Log

*"The closer you get to the light, the darker your shadow becomes" - Carl Jung*

The Saga of Ethergaard has yet to be writ...the pages of history open before you, stain them with the ink and blood that comes with the cosmic struggle!

## Chapter One: Welcome to the Bazaar

Azrael awakens in his opulent house on the western flank of the Exalted Estates district. His parents and siblings, having toiled in the underdark and worked their way to establishing him here, have entrusted Azrael to gather intelligence on the surface city of Ethergaard and become part of the community. On a dim autumn day, Azrael seeks out a high elf geologist working at Myrla's gems named Kolvar. The two hit it off, and he learns of a conspiracy theory that the days will get shorter, that the sun is dying out. Kolvar distrusts the idea, stating that the alarmist halfling population is likely spreading it as a way to destabilize the high elf population that has been able to make it on the surface. Azrael gets the other side of the story in the Bazaar district, at the Yondalla caravan with Panzor and Uneni. Apparently, Ethergaard has initiated daylight savings time to no effect, and the halflings believe Yondallan high priest words that the Windswept Coast will pay for the bloody wars fought on its soil by an apocalyptic event known as "Nightfall". As Azrael loosens up and reveals his shadow elf face (picking up a disguise kit in exchange for the information), screams erupt from the nearby Whitebull General Goods, a clustered, mazelike business where a man named Sigmund is being pursued by two Etherknights and four Ethergaards. Azrael magically leaps through a window, and uses spells to distract the guards, allowing Sigmund to slip out of their grasp. Attempting to vault toward Azrael, Sigmund slips right through the wall, falling into an unseen space. Azrael creates warlock illusions to distract the guards and runs to the wall himself, finding himself plunging through a liquid like portal into a free fall, emerging into a distorted version of Whitebull General Goods in the shadow plane. Here, everything is cold and shifting in shadow. He uncovers a letter in a bundle of rags from a someone name Videric Hearst, as well as a cryptic verse. Apparently, Hearst was sent to this "prison" by the "Paradiso" family. He says he lost a key in flight and is in hiding, but wants to alert any potential family members who are also imprisoned. Azrael pockets the letters, explores the labyrinth, finding an odd floating ball of negative energy. Winding through the halls, Azrael is grievously wounded by a skeletal archer, who he eldritch blasts and destroys. He uses the negative energy ball on a shadow door and finds himself back at the entrance, where he rests.

## Chapter Two: Saving Sigmund

After a short rest, Azrael continues through the shadowplane. He defeats a group of shadow rats, then tries to hide in a room filled with the bones of others that came before. He is interrupted while nursing his wounds by two shambling corpses, starting a chase through the labyrinth. Eventually, he destroys the zombies but not before alerting some type of fiend in the maze. Something huge is thumping through these cold corridors. After locating a safe room, Azrael hears a pained cry and hurries to the rescue of Sigmund, who is being attacked by two shadows who are bashing him and sapping his strength. At this point, Azrael is exhausted, and Sigmund is hurt. They locate a strange room with a stove, a sconce, and a metal box on the wall with bars and keyholes and a pulley system leading into an unseen room. Azrael recommends that the lithe Sigmund climb onto the rope, which rings a large bell in the unseen room. Thump. They have alerted the beast.

## Chapter Three: The Proposition

Freezing and even more tired than before, Sigmund and Azrael dash through the dungeon halls. Azrael turns around to hide just as Sigmund comes into view with the dungeon's guardian: The White Bull. A minotaur skeleton charges down the hallway, spars with Sigmund and forces the duo into close quarter combat. In and out of consciousness, the two duel until they are defeated. Sigmund stabilizes, administering his last two potions to himself and to Azrael. Then, the two play more cat and mouse, running from but finally cornering the bull in a hallway, destroying him with crossbow bolts and magic energy. After this, the two explore and find more Umbra, shadow energy that allows secret doors to open. They investigate the throne room and grotto, and find the man resembling Videric Hearst hanged on a cliffside. They nearly exit the dungeon before running into what appears to be a trap. They double back, reading over notes. An awful realization dawns: Sigmund himself is from the Hearst family. But what is the meaning of this? Why did he end up here? The two decide to approach the hanged Videric and the corpse springs to life, using the rope around its neck to try to snare the two adventurers who are near death. They run and fire at the corpse, finally destroying him. In his possession is an apology for not making it, an assurance that other family members will be hunted. Azrael discovers a faint code on the paper but isn't certain what to do with it. They also find a black mask that Azrael puts on. After surviving a poison dart trap, they push onto the exit: a horrific nightmare zone. Here is the drow lich Valxun, a horrific, flying mage infused with blue energy, floating above a tentacle with spikes and an eye in it, guarding shadowy images of the other Hearst family members enduring eternal torment. Ahead of Azrael is the shadowgate back to the material plane. Valxun, in an otherworldly voice, puts forth a proposition that stops the shadow elf in his tracks: give Sigmund over to receive the punishment "befitting the Hearst family" and receive safe passage and navigation to the underdark routes underneath Ethergaard that could put him in good strategic position for the rest of the campaign. The lich answers his inquest regarding the Paradisos, saying they have been "dead for over a century". Azrael considers the words of both Sigmund and Valxun, stuck with what feels like an impossible choice for the fledgling assassin.

## Chapter Four: The Nursery

Azrael questions Valxun, wondering why Sigmund is of such importance. It turns out the entire Hearst family were "agents of chaos", and their removal will make Valxun's ascent "predictable". Despite Sigmund's pleas, Azrael casts the tattooed man toward the lich, who, making use of the giant tentacle, steals the life of Sigmund. All around Valxun are the strange, pink shadows of the Hearst family. Azrael enquires about the color: why is there color in the plane of shadow? It turns out this is a convergence spot between the plane of Shadow and the Plane of Dreams, which results in a nightmare zone. The inquest impresses the lich. A pact is made: in six days, Valxun will help Azrael find underdark passages relevant to his shadow elf clan.

Returning home and resting after his near death experience, Azrael is visited by his father Izzoko. The elder shadow elf has been amassing arms while his wife shores up troops for what will eventually be an emergence, a day when the clan no longer needs to be confined to the underdark and can draw on the surface's resources too. Along with Azrael's general mission of establishing himself in Ethergaard, Izzoko challenges Azrael to find out more about Sigmund and also to stake out a warehouse where troops and arms can be temporarily moved to.

Setting out, Azrael visits the Southern Quarter, the Fishery, the border of Emerald Knoll, and then circles back to the fishery, finding a defunct nursery for trees near the western gate. Inside, Azrael gets the jump on a goblin guard and obliterates him with magic. A tense sword fight follows with a goblin and a goblin boss, Azrael barely eking out a victory and forcing the goblin boss to flee. The nursery has been claimed.

## Chapter Five: Black Mask

The goblin chieftain defeated by Azrael flees, begging Ethergaards for shelter. The goblin is thrown out of the town gates and into the Plains of Exile. Azrael surveys the nursery then leaves to tell Izzoko of his success. They hatch a plan: the meeting of landowners and nobility that Skipta is conducting the next night will be a perfect event to ingratiate Azrael into high society. After that, they will use Valxun's help to find an underdark passage underneath the nursery so he can move the Thurianni Clan shadow elves to the surface at last. He spends the night and next morning picking up local rumors to help flesh out his alternate identity: a high elf named Ianni. He learns that the Vaitarna river has been dammed on one side to assure safer passage, but it has interfered with some shipping companies. He hears that hunters have been bringing back progressively fewer meats and pelts, but the extent of the volume deduction has not been felt by the population yet, but will soon. He also learns that a luxury skyship, Volaris, is being built with steam and arcane energy, but is currently grounded. The architects have so far failed to build this large civil project correctly, and Exalted Estates benefactors are growing concerned. Armed with these local politics, and putting on the black half-mask that marks nobility (the one he found on Videric Hearst), Azrael leaves for the town meeting.

Lord Skipta gives his speech the next day at Thresher Hall. He warns of "insurrectionists" and "bringers of chaos". He tells the story of a town guard recently promoted to a squire, who leaked information about the town's security and spread lies making Ethergaardians fear "the sun itself" and nature. He says the man was pursued and then killed in action. Ianni pretends to gasp and realizes Skipta must be assuming Sigmund died in the shadowplane, this was the squire who endangered the town. He congratulates Euric and Leovulg on capturing, and announces a new statute: those with information on bringers of chaos will be rewarded, those who fail to report suspicious activity may stand trial. Skipta ends on a "happier tune", telling everyone that more scholars than ever are graduating from the academy, and Ethergaard is at the peak of historical might. Furthermore, the town has inked a deal with Thornmoor to bring in more steel than ever before.

After the speech, Azrael notices a man has been staring at him the whole time. It is Namatius Elysium, a noble who is impressed by his mask. The two talk local politics, and Namatius becomes more curious about this "Ianni," inviting him to the town's fanciest inn and diner, the Chamberlain. Azrael also meets Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet, two nobles who have been impacted by the damming of Vaitarna. He ingratiates himself with them as well, and each agree that they would like to meet again as well. The shadow elf knows all this nobility will get suspicious if he isn't licensed, so he signs up for classes at the Academy which will get him his merchants license in a month so he can own a shipping company. He begins learning about currency, finding out that there was a day when Ethergaard was known as the Barony of Cephalan, and currency was mostly electrum pieces and gold bars. Azrael meets Namatius the following night, Namatius riding in a bizarre steam-powered carriage with a mechanical horse. They eat a four course meal and Namatius reveals he is the chief architect of Volaris the skyship. He is a decent mage and renowned scholar who nonetheless has failed to inscribe the correct sigils to get Volaris going. He asks Azrael his thoughts about Sigmund and the meeting, then invites Azrael to the next experimental launch in a month.

After the meeting, Azrael goes to sleep one night and wakes up, haunted by hallucinations. When he opens his eyes, he's back underneath White Bull, on the border of the shadow plane and the plane of dream. Here, Valxun says he will make good on his deal, and before Azrael's eyes, he transforms the Hearst family into devils. While most are misshapen lemures, Videric and Irnfried are the exception, becoming powerful devils. Valxun imbues Azrael with a star chain and more warlock powers, promising pacts unknown to most of the warlock world. He says he will show Azrael the way through the underdark remotely, as he has to take the Hearsts "where they belong". He says the next time Azrael sleeps, he will awaken in the underdark with Irnfried.

Azrael says goodbye to Izzoko, who will also be leaving to bring the shadow elves to the passage. He says to look into Valxun to know what he's getting into. When Azrael goes to sleep, sure enough he wakes up with Irnfried in tow, the glowing eyes of Valxun following him to assist. Valxun wants to find a passage for himself as well, as he has some sort of business and needs the area mapped out. Azrael immediately discovers a hooked horror in the passages, firing eldritch blasts at it. The horror, a terrifying beetle body with a bird's head and hooks for arms, runs off into a group of gnoll hunters. Azrael and Irnfried stealthily pursue, watching the hooked horror kill two gnolls and force the others to retreat. The horror continues to run, Azrael and Irnfried pursuing until they find an advantageous position on a large rock in the middle of a corridor.

## Chapter Six: Nest of the Hooked Horror

Azrael scouts out his position from on top of his rock perch, turning invisible. He doesn't realize that the gnolls who retreated went back to the camp, and are now slowly investigating the cavern beneath him. Irnfried picks a bioluminescent Ormu mushroom before nearly surprised in combat. Azrael notices them at the last second, throwing rocks to warn his devil companion. A fight ensues, with a gnoll pack lord leading the assault and even more gnoll archers flooding the passages and firing barrages of arrows. Three gnolls are killed in the battle, which involves Azrael going in and out of the shadowplane and creating duplicates of himself. The rest of the gnolls are pushed back to their encampment and are not pursued. Instead, the two loot the bodies, rest up, and decide a change of plans is in order: Valxun will conduct his business and return within a day to help Azrael find the spot that leads beneath the fishery nursery. In route, Irnfried challenges his servitude and is delivered with shocks of pain and reminded the alternative is hell.

Exploring further, Azrael scouts ahead while Irnfried is spotted and attacked by two stalactites that turn out to be darkmantles. Globes of darkness envelop the passages and Azrael decides he wants none of it. He runs into a large room, still invisible, and while attempting to climb a rock face spots the hooked horror above. The horror descends and joins the battle. Hideous screams from Irnfried escape the darkness, the sounds of hooks meeting flesh and Irnfried's strangely muffled voice convincing Azrael not to get any closer. Instead, he investigates the perch the horror came down from finding a nest! Four white hooked horror eggs lie in beds of straw. He puts one in his pack and descends to watch more of the fight. Both darkmantles are eventually killed but Irnfried is defeated, knocked out, lying unconscious but stable. Azrael and the wounded hooked horror square off, and the shadow elf uses his mirror image to score a crucial victory. At the end of the battle, Irnfried lies with tiny cuts all over his head and throat and deep hook wounds. The hooked horror's huge body lies, brutalized by eldritch blasts. The manta ray-like darkmantles are spread out on the ground like umbrellas. The only standing victor is the shadow elf.

## Chapter Seven: Emergence

Irnfried is propped against a rock by Azrael who finds himself feeling at least a little protective of his fiendish partner in arms. The shadow elf decides to explore the dungeon further. He moves through the south tunnels and hides behind a boulder when he hears the gnolls' hyena-like laughing in the distance. While hiding, he sees a strange passageway with a demonic statue shrouded in mist. While momentarily thinking he might rest behind the statue, Azrael decides to take advantage of his stealth and track the gnoll group. He sees them open a mossy secret door and go into a tunnel. Following them, he finds the group back at the stalactite room, and monitors the gnolls in case they take Irnfried. The gnolls see the felled Hooked Horror and are jubilant, they quickly scan the room, deciding Irnfried must also be dead, and they run out, catching Azrael off guard. Azrael responds by sending eldritch blasts at them and firing while running backward through the tunnels. The prowess of the Greymoon family elf shines through: he defeats the gnolls, three on one, killing two and causing the last to route.

Afterwards, Azrael drags Irnfried to the northern tunnels where Valxun disappeared to do some unspecified business. Irnfried and Azrael take a short rest and heal up. Valxun returns in a terrible mood, making references to some entity he is bound to, likening it to the bond he has with Azrael but saying he has “no choice” in the matter. Nevertheless, Valxun is impressed with the shadow elf’s success, and shows him a spot right by the hooked horror nest. Above is the warehouse marked for the Thurianni clan. Vlaxun blasts a hole in the ceiling, and casts fly on Irnfried and Azrael, who float towards the skylight, emerging out of the underdark and into the snow-flecked glass of the nursery, the rich pine, the plant life. All elements Irnfried has been deprived of. His joy seems analogous to the struggle of the shadow elves: imprisonment and then release. Tears come to his eyes. As Valxun praises the shadow elf, Azrael uses his clout to propose that Irnfried stay above surface and in the warehouse. Valxun trusts the elf, and agrees. Irnfried uses his telepathy to thank Azrael. Before leaving, Valxun lets Azrael know he can now visit his patron in the nightmare zone but alludes to potentially dangerous mental aftereffects if he does so.

Victorious, Azrael goes back to the Exalted Estates. He practices with a new persona: the clown. While building this alter ego up, Izzoko returns and he has a militant detachment of the Thurianni Clan with him. They are overjoyed at the new that they have a location in Ethergaard that is safe and possible to travel to. Azrael breaks out the champagne and there is a party in his exalted estate. He speaks with Sedna Mori, who can make clothing out of the dye from the Ormu mushrooms he gathered. Brundi, his sister, is proud of him, but his older brother Gorran is scowling and seems jealous. Politics from their underdark home of Al-draghazar is discussed. Illumi apparently is skeptical about the shadow elves accomplishing much on the surface, but Azrael has already shown Izzoko’s intitiative may prove fruitful. Izzoko appears oblivious to these politics, smoking cigars and resolving to travel the underdark to the warehouse the next day.

By evening, Izzoko arrives with the Thurianni in tow, and a second party starts at the nursery. The shadow elves celebrate and admire the skylight. Izzoko reveals the trip back was odd, he detected a lot of shadow plane activity in that run of the underdark beneath the Fishery. Not knowing what to do with this information, Azrael mentions seeing a demonic statue decides to pray to his patron at night and visit the nightmare zone. Here, Valxun explains that particular areas can have increased shadow activity for specific reasons, and suggests Azrael find a mage school to ask about the situation. After receiving this hint, Azrael wakes up, his head aching again. When he begins to speak, the alienating strangeness of the nightmare zone has plagued his senses: he can only speak gibberish.

## Chapter Eight: Speaking in Tongues

Having discovered that the plane of Shadow is seeping through due to events that have happened in Ethergaard, Azrael awakens back at his house. Leaving his house, he runs into Kolvar, but is unable to make any sense. His words seem to twist into entirely unrelated fragments, atonal screetches, and gutteral growls. Kolvar is at first worried but Azrael quickly dismisses himself, trying to find a mage guild. His head is throbbing. As the day turns to night, Azrael's speech returns and he attends a meeting with Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet at Gillet's seaside manor. The two noblemen are impressed with Azrael's connections, both to Namatius Elysium and for his apparent (but faked) mercantile background. They let him in on a secret: they're interested in dominating fishmonger row, a series of dilapidated shacks and low rent businesses in order to make space for luxury housing. Their plan to drive out the population includes exacerbating concern about wandering monsters from the plane of exile sweeping through and damaging the homes (hoping to pose as industrialists who can build a more safe section of town and save it) and by voting down attempts to remove the dam until it has caused enough problems in shipping returns that the area is less profitable. Azrael poses as if these are the most natural concerns to have, and they agree to cut him in on the deal, saying they'll meet again soon.

After this, Azrael goes on the hunt for information regarding Valxun's strange message: that these sections of shadowplane that run underneath Ethergaarde have some origin in the city's history. He finds himself at Deadtown, in the cult temple of Wee Jas, where a beautiful scarlet haired priestess, Mezreia, reveals to him that there have been traumatic experiences suffered in Ethergaarde that appear to recur on the shadowplane, repressed pain that articulates itself infinitely in a sad and broken version of what truly exists.

After receiving this strange information, Azrael does some reconnaissance in Deadtown. A bald adventurer sees him looking at a sign with a scorpion emblazoned upon it, and tells him its the "Scorpion Mercenary Company" and that he looks like the type of character that might be looking for some gold in exchange for work. Azrael considers his clan's need for gold and enters. He asks the guildmaster, a half-orc named Druz, if there are any jobs in the fishery district. The guildmaster says "nay", but the bald man says that he knows of one, right on Fishmonger Row. He tells Azrael to stake out some nobles that have been hanging around the area without getting caught and report back about their plans for two hundred gold.

