Session Recaps

An elderly gnome named Hammerhand and a satyr woman named Calliope meet at a bar called The Crystal Spyre. After small talk with Nathan the barkeep, Calliope asks about finding a man named Aiden. Nathan doesn't know where he is right now, but he has an idea — and offers to take them.

The three head into the Pitch Wards to a place called The Bitch's Sister, where they meet an ogre doorman named Dominic. After dealing with some racism toward constructs and convincing Dominic to let them through, they find their way into the underground fight club — and find Aiden Barlowe, a human detective currently beating the hell out of a white dragonborn.

Aiden wins the fight, spots Nathan and the others heading toward him, and begrudgingly agrees to help them once he wraps up a current case. Back at the bar, a bright light flashes over Aiden's desk and out pops a black rabbit — Thalen Blackfoot, a harengon who immediately tries to run, only to be picked up by Ani, Hammerhand's construct.

Thalen is revealed to be a Crystal Spyre regular with an outstanding bar tab. Rather than handing him to the Brightspark police, Aiden agrees to let him work off the debt. The four of them head to the Kitchen Sink in the red light district to meet a young girl named Charlotte about her missing brother.

The party separates to work their contacts. Hammerhand visits Griffon Whitham, a Brightsparks lieutenant, to ask about Aiden. Griffon describes him as "a deeply troubled man" whose work precedes him, and expresses surprise that Aiden has kept going "considering what happened."

Thalen heads to the Arbic State Penitentiary under cover of night, scales the side of the building, and visits a tabaxi woman nicknamed Pitstop. They catch up, flirt, and end up sleeping in an alleyway.

Aiden uses his remaining contacts to gain access to the Archive in Grollen Keep and researches the party. He learns about Thalen's past with the Golden Hand — a crew that worked under Armsmaster Incorporated — and digs up information about an apartment explosion tied to Calliope. Hammerhand, however, returns almost nothing: records under that name go back only 60 years, a strange discrepancy given how old Hammerhand actually looks. Aiden meets his mentor Maximus to pass along the discrepancy and send him to investigate.

In the morning, the group is introduced to Thalen's tanooki partner in crime, Knick-Knack, and meets Vexra, a tiefling bartender at the Crystal Spyre with a striking guitar, who joins the group.

The group decides to investigate the foreclosed store of Vellena Chezwick — Glyphs and Sundries — in the Electrum Ward before heading to a warehouse. Vexra takes Ani and Knick-Knack to cause a distraction in the plaza while Hammerhand, Thalen, and Aiden break in. Hammerhand uses his lockpicking tools, cuts a hole in the window, casts Enlarge/Reduce on himself to shrink down, and gets dropped inside.

Hammerhand enters Glyphs and Sundries through the cut window, triggers the alarm primer, panics, enlarges himself, and just barely disarms the alarm in time. The group sweeps the shop, securing a Bag of Holding and other remaining valuables. Hammerhand finds a muddy bootprint under a back window — on closer inspection, it bears the insignia of Jimmy Dean and the Cactus Bunch, a city gang.

Aiden breaks into Vellena's office and uncovers redacted government files. Vellena had been working on Project Brightburn — progress reports for some kind of mechanism or construct — as well as subject evaluations tied to another redacted project. Her notes end with her wondering whether the Grand Parliament should hire from within for the project. Among her belongings is a calling card for an oracle: Caelistra Moondawn.

Thalen sends Knick-Knack out to recon the warehouse while Hammerhand leads the group to a black market contact named Mieka. Mieka speaks directly into Aiden's mind, warns him about Brightsparks following up on the Daniel case, and gives rough directions to Caelistra.

In the East Ward, the group finds a dome of wood and fabric and meets Caelistra Moondawn — curly purple hair, a dark star-adorned cloak, and a standoffish manner. She confirms Vellena visited four months ago: she was unsettled, full of cold feet about her government work, and mentioned a subject she felt guilty about — referring to him in the past tense. Caelistra performed an augury that revealed a star in the sky being swallowed by darkness. She had seen this before, and she knew it meant something bad. Vellena left — a month later, she was found dead in an alleyway. Feeling connected to the prophecy, Caelistra decides to join the group.

Knick-Knack never returns. The group rushes to the warehouse under nightfall to find it surrounded by Cactus Bunch members. Aiden shifts into a rat, slips under the garage door, scouts the interior, finds Knick-Knack tied up but unharmed, and returns. The group splits: Thalen and Hammerhand take the roof, Aiden and Caelistra slip back in as rats, and Ani is sent toward the front goons pretending to malfunction. When the goons seal the door and panic, Aiden and Caelistra shift back and strike.

Ani breaks down the garage door. Thalen falls off both floors of the building. Aiden and Caelistra wreck house. The goliath cowboy Jimmy Dean reveals himself as gang leader — and gets promptly defeated. The group scours the warehouse and finds construct chassis upgrade plans, leftover supplies, a strange golden powder inside a construct that is unsettlingly familiar to Hammerhand, and a man tied up and gagged in the back room, covered in a strangely colored fluid: Artur.

