Session 19 — The Collector, the Shard, and the Changeling's Lair

Session Recap

Picking up mid-errand in the Gwyndinas Sewers (14th of Spring's End, ~8 PM), the party finally pushes past the mushroom-infested entry halls toward Eldrich the Elder's mad scientist — carrying the old man's checkbook to buy whatever he's selling. The way there is a long, comic bestiary crawl: Draak, Fenric and the squire Jallek get scooped up by a Thorn Giant that "collects" living creatures on a little stone shelf; Thalia talks her way free with Speak with Plant, wiggle-dances with a dying sentient tree named Wiggleus (who gifts her a magic dagger and the quest of a vanished Spirit of Nature), and the group threads past goblin-stick "tree puppies," shy bird-headed creatures, oozes, and a huge friendly-looking hairy sewer monster that only attacks if you wave it over. Draak falls in the glowing green water and starts shining; Silithane fiddles open the first of several pig-headed sewer mechanisms.

At the heart of the sewers, behind a child's color-matching puzzle and a wall of lethal green laser-beams, they meet Dr. Provostinalkov — a lonely ~17-year-old prodigy who, it turns out, is artificially manufacturing a Shard of the Autark: the god-slaying material that an elven woman once used to kill the human God-Emperor and end his empire. He sells Eldrich his entire first sample (for everything Eldrich owns), hands Thalia a receipt and a failed shard-flake, and points them toward a sewer "circus" healer who may be the missing Spirit of Nature. On the way out, the party picks a heavily trapped metal door and stumbles into the session's real bombshell: a hidden lair belonging to a changeling — pages of forged Reclamation-government signatures and stamps, a thumbed-through screed against the Veilwood Voivode, caches of disguise-clothes, and bound, still-living "failed changelings" being fed to rats. Realizing the shapeshifter means to replace members of the Reclamation leadership (possibly for Laewendas), the party resolves to catch it before it flees — and the session ends as they climb the lair's ladder up into the unknown basement of its surface home.

