26th Olarune, 1000 YK
- Balan and Hasal request the Blast Disks from the party. They have a quick psychic huddle and talk through how to approach this.
- Lozaal explains that the Order of the Emerald Claw are tricksy, and they don't think Richtus is truly dead. They're worried that the Emerald Claw will get them back somehow.
- Balan explains they, as law enforcement, they cannot allow civilians to leave here with a bag full of explosives. They call over Devra Edda, an explosives expert who fought for Breland during the war. She will disarm the bombs on-site.
- Dax' Athla offers to help, at least by casting Tiny Hut and creating an area of protection to limit the risk. They hand over the bags of holding, temporarily, whilst Devra disarms the bombs.
- Dax casts the spell as a ritual, and they also hand over Richtus' corpse for autopsy.
- Warden suggests also giving them some of Kalshana's holy water, but it won't do anything. Gentle Repose would stop him from coming back to life.
- Lozaal mentions the entropic effect that Richtus seemed to have on his surroundings, and Hasal seems to have seen that before.
- Warden offers to cast guidance, but Devra refuses. She doesn't want anything to influence her.
- Devra begins to disarm a bomb, wrapping it with a Null Fold before she begins working. She works on it for several minutes, then removes the fold and asks Dax to step into the tiny hut and say the trigger word. Leonus also enters the tiny hut to give them the necrotic protection.
- Warden, desperate to cast something, casts Guidance on Dax.
- Dax whispers the command word to the disk, and it doesn't explode!
- Devra, confident now, says that she'll be quicker with the next ones. Dax, her fears assuaged, prepares to leave to help with Fallen.
- The party, confident now that the bombs are in safe hands, get on the skycoaches and head to Fallen. Lozaal stays with the Blackened Book to oversee the disarming of the blast disks.
- Their plan is to ferry people up to Clifftop Adventurer's Guild and pay for their rooms for the night, and deal with whatever is going on down in Fallen tomorrow.
- They fly down into Fallen and begin making their way towards the Blackstone Church.
- Dax asks Warden to try and find a rat and ask it to check on Zae Tarkanan. He'll have to do it once they've landed.
- They fly over Fallen, and when they get within a mile of the church, Dax reconnects with Zedd. Zedd transmits images of the night before, of these ragged people coming to the church and requesting food and water...and people. Drego and Zedd fight the people, and one of them causes some sickly radiant effect that makes Zedd feel like she's wasting away. The raver expires before she or Drego does.
- When the skycoach gets within half a mile of the church, the skycoaches just fall out of the sky. Dax uses feather fall and no one gets injured but the skycoaches are slightly damaged.
- Dax wonders if the Syrania manifest zone is disrupted. Is that why the Glass Tower fell?
- The party work together to drag one of the skycoaches back a bit. The coach gets lighter at a certain point, curious.
- Dax calls Zedd to come and watch the skycoaches. She starts to come back and hurts herself. She can't fly! She starts to panic. She leapt into the air and then just fell face down.
- They lock the controls on the skycoaches and remove the keys, so they can't be operated.
- Dax is worried. Zedd could fly last night. Everything feels so hopeless.
- They walk the rest of the way to the church. There's a real tangible feeling of despair.
- Drego, for the first time in his life, looks dishevelled. Warden says "Sovereigns, you look like shit." He seems...disheartened? Something is wrong.
- Dax explains they have skycoaches, and she really feels that they need to leave right now. Drego nods and gets up, and his rapier falls out of its sheathe. He just looks at it and says "oh"
- Dax tries to rally people to get them to move, and everyone seems really sluggish and glassy eyed. It's just all hopeless, what's the point?
- She manages to get everyone up, and starts getting everyone moving. They all feel the hopelessness dragging at them, but Dax keeps talking to try and keep them moving.
- Dax gives Zedd some scritches to try and lift her spirits.
- They start loading people onto the skycoaches, they'll need to do two trips.
- Kal and Warden fly people up, whilst Dax and Leonus remain behind with those who can't be on the first trip. They decide to get everyone out into Foundation first, rather than waiting to get people straight to Clifftop.
