Session 9: Showdown at Typhoon’s Rest¶

The warehouse burned. The party walked away with a divine egg, a fake thieves guild, and blood on their hands. By nightfall, one of them would be on another plane of existence entirely.

The morning began with hard choices. The party stood in the looted warehouse, Gimbleblock at their side, Crawley pacified in his chair, and the roof snipers starting to notice the silence below. Time was short. What followed was swift and brutal. Alarise and Ada dealt with the caged guards. Then Lucien turned to Crawley -- and without a word, raised his hand and fired a blast of pure cold directly at the gnome’s head. The first shot struck the charmed guard instead, killing him instantly. Lucien didn’t flinch. He made eye contact with Gimbleblock, and fired again. Ice encased Crawley’s skull. The room went very quiet.

There was no discussion. The party moved on. Ada, with a brilliant flash of historical recall, devised a cover story: they would frame the raid on a fictitious rival guild called “The Tempest,” complete with a calling card -- a wave wrapping a star, a gold coin, and a note reading “For your troubles.” Lucien left it in Crawley’s safe with the confidence of someone who had done this before.

Before leaving, Shin approached the Couatl of Ioun -- the celestial serpent they had found caged in the warehouse. It was ancient and dying, and it had laid an egg. Speaking with a calm that belied its fading light, the creature offered the egg to the party and helped them deal with the most dangerous caged creatures. Ada warped the hippogriff outside, where it kicked a Myriad thug and took to the sky. Then the party lit Dazz’s lantern. A fire elemental roared to life, and they ran. Gimbleblock collapsed the tunnel behind them, and the warehouse went up in flames.

In Gimbleblock’s hideout, farewells were exchanged. The party pressed 1800 gold into his hands -- for the neighbourhood, they said. Helga gave him her pistol. Lucien sealed a letter with his personal crest and told Gimbleblock to present it at the palace if he ever needed help. Gimbleblock returned Shin’s Gem of Brightness, now encased in a device of his own making: a gnomish flashbang.

As the party made their way back toward the Restless Wharf, they found the streets alight with celebration. Word of the warehouse’s destruction had spread, and the people of the Skew were toasting its demise. The party seeded whispers about the Tempest and kept walking.

At the Typhoon’s Rest -- Dazz’s third and final location -- the party split their approach. Shin, Helga, and Ada took a table and ordered food and coffee. Lucien walked in and stopped dead. Sitting at a corner table, finishing breakfast, were his father Rico and his eight-year-old brother Carlo. What followed was one of the most quietly devastating scenes of the campaign: an awkward, halting conversation between a son who felt abandoned and a father who was clearly trying. Shin did her best to bridge the gap. Carlo, oblivious to the tension, chattered excitedly about a fish he had caught. Lucien agreed to meet them at the palace at four in the morning to go fishing.

Meanwhile, Alarise slipped upstairs. In one of the rented rooms she found what she had been looking for: a summoning circle carved into the floorboards. She called Ada up to investigate. But a thug from downstairs had followed them, and in the scuffle that followed, Ada stumbled into the circle. There was a flash of light and a rush of wind, and she was gone -- transported to a floating island of barren earth drifting in an endless sky. The Elemental Plane of Air.

Downstairs, the tavern erupted. Three thugs and a familiar face -- Zephyr, the air genasi who had fled from the Sluiceweave weeks ago -- attacked. The fight was fast and chaotic. Two thugs fell. Zephyr was forced to surrender. A well-dressed swordsman who seemed to be running the operation fought with the confidence of a man who had killed before, and when the odds turned against him, he vanished through the front door and into the night.

The party held the tavern. Zephyr knelt on the floor with her hands behind her head. But upstairs, the summoning circle still hummed, and somewhere in the infinite blue sky of another plane, Ada was alone, dodging something she couldn’t see.