The group revives Jimmy for questioning. He holds out at first. After his broken shoulder is crushed and other persuasion is applied, he talks. The Naughty Dogs, led by a woman named Vivian Tate, paid the Cactus Bunch to loot the warehouse for valuables and find a specific shard. The Bunch had no idea Chevier — the missing boy the group is looking for — or his boss Artur would be there. They planned to ship Chevier to Vivian, given his "severe condition." Chevier apparently escaped on his own, fighting free and running through the city streets. Jimmy is confident his people will catch him first.

Aiden hesitates over whether Jimmy deserves to die. Hammerhand makes the call and shoots him through the head. The body is burned to obscure evidence of the torture. The group splits: Vexra and Calliope return to the bar; Hammerhand installs the chassis upgrade on Ani; Thalen visits his friend Slip at the jail and cuts a deal for information on Vivian Tate and the Naughty Dogs; Aiden brings Artur to the city cops Weltworth and Clyde.

Aiden updates Welt and Clyde on the Cactus Bunch and brings up the cold case of Daniel Ivy. Clyde reveals their superior, Griffon Whitham, put them on the cold case files specifically to give Aiden a fair resolution. Aiden instructs them to meet him at the graveyard, calls Nathan to do the same, and goes to find Chevier.

After an investigation, Aiden locates Chevier in a small plaza — unconscious, beaten, sickly, covered in a blue and gold fluid, but alive. He rushes him to the hospital, then heads to the graveyard. Welt, Clyde, Nathan, and a THC officer named Ditto arrive. The grave of Daniel Ivy is opened — it is empty. Ditto scans the coffin and finds strange arcane readings, notably divinity. Nathan is confused and shaken, but now knows Aiden's claims over the past three years were true. Aiden and Nathan return to the Crystal Spyre and sleep.

The group reconvenes without Hammerhand. His assistant Ella arrives flustered — she can't wake him up or get into his room. The group investigates: door locked, muffled record playing inside. Thalen picks the lock and they find Hammerhand passed out on the floor surrounded by bottles, in a room like a jail cell. A corkboard holds photos and names of revolutionary soldiers; drawers hold yellowed, faded letters.

Aiden and Thalen uncover the truth: Hammerhand has had extended contact with Korra Eisenwald, a member of the Grand Parliament. More significantly, they find his actual name — Thistlebrand Ironspanner. Aiden recognizes it: Ironspanner was an Uncle Sam-style propaganda figure used by the Rebefaul regime as the icon of technological advancement and glory during the civil war. History records him as loyal. The truth is that he was a prisoner of war, his real identity wiped from the record. Calliope restores Hammerhand to a functional state, and he thanks the group in his gruff way.

While Thalen and Caelistra attempt to track down a specific children's book and Vexra receives an invitation to Iger Masterson's party, Aiden and Hammerhand visit the hospital. A nurse briefs them on Chevier's condition. Chevier is conscious but hazy — he remembers planning to give the shard to his sister Charlotte as a keepsake. Next door, Artur is glad to see them. He describes the Cactus Bunch's raid on the warehouse and notes that before it happened, Chevier had been acting increasingly strange — humming the same song over and over. Aiden recognizes it as a Dorothy in Shackles song and bolts.

The group chases Aiden across the city to the university. They find a receptionist, learn a Halruuian representative is on-site, sprint down a hallway, and burst into a lecture led by a strange-looking Loxodon: Huggtand, Grand Inquisitor of the Halruuian Council. Aiden word-vomits everything — Chevier, Daniel, the shard — and poses his theory: did Chevier touch a shard of creation?

Huggtand leads them to Happily Ever Chapter, the largest library in the city. From the rare books section, he pulls the legend of The Hanged King — an unnamed regent from before Emmerick existed, hanged by his own people on a tree at the mouth of the Viper River. The Hanged King had sold his soul for forbidden knowledge. After a three-day plague — symptoms disturbingly familiar — he rose from the dead, reclaimed his throne of spikes, and the entire town vanished, leaving behind a crater of golden light. Huggtand doesn't fully know how this connects, but he agrees to contact someone who can commune on the matter. The group is left in the library, shaken.

The party is left in the library after Huggtand's account of the Hanged King — shaken, with little to go on and bigger immediate concerns. They discuss the permanence of what they're doing and whether they want to keep working together. They do. They also recognize that if they're going to be dispatching gangs and operating with legal jurisdiction, they need to apply to become an official adventurer's guild.

Everyone agrees and splits across the city to handle errands. Hammerhand calls in an old contact to scrape together gold for the application fee. Calliope and Caelistra return to the hospital, where Artur Kendel lays out a problem and a pitch: he and Chevier can't cover their medical bills, but he had money riding on a group competing in the tri-monthly Blood Bowl tournament in two days — a group that is now entirely dead. He proposes the party compete in their stead. If they win, Artur and Chevier take a cut of the 35,000 gp prize. Once he's out of the hospital, Artur will provide his private contracting services to help expand the party's HQ. They agree. On the way back, Artur stops at a plant shop run by a myconid woman named Sonata to pick up some herbs, then they return to the Crystal Spyre.

