🏘️ Calvantrus

Our story begins in Calvantrus, a small, community-led town that sits on the main road headed towards the capital city of Ashrun Valley - Flammenvielen. The place is currently as busy as it has ever been, as after the event now known as the Fall of Flammenvielen has led to a mass exodus of it's citizens, Calvantrus is now seeing an immense boom of business as the people fleeing Flammenvielen pass through.

🐴 Cart Registration

Amidst the town of Calvantrus, many business owners and couriers have taken to offering rides to those passing by, creating mass cart processions that are delivering people to nearby towns and crossings to make some gold, and assist in their exodus.

The party converges here, as B and Xolo line up to register with a cart ran by a man called Davos Tailwind. They meet Davos' pet tortoises; Dierdre and Dundee, and discuss with him the details of his cart services. He tells them that he'll take them as far as Lake Gheel Cross, where the main road diverges north and south at the end of Ashrun Valley.

B and Xolo continue to register with Davos, who joins them together with Lyra and Ember, two lone travellers who too seek a cart headed towards the cross. They agree to travel together for the time being, and sign off with Davos.

🔥 Flammenvielen Convoy

Some hassle begins to stir up in the town square of Calvantrus when a convoy of Flammenvielen military, led by a high-ranking archmage named Kraetor Weiss , arrives and attempts to set up an encampment. The mayor of Calvantrus, Bronwyn Landlely, confronts Kraetor, who tells that they are transporting munitions on behalf of the military, although Bronwyn and those observing doubt these claims.

The party briefly tempt getting involved, but are dismissed by Kraetor who returns to his convoy. They briefly discuss amidst themselves and Bronwyn, and find themselves very suspicious of the convoy, especially as since the Fall of Flammenvielen, there has been much dissonance between the people, the military, and the state, with many rumours surfacing that the military themselves are not in the know at Flammenvielen anymore, and may be going rogue.

🏠 The Passer's Buy

The party decide to settle in at The Passer's Buy, a local inn and tavern ran by half-elf Colter Tanith, and discuss what to do next. They observe that many of the Flammenvielen soldiers that arrived with the convoy are at present drinking at The Passer's Buy, and thus decide to inspect the carts as night falls to see what they are hiding or transporting. Before they do, Ember incidentally runs into Kraetor Weiss, discovering he must also be staying at the same inn. She passes herself off as a Flammenvielen researcher, which she is, but avoids arousing suspicion that she may be fleeing the military or be any agent of concern for Kraetor. He buys it, and leaves her to her own devices.

🔎 Investigating the Convoy

The party head out sneakily, getting a read on the town and more importantly, the convoys. They arrive at the carts, which are significantly less guarded due to the majority of the soldiers being away drinking, and attempt to infiltrate the small encampment to see what the carts are holding.

Here, they uncover that the carts are transporting a significant amount of gold and valuables, weapons and armour presumably scavenged from the siege, but more importantly, two injured prisoners and a mysterious device.

The prisoners appear to be elven, clad in the silver and navy colours of the Usurper Choir - the elven faction responsible for the siege and hostile takeover that took place during the Fall of Flammenvielen. Moreover, the device appears to be some sort of brass cube with Everflame, Flammenvielen's enigmatic power source, channelled and stored inside it. Ember recognises this as an Everflame core, a device used to power some of Flammenvielen's hulking automaton wardens, and the party begin to question why this wandering militia are transporting it.

Before they can investigate further, they are found out, but quickly apprehend the witness using their abilities, and flee the scene without causing any major upheaval. They retreat to their room at the inn, and debate how much further they should take their investigations.

🌄 Morning at The Passer's Buy

The party awake after the events of the previous night and gather for breakfast and preparations. Before they set out, Kraetor Weiss returns to the room to speak with Ember. He warns her of the disturbance at the carts the night before, and that there may be individuals about who have grievances with the Flammenvielen military. He remains ignorant to the fact that it was Ember and the party, and moves on, leaving them to breakfast. The party make their way downstairs and chat with the owner, Colter, who readies them breakfast before they set off.

💰 The Calvantrus Markets

Due to the booming business resulting from the Flammenvielen exodus, the town has taken to setting up weekly markets. Here, there is a game being ran throughout the town called Smugglers Trade, in which participants must retain an armband or steal others to win a prize. While the party shop about, Lyra goes about stealing an excessive number of armbands from children, enthralled by the game and determined to win it's prize.

🕷️ Sheila Harpey

While shopping, the party meet with a strange, elven figure - a lady named Sheila Harpey who runs a store in town called The Lott. They are intrigued by her appearance, which appears to be that of a disturbed cross between an elf and a changeling, and discover she is from Yanaviere, the mysterious, occult city from the south of the continent.

