Refreshed from a long rest on technomantic beds, the adventurers awake to find Ardak making breakfast make itself. While lesser mortals slept, Ardak deconstituted Allana’s Sword of Psychosis, separating the Psychosis from the Sword, into an amulet of the encased amber crystal strand with which Allana has become so fond of conversing and a nice longsword with which no one speaks at all.
Concerned about the protective properties of Blameless’s bathrobe, Ardak hands him a Helm of Defense [+1 AC] embossed with the Quastarte Coat of Arms and the School of Technomancy motto, “Primus Automatus”.
Rollen and Barrin each recall a nightmare of a skull rushing at them.
Ardak identifies Barrin’s dagger as magically stabby [+1 to hit, +1 to damage] and entertains more questions over breakfast, the executive summary being that Red Larch is a thread to be pulled from the greater tapestry of elemental evil.
Argyle grabs a few healing potions for the direst emergencies while Rollen checks in with his quartermaster for an allotment of arrows. Quartermaster Schmeck, no relation to Captain Smeck, really gives Rollen the hot light interrogation about his recent activities. Rollen whips out his Spell Guard org scroll which indicates Schmeck is not in Rollen’s chain of command. Schmeck retorts by calling Ardak a senile old emeritus and inexplicably offers Rollen a medallion. Rollen, pretending to study the capacity of his quiver, delivers a brutal snubbing, completely indifferent to Schmeck’s advances, and departs with the arrows to alert Ardak of this nosy malcontent.
After a brief travel refresher from Ardak, the group departs through the portal back to Red Larch and heads to Gaelkur’s tool supply, barbershop, and not-quite-noon tavern. Blameless spots Larmon Greenboot from his shepherding duds and signals to Rollen with a nudge and a cough. Rollen asks around for a cough drop for Blameless and introduces himself to Larmon who confirms his finding of four recent burial mounds in the hills. Rollen further inquires about the Believers, alarming three patrons in the corner who depart suddenly. Simon presses Larmon for information on the three, but Larmon balks a little at being mobbed by a group of strangers with a bunch of questions in the middle of his brunch ale. An appointment is made for the following morning when Larmon will guide the group out to the graves.
Taking Larmon’s point, the party breaks up into smaller task groups. Simon dons his purloined black Believer’s cloak and follows the three suspected Believers to four warehouse storage buildings, at #20, where he encounters Bethendur, proprietor and accomplished closer. They negotiate a deal for 500 cubits of storage and, while Bethendur maths up an estimate, Simon greets the three Believers from Gaelkur’s. They are really put off by his cloak and, to be quite honest, the rest of him as well. To patch up the faltering relationship, Simon offers the promise of special information regarding the Delvers. It seems like that entices them back a little, but the discussion really cheeses Bethendur and drives up the price of storage to a flat fee of 600 gp however short the term.
Meanwhile, at the stoneworks, Allana, Meega, Rollen, and Blameless meet a rotund whirlwind of a woman, Albaeri Mellikho, proprietor. Blameless repeats some rumors of strangers seen at the quarry and Mellikho confirms she has heard these reports from her workers but doubts the veracity of the claims; quarry workers, she explains, are a drunken and disgruntled lot. Blameless reads the subtext and tries to ease his way out of the meeting without openly confronting this suspected Believer, but Rollen employs a more direct approach and bluntly mentions the secret passage between the chamber of moving stones and the quarry. Gasping, Mellikho begins choking on the cupcake she’s noshing and things get very tense until Blameless can usher Rollen out with a bit of pig-elvish.
Meanwhile, at the Helm at High Sun, Argyle orders up some authentic ale from the fatherland. Barrin requests the same libation, but the paperwork for indemnification and waiver for non-dwarves cannot be completed in time. With their finger on the pulse of Red Larch’s crossroads, Barrin and Argyle overhear bits of a discussion between a priest and a caravan guard about Beliard and an unnamed, but notable, dwarf. Argyle and Barrin join the conversation, as folks do in taverns, and the four get linked in with each other’s career aspirations. The other party members rejoin at the tavern and agree to have a look at the quarry hillside this evening after Argyle takes a wee beernap.
That evening, dividing up by specialties, Rollen, Barrin, and of course Simon stealth off to have a look at the hillside where the stone-masked strangers were reported while Argyle, Meega, Allana, and Blameless luxuriate by the campfire off the western road. Rollen and Barrin conceal themselves in shrubbery but Simon takes a different tack, prestidigitizing a stone mask for himself and standing quietly in plain view. The ploy works perfectly as a rotund stone-masked woman emerges from the quarry and makes her way toward Simon. “A believer approaches!” she calls, holding her arms aloft. Simon remains still, unnerving the woman. “Arigo…?” she probes. Rollen coughs, “Mellikho!” at Simon and the encounter ends abruptly as the woman flees. The three investigators return to base and, with the cozy campfire already going, the party camps the evening away until time to meet Larmon in town.
Again, Rollen and Barrin each recall a nightmare of a skull rushing at them.
The group departs Red Larch with Larmon and his sheep toward the hills in the east and, after a time, arrive at a barren hilltop where there are four rock-covered graves. A tower rises above the hills a couple of miles to the north and grasslands, where Larmon grazes his sheep, stretch out from the hills to the south.
