Chapter 7 - Session 1

Fourteen Sources of Power and a Melted Diad

Events and Actions

Weeks had passed since the escape from the Fortnum before the session picked back up, and Randolph opened it by reading aloud from a reconstructed account he had pieced together from his recovered three-year casebook and a fortnight of frank conversation aboard the Medallion — his older, more detailed folio having been left behind at the Academy and out of reach. His account filled in the gap in brief: as agreed, the party had made a short stop at the pirate enclave near Drowned Man's Port, collected Brother Nicolas, and got underway west again, pausing along the way to visit Mistress Clara, who tearfully declined an invitation to join the crew. Nicolas came aboard on his own terms: passage for his two most fervent converts — Sven, previously one of Mistress Clara's helpers looking after him, among them — his carved statue of Handsome Gulliver Gold, standing permission to preach daily from the forecastle, and a promise, honored once the ship was properly underway, that he would be shown the Diad.

Randolph's written account carried the bulk of what he had learned since his rescue. The war between the two nations had not ended but stalled — the Shatters had thrown up a barrier neither fleet had found a way around, and both sides had turned their spent energy toward other ends, the Kingdom pouring resources into a crossing meant to carry it around the Maelstrom entirely, toward the New World — a race he understood the southern houses to be reading the same way, as the next arena for an old rivalry now that the old one had gone quiet. On the heresy declaration, Randolph's notes recorded only unease rather than an answer: the church's public bounty had been issued with unusual speed and certainty for a group of unproven youths, and he had a name in mind for the hand behind it, though he refused to commit it to paper. Drawing on his own long-standing interest in the Advance and her captain, he confirmed that the ship had been tracked two years past to an island the islanders and elves both called Birdcrown Isle and had not been seen or heard from since, without ever being struck from a Navy list or formally reported lost — a silence he found stranger than he could yet justify with evidence, fitting a pattern he did not like: this was the second man of Barrows's fellowship to go quiet on that same stretch of water. On the Totems, he confirmed that the light said to rise from a totem's destruction was not unique to Spider Island — it matched an independently recorded account some forty years old — and that a totem's power does not vanish when it breaks but is loosed all at once, ungoverned, with the aftermath scaling to whatever the totem was worth destroying; he noted, carefully, that more such sites are known to people he trusts than the two the world has already mourned. On the Fortnum's two priests, he confirmed from her own crew that both Margot and Arnim were missing, presumed drowned, and that neither held any rank above ordinary cleric. He laid out the church's full hierarchy for the party's benefit — the Twin Eminences at its head, then Archons, High Clerics and Canons, Vicars, Clerics, Curates, Prelates, Deacons, and Acolytes — and one further office sitting entirely outside that ladder: the Censure, drawn from the ranks of Cleric or High Cleric and given special authority to hunt down and destroy whatever the church has already judged heretical. Neither Margot nor Arnim, he confirmed, had held that office, nor was either a "summoner" — a rank he assured the party does not exist anywhere in the church's structure, despite the word one of them had used in front of him.

Randolph also gave an honest accounting of his own conduct: he had gone looking for the Fortnum in person rather than by correspondence once he learned she'd been reassigned from convoy duty to hunting, and had been confined by Captain Mason once his prying became obvious — though Mason, whom Randolph judged an honorable man doing an ugly job, kept his writings safe rather than destroying them and extracted only Randolph's word not to escape while he held them, a bargain Randolph considered voided the moment the party carried the writing case off the ship. He confirmed he had likely called the sea serpent that broke the Fortnum in two using a rare Academy talent for calling birds and beasts, extended past its normal scale by the desperation of the moment, and admitted he still could not explain an earlier incident where a smaller summoning of his was answered by an unclaimed burst of mortar fire. Finally, at secondhand from crew gossip during his confinement, he related what had become of the Advance's second voyage under Captain Barrows: she sailed west under a quieter, more deliberate Barrows with the senior priest Jacque aboard, bound for the same waters where Maynard had vanished, with no port of call between the mainlands and Port Sardinia; a junior priest named Philip had not sailed with her a second time, for reasons no one aboard would discuss, and whatever split Jacque from the ship at Port Sardinia was, in Nicolas's account, as much a falling-out with the priest who ordained him as anything else.