Key Events

• Recap chaos: Magra mangles the "what are we doing" recap (insisting Eldrich wants an anti-aging "Fountain of Youth" cream — wrong), before the table settles it: the job is to find a man in the sewers and buy his product / get Eldrich on the waiting list. Last session's ~100 mushroom men are dead; the party stands at the collapsed-cave junction with a map and clear directions (straight on, second right).
• The Thorn Giant: Draak smashes a couple of light-mushrooms, then he, Fenric and the squire Jallek are silently grabbed by a huge creature of thorns, vines and tendrils that blends into the cave wall. It isn't hostile — it just "collects" them on a little stone shelf like action figures, gently re-placing anyone who tries to leave. Thalia uses Speak with Plant (the giant is "part plant, part fungi"), persuades it to let them off the shelf on the promise they'll return, and Draak gets a full "100% complete hug," sinking clean through the creature and popping out the other side.
• Roto and Tolo: two tiny hollow-wood stick-men ambush Draak with sticks (1 damage a swing). He refuses to let them be killed ("little puppies"), scoops both up when they pole-vault at him, and carries them around until Magra's threat of burning Veilwood firewood scares them off; eventually the "tree puppies" are put down.
• Wiggleus and the Spirit of Nature: the party finds a large, bendy wiggling tree that Thalia (part-plant herself) dances with. Wigglus reveals that the sewers' plant-and-fungus life is sustained by a "Spirit of Nature" — a tree-with-arms entity — who went missing recently, leaving everything down here slowly dying. He gifts Thalia a magical "wiggly dagger" (imbued with his own magic, per Fenric's sight), and she casts Druidcraft to reblossom him; he begs her to stay and replace the Spirit, but she declines (her job is "transient in nature").
• The false wall: Lash confirms the draft-marked false wall (flagged last session) is a secret exit, not entrance, with a push-lever. Draak punches a head-sized hole through it; inside are blue spore-breathing plants exhaling glittery gas and a corridor running deeper. Silithane sends his new bat familiar "Man" (Manbat) in to scout — it senses something Drak-sized and big further in, and the party chooses not to pursue.
• Drak goes green: botching a backflip "push-up" off the floor, Draak tumbles into the glowing green sewer water and comes out coated in bioluminescent film, glowing. Jallek (a "healer") can't help — he's "too healthy to heal" at 78/88 — and a running chiropractic bit ensues (Lash bops his back with her hammer; Jallek kicks him in the groin).
• The pig-head mechanisms: the party finds stone "pig head" gargoyle devices — Bop-It-like contraptions Silithane suspects are Varian dead-drops. After ~20 minutes of random fiddling he activates one (it triggers "something elsewhere in the sewers"); the doctor later confirms there are at least three, predating him, mechanical (two light-gems, no magic), and some already switched on.
• The hairy sewer monster: Fenric senses an invisible creature in an abandoned subterranean tavern; Thalia finds four bound, sheet-wrapped "dead bodies" dumped nearby that turn out to be living botched-human monsters (two left eyes, no proper nose). A huge, gangly, anglerfish-toothed, friendly-looking creature with three-foot-thick wrists snaps one of these monsters in half and eats it. The party learns its rule: it only attacks if you beckon/wave it over (it can only mimic gestures it's seen). They sneak past — Drak intimidating it, Fenric pretending to share its meal while hiding Lash — and it gives Fenric a child's stuffed doll as a parting gift.
• The doctor's lab: Thalia solves a chest's child's color-and-shape matching puzzle (instructions written in dozens of languages) to slide open a wall, revealing a corridor of deadly green laser-beams (people who charged in were vaporized to dust and empty armor) and a bell marked "Ring for assistance." She rings it.
• Meeting Dr. Provostinalkov: the scientist — a noodle-armed teenager in goggles and lab coat — explains his product makes people superhumanly good at things. History/lore checks reveal it's an attempt to artificially create a Shard of the Autark, the god-slaying material. He closes the sale to Eldrich (taking everything Eldrich owns), hands Thalia a receipt and a failed sample shard, and proves wholly harmless and friendless — he just likes to make things, and Eldrich found him.
• The circus lead: the doctor mentions a sewer "circus" healer with a weird name (Krunka? Crinkly? "stupid Pitney?") who has a disease-curing natural-remedy pet — possibly the missing Spirit of Nature. His poster hangs near "the bird guy's house" (left, then left again). He also dispenses pills for Drak's green glow and perfume to fix his sewer stink.
• The trapped door: on the way out, Silithane and Fenric tackle a reinforced metal door (key + secondary tool lock, plus a trap). After many Guidance attempts and Lash's last inspiration die, a 34 opens it without setting off the trap.
• The changeling's lair: inside are rats feeding on five more bound, living mutant creatures, and a loose tile hiding a cache (20+ platinum, pre-signed Palisade leaving-papers, rations, and five different sets of disguise-clothes — girl, man, gnome). Draak smashes through a wall into a second hidden room: a full safehouse with supplies, a study of Orathi cultures/languages, and a desk of practiced forged signatures and government stamps of multiple Reclamation parties — plus a much-thumbed screed distrusting Vesper Vermillion, the Veilwood Voivode, and a Varian-only wine. A ladder leads up to a house basement.
• The reveal and the cliffhanger: Lash walks the table through the three changeling grades — harmless shifters (become a type, not a person), memory-blind doppelgangers (mimic a specific person but can't truly know them), and the dreaded "Twin Stranger" that consumes a target and inherits all its memories, becoming truly indistinguishable. The party concludes the occupant is a changeling aiming to replace Reclamation leadership (maybe working for Laewendas) and that they must catch it now or it'll flee and become someone new. The session ends as they climb the ladder toward the changeling's surface home — the GM teasing a "wife" who turns, hisses, and drops to all fours.