- Dax tries to see if Zedd can fly again but she just seems so despondent. Dax puts a lot of energy into it and manages to get Zedd to fly for a few seconds.
- The skycoaches return after the first trip, and the skycoaches fall about 50 feet away. The boundary is expanding, that's worrying. Warden and Kal get a little bump.
- Devra is still disarming bombs, whilst Lozaal watches. She's getting quicker, but the mad lad who made the bombs put scapegoats in to make it harder to disarm them.
- Back in Fallen, they load the remaining people back onto the coaches and fly everyone out of Fallen and into Foundation. The people they left there are all just sat on the floor where they left them.
- Kal and Warden fly the coaches up to Clifftop, and Dax and Leonus stay with the remaining refugees.
- They pay for the refugees rooms, it's 11 gp in total to house them for tonight.
- Faela and Drego are just as effected as the other refugees, it's really disconcerting. Everyone is so hopeless.
- Warden casts Dispel Magic on Faela, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
- They gather everyone around Kalshana, and she uses the Calm Emotions stored in her sentira armour. There is an immediate impact, everyone seems to stand a little straighter. They're confused but in less of a stupor. After a minute, the spell ends and they all slump back into hopelessness.
- Leonus examines some of the refugees to see if there are any physical signs of the effect, but he can't find anything. It seems to be in their head.
- Dax wants to go to the library at Morgrave University and read up on the manifest zones in Sharn. She then remembers that they know a planar specialist, they've worked for him before! Provost Nigel Faurious.
- They go to fetch Lozaal first.
- Devra has just about finished disarming the blast disks by the time the party arrive to get Lozaal.
- Lozaal looks at the skycoach and then yells at Warden (who is driving) for damaging the coach. He works out that it crashed twice and he is NOT HAPPY.
- Warden argues that he didn't crash it! It falling out of the sky while he's driving is not him crashing it!
- Lozaal says if he was driving it, he crashed it.
- Dax tries to mediate, that they never could've predicted the manifest zone failing and he shouldn't blame them. He does anyway.
- Every session we have is potentially the start of Lozaal's villain arc.
- They go back up to Clifftop to try and contact the Provost.
- Warden drags dirt everywhere, he's a dirty boy.
- They run into Lhara, who tells them she has a job for them! For the Provost! Thelanis this time she thinks.
- Lozaal says "Sharn is breaking".
- Dax tells Lhara they need to speak to Nigel.
- She takes them to a meeting room and they wait for her to fetch the Provost.
- Lozaal takes brochures from the waiting room, adverts for local businesses!
- Lhara quickly tells them about the job, to recover an artifact called the Chains of Mur'taal. Lozaal knows the story about these! He doesn't share it right now though.
- The Provost bursts into the room like a hurricane, paper flying, and sits down. He heard there was planar nonsense?
- Dax explains what happened to them.
- The Provost is confused, skycoaches wouldn't immediately fall if the zone was disrupted, they can fly for a little while outside of it. Zedd being unable to fly is weird too, it's more like something is suppressing flight.
- Maybe some kind of demon? This isn't the Provost's area of expertise.
- Leonus is worried about the effect expanding. If it's expanding at a constant rate, surely the city will be falling soon?
- The Provost (and Warden) ask how they know the effect is expanding. If it's being produced by a creature of some kind, maybe it just moved.
- Dax asks who to talk to about setting up a no-flight zone. Kal suggests making a sign. It's unfeasible anyway, as entire districts lie above Fallen.
- Nigel asks if they're going to do his job. They say they'll get in touch but they need to deal with this other problem first.
- Lozaal asks why he wants the Chains, and he gives a brief explanation of Thelanis and how it interacts with stories. The locals tell stories of this object, and the manifest zone likely makes them real.
- Lozaal wants the chains after the Provost has studied them. Nigel agrees.
- Lozaal asks how Nigel heard of the chains, and the other objects he wants. He explains that he pays people to look for manifest zones, and probe local rumours. A nice hobgoblin named Tantuul informed him of the chains, and he's paid Tantuul to lead the party to them.