Once the reading was done, the party pressed Randolph further over an elaborate dinner attended by Quartermaster Leopold and De Torres, the Master of Sail — Batu Batu serving fresh meat and good claret, an extravagance the ship could still afford so soon after leaving port. Randolph confirmed that a chronicler's abduction was entirely unprecedented, that the church's neutrality had been thrown into question by the act, and that the Academy possessed capabilities of its own that could seriously damage the church's standing if it chose to retaliate — though what the Academy would actually do, he could not say. Pressed on what chroniclers actually do with what they gather, he described a strict neutrality: information such as fleet movements is recorded and passed on to the Academy's own researchers, never used to hand one side an advantage over the other, though he admitted that interpreting and acting on it falls to others back at the Academy, not to him. Pressed on the Triad, he acknowledged his own membership for the first time, describing a loosely organized fellowship that communicates through dead drops and identifies itself with a private mark — three lines, drawn to see whether another party recognizes them — whose members mostly do not know each other's identities. He confirmed that Major Hubert had definitely been a member, that Maynard had joined deliberately while Barrows had been drawn in only after his court-martial and rescue — likely without fully realizing it, and, Randolph suspected, with the Triad's own unseen hand behind both his surprising promotion and his return to a ship the church had never wanted him to command — and that the society itself does not know what its own "third way" beyond the Two actually is, only that it must exist. The party laid out everything they knew or suspected of other sources of power in the world in an effort to help answer that question, and Randolph, delighted, began keeping a running list.

The party also worked through why the church had focused so intensely on them: Randolph judged it was less their youthful heresy-adjacent conversations years ago than the overt displays of power they had since shown, combined with the Medallions specifically, which he believed frightened the church for reasons even it did not fully understand. Pressed for a count, the party confirmed seven medallions known between them — six carried among the party itself, and a seventh taken years before from Stick Stab, not presently in their keeping. Asked why Knick Nab alone had been left off the wanted poster, Randolph reasoned it came down to visibility — the others carried renowned family names, noble school connections, or a public position that put them in the church's eye, while Knick Nab, arriving from nowhere and never formally recorded anywhere, simply left no name behind to write down — though the party noted one wrinkle in that theory: Knick Nab had signed a ship's registry once, marking it with an X for lack of letters, proof he wasn't entirely invisible to the written record even if it evidently hadn't been enough to put a name to his face. During the same conversation, Randolph produced a folded letter found among Captain Mason's personal effects — addressed to "my dearest Herod" from his wife, Eleanor, revealing Mason's own given name and announcing the birth of their son, whom she had named Herod after his father and taken to calling "little Herod" to keep the two straight — along with the other valuables taken off the Fortnum: a pouch of 49 silver, a large diamond and matching pearl necklace and bracelet, a matched pair of fine sabers, and a stack of charts confirming a route west but with no island marked "Birdcrown."

With dinner concluded, the party formally presented the Diad to Nicolas, who took it into his care as agreed — reduced from constant possession to daytime use once Werner raised the risk of it being tracked. Wary of what an unstable priest might do with it, the party kept someone with him at all times and had the quartermaster cut off his rum; Mani went further, making a point of befriending Nicolas in earnest rather than merely tolerating him — attending his sermons and treating him with real respect, partly from a long-held instinct to bring people together and partly so that, if Nicolas's temper ever did turn dangerous, it would not fall on a stranger first. When Nicolas asked whether he might bind Grantos to some new task rather than simply free him, he was told flatly that the deal already struck with Grantos was not his to renegotiate. The party sailed on to Grantos's wreck, becalmed within sight of it and forced to row the last distance by boat, a hardship the crew endured well enough since they knew their destination this time. Reunited with Grantos, the party brought Nicolas ashore to attempt the binding's reversal. Nicolas listened as Grantos described, in increasingly strange terms, the effort of endlessly managing the air and pressure around the wreck to keep it safe — then, apparently on inspiration, struck Grantos with the Diad itself. A sudden violent inrush of wind swept the area, briefly endangering the Medallion at anchor until her crew got a second anchor down, and when it settled Grantos declared himself free, shaking Nicolas's hand as the priest who had finally released him.