Combat & Encounters

This was a near-combatless exploration session — most "encounters" were defused socially or by sneaking:

• The Thorn Giant — a huge vine/tendril creature that collects living things on a shelf; non-hostile, resolved by Speak with Plant and persuasion. Drak befriended it.
• Roto and Tolo — two tiny hollow-wood stick-men dealing 1 damage a hit; carried off and abandoned, never killed.
• The hairy sewer monster — a powerful, semi-intelligent bottom-feeder that kills only what it beckons close (it snapped a smaller monster in half barehanded). The party slipped past it entirely.
• Failed-changeling "monsters" — bound, gagged, still-living botched shapeshifters dumped in the sewers; rats were eating several. Not fought; examined.
• The laser corridor — a passive death-trap of green energy beams guarding the lab; bypassed by ringing the bell.
• The trapped door — a metal door rigged with a Hallucinatory Terrain spell scroll and a sticky incendiary firebomb, both triggerable on a botched pick. Disarmed/opened on a 34.
• No party casualties. No initiative was rolled all session.

NPCs & Factions

• Dr. Provostinalkov — new note: the sewer "mad scientist," a lonely teenage prodigy secretly fabricating a Shard of the Autark. Sold his first sample to Eldrich the Elder for everything Eldrich owns; harmless, friendless, and now (per Drak) the party's "friend." Will post-notify when the real product is ready in ~1–2 months.
• Eldrich the Elder — not seen on-screen this session, but his checkbook closed the deal; what he's buying is now known to be a god-slaying Shard, not a "blood experiment" or anti-aging cure. The errand is essentially complete (a 1-pip "¾ of a quest," to be handed in at the milkshake shop).
• Wiggleus — new note: a sentient, wiggling, fey-touched tree in the sewers, slowly dying without the Spirit of Nature. Gifted Thalia a magic dagger; offered her his role.
• The sewer changeling — new note: the unseen owner of the trapped lair — a shapeshifter forging Reclamation-government signatures/stamps to infiltrate or replace the leadership, possibly for Laewendas; keeps bound "failed changelings" in the sewers and distrusts the Veilwood Voivode. The session's central reveal and cliffhanger; Lash floats it could even be Smiling Sam.
• Braille and Jallek — the two allied Rivalonian squires from Session 17 are still with the party; Jallek got collected by the Thorn Giant and fumbled "equalize"-healing Drak, and both helped pick over the lair as evidence ("Is this legal?"). (Names still garbled.)
• The Thorn Giant / the hairy sewer monster / Roto & Tolo / the bird-headed creature — sewer denizens, kept to this note (one-scene, though Drak "friended" several).
• Jugs — callback only: Dr. Provostinalkov recognizes Draak's nutrient gelatin cube as his own invention and resolves to make his "nutri-spheres" instead — apparently a case of simultaneous invention.

Locations

• Gwyndinas Sewers — much of the system mapped this session: the plant/fungus quarter (Thorn Giant, Wigglus, tree-puppies, the dying ecosystem of the Spirit of Nature), an abandoned subterranean tavern, the pig-head dead-drop mechanisms, Dr. Provostinalkov's laser-guarded laboratory, and the changeling's two-room lair (cache room + safehouse with a ladder to the surface). The glowing-green water is confirmed to be the doctor's experimental runoff.
• The doctor's laboratory — a hidden lab behind a children's puzzle-door and a lethal laser grid, full of machines harnessing green energy onto a central platform; powered (the party realizes) by electricity humming through the sewer walls.
• The changeling's lair — twin hidden rooms with disguise-caches, a forgery study, a hallucinatory-terrain trap, and a hatch up into a house basement somewhere in Gwyndinas (the next session's destination).

Loot, Items & Rewards

• Shard of the Autark (failed sample) — a ~1 cm green glass flake in a box, given to Thalia along with a signed purchase receipt for the real product when ready. A botched sample, yet its magical aura (per Fenric's sight) is too vast to perceive its edges.
• Wiggly Dagger — new note: an oddly-shaped magical dagger Wiggleus gifted Thalia; effect unidentified, magic matching its maker's own aura.
• ~20–25 platinum — looted from the changeling's emergency cache (the party debated leaving a coin "to be insulting").
• The firebomb + Hallucinatory Terrain spell scroll — the door's twin traps; Fenric flagged both as takeable (the firebomb is volatile — a single spark sets it off; the scroll disguises the room as something innocent, components: mushrooms).
• A child's stuffed doll (blue dress) — gifted to Fenric by the hairy sewer monster.
• Glow-cure pills and perfume — Dr. Provostinalkov's remedies for Draak's green glow and stink ("I smell like cake now").
• Dead-guy dust — Silithane pocketed ashes of a vaporized lab intruder.
• A 1 pip / milestone — for handling ~¾ of Eldrich's quest (hand-in pending at the milkshake shop). The party is a session ahead of the parallel "Red" group (who are 6 days behind, on the 6th of Spring's End).

