Three adventurers converged on Still Lake of the Vale from three separate directions, met a mechanical stranger who counted everything in seconds, watched a vast shadow move beneath a paddle-wheel steamboat, solved a bell tower puzzle over a radio that shouldn't exist, and deployed a giant mechanical lobster against something the Sablecoast calls a legend. Whether that legend is now dead is a matter of perspective.
Before the session properly began, someone approached Ord Stonebreaker alone on the docks at Blackreef. Small figure. Bright scarf. Moving with too much purpose for someone her size. She stopped in front of him, said clearly — "Purple, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue" — and was gone into the crowd before he had finished turning. He had no idea who she was or what it meant. He boarded the Dreams of Gold and said nothing about it.
The Dreams of Gold is a paddle-wheel steamboat, heavy in the water and slow across it. Ord Stonebreaker and Burn had both answered the The Royal Call independently and found themselves on the same vessel out of Blackreef, bound — according to the manifest — for Gildwater. The actual route had taken them north around Frostmarch, through Chain Bay, and down the The Alden River Locks to Still Lake of the Vale. Captain Edric ran the ship with the close attention of someone who had already decided what he was afraid of. His first mate Zhurm ran the crew. The shape covered in cloth on the upper deck near the helm — the one no one was to go near — was not discussed.
In High Alden, Zhodrok had been given their orders by Sir Kaelin with characteristic economy. A ship called the Dreams of Gold. Two more like them aboard. Cargo for the The Collegium Arcanum. Still Lake, south docks. The King Regent added, from her chair by the window, "Quietly, please." That was all.
Liorin Vale & Shelly, meanwhile, had been at Lantern Abbey helping Cousin Berry run a children's birthday party, which had got slightly out of control before either of them arrived.
Zhodrok reached the south shore of the lake ahead of the ship. He was walking the waterline toward the dock when he noticed something moving along the shore: small, deliberate, entirely wrong in its gait. The creature stopped in front of him before he reached it and said: "That lantern. Where did you get it?"
Its name was Orison-7 — build 239TR54564FRG, by its own account. An autognome construct, all jointed casing and robotic precision, working with Captain Edric and trying to reach the stone church tower further along the shore to make contact with the ship. It converted time to seconds without being asked. It noted, with no particular emotion, that it had known the Lantern of Steady Flame to be in someone else's possession as recently as seventeen days ago. Zhodrok said it had been his for years. Orison-7 accepted this and invited him to the tower.
They were almost there when the man came out of the water.
He was waist-deep in the shallows, moving toward the shore like someone who had forgotten what dry land was for. His clothes were soaked through. His breath fogged in air that was not cold enough for it. On his head, immaculate and undamaged by the water, sat a hat of extraordinary craft — wide-brimmed, elaborate, and somehow more real than the man wearing it. He stopped on the bank and looked through them rather than at them. Zhodrok recognised what he was looking at. Orison-7 was very interested in the hat. They kept walking.
Aboard the Dreams of Gold, the lake was unsettlingly still. Then the boat listed — hard, without any wave or wind to explain it — and a massive shadow moved under the hull and was gone. Captain Edric gripped the helm and went tight-jawed. Ord Stonebreaker's perception was good enough to read him: this was something the captain had been expecting. Had been afraid of before it happened.
Before anyone could ask, screaming came from below, and a wolf came up through the hatch at a full run and hit a deckhand hard enough to put him down. A dire wolf followed. The combat on deck was fast and brutal — Ord Stonebreaker and Burn put both animals down — and in the same moment Captain Edric raised his arcane communication device to his ear. It crackled. A small robotic voice said: "Captain. This is O7. I'm in the tower."
The tower room had a spiral staircase, four windows facing the cardinal directions, and a floor of coloured stone tiles — red, blue, yellow, two of each, arranged in a pattern none of them could immediately read. Orison-7 described this to the captain, who described it to Ord Stonebreaker, who had been listening to a garbled relay about primary colors and started making the connection. The word colours was close enough to what the stranger had said at Blackreef that he said it aloud: "Purple, red, green, yellow, blue.". No one quite knew what to do with Purple and Green since they wern't on the floor but final from a surprising source Burn remembered "blueberries and blood make purple".
The puzzle worked by standing on two tiles at once to combine colors. Zhodrok and Orison-7 worked through the sequence — purple was red and blue, green was yellow and blue, the others stood alone — each step causing a bell resonance felt more than heard, a vibration through the stone that built with each correct combination. The final step was the loudest sound anyone in the tower had ever experienced. A section of wall opened. A key fell out. Orison-7 picked it up and left the tower without saying goodbye, already in a dead run toward the dock.
Morvath had returned.
He reached the Dreams of Gold as it was coming in. Captain Edric was yelling for the key. Orison-7 was approaching on the dock with the key. The cloth came off the shape on the upper deck — and the party saw the Apparatus of Kwalish for the first time: a large, sealed iron construction that unfolded, into something that looked very much like a giant mechanical lobster. Claws extended.
The creature came up against the hull. Wrapping it tentacles wildly around the boat. What followed was fought on the dock, on the deck, and at the waterline by everyone present — Zhodrok having arrived from the shore, Ord Stonebreaker and Burn from the boat, Orison-7 having been boosted on the boat by Zhodrok ran to the Apparatus of Kwalish unlocked it and jumped in. The captain yelling operating instructions to Orison-7 who wan in the Apparatus of Kwalish when it launched. After a long battle both on deck, on the dock and underwater Morvath stopped attacking. Orison-7 saw its body sink below the surface of the lake and did not resurface. Whether it was dead or simply done was not resolved — no one went after it to check. The boat made the dock. The boat was damage but working. The cargo was dead.
The battle over, the crew of the Dreams of Gold found reasons not to speak. Orison-7 guided the Apparatus of Kwalish back up from the shallows — neither it nor Captain Edric had operated the device before today, but necessity had made them quick students. The machine broke the surface, dripping, and was secured.
Zhodrok crossed the dock to where Burn and Ord Stonebreaker were still getting their breath back. He told them what Sir Kaelin had sent him to do: deliver the cargo to High Alden. Ord Stonebreaker informed him that the cargo was dead.
Ord Stonebreaker noticed his arms and legs when the noise had quieted enough to look. Where he had grappled the dire wolves and taken Morvath's grip around his limbs, the skin had changed — harder to flex, colder to the touch, less willing to feel. The colour had begun to shift as well. Not dramatically. Visibly. He said nothing about it to anyone.
Captain Edric noticed his torso and stomach where the tentacle had wrapped him at the waterline. He spoke quietly to Orison-7 and Zhurm. He did not mention it to the party.
Zhodrok, Burn, and Ord Stonebreaker loaded the wolf carcasses onto a Steam Wagon and began the road back to High Alden. As they pulled away, the captain called out to them from the dock — wincing slightly as he did — "Tell Sir Kaelin if he needs me for anything else, he'll know right where to find me."