Azrael follows the directions and finds himself on the broken cobbles of Fishmonger row in the dead of night. Before he can react, he is surrounded by a powerful gang. While Azrael is able to injure several of them, he is ultimately defeated and captured.

## Chapter Nine: We Chose This, You Fell Into It

Awakening bound to a chair, Azrael finds himself surrounded by a strange array of adventurers in a boarded-over tavern. Graffiti reading "The Bastards" is plastered over the planks and make-shift accommodations. A tall, strong looking figure with prematurely gray braided hair, Destin, smirks at Azrael and accuses him of tampering with nobles he has no business tampering with. He reveals how Azrael was hunted and ambushed: the bald man from the Scorpion Mercenary Company steps forward. His name is Vicar, a man who wishes to join with the Bastards and is now ready for "the gauntlet", some kind of test that has another name apparently. Destin finishes by saying that Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet are in their pockets and off limits, and resigns Azrael to imprisonment. He is taken below ground through a tunnel and left in a locked cell, right across from another cell with Feredire, a captured wood elf. The area is patrolled by an enthralled goblin named Braggath, who greatly fears the rat that sometimes visits and takes personal offense to Feredire's chorus of "bitch boy" whenever he walks by the cellblock. Strangely enough, Captain Harshlight, a member of the Bastards, leads Vicar down to a circular platform with a switch at the edge of it and tells Braggath to let him "take the test". Harshlight leaves, and Braggath asks Vicar if he's ready. Vicar says of course, but Braggath replies "no, you're not" pulls the switch, and drops Vicar straight through the floor.

Azrael and Feredire whisper to each other and eventually start to harass Braggath. When the goblin decides to ignore the chiding of the two captives, wisely choosing to eat his lunch instead of giving them an opportunity to pick his pocket for a key, Azrael calls on his warlock powers to Misty Step out of the cell. He then pushes the equipment chest toward Feredire's cell and Feredire starts shouting that the chest is alive and a Mimic. When the goblin approaches, Azrael dives out, pinning him to Feredire's cell bars. Feredire ferrets the key off Braggath's waist, unlocks his manacles, and smashes the iron sides of them against Braggath's head and knocks him out. After this, they unlock the cell door and they reclaim their equipment. They find a dusty iron door with "The Letter of the Law" written in dust. Azrael uses Augury to call on Valxun to give him a hint as to whether or not Feredire and Vicar, the man that disappeared, could be an aid to escaping. He is given an unequivocal "yes".

It even turns out Feredire even has a similiar story to the shadow elf: he was hired at the Scorpion Mercenary Company to collect a bounty on Anixius's head (a mage for the Bastards) and was assaulted and captured in the process. With their stories told, the two decide to rig a grenade trap to the food door and then test the trap door, dropping Braggath's body below into the gauntlet using the switch. After this, they descend into what Braggath called "THE STINK".

Sure enough, 60 ft below ground is a sewer system with those exact words graffiti-sprayed on the wall. Feredire takes an opportunity to deface it, writing, "two in the pink, one in" above it. The two trapise through a corridor filled with scything blade traps, one of them injuring Feredire. At the end, they find Vicar reacting to a strange sound ahead of him. They call out, and Vicar is aghast. How a man who helped capture and another who was imprisoned get free? Vicar is sure he will be killed but tries to reason, saying they aren't different, he was just trying to make it, to put food on the table. Azrael disagrees telling him Vicar "fell into" where they are now while Feredire and Azrael "chose it". As a result, they force the bald swordsman to lead the way. He goes into southern tunnels that he says were full of maddening voices. A babbling fills the hall and Vicar unexpectedly wheels around and strikes Azrael. A few seconds later he pleads, saying he didn't choose that act consciously, he doesn't know what came over him. Feredire has already wounded him, but Azrael makes a plea for Vicar's life, believing him. Sure enough, a Gibbering Mouther, a mass of chewing mouths and ectoplasm, comes shambling around the corner, upsetting flagstones and threatening the party's sanity.

Azrael and Feredire keep their distance, firing shots while Vicar fights up close. They eventually destroy the mouther, but Vicar is blinded by its spittle. Azrael has backed his way into another tunnel where a female voice assures him that what he's doing is a waste of time. To give up and relax. The party investigates, and a strange figure in a white gown appears, a woman of considerable beauty with long dark hair. She mimics the voice of Feredire to try to sway Azrael but he sees through it. They avoid her, but are apparently pursued: her footfalls never sound far from them.

Navigating around a fetid pool of sewer water and some bootleg rum, the party finds a green switch Vicar was afraid to pull and they activate it, partially draining the water. They then find a pile of trash near where the mouther came from and a section of the sewer with a dry canal save for heaps of mud. The mud takes to its feet, the sludge is an elemental and has two more of its kind in tow. The party battles the mud elementals, and Vicar is blinded again with mud. He is knocked unconscious. They defeat the rest of the elementals, with Azrael skipping across the pool but not without alerting a creature in its depths. Feredire cuts Vicar's throat to put him out of his misery, and Azrael fires an incredible eldritch blast shot into the depths that happens to explode directly onto an utter monstrosity: zombified crocodile in the sewer depths.

## Chapter Ten: Fall of Heroes

The sound of the battle has alerted another denizen of the swere depths: the dragonborn fighter known as Opie. This member of the Thornmacht has been spying on the Bastards and has found himself in the sewers after stowing away on their skiff. After hearing the hallucinatory sounds of the woman in white, the sounds of battle change his perspective. It's time to see who else is in the depths.

Azrael sneaks up behind Opie while Feredire tries to show that he means no harm; they are all trapped. Right as the party appears to solidify, the figure in white rises up out of the water, riding the zombified crocodile. A pitched battle ensues, the figure in white disappearing and reappearing, mocking the party and clawing at them. As she is attacked, her pale white skin fades to a sickening green. Her manicured hands turned to long witchy fingernails. Her white gown turns black. She takes severe damage and is routed down the path with the scything blade traps. The crocodile has more success, swallowing and badly wounding Opie before he busts out with a breath weapon aided by ranged attacks from Azrael, who is perched on a staircase.

After the fight, Azrael embarks on his own path. Feredire tries in vain to find the figure in, well now, black, but she leaves no footprints. While Azrael examines the dungeon, finding a giant stone door at the top of an incline from which the main flow of water rolls downhill, Opie and Feredire take a closer look at the sewer pipe room. This was the room Opie had inhabited when he was confined to a crate as a stowaway. Inside are three chests, and above them a sign reading "CHOOSE WISELY". "Luckily, I'm wise," remarks Feredire, and after assessing a series of pressure plates beneath each chest, they examine the contents. Each chest has a different object: the first, a plank, the second, a potion, the third, a bag of gold. Opie grabs the plank at the same time as Feredire grabs the two other objects. The result: the chests all collapse into the ground, shaking the chamber and causing six rat swarms, a total of 80 rats in all, scurrying hungrily from the drainage pipes.

Opie and Feredire valiantly battle the rats while Azrael looks around for the crone. The rats prove to be too rabid, too numerous to chase away. They cover their bodies and bite until both adventurers are no more. By the time Azrael gets to them, they have devoured both and are now on the hunt for him. He runs through the tunnels, evading them and barely escaping with his life. He returns the drainage pipe room and hides the bodies of his party members, and himself, in the crate.

## Chapter Eleven: Who's the Bastard Now

Azrael sits motionless in a crate with the dead bodies of his fellow captives jammed in next to him. It is in this grisly state that he resolves to do what the Thurianni Clan has taught him to do: survive at even the most impossible odds. Sneaking out of the chamber with his wounds healed, Azrael climbs a staircase and uncovers a room with a magical brewing contraption that creates ale, along with a blue switch that he pulls. This appears to drain more water from the reservoir and re-direct the sewer flows. He also attracts a couple of the rat swarms, which he tactically defeats by hurling them down the staircases with forceful eldritch blasts. He leaves the brewery, finding a locked and barred sewer door, and maps his way through the sewer system, finding the sewer slightly different from when he pressed the blue switch. Now, the water has completely drained out of the reservoir where the crocodile once lay. Beneath are glittering coins and a note stating "LAND SEA FIRE". He pockets these and hears the sounds of the mysterious white figure again, this time in a nearby sewer tunnel.

The shadow elf assassin stealthily pursues his prey, finding the figure in a twisted combination of the features of this black haired goddess and the grey haired witch. He launches her so far back with an eldritch blast she's lost in the dark. Racing through the sewer, the woman appears from nowhere, a couple stones skittering into the now-filling drainage pipes and altering him. When she appears, he blasts her again and she vanishes from sight, reappearing, seemingly conjuring a giant rat right in front of him. Azrael sees his opening. He charges the rat and swings then uses his misty step to disappear from site and appear behind the witch, hitting her with a devastating blow that knocks her unconscious. He ties her up and partially blocks the tunnel with her roped body. He finds a statue on the figure that closely resembles her more beautiful appearance. He also finds a potion of water breathing.

After this, Azrael goes further down the sewer tunnel and sees a red switch ahead. The note now makes sense to him: LAND SEA FIRE. The green switch was land, the blue was sea, the red is fire. He has hit the switches in the correct succession, and marches ahead to get the final one. Though Azrael notices prints in the dust on the floor that suggest the ground had been touched by wooden boards at one point, he takes no heed and the floor falls out from underneath him. He uses his final misty step to appear on the other side. He pulls the red switch and reverses the flow of the sewer drains, causing powerful winds to blow through the sewer.

It's at this point that Azrael is in trouble. He looks into the pit and notices theres no easy way back across. Down beneath are the ancient remnants of something that came from long before the sewer was engineered: a vast and elaborate antechamber held up by Corinthian columns with an altar in the middle. He shines a torch on what lies below: glittering objects on the table in the darkness, a sacrificial dagger and a choker. The sewer water is accumulating in the ancient chamber. He can make out frescoes full of statuary and a marble, and a partially destroyed statue on the altar. The torchlight illuminates a corner of the drowning chamber and he sees a giant mouth, with multiple rows of teeth, jutting out of the water. Tentacles with similarly toothed mouths writhe around the creature. Azrael makes a decision. He braves an hour long rest, opening himself up to attacks, but gets lucky. There is nothing but silence. He drops the torch to sizzle into the water then uses feather fall to float gently down on shadowy, batlike wings and turns invisible, downing the water breathing potion before entering the water.

In the antechamber, Azrael sees the aberration surging toward the junk in the corner of the room, rabidly pursuing drowned rat corpses for food. Azrael takes a glowing ceremonial dagger and a dragonscale choker from the altar, but leaves the figurine by the statue and is filled with a sensation of completeness. He can see in the far corner of the antechamber a way out of this strange room: a sewer drain that is actually pulling the water upwards in a tunnel. He dives in the water and swims out of the way of the creature, rising back to the giant stone door the party found earlier on the higher level, right out of the drain. This time though, the door is open, and the water is pushing him upwards!

Azrael takes the current upwards to what must be a spot near to the surface. He finds a smugglers cove, with empty crates, a chained up skiff, and a huge moat-like door closing off the cove. This is where the bastards dock their ship. He finds a grey switch here, which he hits to reset the gauntlet's flows. Azrael sees a dusty iron door at the north side of the cove with a tragicomic Olidammaran mask built into it. There is red graffiti above it reading THINK, echoing the STINK from earlier. When he approaches, a jubilant voice announces he has survived the gauntlet and has a new task: solve the riddle.

*I begin eternity,
And end space,
At the end of time,
And in every place,
Last in life,
Second to death,
Never alone,
Found in your breath,
Contained by earth,
Water or flame,
My grandeur so awesome,
Wind dare not tame,
Not in your mind,
Am in your dreams,
Vacant to Kings,
Present to Queens*

Azrael contemplates a strange coded poem, and recalls this iron door is the very same one he saw when he was imprisoned, that read "LETTER OF THE LAW" on the other side. Noting this, he realizes the code is gesturing toward a particular letter: "E". He says the letter and the mouth envelops the door, letting off a triumphant horn alarm. The Bastards rush back down the stairs. Azrael immediately turns invisible and notices the grenade trap had been sprung. Last of the gate is a badly injured Captain Harshlight, who now has a peg leg from the grenade strike.

Destin Bela, the head of the Bastards, believes Vicar has successfully navigated the gauntlet. He yells out a congratulation. When there is no response, Veselona warns him that they are missing two prisoners. Destin keeps his hand on his sword and calls again, and Azrael appears right behind Captain Harshlight with a devastating rapier strike, knocking the injured captain unconscious. He grabs the pirate by the throat and threatens to cut him ear to ear if they get close. He notices Destin deeply cares about the pirate, and is trying to negotiate. Azrael demands a place on the Bastards, and Destin concludes he has successfully passed THINK and STINK, and wants to know what happened to the other two. "There were actually three, one you never knew about. And they're all dead," Azrael darkly intones. Destin is extremely intimidated, and notes that there's just one last trial for initiation: INK. He would have to get a tattoo with the letter B on it. Anixius is appalled at the suggestion that a prisoner and spy could become part of the group. He mentions that his cellmate, Feredire was going to have him killed, and the party killed Braggath and badly injured Captain Harshlight. Destin quiets him as Azrael asks if the script for the letter B is up to him. Destin lightens up, realizing that he has a way to save his friend. "Of course, ink it in any hand you please..." Just like that, the captive has become a Bastard himself. Azrael lets Harshlight drop to the ground while the party coalesce around him. Azrael walks out casually to the sounds of their relief, and Anixius's disbelief.

## Chapter Twelve: The Damming of Vaitarna

In a manor house in the Exalted estates, Azrael awakens and traipses across town to the nursery, where he finds Izzoko training a new contingent of Thurianni Clan shadow elves. Brundi and Sedna Mori are excited to see him, and Izzoko encourages his in-route to the Bastards, while Brundi seems worried. The fiend Irnfried Hearst seems busy, attaching a tapestry to cover the skylight.

Across town, two Bastards return from a diamond heist: the Wee Jas death monk Wolfrün and the lizardfolk trickster cleric Yex. They find the Bastards in a state of disarray. Having worked with Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet to monitor the wandering monster attacks in the Fishery and report back, they located the spy Azrael. This shadow elf had been captured but escaped and passed the test to become a guild member, even taking a member hostage to ensure that he be added. Destin and Wolfrün shout down a concerned Anixius while Yex attempts to stave off Captain Harshlight's leg infection (unfortunately failing to do so).

In the streets outside both the fishery and the Olidammaran safehouse are the calls of coming darkness from doomsayers.

The two sides meet when town criers take to the streets with trumpets calling an immediate town meeting. Lord Skipta and Grand Officer Anagastes have taken to the stage, bringing news of yet another attack on the fishery. This time, the monsters are described: shadow forms that have been beating fisher peasants. There has been a dam standing at the northern banks of the Vaitarna river, nearly completed, which is argued could be used to stop the spirits from arriving. They put the matter to vote immediately (even though it was tabled for the Winter Thresher Hall vote next month) as an emergency, allowing Thresher Hall members to air their arguments on the matter. Azrael, in his disguise self form as noble high elf Ianni, speaks out of turn on behalf of the what the nobles want: damming of the Vaitarna river, which will stop spirits from arriving via this water route that seems to symbolize both life and death, the flow of trade goods and the flow of bodies via ceremonial burial. Kolvar enthusiastically agrees, and appears to be taking a true liking to Ianni. Ragnoc Redbeard, dwarven blacksmith, speaks in opposition. Wolfrün thinks a dam could do little to stop spirits and is escorted out for his trouble. Yex joins them. Earl Gillet and Alderman Jaynyn land the pivotal blow to this argument, saying the attacks proved their concerns for the fishery's safety, and that not only should the river be dammed, but the shacks in the fishery should be evaluated for structural supports and torn down if they are a hazard. Commander Euric says he was previously on the fence but doesn't want to risk losing Ethergaards in battles against spirits with no known anatomy. The matter is put up to vote, and the nobles win with only a few dissenting votes. The final slab of the dam would be immediately put into place, with a ceremony the following night at Thresher Hall where the Pholtian seal on the dam would be lit.

The nobles call Ianni and the Bastards to a feast at the Chamberlain for assisting them, giving each a bag of gold (and an extra one for a member not present, Azrael). Ianni follows them, finding that they are indeed hoping to dominate the settling and trade of the fishery, and this move will allow them to do so. The river will be less suitable for fishing in the south, driving away competition. They will be able to replace the ramshackle huts with expensive manor houses. In addition, Ianni believes there could be a link to Namatius Elysium's sky-ship project but isn't sure what that would be.

Back at Olidammaran thieves guild, Destin believes they could have their cake and eat it too: pocket the nobles gold, but then spoil the dam project during the ceremony. Destin says he has family and connections in the fishery, and also believes the nobles actions will allow them a power that will undermine the Bastards, and further solidify the Pholtian grip of law Skipta has over the city. Wolfrün decides to take action, forming a party with Yex and Azrael to case the dam and find out about it.

At the dam, Ianni takes a carriage and distracts guards. Wolfrün vertically leaps up to the second floor of the keep, finding two men dressed up as shadows pretending to scare one another. He kills one brute while the other one runs to the first floor of the keep to warn about the attack. Frantically, the death monk throws the body into the Vaitarna. Meanwhile, Yex watches as confused Sahuagin wind up in an adjacent ice cave, eating their meals of raw fish while pondering how they got stuck moving downstream. Eventually, Ianni and Wolfrün make it over to the cave and notice a vertical well leading into the dam from the cave, a well used for filtering sediment. Yex jumps into the water and swims up the well while the Sahuagin fight, one of the fish-men sending waves through the water to call a reef shark to attack. Yex kicks off shark attacks and finds this back entrance to the dam, but does not go in, hearing guards a room over discussing Wolfrün's breach. He rejoins the party below, sucking the life out of the Sahuagin priestess while Azrael and Wolfrün dispatch the others.

## Chapter Thirteen: Ignition

Leaving the ice cave, Azrael and Yex return to town through the north gates disguised as a plump, jovial Pholtian cleric named Falthrian and an ethergaard, respectively. The two meet up with Ragnoc Redbeard at the Forge of Moradin in the Fishery. They say they need more materials for the dam building celebration coming the following night. Ragnoc repeatedly tells them they should listen to what someone named Sho Feng said. He seems perturbed from losing the vote, but is also concerned when they tell them there was an attack at the dam. He supplies them with two kegs of gunpowder for the celebration and a bomb in case of any more intruders. They both pay some young men to deliver the kegs to the dam, which is now patrolled by an even larger contingent of Ethergaards. Meanwhile, Wolfrün takes a rest at the tower of Wee Jas, impressing Mezreia with his defeat of a dam worker and subsequent river-burial (that coincidentally fulfilled Wee Jas funereal rites, no less). They pray together, and he leaves her gold and weapons in case she needs the help.

