Session 25: Fair Chance

Crownsday, 17 Sunfall, 998 Y.K.   Zer opened his thoughts to the minds of Fairhaven, expanding further and further out, seeking the fiery thoughts of Meledri Corus. The young psion sensed the paladin’s thoughts in the Whitecap district by the docks, and following that sense they found her still staying at the inn where Bell and Milli had gone to talk with her before. Once there, however, they found her in the middle of packing. She seemed surprised to see the group again and said she thought they’d gone back to Sharn. She'd followed Raelvan all over Fairhaven for weeks, but her trail had gone cold a few days ago.   The psion, with perfect recall, transcribed Raelvan's letter and gave it to Meledri, saying it had been found on the body of someone who'd been ritually sacrificed. Spark quickly added that Gwyr had betrayed Dowser to steal it. The Flamish paladin shook as she read the letter, then passed it back to Zer. Luka, she explained, had been her mentor in the church; they had views the Council of Cardinals had pronounced "curious," in that they felt the Sovereign Host and the secular governments of Khorvaire were less a threat than the machinations of the Bleak Council and their ilk. If Raelvan was targeting Luka, she was needed in Sigilstar. She shook Bell's hand and thanked her for the tip.   Bell quickly explained she'd come because of the fiends in Jorlanna's basement, and that they needed her help to face them. The paladin nodded. "I'll need to unpack some things. Give me three hours. I'll meet you there."   On the way to Cannith West's stronghold, Bell and Milli detoured briefly by the Aundair Patent Office in Fairhaven. The building was stodgy and cramped, stuffed with papers and staffed by an elderly clerk who seemed quite distraught both at the presence of Milli’s legs and the paper refuting House Cannith’s claim to them. He harrumphed and proclaimed his distaste and discomfort, but in the end he accepted the unicorn’s work as evidence of prior art, and her paper as proof. He said it would likely take a few weeks for them to verify her claims, and she shouldn’t try to profit on her work in the meantime, to which Milli could only smile and nod.   When Milli and Bell caught up with the others, Morran was still pacing in the foyer, clearly uncomfortable at the thought of what was to come. He told the group he wasn’t much of a fighter, and they suggested gently that he find a safe place to stay, and to take Veora with him. While he gathered Cannith West’s second-in-charge — and a change of clothes — Meledri Corus arrived in the foyer, wreathed in sunlight. Pounding open the front door, she announced in a loud but steady voice that she had come to purge the evil from this place. Morran escorted the group to Jorlanna’s chambers, then quickly made himself and Veora scarce.   Jorlanna had told the group which room the fiends had claimed for their work. Even from down the basement hallway, the group could catch the whiff of something wretched. A sign said No Entry Without Permission. Meledri wasted no time in hammering open the door, revealing a trio of figures that might once have been human, surrounding some kind of foul magical circle inscribed on the floor. The room pulsed with unnatural energy, and the walls seemed to shudder with every wave of eldritch power emanating out from whatever ritual they’d been working. As Meledri burst down the door, the three turned to face the party. One of the fiends hurled a fireball at the door in response to being disturbed, and the whole building shook as flames burst around the group.   “By the Silver Flame, I will send you back to the Far Realms!” Hammer at the ready, Meledri Corus charged the closest fiend in human flesh. Blow after blow fell, each strike sending silver light coursing beneath the demon’s human suit and making the fiend screech in blessed agony. Relic dashed towards a second and, with a snap of his wrists, summoned twin rivers of pure water to smash one of the fiends into the next, while Spark followed with blast after blast of pure sun. With a prayer, Zer temporarily forced one of the demons into a demi-plane, while Millimax imprisoned one of the others in a force cage. Bell focused on hardening Spark’s shell, while Medya threw shatter tokens at the carvings on the floor, trying to disrupt the circle holding the fiends’ working together.   The battle was pitched, but short. With one of the fiends indisposed and a second flung prone, the party quickly swarmed their foes, but even with superior numbers, the party had never faced such unearthly foes before. Their touch inspired fire and rot even in the bodies of the forged, and their spells burned cold. The portal rippled and spat, and Bell realized the fiends were drawing on their working to heal themselves. She and Meledri quickly joined Medya in trying to disrupt the spell, which began to buck wildly, disrupting Milli’s and Zer’s magics. The banished fiend was rudely spat back into this plane, just in time to see its comrades disrupted by purifying flames.   