Session 36, Arc IV

Red Skies at Night...

Played 30 May 2026

The party stood on the deck of the Hornet, anchored in the port of Alanae, staring out at a sight that turned their stomachs. The Iridian Channel, which had been their path northward, was now choked by a massive blockade of fifty to sixty ships — dark-wood Veurim warships and merchant vessels alike — stretching as far as the eye could see. It was then that Cyrran's attention was seized by a familiar figure on a nearby warship, roughly two hundred metres away. The rune carved into his face began to glow and smoke with a searing, necrotic heat, and he tunnel-visioned onto the elven scout he had encountered once before on the road to Arakcadia. She was not looking at him with anger this time — her face was carved with stone-cold fear.

Before Cyrran could make sense of it, a blade was plunged through the scout's chest from behind. A woman in ornate black clothing, dark face paint ringing her eyes, withdrew the weapon as dark blood splattered across the bow of the warship, and the scout crumpled to the deck. Cyrran's eyes widened as he snapped back to reality, the rune on his face still smoking. Kailyn, noticing the heat rising from his skin, shaped a splash of ocean water and threw it directly onto his face — only for it to evaporate instantly on contact. Cyrran, startled, demanded to know what on earth had just happened.

The party quickly identified a Veurim Empire tattoo on the assassin's chest, matching a symbol Cyrran had kept on a preserved piece of flesh taken from a dead drow scout found in the desert near Arakcadia. Bones attempted a minor healing, but nothing took hold. It was Bones who conjured a clever illusion — a spectral cigar appearing in Cyrran's mouth — to mask the smoke rising from the rune as the party debated their next move. Meanwhile, Yomidrogo transformed Dexter into a hawk and sent him soaring over the blockade to scout the enemy crews for others bearing the same mysterious marking. Dexter returned with word that many of the Veurim crew bore the tattoo, though plenty were too clothed to confirm.

As night fell, a torrential storm rolled in, dropping visibility to near zero and reducing the channel to a maze of signal fires bobbing in the dark. The party seized the opportunity, disguising Yomidrogo as a high-ranking Veurim captain — calling himself Captain Blihennuru — while Kailyn wild-shaped into a raven to avoid scrutiny. They sailed into the pitch-black night without a signal fire of their own, hoping the storm would swallow them whole. For a time, it seemed to be working. No ships advanced on their position as they wound through the heart of the blockade.

Their luck ran out when a Veurim warship pulled alongside them, lighting a strange purple-grey signal flare. Arri used the Helm of Comprehensive Languages to translate the telepathic demands being pressed into her mind — the warship was ordering them to remain stationary for boarding. A boarding party leapt across the rigging: two half-orc guards and an elven officer who introduced himself as Blihennuru, demanding to know their business. Yomidrogo, cool as a cucumber in his disguise, spun an elaborate tale of a secret deep-cover spy mission into enemy territory, explaining away their missing crew, their lack of a signal fire, and their suspicious manifest. Kailyn, still in raven form, swooped down repeatedly to tear pieces off the incriminating manifest before the officer could read it too closely, ripping away chunk after chunk of paper with her beak.

The guards descended into the hull to search for stowaways, but conducted only a cursory sweep before returning empty-handed. Bones, pressed into a dark corner of the hold, barely breathed as their footsteps passed overhead. The officer, though visibly suspicious, found nothing concrete to act on. He warned them to light a proper signal fire in future and departed with his guards, leaping back to their warship as the Hornet continued north. The party exhaled as one.

With the blockade behind them, the crew retreated below deck where Curly revealed a secondary talent — he was a magical tattoo artist. Arraphesu received an Eldritch Claw tattoo on her hand and arm, designed to extend the reach of her strikes with crackling magical force. Yomidrogo underwent a far more intense procedure for a Spellwrought tattoo — a burning tree with the word "breakfast" inscribed inside — infused with swirling orange, yellow, green, and red energies that pulsed beneath his skin. The process was painful, and Curly warned them both to rest the affected limbs for eight hours before the magic would fully set. It was a small moment of calm in an otherwise relentless journey.

The calm did not last. Cyrran's rune continued to burn, and the party resolved to finally be rid of it. Kailyn prepared a powerful cleansing ritual that required diamond dust worth a hundred gold pieces — a component they did not have in the right form. Yomidrogo attempted to shatter one of their large diamonds with his firearm, but the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the gem's surface. In desperation, Curly offered his beloved tattoo gun as a makeshift drill. He was warned it might not survive the process. He agreed anyway — and it was obliterated completely, reduced to dust alongside the diamond. Kailyn gathered the glittering remnants, pressed her hand to Cyrran's face, and performed the ritual. The rune slowly lifted from his skin, and with it went something deeper — a persistent, unseen sensation of being tracked and pursued that Cyrran hadn't even realised he'd been carrying.

