The Crimson Echo Season Four

[Inspectre]

The Story So Far:

Spoiler: How It Normally Goes

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• The party is brought together by Zellara, a middle-aged Varisian woman who is a Harrow (fortune) reader. She claims Lamm has wronged her too, and has brought all of you together to take revenge against the old criminal who has wronged each of you in some way.
• Following intel provided by Zellara, the party goes to an old fishery that has been serving as Gaedren Lamm’s base of operations. After fighting through the couple members of Lamm’s gang, you confront the old man in his lair and kill him.
• Searching Lamm’s lair reveals Zellara’s severed head, leading to the revelation and confession from her that she is a ghost and has been this entire time. She brought you together after her death to take revenge on Lamm, and selected all of you because she sensed that you had some greater fate to play beyond just killing Lamm.
• Amongst Lamm’s possessions is an incredibly detailed and expensive brooch that is the property of Queen Ileosa, King Eodred’s wife – how it came to be in Lamm’s possession is a mystery, although theft by one of his little lambs seems most likely.
• Later that night, King Eodred dies and the city is thrown into chaos. The party is forced to seek shelter indoors, perhaps back at Zellara’s old house, or perhaps at your own nearby residence. Along the way, the party has to deal with angry rioters, rambunctious imps enjoying the chaos, and possibly even a hungry otyugh.
• After the city has calmed, the party eventually goes to the royal palace to return the brooch to Queen Ileosa. After a brief meeting with the solemn queen-in-mourning, the party is generously rewarded and asked to meet with the head of Korvosa’s city guard, Field Marshall Cressidia Kroft, to aid the city further.
• After meeting with Korvosa’s most overworked civil officer, Field Marshall Kroft asks the party to investigate a group of city guardsmen who deserted their posts and have taken up shop in a butcher shop known as All the World’s Meat.
• Investigating the butcher’s shop reveals that while the ringleader of the deserters, Verik Vancasterkin, is indeed knowingly guilty of desertion, he is unaware that his men have set up a murder-for-hire business on the side, disposing of the bodies of their victims as part of the free meat distributed out to the desperate citizens of Old Korvosa.
• Following the party’s success in capturing Verik and his gang of miscreants, Kroft assigns a new task to the party – dealing with the smarmy ambassador from Cheliax, Darvayne Amprei. Amprei has been taking advantage of the chaos following Eodred’s death and his position as ambassador to enrich himself at the cost of the city, and Kroft wishes to convince him to back-off. How she intends to do this is acquire evidence of his misdeeds, or at least compromising information that could undermine his position back in Cheliax.
• A friend of Field Marshall Kroft, Vencarlo Orsini, is present at this meeting and explains that he is aware of someone who likely has such damning evidence on Damprei, and who probably would be willing to part with said information in exchange for a good amount of coin – Devargo Bravarsi, the so-called King of Spiders, who is a major crime boss running a den of sin and inequity known as Eel’s End in Old Korvosa.
• The party travels to Eel’s End, bargains with Devargo, and convinces him to part with his evidence against Damprei – a series of love letters between him and his mistress, which also includes details of several occasions where he has exploited his position as the Chelish ambassador for his own personal gain.
• By this point, there is a growing belief that Eodred was murdered rather than simply died of advanced age, and one popular suspect in his murder is Queen Ileosa herself. Another potential suspect is a young painter that King Eodred hired a few months ago, Trinia Sabor, who Kroft asks the party to quietly bring in for the girl’s protection.
• Despite the party’s best efforts, the apprehension of Trinia Sabor goes sideways, with the young painter proving to also be a talented acrobat as she leaps out of her apartment and races out onto the Shingles, the twisting maze of roofs, clotheslines, and bridges that span across the top of Korvosa’s slums.
• Things tend to go one of three different ways here - the party manages to catch Trinia, Trinia eludes the party long enough to run directly into a wandering patrol of Hellknights who promptly arrest her, or previously unknown assailants attack Trinia in the streets, killing her before the party can intervene.
• In the Shizu-verse, which is where two of our PCs are from, unknown assailants fire crossbows at the fleeing painter, wounding her at a critical moment and sending her tumbling to her death on the streets far below. The world shifted into its new state shortly after her death, and the party had no idea what follows this point, as they abruptly found themselves in a new world, with a similar but much different set of memories sitting alongside their memories from this first world. They have jumped to different worlds several times since then, as we have recruited new people a couple times before this recruitment drive.
• You may wish your character to come from a world where one of the other two outcomes with Trinia happened instead.
• If your PC caught Trinia, and decided that she was innocent of the King's murder and thus should be protected:
• You hid Trinia away, to attempt to smuggle her to safety later as the city at-large is now aware of the accusation from Queen Ileosa that Trinia murdered the King. Several days later, it was announced that Trinia Sabor was apprehended and would be publicly executed, under the orders of Queen Ileosa. The real Trinia was safe where you put her, so this was an either a fake or a case of mistaken identity.
• If Trinia got away from your PC (until she blundered into the Hellknights, anyway) or iff your PC caught Trinia, and decided that she was guilty of the King's murder and handed her over to the guard for punishment:
• You handed Trinia over to the guard, letting Field Marshall Kroft, who had approached you about finding Trinia in the first place to learn the truth, decide what was to be done with her. Several days later, it was announced that Trinia Sabor was apprehended and would be publicly executed, under the orders of Queen Ileosa - and against Kroft's protests.
