After the large battle the previous session, the party took several days to look through the books and clues they had gathered, buy and sell some loot, and discuss further plans with Cesadia and Winter.
Looking through the books and notes left by Lowls in Iris Hill, the party learned several things:
- Lowls was headed to Cassomir in Taldor. He was meeting up with a colleague, Miaknian Mun, who was going to help him retrieve The Nightmare Codex. The Count had several weeks head start on them. This information was confirmed by Melisenn before she left.
- Lowls had learned the location of The Nightmare Codex by traveling to The World of Dreams in his sleep. There he met and learned the information from talking to a person called, The Mad Poet. There was a copy of the ritual to travel to the World of Dreams in Lowls journal that the party had found. It was complicated but given time Enni believed she could get the ritual to work.
- Lowls was ultimately searching for a lost city that had Star Stela similar to the ones in Thrushmoor. In this lost city he hoped to be able to bring Hastur, The King in Yellow, to the world of Golarion. That seemed like a bad idea.
The group also identified a longsword found in the tomb of one of Lowl’s ancestors as, Soulrender, a decidedly sketchy blade with a reputation for corrupting its owners and eventually killing them somehow. The stories were unclear on exactly how all this happened. The sword itself was powerful, particularly against demon, devils, and undead. Strummer decided that it was too useful an item to abandon and attuned to it. That won’t come back to bite him in the butt, we’re all sure.
Talking with Cesadia and Winter, the group learned that Winter intended to head back to Caliphas. That is where she had been assigned to assist Royal Accuser Omari. Now that Omari had been slain, she intended to report to her superiors and seek further guidance. She wanted to know what the party intended since that would be part of her report. After a little discussion, the group decided to continue to pursue Lowls. They still hadn’t gotten all their memories back but they had learned enough to know that Lowls had betrayed them and that didn’t sit well. Plus, the whole “Bring an Eldritch Horror into the world!” thing seemed like it should be stopped. They lived in the world, after all.
Cesadia was grateful for the work the party had done to stop the disappearances in Thrushmoor. She had come around to trusting them a bit more than she had originally. As a favor, she told the party about a river boat captain that was in port and gave them a written recommendation. The captain’s name was Skywin Freeling on the Sellen Starling. Having a goal and the means to pursue it, the party bid Cesadia and Winter good-bye and headed to the docks.
At the docks Skywin was having a loud disagreement with the Harbor Master over the loading of her ship. It seems the dock workers hadn’t balanced the load correctly but the Harbor Master wasn’t accepting the fault. He wanted Skywin to set sail and free up the dock space immediately. Zachariah cast a quick spell on the Harbor Master suggesting to the man that he fix the mistake. Which he did since he was feeling a little magically encouraged to do so.
Captain Freeling was appreciative of the help and given the note from Cesadia agreed to give the party passage. She just required that they help with defense of the ship should she need it. The Captain already had two paying passengers, scholars from Cassomir, but she figured she could squeeze the party aboard. She an her crew were all halflings, after all. They didn’t take up much space.
