Session 15 — Talk, Talk, Talk: A Day of Wizards

Session Recap

The party spends a full day chasing the Smiling Sam investigation through every magical and religious institution in Gwyndinas — and ends it more or less where it started, with Draak thoroughly sick of mages and churches and the group half-resolved to go back to punching things. Picking up on the 9th of Spring's End, the blue group reunites (the soup-and-rocks crew — Lash, Thalia, Ashlyn, Draak — rejoins the investigators Fenric, Silithane) and walks first to the All Saints Cathedral, the church of dead and hoped-for gods, only to learn that real magic lives at the Flamespeaker Ziggurat, the church of the still-living All-Flame Queen. There they interview the imposing Deacon of the Ziggurat about the failed resurrections, then his catacomb apprentices about the Speak with Dead transcripts — every victim's recorded answer is nothing but escalating, wordless screaming.

Lash eats her long-held death cap mushroom to cast her own Speak with Dead on the latest victim, Margaret Everdeen, and confirms via an insight check that the woman isn't refusing to answer — her soul is simply already screaming, as if trapped in all-consuming torment. The trail leads to the Mage's Society tower across the bay (a boat ride courtesy of Draak's "sovereign citizen of the land of boat" birthright), where the soul-scholar Louis explains, via two bottles of brown liquid, that Speak with Dead never touches the soul — only a "printed moment" of animated spirit — and that the successful resurrections prove the souls are free, not captured (you can pour the drink; they just refuse to drink it). What's breaking these victims so badly that nothing cogent remains is the real horror. The liquid-specialist Wind Douglas confirms blood is trivially removed by cantrip (undetectable residue) or a simple suction device, conjures Ashlyn a day's worth of substitute blood for "science," and scries his hated office-nemesis — the city's best blood mage / sangomancer, Rhys Wengler, who left Gwyndinas days ago and is now camped in the wilderness with reluctant allies. The day closes with a hole-in-the-wall dinner in the Rainbow Bazaar and a nighttime trip to the Westport Black Market, where the party buys poison and old-orc blood, and Silithane's Suggestion squeezes a tannery butcher into naming a rival blood-seller at the South Wall market by the Ceased Gate.

