.

Hope casts Waterwalk on the party, and Thavius telepathically connects SK-73, Hope, Aura and the Dragonturtle to himself to find out whether the Dragon Turtle is actively hostile, when it is, he and Sir Mister run towards it and the Sahuagin. Deb heals Amara, and she manages to get out of the water. Skeventy tries to carry her to her home on the Floating Disk, but she convinces him to instead give her the keys to the library, so that she can get the people to safety, and to go after Arthur and save him.

As Thavius tries to make one of the Sahuagin drop the child they try to abduct, he realises that the children have air bubbles around their head: the Sahuagin do not want to harm the children, they "just" want to abduct them. Thavius and Sir Mister manage to get two of the children back. When SK-73 uses the telepathic link to tell Thavius that they have to find Arthur, Thavius runs further into the ocean.

When the Sahuagin left alive are all retreating, Deb manages to charm two of the last ones closer to the shore, and they tell them that they are supposed to bring the children to a wizard, and to get to them they have to go through a circle that cannot be missed. With this information, the party walks over the ocean together, leaving Aura in her fight with the already hurt Dragon Turtle, and shortly after, they see a shimmering magic circle 30 feet below the surface.

### Episode 3

Thavius is the first one to arrive at the shimmering circle, he swims down, touches it, and then vanishes. The rest of the party follows shortly behind. They reappear at the ceiling of a 15 foot tall room, falling, and Thavius tries to catch them, later with the help of Sir Mister and Hope. The room has a single locked door inside it, that Sir Mister and Thavius break by ramming into it, and right behind it is another door. Before they ram down that door, too, Sir Mister gets bitten by a venomous mushroom and refuses help from Hope. Deb tells Hope that Sir Mister acting weird is not her fault. Thavius realises that Aura is no longer within a mile of him, so he instead telepathically connects his whole party to him.

In the next room, there is a big mirror on the wall that does not reflect any of them, a door to the left, one to the right, and a little pool of water in the middle. Sir Mister looks down the pool, gets captivated by his own reflection, and only gets out of it again as Thavius punches him. The two of them go left, with SK-73 half-following, and Deb and Hope go to the right.

To the left, they encounter a room ooze, fight it until it collapses, and walk over it to the door on the other side. Hope and Deb in the meantime find themselves in a room full of cabinets and a red button in the centre. As Deb pushes the button, the room traps them inside and catches on fire. They find a key inside the burning cabinets, and get out again. As they get back into the room with the mirror, the mirror now shows them holding a mermaid figurehead.

In the room behind the ooze, Sir Mister, Thavius and SK-73 find the figurehead, cut it down, and bring it to Hope and Deb. The mirror ripples and reveals an opening to another room, in which there are two trap doors, leading far down, seemingly into different rooms. After a quick discussion, during which Hope and Thavius unmistakeably get that something happened between Deb and Sir Mister, they split into two groups: Hope goes to the left with Sir Mister and Skeventy, Thavius goes to the right with Deb. Before they do so, Thavius promises Hope that they will telepathically stay in contact, and should they be separated by more than a mile, he will go back to find her again.

### Episode 4

The party halves go down their respective ladders. Mister, Hope, and Skeventy reach the bottom of theirs, find a room, and a glass case with a goblin child floating inside it. Hope uses the spare key she has from the room that caught on fire to open the case and take out the still unresponsive, but breathing child, while the others investigate the notes and writings in the room. Skeventy gets the impression that there are big pieces of information missing, but there are concerningly detailed notes, drawings, and texts about dragons and SK Warforged. Hope finds out that there is Conjuration magic on the doorframes of the two doors in the room, and as Mister steps through one of them, he comes right out of the other.

In the meantime, Deb and Thavius reach the bottom of their ladder, and find a Firbolg child in a case. Thavius, who telepathically heard about the child Hope got out of the case, goes to Hope, gets the key, and frees the Firbolg child. He lays her down on a blanket in a corner, with a muffin from Deb, who found out that there was Transfiguration and Enchantment spellwork done here, and that there is a map with the pirate island of Blue Haven marked on it. Before continuing towards the door, Thavius makes sure that Deb is still enough of a teamplayer that the party can rely on them, even if they don't want to talk about their issues. Then, he finds out that the tiles in front of the door are pressure plates that make darts fall out of the ceiling, and just teleports towards the door. Deb finds out that they only let darts fall out if two plates are pressed at the same time, and jumps, hopscotch-style, to Thavius.

The other half of the party at the same time tries to stop the teleportation by preventing the door from closing. While Sir Mister holds the door open, Hope goes into the seemingly empty room behind it, and doesn't teleport. But she also cannot reach any end, and feels incredibly lonely and wrong in the place she's in, so she runs back out again. Finally, as the three of them, plus the Goblin child carried by Skeventy, get through the door together, they land in the next room, which is the same open space with a dining table and nautical paintings that Deb and Thavius also found behind their door.

