Session 5 Report

Weeks passed in uneasy stillness after the rescue of Cricket Thimblewhistle. The party drifted like flotsam through the tidepools of Frae, their wounds half-healed, their questions unanswered.

Padget slipped into shadows, tracing the whisper-chain of the Fangs of the Shadow, her presence vanishing into alleyways and backrooms.

Tolliver wandered deeper into theory and threat, digging into the Bound Compact, and how Frae’s tenuous grasp on magic was held, bartered, and broken.

Brikk turned to his church turning fists into currency. His underground fight ring swelled in number and bruises.

Nerissa studied plants that grew too close to the sewers, their leaves whispering strange things when burned. She sold tinctures, gathered coin, and listened.

Valden worked the bar, his hands occupied by glasses and rags, watching the door, watching his kin, waiting.

Then the coin came, delivered in silence, stacked in a simple sack. A token of thanks for Cricket’s life.

Soon after, a boy approached the bar. Too small. Too chipper. He wore fake halfling ears, clothes identical to Cricket, and introduced himself as Thimble Whistlecricket. No one had ever heard the name before, but he carried a message: another job, another favor, another whisper from the powers behind the curtain. The party disregarded the absurdity of the boy's claimed identity, the play on name, and chose to play along.

The reward? A home, a permanent base for the party. A roof under which they might belong.

The task? Investigate a dinner party in a long-abandoned warehouse at the edge of Eelmarket. Find out who was throwing it. Use their skills to learn more about the feast.

Brikk stayed behind, still buried in his fight club obligations. The others went without him.

They found the warehouse locked but not trapped. The interior was dark, not absent of light, but thick with it. Black walls, black floors, the taste of rust and wet wood in the air. As they stepped inside, the door behind them shut and locked with a click.

They ascended narrow stairs toward a single lit floor, where flickering light and wine-scented warmth beckoned. On the third floor: a banquet hall. Grand. Too grand.

Tables stretched from wall to wall, laid with meats, breads, fruits glossed with syrup and rot. Dozens of guests sat in silence, smiling too widely, their eyes too still. The room glowed warmly. It should have felt safe.

It did not.

Padget stepped toward the balcony, where a lone figure slumped in a chair, unmoving. But as she neared, they moved.

So did all the others.

The feast awakened.

Corpses smiled wider. Heads snapped. Claws scratched on wood. The room erupted in wet hunger as the dinner guests began to crawl, not toward escape, but toward the party.

The investigation shattered into chaos.

Padget fell first, her body paralyzed mid-motion, claws biting through cloth and skin. Nerissa followed, dragged to the ground, her voice lost beneath the gnashing. Valden and Tolliver nearly fled, hearts pounding, the door locked still behind them. But something in Tolliver snapped sharp and cold, his crossbow bolts finding a throat, then a skull, then a second and a third. The tide began to turn.

The monsters fell, but not easily.

The party stood bloodied, panting, barely alive. The feast table was strewn with broken chairs, torn flesh, and toppled barrels of wine that smelled like vinegar and bile.

They had been sent here under false pretenses. To die. Or worse, to be served.

They left with their lives. But not their trust.

Who had given the job? Was Thimble Whistlecricket part of something more nefarious? Who set the trap?