Players: Imogen, Cheri, Vesolnir, May, Bonk

Session Recap

Roxana

Imogen read the room, immediately snagged Cheri’s cloak of Elvenkind, and disappeared through the front door while Roksana was talking to Jubilee. Before the party could slip out, Roxana Hardhelm made her way over. Vesolnir stayed, spine straight, and handled it. The conversation was careful on both sides — Roxana has a history with the party going back to their first job, Rescuing Pog Pizzler from the Tomb of Primixolon, that she hired them for. She mentioned she was investigating matters of the underworld, and left it at that. Vesolnir suggested that the party was heading to the Academy to see the headmaster. She told him to pass along her regards. Then she left.

Casework: The Estate of Reginald Barsand

What information the party had gathered: Reginald Barsand inherited the estate from the saint he had served, Ertyu the Unturned — a celebrated delver who had achieved sainthood through his work in the Veiled Spiral of Caelumbra, a city built around a pit of unknowable depth into which the faithful descend on pilgrimage. The churches of Caelumbra control its real estate in proportion to their saints; delvers earn their lanterns lit from the flame of those who have gone before. Barsand was never a delver himself — he was the saint’s bodyguard, a fighter who worked outside the veil, protecting a remarkable person from ordinary dangers. After the saint died without heirs, Barsand inherited the house and turned it into something of his own. He now manufactures survival gear for Caelumbra delvers, a reclusive craftsman living in a saint’s house he never quite belonged to.

The estate has four distinct levels. The lower basement and main floor predate Barsand’s ownership and retain the character of the saint’s era. The galleria floor — a prize room displaying relics and trophies — and the top-floor tinkering workshop were added by Barsand himself. The security system is his own work: mechanical automatons of varying sophistication, pressure plates, and four gargoyles positioned at the roof’s corners.

The item on the prize floor is the saint’s pale-flame lantern — a small brass thing on a chain, worn smooth where hands have rested on it. The pale flame inside illuminates the room more than it should, but looking at it directly is difficult in a way that resists explanation. The light arrives, but does not feel like it belongs.

Entry

With hours to burn before the 2 a.m. window, the party split up to survey the property.

Vesolnir positioned himself across the street from the front entrance and waited. Cheri took to her broom and ran aerial reconnaissance at height. Imogen drifted down to the riverbank at the rear of the property, where the estate butts up against the water — a dock, a small personal craft, and a sewer grate that drained from underneath the building. The grate had been moved recently.

The party made their moves, separately, without coordinating.

Vesolnir walked up to the front door. A robot butler answered — an early prototype, simple gear-and-command architecture, mostly just clanking at him in half-formed instructions. A high investigation check was enough to read the mechanism: a series of gear states corresponding to basic modes. Vesolnir adjusted it into welcome posture and stepped inside. The entry hall opened into a formal receiving room — a saint’s throne where pilgrims once came to pay respects, an offering table Barsand now uses as a dining surface. Two patrol automatons, more sophisticated than the butler, circled the floor. Vesolnir cast Minor Illusion — a copy of himself, moving toward the basement stairs — and both units turned to follow it down. After searching for traps he notices a series of pressure plates and slipped up toward the prize floor as the house lights suddenly died.

Imogen went into the sewer.

Beneath the estate she found Gorum Stoutmantle, a member of Mirka’s crew, crouched over a pit trap in the tunnel floor. His associate Sybill Shortshriff had gone in first and landed badly — busted leg, stuck at the bottom. He begged Imogen to help so he could go upstairs to assist with Mirka. Gorum ran before Imogen could even respond. Imogen hauled Sybill up out of the pit and shoved her out of the way, then pulled herself up through a floor drain into the basement proper.

The basement is old. A former kitchen and servant’s workroom, a dwarven forge tapped into the original chimney, a ritual circle etched into the floor around a central altar that has seen steady use over a long time. A treasure chest in the corner. And at the base of the pit: bodies. Two of Barsand’s patrol automatons — the ones Vesolnir had lured downstairs — were already in combat with something down there. Imogen hit the nearest automaton and tried to push it into the ritual circle, then turned her attention to the circle itself — poking at it, trying to get a response. Nothing. Whatever it was built for, it’s been dormant a long time. A saint’s altar at the center, signs of deliberate and heavy use, and absolutely no indication of what any of it meant.

Cheri, on her broom at roof height, found that every window in the building had been blacked out. She picked the lock on a top-floor window anyway — then heard stone grinding on stone from all four corners of the roof simultaneously. The gargoyles were waking up.