The party meets back up at the Olidammaran Thieves Guild, where only Veselona Ilych is awake. Uncharacteristically, the monk praises the party's initiative for taking a rest during the day and immediately going back by cover of night. When they arrive, they decide to split up, with Azrael and Wolfrün sneaking in through the vertical well while Yex stays outside, by the strange portcullis, waiting to get a chance to light the fuse once the party finds an appropriate place for the kegs. Found out in the worker's gallery, Wolfrün does damage control by pretending to be a "torch inspector" and Azrael pretends to be another Ethergaard telling him he needs to leave the site. The workers find the behavior very suspicious and haven't seen these people before, and before long, the Etherknights are entering through the main doors and asking questions. The battle breaks out.

Flanked on all sides with workers (who appear to be trained as fighters and armed with crossbows and maces) and knights, Azrael and Wolfrün take a heavy beating. One of the Etherknights runs to the front of the dam and calls the rest of the guards, prompting Yex to try to find a way in. Yex investigates the portcullis trap, plunging into a shadow world of grays and blacks; a colorless, lightless realm that makes the dam appear damaged, ancient, cold, and lost. He runs up the keep stairs to find a horrible hound made of shadows, baying at him. Looking back through the portcullis, he sees a negative of the world he came from. He runs away from the cold world, emerging with his thoughts focused on that terrible hound. He runs to the front of the dam to find Azrael and Wolfrün in terrible condition, and casts healing spells while dealing with some of the knights. The party stages an incredible comeback, fighting through the knights, beating up the thugs, forcing a worker to surrender and deliver a coup de grace, and even running an escaping knight down and draining his life from him. While the death monk and shadow elf assassin battle the last of the workers, Yex sets up kegs on either side of the Pholtian seal, directly next to the downriver side of the dam.

In the distance, stage coaches full of knights are coming toward the dam, half a mile away. The party distributes the corpses through the vertical well so that they'll arrive in the ice cave or out into the river. They quickly set fire to the wick and let the alchemical solution ignite. They run toward the watershed. As the run, behind them, the guards watch the Pholtian seal light up for just a moment, the gold glow of the god of Law sparkling just before the flames touch the gunpowder. The dam explodes. (1,300 XP per character)

## Chapter Fourteen: Black Mask pt. II

After the collapse of the dam, Azrael runs with his newfound allies into the fetid, ankle-deep stagnancy of the watershed. After this moment, we leap forward in time, the events of this chapter taking place chronologically in the early parts of Chapter Fifteen, covering what Azrael does in his downtime after the first night he returns to Ethergaarde.

Azrael invokes Valxun, his patron, offering victuals and performing rites until the ceiling above his bed seems to duplicate and his eyes grow heavy. He fades into sleep, awakening in a long tunnel in the shadow plane, the blacks, whites, and greys of the surfaces giving way to a pink light ahead. He pushes on and finds himself in the tentacled horror of the nightmare zone, witnessing the diabolic forms of the Hearst family working a kind of chain gang, breaking rocks to extract some sort of iridescent material. Videric Hearst is relieved to hear Irnfried is still alive, even in this infernal form. Azrael has apparently truly helped Valxun's cause. Valxun explains that this other entity, one that he has a bond with, was told of Azrael's power and how Azrael went to the Underdark to forge a path. Azrael requests more power and it is granted, he rises up above the tentacled horror, his body floating. He has received the power of flight. He also requests a tentacle for use with one of his new invocations.

After this, Azrael requests the body of Sigmund Hearst, explaining that Commanders Euric and Leovulg were credited with killing Sigmund, and he could use the opportunity to undermine this story in order to ingratiate himself with Lord Skipta. Valxun explodes rocks with the scorpion's tale of the nightmare zone, revealing Sigmund's body, his eyes open with an eerie pink light. Azrael watches as Valxun taunts Sigmund's spirit, asking the spirit if it recognizes the body. The display is disturbing. Sigmund seems to have no recognition. Azrael wakes up, feeling like he has trouble anchoring himself in the material plane. He grasps the black mask he found in the world behind that portrait that fated night in Whitebull General Goods. He reassures himself of where he is, putting it on as a reminder of his earthliness.

From here, Azrael has a spirited conversation with Kolvar in the gardens, finding the noble geologist to be thinking the Nightfallen, the doomsayers on the streets of Amathara, are making a self-fufilling prophecy. By making people scared of doom, the fear itself is causing real negative effects. They discuss the dam. Azrael breathes some doubt about Skipta's efficiency in ruling over the town but Kolvar is unconvinced. He crafts a metaphor of "idiots walking on the upper crust, the surface, the truth, Skipta, is the core, and reasonable people are stuck in the mantle, feeling the pressure of each".

Azrael visits the Bastards and talks to Veselona and Destin, letting them in on the fact that he helped attack the dam. The shadow elf believes that causing the city to spend more on rebuilding the dam while also stopping Thornmoor from sending any more men might be a good route to create some instability. He and Destin concoct an alternate theory that Azrael can use as a cover, that the nobles Earl Gillet and Alderman Jaynyn aren't actually trying to push out business, but simply have a good vision for Thresher Hall and have been undermined ever since Sigmund arrived. Lord Skipta himself mentioned Sigmund leaking information from his time on the guard force, they decide to play into this and blame the attack on this information, while saying that Sigmund, now confirmed dead, couldn't possibly hurt the town any more. So it will be time for the dam, take two.

Going down to Fishmonger Row, Azrael finds that the Gillet fishing stands are empty. Vaitarna fishing is not allowed as the investigation of the dam attacks begin, but fishermen are quietly hopeful of the idea that their jobs won't be drying up after all. The warlock decides to influence a Thresher Hall member, meeting with a frightened Holval who makes it clear that he already believes that "agents of chaos" are attacking the city. He thinks Skipta should understand the big picture, that safe shipping to Thornmoor and most importantly Amberhelm, will be cut off if it becomes prohibitively frightful to pursue. This is more important he says, then fishermen on the row.

After this, Azrael visits the Scorpion Mercenary Company and gives the story Destin and he crafted to Druz, who pays the gold that Vicar left for finding information on the noblemen. Druz hasn't seen Vicar around recently but is ready to pass off the information... While contemplating the violent end of that man, Azrael goes shopping for studded leather.

## Chapter Fifteen: The Burial

Between the Vaitarna and the sea, the party trudges on through a darkened watershed, the ruins of the dam behind them, the world of the dead before them. Yex turns back, seeing the open portcullis door on one of the remaining towers, a bellowing of a hound emanating that only he can hear.

The party splits up, knowing that in the commotion, with Ethergaarde behind them, torchlights announcing the town's wakefulness, that they will have to sort into the crowd to avoid scrutiny.

Azrael goes back to Exalted Estates to meditate and to visit his patron. His adventure is explained here.

The lizardman Yex returns in disguise to the Bastards. Bela can't believe all the chaos, Veselona, having seen the party leave right before the bursting of the dam knows they're directly responsible. Yex talks to Anixius Pallium about the prospect of becoming a temple raider. That with the abundance of churches in town, the theft of some holy symbols could mean increased luck for these followers of OIidammara. Yex continues surgery on Captain Harshlight. It's not going well.

Wolfrün moves around the river, choosing to use a trade route to re-enter the city. He succeeds and goes back to the tower of Wee Jas, where he sees Hildie playing on the stoop, watching the armed guards rushing through the streets and the crowd waking at the incredible bursting of the dam. He talks with Mezreia, who mentions the day has been distressing. The river Vaitarna has been shut down, preventing burials. The old graveyard outside the tower is only for historical graves, full up. She expresses worries that this situation could result in improper burial, and perhaps the creation of dreaded unlife. Sorel, an old priest, injured himself tending to the sconce at the top of the temple, apparently causing himself to bleed effusively. Hildie is playing a game with an unseen person (Mezreia saying it's an imaginary friend), repeatedly referring to him as Percival. Wolfrün walks with her when she calls to this entity, and sees nothing at the top of the stairs. When Wolfrün sees Hildie run outside again, he follows, and finds that she is watching Percival imitating a cat. "Is a kitty cat out there?" She asks. Perturbed, Wolfrün has her go upstairs and go to bed. In the process, he swears he sees another figure, just a hand, for a split second when he walks in front of the tower's mirror. Hildie says Percival is "afraid of the temple" and "won't come up here".

After this, the whole party convenes with the Bastards the following morning: we see a near beating of doomsayers in the streets (Nightfall is coming! The sky was red over the dam!) we find a scene in incredible disarray. Yex performing a second peg leg operation on Harshlight, the flesh leg flung into the common area, splitting Destin's attention between the leg and what Azrael is holding: the body of Sigmund Hearst. The party knows this is a crucial moment, they have the body of someone Skipta claimed to have destroyed. They make a plan: stage a fake attack in which Azrael, in the costume of Ayane, defeats Sigmund Hearst while the Bastards help secure him. They choose to try this right in front of Skipta. Wolfrün is hesitant but agrees as long as Sigmund is properly buried.

The streets are cleared later that day as Skipta makes his way to Thresher Hall, with Commander Anagastes, Commander Euric, Commander Leovulg, Alderman Jaynyn, Earl Gillet, and some of the strongest Etherknights in his coterie. Ayane runs through the streets, pursuing Yex, who is disguised as Sigmund. The whole group ends up in Deadtown, outside the Bastard's guildhouse, with Yex stumbling out of view as they drop the real body of Sigmund, masking the sleight of hand with one of Ayane's forceful magic blasts. Skipta realizes what the body means instantly, and asks if they can bring him into the Bastard's house. They do so, and Skipta chastizes Leovulg and Euric for failing to take down Sigmund. The guild uses Sigmund as an alibi, saying Sigmund must have been behind the dam explosion. Skipta cooks up a story to tell the town, that Sigmund really did die back when he claimed he had, but information on the dam and guard force had already been leaked. The hoiped-for end result? A town that believes the bad thing is behind it: sure, Sigmund compromised its security, but he's dead and it's done. In this moment, we see a den of thieves become ingratiated with the throne in a mutual distortion that only each other are aware of. Skipta says the body needs disposed: take him to the crossroads outside of town where the murders are ignominiously buried.

But Wolfrün has other plans: he takes Sigmund to the tower of Wee Jas to consult with Mezreia while the rest of the party discusses plans at the guildhouse. When discussing the news, Sorel overhears and brings his damaged frame over, mentioning that if it really is a Hearst body, the historical Hearst grave is right on the site. Better yet: there's no name on it, a tactic the family used to prevent graverobbing from the rival Paradiso family. Wolfrün follows Sorel to the tomb but is grabbed and hurled into it. He cries out, alarming the party down the road. Sorel has a flash of green in his eyes, accusing Wolfrün of working with someone named Valxun. Wolfrün does enough damage to make Sorel's body fall by the wayside, a jellyfish like creature emerging from the back of his head, floating and attacking with demonic power. It forces Wolfrün to consult a mirror in the corner of the room. In it, he sees not just himself and the creature, but also, Percival. A slight man with dark eyes and no stand-out features. Wolfrün rushes to the mirror and falls through to a cold, shadow world. In it, he attacks Percival and the jellyfish. The party comes to his aid, they kill the creature and Percival gives up. Wolfrün ties Percival, who appears to be invisible unless he's in a mirror, to his waist. Percival says he has no memory of who he is, that Hildie gave him his name. He says he's never thought about it. That he's "not like the others, angered by where he is".

They run to a gallery up ahead, which has old frescoes and art scrawled into the walls. Out of inch wide holes in the frescoes, shadows emanate and become sentient, striking at the party and siphoning strength from their limbs. They fight them off, coming to the end of a corridor where an invisible group of creatures discuss grave business.

## Chapter Sixteen: The Shadow Demon

   The other figures in the room appear to be like Percival, which is to say, do not appear at all. They reveal that their histories are gone, none of them

have names, Percival only having one because of Hildie’s affection. Percival is
the odd man out—they seem to flit like shadows, remaining in the only place
they know. In fact, they seem linked to the shadow plane entirely.

The party proceeds up an incline in the tomb and make it to another above
ground masoleum with a window. They see a terrible sight from this vantage: the
likeness of the tower of Wee Jas, except it’s missing chunks of granite, it’s
conical tower sad and broken, the flame at its peak flickering white,
everything inverted and washed out. A huge figure looms at the top of the
tower, visible from here, roaring at a shadowy figure that springs to life. The
figure has obsidian skin, almost like it was cut perfectly from stone, an angular
face, a small set of horns, and effusive green mists pouring off of him. They
also find a switch that appears to have some connection to the tower.

The party charges ahead, finding a tomb next, battling demons and finding
empty caskets of other members of the Hearst family. Azrael knows what’s become
of these bodies. They proceed to the tower, Azrael sprinting upward while Yex
and Wolfrün investigate the lower levels (Wolfrün finding a bright red book, a
sacred text known as the Abominable Devastation, a source of of great controversy in
the church of Wee Jas. It was in the same place as the White Book in the material realm). The
party finds flitting shadows and zombies, stealthily moving past, and also sees a
mirror that displays Percival but also seems to allow them to see through the
shadow plane, back to the real world tower of Wee Jas. Mezreia and Hildie are
visible. They find that in order to open up the top of the tower, Wolfrun has
to solve the riddle a magic mouth gives. He returns to the real world tower of Wee
Jas and moves objects around until he impacts the shadow plane, unlocking the upper
level.

Azrael runs to the upper level to turn the flame of the tower up, sneaking
past the obsidian figure. This beast is referred to as the Dark Prince, and he
is giving instructions to take the body of Sigmund Hearst, who is part of a
family fated to always be the undoing of Ethergaarde. The figure dissipates and
Azrael activates the tower, while Wolfrün manipulates the tower, while Yex
pulls the switch. The fight is on, the shadow demon emerges. This terrible
enemy accuses the party of working for someone named Valxun. The fight spans
the tomb, with the undead pouring out of the tower. Yex turns most of them with
his Olidammaran holy symbol and the party reigns down a torrent of violence on
the shadow beast. In the end, he is defeated. Sigmund’s body is left lying on
the ground in the tomb, and Wolfrün gives him a proper burial, laying him to a
final rest. The party returns to the surface with Percival.

## Chapter Seventeen: Blood on the Cobblestones

    The party rest and heal their wounds, keeping the bulk of their exploits secret from the rest of the Bastards, who wouldn’t be able to

understand them even if they were told. It is here, in the Olidammaran
safehouse, that an emissary of Jaynyn and Earl Gillet appears. He has a letter
explaining he needs muscle again from the Bastards, the nobles are willing to
pay in gold to have a piece of important business addressed.

The trio leaves under cover of night. Despite the
increasingly strange spectacles in the street, with Nightfallen cultists heralding
an end time, Ethergaarde has tried to establish a degree of normality. The
party must make their way to the Fishery, where Jaynyn and Gillet hail from,
and find an attempt at this normality: buildings festooned with streamers, the
streets filled with the trash of a local fair. In this atmosphere, in the post
celebration quiet, a series of rooftop dark creepers—sickly, filthy robed, impossibly
thin specters, assail the party. At first they seem like the black cloaked false
shadows employed by Jaynyn and Gillet, but this time they turn out to be actual
supernatural creatures. During the fight, one of them grabs a citizen and
threatens to cut his throat and Azrael demonstrates how little of an effect it
would have on his course of action. Yex hides in the trees and hacks a few to
death around them. They emerge victorious.

Arriving at the opulent manor estate of Alderman Jaynyn, the
party finds the two noblemen pacing nervously. They see their
opportunities drying up and need to think abot their fortunes, believing
Namatius Elysium is closing in on his completion of Volaris the Ethercruiser,
while their effort to build the dam to increase shipping revenue (and more nefariously,
justify pushing the poor out of the fishery) is looking like it will be
eclipsed. After hearing of these dark creepers, the two are absolutely frightened
of the demonic activity. Guards being taken by shadowy forces, the dam
exploding, the streets overrun by actual black cloaked freaks...they link this chain of events back to
their opponents in Thresher Hall to it as well, believing
that the guards at this point are compromised. After all, if Sigmund is a
turncoat, could there be others? Who was Sigmund working for? They can’t do any
fishing in the area until the investigation is complete. They ask the party to “clean
up” the area and do some preliminary investigating themselves. They want the
area cleared so they can get back to saving what’s left of their fortunes, and
offer a pretty sum of gold for it to happen. The party accepts, and heads to
the ruins of the dam with secret knowledge of how it really fell, and how,
ironically, a Thresher Hall member, Ragnoc, was actually involved.

## Chapter Eighteen: Nightmare Courtyard

    Investigating the ruins, the party finds a statue of Skipta I, the lord that ruled over Ethergaarde a little over a hundred years ago, but the statue seems to have been built over an older one. There is even a tablet in its hands, a facsimile of a holy book of Pholtus, that is really a palimpsest: beneath it is a strange text called "the Ruin", an apocolyptic poem written by someone of Mournfallian descent. They aren't able to linger long: there are more dark creepers lurking in the dam. Apparently the same forces watching the fishery are here as well. There are signs of struggle—the town guard is supposedly investigating

but nowhere to be found. The party has a dam-spanning battle as a Nightmare emerges
from the sky to join the fight. Azrael is knocked unconscious and is healed by
Yex in a crucial moment. The party takes the fight to the upper reaches, seeing
a figure standing on the height of the dam.

Ahead, the unnatural darkness of the tower, that same spot
Yex watched a dark hound emerge from, emanates an intense evil. The nightmare
takes a few more hits and disappears from sight. The party arrive at the tower,
finding a beautiful woman who reveals her true self: a witch, Anima. She has white
facepaint on her dark skin, knotted, unkempt hair, and a limp. Her visage is far from
what it was a moment ago. She is impressed with the party, thinking they
were one of them. Who is “them”? The servants of Graz’zt, the dark prince, the
destroyer. She reveals what is going on at this dam, it is built on a place that
has been haunted many years, where a battle took place in the Barony of Cephalan, where the great dragon Shyndre was banished. Graz’zt is here to
attempt a grand return to the material realm, and what’s more, he’s pissed off
a former lover, Anima’s patron, the witch Iggwilv. She is one of the “fingers
of Iggwilv”, a coven of hags devoted to the witch queen. She says his interference
has torn a hole in the shadow plane, and he has created a portal to the abyss.
The guards that were investigating? They’re inside, hopelessly enthralled to Graz’zt
and his daughter Thraxxia. They also have the captured draconic daughter of Shyndre,
Nyndrah the Unseen.

Azrael takes a decidedly warm tactic with the witch, finding
that their goals might be in alignment. The two hit it off instantly, with Anima
telling him she’ll visit again. She gives them a block of obsidian and tells
them to strike the ground with it for one time assistance. She bids the party
good luck, and says she’ll be keeping a close eye on Graz’zt, as Iggwilv is
very interested in what her former lover is up to.