Grantos immediately demanded the Diad be destroyed, unwilling to risk anyone using it to imprison him — or anyone else — again. When Nicolas balked, protesting that he had sensed truth and even glimpsed Handsome Gulliver Gold through the Diad and could not give it up, Mani talked him down, arguing that the item was only a tool — the true culprit for Grantos's decades of imprisonment was the priest of the Two who had wielded it against him, not the Diad itself. The party debated at length whether to destroy it, cast it into the deep sea, or keep it secretly, weighing the sole known example of undoing a Diad's compulsion (this very item, on this very effect) against the risk of the church tracking it. With votes split and Nicolas pleading to keep it, the party settled on a middle path: try to destroy it, using a forge rigged from the ship's oven. Asked whether his mastery of wind could part the murky water for a dive, Grantos confirmed his power was limited to air and pressure and could not touch the water itself, so the party turned to swimming instead. Heating and hammering alone would not melt the Diad, so the party turned to the sea: Knick Nab made a first attempt alone, swimming the hundred feet down before the murk defeated him and he surfaced empty-handed, and it was Riu and Knick Nab together, working a net down on a second attempt, who recovered a strange, eternally warm lump of black material from an underwater cavern near the wreck — a lump that caused the Diad to deform and melt the moment it was added to the fire. The molten material was worked into six pieces of shot for Riu's pistol, a set of knuckle dusters, and a small blank ingot; Riu attuned to the remnant and found it still magical but purposeless, its original power gone. The gemstones pried from the Diad beforehand were handed over to the quartermaster as ship's loot.

With his side of the bargain honored, Grantos packed his few belongings, accepted a bath, clothes, and a haircut, and formally joined the crew; the party left a small carved marker at the wreck commemorating his decades of imprisonment and release. Asked about Birdcrown Isle, he said the name meant nothing to him specifically, though he recalled people who rode giant birds visiting his home island more than fifty years earlier and had seen none since his imprisonment began — nor ever in the old world, doubting more than a few northerners even know such riders exist. With Grantos aboard, the party briefly weighed leaving Nicolas behind now that his mission was accomplished, worried he might talk carelessly about Grantos or the party to outsiders, before voting to keep him with them regardless — Mani arguing they had made him what he now was and owed him the follow-through of setting him right. The Medallion got underway at full speed toward Birdcrown Isle.