⚔️ Vander Mace

Meanwhile, B vends with Vander Mace, a merchant with a mechanical arm who specialises in weapons, and black market and counterfeit goods. She questions if he has any associates to her previous faction and their leader, Maverick Hyde, but Vander shrugs it off, claiming he knows and is owed money by Hyde but is no longer affiliated with him.

🔥 Infiltrating the Convoy

Retaining their spite against the Flammenvielen militia that has set up in town, and driven by curiosity, the party decide to infiltrate the convoy and attempt to steal that in which Kraetor and his man are attempting to hide.

Ember attempts to talk to and distract some of the guards while Xolo deploys his moth familiar, Polita, to flutter in and inspect them. They reaffirm which carts have the prisoners in them and which has the Everflame core, and converge on them.

B burrows beneath the ground and emerges underneath one of the carts, attempting to peer up between the wooden flooring on it. At the same time, Lyra uses their drow-elf shadow step to enter into one, and Xolo emerges from their mystical flask which Polita was able to carry into one.

The prisoners look up in shock, faced by Xolo who has suddenly appeared before them, and confusion immediately follows as the party discover that the carts are enchanted with some sort of silence-inducing magic.

The session ends as the party find themselves converging on the carts in broad daylight, in an attempt to seize their contents and slip away without being caught.

‼️ Escaping the Convoys

The session picks up as the party finds themselves scattered amidst the convoys, deciding on what move to make next.

Lyra manages to secure the Everflame core, shadow-stepping out of there and linking back up with Ember, working together to obscure the core and heave it back to their inn.

Meanwhile, Xolo communicates with the two prisoners, scribbling down questions in their cookbook and getting them to scribble back answers. They demand to know if Xolo is somehow part of the Usurper Choir, and if "Lorinveil" had sent him. Xolo decides to free them in order to ask more, and they each teleport to a nearby rooftop.

While this is going on, B burrows to one of the adjacent carts, and using her artificer tools, funnels out and steals a significant portion of the gold being transported.

🎻 Questioning the Usurper Choir

On the adjacent rooftop, Xolo and the two elves remain low as they quickly and sharply exchanged questions. Their names are Xyrix and Lorna, and they are members of the Usurper Choir who fell during the siege and were captured.

They are soldiers of Lorinveil Lavandra, heir to the Lavandra line and who they claim to be the "rightful" heir to the throne of Rivelium. Xolo learns that the Usurper Choir funded the takeover of Flammenvielen as an attempt to seize back power on the continent after the humans who ruled before supposedly killed the rest of the Lavandra heirs.

They tell Xolo that they know not what happened at the siege since they fell during the first attack, and so their next plan is to head to the elven capital, Aelfhelum, and figure out what the Usurper Choir's next plan is. They flee, leaving Xolo to link back up with the others.

🔥 Inspecting the Core

Lyra and Ember remain in the streets as they wait for Xolo and B to catch up. In the meantime, Ember attempts to investigate the core, and discerns that the Everflame contained within it is producing magic that is on the cusp of sentience, almost being able to communicate with it. She discerns that these cores are used to give the Flammenvielen defence wardens automated sentience, but wonders what one is doing here, outside a robot host?

Combat Start | Flammenvielen Tracker Imps

As the party join back together, Ember begins to sense a disturbance in the Everflame core, and realises that something is tracking and tailing it. Before they can react, three mechanised imps powered by Everflame zoom down the street towards them, presumably deployed by the Flammenvielen militia.

A clash breaks out down an alley of Calvantrus as the party fights back against the imps, destroying them one by one as they explode in flames, and the staple, brass Flammenvielen mechanism materials.

As the party fend off the tracker imps, Flammenvielen soldiers soon follow suit and attempt to overwhelm and seize them. However, just as the party become outnumbered, the Usurper Choir Elves, Xyrix and Lorna, show back up and help fend off the soldiers as a way of thanks. The party gather themselves and flee, leaving the elves to fend off the converging Flammenvielen soldiers.

🔥Lorna Returns

The party gather back at the inn, and take a much needed breather after the events of the day. Still on edge, they prepare for the night and rest while Lyra stays up on watch.

Not before long, there is a desperate knock at their window, and Lyra opens it to find and let in the Usurper Choir elf, Lorna. She is desperate, and bloody, and singed - missing her entire left arm. The party wakes and gathers around her in worry as she reveals to them that Kraetor arrived and burnt Xyrix to death with what can only be described as an all-consuming fire. One which cannot be put out. She tells that her arm was caught by the same fire, and so she had no choice but to amputate it before she too burned to death.

