Session 06 Recap – Ashes of the Nest

With Petra Lang rescued and a secured delerium specimen in their care, the party emerged from beneath the Rat's Nest Tavern into a long evening — one that would carry them across the outer ruins, into the path of a holy knight who would change everything Drakzen thought he knew about his own order, and back home to a dream neither Six nor the party were ready to interpret.

Two Who Walked a Different Road

As the party climbed out of the ratling breach into the failing evening light, Doc Skizzet was the first to step away.

He had palmed a sliver of the meteor specimen before River's case was sealed — small enough to miss, precious enough to consume him. The fragment pulsed faster than the larger piece, and Skizzet was already somewhere else entirely, speaking of "organizing patterns" that had to be measured before the calibration window closed.

He pressed a Potion of Healing into the nearest open hand, whistled once, and Frankie unfolded from a pile of masonry to carry him overland northwest toward Emberwood.

Moments later, Rustar set down his gear with deliberate care. The contamination he had taken in the burrow was, in his own words, deeper than he had first believed. His sect had practices for this. He would walk north — a full day's journey around the city's eastern wall — to the Shrine of the Old Gods in a grove to the north, and he would fast there until the taint had been purged and the Flame answered.

He did not know when he would return. He bowed once, and was gone into the mist before the road had a chance to protest.

Petra's Confession

With the others departed and Petra leaning hard against a slumped stone, the four remaining companions settled in while she recovered her strength.

She was grateful, but she was also honest — a Hooded Lantern trait the party is starting to recognize. She spoke of:

• The Lanterns being stretched thin across a city that needed ten times their numbers
• The Queen's Men, who had become more than a nuisance — a thorn the Lanterns could not afford to pull out
• A warning about the Silver Order: polite, disciplined, dangerous — and especially attentive to anyone carrying faith openly

That last was meant for Drakzen. Petra did not know which sect he served, but she knew the Order would recognize him the moment they saw him, and she wanted him to meet that meeting with clear eyes.

She also had a word for Six, quiet and uncharacteristically searching:

"You look like someone was erased and rewritten."

For Tough Luck, Petra made a promise — one sealed before they reached the gate: she would have Slovak check the Shepherd's Gate ledgers for any trace of a dwarven girl passing through. She kept her word.

The Questing Knight

The road between the ratling crater and Shepherd's Gate is not long — perhaps half a mile. Six, ever the careful one, spread word quietly through the company: if they crossed a Silver Order patrol, he would cast Invisibility on Tough Luck, who carried the case.

The patrol stepped out from behind a burnt wagon before Six could speak a syllable.

Eight figures in white tabards. Silver plate. A burning chalice on every shield. At their center, unhurried, a knight pulled off his helm.

"Evenin', friends. Mind if we share the road a moment?"

Sir Gideon Harrow — sun-lined face, greying hair, eyes the color of weak tea — spoke with the slow cadence of a country preacher. He did not draw a weapon. He did not raise his voice. He was, Drakzen quickly realized, one of the most dangerous things the party had yet encountered — and one of the most sincere.

The Order of Light

When Drakzen named his sect, Sir Gideon's whole body went still. The silence that followed was long.

"…The Order of Light. I'd heard the last of 'em died in the city. Tendin' the holy places when the sky came down."

He spoke of a Brother Caswell who had served beside him in the Caspian campaign — a quiet man, hands like a healer, sword like judgment — who had come from Drakzen's order. He touched, without meaning to, a ring he kept on a cord beneath his tabard.

Drakzen, watching Sir Gideon closely, understood more than the man was saying. (Jim rolled a natural 20 on Insight, and the moment landed exactly as it should have.) He learned:

• The Order of Light was an older, contemplative wing of the Silver Order — keepers of holy sites and sacred rites, not crusaders
• The Order's contemplative traditions had been fading for decades before the meteor fell; the modern Silver Order, under Knight-Captain Marshal, favored the crusader path and would, if given its way, burn Drakkenheim to the ground
• Sir Gideon personally carried grief for Brother Caswell and doubt about the command he served under
• The older path — the Order of Light's path — was what Sir Gideon honored above all. He was not recruiting Drakzen into Marshal's Silver Order. He was asking him to remember who he already was.

What Sir Gideon Asked

Sir Gideon extended three things to Drakzen and the party:

1. An invitation to Camp Dawn, two miles west, to share bread and hear the Order's position before the case was delivered anywhere it could not be retrieved
2. A gentle reminder of the Chapel of St. Brenna — a site of the Sacred Flame north of the cathedral district, where rumor says the Sceptre of Saint Vitruvio itself lies hidden, buried when the city fell
3. The hope, spoken plainly, that when the time came, Drakzen would stand beside the Order — and beside Sir Gideon himself — as they reclaimed the Cathedral of Saint Vitruvio

And he warned them about something that prowled the cathedral district. A name the party had not heard before, spoken with something like real fear:

"The Lord of the Feast."

Sir Gideon did not elaborate. He did not need to.

Drakzen Heard Him

The paladin of the Order of Light listened. He did not accept the invitation to Camp Dawn on the spot — the rest of the party was reticent, and Drakzen does not walk alone in this company — but something in him leaned forward, and it did not lean back.