• Your last assignment from Field Marshall Cressida Kroft, who you had been working with over the past couple weeks since returning the Queen's pendant to her, was to resolve a potentially severe diplomatic incident with the Shaonti, the native "barbarians" who had originally lived here before Korvosa was founded (and driven off by the Chelish settlers). It seems during the riots a prominent Shaonti, Kynndor Thok, was murdered and rather than his body being handed over to his father for burial in the Shaonti tradition, it had been carted off to the Grey District to be dumped in an unmarked mass grave with everyone else who had died during the recent unpleasantness. As his father was a leader amongst the Shaonti people, this was going to be a serious diplomatic incident and could push the already unfriendly remaining Shaonti towards war - which in Korvosa's weakened state due to the succession crisis following King Eodred's death, would likely not end well for anyone.
• Your attempts to locate the body of Kynndor Thok hit an additional roadblock when you learn that his body was stolen from its mass grave, apparently by a group of derro for experiments with necromancy, a school of magic all but forbidden in Korvosa. You venture down into their lair beneath the Grey District, in a warren of catacombs known as the Dead Warrens, eventually dispatching their leader Vreeg and recovering Thok's body. You return to Kroft triumphant, only to be greeted with the news of (fake or real) Trinia Sabor's scheduled execution.
• Your last memory is of attending the execution of the hapless painter, Queen Ileosa addressing the crowd and rallying them against Trinia, promising her blood as a balm for their recent sorrows caused Eodred's death and the riots. Perhaps you attempt to rescue the painter from the executioner's axe, sway the crowd and the Queen to mercy as the painter girl is innocent, or simply watch on helplessly. In any event, it all goes wrong and much as during the Shizu-verse chase in the alley, Trinia dies in front of you despite any attempts to help her. Your perception shifts to your new world shortly thereafter.

Spoiler: How Its Gone This Time

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(A similarly rough, general summary of the Crimson Echo, Seasons One through Three, is provided below.)

• Seeking to avoid a repeat of the original disaster, Silas goes to Trinia’s apartment first thing before King Eodred is even announced dead. Silas and Trinia are attacked by several gang members who seem intent on kidnapping the girl as part of some wider conspiracy. While Trinia is knocked unconscious by a poisoned crossbow bolt, she survives the ambush and Silas gets her to safety back at his place. A bit later on, corrupt guards show up at Silas’s place looking for her, seemingly part of the same conspiracy. Silas and Trinia again escape from harm and releasing the girl is in more terrible danger than previously believed, he takes her to Vencarlo Orsini’s house to hideout. While not happy to get a babysitting job dumped in his lap, Vencarlo agrees to keep the girl safe and out-of-harm’s way for now.
• Eventually, the party is once again assembled by Zellara, who again sets them on the trail of Gaedren Lamm as his old fishery base, although she notes that the threads of Fate seem oddly out-of-alignment.
• Arriving at the old fishery, the party once again fights through Lamm’s goons, albeit considerably more of them this time as Lamm seems to have found the money to hire a local gang for protection. Lamm ultimately escapes from the party aboard the old boat he has moored at the back of the old fishery, a previously ruined derelict that he has suddenly found the money to repair into a sailable vessel. While Lamm makes his escape, the party has to contend with the leader of the hired gang, who consumes a vial of shimmering orange liquid, promptly gains magical powers, and starts ranting at the party about how the city was all going to burn and rot.
• The drug that the local tough consumed was almost certainly a new drug called Shudder, a potent substance that (apparently truly does!) gives the drinker magical powers – albeit at the cost of going stark-raving mad. Lamm is apparently the sole distributor of the drug currently, which is certainly one reason he could be considerably richer and more powerful in this brave new world.
• The party still finds Zellara’s severed head, along with his stash – although the queen’s special brooch is notably absent from the minor hoard.
• King Eodred dies, and the city again plunges into chaos. The party deals with angry rioters, a few obnoxious imps, and a squad of Hellknights, members of the local mercenary band of the Order of the Nail, who are brutally putting down every rioter in sight with horrific amounts of violence. The party manages to largely steer clear of the Hellknights, although Aliani sends one of their officers – a dead-eyed Hellknight named Xerxes – chasing after Lamm.
• Through the chaos in the streets, the party rescues several people – a local fisherman known only as Fishguts Jim from some reefclaws, Nadine - a ballerina who is old friends with Aliani - from some thugs, and Beautrice – Nadine’s twin sister – from the psychotic leader of a street gang known as the Dusters who had burned Beautrice’s face with acid, leaving her gravely ill and on the edge of death.
• As things begin to calm down, the party is approached by Field Marshall Cressidia Kroft, who is aware of the party’s existence thanks to Vencarlo Orsini as well as Dalen approaching her prior to the riots to offer his services.
• The Field Marshall is badly overworked, and lacks the resources to attend to a request from Queen Ileosa, namely to see to the safety of the Chelish Ambassador, a woman known only Lady Andaisin. The ambassador has a small nondescript home in Old Korvosa, and with the riots still ongoing, the party is being asked to find her and escort her to the royal castle for her own protection.