## Chapter Nineteen: Vaitarna Abyss

    Stealthily, the party enters the tower—the only member who has been here before is Yex, who went mad at the sight of a terrible black dog.

It appears this vision is recurring, Yex is struck again by madness, seeing the
dog in the dark. The bottom of the tower is a gaping maw of the abyss, burbling
and churning magma, irregular dimensions, chaotic alignments of stone and
statue and broken columns. As the party employs shadows, invisibility, and disguise
to breech the area, they see a group of Ethergaards and Etherknights enthralled,
wordless, unconscious, tied up. Across the area is the shadow dragon Nyndrah,
in a cage, languishing. In the middle of it all is Graz’zt and Thraxxia,
discussing what they are after now: their experiment was a success, they can
bring in demonic forces to Amathara, but they have lost the Hearst body.
Thraxxia, an attractive alu demon daughter, vows to enter the fray. She is
known for never having botched a job. Nyndrah’s incarceration is part of this:
the shadow dragon is aligned with someone named Valxun, who also opposes Graz’zt.
The two discuss what’s next. In the town of Mournfall lies an ancient artifact
tied to time itself. It will allow the demons to dominate the material plane if
it’s in their hands. Graz’zt shows love for his daughter and the two vanish to
make way to Mournfall, leaving a demonic ape-like creature to torment the
guards and the dragon for fun.

The party darts around the area after this, fighting the
demonic ape and finally destroying it, freeing Nyndrah the Unseen. The dragon, who
has been permanently altered by spending too much time in the plane of shadow,
is in dire condition but offers a warning to the party: Graz’zt’s intervention
in the material plane could mean all of Amathara resigned to an abyss, a cruel
and pointless spectacle existing only off of Graz’zt’s whim. Azrael mentions
Valxun and the two find a connection here: Nyndrah is aligned with the same
patron, and wants to see fate play out as its supposed to. While Yex and
Wolfrün are confused by the exchange, they all end up with the same takeaway: Mournfall
has an artifact that, when fallen into the wrong hands, could end everything.

The party frees the guards after this, and take credit for
saving the Ethergaards. They collect the gold from Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet, whose fears about demonic activity are confirmed but who now have at least
a bargaining chip for Skipta’s ear: the Bastards have made the dam safe again,
perhaps shipping can resume.

## Chapter Twenty: Expulsion of the Envoys

    Yex is still recovering from his madness when the splinter group of the Bastards returns to town. Here, they heal up, finding that Destin is using the Bastard’s newfound immunity to law to cook up some low hanging

schemes, collecting gambling hall money, setting up gang controlled areas in a
local “tunnel of love”, it seems small fry business to the party, who chastise him
for his lack of vision. There is a rift here between the thieves guild and the
ever more enterprising party.

In Ethergaarde, the party finally gets a chance to manage the
loot they’ve received, selling large amounts of objects retrieved from the dam
and from the dark creepers in the Fishery. They also make it to the church of
Boccob to buy some magical items. Wolfrün takes advantage of the time off to
make it to the tower of Wee Jas. The relationship between him and Mezreia deepens,
it appears she has been quite worried about him, and is even more so when he
reveals the Abominable Devastation: the dark text that is considered apocryphal
and dangerous in the church of Wee Jas. Carefully and diplomatically, Wolfrun
talks her into translating the text and looking it over, but Mezreia says it
will need to stay between them and will take considerable time.

Skipta orders a meeting, a mirror of earlier when Jaynyn and
Gillet sent emissaries, this time it’s the Etherknights: Commander Leovulg and
Commander Euric. Destin jokes with them, telling them how great it was that
they brought down Sigmund Hearst. They aren’t amused, but have little come
back, and they are charged with bringing the party to Skipta’s Court.

At high-sun, the party departs for the court and sees a
group of Thornmoor envoys lined up and facing accusations from Skipta and Anagastes. He has heard tell of Thornmoor on the verge of completing their
airship project, and the betrayals happening in Ethergaarde seem linked: right
when they were on the verge, military secrets were leaked by Sigmund Hearst.
When they went to complete a different way of being able to ship to Amberhelm
after Namatius’s failure, the dam was exploded. One of the envoys, Opie, went
missing precisely around this time with no notification to Skipta. It’s all
adding up, and Skipta says it is by his holy grace with Pholtus that they will
be expelled outside the Vaitarna rather then have their heads freed from their
shoulders. The envoys are confused and upset, and even venture making an
accusation about Opie having gone missing. The party piggybacks on this web of
deception.

When the envoys have been dispelled, it appears that those
left around can feel the weight of the decision but do not know full well what
it means. Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet are in attendance for a particular
reason: they believe members of Thresher Hall who bitterly opposed the dam are
suspect and should be investigated. Azrael, as Ayane, agrees with the group.
Skipta takes it one step further: he is tired of outside influence on the
court, and will be suspending the Thresher Hall meetings for now. He has the
power and law of Pholtus behind him.

The conversation turns to graver matters: the injured Etherknights
who were attacked at the dam. There is supposed demonic influence, which surprises
Skipta little. Thornmoor, working against Pholtus, could easily be aligned with
the forces of abyssal chaos. The party reveals that a powerful demon is on the way
to Mournfall to secure a powerful artifact meant to cement their power. Skipta is
distraught—Ethergaarde appears to be under ceaseless attacks, Nightfallen cultists
are whipping up insane conspiracies on top of it, he doesn’t know how he can
mobilize a detachment to look into this. The party volunteer to do this, and
Skipta says they will be rewarded greatly. He gives them the symbols of Pholtus
to show to the command in Mournfall when they arrive: Mournfall is an occupied village
of unnatural rainforest once ruled by elves, but here Ethergaarde has tamed the
wild lands and the leader, Lord Brice, is a vassal of Skipta’s. They take the
symbols and appear once again as a force for Pholtus. Next stop: Mournfall.

## Chapter Twenty One: Mornfall, or Mournfall

    The journey out of Ethergaarde is generally peaceful but there is a disturbance the night before they arrive in Mournfall: Yex spots fires

up on a nearby mountain, and the party investigates. They find the bones of a
great old dragon here, and a group of Kobolds who appear to be dedicated to its
maintenance. Instead of fighting them, they simply watch the kobolds talk about
the terrifying creatures on the way to Mournfall, how they have other
companions in the town that must be warned. In the course of the conversation,
they reveal the dragon’s bones to be Shyndre’s, the mother of Nyndrah the Unseen. The kobolds embark for Mournfall, the party deciding to lag behind to
not be spotted.

When the party arrives in Mournfall, they find the late
summer, temperate plains suddenly terminating at a tree line of thick rubber trees:
an unnatural rainforest is growing in this spot. Beyond it, a twisting
terracotta and stone village jutting out of the patch of jungle, complete with holy
ziggurats. The sign outside reads “Mornfall” but it is crossed out and re-written
as “Mournfall”. There is a hut they are instructed to visit when they flash
their Pholtian badges at the entrance. Walking through the muck, they see indigenous
elves with body paint reduced to slaving, working over the distant mountains
and retrieving valuable niter, along with copious produce this mystical area
produces. Everything is wet and muddy, but in the hut it is dry and spotless,
with an administrator named Reeve, dressed in all white, a punctilious man with a stick up his ass,
who apparently is surprised Skipta sent anyone to the town. Communications with
Ethergaarde have been lacking lately, he’s curious to why they are there. Yex
and Azrael decide to tell him they are investigating charges coming from Skipta
directly, and they want to know where there is a prominent holy place. Reeve
gestures out of the window at the substantial Ziggurat—the House of the
Magician. He has know idea how these worthless elves put it together over a
hundred years ago. He wishes them well but says its best to stay clear: the
ziggurat has been empty for a long time and is dedicated to gods no longer
worshipped.

The party goes directly to the ziggurat where they find it
patrolled by a group of interdimensional agents of chaos—the infamous Yuan-Ti.
Aligned with Graz’zt, these forces use spells and their magical resistances to
battle it out with the party but are ultimately destroyed.

Knowing they must heal before going further, the party
inquires about where to stay, and are told they can take up residence at the
local barracks. It is here that they meet Lord Brice, a brash, foul-mouthed,
and quite possibly drunk lord who hasn’t had to entertain any guests from the
Lord in quite a bit. He’s a little rusty, and Wolfrün is especially hesitant to
even show him a degree of respect.

The next day, they have breakfast and embark to the ziggurat,
but walk by a hip ball court on the way, where a wager between elvish slaves
and Pholtian guards has turned into an unfriendly affair, the guards suggesting
that if they win their elves should face the punishment savages facor, human
sacrifice. The elves try to explain they misunderstand the circumstances of sacrifice
but the guards have no interest. Wolfrün joins the game on the side of the elves,
as they are down one man. The guards win in the end, and the elves are forced
into retreat. The guardsmen treat Wolfrün with contempt from here on out, Yex
and Azrael saving themselves this fate by staying far away.

Once within the Ziggurat, the party finds more Yuan-ti,
riddles, trapped corridors, and multiple levels of peril preventing anyone but
a chosen of Mournfall from even setting eyes on the artifact. They even battle
it out in a room where lightning is loosed everywhere and use this against the occupying
forces. They take a nightmare speaker captive, and get her to give the secrets
of the temple: there is a sundial above that corresponds to the cyclical ages
of Amathara, able to tell when an era is coming to a close. On top of this, it
can be affixed to any broken artifact to restore it to power. Both of these
functions are useful to Graz’zt. Wolfrun slits her throat after finding this
out. They climb to the next level.

It is here that Graz’zt has stationed a demon who is
attempting to find the dial. It appears they have revealed the entrance by
activating a mechanism the floor below. This is a powerful Vrock named Arralith, a winged
fiend capable of great torment. He is stopped from retrieving it by the arrival
of the party. He has henchmen in tow that battle with this group of Bastards,
but eventually, our shadowy anti-heroes corner the winged beast and fight
within the water, in the sky, and on land, and they are victorious. Azrael gives his
most confident speech yet, recapping their heroics.

The party walks into the entrance to the final room, going through
a winged statue that resembles Shyndre. It is here they find the sun dial, and
find it is only set to "Dawn", but have no idea how fast its moving. They retrieve
it, and hit a gong on the wall, causing a high, piercing note to resonate
through Mournfall. Wolfrün leaves a calling card from the Monastery of Black Fire for Graz'zt to find.

When they exit the ziggurat, elves have convened all around.
They’ve heard stories of this gong, hit only by those able to get to the top of
the ziggurat. The guards want the crowds to disperse and the party is not
interested in these affairs. They abscond quickly back to Ethergaarde with the
sun dial.

## Chapter Twenty Two: Yellow Haze

    On the road home, the party battle a group of hill giants that are known to be around the area. On the way, they meet Hobnil and Coyopa, who

are moving from Mournfall as well to trade within Ethergaarde city limits. They
appear to have attained freedom somehow, and have with them two howler monkeys named
Hearst and Paradiso that they have fight each other for a wager. The party
maligns them for their arguments, and watches as the two monkeys cause their
sacks of gold to fall off a suspension bridge into the gulch below, lost. The
two elves curse at the monkeys, and the party leaves, uninterested in the rabble.
Over the city they see something strange: the southern part of town has a yellowish,
thick mist pouring out of it.

The party rests up, Azrael having a
vivid dream, a trip to the Nightmare Zone, where Valxun has members of the
Hearst family pummeling away at rocks, infinitely laboring. He is pleased with
Azrael for saving Nyndrah and encourages his bond with Anima—Graz’zt, the Dark
Prince, is truly dangerous to his aims. He “knows the same things we do. That
history is simply replaying itself, that the rivalry between the Hearsts and
the Paradisos is playing out as it did before. Maybe the permutations are a
little different, the bronze spears turned to steel swords, the crossbows to
pistols, but it’s playing out all the same. Moreover, he knows that all of this
will play into our hands, come Nightfall, come the end of Ethergaarde”.
It is here that Azrael glimpses the true difference in aims, Valxun wanting
history to play out as intended, as fated, whereas Graz’zt wants to loose the
world from history itself, to collapse all time on itself and tear into the
material plane. Either way the world’s going down, it’s up to Azrael whether
they come out on top. Anima has vowed to visit Azrael in a month’s time, and is
hard at work with a project, informs Valxun. It appears Valxun is reporting to
a deity above himself.

At the end of the dream, Sigmund is
vanishing from the chain gang. He has received his proper burial. Valxun only
wants to torment him more but now he has rectified his soul with his body: he recognized
himself, and fades out of the nightmare zone.

Back on the material plane, the
party take to the streets and find Ethergaarde erupting into chaos. Guards
beat a Nightfallen cultist in the streets, screaming at them that they are
enabling the agents of chaos by spreading conspiracy. The lipsticked cultist
points to the yellow mist over the Southern Quarter, saying this, the dam,
Sigmund, they’re all signs that Nightfall is coming. He receives another
beating. The party watch but do not inferfere, and make their way to Skipta.
Here, they collect a bounty while watching Thresher Hall members and
sympathetic laborers protesting outside of the walled Skipta Court. Skipta
remarks that Thresher Hall is livid that they have been shut out of politics,
their voices unheeded. Skipta is informed that the artifact was prevented from
falling into the hands of Graz’zt, but led to believe it is still in the ziggurat
as it should be. His confidence in the group is raised. He reveals that the
whole Southern Quarter has been under evacuation orders, he’s unsure of what is
afoot: weather or even a possible attack. He says the mist appears to do no
harm but hampers vision even a few feet ahead, preventing work from being
accomplished. It is said Namatius still has not evacuated the factory, and attempts
to contact have failed. He mentions Jaynyn and Gillet said the whole thing
could have been a backfired sigil, which seems on par after Namatius’s earlier
failures. The nobles have advocated that the Volaris project be dropped
entirely. The party decides to investigate.

Back at the Bastard’s, Destin is
feeling particularly happy at all the chaos. It seems to play into his hands,
the guards no longer patrolling Deadtown at all. His fortunes are up, and he is
having fun calling other people hanging around his stoops the real bums for
once, in a joking manner. His popularity among the rabble has risen, even if his
sights are still set low. Jaynyn and Gillet have come by in their absence, asking for them to
spy on Thresher Hall members but Ragnoc and Destin “have a non-aggression pact
that goes way back. Never bite the hand that feeds, or crafts your daggers”.
In fact, after the party does some shopping they find Ragnoc in a state of distress.
He sells them the weapons they need but find that he is encouraging protests,
their voices drowned, and he is under investigation by Etherknights for having
sold the barrels of smokepowder that eventually led to the dam explosion. He explains
he sold them to a couple of Ethergaards but his descriptions don’t match any
real ones.

Mezreia is overjoyed to see Wolfrün
again, was concerned about him leaving after finding the book of Abominable
Devastation. She says that she thinks the cultists in the streets might be
connected with Nerull, that she sees nothing behind them, but can’t shake the
feeling that the worshippers of Wee Jas aren’t too different either. Maybe
the key to braking the town out of this spiritual torpor is throwing themselves
into this forbidden knowledge.

After hitting up the shops, the court, and the temple, the party embark to the
Southern Quarter where the laborers have been kicked out while the mists billow
in. The more wealthy families have afforded to pay the guards off and get
supplies delivered in. Angry workers find themselves without a mouthpiece in
Thresher Hall and without a means of work. The party decides to go to the estate of
Namatius Elysium. They circle the area, finding multiple windows and places of
entry. Azrael is dressed like Ayane keeping a look out, while Yex and Wolfrün decide
to investigate the estate. While in the mist, Ayane spots a crying woman walking
up to the estate. It turns out it is Namatius’s girlfriend, Mia. Apparently, no
one has seen any of the workers at the factory since the mists poured in three
days prior, and attributed this to the frequent all nighters Namatius sets up.
She knows there are beds and provisions in the factory, but it’s unlike him not
to at least take a break in his steam powered carriage and come to see her. That being said he has been obsessive lately, after his failure at launching the ship, they work long hours and the ship apparently has been placed in a secretive location away from prying public eyes. Despite this, she
thinks something is gravely wrong. That maybe he’s been attacked. Ayane assures
her that everything is fine, he’s met with Namatius before and he is a careful
and protective man, that his house and every place he goes is impregnable. Meanwhile,
behind him, Yex and Wolfrun force their way through Namatius’s window.

The two get spotted by a butler and
Yex tries to diffuse the situation. Wolfrün slyly takes the butler into a side
room, slits his throat, and puts coins on his eyes. The two adventurers loot
the estate until a powerful construct on the floor below begins to stalk them.
In the process, they find a study with plans written out, it appears that one
of them is a schedule. Sure enough, Namatius was just starting mock tests for
Volaris’s crew, and was about to actually test Volaris itself again, believing
both the sigils and steamcraft to be sound. The party escapes before being
caught by the construct, and rejoin Ayane. Ayane changes back to Azrael, meets with the Thurianni clan shadow elves who state that Illumi and the other members of his family will be back within the month. He leaves the sun dial with them for safekeeping. With this, the party decide to head for Elysium Factory.
Poor bastards.

## Chapter Twenty Three: Elysium Factory

    It’s difficult to find the may through the jaundiced miasma, the sickening clouds of unnatural fog descending on Ethergaarde’s Southern Quarter.

Mia walks one way, the party the other: toward the factory. They avoid the main
warehouse doors, finding another door “Water Reclamation”. They can hear the
sound of rushing water but the door is jammed. This won’t do for a party known for
stealth. They take to the roof, finding a thin iron cage that offers a line of
site into the factory’s foundry, two overflowing cauldrons below and an entire
workshop. They also see what looks like a giant grandfather clock. Azrael uses
his eldritch blasts to noisily dislocate the cage and the party crashes down,
literally for Yex, whose lizard body drops from the rope. Below, they encounter
a marauding clockwork golem, who breathes fire and flies around the foundry,
greatly harming the party before being reduced to a pile of burned cogs. In the
process, the clock ticks but they make it out before an explosion. They hear
roaring inside the foundry, but use a lever to close the door. The party
presses on, into the Worker’s Quarters, where sectioned off sleeping areas are
left for the workers. Flying clockwork bugs hold documents and workers belongings
they have pilfered.  They battle with
warforged fighters and eventually—groups of purple cloaked wizards, gunners,
and grenadiers, whose clothing, technology, and accents are unmistakeable to
Wolfrün. These are agents of Thornmoor. In these quarters, they capture two Thornmoorish
raiders and rescue a frightened worker, Aurelia, who states a gas-masked man
took over the reactory room along with a powerful man in a half-mask. They
imprisoned the workers and killed those that fought back. Linus, her husband,
instructed her to run, but was too frightened to come out of his particular area
to assure her safety. He was last seen in the warehouse. Roping up the Thornmoors,
the party heads to the warehouse.

