Session 1

A fresh dawn rises on a new generation of heroes, adventurers, and villains in the land of Serulea (more context in other docs). On this dawn in particular, four unknown strangers arrive in Old Byron, an idyllic cottage town near the capital, at the behest of a famous archmage that none of them had ever met in order to celebrate a protégé that they had never heard of. These four, who arrived separately, were named:

• Esper Starwisp, a young and optimistic druid who had been sent out from her home village early to explore the world and parse some ominous fortellings
• Bryan Omega, the youngest and most reckless son of the O’megan noble family whose lost fortunes propelled him unprepared into poverty
• Zephyra, an enthusiastic tiefling who used her inherent magical abilities to aid a life of thievery and crime on the streets of Kalzaharn
• -Morren, a dour bard with a wholly mysterious past and a penchant for cruelty

Upon entering the town, a tumultuous thunderstorm began, trapping everyone inside for the day. Morren, feeling somewhat strange, collapsed in an alleyway away from the public eye. He did not regain consciousness in time to make it to the party. Esper, by contrast, fell into a light but fitful sleep in  the inn room. She experienced a strange nightmare, where she explored a shadowy dreamscape with two other translucent figures. Upon finding a mysterious, iridescent woman, the group battled an evil presence to protect her.

Before they could reconvene with the woman, a massive, god-like figure swirled out of the shadows, calling herself Mortholme, the Queen of Dreams. The group prepared for another fight, but she swallowed the group within a large black flower. Irene woke with a start, a headache, and dismayed to see that the storm had not let up. Regardless, the party began at dusk, so she had no choice but to set off towards Attwen Manor.

As she traversed the few miles between the town and Archmage Ullic’s estate, the storm soaked her to the bone, the wind ruined her hair, and the mud stained her clothes. Within a few minutes, her mood was lower than it had been even after her nightmare. But as she finally reached her destination, the storm cleared, and she got a true picture of the majesty she was approaching. The river gurgled gently, the animals were quietly enjoying the surrounding nature, and the manor shone brightly in the setting sun. Esper got the distinct feeling that this was the start of something Glorious.

As she knocked on the door, a distinct tinkling of bells rang through the mansion. An elderly butler named Bendel greeted her at the door and invited her inside. As she entered, a magical doormat cleaned and dried her clothes within seconds, buoying her mood further. Bendel walked Esper into the next room, explaining that only one more guest was due to arrive. As they entered the first room on the West Wing of the manor, Esper saw an excitable, if somewhat womanizing, young mage bragging to three young women about his latest conquests from the war with the Ascendancy. One of the women immediately caught Esper’s eye: the tiefling Zephyra was one of the three present in her dream! She tried to strike up a conversation, but Zephyra stared blankly at the elf until she turned to walk away.

Realizing that Esper was indeed talking to her, she chased after the young woman into the dining hall and began to tag along (silently). Esper again asked her what she was thinking about, and she thought back to her conversation with Alkamer. But again, she chose to say nothing. Esper was getting quite frustrated at this point, and asked if she was “slow in the head” before telling her that the regional government likely had facilities for “people like her”. This got her talking, and as they began to discuss their shared dream, they overheard a Halfling noble attempting to engage an intimidating shirtless man in political conversation.

Bryan Omega defused what could have been an explosive debate by playing dumb before moving to greet Esper and Zephyra. As they discuss the nightmare and the party, Esper described Bryan as “homeless” after he proclaimed his desire for a free meal. After several more strange conversations with Mayor Montgomery and several nobles, the group discovered that almost nobody at the party knew the Archmage personally, and began to suspect something was afoot. Esper talked to Stradavon the Bard and obtained his autograph before heading to the Northern wing of the manor with Zephyra and Bryan to find some pre-dinner food. After the chef rudely banished them from the kitchen, Zephyra showcased some of her magical abilities by using a Mage Hand to steal a shepherd’s pie through another doorway.

Continuing their streak of thievery, the group  snuck into the Chef’s quarters and rooted through his chests until Zephyra  found a broken purple crystal hidden underneath some cooking utensils. The three then proceeded to split up and wander around the manor for another 20 minutes without learning anything substantial. After returning to Stradavon to watch him perform, the group heard the tinkling of bells that announced their final guest. They settled in for dinner as Justicar Wargreaves, a noble blue Dragonborn, entered with Bendel. As they made their greetings, Bryan was immediately hostile to the authority figure, but they didn’t have time to devolve into a fight.

Bendel, who had left to retrieve the Archmage, rushed back into the dining room to proclaim a tragic finding: Archmage Ullic had been murdered! Bryan immediately accused the Justicare of committing the crime, and continued to do so for the rest of the night even after everyone involved explained to him that the Justicar was quite literally the only person who couldn’t have done it. In any case, the three were tasked with  investigating and working their own theories about the Archmage’s murder. Alkamer also warned them that the mansion was conjured by the Archmage, and would fade with the morning sun if not renewed. They headed upstairs to check the body, but got immediately sidetracked and started combing through bedrooms upstairs. They found two health potions in Bendel’s study and some letterhead in Alkamer’s bedroom before Esper remembered the reason they had come upstairs.

In the Archmage’s room, they found the old man lying in a pool of his own blood from a massive stab wound to the heart. Zephyra tried to crack open the Archmage’s chest before even looking at the body and found a few journal entries that described his exploits as an archeologist and preservationist. After doing a horrible job inspecting the body (they did at least determine that the Archmage was, in fact, dead), they then tore apart the study and found another journal  entry. After digging through even books in the library, it became clear that the crystal Zephyra had found was likely a Godshard, an artifact of immense  power and religious significance. She declined to share this information with Esper and Bryan, though. They also found a book of debts that described a large amount of taxes that the Archmage had withheld from the town of Old Byron.