• Ambassador Andaisin is unharmed, although the party finds her unsetting and suspicious, particularly after noticing that there seems to be blood and signs of a struggle inside the house (seen through the open front door) despite the ambassador claiming nothing happened the previous night. Nonetheless, the party obediently escort her to the royal palace, where they briefly meet with the ambassador’s old and close friend, Queen Ileosa Arabasti. The queen thanks the party for their efforts at protecting the ambassador, and offers them a new task – escorting her elven handmaiden Elliana, around the city tomorrow to survey the damage from the rioters and present her with a list of problems the crown could attempt to solve.
• During the meeting with the queen, Aliani brings up Beautrice’s condition, leading the queen to dispatch her personal physician, Dr. Reiner Davaulus, to attend to her now infected injuries. Dr. Reiner manages to cure Beautrice, although he is unable to remove the scars left on her face from the acid.
• While having some misgivings about the entire thing, the party ultimately agrees and returns to the palace the next morning to pick up the curious handmaiden. The queen’s personal bodyguard Sabrina Merrin, believed to be the city’s most skilled warrior, is very insistent that no harm come to the handmaiden.
• In the course of escorting the handmaiden around the city, the party comes across the handiwork of the Order of the Nail, in the form of numerous impaled and crucified bodies left in the middle of the street. They also meet the drunk and demoralized guard sergeant Grau Saldado, eventually managing to convince him to pull himself together for the good of the city despite the horrors he had witnessed the previous evening, both from the rioters and the Hellknights.
• The tour of Korvosa goes sideways when Aliani suggests to go investigate the suspicious Ambassador Lady Andaisin’s house, which handmaiden Elliana reluctantly but finally agrees to do.
  [*}The inside of Lady Andaisin’s house is a death trap full of horrors, including animated furniture that attempts to murder the party (Elliana included), and the re-animated bodies of a kill squad Lamm sent after the ambassador (and surely the source of the blood upstairs that led to this suspicion in the first place). Worst of all, the party discovers a booby-trapped shrine to Urgathoa, goddess of disease, gluttony, and undeath which ultimately sets the entire house ablaze in an attempt to destroy the evidence. The party ultimately escapes, but Handmaiden Elliana is badly shaken and vows to inform Queen Ileosa of this discovery.
• While down in the basement the party also learns a bit about Elliana’s backstory - that she grew up as an orphan on the streets of Westcrown in Cheliax, that she came to Korvosa along with Queen Ileosa and Lady Andaisin, and that she is a worshiper of the Empyean Lord Lorris the Savior Hound (with a small medallion of Lorris tucked under her clothes)
• On the way back to the palace, the party comes across a group of Hellknights who are publicly executing a group of civilians that they had supposedly caught rioting and looting the previous night. Handmaiden Elliana marches forward to confront the Hellknights and challenge their legal authority to summarily execute Korvosan citizens, when the whole thing is rendered moot by the arrival of Korvosa’s most famous vigilante and masked hero, Blackjack, who frees the civilians and engages the Hellknights in a duel to keep them busy while the remaining prisoners make good on their escape. The party aids Blackjack discretely, and Elliana is injured by a stray lightning bolt after she pushes aside a child who would have otherwise been caught in the bolt and killed. Miraculously, Elliana sustains only minor injuries as well (nothing a few CLW spells can’t fix!), although Sabrina is less than amused when the party arrives back at the palace and Elliana’s injuries are discovered.
• The party handles various personal business over the next few days, before they again meet with Field Marshall Kroft. Kroft introduces the party to one of her top detectives, a clean-shaven man named Rhev (who was also a drunk slob, disgraced ex-guardsman, and member of the party in the original timeline). Rhev had been assigned tracking down Gaedren Lamm, due to his Shudder business, his apparent involvement in Eodred’s death, and his stated intention to lead a revolt against the city’s nobility and topple its government. Rhev announces that he is looking into several potential leads into Lamm’s business, including references to a “painter” that he apparently used, possibly to poison Eodred. The trail of evidence Rhev has found so far seems to lead directly back around to Trinia Sabor.
• Shortly thereafter, the party is invited back to the royal palace for a luncheon with Queen Ileosa. There the queen presents the party with several personal gifts as a reward for escorting her handmaiden around the city on what the queen felt was a most productive survey. While there, the party broke the news that they believed King Eodred was murdered via poison, leaving Queen Ileosa distraught as she had apparently been uninformed of Kroft’s suspicions.
• The topic of Trinia Sabor came up during the conversation, and the party advocated for the girl’s innocence, learning in turn of another possible suspect – King Eodred’s tiefling brother Venster, a quiet embarrassment for the Arabasti family due to his heritage, and thus his somewhat secret existence within the castle. Investigating Venster’s tower also revealed Trinia Sabor’s work area, where she had indeed been diligently working on a secret painting, still half-finished, commissioned by King Eodred to be a gift for Ileosa, rather than anything illicit.
• This seemed to be enough to convince the queen of Trinia’s innocence, and ultimately led Silas to petition the queen to protect Trinia, as it was believed she would be better able to protect the girl than Vencarlo. Wishing Trinia to finish the painting that Eodred had commissioned, Ileosa promised to ensure her safety and asked the party to bring her here, which the party did (over Aliani’s protests).
