Session 11: The Archivist's Retreat

General Summary

I. The Last Stand in the Stack of 12

The fight ends in the circular archive with fire, fists, and a moment of genuine indignity for the Archivist. Nyxek drops a Flame Strike close enough to a bookshelf to make everyone nervous. Kal dismantles the Nightveil Specter with elemental fisticuffs. Vutha gets his claws on the Archivist directly, specifically, on a part of the Archivist's anatomy that no one expected to become a plot point.

The Archivist calls out for retrieval. A portal tears open, darkness, stars, and open sea pouring through its edges. The smell hits Kal immediately: Gammoranth's kelp. The Dauphin's signature, unmistakable. Vutha holds on, fighting the pull, but the portal is stronger. Rather than get dragged through, he shifts his grip at the last moment and snaps the skeletal dragonborn's baculum clean off. The Archivist disappears. Vutha eyes the bone for a moment and offers it to Tad for the Trophy Room. Tad accepts.

II. What the Stacks Remember

With the fight done and the archive theirs, the Claw takes time to go through the stacks properly. These are unredacted originals, the versions that were never meant to survive. Someone offers Nyxek the title of Archivist of the Stack of 12. In a rare moment of genuine self-reflection, he declines. It would absorb too much of his time. He has already found something far more valuable than a title.

The records of the dula-dula clans are here. The extinction wasn't natural and wasn't war. Their tadpoles were harvested for healing and regeneration poultices. Tad reads the files flagged with red ribbon. The dula-dulas were used up as a resource, like animals..

And deeper in the stacks, in sources old enough to predate the current Imperial doctrine entirely, Nyxek finds the real meaning of the Truth and the Fallacy.

The Truth is the First World. The original Prime Material plane of the dragons, created by Bahamut and single-headed Tiamat together, where they made Sardior, the first-born, ruby-red, who helped his parents shape the metallic and chromatic dragons. A world whole and singular. The Fallacy is everything that came after its shattering: the many seedling realities of the multiverse, the fracturing of Sardior into fragments that each became a new world, and Tiamat's transformation into five heads reaching for vengeance. Every world that exists now is a piece of what was broken. The Emperor denies the new reality. He wants to go home.

III. Seijuro's Memories

Among the treasures in the stacks is something small and strange, a tiny edible scroll, barely larger than a fortune cookie fortune. It contains Seijuro's stolen memories, preserved and compressed into something that can be consumed.

Nyxek holds it. He considers the thousands of gold he was promised for its return. He weighs it against his duty to the Emperor and his need to know what is actually inside it. The veracious inquisitor makes his choice and swallows it whole.

Seijuro's memories wash in all at once.

A secret meeting in the Hidden Archives. Seijuro, composed and careful, handing a list of names to the Vox of Gammoranth, the names of Nyxek and Vutha's children. The Vox offers assurances: the Pale Emissary will receive the names, the families will be protected, and Seijuro will not remember this meeting.

The Pale Emissary. Cleric of Tiamat. Bearer of the White Dragon Mask. Inhabitant of the Fallacy.

Diirhaas Nyxekspawn.

Nyxek comes back to himself. The library no longer feels safe. He orders the Claw back to the Wyrm's Oven without explanation.

IV. What Was Found in the Stacks

Before leaving, the Claw collects what the Archive had been sitting on. A Dragon Wing Bow. Magic handwraps. A powerful Amulet of Bahamut, not the Empire's Bahamut, depicting him with a golden fox at his feet. An Ioun Stone. A Bag of Holding with foreign coin and gemstones. A fragment of a Green Dragon Mask, carefully wrapped and annotated in the Archivist's hand, he had been studying it, and a second fragment was exchanged in the memory, handed to the Vox of Gammoranth along with the list of names.

The cracked Dragon Orb the party found reference to was not in the Archive. It was in Seijuro's memory, exchanged to Gammoranth's Vox at that same meeting. Gammoranth has it.

V. The Wyrm's Oven, Bastion Week

Back at the Wyrm's Oven, the Claw disperses into their own spaces to work.

Vutha's Gaming Hall runs its first real gambling night. Ten gold invested turns a profit through the Storehouse operation. Four new Bastion Defenders join the barracks. The Stables acquire a llama, a Giant Ground Sloth, and an Axebeak. Usk manages all of it without being asked.

Kal's Workshop is building a Broom of Flying, ready next session. The Greenhouse produces a Potion of Greater Healing. The Training Dojo's regimen pays off with an extra d4 of bludgeoning damage. The Storehouse turns a profit.

Tad's Shadow Archive Library produces research on Gammoranth: he has not spoken directly to anyone in decades. All communication passes through his Vox. His annual circuit of the Empire's oceans currently places him to the north, near the Claw's old Desolation Station. He commands a sizable fleet of Imperial ships beyond his own military presence. He is in charge of the Boundary Monoliths.

Nyxek converts his Scriptorium to a Storage Room. His Sacristy produces a pair of Sending Stones. He gives one to Paragon Prophet. He tells her he has had visions of traitors and will reach out when he has confirmation, carefully vague, no names, no accusations that could move faster than his investigation. His Workshop provides a Source of Inspiration. His Library turns to the question of how outside forces have breached the Boundary Monoliths before.

VI. The Shape of the Threat

The Library research surfaces three possible vectors. Skyships capable of traveling via the moons can descend behind the Boundary, but Horizon's Aerie maintains a watchtower specifically watching for descents from above. Rumors persist of tunnels leading into the dangerous cavernous Underworld, which connects to the surface in places beyond the Empire's borders. And then there is the keystone: beyond the Red Rods of Heaven, Gammoranth possesses a personal keystone to the Boundary Monoliths that allows him to bypass them entirely should he require it.

Nyxek begins planning. The tunnels need investigation. The keystone needs to be found and if possible sabotaged. None of this happens today. All of it is now on the board.

VII. Jack Straw's Request

Jackstraw, not to be confused with Sifu Splinter who runs the training yard, approaches Kal with a problem and a pizza order. He has lost students. Many kobolds and a handful of tortles have gone missing or returned almost entirely emptied of memory. He wants to know what happened to them. He wants them found.

Kal tells him what he knows about Turtle Power, unshelled, repurposed, destroyed. Jack Straw takes it quietly. Then Kal thinks about the sewers, where the tortle disappearances have been concentrated, and wonders aloud if Turtle Power's missing shell might still be down there.

Jack Straw wants his students back. He wants answers. He wants a pizza.

Two of those three things are probably achievable.

VIII. Open Threads

• Diirhaas Nyxekspawn is the Pale Emissary, Cleric of Tiamat, bearer of the White Dragon Mask, operating from outside the Boundary. He has a list of Nyxek and Vutha's children's names. Seijuro gave it to him.
• Seijuro handed over that list to protect his own family. He doesn't remember doing it. Nyxek does.
• Gammoranth has the cracked Dragon Orb and a fragment of the Green Dragon Mask. He has a keystone that lets him bypass the Boundary Monoliths. He is currently north near the old Desolation Station.
• The dula-dula extinction was a harvesting operation. Tad has the files.
• The Truth and the Fallacy are the Emperor's genuine cosmological grief. The First World was real. It was shattered. He has been trying to restore it ever since.
• The Archivist's baculum is in Tad's Trophy Room. This will probably matter later.
• Jack Straw's missing students, kobolds and tortles, are likely in the sewers. Turtle Power's shell may be down there too.
• Three vectors into the Empire from outside: skyships via the moons, Underworld tunnels, Gammoranth's keystone. All three need investigation.