# February 24, 2026 | Happy Hammers > [!Summary]+ meta > **Role Call**: [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] • [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] • [[Kouneli]] • [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] • [[Cheeto]] • [[Styx]] > **Where We Are**: [[Morgrave University]] → [[The Cogs]] > **Tagline**: "It is a start." [[E9 - One More Game of Chicken|↶ Last Session]] | [[The Bleeding Veil| Campaign Home ↝]] ## This Session The party explores [[Morgrave University]]'s Astral Conservatory and meets [[Flamewind]] — a lamia oracle who speaks in remembered words and confirms the planar boundaries are weakening at an unprecedented rate. After a debrief with [[Lhara]] that reframes everything as a race against [[Arthemis d'Cannith|Arthemis]], the crew descends to the Cogs and walks into a warforged labor strike at Drummond Independents. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] talks the forge owner into paying his workers one silver a day and treating them like people instead of hammers — a start, but only just. The session ends on a cliffhanger when a nervous warforged named Auger asks the party to cover for her at an underground prize fight. ^session-summary ## Session Log ### Cheeto's Psychic Compass The party stands in the quad at [[Morgrave University]] when [[Cheeto]] feels it — a psychic pull, sharp and insistent, pointing him toward the Astral Conservatory like a compass needle spinning true. - [[Kouneli]] and [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] follow him down the rabbit hole. [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] stays behind trying to talk the admissions folk into letting his orphanage kids enroll. They brush him off like he's selling timeshares. - He catches up at a set of imposing doors marked "Astral Conservatory — Authorized Personnel Only." The locks are open. The party exchanges looks and walks right in. ### The Garden of Impossible Things The conservatory is *huge* — a flooded cathedral of light and impossible botanical nightmare. - Silvery ferns shimmer like starlight. Flowers bloom in colors that shouldn't exist outside of fever dreams. A shadow-bark tree coils its darkness through the space. Crystalline succulents catch light and scatter it like broken glass. There's a cordoned section marked "Xoriat specimens — UNSTABLE" that everyone sensibly avoids. - [[Cheeto]] feels the pull deepening and moves toward the apse. [[Kouneli]] sits down — just sits down in the middle of this alien garden — and casts Detect Magic as a ritual. Opens his eyes: "All of this is magic. The magic is as thick as the air." More magic than he's ever experienced in one place. - [[Styx]] wanders through like they're in a museum, treating it like treasure-hunting season. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] checks the fountain for fish (there are none). ### The Golden-Eyed Witness As they approach the apse, a massive figure shimmers into view. Not gradually — all at once, like someone's just made themselves visible. - A lamia. Body of a great winged lion, black as midnight with burning orange stripes like tiger's blood. Falcon-sharp wings. The torso and face are elven, regal, golden-eyed. A silver diadem crowns her head. Her name, somehow, is known: [[Flamewind]]. - She doesn't speak. Her words are *remembered* — appearing in their minds fully formed, as if they always knew what she was about to say. - "Do you know what this is?" She shows them a Siberys bloom — the flowers that bloom once every forty-three years. "It has bloomed six times in the last month." ### The Weather Report Oracle The party peppers [[Flamewind]] with questions — mostly out loud, which is hilarious because she communicates telepathically and [[Cheeto]] keeps doing it anyway, talking to a lamia oracle like she's his buddy at a bar. - She tells them the planar boundaries are weakening. The rate is unprecedented. Everything that was sealed is becoming permeable. - [[Cheeto]] blurts something about "one of the great ancestors" and [[Flamewind]] acknowledges the blood-truth in that. She looks directly at him and tells him about a smith — a woman who works with planar metals in the Fernia manifest zone beneath the city. "She can't make what you want. But she can make the beginning of what you want. The rest will require some travel." - [[Kouneli]] asks a perfect question: "Are *you* creating all this magic, or is it the place?" She gives that feline grin — the kind of smile a satisfied predator gives — and says: "That is the right question." - Then slowly, like a watercolor painting left in the rain, she shimmers out of existence. ### Loose Gold and Loose Tongues The party distributes coin from the communal sheet — 125 gold split six ways, about 20 pieces each. - [[Kouneli]] buys ten fancy filigreed darts for 1 gold. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] picks up ball bearings for 1 gold and immediately regrets not having them for the airship fight in E9. - They table the hardcore shopping session for later. ### The Dragon's Stories Around noon, they arrive at the Drunken Dragon. [[Hascal d'Ghallanda|Hascal]] has drinks ready. [[Lhara]] is waiting. - The party all talks over each other telling the story of last session — the airship, the coin, [[Arthemis d'Cannith|Arthemis]] herself. [[Styx]] gives the most coherent account. - [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] pulls out the coin that [[Arthemis d'Cannith|Arthemis]] gave to [[Cheeto]]. It snaps out of his hand and into [[Lhara]]'s with a *clang* of magnetism. She examines it with the intensity of Gandalf and the Ring — turning it, studying it, reading something in its metal that the party can't see. - "This is a race now." - She tells them about the Drummond Independents in the Cogs, in the Ashblack district. Hands [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] a sealed House Kundarak envelope addressed to Tresca Teesbeak, gnome artificer. "Don't try to