# July 13, 2026 | Brian the Talking Cat > [!Summary]+ meta > **Role Call**: [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] • [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] • [[Kouneli]] • [[Styx]] • [[Cheeto]] • [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] > **Where We Are**: [[Sharn]] — the Drunken Dragon > **Tagline**: "Do you have any idea what you are?" [[E21 - Blow Up the Trolley|↶ Last Session]] | [[The Bleeding Veil| Campaign Home ↝]] ## This Session Still standing on the roof of Sharn with the morning's bodies still warm under canvas, the party works the exit with varying degrees of success — [[Styx]] riding a wave of accidental hero worship while the rest try not to look like they're fleeing a crime scene. They regroup at the [[Drunken Dragon]] where the debrief they came for gets interrupted by [[Nigel Faurious]] himself — the client, in the flesh, expensively dressed and badly buttoned and delighted to finally meet his adventurers. He lays out a job that sounds almost boring: take a sapphire to a valley of eternal daylight, wait a day, bring it back charged. But the watcher in the corner who paid for his silence in gold, and the way Faurious looked at [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]]'s chest assembly like he recognized an old friend — neither of those came with a contract. ^session-summary ## Session Log ### "There She Is, the Old Lady" The shade isn't deep enough, and the courtyard has become a slow-moving disaster scene. The Watch is taking statements, and there's a scribe working her way down the wall of survivors — toward them. - Young **Tobin** spots [[Styx]] across the courtyard and *hauls* a guard over by two fingers: *"There she is, the old lady who threw me over like a football!"* Styx, who is not wearing the face Tobin remembers, lets the moment land — and the crowd loves it. He's suddenly a hero, and he leans into it like a pro. - The rest of the party tries a stealth exit through the freight gate and rolls about as well as you'd expect after the morning they've had. A scribe intercepts them: *"Where do you think you're going? Not without a statement."* - [[Cheeto]] gives a false name — *"Brian"* — and a bribe the scribe ignores. (Table: *"He's a cat named Brian, he's a talking cat named Brian."* A running bit was born.) - [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] offers to mend the guard's dangling codpiece. This buys goodwill. Let the record show that a holy man rethreading a guard's pants de-escalated the most tense morning of anyone's life. - [[Kouneli]] plays the wide-eyed scholar, notebook out, sneaking peeks at the scribe's wax tablet. This is the same man who watched someone die on the lift and called it *exciting.* He is on one today. - The guard captain pulls [[Styx]] aside: a teamster is saying the party attacked civilians on the lift. Styx's statement is a careful masterpiece of not-quite-lying: *"I saw no one attacking anyone. Only people running into each other."* - The captain buys it — even gives him a respectful nod — but adds: *"Don't leave Sharn. Cooperation expected."* And, nodding at the burn on Styx's arm: *"Get that looked at."* ### "Ugly Matt Damon" They make their way through the city, heads down, rolling over what they just lived through. - [[Styx]] changes face in an alley and emerges as — the table's words, not ours — *"ugly Matt Damon."* He runs surveillance on the group's six. Nothing obvious is following them. - [[Kouneli]] shares [[Flamewind]]'s concern about a *"planar lens project"* — more dots connecting between aberrant marks, research, light shows, and what he's starting to call *"a magical gun powered by other planes."* - [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]] describes what it felt like stepping into the rift: a presence, the world shifting color, and then — in the final half-second before it closed — *anger.* He ran a systems check. No physical damage. Only *"emotional damage."* - The conversation circles around Tendy's apparent ability to calm aberrant events by proximity. [[Kouneli]] connects the dots: aberrant dragonmarks, planar lens research, light shows on public lifts — something is *building* across all of it. ### Six Drinks Waiting The [[Drunken Dragon]] is warm, loud, and hung with the bones of other people's expeditions. [[Hascal d'Ghallanda]] has six drinks waiting. - *"Why don't you settle in and put your feet up."