Session 10: Heart and Hammer

Thronesday, 24 Seeding, 998 Y.K.   The journey home from Eston was quiet, eerily so. It seemed as though the Mournland was simply done with the party, as much as the party was done with grey haze and silence. Even the magical apparatus at Kalazart ran without hitch. Though, as if to offer a final indignity, Leali discovered on their way back that the unsealed mana reservoirs were bleeding off. The last one, in fact, ran dry just shy of the edge of the mists, forcing Bell, Zer, and Milli to collectively shove the inspector cart the last quarter-mile to Breland.   Once on powered track, however, the conductor stones caught immediately, and the cart resumed normal travels as though nothing were amiss. The early afternoon sun cast a warmth the party hadn't felt in some time, and a light breeze carried the scents of early summer on the Brelish eastern plain: grasslands and pollen, with a hint of mountain crispness. The faint lingering unease inspired by the Mournland faded, and soon the land beyond death seemed to be only a dream from which the group had finally awakened. Most of the journey home, Bell and Milli discussed the manuals they had found and the circles they'd seen inscribed in the floor of the Eston workshop. They knew when they returned that they'd have to find a better space, one that let them inscribe such marks with greater precision than lines in the sand.   In Starilaskur, Milli and the group made a point of visiting Nebik at their stall. Milli needed to thank the gnome for offering them a reminder of home, and to offer a favor in return. The prospector said they'd have a message they'd like Milli to deliver at some point, but they'd have to figure out the wording and to whom it needed to go, but they were otherwise happy to have Milli's help. Bell acquired several thin slivers of quartz and a thin sliver of red garnet, while Spark sought after and found an emblem of the sun: a cloudy yellow topaz that Nebik had tapped into a face in a sun. Relic asked the gnome to patch up the small black mark that his jade dragon had acquired; they seemed very concerned by the mark and asked Relic to keep that a secret.   After Nebik, the party spent a good night with Siege and Ballista, along with the juggernauts' work crew. As they worked hard, they played hard, and the forged spent the night on dust and dancing, while Milli and Medya got some much-needed rest in a bed that remained stationary all night. The next morning, Milli went out to a bookbinder to buy enough blank writing space for her to transcribe and translate the repair manuals they'd acquired, along with its index, while Zer remained aboard the train in quiet meditation upon the crystal that would house his new shard of self. The gnome met the party at the train platform the following morning, returning Relic's necklace repaired just before the rail line departed for Wroat.   With no reason to stop at either Wroat or First Tower, the party arrived back in Sharn after almost two weeks away. Leali and Rakela took their leave of the group, thanking them profusely for their help and telling them their pay receipts for the trip would be available in a few days, along with the list of goods that House Cannith had rejected. The party made their way back to Bell's tent, hoping to start to recover after a long journey. However, as they approached, they found that the tent had been searched during their absence; tools were moved or missing, seats were overturned, and piles of stock sat in disarray. None of Bell's neighbors knew who had done it, but those who admitted to seeing anything agreed the perpetrators had nicer clothes than came around Lower Dura, and one reported the faint aroma of roses.   Bell reassembled her space as best as she could, but her and Milli's search for a new shop space clearly needed to begin in earnest. Medya agreed to help, and within a few days had found a vacant warehouse space at the edge of Myshan Gardens, in Lower Central. The previous tenants had run a business in bespoke personal artifacts and alchemical reagents there, but a gang had come in the night and cleaned out their inventory. The space was two stories, seventy-two feet by two-hundred, with a second-story loft covering about a third of the floor: plenty of room for personal alcoves above, with shop space and room for a small training center for Relic and Spark. Sure, the front door had been torn from its hinges and the shelves within had been knocked over, but that simply meant more raw materials once Bell and Milli were done tidying. Bell signed a mortgage on the space that afternoon with House Kundarak, who was happy to advance an adventuring party signed with Morgrave University the funds.   It took the party almost two weeks to set up the space to their liking, inscribe the necessary circles, rebuild and reinforce the front door, and set up living quarters for the group. Gears asked their crew to help transfer Bell's old anvils and stock to the new space, and the rest of the party moved in. Having a permanent roof over their heads was new, but even within a few days of living there, they could all feel the difference that sense of permanence provided. Myshan Gardens was nominally middle-class, but mostly occupied by artists, dissidents, and other societal troublemakers; it very quickly began to feel like home.   As Bell's new repairs shop neared its opening day, Rakela came to visit, receipts in tow for the party's pay and goods. House Cannith had kept the cloth-of-gold hood and the recovered Works of Onatar, but the rest they had signed over to the group, as well as paying the adventurers 150 gold apiece; this would easily cover the mortgage on the new shop for several months while getting it established. It seemed that between the shop's income and their adventuring rewards, the party would actually be able to pay their own way. And with that, Bell hung her shop's new sign and declared the Heart and Hammer open for business.