- The gang goes to bed (and, assumedly, comfort Quén)
Morning Comes (in Hillford)
- Nothing happens during the night!
- When we wake up, we smell breakfast :]
- As we all mosey downstairs, our usual table has been set by Foo <3
- Cal is already there, eating his second serving
- Waffles, pancakes, the works
- What everyone’s doing
- Foo’s cookin
- Vallen’s not currently in sight, but his absence doesn’t seem to be an urgent issue (based on the vibes)
- Cordelia comes downstairs, but doesn’t make conversation with Cal (assuming he’s not in the mood for conversation)
- Kaya comes downstairs next, and it’s dead quiet
- When Foo comes over with Cal’s third plate of breakfast
- Before Foo leaves, Cal grabs his arm and asks him to stay — Foo sits in Vallen’s usual spot
- Cal says that Foo said he knows where to find Erin Thorne. Foo responds affirmatively.
- Foo asks if this is conversation to have over breakfast. In response, Cal calls everyone over
- Quén comes downstairs, sits down, and starts to eat. They don’t say anything.
- Cal slides a plate of food over to them 🥺 I love friendship
- Cal tells the gang that Foo’s gonna tell us “where we’re going next”
Talking about Erin Thorne
- Cordelia, Kaya, and Quén caution Cal against going after Erin Thorne immediately
- The logic is that [idk man, Izzie didn’t finish this sentence]
- Vallen questions why Thorne wants the Shapes and Eldorians so bad
- Kaya reminds us that Eldorians have the Blood of Paracausality
- Cordelia says that we probably should take the time explore Solmara
- Quén suggests that we ask Kade to show us around
- Vallen cautions us against seeking help from the Solmarans so quickly, and suggests that we ask for help from the people that we trust first (i.e. each other and Eldorians)
Scrying on the Pyramid
- Quén begins casting Scrying on the shards of the Pyramid.
- They see:
- A mountain pass
- An underground cavern, similar to the Underdark
- An underground area, reminiscent of royal catacombs
- The vision shifts. In the mountainous region, they zoom in from a birds-eye view onto a warforged.
- It carries a shard of the Pyramid.
- As the warforged begins to crumble from touching the Pyramid, another one takes its place and continues walking
- The vision shifts again. In the catacombs, there’s a pedestal with a shard of the Pyramid sitting atop it
- Black fog rolls off of the shard, and red lightning arcs inside the fog like a storm cloud
- The vision shifts for a final time. It’s an underground area, highly similar to the Underdark that we saw in Eldoria. A decrepit hand holds a shard of the Pyramid.
- The hand looks extremely familiar
- As the Pyramid damages the hand holding it, it heals itself
"Someone's being nosy." ⇐ The Father's voice
- Quén tries to end the Scrying, but cannot.
- The Father grabs the scrying sensor, forcefully turning it to face him. He stares at it, and Quén feels a pressure build around the sensor, cracks form in their vision before their connection suddenly and violently disappears
Discussing our Next Steps
- Where are the Pyramid shards?
- One is in Langston (likely underneath the city, in Underdark-like ruins with the Father)
- Potentially in the Eldoria Underdark
- One is with a group of warforged, in a mountain pass
- One is god knows where (royal catacombs?)
- Likely the piece of the Pyramid the Curator sensed in Langston
- One is in Langston (likely underneath the city, in Underdark-like ruins with the Father)
- Cal and Vallen mention that Foo was working on something to help us track the location of the Shapes
- Quén calls out to Foo, and asks about the tool he’s been working on
- Foo says that the tool is almost done, he just needs to calibrate it in his free time (which he’s been planning on doing over the next few days)
- Quén asks for the tool, and Foo hands it over
- Calibrating it will require travelling around for a while, after which it will begin pointing in the direction of the closest Shape
- Cal pitches the name The North Star for it, which everyone likes!
- Our Options
- Go west to the island of Warforged, and calibrate Foo’s machine on the way
- Scour the Underdark to look for the Father
- Find Dr. Pope, learn about his plans, and kill him
- Cal tosses the idea that we could split up to cover more ground
- Vallen agrees that this would be more efficient, but Quén argues that it’s more dangerous, since they can’t heal everyone if we’re split up
- Quén suggests that we talk to Aratish about Thraxxus
- The consensus is that we need to talk to Aratish to get the information she has before we make any major decisions
- Quén messages Ozwin to let him know that we’re leaving
- “Heey Ozwin. We are going back to Solmara. Goodbye.”