Yomidrogo woke the following morning from a vivid and deeply unsettling dream. He had been alone on a strange shore, the ship empty of his companions, and had followed the sound of something calling him into a dark cave. Inside, on a central stone island surrounded by deep water, sat his missing broom. He had reached for it — and a gargantuan, ten-tentacled squid creature had risen from the depths, covered in a cancerous growth of stolen treasures and belongings, and killed him. He woke gasping. When he cast a locating enchantment on the broom, he found it — nearly a thousand feet away, towards the top of Droshdech island. Rupert was missing too. The party suspected the two were connected.

They made for the shore, and found the cave exactly as Yomidrogo had described it — a narrow rock formation that opened into an impossibly large cavern, far bigger on the inside than it had any right to be. A central stone pillar rose from a ring of deep, dark water, and on it lay Rupert, motionless, with the broom beside him. Water dripped unnaturally from the ceiling above. Kailyn shaped the water into a temporary passage and the party advanced — until a shadow detached itself from the ceiling and a gargantuan creature with a jaw the size of a person dropped into view, blocking the exit and letting out a horrifying scream that seized Kailyn's mind and bent her will toward the beast.

What followed was a desperate, chaotic battle in the flooded cavern. Yomidrogo transformed Bones into a gargantuan sperm whale to match the creature's scale — only for the beast to immediately charm the whale, rendering the party's greatest weapon useless. Arraphesu conjured a thick bank of fog to obscure the party's position, while Cyrran leapt across the water to reach the island and attempted to rouse Rupert with a healing draught. The creature proved terrifyingly powerful, reflecting spells back at the party, unleashing a devastating bolt of lightning, and charming the plesiosaurus Kailyn had summoned to fight alongside them. Arraphesu managed to wake Rupert with a powerful restoration, and Yomidrogo paralysed the beast with a binding enchantment that left it completely frozen in place. Cyrran seized the moment — he drove his rapier into a weak spot near the creature's neck and sliced downward through its centre, splitting its jaw open as teeth scattered across the water and the massive creature finally went still.

The party looted the hoard embedded in the creature's remains — ten thousand gold pieces, a bag of magical beans, a golden shell, a plus one greatsword, and several rare potions. Bones, ever curious, used a special concoction to speak with the severed head of the slain beast. It communicated cryptically that it would serve only itself and a mysterious "him", and that it had sought to "free the rules." Yomidrogo, who had been quietly detecting the thoughts of those around him, sensed a familiar and deeply unsettling presence lurking within Bones' mind — the same dark energy he had encountered in the ziggurat. When he pressed further, Bones felt the intrusion and, uncomfortable, transformed into a bird and flew back to the ship alone.

The party returned to the Hornet as the storm intensified to a terrifying degree, clouds visibly rotating overhead and the heat climbing to an unnatural thirty-six degrees. Cyrran heard distant explosions, and moments later a cannonball tore through the hull of the ship, sending splinters flying and injuring crew members below. Kailyn manifested a powerful whirlpool in the path of the pursuing vessel, and the party identified the attacker as a pirate ship flying the flag of the Islands of Spelora — a faction known to hold no alliances and care for nothing but themselves. Then Arri heard a voice in her mind: stop, if you want him to live. She knew immediately. It had to be about her father.

The party ceased fire and boarded the pirate vessel under a white flag, climbing the rigging to be met by half-orc guards with spears levelled at their chests. From below deck emerged a man in ornate, colourful pirate's robes — Ravikiel, Arraphesu's estranged brother. He greeted her with a quiet observation that she stood exactly as their father had stood, shoulders back, chin up, proud of a world she thought she had figured out. He claimed to have their father, Alshaedei, locked up in his lawless land, insisting that everything he had ever done had been to protect Arri from their father's manipulation. The conversation was tense, philosophical, and deeply personal — until a Goliath crew member moved to physically restrain Arraphesu, and the fragile peace shattered.

The rocs were called. Spells were flung. A wild magic surge conjured a massive illusory pink elephant onto the deck, which trumpeted once and vanished in a flash of light. Ravikiel grabbed Curly and held a knife to the navigator's throat, demanding compliance. When the rocs flew away with party members, Ravikiel drove the blade into Curly's stomach without hesitation. In retaliation, Yomidrogo transformed Ravikiel into a sloth — slow, harmless, and utterly undignified. Arri cradled her brother's sloth form as Garen, Ravikiel's pragmatic second-in-command, negotiated a tense truce. The party agreed to accompany the crew to find Alshaedei, and the ship departed into the storm — the party captive once again, heading back south, with a sloth for a hostage and ten thousand gold pieces in their hold.