# May 4, 2026 | Asking for a Friend > [!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]] → all over [[Sharn]] → [[The Drunken Dragon]] > **Tagline**: "People notice when people don't come home." [[E15 - Noisy Toys|↶ Last Session]] | [[The Bleeding Veil| Campaign Home ↝]] ## This Session A downtime episode. With the Burning Idol handed off to [[Professor Garthen Daela|Professor Daela]] and their faces still fresh on the broadsheets, the party decides to spend three days doing the thing they've never once done: gathering information *before* something explodes. They split up. [[Kouneli]] vanishes into the Morgrave library and reconstructs the money trail behind their entire careers. [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] and [[Cheeto]] work the lower wards. [[Styx]] takes a stranger's face to a bar and hires [[Varis]] for two jobs. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] and [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] turn a pub crawl into reconnaissance. No combat, no dice-rolls-for-your-life — just six people quietly realizing the floor under them has been someone else's floor the whole time. They regroup at the Drunken Dragon three days later, mostly successful and slightly hungover, with one cold fact sitting in the middle of the table: nobody has seen [[Lhara]] in weeks. ^session-summary ## Session Log ### The Group Project The morning after the bridge. Everyone's wanted, everyone's tired, and the plan — for once — is to be patient. - [[Cheeto]] shows [[Professor Garthen Daela|the professor]] his barrel-shaped not-yet-a-gun, fishing for a dramatic reaction. He gets a shrug — same alloy, *"and I have no idea what it does."* Cheeto sulks. - The professor hands [[Kouneli]] a library card. On the party's hunt for somewhere private to talk: *"My boy, it's a university. If you can't find a quiet place, I'm worried about you."* - The anxieties, stated flat: they don't trust [[Lhara]], the jobs were never really Clifftop's, and the rats keep turning up where rats shouldn't. One of them *talked* to [[Hascal d'Ghallanda|Hascal]]. - Theory floated: the rats are polymorphed druids, or [[House Tarkanan]]. Plan — send one back with a message. - [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] discovers he's been carrying a small fortune this whole time. *"House money. Let's play."* He stakes [[Styx]]; [[Kouneli]] adds five gold and one plea: *"be judicious and thrifty."* - [[Cheeto]] draws the job of making six wanted faces less conspicuous. He takes it seriously. Mostly. ### Restricted Section [[Kouneli]] disappears into the Morgrave stacks for three days and comes out the most dangerous person in the party. - The engineering wing was a **House Cannith** grant. The **Colossi** needed extreme-grade alloy and something the records keep calling a *docent.* - A departed researcher's paper calls docents **intelligence cores** — the next warforged leap wasn't *bigger*, it was a *mind inside.* Author: **Stefan Faurious.** Kouneli clocks the name. - **Provost [[Faurious|Nigel Faurious]]** — Morgrave's planar-interaction authority, richly funded by vague *"field research"* contracts routed through guilds. Five years ago his work pivoted from theory to *recovering things.* - The greenhouse "lamia" is a gynosphinx — [[Flamewind]] — older than the entire faculty. Minutes from forty years back note her unease about a *"planar lens project."* - An archivist's margin note: *"They know things about us. I feel like she's watching us."* - Loose end: nobody ever paid them for the flask. The professor waves it off — *"I don't normally handle the finances"* — and points at Clifftop. ### Always a Goddamn Lesson [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] takes the lower wards, where he is both a folk hero and a terrible spy. - The orphanage kid who spiked a fever is back on his feet and wants to be just like Uncle Boldran. Every war story becomes a parable; every parable ends *"...that I learned from my master."* - He works his fabric stall behind a mask of wholesome ignorance and a homebrew skill he calls **drip.** - The catch: **Drummond's forge is dark and the whole Cogs quadrant is barricaded from the outside.** - Strangers in unfamiliar dark armor have been asking around — *"haven't seen armor like that since the war."* Not watch. Nobody knows them. - [[Cheeto]], behind the stalls, overhears two warforged arguing the Treaty of Thronehold — *free* versus *equal.* ### A Girl Walks Into a Bar [[Styx]] puts on a stranger's face and goes shopping for answers. - [[Varis]] arrives as a serving girl, slides into the booth, drops to a flat in-between voice. - Styx trades what he knows about the artifacts and [[Arthemis d'Cannith|Arthemis]]'s interest. Varis, re: the Bazaar fire: *"Oh man, you're trying to get laid, huh?"* - **Job one — Lhara.** Styx reads it instantly: Varis knows more than they're saying. *"People tend to notice when people don't come home... no one's spoken to her in some time."* Price: a future favor, shape unspecified. Styx takes it. - **Job two — Arthemis and the Emerald Claw.** Styx haggles like a man who's never haggled; the price walks *up* — twelve, sixteen, twenty-one. Varis pockets it: *"We'll find you."* ### Dead Air [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] and [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] do their reconnaissance the only honest way they know — one pub at a time. - At the **House Sivis** station, Brian works a gnome clerk he knows. **Clifftop's gone quiet** — eight, ten messages a day, now things go *in* and nothing comes *out.* - Brian resolves to drop in on old friends at the guild. - [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]], Brian's walking lie-detector, remembers his own repair: the tech, **Rivet**, watched his tools die mid-job and bolted. Tendy's theory — the *event* breaks the instruments. ### Make Your Own Lightning The same pub crawl wanders, inevitably, into retail. - At **Derek's Provisions**, [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] nearly sells wine back to the man selling it. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] explains haggling. Tendy leaves with a healer's kit and a thousand ball bearings; Derek pops the cork before they reach the door. - At **Carvax Iron Works**, Brian tries to buy Tendy's beloved Sentinel Shield with one *"priceless ancient coin."* The smith: *"Are you functioning properly?"* — then name-drops a warforged-repair man, **Stoke.** - At **Sayla's Remedies**, Brian asks for a twig from a lightning-struck tree. Sayla, not looking up: *"Have you ever considered making your own lightning?"* ### Last Call Three days, six investigations, one table. - Three days, six investigations, no fights, no loot — just thread: Lhara missing, Clifftop silent, Faurious's money under everything, a sphinx watching the watchers, Drummond's sealed, dark armor in the Cogs, Daask holding a marker on the Colossus building. - *"We learned a lot of good information tonight. We almost got a shield."* - Next move's already set: Varis will send word on Lhara. They just have to learn what it cost.