* They do. Fine arcane vintage — Con saves all around. [[Styx]] and [[Boldran Evans|Boldran]] hold it together. The rest do not. - [[Kouneli]] (tipsy, which is maybe not the best time for this) starts cataloguing sigils and lights and aberrant dragonmarks in his notebook at the bar. The Tain Gala is tomorrow and he knows nothing about it — failed history check — but he's taking notes anyway. - [[Styx]] drops his face back to his own mid-drink, which creates an at-table identity crisis. (Ronnie: *"I'm back. I'm Styx again."*) - [[Cheeto]] tries to get involved at the bar and gets shut down by Hascal with a gentle: *"Sit back down. I'll see you in a bit."* ### The Door Opens [[Lhara]] holds the door for a man in his fifties — expensively dressed, badly buttoned, ink on two fingers, already mid-sentence to himself: *"—the tolerances are fine, the tolerances were always fine, it's the* window *that concerns me—"* Behind them, a third man in traveling grays peels off to a corner table without a word. - *"Gentlemen,"* Lhara says. *"The client insisted."* That's the whole briefing. Whatever mask this party wears, they put it on in front of him. - The man introduces himself as **[[Nigel Faurious]]**, Provost of Applied Thaumaturgy at Morgrave University. He produces a cloth bundle and unwraps a sapphire amulet — deep blue, bright enough to seem lit from inside. - The job: a manifest zone in the [[Graywall Mountains]] called the **Valley of Eternal Day** — tied to [[Irian]], the plane of endless light. Leave the sapphire there for 24 hours to charge. Bring it back. *"The power of the Eternal Day itself, sown and reaped. I wrote that,"* he says. *"It reads better in context."* - He wants a precise account of the lift: *"What came first — the colors, the flashes, or the heat?"* Drunk [[Kouneli]] answers in detail. Nigel takes notes. Lhara tries to cut him off; Nigel doesn't notice. - Terms: 50 gp each upfront, 50 on delivery. Airship passage on the *[[Clear Blue Sky]]*, departing [[Dragon Towers]] at dusk tomorrow. Nigel leaves the sapphire on the table. [[Cheeto]] pockets it. Drunk Kouneli doesn't notice. ### "Do You Have Any Idea What You Are?" Mid-pitch, Faurious stops talking. He's staring at [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]]. - *"Sorry — I have to. Juniper-line resonance lattice? The chest assembly. They only ran that line for two years, you know. Everyone thinks the late-war frames were the good ones. They're wrong."* He leans in, close enough to be rude. *"Do you have any idea what you* **are?***"* - He asks Tendy nothing about himself — his name, his war, his wants. Only his frame. [[Lhara]] physically ends the conversation: *"We have other matters to attend to before the gala tomorrow."* - As he leaves: *"Later, then. We'll have time."* which reads almost like a promise nobody asked for. ### The Watcher's Tab They leave together — Nigel still talking, Lhara steering, the man in gray settling up at the bar. - [[Hascal d'Ghallanda]] appears with a round nobody ordered. *"You did fine."* Professional appraisal, not friendliness. Then he wipes a ring of water off the table where the gray man sat and flicks a single **full gold piece** onto the cloth. *"Your professor's friend paid with a coin too heavy for what he drank. Thought you'd want to know he wasn't here for the beer."* - [[Styx]] approaches Hascal alone at the bar afterward. Hascal, oblique as ever: *"Everyone can find their community."* Styx, not finding it, starts drinking to catch up. - The party resolves to visit [[Garthen Daela|the professor]] at [[Morgrave University]] before departure. [[Kouneli]] notes he still owes them 50 gp. [[Styx]] wants his short word back. The airship leaves at dusk tomorrow — Tain Gala day, whatever that means and whether they're ready or not. ### Status - **Sapphire** is now Cheeto's pocket-change by default. - **Two dolls** still in the bag, still ticking sometimes, headed to Droaam. - **The third man** paid in gold and disappeared — identity unknown, affiliation unknown, and Hascal made sure the party knows he was worth watching. - **The Watch** has six descriptions and one fake cat name. Party told not to leave Sharn. They leave tomorrow at dusk. - **Faurious** has met Tendy. He knows what Tendy's frame is. He did not tell the party — only confirmed there's something to know. - **Long rest still pending.** Half-charged, dinged up, and booked on an airship to Droaam. %% DM — NOT PLAYER-FACING: Styx's aberrant dragonmark (the "burn") remains hidden from the party. The third man is Haras Kant's man — Aurum money watching Faurious. Hascal's bar is a Tarkanan intelligence node. The Tain Gala celebration happening concurrently with the mass casualty event is deliberate class contrast — the party rolled poorly on History and knows nothing about it. %%