That's So Raven

You did not all stay at the tower.

Lessie and Moist carried Sir Titus to the Tyr Shrine — which none of you had known was here — and the shrine sat near a Lathander Shrine that you also hadn't known about. Leilon is older inside than it looks from the gate.

KeYs joined a humanitarian tour through the streets. The town was awake again. The bakers and the dock-workers and the watch were all where they were supposed to be. The four-in-the-morning emptiness had lifted with the sun.

Moist went back to keep watch on the devil.

Mazros the Cursed Baron drifted in and out of sleep on the steps. Waking only to swear and curse. You learned what maddening meant.

Ubys took the scribe's book and went to the Dusty Gnome.

He ordered lunch. He listened to the gossip. (Nobody was talking about the Toke Inn.)

He went up to his room and read.

AC climbed the tower.

The second floor was where the Knights of Vindictus lived. Their chambers. Their books. The order makes its members keep journals — field journals, daily logs. AC pulled them down off shelves and started to skim.

He found infernal words in the margins.

He found her name. Mizora.

He found the earliest trouble in Squire Eltiel's journal.

Eltiel had recorded an altercation between Nathaniel and Capt. Tisdale — Nathaniel had been questioning the Captain about a conversation Tisdale had had with the demon lady.

And then the Captain had talked with someone called Hector the Fang.

In secret.

You learned, reading further, what Nathaniel actually was.

He had been sent in from Yartar. From a different chapter of the Knights of Vindictus. The chapter that captured Sir Titus on the cliff. They had suspected the Leilon chapter of looking for the Tomb of Orcus.

Nathaniel had confirmed it.

He had been discovered.

He had fled.

You were paid 1,000 GP to bring him back.

You brought him back dead.

He died with his secrets.

The Leilon chapter, reading through the journals now in AC's hands, was happy you brought him back too late.

You learned — with Mizora's name running through every page — that Mizora has dealings with the Leilon KoV.

You learned the scribe (Ralph. Scooter.) had fallen first. Then he polluted the order.

You learned the Leilon chapter believes the Angel Vindictus is held in the Tomb of Orcus.

The bard at the Mephistos' coast house had been singing about an angel of Tyr descending into the Heiress's temple. That song was their doctrine.

You learned two more names from the margins.

"Rowan, disciplined, pious."

"Tinrick, especially tempted."

Tinrick — the man who became the minotaur and tore the wall off Talon's room — had been flagged in his own order's journals as a man who would fall. They'd seen it coming. They had not moved fast enough.

AC read the building with all of this in his head.

The tower has a dark conduit running through it. Something passes in. Or out. Something the order's compromise is anchored to.

He stepped back and let the thought settle.

He doesn't have to protect his brethren.

The order is fallen. Mizora is in the cracks. The angel they're hunting is in a temple they don't own. Whatever AC owes anyone, he doesn't owe these knights.

Across the day, in his little room above the Dusty Gnome, Ubys kept reading.

The scribe's marginalia got darker the further it went.

Outside, on the steps of the tower, Moist listened to a devil curse the dawn.

Next session: smoke from the Toke Inn chimney that should not be there, and what's wearing Viggo Ironheart's face.