Session Date: 4 April 2026 [SEASON 2 START]
Transcription WIP
Octavius estate
- The party is gathered in the dining room, with Nadezhda, Saeryx, and Haruspex
- We are soot-covered from having gone through the burning remains of the inn…
- Saeryx asks what happened and we fill her in
- Calliope’s plan: divining tonight, Sending tomorrow morning
- Everyone seems to agree – we have little resources (spell slots) to go after Kiat and Kulani right away
- Saeryx brings us to our shared quarters
- Callie starts divining → how can we save our captured friends? (where are they, how best to find and rescue them, etc.)
- Series of images: Kulani and Kiat in a cell, injured with burns; a man crouching, smiling; dried insect, iridescent fangs, dead; desiccated doorway (?); architecture not like the Hive but in Sigil, somewhere underground
- Ix and Calyx go snooping around the kitchen (scaring the staff) and starts making tea
- Saeryx comes over and offers them whiskey
- They go back to their room and have a drink (mixing black tea and whiskey together for some reason) in the hopes that it’ll help them fall asleep
- We all curl up in our beds and sleep!
Jon’s nightmare
- As Jonquil is mid-trance, she gets a nightmare: a memory of something not quite familiar
- Walking in a stately house, everything is hot and dry, dust in the air, light from the windows
- There’s footsteps behind her, following her, but when she looks back, there’s nothing there
- A voice from behind says her name, and a hand on her shoulder and it burns
- Jonquil wakes up and there’s a fading burn mark, purple in the shape of a handprint
Sending
- We have breakfast with Saeryx and Haruspex
- Haruspex brought a scroll of Sending and a sheet of paper & pencil for Calliope
- Callie casts Sending to Kiat first, asking where he is, and he answers
- He’s on a ship, and Kulani’s not with him. Deci left shortly after the party did
- Ship is an Astral Plane cargo ship
- Ixie freaks the fuck out about Kulani and tells Calliope to tell Kulani that they’ll kill her if she dies hashtag Romance
- They try to walk it back but Callie sends the message including their words anyway :P
- Kulani replies – she’s in the Undercity. Ask Tarak since she was looking into cult locations. Tell Ix I’m waiting for her1
- Unfortunately Tarak died in the fire
- Investigation checks: Tarak was a judge; we can look through her notes in the Foundry
- The plan: follow up with contacts at the courts. Maybe tell Kiat’s dad but we’re positive he won’t care at all
- Deci’s suspicious
- They refused to go through the Zone of Truth and wants Astrada dead; it seems deeply personal to them
- Calliope asks Saeryx for some kind of official ID or anything that’ll help the party get into Official Places
- Saeryx gives the party a job, like she said she would back in the gala
- Not enough people to stop this cult shit
- To make it official, she gives them (Ix) 500 gold to start off, and more later depending on how much information we get
Note
We should get a scroll of Sending for Calyx
Finding Leads
The roost
- Visit Callie’s employer first, the (dis)honourable Judge Vespa, a spineless career-climbing POS
- Corin’s pulling his strings
- Callie leads us to a penthouse in an apartment building
- The door is answered by a butler named Matei
- Calliope leads, “We’re here on Mercykiller business.”
- Matei lets the party in, leads them to a drawing room area, decorated in a way that Corin likes to furnish her house
- We’re kept waiting for quite some time so the party starts fooling around
- Calyx summons Bramble
- Ix steals whatever alcohol is available
- <<I didn’t write what the other two were doing sorry>>
- Judge walks in; he’s tall, lean, dark-haired and narrow-faced
- Callie and the party bullies his pathetic ass into giving information
- Questions
- Any cult-related info or anything on Tarak?
- Vespa didn’t like her or was scared of her. Doesn’t know that she’s dead
- She was looking into the missing seers; seems to be connected to the Arena
- Working on a case in the Verdant Square, thought the cult was taking them
- Callie tells him Tarak’s dead
- Missing seers
- Irina started acting strangely, became unreliable, then she was gone
- 2 went missing since Irina, 3 in total (not including Calliope who was arrested)
- Vel
- Not the most popular, though the Princeps likes her
- Any cult-related info or anything on Tarak?
- Calliope: You owned me. // Vespa: You are a child.
Foundry
- Artares lives in the Lady’s Ward
- Arrive in the Public Courthouse, Tarak’s office is locked
- Ix picks it with the thieves’ tools that Kulani gave her, gives it a kiss for luck and picks it
- Tarak’s office is a mess, papers strewn about
- Callie finds notes on the missing seers, Irina and Callie’s name
- 2nd seer: Ymir, paladin working for the Harmonium
- 3rd seer: Stark, members of the Ciphers
- Vision was physically manifesting on their body harmfully
- Tarak interviewed them and the commonality seems to be distressing dreams of razorvine and skittering insects
- Ix finds The Calliope Files
- Tarak was investigating corruption and internal affairs, ends up compiling a dossier on Callie’s case
- Vespa met with Harmonium before the order on Callie’s arrest
- Gathering evidence of false accusations
- Talked to Factor Duranti
- After Calliope was arrested, Clove was put on a Harmonium ship and couldn’t be found
- Jon finds a list of names she mostly doesn’t recognize
- Part of a larger file, separated from the rest of the papers
- Recognize Wavebreaker which was mentioned in the letter Aurelia wrote to Morgan
- Calyx rolls a Nat 20 on Investigation <3
- They find a floorboard not pushed all the way down – underneath is a small flat lockbox
- Ix unlocks it
- Notes about Vel and her import-export of goods; a network of people doing it for her, constantly switching it up
- Sek appears a lot in these notes
- The notes also corroborates what Vespa told us about the ??? case. He murdered his family, and his address is in the Verdant Square
- Harmonium ships have outposts on different planes, but their leadership is in the Astral Plane
To the undercity
- Party can’t wait any longer, we all want to go to the Undercity right away
- We backtrack to the inn, already gutted for parts, Tarak’s body is gone
- Soot guides us to the house where a door-portal had been used to transport Kiat and Kulani
- There’s a door that leads down to a cellar; Ix picks the door and unlocks it
- Calyx sneaks down to the basement and scouts the area
- Two people sitting down for a meal
- We nudge Jonquil into doing the talking for us; the party follows her down
- Social encounter fails when we’re just straight up trespassing
- Roll initiative! These are death cultists
- Scawy combat with damage that cannot be healed until the end of the enemy’s turn!?!??!
Footnotes
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Not me giggling and kicking my feet when she said this ↩