NPCs & Creatures

Randolph the Chronicler — read aloud a reconstructed journal covering the gap since the party's rescue of him: the stalled war, the unresolved reason for the heresy declaration, confirmation that totem destructions release ungoverned power scaling to the totem's worth, the fates of Margot and Arnim, and secondhand news of the Advance's second voyage under Barrows. Confirmed his own Triad membership for the first time and his belief that the Medallions specifically unsettle the church. Produced a letter from Captain Mason's personal effects. With Riu and Cosimo's permission, examined both of the party's Diads side by side, finding them worked metal, nearly identical, and impossible to distinguish by any power beyond what was already known, though he confirmed such pieces are normally kept within the church's private spaces and shown publicly only during certain processions on holy days.
Nicolas — reunited with the party as agreed, appearing sober and focused; given custody of the Diad by day, used it in his shipboard sermons, and confided privately to Cosimo — judged the most sympathetic of the crew — a growing conviction that the Two themselves, not just their church, were evil and needed to be defeated, going so far as to embrace being a heretic against evil gods. Recalled having touched a diad only once before, during his own ordination. Ultimately freed Grantos from his binding by striking him with the Diad after listening to his account of the wind, then dropped to his knees to embrace Cosimo's legs and hail him as a prophet after Cosimo conjured a fleeting illusory apparition of Handsome Gulliver Gold over his shoulder. Argued to keep the Diad rather than destroy it; the party voted to bring him along toward Birdcrown Isle.
Grantos — freed from his decades-long binding to the wreck of the Divine Rite when Nicolas struck him with the Diad; immediately demanded the item's destruction, confirmed his wind mastery could not extend to water when asked to help clear the murk for the recovery dive, joined the crew afterward, and confirmed no specific knowledge of "Birdcrown Isle" by that name, though he recalled giant-bird riders visiting his home island over fifty years ago.
Mistress Clara — visited off-page during the time-skip; tearfully declined the party's invitation to join the crew.
Captain Mason — referenced via his recovered personal effects: a letter addressed to him as "Herod" from his wife, Eleanor, revealing his own given name and announcing the birth of their son "little Herod," alongside valuables and charts taken from the Fortnum.
Margot and Arnim — the two priests of the Fortnum; confirmed by Randolph, via her surviving crew, to be missing and presumed drowned, and neither of any special rank ("summoner" or otherwise) within the church hierarchy — Margot the more fervent and senior of the pair, Arnim junior and very much under her thumb, both by Randolph's judgment expendable rather than powerful. The party's own working theory, unconfirmed, was that the two carried cannonballs into the water deliberately, drowning themselves and their own Diad rather than let either fall into anyone else's hands.
Batu Batu — served the party's dinner and rigged the ship's oven into a working forge for the attempt to destroy the Diad.
Leopold and De Torres — the quartermaster and Master of Sail, invited to the private dinner with Randolph as senior command staff.
Sven — named by Randolph as one of Nicolas's converts, previously helping look after Nicolas alongside Mistress Clara; a second named convert was mentioned but the name was not recovered this session.

Locations

Grantos's Wreck — the wreck of "The Divine Rite," ringed by sharks and the occasional giant lobster, where the party freed Grantos from his binding and where an underwater cavern nearby yielded the eternally warm black lump used to melt the Diad.
Aboard the Medallion — site of the private dinner with Randolph, Nicolas, Leopold, and De Torres, and later the improvised forge built from the ship's oven.
Drowned Man's Port pirate enclave — visited off-page during the time-skip to collect Nicolas as previously agreed.

Conflicts

None.

Learnings and Discussions

Randolph's reading covered the state of the world during the party's three-year absence and since: the war between the two nations stalled rather than resolved, both sides investing instead in expansion elsewhere; the heresy declaration's cause still not fully explained, though Randolph suspects a specific hand behind it he declined to name; confirmation that totem destructions release raw, ungoverned power scaling with the totem's own worth, and that more totem sites exist than the two already lost; and the fates of Margot and Arnim, neither of whom held any special rank in the church. Pressed on why the two had thrown themselves into the sea rather than be taken, the party settled on its own working theory, unconfirmed by Randolph: that they carried cannonballs into the water deliberately, drowning themselves and their own Diad rather than let it — and whatever means it may have given them to track the party — fall into anyone else's hands.

Over dinner, Randolph confirmed his own Triad membership and explained the society's core uncertainty: even its members do not know what the "third way" beyond the Two actually is, only that the evidence of other power in the world — which the party has demonstrated repeatedly — makes its existence undeniable. He also floated the theory that the Divinity of Two might be an active, not merely passive, cause of the deformities suffered by unblessed births in the north, since the same effect does not seem to occur in the south or wherever the church's control is weaker. Riu, occupied elsewhere at the time and relayed secondhand through Randolph, reiterated an old theory of his own that the deformities trace back to the church's holy water specifically; unresolved alongside it, the party noted they still do not know what became of the water carried aboard the Mother's Sorrow — sister ship to the Medallion itself — unlike their own vessel's well-known cargo. The party catalogued as many as fourteen suspected sources of power for Randolph's notes: the Two, the Totems, the Elves, the pygmies of the Three (kept distinct from the hostile pygmies of Totem Isle), the three PCs' own individually distinct abilities, Leela's people, Grantos, the southern wind witches, the Medallions, the southern fire cult, and — added later — Mistress Clara, with general agreement that several of these likely trace back to a common, unidentified root. Randolph himself was tallied as the fourteenth, once he admitted his own bird- and beast-calling talent answered to no god he could name.