Here, warforged and abominations made of gears hunt through
Namatius’s supplies. By eavesdropping and going through documents, the party
find out Namatius has been taken captive by someone known as the Chronomancer,
and is in the factory being questioned perhaps under duress. They find workers
who have been cut down by the Thornmoors, but also, find Linus within the halls.
The party finds that they need to heal, leaving after removing the warehouse door
barricade, but reunite the couple before they do so. They instruct the couple
to stay hidden and monitor the roped Thornmoors.

When the party returns, to their
horror, an army of Yuan-Ti led by Thraxxia and Graz’zt are outside the Water
Reclamation. They are preparing to come after Namatius, having failed to secure
Sigmund. It’s unclear at this point why this is a natural next step, but it is
revealed, when Thraxxia goes to touch Graz’zt, that he is but an image: the Dark
Prince is apparently unable to make it to the material plane.

Avoiding this legion, the party choose
to go back through the roof but find what the clock concealed: a clockwork
dragon. The fight is massive, once again gravely wounding the party. They emerge
victorious, slaying the dragon and calling to Aurelia and Linus to hit the
lever and let them in. The party explore an electrified capacitor bank, finding
a puzzle of switches that results in many injuries, Wolfrün pushing through but
the rest of the party locked in other rooms. He finds a gigantic 12 foot tall
automaton and realized his error, moving back. They find a loose grate and take
to tunnels below, locating troops with valuable information. One has a letter
from ANACHRONISM, a factory in Thornmoor:

“No need to print what was discussed
within the confines of House Rinabel’s own glorious ANACHRONISM. Our factory
has produced the finest clockwork soldiers, and you, along with your warforged
companions will pay Ethergaarde back for the expelling (and likely killing of
one) of our diplomats. We’ll rise to prominence in Kaiser Kammerer’s eyes when
he finds we have completed our ship AND have stymied the efforts of a state
enemy. You know the drill--keep the factory on lockdown until the chronomancer
obtains the needed sigils. If any workers remain on site, do not let them
leave. Keep to the main sections of the factory. You are subordinate to Jürgen Rinabel and are to report to him in case of any
breach. Returning to Thornmoor with the information we need to power the TSS
Uhr-Wolke will result in your immediate promotion to ANACHRONISM’s Inner
Circle.

Tidings,

Elgert Elsner

ANACHRONISM Director”

The name is familiar:
Rinabel. This is the family name of the noble house that led to Wolfrün's
expulsion from the Thornmoor. During an explosive fight with Cian, a jealous
thieves guild member, the niece of Duke Rinabel was killed. According to this
message, the Duke’s own son, Jürgen Rinabel, is involved. In fact, he is the
one in the reactor room with the gas mask, reporting directly under the
Chronomancer.

The party uses the tunnel systems as well as the main halls
to take on the Water Reclamation area, finding a difficult puzzle that leads to
deadly fights with a variety of warforged. They eventually unleash an iron
cobra that was damaging the pipes that is eventually slain. They find a Thornmoor
gunner named Dominic and a grenadier pouring over a systems manual. They are
concerned how much time it’s taking the Chronomancer to get the information
needed to to steal the technology for the airship. Dominic is uncertain and
wants to use the manual to get to Jurgen and warn him, but his companion says
he is being disloyal and that not only will they steal it, they’ll destroy
Volaris on the way out. The two are attacked by the party. Yex chains Dominic
to a hot pipe, and they force him to say what he understands about getting into
the Reactor. It will take Simultaneous activation of the capacitor bank
and water reclamation areas to overload the doors to the reactor, but Dominic
accomplishes it by lying to his Thornmoor allies about orders from the Rinabel assassin.

After finding a badly threshed
body outside the room, they enter to face Jurgen Rinabel. Except his face is
cloaked in a gas mask that lets him see in the dark, and everything around is
dark. Shots ring out, Jurgen firing long range musket shots, scattering the
party with his rifle. Wolfrün lands the impressive attacks in this battle,
jumping to the peak of the reactor. Jurgen sees this man who is wanted for
killing his cousin, and unleashes with everything he has. It is not enough, the
party drop him, keeping him alive. They tell him, like Dominic, that he will need
to give up the secrets of how the Chronomancer has moved so far through the factory.
Jurgen states that now that the reactor is activated, the airship is receiving
power. They don’t have much time. Things go from bad to worse, the activation
of the reactor and its rumbling cause Thraxxia to stop preparing and to take to
raiding the factory. What results is a bitter three way fight, Thornmoor versus
Graz’zt’s troops versus Bastards. The party is incredibly successfully, hunting
and killing every Yaun-Ti while Thraxxia moves out of sight.

After this, the party takes the two captives through the power hub,
moving into the pump station, where they free a cage full of captives. Jurgen
and Dominic go ahead to the vehicle bay to secure a crablike vehicle for use in
informing the Chronomancer of important decisions. This prevents the party from
getting into another costly battle. At the end of this, the fate of the
captives is discussed in grave terms, Dominic is seen to be nothing but a
liability (perhaps more importantly, a pawn that can be discarded to put fear
into Jurgen’s eyes), and is slain, to the dismay of Yex. Jurgen Rinabel strikes
up a bargain with Wolfrün: his life will be spared if, after all the dust has
settled, Jurgen returns and tells the Duke that Cian was the one who launched
the attack that killed the Duke’s niece, that Wolfun wanted to prevent it. That
Wolfrün was framed, and should be welcomed back to Thornmoor. Jurgen swears on
it, and the two find themselves linked by the pact.

The strange party move through a reservoir of heated water to an airlock
where, emerging from the crab, they sneak in to find a terrible sight:
Namatius, bound by magic manacles preventing his motion, tortured by a
half-masked, brass coated Chronomancer, who stands across from Thraxxia. The alu demon, having survived the previous fight, demands that Namatius be given to her,
promising she has never failed before and she will end his life. She reveals something previously unknown: Namatius's mysterious fortunes came from...the Paradiso family. He is the sole surviving member of one of the competing families of robber barons who once ruled the Barony of Cephalan before Ethergaarde was maintained, families whose war rended the kingdom. Their greed was said to transgress generations, their mere existence a fated threat to all around them. While Hearst is buried, Namatius is still alive, and ironically, adored by the state that wants desperately to route these lineages from existence.

The party converges on them, another three way battle underway. When the party gets close to the Chronomancer, time slows down, and when Yex nearly makes it right to him, he sees that the factory keeps dimming, shifting...another image is underneath it, is he in a chapel? Full of dust, broken pews? What's happening? Thraxxia
and the Chronomancer end up taking a platform to the secret area Namatius has
placed the ship, away from the public, known only to himself and his workers.
They fight over Namatius, while Namatius’s shield guardian cause Yex and Yex’s
Olidammaran copy of himself to have to run to the surface.

## Chapter Twenty-Four: Volaris the Ethercruiser

    Back on the surface at last, the battle heats up, Namatius’s body passed from the Chronomancer, to Thraxxia, the party landing blows on each. It’s difficult to harm the Chronomancer, who can slow down missiles, and

Thraxxia, who disappears and reappears at whim, flying about. Eventually,
Thraxxia grabs Namatius and teleports him away. She will have proved herself to
her father once more. The Chronomancer, however, finds himself surrounded. He
is repeatedly battered, his half mask split, his body rended, the shield
guardian medallion falling. The mists dissipate, a new day in Ethergaarde, warm
fall light spreading. The party takes it just before the shield guardian comes
to crush them, renaming the mechanical construct “Stompy”.

Stompy hoists the party aboard the ship, where the crew, who
were in the middle of a mock trial during their capture, are locked in the
ship. The party release them and deceive the crew, letting them know they are
in the ranks of Skipta and that they have an urgent meeting with the Lord, but
will need them to await orders. They meet the ranks, a motley crew of air
sailors more used to the water then the skies, uncertain of their fate now that
they’ve lost Namatius. War with Thornmoor seems certain, they will be called on
to pilot the ship. Isolde, the first mate, points out the ship isn’t even
operational. It’s a ship without a captain. Azrael assures her all will be
fine. He heads back to his manor and meets with Azzoko and Illumi. The rest of
his clan is assembled, back from Al-dragazar, safe and in the old abandoned
nursery in the fishery. He tells them to come along, that they will be disembarking
for Thornmoor. He retrieves the sun dial and finds that it already shows that
it is evening. The whole party sees what lies ahead: a collision course between
Ethergaarde and Thornmoor.

After healing, the party visits the court of Skipta, where
they learn a full investigation is underway. The guards will be investigating
what happened at the factory, and Skipta is given the story that once again, he
has been thwarted by Thornmoor. Volaris, while just lying on a flat concealed
hill outside the Vaitarna, is characterized as “missing” by the party. Anagastes
fills in the blanks: the ship has been stolen, ANACHRONISM has become a
military power, and it won’t be long before Thornmoor uses their knowledge to
further their own agenda.

Everything in the end seems to go back to Sigmund: it all
makes sense, his leaking of information gave Thornmoor what they needed. He
likely even told them about Volaris’s issues, and now destiny has proved right:
a Hearst family member has threatened the king. Can Skipta overcome fate itself?
The gravity seems to way heavily on the lord. The party splits up after this, planning
their own missions as they receive a new kind of freedom courtesy of Volaris,
powered by the sun dial.

## Chapter Twenty-Five: Tasha's Swamp

*Yex Solo Quest. Yex's eyes only, please!* Following the defeat of Chronomancer Johann, Yex gets a well-needed rest. While Azrael sleeps in his palatial estate, and Wolfrün spends the night at the temple of Wee Jas, Yex kicks up his lizard feet at the Olidammaran Safehouse. He can barely make it out of the room before Anixius Pallium cuts him off. The wizard, one whose mysticism makes him easily the most devout follower of Olidammara in the Bastards besides Yex, is obsessed with the elements of chance being put into play: the yellow haze over the southern quarter, the takeover of Elysium factories, the guards finding the bodies of Thornmoorish fighters (and Yuan Ti terrors) throughout the factory, the airship missing! Yex sputters some theories, but he’s being grilled more and more. Anixius brings up how strange it was that Yex and his two other companions were gone for the exact amount of time between the mists and the revelation of the attacks. Yex sighs. “Fine,” and he divulges the secret. Anixius is privately interested and anxious, and when hearing of Volaris being docked in a secret location, requests to come along with the lizardman.

From here, Yex spends the day preparing, praying to Olidammara for good fortune, and talking with the Bastards, who are developing their plans to use the instability in Ethergaarde to catapult themselves to the top. Yex leaves under cover of night to the airship, Anixius becoming the ship’s first official passenger. Azrael’s sundial causes the ship’s malfunctions to seize, Thornmoor’s secrets no longer needed. The ship takes to the skies, and leaves behind Ethergaarde.

While aboard the ship, Yex passes over the ruins of Vorel’thel, the swamp village from which he hailed, the lizardfolk enslaved or run off. But there’s something amiss: activity below. Thornmoor soldiers and their brass armor shining in the sun, and what’s this? Lizardfolk, once again in the swamps, a few patrolling the village itself, a few in the dank, wild woods to the south, all visible from the airship. Seized by the mystery of the moment, Yex tells the crew he must descend, he must look into the matter.

Descending from a rope are Yex and Anixius, dropping into the village and sneaking around the huts. They eavesdrop on a few homes, finding lizardfolk nervously wondering what the Thornmoorish troops will do this time. In the middle of the village, they reveal themselves to an old acquaintance—Thurkear. Thurkear is a lizardman keeping watch over the village, he tells Yex that despite being run off years ago, the lizardfolk have been allowed to return, but paid “a great price” for this. One of these prices is the installment of a terrifying king, one Yex glimpses in a central hut, known as King Kepesk. Another price is the continued raids by Thornmoor to take lizardmen captive. Thurkear explains that a large number of troops have congregated to the northeast as well as taking the north road to Ethergaarde. He is afraid for the lives of a dispatch of lizardfolk in the hunting grounds south of the village, worried Thornmoor is capturing more of them.

Yex gives Anixius the option of returning to the ship, and the mystic sees little here that could move the winds of chance in the direction of the Bastards. He takes him up on the offer and returns to the ship. Meanwhile, Yex takes to the southern hunting fields. He battles a pair of clockwork huntsmen that have been capturing lizardfolk in nets, and the continued fighting alerts a woman who was in the center of the swamp. It is Malise, the white cloaked witch known to haunt the sewers underneath Ethergaarde. She asks who dares disturb her coven, and when she sees the fight breaking out she joins in as well. The three parties trade blows, Malise’s spells seemingly unable to bring the hunstmen down. Yex finally causes one of them to hear the bells of its own funeral ringing in its ears, dropping the huntsman and ending the life.

Seeing Yex restore the area to tranquility, Malise calls off the fight. The lizardman is very familiar, in fact, she’s seen him before…in the gauntlet underneath the Olidammaran safehouse! He was one of the Bastards to pass the rigorous test. Knowing all this, Malise alludes to being able to do something that could move the troops out of the area. Yex has been useful, and its time for his reward.

## Chapter Twenty-Six: Black Mask pt. III

*Azrael's Solo Quest. Azrael's eyes only, please!* Azrael, resting after the trials of the Elysium Factory, receives a knock at the door of his manor house. It's Jürgen Rinabel, the Thornmoorish assassin. Jürgen tells him that Wolfrün sent him to have a night experiencing the splendor of Ethergaarde in the Exalted Estates. Rinabel is terrified of the fate that might await him in Thornmoor, and Azrael extends to him the idea that he might not ever have to return, giving him a little bit of truth about Azrael's own life: that he keeps moving when there's something that would prevent him from getting what he wants. This is inconceivable to Jurgen, who jokes about the cultural difference, pointing to the indoor trees and lack of a reflecting pool in the atrium. He is given a nice room with a balcony.

That night, Azrael concentrates on his patron and absconds to the nightmare zone, where Valxun is furious. Graz'zt has captured Namatius Elysium, the only surviving member of the Paradisos. Valxun believes that fate will restore him (and the shadowy figure he reports to) to prominence, but these machinations of Graz'zt threaten to "throw the world off its axis". Valxun is ready to strike his warlock down. Azrael cleverly attributes Namatius's kidnapping to fate itself--that he was always going to end up with Graz'zt. He says he's on his way to Thornmoor and will ignite the tinderbox underneath the two towns even more assuredly now. Valxun is impressed with this reasoning, and tells Azrael he will invest in the power he needs to finally complete this epoch in history. He says he has met with Anima the witch and Nyndrah the Unseen, agents of Iggwilv. A hundred years earlier, he says Graz'zt kept his lover Iggwilv in his thrall and these agents and their vengeance could prove worthy allies. Valxun says the witch left a message for the warlock: to meet her within the ruins of Vaitarna Dam.

That morning, Azrael leaves for the ruins of Vaitarna, knowing his family is preparing to leave aboard the Ethercruiser. He spots a pair of Berbelang, fiendish agents of Graz'zt, floating on green wings over the Dam. Azrael hides behind a staircase and hits them with a series of Eldritch blasts, stunning them and taking the fight directly to them. They descend around the shadow elf, one of them falling over in a heap and sending a spectral version of itself to harm Azrael with psychic damage while the other two claw and bite. Azrael is beaten and bloodied, but kills all but one, who plane shifts out of existence.

Azrael then meets with Anima, finding her tending to Nyndrah the Unseen, a shadow dragon descended from a legendary lizard that once haunted The Barony of Cephalan. Nyndrah is still hurt from her attack in the abyss, but is on the mend. Anima explains that Nightfall is real, that it's coming soon, and all they need to do is prevent Graz'zt from tearing a hole in time itself and stopping fate from restoring them to their rightful place. While Azrael hopes to became the lord of Ethergaarde, Anima wants to make sure that Graz'zt pays for what he did to Iggwilv. This meeting of convenience is solidified by an offer from Azrael: to take Anima and Nyndrah to Thornmoor to meet up with the rest of her coven. He says he will set up a meeting with Valxun to insure they are on the same page.

Azrael takes a long rest before departing, leaving to the nightmare zone and reporting to Valxun that everything is going according to plan. Valxun tells him the time on the dial is nearly up: the meeting between them the next time will take place on the material plane.

Aboard the Volaris, Azrael runs into Jürgen again while Wolfrün explores Thornmoor below: Jürgen has been given the Cephalan short sword to prove he took out an Etherknight and did his best, and that he will lie and say there was a traitor in the ANACHRONISM ranks that alerted the Etherknights to the Factory raid and brought about the downfall. Despite this good cover story, he has one more request: he believes he can absolutely save himself if the Chronomancer is revivified. Azrael is initially contemputuous of this suggestion but grows to see an opportunity: perhaps he could pretend to be the Chronomancer Johann. He even takes on the image to startle Jürgen, who is apologetic and does not truly lie. Azrael is not impressed and tells him he'll have to do better. Jürgen suggests that maybe Azrael himself could impersonate the Chronomancer, which leads Azrael to come to the conclusion that any specific questions might out his disguise, so maybe there could be value in Yex revivifying him after all...

Jürgen points at the black mask at Azrael's side, the Hearst family nobility mask, and says that he too must wear a mask now, showing the fragment of the Chronomancer's mask that Wolfrün gave him as a symbol of their secret connection.

## Chapter Twenty-Seven: When the Sky Falls, We Catch Larks

*Wolfrun Solo Quest*. *Wolfun's eyes only, please!* Jürgen spends the night in Azrael's manor house. He has a difficult time wrapping his head around how he came to Ethergaarde to derail the city's plans and now is sleeping in the lap of its luxury. The party leave in the dead of night, the crew having been assured that Skipta gave his blessing about the voyage to Thornmoor. The crew misses Namatius anyway, with Isolde covering her feelings by becoming a fairly martial captain. Azrael's sun dial causes the ship to rise, and with Azrael leaping over the side and Yex roping down into a swamp, Wolfrun is left to explain that all this is "part of the plan". The crew is mesmerized: these must be true heroes, they've never seen anything like it. One day the ship is dormant and they're trapped in it, with the Chronomancer holding them hostage, the next the ship is in air, they're freed, and the Chronomancer is in a cage in the cargo hold.

Aboard the ship, Wolfrun cases the decks, getting a feel for the crew. Unimpressed with the stewards, who at this point, have no job to do, he finds that Eastree is a notable exception: she has a ledger to keep track of passenger needs. There's only one entry: Anixius Pallium, who Yex brought aboard. Wolfrun recommends that Eastree talk to Isolde about a role change. She is excited and gives Wolfrun the ledger, which Wolfrun gives to Helena, who is eyeing Anixius hungrily.