- Lozaal asks about the pay, the expresses disatisfaction at it only be 100 gold each. Nigel exclaims that it's a lot of money!
- Lozaal asks if they know where he might find adamantine. Nigel doesn't know, but Lhara says you used to be able to get it from House Cannith but the price went way up after the Mourning. Dax theorises the mines must've been in Cyre.
- Leonus quickly chimes in to ask about Mabar manifest zones. The Provost goes on about Mabar generally, and Leonus seems to be pushing him to say that Mabar is necessary and not evil. Warden probes and says that isn't using it's energy evil? The Provost says it depends how it's used, a fireball doesn't mean Fernia is evil, but it potentially means the caster is. Mabar, and entropy, is like death. It's a necessary part of the workings of the universe, it's not necessarily good or evil, but it can still hurt us.
- Whilst the Provost is giving this speech, Lozaal leans over and puts "his arm" (Terfel's arm) over Wardens shoulder. Warden freaks out. Once they realise it's Terfel's arm they all freak out. The Provost is confused.
- Kal is suspicious of the Provost, which sparks a discussion about how she always seems suspicious of those who try to help them. That cult she grew up in really did a number on her.
- A CULT!?
- Let's not get into that again now.
- Dax thanks the Provost for his time, and then they leave to find Drego. Lozaal pointedly does not say thank you.
- Warden grumbles about this, "no wonder the Dhakaani empire fell apart."
- Drego looks so dishevelled, it's concerning. He seems so hopeless. Dax tries to explain this to him and he's just like "ah".
- Lozaal slaps him, and then Dax tells Lozaal to leave. Lozaal explains his reasoning, "a lot of these effects end if you hurt them!" It didn't seem to work in this case.
- Warden makes a pot of Tal.
- Dax asks Drego if he knows about any demons that might suppress flight. He says there's a spell? Demons can cast spells.
- Drego talks about the ravers he saw, and their weird powers. Something giving them powers that hurt them?
- Kal says it reminds her of Teral ir'Soras and what he was doing to people. Giving people aberrant dragonmarks. Drego says "that sounds bad", which is so unlike him and upsets them even more.
- Lozaal found his skeleton in the Citadel of the Closed Circle, Teral can't still be alive. Leonus says "well we've been fighting corpses all day."
- Dax doesn't think it's Teral, anyway. She does mention that Brom Tarkanan mentioned aberrant marks were getting stronger. Maybe it's an aberrant mark?
- Dax thanks Drego for his time. He tries to do his silver flame finger guns, but they just silver spark.
- Lozaal left when Dax kicked him out of the room, and went to try and find some adamantine. Cannith sells it, but it's 1000gp per ingot. He's not paying that.
- Lozaal doesn't come back for a while. He wants to go to see the play tonight, and finally informs everyone that he has tickets. Leonus doesn't want to go, he just wants to sleep (and he hates plays). Dax asks if they have to go tonight? They're all tired and Dax wants to prepare everyone for whatever is down in Fallen.
- Dax fills Lozaal in on what was discussed, about how it could be an aberrant marked individual. Lozaal isn't sure what preparations are needed to deal with that. They can still go see the play surely?
- Dax is worried about Fallen, not sure she's in the right headspace to go see a play tonight. Lozaal asks if they're all worried, and they all express their concerns. "Something that can cancel out a manifest zone is pretty unnerving."
- Lozaal isn't sure why they're worried. They got this.
- Lozaal is concerned about the others, they didn't sleep the night before and just dealt with a dangerous threat, and now they are reeling from it. He doesn't think they should wallow in it, play or not, he thinks they need to relax and unwind a bit. He's concerned the hopelessness of Fallen is getting to them too.
- Dax asks if Lozaal wants to fight. That clears her head.
- Warden doesn't want to fight, he'd like to see the play.
- Lozaal asks how Kal relaxes. "Do you want me to get you cheese?"
- Kal would like some cheese.
- Leonus just wants to sleep. The beer in Sharn sucks anyway.
- They're gonna get a quick sleep in, and then go to the play in the evening.
- Dax and Lozaal spar for a bit to clear her head.