• Around this same time, Aliani’s mentor, Haeluna Summersun, had recruited him fully into her secret organization of Milani worshippers. Aliani reluctantly accepted her offer to become a leader within the movement, and encouraged the party to come with him and meet the other leaders at an upcoming secret meeting. During this meeting, Gaedren Lamm made an appearance, announcing his intentions to topple Korvosa’s government, and requesting – as a former member of the Milani group – their formal assistance in his revolution. With Lamm is a certain dead-eyed Hellknight – Xerxes, the same Hellknight Aliani directed to chase after Lamm the night of the riots. Ultimately, thanks to the party’s arguments, the other Milani leaders voted against supporting Lamm, and the criminal leader stormed off.
• There were some insinuations from Haleuna that Gaedren Lamm may in fact be Aliani’s father as he was apparently close with Aliani’s mother several decades ago when he, Haeluna, and Aliani’s mother were all leaders within the Milani group – but no one really believed this to be true.
• The party has another brief meeting with Queen Ileosa at this point, escorting Trinia Sabor to the palace. They arrive just in time to overhear the queen formally hiring the Order of the Nail to conduct a series of extensive patrols of the roads outside of Korvosa, which will effectively remove nearly all members of the Order of the Nail from Korvosa for an extended period of time.
• Shortly thereafter, the party was again approached by Rhev, who had apparently found the drug lab where Gaedren Lamm was currently manufacturing Shudder. Wanting to shut the drug lab down, Rhev offered the party the opportunity to participate in the bust.
• The party approached the lab from the sewers, discovering an underground entrance guarded by several wererats. After a brief fight, the party secured that exit and then decided after barricading the door to go back up and enter the lab from the top rather than this secret underground entrance, believing that with this hidden exit now sealed, anyone inside the lab would be trapped.
• While the human guards on the ground floor of the lab were easily subdued, what was waiting for the party in the actual lab down in the basement was a much different story. Here the source of Lamm’s Shudder was revealed – a group of derro, insane little blue men that most believed to be urban legend rather than real. Their leader, a derro known as Vreeg, wielded a strange artifact he referred to only as The Eye – a literal eyeball impaled upon an iron spike that slowly leaked a black liquid. While the derro themselves were not that frightful, Vreeg’s pet, a giant cytillipede mutated by Shudder into a fire-breathing abomination that he called Odium, certainly put the party to the test. Ultimately, Vreeg escaped with the Eye through a tunnel smashed out by Odium, and the badly wounded party elected not to follow the two as they made good their escape.
• Returning from the drug bust not being a total success, the party yet again gets summoned to the royal palace, only to learn from Sabrina Merrin that Queen Ileosa was missing. Apparently she had slipped out with her Handmaiden Elliana, obstenibly in order to carry out an ill-conceived plan to hunt down Gaedren Lamm and kill him. Sabrina asked the party to find the two and convince them to return to the castle before they got hurt. Worse still, the council of nobles had announced they would be meeting tomorrow to determine the city’s new seneschal, a position with a great deal of influence over confirming Queen Ileosa as the city’s new monarch, or removing her in a favor of a new candidate (and likely sparking a civil war). The front-runner for that position was currently Chelish Ambassador Lady Andaisin.
• The party is unable to discover Queen Ileosa’s whereabouts, but they do eventually track down a trail left by her Handmaiden Elliana, a trail leading to Eel’s End and Devargo Bravarsi, King of Spiders. The good news was that Devargo had established himself as a rival and enemy of Gaedren Lamm’s, and had reached out to the party to meet for discussing a mutually beneficial relationship.
• With the open invitation to meet, the party is able to be shown into Devargo’s presence with relative ease, and they are eventually able to establish that Handmaiden Elliana had been here as well. Unfortunately, Handmaiden Elliana had been rather rude to the King of Spiders in demanding information on Lamm’s whereabouts from him, including attempting to charm him. Devargo had not been amused, and had his pet spiders capture the handmaiden with the intention of teaching her a lesson in respect, although the party was eventually able to convince him that laying a hand on the queen’s personal handmaiden was a *bad* idea.
• As Devargo was going down into the spider-infested hold to convince his pets to give up their prize, his warship came under attack by water elementals summoned by Lamm, who was seeking to eliminate his rival ahead of a meeting amongst all of the heads of the criminal underworld later that night (Lamm had apparently taken to recruiting the crime lords across the city, having failed to recruit the Milanites).
• The party battled into the spider-infested hold of the ship has it began to take on water, fighting through several frightened Dream Spiders and invading water elementals, cutting Handmaiden Elliana free and escaping from the hold before it flooded.
• Undeterred by her near-death experience, Elliana continued to advocate that the party move on to this meeting of the underworld, being held beneath the Kendell Ampitheater, rather than return immediately to the palace. This resolve softens somewhat when the handmaiden learns why the queen’s immediate return is so pressing (to advocate before the council of nobles tomorrow to try and block Andaisin’s nomination). Ultimately during this discussion, the handmaiden excuses herself and returns to reintroduce herself to the party sans disguise – as Queen Ileosa Arabasti.