Thalen, meanwhile, decides that tracking down an elusive gang requires an elusive organization. He descends into the Pitch Underward and finds the entrance to the Thieves Guild — an old commandeered brewery where members play cards, drink, and take jobs. He gets a meeting with Lorenzo Delamaine L'Gentylle, the half-orc leader of the only Thieves Guild this side of the Silvertongue River. Lorenzo is everything his reputation suggests: composed, intelligent, and fond of fine things. He strikes a deal to have his people scour the city for the Naughty Dogs — at the entirely unreasonable rate of 50 gold per person per hour. Feeling thoroughly gouged, Thalen gets out before things get worse and heads to Slip at Arbic State Penitentiary for an update. It's only been a couple days, but Slip has one lead: the Naughty Dogs were last heard from in the Historical Ward.

Back at the Crystal Spyre, Vexra pulls Aiden aside. She's worked out that the invitation to Iger Masterson's celebration was sent by her half-brother, Bartholomew Dumont. She confides in Aiden about a bounty on her name in Neu-Bergbau. Thalen returns and admits to the Thieves Guild detour before sharing Slip's lead on the Historical Ward. Everyone agrees to hunt the Naughty Dogs in the morning — after Aiden officially registers the group.

The next morning, Aiden signs the party into the Blood Bowl and officially registers the group under the name The Bannerless. Then the hunt begins. Through a coordinated skill challenge the party expertly works its way across the Historical Ward and finds itself in an alcove behind an abandoned library. Aiden shifts into a Canisfolk form and bluffs the group through the door, posing as a gang member bringing new recruits.

Inside, a trap door leads down into an old civil war-era bunker beneath the Historical Ward, housing multiple Naughty Dogs members. The party comes face to face with Vivian Tate. Thalen and Nik-Nak clock Naughty Dogs members quietly repositioning to block every exit. The rest of the party notices. Aiden draws his gun.

The standoff breaks into a fight. Vivian Tate doesn't recognize Aiden in his Canisfolk form and has no intention of handing over the shard — she claims there are people who need it more than the party does. The bunker erupts into close-quarters combat: mages attempt to blind the party, brutes swing poisoned blades, and Nik-Nak takes a critical stab through the chest, barely surviving the poison with a successful save. Ani catches Vivian in a hammock and spends most of the fight launching her into her own troops. Vexra panic-casts Invisibility, and Hammerhand kills a gang member with a single devastating blow to the groin.

The party hears rock shifting and footsteps — gang members escaping through a hidden tunnel. With Vexra's Wondrous Appearance providing cover, Aiden rushes after them, followed by Thalen and Nik-Nak, leaving the rest to finish the fight. The remaining party defeats the last troops. Vivian, still tangled in Ani's hammock, crushes a teleportation bead fashioned into a fake tooth and vanishes. The lone surviving Naughty Dog, under interrogation, reveals Vivian went to The White Rabbit — an exclusive underground grunge nightclub accessible only through the mine tunnels beneath the city. Hammerhand breaks the informant's kneecaps and leaves him outside the abandoned library. The party reunites underground and pushes on.

The tunnels are full of strange finds. An obsidian wall polished to a mirror shine shows the party's reflections with subtle imperfections. An abandoned underground chapel of Shar holds a scrying basin glowing with still water. A dead orc adventurer nearby carries a small pack of strange cards — a single suit from the mythical arcane item known as The Deck of Minor Things, recognized only by Hammerhand.

Thalen looks into the scrying basin and sees Vivian in conversation with a man in medical attire — worried about the party's arrival and the disruption it would cause to their work. Hammerhand looks and sees Korra Eisenwald, one of the Prime Ministers of Stahlwolke and a woman he has history with. Korra speaks with an assistant about a current project, says she wants to see it herself before moving to the next phase, and asks the assistant to contact someone named Basil — it's time for lunch. Both Thalen and Hammerhand take psychic damage from the scrying and briefly lose consciousness. They continue once recovered.

The tunnels open into a main throughway, where a staircase marks the entrance to The White Rabbit — neon lights lining the walls and ceiling, thin fog across the floor. Aiden bribes a dragonborn bouncer into pointing them toward a neighboring building. Outside it, Aiden shifts into the bouncer's form and deceives the two guards into leaving to break up a nonexistent fight, clearing the path inside.

The building is full of people in smocks and masks — it's a medical facility. On the third floor, Caelistra shapes into a beetle and scouts a storage closet, spotting Vivian and another man inside. The party charges in and entangles both in vines. The man is Carver, laboratory director of the facility.

Vivian, cornered, comes clean. The building is the Golden Oriole Hospital — an underground medical facility serving criminals, the destitute, and those who can't afford legitimate care. The shard, despite its severe effects with prolonged exposure, can enhance memory and intellect in very minute dilutions. She offers a deal: let the Naughty Dogs and the Golden Oriole be, and she, Carver, and the lead medical team will hand over the shard and share everything they've learned about it. The party agrees. Vivian provides a rune for their speaking stone. The shard changes hands. The party exits through the top floor of the Golden Oriole into the West Underward — shard finally in hand.