Session 15: And one day, harmony willing, we shall meet again.

Bearsday, 16 Blooming, 998 Y.K.   With little time to prepare for the fight to come, the group quickly disappeared into their respective workshops to prepare. Bell assembled shatter infusions and repair patches, while Zer' put his alchemical knowledge to work building smoke bombs and a few grenades. , for her part, prepared a force harness trap to slow Cazha down, and an experimental first-draft of her renewal magics, carefully crafted to work on both forged and grown. Relic and rehearsed a few joint maneuvers, and Medya scrawled a few hasty bars of martial music to inspire the party.   The snap of Milli's alarm token cut through the unicorn's preparations, and suddenly the party was on the move. On the way to Malleon's Gate, the site of the summons, the party heaped Medya with bombs to provide aerial support and talked through their hopes of freeing Lem quickly once this sordid situation had come to an end. Cazha and her hunting motley, including Zhakil, were waiting at the bottom of a sixty-foot diameter hole in the ground, probably once the site of some excavation but now a bloodstained arena around which a crowd of goblins had already begun to assemble.   The group descended the narrow ramp down into the pit, and Millimax walked deliberately up to the harpy, stepping back just far enough to put herself beyond the reach of the giant maul Cazha balanced on one shoulder. The unicorn raised her head, tossed her mane from her face, and addressed her adversary. "your actions don't make any sense to me. you clearly don't care about being kind or fair or honest so i won't even try to appeal to a better nature you obviously lack. but if all you care about is your own well-being then this still doesn't make any sense. you've gone out of your way twice to assault and abduct folks who did nothing to warrant being involved. that doesn't do anything to resolve or even communicate your problems in a useful way and that's why it isn't getting you what you want and why it is getting you a lot more trouble. so reason doesn't seem to compel you but you've got to at least have some desire to keep living. and because of what you've done my friends are ready to straight-up murder you and the only reason they haven't already done so is that I asked them to let me offer you one last clear chance to avoid all of this. so here it is: just give us whatever we'll need to safely un-abduct Lem and we'll call it good! nobody has to fight, you don't have to die, we can call this whole thing off and walk away. please."   Cazha responded to Milli's threat-cum-entreaty in the only way she really could. Cazha's speed with that giant weapon was incredible, and her first hit shattered both of Milli's boots. Violet light flashed as the spell matrices on her first pair of self-made legs failed. The follow-up swing shattered the bones beneath the ceramic and metal, a blow with such force that the unicorn was bodily lifted into the air and sent backwards to land on her side, sprawled out and unconscious.   With the unicorn down, the pit erupted into battle. Medya threw Milli's renewal infusion at her, then took to the air as Zer' teleported the unicorn out of the pit. A hobgoblin archer opened fire at Bell, piercing the forged's shell with a massive arrow. A shifter barbarian unleashed a bellow and charged at Spark, while Relic closed with the harpy. Zhakil and the gryphon fought over musical lines, while the latter also rained down bolts and curses from the sky above them. Cazha's forces were powerful, and the party suffered massive setbacks, but righteous rage won out over cruel fury, and one by one Cazha's forces were cut down. The harpy attempted to repeat her success, but a well-placed psychic lance from the psion rendered the leader of the motley inert.   While the combat raged around them, Spark and the shifter squared off against each other. The boar-blessed barbarian landed several solid blows, and Spark went stumbling to the ground. Milli, however, had just recovered enough of her senses from Medya's use of renewal on her, and was able to bring Spark back from the brink. As the forged rose to her feet once more, she heard the crowd gathered around the pit begin to chant her name. Gears had caught wind of the combat, and they began working the crowd to inspire their favorite fighter. As her name echoed over and over off the walls of the pit, the forged below felt the power of the crowd flow through her. With Cazha down, the battle between Spark and the shifter became a brawl, one into which the forged threw herself with ferocity. The goblins, seeing someone standing up to Daask and their oppressors, roared their approval as fire flew from Spark's fists, and when the shifter went down, the crowd went wild.   When it became clear that the party would prevail, despite Cazha's brute strength, Zhakil made her presence on the battlefield known... by stabbing one of her erstwhile teammates in the back. When his body fell, the hobgoblin put her hands in the air and tossed her sword to the ground in surrender. With all eyes on Zhakil, no-one noticed when the rival archer that had been pinned but still breathing sprouted a crossbow bolt from one eye and fell to the ground. Bell asked where Lem was, and Zhakil said that Cazha had snuck the alchemist into the back room of Shamukar through the sewers; the harpy had hoped to lure the group into violating the bar's neutrality. Zhakil said taking Cazha's maul would be proof enough that the harpy was dead, and to tell the bartender that Cazha had broken the truce herself. In return, Bell told Zhakil in no uncertain terms that Daask should look elsewhere for targets, and the bard agreed to tell Cavallah, her boss. The two shook hands, and then Zhakil deliberately turned her back on the group and told them she'd wait for them to leave the pit before traveling.   While Bell and Spark made quick work of recovering Lem from Shamukaar, Medya and Relic helped Zer and Milli back to the Heart and Hammer, where both collapsed from exhaustion. Captain ir'Talan Iyanna stopped by the shop to tell the group that Cazha had a sizeable bounty on her, and that they needed to come collect their earnings, once they had patience for paperwork. Relic threw himself at the task, and by evening the party had recovered substantial silver for their work, enough for Bell to upgrade the shop, and for Milli to make her new legs, the proper set to harmonize with her body.  

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Bearsday, 28 Blooming, 998 Y.K.   The two weeks that followed the fight were a whirlwind of changes around the Heart and Hammer.   Milli healed physically, but without the use of her front legs; something had gone wrong in the renewal that pushed her to seek harmony with her new body as fast as possible. Zer' spent the time recovering from exhaustion, while Bell enlisted Transom to help her expand the forge. The spa day that followed the fight was a more subdued affair; the turnout was bigger, but the mood was definitely more somber. With Cinnabar dead and news of "no more dust" spreading, forged were starting to hoard what supplies they had. They'd heard that Lem was opening an apothecary to work on a replacement, but that wouldn't help them today. Someone mentioned a rumor that Nolan Toranak, Sharn's councilman for all of the Cogs, had introduced a resolution outlawing dust, and that started a hearty round of agreement that someone should approach Crucible about running for City Council. That idea met with general approval, and the gathering at least ended on a hopeful note.   Lem did open the apothecary, with some financial backing from Lead Design. After the opening, Lead came back to a smaller afterparty at the Heart and Hammer, where Milli finally got to meet the reclusive forged financier. They seemed quite interested in Milli's research and asked if they could have a copy once Milli had gone public, and they warned the unicorn that bigger forces than he would find her papers quite interesting for all the wrong reasons. Milli, however, was undeterred and agreed to share her notes once she'd gotten them ready.   Relic, for his part, reached out to an old friend of his: Ander Reed, the Wayfinder that had brought him back to Khorvaire. The interactions with Cinnabar had awakened memories of a similar confrontation as he was just waking up to himself, and he felt the time was right to ask about his past. Ander invited he and his friends to join them in Fairhaven to share what he knew. When Morran heard this, he sent word to his cousin Jorlanna and asked for an audience to discuss the future of House Cannith, and also to ask for help financing a replacement for his arm. Milli and Bell agreed to help him with his designs, and Morran released Lem as his caretaker to prepare for travel.   And once Milli was fit for travel, sporting her newly harmonized front legs of copper and ceramic, the party made ready to travel to Fairhaven.