• Here Queen Ileosa now reveals her reasons for running off alone to attempt to track down Gaedren Lamm – she did not believe that the council of nobles would support her selection for monarch, and she would either be shuffled off into exile or placed in a gilded cage for the winner of the following civil war to claim as a literal trophy wife. As such, she wanted to do one final good thing for the city – purging it of Gaedren lamm, the murderer of her husband King Eodred.
• Queen Ileosa also explains that Elliana was a real person, a fellow orphan in Westcrown who looked after her until she disappeared while trying to acquire medicine & food for a gravely ill Ileosa. Shortly thereafter she was found by Lady Andaisin, leading into her relationship as Andaisin’s pupil. In memory of Elliana, Ileosa uses her likeness now as a disguise as a way to honor her first friend.
• Queen Ileosa further reveals the nature of her close relationship with Lady Andaisin. More than just a mentor, Andaisin created Ileosa the noblewoman – the real Ileosa was nothing more than a commoner street rat from the streets of Westcrown in Cheliax that Lady Andaisin found and adopted. They came to Korvosa as a pair of grifters, and Ileosa seduced King Eodred into marrying her, and then manipulating him to enact various policies by whispering into his ear – many such policies which were in turn whispered into Ileosa’s ear by Andaisin. Ileosa’s true nature was therefore a secret which could destroy her if it ever got out, and Lady Andaisin was very much aware of that fact.
• Despite her misgivings, the party is ultimately able to convince Ileosa to stand against Andaisin at tomorrow’s trial, destroying her candidacy by revealing her status as a worshipper of Urgathoa, technically not illegal within Korvosa but nonetheless strongly frowned upon.
• Despite the party’s misgivings, Ileosa is eventually able to convince the party to go forward with interfering with Lamm’s meeting with the various Underworld bosses.
• The party sneaks and fights their way inside to the meeting, overhearing that the reason Lamm has called this meeting to get their assistance and fealty, and to prove his capability of becoming the new overlord of Korvosa’s underworld, he will rob the impenetrable Bank of Abadar, a feat of daring that would certainly prove his skill, if he could pull such an impossible task off.
• The party then interrupts the meeting, alongside of Blackjack who has also shown up to dispatch Gaedren Lamm. A fight breaks out, prompting Lamm to reveal a new pet spider infused with Shudder that had acid for venom, but the party succeeds in cutting the criminal mastermind down, only to discover that it is only a derro in magical disguise. Quite possibly this derro had also been appearing as Lamm during the previous times the party encountered him.
• As if Blackjack and the party themselves are not enough interlopers to this meeting, another group of cowled and masked spellcasters break into the meeting and start arresting various members of the criminal network. After convincing them that they were on the same anti-Lamm side, the party learns these cowled figures are a secretive sub-group of Hellknights, the Order of the Eye, essentially a black-ops splinter group of the Order of the Nail who are still operating within Korvosa and chasing after Lamm.
• While the party is dealing with the secret sect of Hellknights, Ileosa in her Elliana alter-ego is negotiating with one of the crime bosses who has not disappeared into the darkness just yet. She manages to strike a deal with the representative of the Scarzni at the meeting to come up with a holy symbol of Urgathoa, which she can present tomorrow as fabricated (since everything burned) evidence that Lady Andaisin is a worshipper of Urgathoa.
• The party eventually manages to extricate themselves and return to the palace with Elliana/Ileosa. The next morning, they are invited to the council of nobles meeting by Queen Ileosa to watch their fates play out.
• While intimidated by Lady Andaisin, Queen Ileosa ultimately testifies against her before the council of nobles, explaining the party’s presence as a group of investigators that she hired to look into possible misbehavior by the Ambassador. What they uncovered, of course, was a bunch of re-animated corpses, along with a shrine to Urgathoa, which the party testified to the council about while Andaisin futilely attempted to deny everything. Queen Ileosa’s final stroke was the presentation of the (forged by the Scarzni) holy symbol of Urgathoa, which she claimed the party unearthed from the wreckage of Andaisin’s house.
• Exposed as an Urgathoa, Lady Andaisin is publicly humiliated and quickly voted as dismissed from consideration by the council of nobles. With a final comment that she was very disappointed in Ileosa, Andaisin stormed out of the meeting, and the discussion turned to other potential candidates.
• Ultimately, the field of candidates is discarded for one reason or another, and as they near the end of the list Glorio Arkona of House Arkona finally breaks the stalemate by suggesting the mediocre – but neutral to all of the Great Houses – suggestion of Darvayne Amprei as Korvosa’s next seneschal. Furthermore, in a surprise move, and perhaps inspired by Ileosa’s initiative in exposing Andaisin (although almost certainly due to some ulterior motive), Glorio Arkona further proposes that in order to establish some degree of stability in Korvosa’s usual chaotic succession of rulers, that Queen Ileosa be coronated as Korvosa’s new official monarch. Amprei as his first action as the newly appointed seneschal agrees, and the motion is swiftly confirmed by the rest of the council – Queen Ileosa will be Korvosa’s next monarch, her coronation to be held one week from now, much to everyone’s surprise.