- “WHAT???? Wait where do I go in Solmara to find you?”
- “Do you… want to come with us?”
- “YES”
- Ozwin rolls up with a MASSIVE duffel bag minutes later
- He basically just pushed his entire desk into a bag (Quén lets him store all his stuff in their bag of holding)
- He’s able to fight! The highest level spell he can cast is Finger of Death (7th level)
Returning to Solmara
- Kaya passes through the door first, and is IMMEDIATELY met with her mother sitting at the table, facing the door
- Cal pushes past Kaya (she paused in the door, and falls over when Cal comes in)
- Aratish asks if we went to Eldoria, to which Kaya responds affirmatively
- Insight check: Kaya doesn’t pick up on shit (Insight NAT 1), but Quén (Insight NAT 20) senses that she’s tense and has a problem with the fact that we went to Eldoria
- Aratish says that she was hoping to learn what WE learned at the Gala
- She learns that Thraxxus is not only KAYA’S UNCLE, but the original title he came up with was “Thraxxus the World Breaker”
- He also supposedly died before Kaya was born?
- “Thraxxus” changed his name himself during a battle (long before Kaya was born, roughly 30-40 years ago). Around that time, he defected from Solmara
- After a period of time, they received word that he was dead.
- They believed the fact that he’s dead, and moved on
- Aratish muses about how Thraxxus came back, and says that Erin Thorne most likely had something to do with it
- Quén mentions that - when we first met Erin Thorne as a party - he had two undead guards with him, their mouths sewn shut
- Quén asks if there’s any other information that we should know related to this — she says no, and asks us to trust her
- Quén senses that she has more information, but isn’t sharing it at the moment
- Aratish expresses her disappointment that Vallen is “retiring” so early, and asks Kaya what our next moves are — we accomplished the mission she gave us, so what’s next?
- Kaya looks to the rest of the gang for help (explore, find the warforged, etc.) and tells her mother that while we might pursue our own goals, our ultimate move is to gather more information
- Aratish says that - if we need an objective - we can seek out one of her informants in a nearby town who might have been compromised
- The informant (a “he”) is supposedly “very important”
- She suspects that vampires are involved
- Ozwin steps forward, bowing to Aratish (he addresses her as “her royal highness”)
- He requests that we have a little more time to discuss our next steps and answer her question
- She’s like 👍, and says that she will be in her room
Discussing our next moves
- Ozwin mentions that we came on a boat
- Quén is like yea, but 🤷♂️they don’t know where it is right now
- We can use the boat as our base of operations
- Quén messages Captain Seamus
- Where are they? (“We are on a supply run right now, almost back to Langston. We will be there by the evening”)
- Where did they go, and please let us know when they leave next time (“Just down the river… also we need MONEY”)
- They earned about 7,000 GP moving cargo on a large ship (they were gone while we were at the Gala)
- Is Vallen hungry?
- Yes — since he’s a true vampire now, he can drink people blood. But he’s reluctant to go look for food right now
- He CAN drink pre-prepared blood from a little blood bag
- Vallen argues for the warforged plan
- Kaya and Quén pinpoint a large island right off of Braldurak that has a mountain (and therefore, a mountain pass)
- Kaya says that we’d have to be comfortable with leaving the situation in Langston as-is
- Vallen counters by saying that SHE will have to be comfortable with it — the people of Solmara are technically HER people, after all
- The consensus is to go after the warforged first. The way Cal put it, we’d be attacking the body before attacking the head, making our whole mission of ultimately attacking Erin Thorne easier
- Quén asks Ozwin what he knows about the shapes
- V taught him a lot about them! He also did a lot of research on his own
- He was in the room when the Orb went off
- It glowed bright, and then he dove under a table
- Ozwin is filled in on the fact that the shapes are in pieces now
- Ozwin reminds us that the Capital is in good hands, since Balthazar is taking care of it
- When the Capital was under Balthazar’s rule, it was prosperous!
- NOTE: THE CAPITAL IS GREEN NOW (AS IN PLANTS) BECAUSE OF THE ORB EXPLODING
NOTES ARE SPARSE TODAY BECAUSE IT WAS MOSTLY TALKING AND JOKES. Also Izzie is tired as hell