Decisions & Open Threads

• Catch the changeling now: the party agrees they must ambush the shapeshifter immediately — up the ladder into its home — before it learns its lair is breached and flees as someone new. Silver is the agreed weapon (Fenric still has the Silvered Short Sword). The cliffhanger: a hissing creature on all fours waits above.
• Who is the changeling — and for whom? It's forging the signatures/stamps of multiple Reclamation leaders. Theories on the table: a freelance infiltrator, an agent of Laewendas seeding loyalists into the Reclamation, or even Smiling Sam himself. Unconfirmed.
• The Shard of the Autarch: Eldrich now (in ~1–2 months) owns a god-slaying weapon-to-be in a world with one surviving god (the All-Flame Queen). What he intends, and the danger of someone manufacturing shards meant only to fall from the sky, is wide open.
• The missing Spirit of Nature: the party means to detour to the sewer "circus" healer (left, then left) to find the tree-with-arms entity whose loss is killing Wiggleus and the sewer's plant life — possibly the circus showman's "disease-curing pet."
• The "failed changelings": two separate stashes of bound, living botched shapeshifters (one dumped like garbage, one hoarded and rat-eaten) — why two piles, and who's collecting them, is unexplained.
• Carryover threads: the Smiling Sam case and blood-mage Rhys Wengler beyond the wall; the three leaving-signatures still being assembled; Lash's in-progress auricalcum crafting hammer (and possible curse); Magra's mother bound somewhere snowy; the Prince Lon letter; Ankley Island the sealed prison; Professor Wind Douglas's standing dhampir-subject request.

Memorable Moments

• Magra's catastrophic recap — "our job is to get the old man aging cream" — and the GM's deadpan callback: "She, she was looking for the Fountain of Youth and you guys were like, no, and then she died of old age." / "I am not doing any more recaps."
• The shoe debate: a five-minute table argument over whether a sock with grippy bottoms is a shoe (verdict: "At best, it's a slipper").
• Draak and the Thorn Giant trading a bell back and forth like jealous toddlers, then Drak demanding a 100% hug and Homer-Simpson-ing fully through the creature's body.
• Thalia greeting a cavern of plants with "Hello!" and getting a chorus of ~600 voices answer back.
• The whole table's slow horror as the "dead bodies" in the sheets open their eyes — botched humans with two left eyes and teeth in the wrong places.
• The hairy monster's one rule — it kills only what it beckons — and Fenric crouching to fake-eat organs with it while waving the others past behind his back.
• The God-tier lore drop over a "1 by 2 centimeter shard of glass in a box": the Autarch (the human emperor-god who founded a ~300,000-year empire and slew every other god to reign as the one true god), the elven woman who stabbed him with a shard and made him explode — toppling the empire — and the Varian group that killed a god 40–70 years ago. Only the All-Flame Queen survived, by hiding.
• Dr. Provostinalkov, asked if his world-ending product has an intended market, registering the question "for the first time" — and confessing he just likes to make things, friendless in a sewer.
• The real-world village power outage mid-session — the GM's whole town runs on "a single Wi-Fi receiver on the water tower," and someone "hit the antenna link with their car," prompting ten minutes of Draak's player refusing to believe rural Scotland exists.
• Lash's lockpicking pep-talk to two proficient thieves — "Third time's the charm. Either we blow up or we walk away." — landing the 34 that opens the trapped door.
• Lash's chilling tutorial on the Twin Stranger changeling, ending on what it would mean if one ate Queen Ysolde and became her, "indistinguishable even by the most advanced magical means."