By the time Wolfrun makes it down to the cargo hold, Jurgen pulls him aside. He's been thinking of the defeated Chronomancer in the cage all day, and needs to talk to Wolfrun about his future. He's afraid of returning to Thornmoor without victory, he's afraid of what happens when Skipta's men see that the ship is gone and assuredly blame Thornmoor, he's afraid of what to tell his father when he's clearing Wolfrun's name. Wolfrun reassures him, picking up a piece of the Chronomancer's mask. Jurgen mocks him at first with the Thornmoorish phrase, "when the sky falls, we catch larks". Wolfrun responds that there are many ways to catch a lark.He gives one half of the mask to Jurgen saying its a bond between them. Jurgen points out that he was represented by the mask: it's broken because he failed. Wolfrun comes up with a plan for him: he gives him the Cephalan short sword and tells Jurgen to tell Duke Rinabel and the Kaiser that there was a traitor in ANACHRONISM's ranks. Skipta was ready, and the Etherknights defeated the Chronomancer. Jurgen went out fighting, slaying one and taking his sword. Jurgen is impressed when Wolfrun hits him with another question: how far away from the throne is he? Well, his father isn't the most high ranking Duke, and Kaiser Kammerer has a son anyway. Wolfrun tells him to watch the throne anyhow, that there may be a place for him. Jurgen can't fathom everything Wolfrun is telling him, but takes his mask and goes above deck. Thornmoor comes into view, the gothic steeples and tall buildings, the fires, the plateaus. Jurgen has one last thing pressing on his mind: he inquires if Yex is a healer, and if so, could he heal the Chronomancer. Bringing back Konig Zeitlos's 18 year old son could be the ticket he needs to not appear suspicious. Wolfrun tells him to talk it over with Azrael.

From here, Wolfrun has Isolde fly outside Thornmoor, over the Isle of the Witch Queen. His mission is to return to the Monastery of Black Fire, to see the group that taught him this unimpeachable level of martial arts. They move the ship high into the air and drop a 100 ft ladder. Wolfrun climbs down the latter and drops off of it, levitates down until he reaches isle in the falling snow. Standing 300 ft off is a thin, waifish young woman with porcelain white skin and red braides. Wolfrun takes long strides across the field, seeing in her a potential vision, an aspect of the deity Wee Jas. When he gets close he sees the image flicker: its an illusion. He slows to a stop in the snow and the woman's flesh appears to turn inside out, it looks darkened as if tangled in sea weed, her skin dripping off the bones, her eyes hollowing, her rib cage exposed. She laughs and tells him to turn back before the image fades.

Fearing the worst for his monastery, Wolfrun charges in, finding floating Vargouille heads flitting about. He runs through the bottom floor of the monastery, chased by the screaming heads. One frightens and stuns him while the others chip away at him, he's injured substantially as he battles all but one to the ground. The survivor flies to the top floor and is nearly run down by Wolfrun except--when he gets to the top, the terrible witch he saw outside the monastery is standing on the altar, beneath the soul cage. She tells him this time that his lungs are filling with water, and he begins to feel it. Using a moment of inspiration (knowing his whole monastery is in trouble) he fights through the sensation. The ensuing battle is a master class in defensive fighting, the witch blurring herself and maintaining the blur despite intermittent hits from Wolfrun, Wolfrun shrugging off the woman's lolling tongue and inside-out face meant to frighten him, Wolfrun resisting her urge to put him in a hypnotized laugh, the Vargouille darting around taking pot shots but landing few blows. Coming close to the witch, Wolfrun recognizes who is on the ground: Jurgen's dad. Duke Rinabel. He has come to the monastery to mourn the loss of his son, and now he is unconscious, and the rest of the guild has been placed "somewhere else".

At long last, Wolfrun lands a blow that throws the blur off of the witch, then follows up with a flying guillotine kick, firing the witch to the floor. When she looks back up, she is in her waifish form again. She says he can have his friends back, extracting a small box from her robes. Wolfrun asks who she is. "Loreley," she responds. "This man, Duke Rinabel, is getting in the way of a chaos that is needed: Thornmoor and Ethergaarde are on course for collision. Nothing can block this path". She sets the box on the ground, allowing the members of the Monastery of Black Flame to tumble out of a pocket dimension. Realizing her concerns might meld well with his, don't really involve his monastery, and also realizing her power, Wolfrun decides to tell the witch to run before they see here. She says she'll be on the north side of the isle.

When the monastery members come to, they are overjoyed to be reunited with one of their most promising students. Grandmaster Langerschatten shows even some overt affection to him, his unlife saved. While embarrassed by the ordeal, the Grandmaster swallows his pride and tells Wolfrun he's glad to see him, and has ascended to a new rank, and is able to petition to become a master one day. He is given the opportunity to come up with a unique token and is granted an obsidian dagger from the wall of the monastery to symbolize his ascendance.

## Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Witching Hour

    Snow cascades through a foul and filthy air, standing amid the pyramidal tupelo trees of the Vorel’thel hunting grounds, the lizard priest Yex stands, his mace gouged by the clockwork pieces that lie in heaps on the soil. The swamp burbles around him, though he can see little now save the emotionless faces of the lizardfolk he saved from nets, and the countenance of Malise. She beckons Yex over to her hut.

Vorel’thel was destroyed when Thornmoor came through with their slavers before, but everything is different now. It was in this very swamp, we watched our lady, Iggwilv, Tasha, in the thrall of Graz’zt. Kepesk back then was a renegade, chased out of his village, a would-be slave without a rock to warm himself on. He promised Graz’zt his soul for the power to gain Vorel’thel back. He made a bargain that day, and what he got in return was a body grown monstrously large, demonic blood flowing through his cold veins, warming them, transforming him. He rebuilt his tribe and made a terrible pact: to keep Thornmoor out he would allow them a certain number of strong, able bodied lizards. They are prized for their strength, endurance, and unfeeling, unflinching behaviors...he allowed this to happen. He allowed this to go on. This may look like home but it is not. My sisters are gone, Iggwilv is gone, this may look like my home, but it is not

Volaris has landed, right outside of a thick marshland. The area is well concealed, with a v-shape of tall pines standing well over the boilers and propellers. Azrael, his Thurianni clan shadow elven family, and the witch Anima, are being given a tour of the sleeping quarters by the adept stewardess Dana. Dana is worried she's offending the exotic shadow elves, and tries to show them a nice place to sleep and inadvertently shows them Helena fucking Anixius Pallium instead. Both stewardesses yell at each other and both use the defense that they were trying to make the guests feel welcome. Anixius chides Dana, saying there's nothing to do anyway in this swamp, which alarms Anima--a swamp outside Thornmoor? They've taken her right home, to the hut of Iggwilv's Fingers, the coven of witches.

Azrael follows Anima and joins Yex, and they learn of a prophecy from these witches, who can see "which grain will grow" when they look in the future. They can scry from a large cauldron, and these witches have given and received possessions from Azrael (the obsidian stone, the sending stones) hinting that they've been voyeurs for part of this struggle. They say Azrael reminds them of Skipta I, who came through from Amberhelm on the way to Cephalan, and they could see he would one day be king. They also give a dire pronouncement: the Thornmacht will see Volaris unless they do something. That something? Either taking care of King Kepesk and replacing the lizard, a permanent yet indirect solution, or killing the Thornmacht, a temporary yet direct one. The witches vow to distract the other party regardless of what the party chooses.

The team decides on taking on the Thornmacht slavers. They return to Volaris, talking with Isolde and finding that she has misgivings about Namatius being gone, and is trying to get the crew to cut down branches to conceal the ship further. She's glad to hear the party is on the chase. Jurgen sits and forlornly peels a potato, taking in the news that men he once worked for are about to be attacked. Izzoko asks if his son needs help, and lends his sword to the fight.

Yex and Azrael tiptoe around the perimeter, drawing attention of the Thornmacht on the Northern Line and causing them to congregate after, wondering what they heard. Once in position, with Azrael right by them, Yex hidden behind Thurkear's house, and Izzoko on the other side with an arrow knocked, they decide to let the elder Thurianni get the jump. it's a success, he plants an arrow in a Thornmacht head and ignites a wild battle, with Thornmacht rangers taking their marks on the party, one shooting Yex in the heart. One Thornmacht with a flamethrower burns down Thurkear's hut, causing the lizard to join the fray, burying his spear in one of their scalps. Azrael flies and launches blasts at the group, transforming into a mass of pulsating maggots and causing them to freeze in horror. Yex throws gas grenades and calls on his spirit guardians to weather them. In the end, they are bloodied, but victorious.

## Chapter Twenty-Nine: Chust Sdeer Zee Poat

In the village of Vorel'thel, Yex sets up Thurkear up for rebellion. Witnessing King Kepesk, the demonic ruler of the old village, Yex knows it will take more than a witch's curse and a distraction to stop the great beast. Azrael helps shore up these efforts, the duo lending weapons and philosophical support for a world that could be free for them again, a world beyond this new exploited Vorel-thel, one that resembled days that Yex never got to know, where lizardfolk could rule their own swamp.

Back in the island monastery of Black Fire, Wolfrun is given a ceremonial dagger by the vampiric monk Langerschatten. This obsidian weapon is a symbol that one day the monk will be able to return to the monastery and take on a challenge to become a master. The group has watched Wolfrun come to the aid of the town only to be driven out, then finds him with the patience and courage to forgive a would-be assassin. Instead of thinking of these things as wild ideas, they see Wolfrun has a point: there are true breaking points in Thornmoor's society, and having a foothold in it with a highly motivated son-of-the-duke doesn't sound so wild. Wolfrun is given the full ceremony, and takes Duke Rinabel into town. He instructs the duke to keep his explanations simple, using the Cephalan shortsword as a symbol of defeating prominent Ethergaards before being forced to route.

After this, Duke Rinabel lets Wolfrun onto a Thornmoor steamship that the monk takes all the way to Vorel'thel, and the party finds Wolfrun coming through the thick smog, victorious and armed with his new dagger. Once the party is re-united, they decide to take the boat back into town, confusing the sailors by taking on the costume of Thornmacht guards (when they ask, Azrael goes into a Thornmoor accent "Chust Sdeer Zee Poat!"), a mixture of magic and stolen identification papers from felled Thornmoor. They return to the city, finding a strange industrial oasis in the rolling plains of the Windswept coast: steam cars, tall tenement buildings, factories, and wide streets mark this new and unfamiliar place.

With them is the body of the Chronomancer Johan. They know, that with Konig Zeitlos's son alive only because of them, they could potentially manipulate the town and drive Thornmoor into a conflict with Ethergaarde. But it is here that the effort is aborted. The party finds The Spiegel, a mysterious chapel to a god that can apparently be visited by walking through a mirror. Here, the party bargains with the high priest, hoping the priest will understand that Chronomancer Johan, who is dressed as a felled Thronmacht, should be brought back to life. The priest explains how difficult and costly raising the dead can be and that this soldier is just one of many who were killed in the assault on Ethergaarde, and he would not be able to simply raise this one while telling the families of the others that it is impossible. The party angles to see if they can do anything else as Azrael becomes ever more Azrael, losing his temper at the suggestion that the party could go through the mirror and visit the god Murlynd themselves. At this preposterous suggestion, Azrael storms off and the party continues back to the thicket of woods Volaris the Airship is concealed within. On the way, they unceremoniously drop the body of the Chronomancer Johann into the water, ending all hope of resurrection. Wolfrun gives his final rites and the Thornmoor chapter is concluded. For now.

## Chapter Thirty: Cannons Over the Coast

The party finds that Isolde has been keeping a tight ship. They have alluded capture and assault and stayed by the party's designs. With this false start into Thornmoor, the crew of Namatius Elysium's hand picked adventurers are ready to get back to Ethergaarde, but they find only strife and some alternative plans from these Bastards of Bastards here. High in the sky, about fifty miles south of Lord Skipta's kingdom, Volaris the Ethercruiser is intercepted by Thronmoorian ships! The group ends up in a high stakes dog fight, firing cannons, energy weapons, and grappling hooks at each other's ships. Volaris takes some damage but the majority of it is cosmetic. Yex releases an incredible energy bolt that sends one of the ships spiralling down into the valley below, and the party takes a nose dive, following the wreckage.

At this point, these flying ships are a mystery: after all, if the Chronomancer had one half of the knowledge to complete airship construction and Namatius had the other half, then only someone who knew both sides could use this knowledge to put these ships in the sky. The only person who had been privvy to both, Johann, is dead in the river. Well, the only person besides the Yuan-Ti employed by Graz'zt, the dark prince. Yes, when they remove the helmeted visor from the charred Thornmacht corpses they find these Yuan-Ti serpent beasts. The party then knows that Graz'zt is on the lookout for them, and has apparently procured some powerful ships from Thornmoor.

That night, the party ingratiates themselves with the crew, with Wolfun especially charming the otherwise frightened members. The battle seems to have pulled them together. A shell-shocked Azrael delivers the bad news: there can be no returning to Ethergaarde. The party is marked now, and any of the crew returning would signal knowledge that the Ethercruiser exists, preventing the party from their manipulations of Skipta's elite. Of course, he leaves that last part out, citing the safety of the crew. Yex wonders where they could even go that would be near the city but concealed. Isolde has a place in mind: Shyndre's Bones. The mound where the legendary red dragon crashed into the earth after a fatal wound. Azrael and Yex once passed this place on the way to Mournfall. It is said that the Etherknights are terrified of the lingering energy around this area, thinking it cursed. It would be perfect. The party agree.

The party meets and talk at a table, deciding that they will allow the members to interrogate the Yuan-Ti since they want to know the conditions of their own kidnapping, the assault on Elysium factory that has led to this moment. This scene definetly happens and everyone remembers it.

## Chapter Thirty One: Heirless

The party lands at Shyndre's Bones, finding the red dragon's skeleton felled on the rocky precipice. They are safe here, and the party explains they will need to head back into Ethergaarde but will be requiring the crew to stay here. The plan is to have the uh, simple and loyal Hayburt go to the edge of the city in the woods, waiting to pass any news the party needs to get back to the crew. All of this sounds like a dangerous job to Isolde, who wants her crew paid for the trouble. A testy conflict with Azrael opens up before the group gets paid and told they will have to make due with that amount, the party needing their reserves to make Ethergaarde a safe place again.

From here, the party returns to Ethergaarde and finds that Nightfallen cultists are being beaten and arrested. The doomsayers have begun to say that the time is near for a true end to this way of life, and the guards are finding them suitable punching bags while dealing with a more pugnacious threat: rioting Thresher Hall members. Yes, following Namatius's disappearance, the perceived victories of the agents of chaos, the falling of the dam, the theft of Volaris, and the inflitration by Thornmoor, the peace that held the city together is long fractured, with Thresher Hall sick to death of being prevented from having a say in the affairs of the city. They have assembled outside the walls of the Royal Court and the party notes that the conditions of these protest are spiralling into violence.

The party arranges a courtyard meeting with Skipta, the last public one they'll have on these terms. In the Royal court yard, they find a weathered Skipta. The king has no heir, no airship, and thinner air for his declarations. Nobles in attendance listen to the pleas of the party to do something about the Thornmoor threat. Azrael, under the disguise of Ayane, pushes for action. Lord Skipta reveals that in the works is a meeting on the Northern road, between the head of Thornmacht guard Seraphina and Anagastes troops. The party notes this and also hears from Alderman Jaynyn and Earl Gillet, who are angling to fill in the place Namatius once occupied in the city's economy, hoping to transform transportation and commerce from within.

After this, the party decides it is time to strike. They visit the Bastards and they too are in a mood to finally see these dark days come to an end, but they have no idea how dark it will get yet. The party offloads huge amounts of treasure, visiting the Tower of Boccob and Ragnoc's smithery especially, the latter of which is now run by his female apprentice. They wonder about Ragnoc's disappearance and find that he has been arrested with charges of insurrection due to his radical position in Thresher Hall and with murder, having supplied the gunpowder that blew up the dam that seemed to cause this whole spiralling drama... Nevertheless, the party sell their wares, stock up on new ones, and plot on the upcoming meeting of troops. Little do they know, the tensions will be kicked off much sooner than they exect.

## Chapter Thirty Two: Silence, Demoness

After a long rest, the party reconvenes, meeting with Kolvar the geologist as well as the Bastards. They find that the guild is doing incredibly well, that to keep their involvement hushed, Deadtown has become viritually unpoliced and the Bastards have taken over, making money hand over fist through gambling escapades in the abandoned Tunnel of Love known as the Serenade. These conversations are nearly swept away by a terrifying development: the Flugzeugträger, a floating carrier for airships has maneuvered above Ethergaarde and cast its shadow. This Thornmoorish technological monstrosity casts a pall over all the existing tensions, turning townspeople even more paranoid. This is seen as an immediate threat and invasion, and the drums of war begin to be sounded. The party meets privately with Skipta and finds that he knows how useful the bastards are at getting into areas surreptisiously. He's willing to pay them a great amount for valuable reconaissance. Skipta wants to know what is going on aboard the carrier and what the leadership truly want. Besides, there is a strange development: guards on the castle (which is just underneath the carrier) swear they can hear sounds of battle aboard the ship. With Namatius gone, supremacy to air is all up to Thornmoor. The party agrees and takes the ship.

Above, they find a battle going on aboard the carrier, between the hi-jackers, a grotesque assortment of Yuan-Ti, and the brutalized Thornmacht holding their own with muskets and pistols. The party goes to war, from one edge of the carrier to the other, Azrael flying around and throwing energy at the clusters of Yuan-Ti, Wolfrun saving Thornmoorish lives by putting his body on the line, and Yex piloting a steamcraft tank and firing explosive rounds at the Yuan-Ti. All the while, they notice the carrier slowly positioning itself differently, no longer over the castle to intimidate Skipta, it is now over...The Vaitarna Dam?

There is a curious site at the southern end of the platform, it appears a temple has been dredged out of dirt, hovering in some unholy combination with the carrier. The temple has strange markings on its pillars, and is just beyond the deck of the carrier. After dispatching the Yuan Ti in an epic battle, the party is badly wounded. They consort with the surviving Thornmacht, getting them to pilot a zeppelin away from the ship so they can rest. Aboard this ship, they tell the Thornmacht they have nothing to do with Skipta, they are hunting the demons that did this. When the ship resturns, they are rested and decide to take on the temple.

What is the temple? The remnants of a Paradiso sanctuary, the head of Cornelius Paradiso in giant marble relief, magically bolstering the grounds and firing forceful projectiles at the party. Moving at first invisibly in the ruins is Thraxxia, the daughter of Graz'zt. The assassin that has never lost. She has successfully stolen Namatius, who she positions in a pair of dimensional shackles at the center of the temple. When the party approaches, Yex alerts the shadow mastiff that belongs to Thraxxia, the object of his great nightmares. In this moment, Yex overcomes his great fear and goes toe to toe with the beast, at last destroying it once and for all. Namatius diappears from the spot, the party drawn in to Thraxxia's trap. The demoness emerges, invisible and full of hate, vowing to drive the party away. She assures them they are on the wrong side, that they support Valxun in a conflict that will only cause endless suffering. Graz'zt and her represent the only break possible from this horrid existence: a new world.