As the spell unraveled, the last of the demons climbed onto the table and began to absorb the energies of the working, its flesh taking on a metallic sheen as wings and tail tore from its back. Horns of twisted iron sprouted from its forehead, and jagged teeth of metal filled its face. Bell and Meledri, Relic and Spark wasted no time in laying into the fiend, which fought back fiercely, viciously wounding Spark and Bell as it fell. With the fiends gone, the group immediately began to purify the space. Meledri summoned water and blessed it, and the group quickly turned to cleansing all that the fiends could have touched. Slowly, the fetid stench began to clear, leaving behind only the charred remains of an imp, its body riddled with forged components, its face locked in a rictus of pain and joy.   It hadn't survived, but that they'd gotten as far as they had so quickly was impressive. And terrifying.   On a table near the center of the room, seemingly unharmed despite the eruptions of foul magic, lay a book in which Palor’s friends had been taking notes. Milli found the book quite interesting, at least as a checklist of what not to do. She pocketed the book despite Spark’s and Medya’s hesitation, then followed the rest of the group upstairs to confront Jorlanna about the fiends and their intents.   Dashing madly about her lab, d’Cannith Jorlanna had clearly had a rough night. Papers were strewn everywhere, with overturned mugs of tea soaking one of her tables. The magewright rambled as she paced, at one moment angrily raging at Morran for refusing to help speed up the project, the next begging that Palor stay in Passage just a few more days, to give her time to think. Meledri stepped into Jorlanna’s path and laid her hands upon the enchanter’s shoulders, then looked deep into her eyes and told her to breathe. Something seemed to connect deep within them, and Jorlanna drew in a shuddering breath and let it go.   The matriarch of Cannith West bowed her head, and when she lifted it again, tears ran down her face as she apologized for all the harm she’d caused. All she’d ever wanted was her husband and daughter back. She’d made a terrible promise in a moment of weakness, and she’d spent thirty years paying for it. She'd fought Palor, time and again, but the fiend was stronger and she was so tired, so tired. She knew it wasn’t enough — it would never be enough — but it was all she could do.   Bell pounded her hammer on the wall near the door, interrupting Jorlanna’s lament. “The families who’ll suffer because of what you built for Emmer Sykes, all they want is their loved ones back.” The forged’s voice crackled with anger. “It won’t happen for them. You think about that, while we go clean up your mistakes.” Then she turned and left, leaving Meledri to ask when that would be. Jorlanna said he was due back in three days. Meledri said that was enough time, and she told Jorlanna to return to her bedroom and pray, then ushered the rest of the party after Bell.   Outside, Meledri told the group that she’d need to go to the old Flamist temple; there was an artifact there, the Lantern of Jaila Valeau, first rector of the Silver Flame in Fairhaven. Its light could make even the greatest fiend tremble, if they could recover it. Ever since the Silver Flame had coopted the government of Thrane and turned it to a theocracy, Aundair and Thrane hadn’t been on speaking terms, with King Wrogar going so far as to close the largest Flamist temple outside Thalin’s Domain and forcing the Flamists of Aundair to renounce their faith at wandpoint. Since then, the temple had been treated as haunted, with entry explicitly barred on order of the government of Aundair. If they were going to get the Lantern back, they’d have to break into the Temple.   Then Milli suggested they reach out to Senna Redeker; the Knight Arcane even had a letter — which Zer dutifully recited — suggesting Raelvan had taken Emmer Sykes’ puppetry rig to the head of the gang operating out of that temple. If Redeker allowed them access, they might be able to solve two problems at the same time. Meledri said it couldn’t hurt. The group set out to ask the Watch to put them in touch with Knight Arcane Senna Redeker, on urgent business.   When the Watch officer asked what kind of business it was, Milli began to explain, with many digressions and loopbacks for clarity. As she talked of the fiends in Jorlanna's basement and Raelvan's note, the guard's eyes grew wider and wider, until Relic hastily interceded. The next hour passed in awkward silence, with whispers passing around the group, until Senna Redeker arrived. Once safely behind closed doors in a warded interrogation chamber, the group explained why they were there, and what they needed. Despite her reservations, Senna seemed open to the idea once the stakes were explained to her. She gave the party’s blessing to enter the old temple, but warned the party they’d be watched — from a safe distance — to ensure no Thrane trickery.   