23: Old Wounds, New Beginnings

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## Summary

### Stuck Together

In the wake of battle with the Rat Queen, and with the circumstances surrounding Cat’s transformation finally revealed to the party, the air is thick with tension (and sewer stench). Sticking to her original plan, Lillet begins examining the Rat Queen’s corpse, now nothing more than a pulsing mass of Wrath. As she and Tai investigate it further, they uncover a curious, almost metallic shard—a fragment of the Godslayer weapon, once the First King of all Balaayt, corrupted by his thirst for power.

As the party gazes upon it, they feel a great, dizzying emptiness wash over them. Cat hears a familiar voice, neither male nor female, both hollow and seemingly endless, calling out to him with the promise of great power. But when Lillet puts the fragment into her pack, the feeling and the presence dissipates as quickly as it came.

She resolves to take the fragment back to Lhoam, where she claims to have encountered another in the cellars beneath the Academy. She goes on to tell the party that, since they opened the Arkspring in the Wilds, Lhoam has changed. According to Lillet, the ruins of ancient machines around the city seem to be functional again, and the Radio Tower is acting up.

### Have You Seen this Child?

Once Lillet and Tai are done investigating the Rat Queen’s corpse, the party brings their focus back to their original task: finding Teddy and Ginger. With the tunnel they arrived from since collapsed, the party has nowhere to go but up a ladder on the opposite end of the Rat Queen’s lair. It leads to another dark tunnel, and as the party forges on, they hear a faint whistle—three short chirps, the same signal Damhir tried in the ballroom when looking for Ginger.

Following the whistle deeper into the maze of sewer tunnels, the gang reaches a crossroads. Three new tunnels lie before them. Trusting their ears, the party chooses the rightmost tunnel, and rounds a corner into a chamber where none other than Teddy, Peeks, and the two desert travelers are waiting for them, along with an unfamiliar face. Ginger, unharmed, recounts to Damhir in a strange dialect of Elvish how he and Teddy and Peeks were dragged through the tunnels by wererats, but saved by the haggard mystery man hunched over in the shadows. Damhir chides him and fusses over his dirtied clothing, but seems relieved that he’s alright. Meanwhile, a still-drunk Peeks gives the party his version of the story, and Lillet grows ever more impatient to find a way back to the surface.

### It's Rats All the Way Down

After some bickering, the haggard man at the edge of the room speaks up. His voice creaky from disuse, he tells the party that he knows the way to the surface. When the party asks him who he is and why he knows the way, he reveals he has spent the last decade in the sewers, and a sizeable amount of it cursed with wererat lycanthropy. Though Lillet lifts his curse, he remains reluctant to break the surface, alluding to doing some things he isn’t proud of to survive in the sewers. As he leads them out of the chamber, his gaze lingers on Tira for a moment.

As the party makes their way to tunnels less traveled, the teens try to entertain themselves, with Bran showing off some village walnut-cracking tricks. But before long, they run into another set of foes—this time, led by a Rat *King*—and are forced to fight their way out.

### Fated Reunion

After the skirmish, and just a bit further on, the party reaches a grimy ladder leading up to a manhole. In the moonlight filtering through the grate, Tira barely recognizes a familiar face: her father, Tallis, whom she thought long dead. He is at once overjoyed to see her, and pained to know that so much of her life has been spent without him.

The party convinces Tallis to come back to the surface with them, and they all make for Peeks’s apartment to put his shower to good use again. Now back on the surface, the three groups part ways—Lillet and Tai head back for the School of Sorcery dorms, and Damhir and Ginger leave for the Castle. Lillet parts with a warning to the party that some in Lhoam think them foes; Damhir and Ginger go with their gratitude, and an instruction to meet them at the stables at dawn.

After some time in Peeks’s home, Tallis emerges from the bathroom clean-shaven and mostly free of sewer stench. He looks sickly, still, and too thin, but the fog of his curse has been lifted, and the party packs onto Peeks’s little balcony to give father and daughter some privacy for an emotional reunion.

The night hours roll on, and Tallis tells Tira in long-unused, stilted Elvish how he survived a decade in the sewers. When the first members of the Coalition were taken prisoner in the dungeons, they were tortured to give up names. But after a structural collapse in the dungeons, Tallis, a human woman named Ava, and a human man named Garris escaped into the sewers, but separated in the chaos. While Mujie and Cat surreptitiously eavesdrop from the balcony, Tallis tells Tira about Garris: an ambitious, driven man, but a valuable and loyal member of the coalition, and talented spellcaster.

Turning to lighter topics, and with the hint of a smile for the first time in a decade, Tallis spends the rest of their time together telling Tira of her mother, Feydra. He soon grows weary of their eventful night, but before they all turn in, Peeks suggests he and Tallis do some sightseeing in the Wilds.

## Quotes

> “So, haha, listen to this, I was uhhh, just takin’ a look in the cellars, 'cause. You know how at big parties, they never put out the good shit? The wine out there—I mean it wasn’t *bad*, but, come *on*. You know they’re hiding something better. So I thought I’d just take a quick look, y’know, see if I could find something a little higher shelf, and then. Lights out, I get picked up by a wererat and brought down here. Musta been cause they didn’t want witnesses, not ‘cause. I mean. I’m too tall to be a child, obviously.”
>
>

*—Peeks*

> “We’ll be taking our leave. But, thank you for helping me find Ginger. If you’re serious about traveling to the Empire… Find us at the stables tomorrow at dawn. Don’t be late. We can’t delay our journey. It won’t be an easy one, so, rest well.”
>
>

*—Damhir*

> “Listen, um. I’m feelin’ kinda homesick after all this, so. I was thinkin’ of taking the Northeast Road up to Samsara, seeing some old friends. The Wilds are real nice this time of year, you could, I don’t know, do a little traveling, get back on your feet?”
>
>

*—Peeks, to Tallis*