do it yourselves. You'll need her help." - The party debates: rest now, or go immediately? [[Kouneli]] — the teacher's pet, as always — asks if they can at least long rest first. [[Lhara]] looks at him and says: "If you're here tomorrow, there will be consequences." - They decide to rest at [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]]'s orphanage as a waypoint. ### The Lockbox Moment Evening comes as they reach the orphanage in Callestan, the lower wards. [[Tesca ir'Lantar|Tesca]] — sixteen years old, doing her absolute best — is holding the fort. - [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] talks to her about the recurring threat: the property assessor came by again. He pulls 15 gold from his personal stash and puts it in the lockbox. [[Tesca ir'Lantar|Tesca]]'s eyes go wide. - The kids swarm. They drag [[Cheeto]] off for adventure stories. [[Kouneli]] tries to teach them about magic. [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] orchestrates a feast — special food from the upper wards, 5 gold well spent. - For a moment, [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] looks around the room: kids crawling over [[Cheeto]], [[Kouneli]] explaining the weave, everyone at peace. This is his family. Found, mended, his. - They rest for the night. ### Down to the Burning Deep Morning. The lift down to the Cogs. The attendant intones: "Welcome aboard for Blackbones. Try not to stare too deeply into the darkness." - The everbright lanterns thin out, then vanish. The light dies. Then rhythmic hammering. Steam. Forge fire. - The lift opens to Blackbones central square — a deep orange glow, molten metal everywhere, an oasis of sparkling water surrounded by blazing lava (the Pool of Onatar's Tears). [[Kouneli]] warns everyone about feather fall, "just in case." [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] quips about the rickety lift like a nervous tourist. ### What [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] Sees [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] notices immediately: eighty to ninety percent of the population is warforged. But they don't look like him. - They're pitted. Scorched. Limbs replaced with crude tool attachments. They don't look up. They don't acknowledge each other. There's no social system — just labor. - He stands there, a perfectly maintained warforged in fine clothes, and he sees his own potential future: stripped down, worked until the seams fray, left to rust. - He starts thinking about scale. The solutions need to scale. How does one person fix this? How does one warforged help his thousands of brothers when the infrastructure wants them broken? ### The Picket Line They navigate from Blackbones to Ashblack. The heat increases. - [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] notices ogres and goblins moving between forges — Daask enforcers collecting protection payments. Extortion dressed up as business. - Then they see it: the crossed iron staves above the Drummond forge door — and in front of it, a picket line. Warforged standing sentinel, fists raised, chanting "Sovereigns Not Slaves," hammering their fists on the ground in rhythm. ### [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] Meets [[Stoke]] [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] approaches the largest one — adamantine frame, forearms charred black. His name is [[Stoke]]. - He talks about the Last War, about freedom, about personhood. "We get to choose our families," [[Stoke]] says, gesturing to his crew. "This crew deserves to be more than a hammer." - [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] asks what their specific demands are. [[Stoke]] says "personhood," but when pressed, the words stumble. It's not really about money or conditions — not exactly. It's about being *seen*. About not being treated like property. - The party huddles and debates amongst themselves: compensation? Working conditions? How do you negotiate with injustice? ### The Gnome's Proposition A small gnome woman steps out from the forge. Tresca Teesbeak. She's on the strikers' side. - "Lhara sent you? [[Drummond]] seems on the verge of cracking, but if you want your order today, I think you'll have to grease the wheels for [[Stoke]] and the others." ### [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] the Negotiator The party splits. [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] stays outside with his brothers. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] walks into the forge to talk to [[Drummond]] himself. - [[Drummond]] is exactly what you'd expect: greasy-haired, small-minded, the kind of guy who sees workers as costs. "I don't pay my hammer, I don't pay my kiln." - [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] works the persuasion angle. What does [[Drummond]] really want? Efficiency. Production. Fewer headaches. "Imagine fifty happy hammers instead of fifteen pissed-off ones." - [[Drummond]]'s face softens. It's not moral clarity — it's just simple math. The deal: one silver per day wages, conversations with the workers (actual time to speak), and Sundays off. - [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] reports back to [[Stoke]]. [[Stoke]] nods, taking it in, and says simply: "It is a start." ### The Red Cape Secret [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] notices one warforged acting anxious. Eyes on a clock. Twitchy. He approaches: "You seem anxious. What is going on?" - "I have somewhere to be." Her name is Auger. - [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] and [[Kouneli]] spot it at the same time — a bright red cape, stuffed into Auger's day pack. - Auger looks between them, and the question hangs in the air. She says: "I have a prize fight." - And that's where we leave it. The session ends on Auger's nervous confession, the party staring at a red cape they don't quite understand, the cogs still turning beneath their feet, and a race they've only just begun to run.