Session 16: Look to the Western Skies

General Summary

At the offices of the Phaeros Foundation, Marcella spoke with her Mother. Before continuing the conversation, Marcella’s Mother shifted into the form of a beautiful dark-skinned Valenar elf, a visage Marcella recognized. Marcella’s mother told her that she had been posing as Aarland since the Siege of Thaliost, as Aarland had become ill, but did not want his political enemies to know that. She had been using this as a way to keep tabs on Marcella since that time. The reason she came to the offices was because she used her relationship and Marcella’s past to ask the Queen for a favor: honorably discharging Marcella from the Royal Eyes. She did this to avoid the wrath of Thuel Raccanoch and Alain de Vere that was surely coming.
When Marcella asked if Alain had done what she thought that he did, Marcella’s mother was hesitant to fully confirm, saying that war is chaos, but she believed so. She then told Marcella she didn’t have much time and needed to leave, but left her with a gift from the Giver of Gifts: that Marcella’s true visage is for her alone and should only be shown to someone they trust the most. But, her name could be given to those closest to her, as a gift of sorts. She then left the offices and Marcella for the time being.
Vax woke up from his night of drinking in a halfling house in Little Telenta, a halfling residential area in the Northedge district. A family had taken him in after he passed out on their stoop. As he woke up, they fed him a secret House Ghallanda recipe that took his exhaustion away.
An hour or so later, Vax returned to the offices, waking Bal up. Vax showered and then the Foundation gathered to talk about the information they had received from the Shadow Outpost inside the Huntington’s Manor. Turk had discovered the following information:

• First off, Turk has found out that there seems to be 7 Operatives. III, IV, and V the Foundation have met, the documents reference II and VII and the reports are mostly written by Operative VI, who wrote the report on Vax. Of note was the fact that the Shadow seems to still be trying to recruit Operative I.
• The ticker tape Vax stole is tracking the dragonshard industry, so the Shadow has some interest in that.
• Reports talk a lot about the Mourning. Turk fears that they are trying to recreate it.
• Lastly, any references of this vault mention the Lantern. As far as Turk knows, this means the Lantern Tower in the Shadow Marches.

Together, the Foundation comes up with a plan of action: they will not wait around, but will instead leave for the Shadow Marches at dawn the next day. Turk believes they have a grace period as Marris will not inform the Shadow that she has lost the key and will try to fix the situation herself. Hackett suggests bringing in five of his former military buddies to pose as the Foundation members who will be leaving (with help from Vivienne), so it seems like the Foundation hasn’t left.
During the day before leaving, the Foundation members did brief downtime activities:

• Vax purchased a ring of flying from Crystals of Darion for 500 cr and went to the Magewright Organization to learn a new spell, the 1st level absorb elements.
• Marcella purchased a necklace of sending from Crystals of Darion for 500 cr (borrowing 150 cr from Vax) and used Turk’s notes to research the Shadow Marches.
• Mila sent a letter to her brother Ivan in passage, telling him to be on his toes for anything strange, and she sparred with Balarath in the hopes of getting to know him a bit better.
• Bal spent most of his time relaxing and meditating on his connection with Melk, the quori spirit he is connected to. He also sparred with Mila, trying to learn a bit more from Mila about unarmed strikes.
• Rasp experimented with necrotic arcana on some of the specimens he had collected, learning the difference between undeath and necrosis. He also talked to Vax, communicating to him that he needs to stop hiding in order to benefit from his healing abilities.

Once everyone got back, Hackett introduced his five military buddies that would be helping to keep the illusion that the Foundation was still in Sharn. With Vivienne’s help, she created illusions to make them each look like Foundation members. The Foundation also gave Turk 100 cr for him to use to make purchases under the Foundation member’s names to keep up the charade.
That night, Vax dreamt again about death, seeing the time when Shadow agents attacked the Foundation when heading to the cathedral in Sharn. He was once again joined by Marris. When Vax asked what she meant when she said that it was nice not to see death that she had caused, the dream shifted to show Marris in Operative clothing killing an older man in his room. She removed her mask and spoke directly to Vax saying this was her first kill as an Operative. As Vax asked his next question, he woke to the sound of Karkhan knocking on his door.
The Foundation was woken at dawn and Karkhan explained that, as the logistics guy for the Foundation, he had gotten in touch with an old friend to help them get to the Shadow Marches. Outside the window, a sky ship rose through the morning fog and Argo Zun saluted the Foundation. On the sky dock, the party saw Argo, Biggin’, and the humanoid elemental form of Tidal on board the newly christened Dawnbreaker, outfitted with an air elemental and several upgrades. Before they left, Turk gave the foundation tokens, symbols of the Phaeros Foundation, he had made for each of them to keep with them.
With that, the foundation departed from Sharn, rising above the clouds on the Dawnbreaker. The first day of travel was clear and they made good time, reaching the Greywall Mountains around sunset where they ran into a large wall of fog. In the fog, Bal noted large shadows circling the ship. He notified Argo who wasn’t able to identify the shadows. As he was about to say that they could probably ignore them, a screech rang out in the air.
The party fought off three wyverns who attacked the ship. Vax leapt onto one of the wyvern’s back, not realizing its tail was tipped with a poisonous stinger. After being stung, he leapt backwards, off the ship, disappearing into the fog-filled sky. Marcella thought that Vax was gone, having fallen from the ship and crushed the wyvern’s skull with her cane. Rasp climbed onto a pile of crates and cast blight on one of the wyverns, draining the beast of vitality and moisture, making it look like skin shrink-wrapped around a skeleton. It died soon after. The last wyvern focused on Mila who managed to fend off the beast and nearly kill it until it clamped her in its jaws and made to fly away with her. Mila managed to pry the beast’s jaws open with Emberime, but she fell over the side.
Managing to grab onto a rope and hang on the side of the ship, Mila took potshots at the beast until it flew off, leaving the ship alone. Unknown to everyone else except for Mila, Vax had used his new ring of flying and had been flying under the ship in case Mila fell and the two spotted each other through the fog, safe and sound.

Report Date

31 Jan 2021

Primary Location

Sharn