• Later that evening, while the party is celebrating their success with stopping Andaisin from becoming the city’s seneschal, they come across a rabble rouser attempting to incite a crowd to riot with the reveal that King Eodred had been murdered (poisoned), a fact which Field Marshall Kroft had been keeping quiet and was going to announce tomorrow. This rabble rouser, a scummy lawyer named Adonis Kreed, was challenged by the party and verbally thrashed, leading the crowd to abandon Kreed’s idea of marching on the castle to demand answers from the new monarch.
• The next morning, Field Marshall Kroft approaches the party to formally discuss the matter of King Eodred’s poisoning, which had been confirmed as fact after a second examination by Dr. Reiner. The second examination had revealed the source of the poison as Reaper’s Kiss, an exotic poison designed to make a slow death appear as a natural decline in health. Rather than be ingested, the poison is absorbed through the skin, and traces of it were found on Eodred’s fingers, left from frequently handling something that had been coated in the poison repeatedly over the course of weeks or months.
• This new information casts suspicion on both Queen Ileosa, who had regular access to Eodred, as well as Trinia Sabor who was a painter and thus could easily smuggle the poison into the castle amongst her painting supplies. With news of Eodred’s death being a murder rather than natural causes going public thanks to the efforts of rabble rouses like Adonis Kreed and others, there is a renewed potential for widespread riots and Kroft is under a tremendous amount of pressure to produce a guilty party to pin the blame for King Eodred’s murder on.
• In an attempt to help clear their names, Field Marshall Kroft requests the party’s help in convincing Trinia Sabor and Queen Ileosa to talk to her. They all return to the palace and Kroft interviews Trinia Sabor, leading to the revelation of several more pieces of circumstantial evidence against the painter – namely that her paint supplier had been found dead and had apparently been mixed up with Gaedren Lamm.
• While this meeting is going on, one of the few remaining maids in the castle, a young woman named Violet, suddenly panics and attempts to flee the party’s presence after she is asked a relatively innocuous question about who was working the night of Eodred’s death.
• Violet is swiftly apprehended by the party and Kroft, but the strange case takes a horrifying turn as a magical curse begins to cause acid to weep from the girl’s body, nearly killing her and reducing her body into sludge. Only the party and Kroft’s combined efforts manage to save the girl’s life, and from there they discover that Violet has been put under a Geas through ancient Thassilon runes carved into her skin. It is suspected that this may be the handiwork of Rolth, a dangerous and deranged necromancer who was imprisoned in Longacre several decades ago, and was believed to be executed . . . or perhaps not.
• Returning to the original conversation, Kroft also learns of the existence of Venster Arabasti, and investigates his residence inside the tower. Venster is presently not home, which is quite curious given he was essentially a reclusive shut-in. Around this time, the party also learns from the maid Violet that she saw Lady Andaisin pay a late night visit to Venster shortly before King Eodred’s death.
• Lady Andaisin, who is still living in the palace at this point, shows up, refuses to answer any of Kroft’s questions while citing diplomatic immunity thanks to her position as ambassador, and declares that after Ileosa’s betrayal, it’s clear she is unwelcome here and will be leaving to find another private residence. She then leaves and disappears to some location unknown to the party or Ileosa (and otherwise refuses to elaborate).
• Later that night Dalen attempts to learn more about the Eye by casting Pagebound Epiphany. He unexpectedly taps into an ancient trove of Thassilon knowledge about the Eye, claiming it is an ancient evil along with some research notes on the Eye’s involvement in blood magic that result in the transfer of magical traits, along with a seemingly unrelated set of research notes on the existence of parallel dimensions. Dalen’s research is interrupted by the triggering of an ancient magical booby trap as well, which interrupts his epiphany by casting Phantasmal Killer at him. Dalen manages to survive relatively unscathed save for some spontaneous bleeding from his right eye, but learns no more about the Eye.
• Additional research into what Lamm’s planning reveal that he has stolen a cache of weapons from Haeluna’s Milani group, and that he is going to do something at the Longacre Building, the city’s courthouse and civil center, or possibly the Deathshead Vault – the prison beneath Longacre. This could be a feint to distract from the bank robbery, or his main objective, and the party endeavors to pass along this information to their allies.
• The party attempts to contact Blackjack by leaving a note at a dead-drop the vigilante had told them to use to get in touch with him. Said dead-drop is outside Giotorri’s toy shop, and whoever dropped the note off across the street is approached by Pearl and Garnet Giotorri, his “daughters” who despite appearances do not appear to be human. They are nonetheless friendly and reveal that Blackjack is a “friend of the family”, hence their curiosity before excusing themselves and returning back into the toy shop.
• The party arrives at Longacre the next morning to find that the building is suspiciously closed, even the areas open to the public. The party investigates further and discovers that Lamm’s men have taken over the building after entering disguised as guards, and are now holding the civilians inside as hostages. Blackjack also shows up around this time, explaining that he received their message and that there had been an abortive attempt at robbing the Bank of Abadar just now – a couple men with crossbows running inside the bank and immediately getting taken down by the security. The bank robbery was the feint and Longacre or the prison beneath it was Lamm’s main objective.