Key Events

• All Saints Cathedral — wrong church: the party seeks "the Deacon" who tried to resurrect the smiling dead and instead meets Edmund the Eldest, an enormous-hatted priest of dead gods who can't do "real magic." A lime-green kobold, Jill, fundraises door-to-door for the sleeping dragon Bael'Drakkor (due to wake in ~3 years; the city has never failed to pay him). Draak adopts Jill as his "brother-cousin," donates a platinum and chalk, and stands guard so no one spits on him — turning the kobold's worst day into his best fundraising ever.
• The Flamespeaker Ziggurat — the real church: the party crosses town to the All-Flame Queen's church (a "giant cigarette") and bluffs past a gnome receptionist as "heightened super special investigators." The scarred, branded Deacon of the Ziggurat confirms 5 resurrections were his to perform; all were rejected — instantly, with absolute denial. The magic worked; the subjects simply refused to return. He sends them to his apprentice for the transcripts.
• The screaming transcripts: in a cold autopsy record room, the Deacon's teenage apprentice reads the Five Questions Speak with Dead transcripts: every answer is "A-A-A-AH" — capitalized vowels, no words. He recalls only one comparable case in his career: a young boy tortured by Laewendas's men, whose answers were gurgled, broken consonants. "These souls clearly suffered greatly."
• Examining Margaret Everdeen: a second teenage assistant, Belinda Amar, wheels out the most recent victim (2 days dead), an elderly woman carved into a lipless, cheekless smile. The party autopsies the body: no defensive wounds, no injection sites anywhere (eyelids, ears, between toes), no bloodletting cuts except the face. The face wound shows two implements — a scalpel-sharp clean cut for the smile, then a rougher blade hacking the cheeks away. The process matters more than the victim; it's done identically every time. Cause of death listed variously as fright / bereft of will to live / unknown (non-physical); the victims were dead or near-dead before being carved (no resistance in any cut).
• Lash's Speak with Dead: Lash eats her death cap mushroom, trips for ten minutes, and gains five questions. Every question — "respond if you're being prevented from testifying," "raise your arm if you saw your killer," "scream shorter if your death is why you won't return" — produces only a scream that grows longer each time (3-4s, then 5-6s, then 7-8s). Her insight check reveals the key: the corpse isn't answering; it's been screaming the whole time, and the spell only catches it mid-scream. The soul is in torment.
• Identify on the body: Silithane (or the party) confirms via Identify that the body genuinely belonged to Margaret Everdeen (~67, mostly human with a trace of elf; a married name — her maiden name went unrecorded), no attunements, no active magic — ruling out a "grown husk" decoy.
• Crime scene revisit: at the dump site (a 7×7 cobble outline near the lighthouse/pier by the Clapton's Hammer), Ashlyn's vampire senses find no significant blood (confirming the victim was bled dry elsewhere), and her investigation reveals the body was dropped unceremoniously, rolled off something like a cart, on a busy foot-trafficked street — requiring high-powered stealth to approach and escape unseen. Silithane's Thieves' Cant spots a wall-marking ~400 ft away pointing toward a black-market location.
• Boat to the Mage's Society: rather than a 3-hour walk, the party ferries from Westport to Eastport (40 min) using Draak's "born on a boat" birth certificate as a free pass.
• Louis the soul-scholar: the Mage's Society teacher Louis lectures the party on souls using two bottles of brown liquid — death is the bottle uncorking, the soul exits ideally to an afterlife, and Speak with Dead animates only the residue clinging to the empty bottle. When a soul can only scream, the "bottle is shattered" — nothing cogent is left to converse with. Crucially, the successful resurrections prove the souls are free: you can pour a drink (resurrect); the victim simply refuses it. He also debunks the demon theory — he's personally visited the hells, and demons trade in coin and favors, not souls.
• Wind Douglas the liquid-wizard: Draak insists on seeing the "liquid wizard," and the party finds Wind Douglas in an office with a private indoor rainstorm. He confirms blood is removed trivially — a cantrip (undetectable residue, ~1-minute half-life) or a non-magical suction device — so the missing blood needs no exotic explanation. He conjures substitute blood that sates Ashlyn's bloodlust for a full day (bland but effective; vampire fangs are for stabbing, not sucking), and wants more dhampir test subjects.
• The blood mage revealed: Wind Douglas reluctantly scries his despised office-nemesis (he'd planted a scrying enchantment suspecting lunch theft) — the city's premier blood mage, Rhys Wengler the sangomancer, who left Gwyndinas days ago and is now camped a day or two outside the city with reluctant allies (a goth blood mage, a blue-haired youth, and an older salt-and-pepper tanned man). The party notes killings continued after he left, but the bodies could be pre-killed and stored.
• Dinner in the Rainbow Bazaar: Thalia leads the exhausted, mage-sick party to a sad little Asian-grandmother hole-in-the-wall; the food is excellent and cheap, and Thalia persuades the lonely cook to raise her prices tenfold to attract the snobbish rich clientele.
• Westport Black Market: Silithane knocks the party into a gated, dead-end black-market street (stolen goods, mercenaries-for-hire, a poison-brewer, a human-leather tanner, firebomb-maker). Lash buys a vial of Ironrot Bile poison; the party investigates the Tannery butcher (a tattooed bigot selling beastfolk blood) and, when he won't name his competition, Silithane casts Suggestion (nat-2 save) to extract it: a rival butcher/blood-seller at the South Wall Black Market outside the Ceased Gate.

Combat & Encounters

• None. A pure investigation/downtime session — no rolled combat. The "encounters" were a string of NPC interviews (the cathedral, the ziggurat, two morgue apprentices, three Mage's Society scholars, two black-market vendors) and skill checks (autopsy Medicine/Investigation, Lash's Speak with Dead and insight, Ashlyn's blood-sense and Nature read on vampires, Silithane's Thieves' Cant and Suggestion).

