Season 4, Episode 5: "The Scythe of Memory" Report

Alarmed by the ringing of the Road Key, the Dream Team rushed to stabilize their surroundings, healing up and coordinating across the Forge. The crew locked Lollipop and Gregar Taxus on Ezorod, recovering some of their passed-on loot, while Mist and Chamas set out to clean up the Aga Jain.

But T.R.A.V.I.S. intervened, drawing the body parts into the ship, and invited the captain back into the A.I. Bay to discuss. Alarmed by his frighteningly human-like speech patterns, Mist and Lockette shut the A.I. down, leaving the ship without its virtual coordinator. Then, the Ysoki was shocked by a vision from Tommen, the first of the Dark Walkers, seemingly triggered by his recent use of the Blessing of the Hunter.

Exhausted, rattled, and low on trust, the group toyed with the idea of not using the Road Key at all, but eventually decided to take the gamble. They arrived on the Rambling Road, greeted once again by the Spirit of the Well, and a grouchy-looking Nicholas Carter.

With Valentina Terris captured, a clause of Nic's contract had kicked in, requiring to forward all of his usual correspondence to the Dream Team instead. While eager to get going before Valentina's trail went cold, the crew had a wealth of relatively unrelated questions and items of discussion, broken in the list below.  

• The Rambling Road is a construct, not a set dungeon. Even Valentina didn’t know what’s inside, only that they lead to pieces of her mother’s old house, and that great wealth and power can be found within. Nicholas believes that the key to getting Valentina back might be with the house, and asks the party to get involved -- leading to a new quest.
• Chad and Pin are missing. Mining Team 1 got an invite to check in at Downlow the morning of the attack, and when they arrived they were all jumped by the Void Coven of the Crucible. They tried to take everybody, but Chad got in the way instead -- the coven fled, Chad and Pin disappeared, and everyone else got a nice roast inside the living room. Luckily everyone is okay, but Qwen is shaken.
• Charon is employing the Void Hags now, and the Void Coven of Crucible are acting as her lieutenants. She and Moscaroth laid siege to Night from the River Styx, while Jun Zhao funneled cultists in from the Material Plane. The Daughters of Night and Carrot survived, but the losses in Night were unprecedented.
• The village of Wexa was besieged by a pack of Quigs, but they were hunted down by the villagers, who have banded together after all the recent insanity. After Nakira died the aggressors on the planet withdrew -- several shifts left the planet entirely, abandoning most of their outposts.
• Nic recently got a lead on some of the Ruby Keys, but he’s had next-to-no intel on what’s going on inside of Golarion since Jestyr briefly breached the barrier. He recommended the party return when they can, but specifically he knows or suspects that:
  • Unari Dama possesses two keys -- specifically the Shoot Key inside his body, and the Butterfly Key sits around his neck.
  • The Sun Key is nearby Ezorod, but Nic wasn’t sure where. If there were any unexplored locations on Mataras that the group knew about, he suggested they search there.
  • He thought the Maelstrom Key was on a planet named Hades Paradise, which he shared coordinates for.
  • He heavily suspected that Vaughn Blackblood has the Brazier Key, but he hadn’t yet confirmed.
  • Valentina had the Sparrow Key… Assumed that Marcus has it now.
• Tesin requested files on Project 9, which Nic immediately delivered -- save one. He offered his files on Tesin to Mist, who immediately returned them, completing Nic's contractual obligation to deliver them to the Dream Team. He then privately offered them to Mist, but only after he swore on his power to never let Tesin read them, as he feared what it would do to her fragile psyche.
• He also offered a number of other files to the party (see the list of updated content below for a better idea).

  After their discussion, Nic vanished, leaving the Dream Team to their devices. They made a soft agreement to split up for a few days, with goals of fixing T.R.A.V.I.S. and securing the Forge, and left the Rambling Road behind.