• Breaking into the employee entrance at the back of the building, the party fights its way through corrupt guards and several Shudder-mutated dogs (Thunder hounds). Meanwhile, Blackjack breaks into the main courtroom through a skylight and begins fighting the men guarding the hostages there. The grand melee gets more desperate as a corrupt guardsman named Baldrago who has had several run-ins with the party before now joins the battle as a Shudder-corrupted madman.
• Baldrago and the corrupt guards are eventually all defeated, saving the hostages and allowing Chief Arbiter Zenobia Zenderholm to emerge from her locked office, which Lamm’s men had been attempting to break into when the party arrived.
• Several members of the Sable marines, Korvosa’s military arm, also arrive at this point to take control of the scene. Their commander, Marcus Endrin, is also present and explains he had provided himself and some of his men to the city guard today to serve as a rapid response team – Kroft and the other city guards were on their way over from the Bank of Abadar.
• While Lamm is not here, it seems he went down into the Deathshead Vault below to stage a prison break of some sort. The party, Blackjack, and Marcus Endrin descend down into the prison to attempt to find Lamm, despite the fact that the prisoners had been released and were now in a full-on riot.
• The party deal with a group of prisoners who have taken a some prison guards hostage, along with an acolyte of Pharasma, Kira Nightshade, who was there to provide medical aid. Blackjack personally rescues the acolyte, earning himself a fangirl in the process. From Kira and the guards, the party learns that Lamm had passed through here, freeing the prisoners on his way to Cell Block C, only a moderate security portion of the prison rather than Cell Block D where the more dangerous prisoners were kept. Apparently Lamm is looking for a Professor Hans Leithold, who is an expert of Thassilon lore and its language. Xerxes the Hellknight was also here, going into Cell Block D to apparently rescue his brother Darius, a notorious gunman and murderer-for-hire. The party elects to chase after Lamm rather than the disgraced Hellknight.
• The party catches up with Lamm just as he is breaking into the Professor’s cell and Vreeg unleashes a magical fog that begins to re-animate all of the dead guards and prisoners within Cell Block C into zombies. Despite planning to get away yet again through a secret derro tunnel, Lamm is caught by Silas and finally killed by the party. This time it’s apparently the real Gaedren Lamm, although thanks to the fog and the low doses of Shudder he’s been drinking, he gets back up as an undead abomination. Lamm is quickly killed again for the second and final time shortly thereafter.
• Despite the party’s best efforts, however, thanks to another appearance by Odium, Vreeg escapes along with the Professor. Still dealing with the rising undead and with wounded, the party wisely decides not to follow.
• Searching Lamm’s body, in a concealed pocket the party finds the queen’s brooch, along with a letter written by lamm and addressed “To my Killers”. The letter is a written confession that Lamm was indeed responsible for poisoning King Eodred, and exposes several other members of the conspiracy. First, Lady Andaisin as the apparently ringleader of the conspiracy, who provided Lamm with funding along with the queen’s brooch (actually given to her by Queen Ileosa as a gift) as insurance for Lamm’s safety. Adonis Kreed (contact between Lamm and Andaisin), Haeluna Summersun (provided the poison), and Trinia Sabor (smuggled the poison into the palace) are also listed as members of the conspiracy.
• With Lamm dead, his revolution is seemingly at an end, although Vreeg is still at large with the Professor. More troublingly, the party learns from Silas’s daughter Vjala – Blackjack’s mole within Lamm’s organization – that Lamm had discovered some sort of ancient Thassilon weapon and was planning on using it, but needed the Professor to translate the controls.
• Lamm’s allies are also still in play, as while emerging from Longacre the party overhears Lord Jeggare of House Jeggare berating Field Marshall Kroft over an apparently robbery at his museum, where the thieves stole his owlbear skeleton, which seems like something only a necromancer like Rolth would be interested in.
• Returning to the palace the party learns that Trinia Sabor has gone missing. Investigating reveals that it appears she was spirited away from the castle by agents of the Church of Asmodeus, and is now being kept within their great cathedral a short distance away from the castle.
• Seeking a diplomatic solution, the party returns to the castle to learn that while they were away Queen Ileosa had finally dealt with Ambassador Andaisin. After learning of her role as head of the conspiracy to murder Eodred, along with the proof via the brooch Ileosa had gifted Andaisin, Ileosa had finally snapped and confronted Andaisin with the evidence personally. This nearly backfires when Andaisin responds with physical violence, grabbing Ileosa and crushing her Lorris medallion, but Ileosa turns the tables when she reveals that she has spoken with Empress Abrogail Thrune of Cheliax about Andaisin’s worship of Urgathoa. In response Cheliax has revoked her ambassadorship, and is demanding that she return home immediately, likely to face a heretic’s death. Or, Andaisin could remain here and be imprisoned from her crimes against Korvosa. Faced with such a choice, Andaisin chooses quiet exile back to Cheliax over Ileosa’s “mercy” and leaves aboard the Direption which was already in the harbor.
• The next day, Queen Ileosa, Sabrina, and the party travel to the Cathedral of Asmodeus to negotiate Trinia Sabor’s release. The high priest of Asmodeus in the city, Ornher Reebs, reveals that they have already extracted a confession from Trinia as to her guilt in Eodred’s death (they are very efficient that way), and threatened that they had a secondary confession which implicated Queen Ileosa as the mastermind for this murder. In return for ensuring that the confession where Trinia claims she acted alone reaches the Arbiters, the Church of Asmodeus wanted Queen Ileosa to recall the Order of the Nail back to Korvosa.