NPCs & Factions

• Deacon of the Ziggurat — new note: the scarred, branded, robe-tripled high priest of the All-Flame Queen at the Flamespeaker Ziggurat, the city's resurrection authority. Performed 5 of the Smiling Sam resurrections; all were instantly, absolutely rejected. Stopped working the case when detectives grew suspicious of him.
• Belinda Amar — the bald, branded teenage morgue assistant who tends the Smiling Sam bodies; lists her own cause-of-death verdict as "fright." One of the Deacon's apprentice line ("one day I will be the deacon"). Likely a recurring resource; left in this note for now.
• Louis — new note: the Mage's Society's soul-and-anima teacher, a dapper non-practicing scholar who explains death and Speak with Dead with bottles of liquid; established the souls are free, not captured.
• Professor Wind Douglas — new note: the Mage's Society liquid-specialist ("Mr. Window Glass"), works in a perpetually rain-flooded office; confirmed the trivial methods of exsanguination, conjured Ashlyn substitute blood, and scried the blood mage's location.
• Rhys Wengler — new note: "the sangomancer," Gwyndinas's premier blood mage and Wind Douglas's office-nemesis (and alleged lunch thief), who left the city days ago and is camped in the wilderness — a prime person-of-interest lead for the Smiling Sam case.
• Edmund the Eldest — the enormous-hatted, gold-staffed priest of dead/hoped-for gods at All Saints Cathedral; can't cast "real magic." A one-scene comic NPC.
• Jill — the lime-green kobold fundraising for the sleeping dragon Bael'Drakkor at All Saints; "G, two E's, two L's." Draak adopts him as a brother-cousin and the party intends to hire him to collect donations at their inn once it's thriving. Possibly recurring.
• Margaret Everdeen — the most recent Smiling Sam victim, an elderly grandmother whose soul is trapped screaming; subject of the autopsy and Lash's Speak with Dead. A victim, not a recurring NPC.
• The Tannery butcher — a tattooed, biomechanical-fisted human bigot at the Westport Black Market who sells beastfolk blood and skins; Suggestion-tricked into naming his rival. The session's last lead.
• The Mage's Society — confirmed to have been open only ~8 months; staffs soul-researchers (Louis, Ella Stray), a liquid-specialist (Wind Douglas), and the absent blood mage Wengler. Members carry photo ID cards; Fenric's card reads "Mage Hunter / Spellbreaker."

Locations

• All Saints Cathedral — the Gwyndinas megachurch of dead and hypothetical gods: rainbow-striped walls, alcoves to half-remembered deities and abstract concepts (a "god of farming" shrine piled with the season's largest vegetables), graveyard tombs around the grounds, bell-tower lookouts over the walls. No living god, so no real magic — most worshippers go to the Ziggurat instead.
• The Flamespeaker Ziggurat — the All-Flame Queen's church, a "giant cigarette" with legions of Firebrands training and wrestling outside, 15-desk reception queues, and a catacomb undercroft housing the morgue/autopsy rooms where the Smiling Sam bodies are kept. The one church in the city that can do real (resurrection) magic, because its god still lives.
• The Mage's Society tower — across the bay on the fancy (Eastport) side of Gwyndinas; walled grounds with militia + battle-mage gatekeepers, a vast hall with an illusory star-ceiling (hundreds of invented constellations; canonically only ~8 real stars), floating blue helper-orbs, 17+ floors. Open only ~8 months.
• The Rainbow Bazaar — a Gwyndinas market/dinner district with a night street-food scene; the party ate at a struggling hole-in-the-wall grandmother's stall.
• The Westport Black Market — a gated, walled-off dead-end street accessed by password/Thieves'-Cant knock; stolen goods, mercenaries-for-hire, a poison-brewer ("The Toxic Brew"), a human/beastfolk-leather "Tannery," a firebomb-maker. Governed by the rules of the underworld ("leave and let leave"); enforcers punish those who break them. A rival South Wall Black Market outside the Ceased Gate is named here.

Loot, Items & Rewards

• One vial of Ironrot Bile — a black-market beast-killing poison (3 platinum / 30 gp; carrion-crawler bile + iron rust; rots a creature's bloodstream from a weapon), bought by Lash.
• A jar of embalming fluid — claimed by Draak from the morgue apprentice in lieu of "confiscated cupcakes" (he intends to carry, not drink, it).
• Two tins of "Old Orc" blood (6 gp) — bought from the Tannery butcher by the party (for Ashlyn / blood-trail testing).
• Conjured substitute blood — Wind Douglas's recipe (a scroll he keeps); one jar sated Ashlyn for a full day. A potential sustainable, ethical food source if reproduced.
• A new familiar (eagle) — Silithane replaced his dead spider familiar at half price (because his prior familiar died), sending it to scout the low-kill-density area near the west gate for the blood mage's caravan.
• A Flame Queen goodie bag — handed out at the Ziggurat exit (taken by Thalia, Lash, possibly Silithane): a Flame Queen "fan-art" poster, a book of fire prayers, a book of fire hymns, a candle, matches, ~10 gumdrop balls, and a sparkler.
• ~16 gp collectively donated to Jill the kobold's dragon fund.
• No pips/milestone awarded this session (a roleplay/investigation day).

