Session 1
Session Summary
The party crossed the barrier and landed at Desvel, picking up a carriage and a lead before riding hard to Isvyn — where an attack by creatures was already underway. They fought their way through monsters, freed trapped townsfolk, and found the Vaelorin estate in ruins. Lilith's parents were dead. Her father left behind a journal — and more questions than answers.
Recap
Session Summary
The party made landfall at Desvel on a stolen pinnace with forged orders and borrowed credentials. The port was quiet and strange — an early sign that things on Hyros had shifted in the six months since the barrier went up.
In town they stopped at the Hook & Sinker, where Alora Smith ran the bar with a phantom hand helping behind the counter. Marwen sat with Old Man Jeeter, a longtime fixture in the corner booth, and they carved wooden seahorses together and exchanged them. Outside, they passed Desvel Hall, where two cheerful twins in matching pastel dresses were handing out pamphlets for a new parish in Babeth.
Further down the road, a farmer was getting bucked off a horse in the yard of a struggling farm. The party helped break the animal. While Marwen and Dijkstra worked with the horse, Lilith and Pibble tracked the trail of a small lamb into the surrounding fields — and found it dead, insides spread across the grass. Wolves circled in the distance. The party drove them off. The farmer, shaken, introduced himself and asked them if they might look for his wife, who had gone to Isvyn to find work months ago and hadn't come home.
Back at Desvel Hall, the party dealt with the twins — Penny and Patty Perriwinkle — by collecting all their pamphlets and appearing to read them with interest. The twins, delighted, left on their own. Father Yorik, the hall's presiding priest, offered the party the use of a carriage in exchange. They took it and set out before dawn.
They arrived at Isvyn in chaos. Walkers and crawlers — things that had once been people — were moving through the city. Valoran and Tristram guards were fighting on the outskirts. The party drove through and went immediately to the mines, where townspeople were trapped behind barricaded doors. They fought their way through several creatures and freed the trapped miners. The farmer's wife, Cecil Dusk, was among them. An explosion destroyed the third mine during the fighting — the one that produced Byzantine mineral.
At the Rock and Stone Café they met Lady Ambergale — a composed, richly ornamented elf representing House Valora. She questioned them with measured care and mentioned that House Valora could use assistance in Dulmak, before excusing herself.
Then they went to the Vaelorin Estate. Thornelis and Camellith Vaelorin were dead. Lilith dismissed the staff and looted her parents. Her father's journal explained the deal he had made with Lord Fisker of Hynsford — Fisker would help strip Lilith of her magic before she came into her full power, and in exchange Thornelis would cut the Byzantine mineral supply to House Valora. After Lilith left Isvyn, Fisker continued pressuring Thornelis to follow through. Thornelis refused. The journal ends there.
Pibble found a locked box of red aetherite in the estate study.
Lilith gathered the estate's workers and promised them housing, fair wages, and a reason to stay. They stayed. The session ended as the farmer, grateful his wife had been found, rode up on a pony, hurled a bag of beans at the party, and left without another word.