Dazed and overwhelmed, she settles in for the night with the party at the inn who take care of her for the time being, and keep a nervous watch out for Kraetor, and any other Flammenvielen personnel who might arrive to finish the job.

🌄 Morning at The Passer's Buy

The party awake and gather after the intensity of the previous night, and plan what is to be their last day in Calvantrus. They console the crippled Usurper Choir elf, Lorna, and allow her to stay in their room while she heals.

After this, they depart into the streets once more, planning on visiting a few shops and chat with a few individuals before setting off.

🔥 Kraetor Militia Leaving

As the party make their way to The Lott, they notice that Kraetor and his guards are packing up to leave. Ember and Xolo decide to speak with Kraetor, knowing that their involvement in the attacks on the convoy are still not known by him, and discover that he and his crew are now headed to Yanaviere instead of their original plan to head to Aelfhelum, due to the complications spurred for them at Calvantrus over the last few days.

During this encounter, the pair spy a strange sigil branded into Kraetor's eye, unlike anything they have seen before.

❤️‍🔥 Ember's History

The encounter spurs Ember to reveal to the party the reason in which she left Flammenvielen and is wary of Kraetor and his men. She explains that her mother was a researcher for the Flammenvielen military, and that her father and brother are both battlemages for them also.

After conducting independent research on the origin of the Everflame, Ember's mother was fired from her role as researcher, and soon after died in a tragic accident. Since then, Ember has found a letter detailing her mother's research, and has chosen to continue it in her stead.

Soon after she took on this decision, an attempt was made on Ember's life that made her realise that Flammenvielen truly was keeping something about the Everflame concealed. She left the castle after this, and soon after, the siege on Flammenvielen had begun, leading her to join the mass exodus.

🐲 Meeting with Mayor Bronwyn

After briefly popping into Sheila at The Lott to discuss about Yanaviere, learning a little about it's mysterious inhabitants and more importantly, Sheila's old spider friend Mary - the party decide to take up Mayor Bronwyn on her previous offer of tea and head to her place.

They are let in by a doorman and are greeted by Bronwyn and her pet dragon wyrmling Lincoln in her finely adorned, antique home. She tells the party how since the fall of the Lavandra dragon riders, dragons are practically extinct and are exceedingly rare to see on the material plane. The only reason she is allowed to keep Lincoln, is because his wings were clipped a long time ago, preventing him from growing past the stage of wyrmling.

They talk over tea and learn that Bronwyn comes from a wealthy family of dragonborn landowners and business moguls who mainly reside in the Nine Hells.

Furthermore, they discuss the Fall of Flammenvielen, and learn from Bronwyn rumours that the largest prison in Flammenvielen seemingly just disappeared amidst the attack - a prison that held many members of the tiefling-ran drug cartel, The Blazing Rain, and members of the Keepers of the Iron Helm, a legion of nationalist military veterans turned vagabond.

The party eventually bid Bronwyn farewell and return to the inn for their final night of stay, reconvening with the injured Lorna, and settling in before their departure from town the following day.

🌩️ An Unusual Storm

The party awake on their last day in Calvantrus to an usual storm. Rain lashes and lightning cracks outside, a nearly impossible phenomenon for the dry climate surrounding Flammenvielen. The party attempt to spy on the source of the storm, peering in the skies back towards Flammenvielen, and notice pink sparks in the clouds, suspecting that there may be an arcane aspect to this storm. Xolo decides to taste the rain, noting it doesn't taste like normal rain, further bloating their theories.

The whole ordeal leads the party to question the climate of Flammenvielen, and they wonder where Flammenvielen even gets their water from in the first place?

👋 Departing Calvantrus

The party head out into town on what is to be their last day in Calvantrus. They arrive at the market square for the announcement of the winner of the armband game, which Lyra wins by a landslide from stealing so many children's armbands, and then head to The Lott and The Black Shore one last time to acquire bits from Sheila and Vander.

B acquires some scrap off Vander while interrogating him on where he got his prosthetic arm, learning of an establishment in the criminal city of Wallrun, The Kettlelamp, where they deal in robotic parts and pieces. The conversation shifts to B herself, and her involvement in Operation Chaos Theory - the bombings and raidings of Flammenvielen's outer districts that distracted the city's military and allowed for the Usurper Choir siege to take place. B is abrasive about the topic, and eventually leaves the place.

Before returning to the departing carts, the party swing in to The Lott to say a final goodbye to their beloved friend, Sheila Harpey. B and Sheila exchanges gifts, and the party are given a sending stone by her so that they can keep in touch.

Joining the Exodus

The party eventually get back to where the carts are departing from, and link back up with Davos and his two tortoises, Deirdre and Dundee, before heading off towards Lake Gheel Cross with the rest of the procession.