They cut her protests short, taking her to the hilt. The party is nearly destroyed by her invisible assault, even beginning to route before Yex comes through with a crucial dispel magic that succeeds, revealing Thraxxia. With help from Stompy, Namatius's personal shield guardian, the party vanquishes Thraxxia. Lying bleeding on the ground, the beautiful Alu-demon says that they're in the wrong place, and too late. She gestures below at the dam. Graz'zt has already ascended and is drawing on the power of the Abyss to appear in the flesh, to create a real aspect of himself to take on Ethergaarde. He has succeeded by this time. Before she can talk more, Wolfrun delivers a coup de grace that ends the demoness. This celebration results in the IP ban of at least one player from an official Thraxxia wiki page.

## Chapter Thirty Three: Nightfall

The party scours the ship, finding Thraxxia's incredible sword along with the battered remnants of arms and armor left from the fight. It appears Thraxxia was playing at a similar game: use the resources of each city to accomplish their final goal. When the party touches back down they find that Skipta is in defense mode, in the castle drawing up plans. He is unable to be contacted, so the gold is paid to the party through Grand Officer Anagastes, letting him know that Namatius is being held and Thronmoor is still on the assault.

The party leaves via Zeppelin to Shyndre's bones, touching down in a tense scene in which the crew of Volaris believe the Zeppelin is an enemy ship. The sides nearly come to blows, but all is resolved when the party lets the crew know these are pawns of theres, surviving Thornmacht being used just for travel's sake. The crew is uninterested in the morality of these enemy troops and wants them imprisoned. The party gives their plans to the crew here, letting them know their stay in the gloomy Shyndre's bones area will be an extended one.

Returning to the city, the party watches as the winter solstice event takes place. Despite the upheaval, the town is being lured out of their homes by the promise of merchant's desserts and strange and wonderful contraptions, such as an odd sea-shell machine that makes the sound of waves when it is cranked. With little diversions all over, there is the possibility of at least some quelling of the tumult, but it is short lived: there is a lunar eclipse. The moon eterna shows like a horrid black shield, blotting out the stars Teshaltar and Omnum-Veris, leaving the world in a red-tinged darkness, weak light leaking onto a riotous city, with a Nightfallen cultist murdered in the streets before the party, the guard who killed him shouting out either to the dead, to himself, or to the world around. It is Nightfall. The prophecy appears to be coming true--an immediate doomed sense sinks into the city, with most people now retreating to their homes, forced by guards to get off the streets. The remaining seem intent on skirmishing around the Royal Court. Thresher Hall aligned rioters and workers battle with Etherknights on the street outside. The party finds that the city is slipping into the deepest darkness yet and knows it is time to strike. The seed that has been germinating, something Wolfrun has pointed out: Azrael's quest for the crown, to turn the tables on a society that has driven out his kind, that has enforced its own brutality in the name of order on the streets.

Talking with Anagastes, they find that the nobles of the town are being asked to take to the Royal Court. Meanwhile, the Grand Officer will be meeting with Seraphina of Thornmoor on the Northern Road. Anagastes believes that Konig Zeitlos, especially under this prophesied sky, may take the road to peace. The party sees this as a tipping point and decide to abscond to Shyndre's Bones. Here, they take on the aspect of the Thornmoor Zeppelin drivers, taking their identification, and resolve to close in on the meeting place of Seraphina and Anagastes, with an eye to accelerating the tensions rather than letting the two cities leave the warpath under their mutual immiseration in this darkness, this...Nightfall.

## Chapter Thirty Four: The Solstice Ambush

The party stick to the trees, maneuvering in the snow off the road to follow the metallic flashes of the armored Etherknights. They finally find a spot in the road where in the distance a cluster of Thornmoorish troops appear: under the weak light of the eclipsed suns, the Thornmoor are led by a female-appearing automaton, hovering off the ground glowing with magical light. This is Seraphina, who Anagastes announces by name. There is a hint of deep familiarity to the two. They assemble on the road, and begin to lay into the litany of each other's offenses. Before it can get too far, the party have fully converted to their disguises. They are hidden in the trees with Thornmoor armor and fire on the Ethergaards, who perceive the action as an ambush.

Serpahina desperately tries to fend off the battle, attempting to scream that these troops have nothing to do with her detachment. The party closes in on her and isolates her as the battle drags on. Men are slashed to the bloodied snow. Anagastes finds himself in a temporary fight with Wolfrun before retreating deeper in the woods. The Thornmoor contingent is fought tooth and nail. Ultimately, the Ethergaardians are forced into surrender, and the party takes the fight to the survivors, wanting no voice to survive to explain what happened. Yex watches from a tree as Azrael and Wolfrun more viciously cut down these survivors, one after another. Serphania is slain in battle, the greatest of the Thornmacht contingent gone. Azrael goes back on his no survivors policy, finding one Thornmacht still alive but unsure of what he has witnessed. In a rare moment of transparency, the party reveals themselves to him. This man is named Reichtenhaber, and is made into another Jurgen Rinabel in a sense: a hostile combatant left to live and leave the outline of the party's power hanging in the air in Thornmoor. He is permitted to live, and told to tell of the strength of the party.

## Chapter Thirty Five: Hey Graz'zt,

Returning to the city, everything has gone from bad to worst. The city has been effectively shut down, Thresher Hall skirmishes persisting. The party uses the sending stone they gave to Anima in Vorel'thel to speak to the witches, who are warning of Graz'zt's power. Thraxxia's threats are most likely true: Graz'zt has likely returned and there's very little to be done but stop him before he becomes too powerful. Azrael, in the nightmare realm, finds Valxun agrees, that this is the last hurdle on their power and after this there will be little in the way of their domination of the town. In this nightmare realm, Azrael glimpses a strange truth: Valxun needs him because Graz'zt has a power over the infernal Valxun that could endager the whole mission. After awakening, the party returns to that fated Vaitarna dam area, with the statue dating back to pre-Cephalan days, molded over, decaying under the eclipsed suns.

It is here that they return to the open portal to the abyss, through the darkened portcullis hole leading into those cursed depths where organs use and puss and hot magma surges. Here, they find a murderous orgy of Nightfallen cultists taking place while a flying Alu-Demon and his troop of cacodemons guard the entrance. The party flies around, battling the winged demon until he is knocked into the abyssal magma, slaying the cacodemons and killing the cultists that survive the careless abandon of the spellcasting demons. They venture deeper, past the iron gate, past the cage where Nyndrah the Unseen was kept, the dragon who lost herself to shadow, the remnant of Shyndre, from those earlier times, before Cephalan...they pass this. Depper within they find an Abyssal castle, the horrendous remains of a Paradiso palace. On top of which is the Demon Lord Graz'zt's aspect. With the defeat of his troops at Mournfall, he has sped up his plans, and is now on the material plane, ready for a last minute surge to take out Skipta before Valxun can. The party maneuvers expertly, keeping Stompy far back as they take to the shadows, climbing across towers, getting closer, closer, until finally--they alert Graz'zt. Azrael nearly slips off the battlements, igniting a fierce and frightening battle that nearly kills Wolfrun.

During the fight, the party watches as the demon transports himself along towers, swiping with his greatsword and firing intense bursts acid out of it. The party takes the fight to inside the castle, sending Stompy in to find...his master! Namatius Elysium, the real one this time, trapped within the castle. Shackled. The wizard is powerless here, unable to stop what seems like the fated end to Ethergaarde. But the party does not linger here long, the battle continues outside, the demon raging and letting loose every power at his disposal. It is not enough. Though Wolfrun is felled in the fight, Graz'zt finds himself paralyzed and beaten at the end of the fight, defeated and unarmed. The party takes his greatsword and communicates with the witches. Anima reminds that Graz'zt held Iggwilv in servitude for years, it is up to the Witch Queen now what happens to this demon. Sending him back to the Abyss is "not enough". Though the party doesn't fully understand these designs, they at last decide to go by them, leaving Graz'zt's body for the coven, who arrive shortly thereafter and keep the demon in thrall.

The party has defeated the dark prince, but it isn't over yet.

## Chapter Thirty Six: The Royal Castle

The party has decided it's time: they will descend on the Royal Castle and take out Lord Skipta. Returning from the ruins of the dam, they witness firsthand the degeneration of the city: the banks of Vaitarna are being drudged up, the muck and mud revealing putrid walking dead, the broken limbs covered in tattered remnants of Cephalan clothing. These walking dead take to the streets of the fishery, haunting the region with real undead this time, not the pretend shadows that Earl Gillet and Alderman Jaynyn once hired to stir up fear. These zombies are hunted by the party, Yex brinking them down. The party learns afterward that the people of the town have become blocked from the court entirely, the ongoing Thresher Hall battles, the Thornmoor attacks, the walking dead from dark pasts, the darkness all around..the solstice festival hasn't been entirely gotten rid of. Instead, the diversions and foods have been brought to the castle, with every noble receiving a letter of endorsement to be kept within the city gates.

After the defeat of Graz'zt, the party re-enters the town to heal, staying at Azrael, or Ayane's, Exalted Estates mansion. It is here where Azrael visits the nightmare realm. He is gifted with the powers of an astral wanderer. Azrael has successfully navigates shadow, light, the material plane, the nightmare plane, the abyss and more, surviving and learning about the totality of the multiverse. With these gifts he is given an even greater strength as a warlock, and with it the ability to thwart the madness inducing effects of the nightmare plane. Here, Azrael learns that it is high time for the takeover of the town, that Valxun has everything he needs and that he should bide his time and keep his head low. Azrael agrees with his patron, but has anything but this in mind.

Instead the party arrives outside the castle and witnesses a huge contingent of guards preventing anyone without a letter from attending the ongoing masque--Azrael threatens them for awhile, promising Ayane will return and get them acceptance into the castle. However, Yex sees an opening: he uses his magic to disguise himself as Ayane and casts Azrael as an impudent servant, talking out of turn. He is able to convince the guard, who recognizes the noble as one that has frequented the court and made his voice heard during the Thresher Hall dam vote. He allows the party in, and a rare reversal seats Yex in the role of Ayane, the one who will be seen as the party's ticket in.

Once in the castle, the battles and blood in the streets are briefly compared with the drunken festivities of licentious nobles in the castle gates. The party glimpses the strange shell machine in the castle halls, the crank twisted by a mesmerized noble. They announce one of their companions has gone, but they don't know where. The party takes a look around, finding an Imperial Mezzanine where the throne room sits. They decide to show restraint, avoiding this area and heading to another hallway where...Thornmoor has made an actual attack. Warforged interlopers, powerful magic-wielding automatons, strike at the party. Ethergaards arrive at the tail end of the battle and are told to alert the others that there is an attack within the castle walls. A suspicious Ethergaard takes the party to sleeping quarters, telling them not to alert the others unless they want to cause undue stress. After all, the castle will be safe for the nobles who are surrounded by these guards. The party notes this strange request and visits the chapel underneath the sleeping area, ironically healed by Skipta's priests to prepare for the assassination of their lord.

In the night, Yex uses a ritual to contact his god, Olidammara, who appears smiling and twisted in the mist, letting him know several answers: that the Chronomancer exists in the southwestern portion of the castle, that the attack will be made here against Skipta, and the warforged are indeed sent by Thornmoor. Azrael visits Valxun in the nightmare realm simultaneously, finding Valxun has put an inside man, a guard that Valxun is using to misdirect people, in the castle and it is indeed the man that led them to that chamber. They find out Valxun is located in the bathhouse of the castle. He wants Azrael to keep the city under management while he completes the final step, but it's something much different than Azrael was expecting: it is the conversion of Skipta (who is being held somehow) into undead, to reign as king forever. It is in this capitulation that Valxun can rule with him forever. Valxun has one last request: get rid of Yex and Wolfun. They have too many ambitions and have seen too much. They have been good pawns but it's time to dispose of them. Immediately after, Azrael makes the decision to truly undermine his patron: he tells the party of what Valxun has had to say. Yex confers his knowledge from Olidammara to the party as well. After reconvening, the party goes to talk to the guard that intercepted them after the warforged fight, Valxun's plant. They bring him into a private chamber and assault him, ultimately killing him.

Attached to the chamber is the bathhouse. The party find a fountain at the stairs, and a noble woman about to walk up the steps. It is here where hateful dead, a series of revenants, attack the party. They are after fresh blood, and take the noble woman. In the fight, the party destroys all but one of the undead, who returns to the bathhouse. They follow him, Azrael slipping into shadow to mask his presence. The ensuing fight has Valxun witnessing the party, who he thinks has survived Azrael's attack, battling him and his revenant. They duke it out but the party finds the distance to be greatly in Valxun's favor, retreating to below the bathhouse. They immediately alert the guards, who are confused as to what is happening and want to examine the area. In the process, the party sees the fountain by the bathhouse glowing with unholy energy. A guard named Septius takes a look at the fountain and is transported somehow when he puts his hands in it. This is enough for the guards, who hear footsteps above. They are convinced to warn Skpita. The party wants them to take them to the Throne Room, to find Skipta once and for all. The group run across the castle and arrive in the mezzanine, right outside of the Throne Room. At long last, the guards ask for entrance to the Throne.

## Chapter Thirty Seven: Welcome to Your Suffering

The Etherknights had been placed in a dire situation where the fabric of their reality is unraveling, and their only response was to acquiesce to the party's request to check in on Skipta, violating his orders to allow him to complete a ritual to "save Ethergaarde". After all, Thornmoor agents are loose in the halls and a terrible otherworldly realm is emerging from the very place Valxun tunneled through to gain access to the castle (all the way back in Azrael's adventure to clear out the underdark of the hooked horror).

When the party gets to the mezzanine, they see through the throne room door. There is a nightmare vision of the throne room, purple flame in the sconces, glowing devilish eyes on the royal statuary, and a vacant throne. One notable absence is the Lord Skipta himself. The party goes in to investigate, taking an Etherknight named Tiberius with them for help and collateral. They find the portcullis door vanishes behind them, terrifying the guard who spends this time in the nightmare realm mostly cowering. Visions of darkness threaten to harm them but they push them off. Something more serious is occuring. In the center of the Throne Room, a sickly, wan figure is gradually shifting into focus, growing, at first a few feet tall, then as tall as a man, then 10ft, then 15 ft, growing, growing, toward the ceiling, hunched, his thin body wrapping and snaking, a gaunt face frozen in horror, howling, atop a pile of skulls glowing in green phospherence. Underneath the skulls a black haired nightmare rises, supporting this sickly giant on its burning mane. The rider opens its mouth, staring at the throne. It opens its mouth and a wave of sound breaks across the room, too low to be perceived but felt as if a wind. A voice reverberates through the area. It is unmistakeable: the voice of Valxun.

Valxun warns these intruders, which he cannot see: "You look to the throne, you look for Skipta, he is not here. You have entered where the realm of shadows, the forgotten, the repressed, meets the plane of dreams, the hynagogic, the hallucinatory...it is here that Skipta’s mind lies. Absorbing the full truth of this place as he undergoes the integration, the connection to Incabulos himself. He will bear the mark of the Black Rider, of the Evilsent. It is here, Skipta’s mind lies. His body back in the material plane, but it is here his mind lies. It is here that you die. It is here that you fade. It is here that you grow to separate from your body, your spirit no longer recognizing it. It is here your spirit will re-enact these moments forever, forever revealing your foolishness. Welcoming to your suffering.”

The party maneuvers through the shadow plane, finding there is an exit out of the Throne Room that didn't exist when it was in the material plane. It leads across the castle, where they perceive strange flitting images of times gone by, Barony of Cephalan Paradiso family members, images of something older, strange creatures, their faces painted...They end up in a vertiginous hallway, full of strength sapping red mists that resemble the red mist pervading the banks of Vaitarna. The sentient gas attacks and the party is able to persist and disperse the strange vampiric monstrosity. They realize the only way to deal with the threat is getting back at Valxun--but how? The portal through the bathhouse fountain.

Once again the party finds themselves in the bathhouse, this time looking more ruinous on the nightmare plane. They emerge from it to find themselves back in the material plane. Guards are shouting about bringing prisoners to the barracks, running through the halls. The party ascend the stairs, ready this for a second try at Valxun, this time with the foreknowledge of how close the ritual is to completion, and how the lich will use the bathouse to his advantage.

## Chapter Thirty Eight: The Bathhouse

As the party leaves for the higher level of the bathhouse, they tell Tiberius to warn the others that if they don't return the only hope is evacuation. The party stealthily climbs the steps and finds Valxun not ready for their circling back. Wolfrun has learned from the long distance pelting they took before, using his monk powers to hop between shadows, charging through the water at the hideous lich. Azrael stands posed in the shadows for a time, hidden from his patron. The battle heats up, Valxun commanding ghouls of former Barony of Cephalan goons to take on the party. Yex uses his holy symbol to drive them back while Valxun executes fatal flying guillotine and tiger style strikes to knock the lich back. When Azrael emerges, Valxun is disgusted. The lich chastizes his star pupil for working all the way up to the point of total control of the city, of ensuring history moves on as its supposed to, and standing against fate like the doomed Graz'zt. He promises Azrael a similiar end of violent defeat. The battle rages on, Wolfrun is knocked unconscious and slides into the water. Yex and Azrael work fast, throwing eldritch blasts and sending Olidammaran spirits to combat the darkness of Valxun. In the end, Azrael squares off with his patron, who ensures Azrael that he's already laid the groundwork, and Azrael has thrown away all his chances to reap the benefits of what's to come: an infinite reign of Skipta, whose undead, unholy council would have promoted them forever to guide them to their fulfilment in power. Azrael, in this moment, uses a warlock trick he learned from his patron, combining their aspects so that if one is hurt the other is hurt as well. In the process, Azrael is wounded, but the spell brings down his patron. Azrael feels a great, radiating pulse through his body. The bones of the lich collapse in the water. But where is the phylactery?

Questions for another time, one where time itself isn't running out. The party knows what's next: stopping Skipta before the ritual is completed, before Incabulos, the black rider, the one heralded by this nightfall, returns and brings all the dead back to serve in his unholy army.