In a manner most uncharacteristic of Flamists from Thrane, Meledri let the barb slide and thanked Senna for her help.   The old Flamist temple of Fairhaven was a massive structure, most of its windows long since smashed, but enough of the stained glass remained despite its age and neglect to give the building an eerie feeling that only grew as the party entered. The front hallway had once been the Hall of Heroes, where portraits of famous Flamists of history and scenes depicting victory over evil hung. Now it was a scrap gallery, littered with smashed frames and garbage. As the party crept towards the vaulted main hall, they began to hear the soft thwip-crack of arrows landing against stone. The bandits that had taken residence in the temple had been waiting for the party, and now had them trapped!   One of the archer’s arrows struck Meledri in the shoulder, and several others flew past Zer. The paladin hollered a charge and rushed forward, followed by Spark and Relic, while Milli and Zer hung back and Medya threw shatter in the direction the arrows approached, smashing through a false wall and revealing archers hiding in the darkness. More and more arrows flew down the hallway, as the group approached the main worship hall and its rows of cracked stone seats. More arrows rained down from the balcony, but Milli dropped a force sphere that sent two of the archers flying while Zer unleashed whispering terrors that made half the bandits drop their bows and flee in terror. The remainder fought valiantly, but little by little the group fought on, closer and closer to the brazier at the center of the room where the Everflame of the temple had once burned.   Sensing an opportunity, Zer teleported to the center of the basin, where dark scrawlwork surrounded the feeble silver light at the base of the bowl. The fiendish carvings kept the power of Jaila’s Lantern suppressed, but they couldn’t fully extinguish such a powerful artifact. Zer bent to pull the lantern from its housing, but as his fingers touched the metal, an ancient and powerful voice boomed across the mental link he’d established. You who would steal the forms of the divine, what business have you with us? Then white light flared around Zer, and the young psion went flying back through the portal he’d opened before. Moments later, a pair of arrows landed mere inches from Zer’s head as the leader of the gang stepped into the fray. Relic, sensing a keen foe, charged up one of the pillars holding up the vaulted ceiling and rushed for the leader, distracting him while Meledri rushed the altar and withdrew the lantern from its home. Instantly, brilliant silver light flooded the room, sending the bandits sprawling and clawing at their eyes, desperate to tear the fiendish goggles they had been wearing off of their faces, blinded by divine light.   With the bandits incapacitated, the party began to tend their wounded. Bell had become deeply injured in trying to help Meledri recover the lantern, but a renew from Milli helped mend most of her injuries. One of the gang, the only one to lay down his arms rather than be defeated, promised to spill the gang’s secrets in exchange for safety in jail, and Milli said she’d pitch the case to Senna Redeker, whose forces were waiting outside for the party to emerge. Meledri thanked the knight arcane for her confidence and said they were successful. The storeroom at the back of the church held a great many treasures and some ill-gotten gold, much of which the Fairhaven Watch claimed as “evidence.”   As Senna Redeker escorted the gang away, Milli asked their leader, somewhat innocently, what they could do to stop the gang from returning. Zer, sensing an opportunity, threw a zone of truth on them, and surprisingly the changeling said that reopening the temple would deprive them — and their overseers, the Lords of Dust — of its network of tunnels and an easy base of operations. Meledri folded her arms and smirked at the Aundairan officer, who sighed and said she’d suggest it to Queen Aurala. She warned that Thrane and the Flame were still not on speaking terms with Aundair, but Meledri said only that the alternative was another gang taking up residence in the empty space. With that, Senna Redeker said all she could was try, and she committed to asking the queen about it.   Thus equipped with holy light, Meledri turned to the group and said they had three days to prepare. “Find sources of hope and justice that will carry you in a fight against despair,” she warned. “I’ll meet you at House Cannith. In three days, we face d’Orien Palor and rescue Jorlanna.”