The Last Stop Report

General Summary

Following Jonas into the tavern, Doyle assumes the alias of Arthur Conan, and receives the pass phrase "until my goods are sold," after communicating to the silver dragonborn bartender Ajax in thieves' cant that he was there on business. Leaving Seneca behind in an attempt to quickly follow Doyle down to their main headquarters, the rest of the party hastily scrambles to convice Ajax that they are similarly inclined thieves, immediately speaking the phrase, "until my goods are sold," upon banging on the tavern door. Meanwhile, Doyle enters the Court of Knives, completing the phrase, "The knife drips red and gold, until my goods are sold." He is met with a large assortment of more than twenty individuals sitting and dining and drinking while wearing ominous white masks obscuring their faces, with one individual, titled the Judge, poised at a throne overseeing the table in a golden mask and crown with a decorative black judicial wig. Doyle sits beside Jonas and Wendell, and makes brief small talk before the room tenses up at the apparent arrival of an enemy, as the rest of the party completed the phrase with, "until I am too bold". They enter to find around 25 crossbows trained on them, as well as Jonas's high-powered rifle. However, as The Judge is indeed a fair arbiter of truth in all matters, they entered a long and amusing discussion of the party's purpose in the establishment, in which the party revealed to him their true purpose there. In turn, The Judge reveals that they made a deal with Thalia to protect this specific location (with the shadow runes) until the end of the day, at which point they would be granted a new position of power in the altered world. During this discussion, Ro-gin calls Talon back to him from the grasp of a confused Jonas, who was evidently questioning his memories upon possessing such an item. At The Judge's request, Torren opened the Codex of Infinite Planes, discovering that the nature of the necrotic enchantment only harms those who attempt to read its words. In order to be granted the opportunity to exit The Court with their lives, Torren agrees to play "Bail", a game crafted by the small and sadistic alchemist named Lillith, which involves three ingestion poisons and three injurious poisons. To survive this game and win Bail, one must pour the three ingestion poisons on an open wound in their palm, and drink the three injurious poisons, essentially nullifying their detrimental effects. After much deliberation and chemical experimentation, Torren uses his half-proficient knowledge of poisons to guide him through all of the correct choices moments before Rastos is fed to The Judge's pet shark, Suzie. After Bail is won, the crossbows (mostly) relax, and the party exchanges 2000 GP with The Judge for a little more information on the nature of the shadowy runes lining the top of the chamber in a sequence of four. Through this bribe, they discover that Thalia simply asked him to guard these in this area until the end of the day, and that there are likely other locations with similar activity. Additionally, a brief glimpse of the Shadowfell blinked into the Material Plane at this location for an incomplete vision of darkness, gloom, and withered husks of life. Shortly after gaining this information, the party leaves The Last Stop, investigating the runes in the nearby alley whilst Torren contacts Jonas to meet them there should he be curious about his seemingly jumbled perception of the events of Octobris 19. At around the time when Seneca hobbles up to convene with the party and discuss the runes, Rastos is pulled back by Wendell, who stuffs a metal hand in his mouth to roughly silence him and drags him back to the alley across the street where Jonas sits with his rifle trained on them, demanding answers to his confusion.

Campaign

Elemental Chaos Campaign

Protagonists