# July 20, 2026 | A Day in the Sun > [!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 [[Clear Blue Sky]] → mid-air over the [[Graywall Mountains]] > **Tagline**: "Time to fly, Heroes." [[E22 - Brian the Talking Cat|↶ Last Session]] | [[The Bleeding Veil| Campaign Home ↝]] ## This Session Far 6 Rhaan dawns golden and guiltless over Sharn — Tain Gala day, the city's annual celebration of being rich — and the party spends it doing errands before they leave the continent. [[Styx]] goes solo into Lower Tavicks where Varis finds him and hands him a wooden toggle to "call home." The rest sober up, shop, and regroup at [[Morgrave University]] to corner [[Garthen Daela]]. They hand the two dolls to the professor for safekeeping — "there's no safer place" — and Kouneli burns a morning in the library cracking the [[Sunrise Sapphire]]: pre-war Cannith "Project Halcyon," a portable healing beacon keyed to Irian's positive energy. At dusk they climb to the docks past Gala lanterns and cleanup crews still working the lift, meet [[Darien d'Lyrandar]] on the [[Clear Blue Sky]], trade war stories for wine. ^session-summary ## Session Log ### Everybody Finds Their Community While the party nurses hangovers from the Drunken Dragon, [[Styx]] slips down to Lower Tavicks alone — chasing the Emerald Claw dead-drop and any word on what's going on in Sharn. - The dead-drop is empty. The bartender's a normal guy who just notes the lower wards "lose regulars" lately. - Half a drink in, a *familiar effeminate voice* behind him: *"43 dead on that lift. That's not a good look."* - Styx holds his composure and asks what the family wants. Varis's answer: *nothing right now*. They press a plain wooden toggle into his hand — *"press down firmly and say your name"* to meet more of his family — and over their shoulder as they melt into the crowd: *"But make no mistake. Our ledger is not balanced."* ### There's No Safer Place Rested and rearmed (new cloaks, traveler's clothes, a disguise kit for Styx's Droaam run), the party climbs to Morgrave and corners [[Garthen Daela]] in Lareth Hall. - Daela is exactly as they left him — bent over his desk, calipers in one hand, the schema in the other, the [[Burning Idol]] humming in its lead-lined case. *"Closed office hours until— oh. It's you. Everybody wants to know about the lift."* The party tells him 43 dead. He does the math. No grief. *"Quite a big number of people who unfortunately didn't make it home."* - The orichalcum short sword / gauntlet they left with him? **Gone.** He tears the office apart, can't find it. [[Brian d'Orien|Brian]] hits him with *detect thoughts* — the professor's mind is just frantically computing the area under a curve, not scheming. - They pull the two dolls. Daela clears the other artifacts back across the room first — *"the harmonic cascade would be instructive, but destructive"* — then lights up: early pre-Galifar Cannith warforged, *"prototypes,"* same lineage as [[Cyran Forge-Acolyte Unit 10-D|Tendy]]. *"Bigger dolls,"* he says, looking at Tendy. The party leaves the dolls in his care. *"There's no safer place."* - Daela pivots to a full academic-pitch at Kouneli about the schema: *"Is it changing, or is it causing change? Are you sure you're not a researcher?"* Tries to recruit him to Morgrave. Kouneli demurs — *"it's a hobby."* ### Project Halcyon Kouneli camps in the library and actually does the work. [[Garthen Daela|Daela]] points him at the gnome librarian (*"third stack, top shelf"*) and the research: - **The Shining Valley** — an Irian manifest zone, the Eternal Day bleeding through. Accelerates healing, promotes growth, *never sees night*. Hazard: too much positive energy overwhelms mortal forms — sensory overload, manic euphoria, inability to rest, and extended exposure grows **crystalline formations on living tissue**. One researcher's footnote: the natives may see mortality as a disease to cure. - **The Sunrise Sapphire** — under *detect magic*, strong abjuration (containment) and moderate enchantment (storage / space-time). A battery tuned to specific positive energy. Pre-war Cannith craftsmanship, a tiny stylus-and-tower maker's mark → a research division absorbed into **Fabrix** after the war. The lead researcher **vanished**. The project was **Project Halcyon** — portable healing beacons powered by planar energy ### They're Celebrating Us Leaving Dusk. They climb toward the docks as Upper Central turns gold for the Tain Gala. - Magelights strung between bridges, ice sculptures on floating discs, a Watch officer directing traffic with *patience*. The Gala — an annual celebration of nothing in particular — begins at sunset. A skycoach full of laughing nobles tosses silver coins over the side (traditional); the coins fall toward the lower wards where crews are still cleaning up the lift devastation from yesterday (non-traditional). - The contrast lands without anyone needing to say it. *"They're celebrating us leaving,"* someone offers. Not wrong. ### The Heroes The [[Clear Blue Sky]] floats at her mooring — brass, wood, a ring of blue fire. [[Darien d'Lyrandar]] leans on the rail, grin already wine-loose: *"The heroes! Faurious said to expect legends. I see survivors, which I must say is much better."* - Introductions: everyone is **Brian**. (The bit continues. There are now at least two Brians aboard.) - Darien trades Aundairian wine — *"borrowed it from a diplomat. He was unconscious, so I assumed consent"* — for stories. The party tells him the forge descent, the Cogs, Sharn Chicken (twice), and the lift. Darien goes quiet at *"forty-three dead. And you were there."* Refills the round himself. - His planar philosophy, several glasses in: *"The planes aren't somewhere else. They're right here, all the time. Pressing against the world like —"* cupped hands *"— water against glass. Sometimes the glass cracks. That's your manifest zone."* He adds the Graywall is *"full of cracks"* — more manifest zones per mile than anywhere but the Mournland. - Eleven hours of flight compressed to: moons rise and set, wine runs low, Darien's stories get wilder. He checks his instruments, kills the cabin lights. *"Time to fly, Heroes."* %% DM — NOT PLAYER-FACING: Varis is House Tarkanan's field recruiter; the wooden toggle is a dead-drop summon, not a toy. The ledger line is the campaign's quiet promise that Styx's mark will be collected. Daela's missing orichalcum weapons are a deliberate loose thread — whether they were misfiled, taken by a third party, or walked via convergence-tech is the DM's call. Kouneli's Halcyon/vanished-researcher dig is a seed for the Aldous Faurious connection (A. Faurious, brother of Nigel, vanished 991 YK per the E23 study notes) — do not surface the link yet. The man in gray at the Gala (Haras Kant's Aurum man) was observed by the party from a distance but not engaged. %%