Previous Next

Repositories & Rituals

Last week, the party met up with Gregory in the Dancing Heron tavern. He said that he reported what the party found about Alistair to them, and they were very eager to stop a mad wizard experimenting with dangerous magic, and would work on trying to find and trap him in the city. However, Gregory was concerned that Alistair might notice the Nullwardens' attempts, and if they were unsuccessful, Alistair might trace the source of their information back to the party and try to kill them. He was also concerned about how the Nullwardens as a whole seemed to be more intensely on the side of putting a stop to the use of all magic, regardless of their individual use of magic, instead of the more balanced position that some members like Gregory took. As a result, he decided that he would be best served keeping an eye on the party for a while longer so he could protect them from both Alistair and any overly eager Nullwardens. He also tried to explain some of his dark and edgy past to justify his concern about magic, but the party was having none of it.

Gregory also gave the party some more context about bounty the Landowners' Association gave mercenaries to find evidence of the use of dark magic in constructing the Havens, but it was somewhat confusing and contradictory. It seemed very likely that the reason the Association originally gave out the obviously biased bounty based on input from the Nullwardens - probably because the Nullwardens paid them, since the Association has been more powerful in the city than the Nullwardens lately and they would have no need to garner favor. However, Gregory heard a rumor that the bounty may also have been cancelled based on unofficial input from Nullwardens, but no one knows exactly why. The party asked if the Nullwardens have various split factions within their organization, and that's sort of true. The latest member of the Nullwarden ruling council, Jeb, is notably more focused on identifying and stopping dangerous and unsafe uses of magic than eradicating the use of magic altogether. His prominence is unusual - historically, the Council has expressed all of its decisions unanimously, making it hard to gain insight about each council member individually and helping to prevent the organization from splitting into factions.

The party contemplated Gregory's info dump and decided to continue their original plans to investigate the donut warehouse outside the city. When they arrived, they found it burned down as reported, and the one random stablehand they asked about the fire was unhelpful. They started poking around inside the building and found it infested with fire elementals, which they forcefully convinced to chill out. Further searching revealed evidence that there was definitely magic being used inside the warehouse, likely as part of a donut creation process. There was also a burned worker time sheet which contained only two legible names: Kuvi and Ladrou.

After finishing their investigation, the party decided to talk to the owner of the stables next door to the warehouse, Jonnine. She was more helpful than the stablehand, and confirmed that the warehouse was known locally for the ritualistic chanting that the workers there kept up constantly. When the party asked her if she had noticed anything unusual that night, she said that there was a mistake in the records for when a particular mercenary named Frank Smith had arrived. His arrival log said he had returned his horse earlier in the night than he actually had. Jonnine hadn't been too concerned about it at the time, since people sometimes fudge those numbers just to avoid looking like they're out too late at night, but it was potentially relevant.

Frank had also talked with one of the stable hands at the inn, and Jonnine summoned the other stablehand to confirm what they had talked about. The other stablehand said that she had told Frank about several events in the city, but he seemed most interested in the bounty that the Landowners' Association had published that morning, and it seemed like he was probably going to investigate that. Gregory mentioned that Frank Smith was a known mercenary to the Nullwardens, and he didn't remember too much about him except that they knew Frank Smith wasn't a real name. With all of their new information, the party painstakingly reconstructed an accurate timeline of the events that they knew about so far to gain a better understanding of their options and returned to Praxis.

Join us this week to pick one of your many options from the beautifully constructed Quest Log! (I'm going to try to make sure the number of unique threads in that log should start going down over time now, not keep going up!)

Stupid Awards

Wei Clumsy Grumpy Wizard: Din Morat: Anwen Jord: Briar: "Bench" McSmashy:
Previous Next