May cast Shatter.

The spell hit all four gargoyles at once and blew out the top-floor windows with them. Whatever Shatter disrupted beyond the gargoyles, the party couldn’t immediately tell. Cheri and May entered through the wreckage.

Inside

The top floor is Barsand’s workshop: a tinkering table covered in schematics, a bookcase, a sarcophagus in the corner. The plaque reads ERTYU THE UNTURNED. Nearby, flower boxes on the roof held plants that May didn’t recognize from anywhere on Drak’lira. She sent her Unseen Servant to collect some of them before floating down.

The galleria floor stopped both Cheri and Vesolnir when they reached it. The room is a museum of the saint’s career: display cases along the walls, a mosaic of a pale white flame on the far wall, two dormant suit-of-armor automatons flanking the space. One case holds a longsword. Another is empty — the velvet backing is still there, indented where a necklace used to rest. And in the center, on a pedestal: a lantern.

Vesolnir scanned for traps and found nothing reassuring. The lighting made it hard to be sure. He used Minor Illusion again — a small creature jumping toward the sword case — to see how the dormant automatons would respond. They stirred. The party held.

Bonk, who had been loitering outside by the garden doing his best impression of a late-night groundskeeper, made his way around to the rear entrance. The lock had already been disabled — Mirka’s crew, presumably, or someone else who had gotten there first. He was through the door as the session ended.

End of Session

The party is spread across the estate. Imogen is in the basement with the automatons and whatever is at the bottom of that pit. Bonk is entering through the rear. Vesolnir and Cheri are on the galleria floor, standing between dormant armor and a lantern that does not quite behave like light. May has just descended from the top floor.

Lore Established This Session

• Caelumbra is the city built around the Veiled Spiral — a pit of unknown depth into which delvers descend on holy and secular pilgrimages. Churches control city real estate proportional to their number of recognized saints. Lanterns must be lit from a saint’s flame or a pale flame to allow entry into the veil.
• There are four tiers of delver lanterns: Amber, Violet, Black, and Pale. The tier reflects the delver’s experience and accomplishment within the spiral.
• Ertyu the Unturned was a saint of Caelumbra — He seems to be entombed on the top floor of his own estate.
• Reginald Barsand was the saint’s bodyguard, not an accomplished delver. He now manufactures survival equipment for Caelumbra delvers and lives as a moderate recluse in the estate he inherited.
• Roxana Hardhelm is investigating matters connected to the underworld in Starbit Bay. She is the head of the city guard and has investigative authority over criminal matters.
• The rare plants in Barsand’s rooftop flower boxes are not native to Drak’lira. May took a sample of one of them with her Unseen Servant.
• The missing necklace from the galleria display case is an open thread.

Table Moments

• Imogen reading the room the instant Roxana walked in and vanishing through the front door without saying a word to anyone.
• The entire party independently deciding to scout the estate, each going a completely different direction, and none of them telling each other. A full heist improvised from first principles by five people who had not coordinated.
• Imogen in the sewer: “I don’t care. I’ll take some antibiotics.”
• Vesolnir hacking the robot butler with a gear adjustment and walking into the house like he owned it.
• Gorum Stoutmantle accepting Imogen’s help and immediately sprinting away to deal with something else, leaving her holding an injured Sybill.
• May’s Shatter described as a rumbling fart that causes structural vibration. The gargoyles had no defense against this and it delayed their awakening by a turn.
• Vesolnir proposing an Indiana Jones weight-swap on a pale-flame saint’s relic using an Unseen Servant. Nobody found this unreasonable.
• “We’re about to have cheese statue money!”

Open Threads

Immediate

• The heist is unfinished. The lantern is on the pedestal. The dormant automatons are watching. Two other crews are somewhere in or around the estate.
• The ritual circle in the basement — Imogen poked at it, got nothing. It’s been dormant for a long time. The question of what Ertyu the Unturned was doing down there remains open.
• Sybill Shortshriff is injured in the sewer with a broken leg.
• The missing necklace from the galleria case.

Ongoing

• Roxana Hardhelm is investigating the underworld in Starbit Bay. She let Vesolnir go without asking too many questions. She knows where they’re headed.
• The rare plants from Barsand’s roof are now in May’s possession. Their properties are unknown.
• The party’s route to the Academy continues through Ruk’Tai territory.
• The Academy visit remains the the ‘Main Quest’ at the moment.