Lorna decides to travel with them for the time being while she is still recovering, and joins them in the cart with Davos as they take off along the Dry Road.

As they travel, the wildlife slowly becomes increasingly green and livelier as they distance themselves from Flammenvielen, and they casually chat with Davos amidst the procession of carts, learning of his history at the Gun Coast, and how he found Deirdre and Dundee on an uncharted island during his pirating days.

During this time, Lyra approaches B after overhearing the conversation at The Black Shore, and B reveals bits about her past involvements. Soon after, B gets to work on a contraption that can safely store the Everflame core they have stolen, while Xolo brews up potions for everyone.

🌌 The Dawning of the Purple Rift

As they are travelling, the storm above worsens, and suddenly, a sharp bolt of lighting shoots across the sky - ripping open an astronomically large purple rift above the procession, high into the sky. The valley is suddenly dimly lit in a lilac hue, and before they have a chance to process what this rift may be, a light flashes from Lorna as a mysterious sigil is suddenly branded onto the side of her torso where her arm used to be - a sigil that bears a strange resemblance to the one that Xolo and Ember observed in Kraetor's eye only a day earlier.

⚡ Beneath the Purple Rift

The party continue to travel beneath the purple rift, and spend time investigating it while they travel along the Dry Road. The rain that pours from it appears to have a purple shimmer to it too, and gives off an aura of conjuration magic. The rain is relentless at this stage, and the fissure in the sky continues to grow, seemingly moving southward.

Around them all, little pink spores appear to float around that are being spawned from the droplets. Over the course of a few days as they travel, the rain does not cease, and the spores and droplets begin to replace the surrounding flora with strange, cosmic variants that appear not from this plane.

🔎 Investigating the Brand

Xolo also spends some time trying to identify the mysterious brand that has suddenly appeared on Lorna, discovering that it is of a different magic type than any they are used to. The brand mystifies Xolo, lulling him into a trance as he attempts to magically identify it further.

🔥 Ember's Mark

One of the nights that they are travelling, Ember dreams of the Everflame core that they carry, and envisions a purple hand seizing it, the energy from it being siphoned, split and rippled.

Awaking from this dream, Ember finds a a sigil similar to both Kraetor and Lorna's branded onto the palm of her hand. The pair spend the next few days investigating their brands, and begin to learn how to harness whatever magic is within them.

Lorna is the first to figure this out, discovering that she can now dissipate her remaining arm into a bright mist, and is able to reform this mist through the mark of her missing arm into other forms. She begins to practice dissipating her right arm, to make a blade out of her left. Meanwhile, Ember practices using her mark on the Everflame core, and is able to just barely grip onto the flame magically, but is unsure what this means just yet.

👋 The Neighbouring Party

Next to the party in the procession, is another carting adventuring party. They begin to chat with them and learn their names - the tabaxi driver, Tammy, a buff human named Douglas, a white-haired halfling Angela, and a large, swollen looking orc of sorts named Blue.

They chat with this adventuring party who they learn are headed to Wallrun in search of work. As they do, they convince Douglas to snort some powder made up of the purple floating spores that they have collected. This causes his eyes to glow a little purple, and slightly alters his magical output, making his casts glow purple.

🧬 Vilios Academy and Biological Experiments

They question the party further, and learn that Douglas had broken Blue out of an experimentation facility, and then met Angela while they were on the run. The facility was working on race splicing, hence why he looks as if he is an amalgamation of an orc and a toad. The party suspect that their changeling / elf friend Sheila is a result of a similar experiment.

Douglas explains how he studied wizardry in Aelfhelum, and was working an internship of sorts with the Vilios Academy when he discovered the facility that held Blue. This facility was not run by the Vilios Academy, but by an organisation that was at least in leagues with them, and was located somewhere between Aelfhelum and Yanaviere.

🌱 Diverging through the Marsh

After hearing word that there is some sort of militia checkpoint ahead of the procession, the party urge Davos to find an alternative way around in fear of Lorna or the Everflame core being discovered. As such, Davos takes a shortcut that will take them briefly through a neighbouring marshland and out toward Lake Gheel Cross.

They set up for the night somewhat into the marsh, and take to sleep while Davos tells a spooky story of an island he once discovered that was haunted by doppelgangers.

❓ Missing Conductors

The next morning, the party wake up surrounded by spores and distorted flora and fungi that has entrapped the cart overnight. As they attempt to get the cart moving, Davos attempts to contact the rest of the procession conductors via sending stone, and cannot get into contact with anyone strangely. He eventually reaches someone, who exclaims that a large portion of the procession had gone missing at the militia checkpoint, that some of them were let through, but those who were stopped had wound up missing, with no sign of the militia left behind.