• There is some negotiation back and forth for the Church to surrender Trinia into the party’s custody rather than execute her themselves, in return for further concessions from Ileosa, when the negotiations are entirely interrupted by a giant mechanic snake smashing through the roof. Lamm’s ancient Thassilon weapon has been activated, by Haeluna Summersun, who reveals that she was always on Lamm’s side, and that she was the one who had killed Aliani’s mother, not Lamm (and Aliani’s reason for going after Lamm in the first place).
• while Haeluna continues to smash up the church, the party attempts to free Sabrina from the rubble as Ileosa runs for safety (Orhner Reebs already having used Word of Recall to escape to elsewhere in the cathedral). Xerxes the Hellknight and Darius the gunslinger emerge from the metal snake construct to give chase to Ileosa, but are stopped by the party. Darius shoots Sabrina in the face with a dragon pistol, shredding her face but accomplishing little else but piss her off (thanks to the party’s efforts at freeing her from the rubble, otherwise it would have been a coup-de-grace).
• Darius falls in battle, alive but left by the party to be dealt with by the Church of Asmodeus. Xerxes swears revenge and escapes via invisbility.
• Haeluna manages to snatch up Queen Ileosa in the snake’s mouth and then flies the construct off, kidnapping the queen. Thanks to magic items produced by Dalen, Sabrina and the party are able to track Queen Ileosa’s location, leading them directly to lamm’s old base of operations within the Grey District, the city’s graveyard.
• Accompanied by Sabrina and Marcus Endrin, the party finds a way into the Dead Warrens, a network of tunnels beneath the graveyard, through the abandoned tomb of House Poryphia, a disgraced group of nobles who had been banished from Korvosa by King Eodred’s mother Queen Domina.
• Waiting for the party inside the tomb was more re-animating mist and a large group of exploding skeletons, although with Jeggare’s owlbear skeleton, repurposed by Rolth into a dangerous necrocraft.
• Overcoming the undead through clever spellwork by Dalen, Aliani’s channeling, and good teamwork (as well as Marcus and Sabrina slaughtering everything that came within reach), the party stands ready to proceed deeper into the tomb, Lamm’s apparent base of operations within the city, seeking Queen Ileosa, Haeluna, and the ancient Thassilon weapon.
• Moving deeper into the Dead Warrens, the party soon finds itself even further beneath Korvosa, in the underground region known locally as “the Vaults”. These ancient sewers and tunnels were made by parties unknown, with the extremely dangerous monsters living this far beneath the city making it difficult for scholars to make much progress in determining this information. However, the primary theory is that these were made by the servants of Runelord Sorshen, who ruled over this land many thousands of years ago. This theory seems to be correct as the party discovers a sanctuary and laboratory built by Sorshen.
• Sorshen’s laboratory, although haunted by some sort of psychic remnant, seems to finally offer a plausible cause for the multiverse hopping that has brought the party together – Sorshen was experimenting with a tenth-level spell to allow for multiversal travel. How this travel was accomplished, why she was researching such a thing, and what relevance this discovery from the ancient past has on your current situation all remain shrouded in mystery.
• Beyond the laboratory, the party discovers the hangar containing the ancient Thassilon snake construct that Sorshen had built, and Haeluna has co-opted, along with Queen Ileosa who is narrowly evading discovery and capture by Vreeg and Haeluna.
• The party ambushes Vreeg after reuniting with Ileosa, slaying the derro leader and escaping from pursuing derro reinforcements through an illusionary doorway to an even deeper still part of Sorshen’s hidden laboratory. What other strange secrets await discovery?
• After navigating a series of traps, the party comes to a final strange puzzle set as a challenge by apparently Sorshen herself. Evidentially the ancient Runelord had anticipated the party's arrival here, as the challenge was a scale balanced against three concerns - What the Party Served, What the Party Feared, and What the Party Hoped to Save. Small stone and metal figurines lined up small recessed alcoves along the walls near the scales, depicting a wide variety of gods, beasts, and men . . . including the party members themselves, locked in battle against a figurine of Queen Domina - not Ileosa - perched upon the Crimson Throne. Ultimately the party figures out the puzzle, and unlocks the door to a treasure vault prepared for them by Sorshen, along with what passes for an operations manual for the ancient Thassilon construct that Haeluna put to used in severely damaging the Cathedral of Asmodeus.
• Upon attempting to leave the vault, the party was again accosted by Haeluna, this time with the Eye. Replacing one of her eyes with the Eye itself, Haeluna was transformed into a terrible amalgamation of flesh and plant, speaking in a voice not her own as she taunted the party with their inevitable defeat.
• Despite her boasts and terrifying power, the party is ultimately victorious over Haeluna, although almost at the cost of one of their own left clinging at death's door. The way is now clear to finally leave the tomb, returning Queen Ileosa to the city and preparing for new threats now that Gaedren Lamm's legacy seems to finally be extinguished . . . although a few very important loose ends remain to be solved, including the fate of Trinia Sabor.