## Chapter Thirty Nine: Recurring

Azrael experiences a hard to place feeling of loss as his patron collapses. The party decides to take the exit to the bathhouse, walking across a bridge that leads them through a plane. They watch the walls shift and dissolve, warping back into the nightmare realm. Here they are, arriving back in the hallway where they fought Warforged interlopers and ran into Valxun's disguised henchman from before. Walking across the hall, they see ghostly images flitting to and fro, replaying a scene from history. This phantasmal scene depicts a gaunt man in long robes with a pointed goatee circling Skipta I. The painting has become a painting of Cornelius Paradiso. Skipta I stares at it, his head cocked, then puts his fist through the frame. “Skipta, come to your senses. History opens up for you, take it by the reigns. You will be lord but to become one means sacrifice, it means compromise" Skipta I considers this, replying “Your dark magic has shown me a sight most unwelcome”. The goateed man rejoins him with “But it is true. I became an archmage to have access to this hidden world and now you know: if even one fruit from the Paradiso or Hearst families were to hit the ground, it will take root again. You must pitilessly pull these trees from your banks, Lord. Yes, Lord--we have taken the castle now”. “We” repeats Skipta. “Has my magic not been instrumental?” queries the bearded man. “It has, it has. But now that we have emerged victorious I struggle as to how to tell our Amberhelmian champions they must venture out again on a chase to kill the lesser members of these robber baron families” “Lesser members...they are filled with rage. They want revenge. They are lesser no more. Besides, they are busy killing each other. Pull out the root while it withers, Lord Skipta.” The paladin considers this. “Valxun, your counsel seems to always lead to one more step. That I cannot even be safe here in what is now our own castle is something that shakes me to my core. We will hunt the last Hearsts. We will hunt the last Paradisos.” “If you do not," Valxun warns, "it will become a problem for your son” “That is something I cannot permit” Valxun smiles, showing a hint of the grinning skull through his tight-skinned face.

After this strange procession, the party hears moaning in a room to the north. They rush in to find a warforged interloper wounded on the ground. He is immediately threatened by the party, and caves under pressure. He says he was simply examining some of the strange machines for the festival and he ended up in this realm, that it must have something to do with the ritual they've been watching Skipta work on. These warforged spies are now caught in the chase to prevent Skipta from completing what he claims is an attempt to bring Incabulos into the material plane. The warforged interloper is named Abelino, and the party find out that it is "too late" to stop the ritual according to him. But it's more complicated than this. The Chronomancer is trapped, unable to stop Skipta but has a time loop spell causing everyone around to repeat their actions again and again, Skipta just barely reaching the throne before being pulled back again. He says it's only a matter of time before the Chronomancer is discovered and her spell broken. The party ask if there is anyone who might know how to actually find Skipta this time, telling Abelino he was absent when they ended up in the nightmare realm. Abelino says they gained a lot of their information from Skipta's right hand mand, Skipta. Azrael secures a password from him "PALE MOON", the name of the Thornmoorish operation to attack the castle. The only other information Abelino has is that Anagastes was last seen in the barracks, dealing with political prisoners, and had even nabbed a few of the warforged.

Terrified about time running out in a whole new way, the party charges ahead, Wolfrun leading and finding...a few small stone fragments on the ground. At first he thinks it is a trap, but Yex points out they are parts of the poem that were on the statue on the Vaitarna ruins. The party makes it to the other end of the castle and even finds a second set of these words. They circle back through the hallways where they fought the vampire mists, finding more phantasms: this time, a scene when the Videric Hearst meets Cornelius Paradiso in a last minute attempt to perhaps join forces to combat the Amberhelmian troops led by Skipta I. Figures like whisps of black smoke appear on the north side of the hallway. They are nearly transparent to the party's darkvision, looking much like the skulks, those nameless apparitions in the Hearst tomb. Getting closer, they see one resembles Cornelius Paradiso, the once-head of the Paradiso family. He stands next to someone who Azrael recognizes as Videric Hearst, the head of the Hearsts whose suicide in the shadow plane was uncovered in the very first adventure of the shadow elf. The two stare each other down.Videric cringes. “Making your peace, with that Wyrm...” “There is no other way, Videric. The whole Barony is rife with unrest. Amberhelm is on the march, and with that upstart Skipta in their ranks the Barony needs all the help it can get. This is our last chance to bind together, but there is no way without the serpent’s power” “So you are going to her? Reasoning with her?”

“Yes,” says Cornelius pacing. “Well, them” “Them” “The dragon has a daughter. Another red wyrm, Nyndrah. Our pact with them will ensure that Skipta finds nothing but agony when his troops make it to the Barony of Cephalan.” “You are a fool, frittering both of our lots on the words of a greedy red beast...your presence on the Vaitarna has been nothing but a scar, a wound” “We’ve both done our deeds, Videric. Now I think it’s time for you to go.” “I agree.” Videric walks over to the drawbridge. Outside is a shapeless mass of humanity, serfs in the barony, shouting out. Armed men in the same dyed reds and cotton whites push them back. He turns the marble handle until the drawbridge closes to the sounds of heightening protests. Tomas, Cornelius’s brother comes to his side, watching the angry crowd. He looks, with a hint of pity, at Cornelius. “It’s for their own good,” says Cornelius. “To protect them we must protect our own ritual. They are safer outside. As for Videric, nothing can save a man unwilling to lead”

After this startling scene, they find the dragon skin of Shyndre over the mantle in the next room, cobbled together as a decoration. After that is the barracks--where Anagates must be. They hear the sounds of torture in this horrid nightmare chamber, and run across Anagastes in a meeting area, an abacus on the table between him and...Seraphina, the Thornmoor once-captain. This is another phantasm. The abacus glows with the same strange darkness as the fountain from before. Anagastes is much younger, watching as the warforged military officer hovers just a foot off the ground.

“You’ve heard what Skipta has said,” Seraphina says, eyeing the abacus. “You’ve made the calculations yourself”

“The Hechicero tribe’s hold on this land has been a memory for half a century. They’ve been forced into Mornfall and have few places to go”

“In the mountains they have niter and precious gems. They will make good on using this, you know it will only be so long before they use their unnatural surrounds to their advantage, threatening both Thornmoor and Ethergaarde.”

“But to attack and occupy, with no declaration, with no incitement..”

“No incitement?” Seraphina says in her strange, distant voice. She points to the beads on the abacus. “Proliferation in their men, they are training more of their tribe. Their incitement is their numbers, their threat is their territory.”

“To tell Skipta, that we should send my guards in,”

Seraphina touches his cheek. “You are letting your passion guide you when you should think objectively. We have done the calculations and this will be a success. We will lend you our siege weaponry as long as you ensure our cut of the niter, which, once again, we have calculated to be profitable for both of us. (a pause) Anagastes, don’t be unreasonable”

“Seraphina,” he says, touching her cheek. “I’ve always had trouble showing this side to anyone and it’s to...it’s to you. You steel my resolve in the moments when the light of Pholtus falters the most. You’re right. I will advise Skipta to march on mournfall.”

Seraphina approximates a smile, and the two embrace, moving a bit behind the stall to kiss deeply.

After this, the party touches the abacus and the nightmare realm dissipates. They're back on the material plane, and hearing Mezreia's voice from the dungeon...she has been taken prisoner along with Thresher hall members, Nightfallen cultists, and warforged interlopers. Anagastes is looking at the same abacus, hearing of the attack on Skipta. He orders the guards to investigate and to deal with the prisoners by executing them immeidately. The party strikes. During the battle, the imperial torturer charges down the hallway. The party uses their powers to slow them, battering them back and parlayzing whenever they can. Anagastes sees Yex as Ayane, and the pieces fit in his own mind in a strange way: yes, this must have been a plot by Ayane to secure power, to promote the doomed dam only to show himself as someone in league with the Agents of Chaos. Yex and Azrael decide to play into this. The battle rages on and just as Anagastes is about to be defeated, the smoke clears and Yex chooses to show himself as a lizardfolk, Anagastes getting to see it really only is the bastards here. They force the captain to surrender, who goes to one knee, apparently wracked with guilt for not being able to do what he believed his duty to be. The party decide he might be useful to have around if they stop Skipta, and keep him alive.

## Chapter Forty: The Assassination of Lord Skipta

Energy radiates from the abacus, a spell is broken. Everyone heals as if they had spent a night sleeping, a very specific nightmare having ended. Anagastes again, in another time, staring at this instrument on the middle of the table. Yex feels his Olidammaran powers returning. Wolfrun's bruised body is healed and he immediately sprints over to the cells to check on Mezreia. Azrael, however, feels a strange abscence. His powers are gone, his patron Valxun no longer granting them. He alludes to this loss, saying he's in "scimitar gang" now, showing with his hand motions that no eldritch blast is forthcoming. Realizing that he cannot gain the powers Stompy has, Azrael pulls off his medallion and throws it to Yex. The Olidammaran priest is not ready to give up on the shadow elf's promise, and throws the medallion back.

Meanwhile, Wolfrun and Mezreia embrace. They are wordless for awhile, before she says in his ear: "Wolfrun, I read the book." Wolfrun asks what was in it, the Red Book, the apocrophal text, the one from the plane of shadow, the Abominable Devastation. Mezreia explains "I tried to tell the clergy what I read, that the dead will be made living again. It describes something very like Nightfall, but from the times when this was a robber barony, the Barony of Cephalan. In this book, it claims that...Wee Jas herself allowed the mass killing that Shyndre perpetrated. That when the Amberhelmian troops came to lay waste to the Barony, to build this city we know live in and rely upon, Wee Jas saw some sort of darkness and undeath in the midst of it, and reigned down a colorless fire to signal Shyndre to attack. That action led to many of Skipta’s men dying, even if Skipta eventually came out over the Hearsts and Paradisos that ruled after they lost hundreds. I tried to explain this to everyone and they said it was heretical, threatened to kick me out. The very next morning after I had the courage to speak up, the guards were burning our church, not with our colorless fire but with their own profane violence. Their paranoia led to this. They now think every church within the town that is not Pholtian is tied to Nightfall, is tied to Thresher Hall, is tied to the Agents of Chaos and the end itself. They wanted my blood for it, for a church that won’t even believe me." Wolfrun comforts her, telling her that the actions of their god is incomprehensible, that they merely have to serve. It causes Mezreia to remember Father Sorel, before his death in the Hearst tombs, telling him something very similiar about faith. She is let loose, and Wolfun begins unlocking other cells.

Wolfrun gets his disguise kit reading, thinking it's time to go to the Throne Room and show Skipta Ayane in the flesh this time. Azrael holds up his hand, denying it. Wolfrun ruefully puts away the kit, cracking a smile. They're going into this one letting Skipta know just who they are. Or...almost. For in that moment, a guard runs screaming into the room. His name is Felix, and he's surprised to see his commanding guard Anagastes taken down, and he immediately has Azrael's scimitar at his throat. The guard explains that the north wall is collapsing, the undead from Vaitarna, from the red mists, are charging into the castle! Nobles are being evacuated but the only way out is through the riots on the south side. The situation is dire, and they're ordering evacuation. The party decides the prisoners will be safer in the dungeon than anywhere else, and Wolfrun locks Anagastes in with them. Felix misinterprets Azrael yelling to Wolfrun to calm the prisoners down as an order for Felix to tell them, so he yells about how he's a member of the Ethergaarde Royal Guard and it's a direct command to be quiet. A delicious irony as the power of this guard has totally unravelled, Anagastes now behind bars himself. Earlier it was mentioned that the party was ALMOST being themselves, for her Yex makes the decision to disguise himself as Anagastes. They will face Skipta as if led by his very own right hand man, an echo of the relationship Skipta I had with Valxun when he was mortal.

The party makes their way across the castle, to the imperial mezzanine. At the door, their sending stone goes off--it's Anima. She reports that Nyndrah was enthralled by Valxun and is with them, and now they have Graz'zt enthralled instead, under the high witch Iggwilv. They tell them that Izzoko, concerned for Ethergaarde, came back to get something off his chest. Izzoko explains that he never told Azrael that his family used to be leaders in Ethergaarde, that the Hechicero tribe were the tribe they came from. That he hid this to have Azrael focus on less utopian goals, of making a life in Al'draghazar and when that become too difficult, focusing on small victories like the return to the fishery. He secretly worried that fate had something like this in store, and tells him they were directly in a line from Rafiel, an apparent god of shadow elves. Then, as Azrael is reeling, he confesses to the killing of Aria. This is enough for the shadow elf. He cannot focus on this at this trying moment, and deactivates the sending stone. The party enters the mezzanine.

This time, they are in the material plane, but watching as a skirmish is underway. The warforged interlopers are perpetually drawing pistols and holstering them. The guards knocking arrows back then putting them back in their quiver. They realize this whole violent scene is repeating itself, the only one active is Chronomancer Zeitlos. She is sweating, barely holding on. Her foot is on a false plate on the ground, causing a trap to fire from the Throne Room. The party investigates and watches the Throne, seeing Lord Skipta himself nearing the throne to complete the ritual. As he approaches the grand seat of the Lord, a dark energy encapsulates the diamond encrusted chair. “Incabulos it is. Perhaps it always had to be this way." He says. "Took a few generations, but finally caught up. Pholtus, forgive me…” he approaches the throne, which begins glowing with preternatural darkness, something deeper and blacker than the party has ever seen. Just before he sits in it, he is rewound, pulled back across the floor. “Incabulos it is,” he says. “Perhaps it always had to be this way. Took a few generations, but finally caught up. Pholtus forgive me.” As this loop plays out, a deadly trap is being sprung going toward the Chronomancer, and a heavily enchanted portcullis door is beginning to fall, all replaying themselves just before the end. The party makes a split second decision in a sense--they put weight on the plate to deactivate the trap, rush in the room, and tell Zeitlos to let go. She realizes this is the only way to make it out, jumps off the plate, and ends the spell. Arrows from etherknights fly. Warforged pistols shoot. The energy fizzles out. The portcullis door slams. Skipta walks up the steps toward the throne. “Incabulos it is. Perhaps it alw--" he begins, but the loop has finished. Now Azrael stands right next to him, attacking with his scimitar. "Bastards!" he shouts. But it is then that he sees Yex attacking, disguised as Anagastes. The Lord is unable to see through the ruse, devasted by this betrayal. Yex says that he has sold his soul, that he loved Skipta. Lord Skipta claims this is the only way to maintain order, and this treason will end with the death of the man he trusted most in Amathara. The battle begins.

Lord Skipta's skills with his Oathsunder axe are astonishing. He has multiple spells cast on him, and radiant and necrotic damage both flow simultaneosly from his axe, causing incredible harm with each swipe. But the party are hitting him with the strongest weapons at their disposal, and paralyze him. Before they can kill him, the whole throne room planeshifts. Back in the nightmare realm. But now? A hulking Incabulos, red eyed and surrounded by skulls, standing where Skipta was. The horrible creature raises up its arms and out of broken foundational stones rises executions from Ethergaarde, zombies that once inhabited the kingdom. The party unleash on Incabulous, badly wounding the incipient god. They'll need to destroy this immense evil before Skipta can bring it back entirely. When Azrael goes to strike the beast with his lowly scimitar, he feels the strength of Rafiel coursing through his veins. A new patron! His warlock powers return, deadly and dark, ready to take on the Lord that made a pact with the lich he once drew power from. When Incabulos returns, the Chronomancer Zeitlos watches outside of the throne room, seeing the undead who broke in through the north walls swarm the mezzanine. She remembers her dead son, knowing that she does not want to lose anymore. She gathers the surviving interlopers and teleports them to safety. The undead swoop in and devour the remaining guards. For the rest of the battle, horrible moaning and shuffling occurs all around the Throne Room, the castle filled with undead.

Before Incabulos can be destroyed, it shifts back into Lord Skipta, the throne room going light, the Lord of Ethergaarde furiously going at the party with his axe. In the process, the Lord heals himself and goes back on the offensive, wounding multiple party members. He shifts back into Incabulos, this time stronger and riding a nightmare. Incabulos casts a spell, bringing back ghouls from the age of Cephalan to battle. Azrael is paralyzed in the fight, but the party brings Incabulos down. The ritual has been interrupted! Skipta shifts back again with immense hostility, promising to end them and re-do the ritual. The battle takes a turn for the worst. Skipta is fully healed with a lay on hands spell, and with a mighty blow, knocks Wolfrun to the ground. Zombies feed on him, and though Yex uses his holy symbol to reduce them to ashes, it's too late. Wolfrun is killed. Yex and Stompy the shield guardian begin taking serious blows, but in the process, Yex raises Wolfrun from the dead with the diamond in his possession, a revivy spell meant to bring back Chronomancer Johann who instead was dropped into the icey cold river between Thornmoor and Vorel'thel. Wolfrun comes back to battle.

The fight gets up close and personal, Skipta running low on divine energy used to smite the party. He falters, forgetting if he's calling out to Pholtus or Incabulos. The party wound him again, but they begin dropping. Wolfrun is knocked unconscious again, and before long, Yex as well. Stompy is destroyed soon after, the creation of Namatius Elysium reduced to broken pieces. Azrael plays a game of cat and mouse with Skipta, temporarily delaying the lord but not before Skipta can finally catch the elf, tossing javelins and chasing him off of statues. Grimly, Azrael is cut down in battle. It appears all hope is lost. Skipta returns to walking toward the throne, ready to restart the ritual.

While Azrael was distracting the lord, the bodies of Yex and Wolfrun bled out on the ground, but both are able to make incredible recoveries. The luck of Wee Jas and Olidammara must certainly have come into play, for they retain consciousness, albeit at the edge of death. Wolfrun pulls himself up from the cold castle stone, the ground full of heaping ghoul and zombie limbs, and charges. He wounds Skipta, who is near death, but cannot kill him. Subsequently, he is cut down again. It is down to just Skipta and Yex.

Knowing how deadly Skipta is close up, Yex charges across the castle floor and activates his spiritual guardians, a spell so familiar. His eyes, bleary with blood, are able to make out the trickster spirits and small lizards phantasmally coursing through the room. Anagastes approaches, apparently able to walk right through the effect. He nears Yex before passing out, unable to take the guardian spirit's psychic assault. Down to literally the last combatant, wounds so grievous one more hit would have killed him, Yex, as Anagastes, stands right in the middle of the throne room. He looks over the fallen Skipta. Behind him, the stained glass windows, dark from Nightfall, begin to fill with radiant light. The black disk of the moon recedes and light pours in, over the limbs of executed Ethergaardians, over the faces of brutalized Cephalan that once ruled here, over the shining fragments of Stompy, over the body of Wolfrun right by the throne, over Azrael on the cold stone near the portcullis. All this time, Yex has watched his closest companions get so near to darkness, Azrael making pacts with it himself, Wolfrun a cold blooded assassin. Yet at this end, with the light pouring in, he is the last standing. Yex's thoughts, usually the slow and deliberate ones of the lizardfolk, race. It is over now, and with all endings come the decision of what comes next. The reign of Lord Skipta is over. The assassination of Lord Skipta is complete.

## Epilogue

The lich puzzle solved, the philactery destroyed

### Bonus Material

Epilogue: Boss List

Epilogue: The Unexpected and Unexplored

Epilogue: The Nightfallen Progression

Epilogue: Literary Touchstones

Epilogue: Recurrence

GM Binder