Sir Gideon placed his helm under his arm, and returned to his patrol. He was, throughout, respectful of the Hooded Lantern in their midst and made no move to interfere with her passage.

Delivering Petra

At Shepherd's Gate, Slovak and the Lantern garrison received Petra warmly and without ceremony. Slovak, true to Petra's promise, committed to searching the ledgers for Tough Luck's sister.

The Lanterns pressed a one-time favor token into the party's hands — not a payment, but a recognition: pass this across a Lantern palm, and the Lanterns will make good on one significant favor, no questions asked.

Petra herself was ushered inside to rest. The party turned west toward Eckerman Mill.

The Lost One on the Road

They had not traveled long when they heard it before they saw it.

A figure dragged itself from the mouth of a side alley — once a person, now hollowed and translucent, one eye gone and the other fixed on the containment case. It took a single step, collapsed onto the cobblestones, and whispered fragments of a life it no longer remembered.

"…I found the pattern… I almost… I almost understood…"

Then, for one clean moment, its remaining eye found Six. And it spoke — lucid, direct, unmistakable.

"You weren't meant to stay counted."

It died on the stones before Six could answer. The others heard only gibberish and wet breath. Six recognized a tattoo on the neck of the dreg: the Roman Numeral VII.

Drakzen, quiet, lowered his cloak over what was left of the body.

The Mill

At Eckerman Mill, River received the case with professional care and, when she opened it, with a flicker of something deeper than satisfaction. She studied the specimen with three different instruments — one of which was plainly not mundane — and named it for what it was:

"A seed-piece. A resonance anchor. The warlock below the tavern was using this to listen to something. Or something was using her to listen through this."

She paid the party honorably: 300 gp per member, including the shares of Doc Skizzet and Rustar, which she did not question. The Arcane Containment Case remained in the party's possession. She added one dose of Aqua Delerium to the payment, and promised another job within the week.

Then she turned to Six.

"You were in the presence of a raw delerium specimen for over an hour. Your sorcery is more stable than it should be. Most arcane casters bloom contamination in that proximity."

Six, for his part, had taken one level of contamination — a casting during the burrow had caught him cross-current. River noted the level without alarm. She said only that it was good the damage was not worse, and that it was worth noting.

"If you ever wish to understand why, the Academy has resources. I say this not as a recruiter. I say this as someone who has seen what happens when people like you try to figure it out alone."

She did not press. She gave him the space, the door left open.

She also, as it happened, had arranged rooms at the Red Lion Hotel in Emberwood for the party that night — a personal courtesy, since it is where she keeps her own quarters when she is in the village.

Ansom at the Watchtower

The party returned to Emberwood by late evening and met Ansom Lang at the watchtower. Ansom, who is not warm but is honest, shook every hand personally.

"You did what my people could not. That is a debt. It's a personal one, not a faction one — I want that clear."

He offered payment. The party declined — they had seen the Lanterns' stretched state with their own eyes now, and they would not take coin from a house that needed it more than they did.

Everything else Ansom offered, they accepted:

• Flamekeeper Hanna's free spellcasting at the Chapel of Saint Ardenna — one casting, one time, their choice when to use it
• Continued contact with the dwarven network — still no reply, but he keeps his word, "even slowly"
• A lead for future work

When he learned the party had met Sir Gideon and the conversation had been civil, Ansom's shoulders lowered half an inch. When he learned Drakzen had listened carefully and not given anything away, they lowered another half inch.

Tough Luck, who understands that a debrief does not require sobriety, asked Ansom for a potato. He put hard tack in his cooking pot, filled it with ale, and dropped the potato in.

The Gilded Lily

With gold in their purses and the weight of the case finally off their backs, the party made their way to the Gilded Lily and spent some of it.

Tough Luck commissioned a young girl with more gold than any normal person would provide for the task- to fetch him a sack of onions, added them to his pot, and cooked a soup that he served to the whole tavern. It earned him good coin and better goodwill.

Augustine took the stage. Six took the stage. Drakzen even took the stage, after a fashion. All four earned tips over the course of open mic night.

(Six burned through a concerning number of chips on his rolls that night. The Lily does not know what kind of luck it was drinking with.)

The Dream of the Hall of Numbers

They turned in late. Six slept in a room River had arranged, in a bed that smelled faintly of pine.

What he dreamed that night, he has not told the others.

But he remembers, with terrible clarity, a voice that was not the dying thing's voice, and was not Petra's voice, but was the voice of a long lost friend, speaking a line he had already heard on the road:

"You weren't meant to stay counted."

Loose Threads

• Rustar is still north of the city, at the Shrine of the Old Gods
• Doc Skizzet is in his workshop, studying a fragment
• Camp Dawn is an open door for any who want to cross its threshold
• Ophelia Reed, High Flamekeeper of the Silver Order at Camp Dawn, was named and would welcome visitors
• The Chapel of St. Brenna waits
• The Cathedral of Saint Vitruvio waits longer, and something in it is hunting
• The Lord of the Feast was named
• River will contact the party within 2d6 days with another job
• Slovak is searching Shepherd's Gate ledgers for a dwarven girl
• Ansom's dwarven contacts are another week out, at minimum
• Ansom Lang's promise of another job soon to come
• The Queen's Men remain a thorn
• The Rat Prince and Squeaks are still alive beneath the crater

"You weren't meant to stay counted."