Decisions & Open Threads

• Top suspect: the blood mage. Rhys Wengler the sangomancer left Gwyndinas days ago and is camped a day or two outside the city — a person of interest the party can pursue beyond the wall (overlapping with the Ponterford job and the Investigatorium's "gather records beyond the Palisade" task). The party also wants the other two Mage's Society mages who looked at the crime scenes, and to read the Hall of Records.
• Souls are free, not captured. Louis's verdict (corroborated by the successful-but-rejected resurrections) reorients the case away from soul-stealing toward what so thoroughly broke these victims, and toward the missing blood — likely a blood-mage or blood-cult purpose, possibly stored/pre-killed bodies.
• The South Wall Black Market (outside the Ceased Gate) — a rival blood-seller named under Suggestion; an unvisited lead.
• The party is wavering on the whole investigation — Thalia, Ashlyn, and Draak openly want to drop the detective work and return to arena fights / bounties ("we're not smart enough"), keeping the case as a part-time / sneak-out-at-night effort unless they stumble onto someone shifty taking blood. Draak hopes for arena tomorrow; the GM wants the arena money too.
• Unfinished basement: the party still hasn't fully sealed the grief-demon burial chamber (they left a Lash-sized hole; Fenric believes he sealed it with "cemento"). Flagged to finish.
• Silithane's leaving-paperwork: his forged Varian papers carry three fake signatures (a guard captain from Ankley, and farm owners from Callahan and Gristgrinder); he must be outside the wall handling Ponterford by the end of the month (currently the 9th).
• Carryover threads: the auricalcum Prehistoric Longsword and the Blue Top Docks smith; Magra's mother bound somewhere snowy; the Prince Lon letter; Scary Joe; Garruk the Red; ~165 gp of pirate goods to pawn; Ankley Island the sealed prison; Wind Douglas's standing request for more dhampir test subjects; Fenric's plan to find an information-seller in the black market next session.

Memorable Moments

• Draak befriending Jill the kobold: "Were you also born on a boat?" / "No, I was born in a hatchery." / "We are cousins." — then standing guard so no one spits on him, and tearing up when the kobold's little tub fills: "You're stronger than all of us."
• The entire Speak with Dead sequence resolving into the grim realization that the corpse is simply screaming the whole time — "It just sounded like whenever you pointed the microphone at her, she was already screaming, and that's just when the microphone happened to be put in."
• Louis's two bottles: uncorking one for the moment of death, smashing it on the desk for a soul with nothing cogent left — "It simply screams, as that is all it has left" — and pouring a drink no one will drink for the rejected resurrections.
• Draak's relentless campaign for the "liquid wizard": closing his eyes to teleport ("You need your eyes or you bump into a table"), face-bonking the scrying illusion, and "Mr. Window Glass" / "Wind Douglas" / "Window Glass?" on loop.
• The "land of boat" birthright: Draak producing a birth certificate that literally says "boat" to get free ferry passage — "I'm a sovereign citizen of the land of boat" — and later befriending the minotaur boatman Salvador (born on a boat, formerly a gondolier).
• Wind Douglas conjuring fake blood for "science," then the table genuinely debating whether vampires drink through their fangs (verdict: fangs are for stabbing, not straws).
• The Mage's Society gate guards deciding the party are "this week's Make-A-Wish kids" granted a pretend-detective wish before they die — and waving them in.
• Silithane's aborted plan to disguise himself as the carved-up Margaret to lure the killer out: "It's a little bit disrespectful to her family." / "Yes, it is. But it would coax them out."
• Draak's philosophy of a wasted day: "Today reminds me of the time I tried to cook. I put the meat on the fire and I left it, and it got longer and longer, and then it went into charcoal... Drak thinks we are making charcoal."
• The blue/red group's escalating map-graffiti war (a doodled penis, "Hey Leo," and a fake "cult entrance" Silithane wants to plant in the sewage plant) — each group convinced the other started it.
• "You murder one guy who's killing crabs and suddenly you're the group's murder hobo." — Lash.