Reunited, the party decides to leave the two children together, so that they won't get caught in any possible crossfire. Thavius talks to his soul coin, revealing that it is the soul of Lathe Nightrym, and he suggests that someone might try to become Pirate King in Blue Haven. After not finding any new door in the room, Deb just expectantly sits down at the dinner table, while Sir Mister impatiently starts lashing out, slashing at the paintings, and then screaming at Deb. The other three party members become invisible to give them some space, and after a quick argument and some clarifying talking, Sir Mister tells Deb that he forgives them.

The invisible people in the meantime have found a secret tunnel behind one of the paintings, and descend down a spiral staircase, at the bottom of which they find a room with a post. As Thavius walks up to it, he realises that it is a pike with a skull wearing a dented crown, and a voice echoes through the room saying "Have you brought me my robot?".

### Episode 5

As Sir Mister and Deb also hear the voice echoing up to them, they run down the stairs. Thavius, in the meantime, telepathically tells Skeventy to back up, drops his invisibility and tries to keep the source of the voice focused on him. As they refuse to just leave SK-73 there for the voice to have, they prepare for a fight, and a platform slowly comes down from the ceiling until it reaches 40 feet above ground. On the platform is an incredibly old looking elven woman with silver hair and a hand tracing patterns on a 4 ft. cube glass box, in which baby Arthur is trapped and seemingly unconscious, but shifting. She talks about how she thought she knew Aura only to then realise that she was wrong, that Aura settled down and had a baby without her knowing, and then directly calls Skeventy over.

Thavius opens the fight by teleporting towards her, and she breaks the glass cube. Arthur slowly descends to the ground while expanding into a Young Gold Dragon with blackened eyes. Deb casts Hold Monster on him to keep him from hurting them all, and the elven woman banishes Thavius to the Shadowfell, where he screams in frustration until he gets back mere seconds later as Spiritual Weapon Sugar attacks the woman and breaks her concentration on the spell, which was harder for her to hold because of an inconvenience Skeventy inflicted her with. She casts something that makes Mister's eyes turn black, too, and his mind becomes empty, but he is snapped out of it as Arthur's Firebreath damages him.

The elven woman Thundersteps next to Skeventy, with her hand laying on him, but as Deb casts Power Word Stun on her, Skeventy uses the opportunity to get away from her again. Thavius jump-teleports towards the railing of the stairs and attacks her with his soul while calling her a bitch, and finally, Hope casts Dawn and drops her to 0, which makes her fracture into pieces and then turn into mist. Her voice echoes through the room saying loudly "this is not it", desperate about all the time she lost and a crown in the ocean waiting for her, and the mist goes into Arthur, who drops to the ground, unresponsive but breathing steadily. After a moment, he opens his eyes again, which turn back to normal, and then transforms back into a human-looking baby that starts crying.

### **Episode 6**

SK-73, Sir Mister and Hope look after baby Arthur and heal and distract him. The mist that went into Arthur seems to be gone, and so they all go back up to look after the children they left behind, which are also fine, and now asleep. They also go through all the notes scattered around the place again, and take everything that seems like it might be important, so that they can show it to Aura later. Then, they leave the dungeon, and with the help of Hope casting Waterwalk again, they all get back to Summerview, where they are greeted by Aura, who in the meantime won over the Dragon Turtle, and the parents of the two children. Sir Mister tells Aura the rough outline about what happened, and she tells them that the elven woman might have been an old companion of hers named Vastya. They decide to rest for the night, and to meet up at the Rose and Thorn tavern the next day.

Sir Mister and Hope rest in the house of Aura and Amara, where Mister opens up more about his wife, and Hope then finally tells him about her mother, and her issues with the situation. He tells her that she is not her mother, but her own person, and admits the issues he had when hearing about all of her adventures while being stuck at a boring post himself. Deb goes to their moms, first, to tell them that they are safe, and then joins Thavius and Skeventy in the library, where they immediately started cleaning and organising. Thavius and Deb then talk about their experiences, and Deb tells him that they got lost in the Feywild, and don't know for how long. Thavius tells them that he knows that they were a good person there, too.

As Hope wakes up the next day, Aura is still up, trying to connect the dots about Vastya. She and Mister leave her to it, and meet their friends at the Rose and Thorn tavern. Hope tells them that Aura will need an adventuring party to stop Vastya, and while the others are quick to agree to become that party, Sir Mister is not so sure. He opens up and tells them that he would have needed to hear that invitation when they first separated, that he felt abandoned, and that by now, he has made a life for himself. He would like to join them, but is unsure whether he can, and will think about the offer. Thavius talks to Lathe again, telling him that he has to bring him home, and Lathe asks him to write a few letters before. Thavius then tells the others that he might need their help to bring the soulcoin to where it belongs.

Together, the party then leaves the Rose and Thorn to first go to Aura, who tells them more about Vastya, who, powerhungry as she is, might try to kill the pirate king. She tells them that they can think about whether they are willing to go on the adventure to stop her, and that she will organise them a boat when they are ready. The party thanks her, then they go on their journey back to Tyle, planning to first stop at Thavius's home and meet Evelynn, and then go to Sir Mister and meet Eliza.

## Trivia

* The arc was finished recording even before Episode 0 was published.