As the three walked along the outside veranda, Esper noticed that the spearhead of the statue in the pavilion was sparkling. Zephrya offered to use her Mage Hand to grab it, but Esper decided to use a length of rope to lasso the spearhead off the statue, successfully breaking it off and causing it to plummet to the ground. Bryan sprinted down the stairs to be the first to retrieve the artifact, and upon finding it discovered that it was another crystal, but this one shining brightly with energy. While downstairs, they interrogated Chef Schenler before moving into the basement, where they discovered a caged Manticore. Unfortunately for them, the cage door had been left unlocked, and the beast burst out of the cage in a fury.

Extremely unfortunately for the Manticore, the group had been waiting for just this opportunity to unleash their wrath. Esper entangled the beast in a sea of green vines while Bryan and Zephyra unleashed an unavoidable onslaught of punches and elemental sprays. The Manticore struggled in a frenzy, but failed to even one time break free of the vines and remained unable to even damage Bryan, who was standing directly in front of the creature. The battle was horribly one-sided and ended with the torn, bloody carcass of the Manticore falling to the ground in shame.

Bryan proceeded to try to break down the door behind the Manticore’s cage, but managed only to hurt himself against the runic protections. In the other room, they discovered a cage with  two zombies, and yet they seemed quite different in composition. One zombie was clearly a reanimated corpse held together by magic, but the other was disgusting, oozing pus and melting from the inside out from some sort of disease. The three quickly took their leave and returned upstairs. Once out from the basement, they felt the manor vibrate as an explosion echoed from upstairs. They took their time, investigating some rooms they missed on the first floor, before making their way back upstairs.

There indeed had been an explosion in the study, green smoldering flames covering the room as Montgomery was strewn across the chair, dead. Bendel was heavily injured but alive, so Esper treated him with her medicine kit. As he regained consciousness, the Justicar entered to see what had happened. Bryan took this opportunity to accuse him of causing the explosion before leaving with the group to finish exploring the top floor. In one of the rooms dedicated to research, Esper discovered that the Archmage had broken the Godshard while capturing it from the northern druids and their temple, and had worked to create an artificial version that could be restored to power. As Esper read these documents, Zephyra began hearing whispers from a black tiara on a pedestal.

The tiara asked Zephyra to break it so that the spirit inside could be free, which she did so with zero hesitation. A Shadow named Ezakyle burst forth from the broken jewelry, and attempted to escape the room to feast on the hapless guests downstairs. Zephyra screamed and fled to the far side of the room as Bryan attempted to block the Shadow from moving. The demon swiped him to the side and struck down Esper in a single blow before turning to flee. Over the course of nearly a full minute, Bryan and Zephyra refused to help the unconscious elf in their attempts to shut down the dangerous creature.

Esper’s condition deteriorated so rapidly that to most eyes, she appeared to have actually died before divine inspiration moved Zephyra to pour the only health potion in her bag (strange, didn’t she grab two?) into Esper’s mouth. Esper barely reacted, however. It was as if her very soul was so infuriated that her teammates did not try to heal her that it departed even before her death was a foregone conclusion. Bryan continued to chase down Ezakyle and managed to end it with a solid blow to the back of the head as it ran down the hallway. Exhausted, the group decided that their best course of action was to finish their interrogations, find Alkamer, and return to Justicar Wargreaves.

They eventually found Alkamer in the basement, naked and in a cage behind the door that had previously been warded. Taken aback, Zephyra immediately performed a “Cock Check” to evaluate the size of Alkamer’s penis while Esper began grilling the prisoner about what had happened. Alkamer explained that he, Bendel, and Montgomery had been trying to open a hidden safe behind the painting in the study to find treasure inside to pay off the Archmage’s debts. The safe was unexpectedly trapped, though, and an explosion teleported Alkamer into the basement while killing the other two. The group hesitantly let Alkamer out of his cage, and the four of them traveled upstairs to find the Justicar.

The Justicar finally finished his Circle of Truth in the throne room upstairs, and summoned all the guests in the manor for the final reveal. The group had the choice of placing one suspect in the Circle of Truth, and after much deliberation they chose Chef Schenler, who they had discovered was a refugee of the same temple that Ullic had stolen from. In the interrogation bubble, the Chef revealed that he was planning on stealing the Godshard and returning it to its rightful place, but had no intention of murdering the Archmage. Instead, he had strange gaps in his memory that correlated with some of the artifacts that Alkamer had been showing off earlier in the night: namely, an Amulet of Suggestion. It was also clear that Schenler had used the magic-rending dagger that Alkamer had also shown off to to get past the Archmage’s wards and kill him.

Although it should have been obvious to anyone that Schenler, acting on Alkamer’s magical manipulations, had been the one to kill the Archmage. However, neither Esper nor Zephyra nor Bryan even recognized that Schenler had been the murderer, guilty or not. This sheer incompetence inflamed Alkamer so much that he actually admitted to the crime in front of the Justicar and started attacking the group. The resulting dogpile was absurd: everyone with any capability unleashed magic and weapons and punches and grapples to the extent that, as powerful as Alkamer is, he stood no chance and especially not while naked.

As the mansion faded in the rising sun, books and corpses fell to the ground, and the Justicar thanked the group for their efforts. He did express a strange thought, though, that there was supposed to be a fourth member of the group. Oh, well. Even with just the three of them, they managed to achieve something positive and begin to create some Glory for their efforts.