The debate sharpened when Nicolas, freshly trusted with the Diad, confided to Cosimo that he had come to believe the Two themselves were evil and needed to be defeated, not merely their church — a position the party did not fully share. Wary of throwing out centuries of northern faith on a hunch, the party held that everything witnessed so far, the deforming of unblessed births chief among it, could still be laid at the feet of a corrupt clergy rather than the gods themselves, especially since the same deformities do not occur in the south or in places outside the church's direct control; some wondered aloud whether that same clerical hand might explain supposedly separate peoples, such as the elves and the enslaved pygmies of the south, being something other than what they seemed. Werner, still unwilling to call the Two themselves evil, prayed sincerely to them that night for a sign that they had not been corrupted by their own church, and received nothing beyond the same ordinary silence he had always gotten.

Randolph confirmed a chronicler's abduction is entirely unprecedented and that it has placed the Academy's neutrality in question, though he could not say how the Academy would respond. Asked why Knick Nab was absent from the church's original wanted poster, Randolph reasoned it was simply that Knick Nab had no name on any public record, unlike the others.

The party also revisited, without resolving, the old mystery of who else might have been unable to see them during their original medallion-acquiring incident years earlier — they recalled that during that first phase they could see the effects of each other's actions, such as rats someone else had already killed, without being able to see one another directly, and that a bartender at the time had seemed to react to other people who were not visible to the party at all. They also turned up an odd detail from that same night: a red-haired child who had stood on the dock alongside one of the priests, watching them, and to whom only Knick Nab had sensed any connection at the time. Whatever ended that separation, they believed, happened at the same moment they returned wearing the medallions themselves. Given that Stick Stab apparently acquired his medallion at a different time and was never one of the invisible-to-each-other group, they tabled the question of who else might have shared it for later rather than press it further. A related question went unresolved alongside it: whether Stick Stab was ever subject to the same compulsion that keeps the rest of the party from straying too far from one another, since he spent many months away from them without apparent ill effect — though the party allowed he could simply have stayed close to someone else carrying a medallion the whole time.

The decision to destroy rather than keep the recovered Diad was reached by group vote after extended debate, weighing the one known example of undoing a Diad's compulsion against the risk of the church tracking it indefinitely; the eternally warm black lump recovered from the underwater cavern proved to be the key to melting it down, deforming the Diad the moment it was placed in the same fire.

Items Gained

A letter from Captain Mason's personal effects, written by his wife Eleanor announcing the birth of their son and revealing Mason's own given name to be Herod.
The contents of the Fortnum's unidentified pouches, now identified: 49 silver, a large diamond, and a matching pearl necklace and bracelet.
A matched pair of fine sabers, taken from the Fortnum alongside the other valuables.
Captain Mason's own hat, taken as a trophy.
A large collection of charts taken from the Fortnum, confirming a route west but with no island marked "Birdcrown."
An eternally warm lump of black material recovered from an underwater cavern near Grantos's wreck, retained after use.
Six pieces of shot, cast from the melted-down Diad for Riu's pistol, still magical but confirmed to have no identifiable purpose.
A pair of knuckle dusters, crafted from the melted-down Diad.
A small blank ingot of residual material from the melted-down Diad, confirmed magical but currently without any identifiable purpose.

Items Lost

The Diad that had bound Grantos — melted down and reforged into shot, knuckle dusters, and a blank ingot at the party's own hands, at Grantos's insistence.