Act 1: Sharn, City of Towers
In Rhaan 998 YK, a group of strangers arrived in Sharn aboard the Moonriser lightning rail from Wroat. House Tarkanan terrorists, with darklings in Lyrandar disguise, tried to crash the train into the city. The company stopped the crash, but the Tarkanans got away with an eldritch machine called the Spell Sink. Princess Haydith ir’Wynarn was aboard.
Sir Bron, a Sentinel Marshal, gave them Writs of Authority, and Sharn did the rest. They broke an Alley Viper toll point, took a job from Priest Grevor to go into The Fallen, and held the Silver Seal with Wesalyn Brightwater against the demon Uvimahm. They raided the Viper nest and killed Baron Vossik. Then Bron’s own daughters, the Deneith twins, turned on them, and Sir Bron died holding them off.
The rot went to the top. Sharn’s Lord Mayor and half its council were roach thralls of something living under the city. When the company exposed them, Breland put the City of Towers under martial law.
At the Broken Blade in Daggerwatch they found House Tarkanan’s plan, Operation Shadow Sovereign, and Azura later revealed that Aundair was backing it. At Club Elysium, Azura Halar took some of them hostage, then became an ally. Mira chose Azura’s side against House Deneith’s elite.
Then the Dark Lanterns struck from a dreadnought overhead, led by Mira’s kinsman Zamis “the Tower”. An experimental skyship tore through the night and pulled the survivors out, Azura among them, just before the war-skyship levelled the club. Most of the old company fell at the tower.
Act 2: The Crowned Prophecy
The survivors of the Siberys Covenant, a secret alliance of house heirs and nobles sworn to an old Wynarn prophecy, went to ground in the King’s Forest. Nearby, Fort Tansend had gone silent.
Inside the fort: a massacre, soldiers with glowing blue eyes, a fallen paladin who rose from a pile of corpses, and a traitor of House Phiarlan, Kaleth Shol. Both went down. At the heart of the fort, the rakshasa Mahadi was bleeding the fort’s people into a ritual meant to tear the world open. The Covenant broke it. Mahadi slipped away.
They carried two things out: the dragonshard that powered the fort, which could repair the skyship’s crippled teleport drive, and a book that had been hidden by illusion. Ivy, who fell in the fort and came back wearing the Raven Queen’s mark, says it names Lords of Dust agents wearing the faces of barons and viceroys across the dragonmarked houses.
The Long Night (where we are now)
Two nights after Fort Tansend, five people are aboard the skyship: Captain Mira d’Deneith, and four newcomers, Epoch, Vessa, Torvath and Vaelis. See The Party.
- Serina is pulling an all-nighter to install the dragonshard into the teleport drive.
- In the mess hall, Ivy told Kaga, Torvath and Vessa much of what’s in the book. Something whispered to him while he talked. He thinks it was the Raven Queen.
- In the passage, Mira took the book from him. She hasn’t read it yet.
- Kaga mentioned that Elanjar had gone missing for a day, to the Phiarlan estate in Sharn, and came back smiling. Epoch realised Elanjar knew the sigil sequence of the ship’s teleportation circle.
- Epoch, Kaga and Torvath went down to the orlop. Nobody was guarding the circle chamber. Inside were four destroyed Cannith warforged, and Elanjar, dead, his lute beside him.
They turned to climb back up and raise the alarm. Behind them, in a room they had just walked out of, something that isn’t there takes a breath.