In the absence of any marker or other clues, the group begins the grim task of excavating grave number one in which they discover a dwarf, wearing artisan robes, slain with arrows and crushed. Tangled in his beard is a Mirabar medallion and some goat jerky. The second grave contains a human warrior whose uniform indicates she is of the Mirabar army, and she also was slain with arrows and crushed. The third grave contains a human warrior who wears a black cloak and stone armor bearing the symbol of the Black Earth, and he also was slain with arrows and crushed. The last grave contains a human wearing a white robe with black feathers and a small necklace bearing a symbol unknown to the party, an inverted triangle topped with an upwardly bent cross. No obvious relationship among these grave occupants can the party determine other than the timing and cause of their deaths. After Argyle presides over the recommittal, the adventurers turn their attention to the tower.
Larmon relates that the tower belongs to some feather knights who keep hippogriffs, but ominously warns that the interposing Sumber Hills poses terrible mortal danger to anyone who would be fool enough to … but Simon is already double sprinting toward the hippogriffs.
The group makes its way through hills and valleys until, about halfway to the tower, a low, distant rumble pauses them long enough to wonder, how distant was that rumble? Just when they reckon everything is probably fine, and that rumble must be for some other group of adventurers, two giant insectoids burst through the ground, unsuccessfully spitting acid at Rollen and biting at Meega. Barrin, wielding his new dagger, lands several blows while Allana sends the other a blast of eldritch. Simon hastens Meega and Rollen so they move with impossible quickness. Rollen puts an arrow deep into his quarry and Meega uses giant slayer to slay one of the giants, but a third pops up and bites Allana. Blameless frostbites it to slow its attacks and it does not survive Simon’s missiles and Barrin’s dagger. The last Ankheg burrows away leaving a hole and Argyle positions himself at the hole ready to whack it, but the devious bug burrows up behind him instead. Allana poetically sprays it with poison. Word of the beatdown spreads to the other Ankhegs and there are no further attacks.
After covering the final mile, the group finds itself at the foot of a lowered drawbridge spanning a sheer drop to a brilliant white limestone spire, resembling a sword piercing the blue sky with enormous vultures circling around the top. Unaccustomed to the kindness of strangers, the party hesitates safely off the bridge, exchanging hails and waves with knights at the top. Simon crosses to converse with Savra about any low mileage hippogriffs for sale. Determining that the situation is safe for the rest of the party, which is to say that their malingering is holding up potential hippogriff transactions, Simon waves everyone across to the tower.
Savra marvels at the fortuitous timing of the visit, as they happen to be preparing a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Feathergale Society. She leads the group through a limestone and marble hall, where hangs an elaborately wood-carved eagle, and up to the roof of Feathergale Spire, featuring a grass lawn, gazebo, a fixed spyglass for observing Ankheg attacks in the surrounding Sumber Hills, and crenulations with four launches. Here the adventurers meet the Lord Commander, Captain Merosska, who explains the Feathergale Society are aerial mount enthusiasts from Waterdeep. Merosska can shed no light on the nearby burials, perhaps observable through the spyglass, but he kindly invites the group to stay overnight for the anniversary celebration.
Excusing themselves to settle in before supper, the group hangs out in their dorm room, generously vacated by a member of the society. Blameless does some light snooping, expecting to find some letterhead or motivational posters with the newly-discovered insignia from grave four, but he finds only locked chests. Casually hanging out in the feast hall, Allana inquires whether a white robe with black feather mantle might be associated with the Feathergales but again nothing is learned about the fourth body who was dressed as such. Simon is FINALLY invited to go down to the stables where the stablemaster introduces him to a hippogriff, in the approved fashion naturally.
Rollen stops off at the kitchen to emphatically relate a latent penchant for gravy, but the local custom strangely does not serve gravy with soup as wood elves do. Fortunately he travels with a personal supply of packet gravy.
A bell summons the celebrants to the feast where they find seats and the soup is brought out. The Society eccentrically inhale at their soupy aromas for an awkwardly long time, long enough that an equally awkward conversation breaks out seeking to establish how the adventurers find themselves in the Sumber Hills, in Red Larch, or anything else they care to offer, which is not much. Fortunately just then someone bursts into the room yelling that a manticore is on the move, granting reprieve from the weird feast. The Lord Commander holds aloft a ring, promised for whoever brings him the manticore’s head.
Meega pilots a hippogriff with Blameless riding along, and Simon pilots a second hippogriff with Argyle riding along. Then, on giant vultures, Rob with Rollen, Chowd with Barrin, and Fenegar with Allana. There is also a solo knight who does not introduce himself competing for the ring.
Simon and Argyle are first to locate the manticore, and the ensuing dust-up seriously injures Simon. With this new perspective, he begins to examine his life and considers just retiring to a beach with his newly acquired hippogriff instead of chasing around manticores. Observing his plight, Meega determines to keep a greater distance while Blameless launches an ice orb, but the strain of casting at this range inadvertently creates a swarm of illusory butterflies and flower petals. Allana’s and Barrin’s knights close in for some good attacks, but close enough that the manticore returns damage. Rollen has superior range but cannot capitalize on the advantage. Blameless hits the mark again and this time two flumphs materialize. Barrin worries about their little flumph families left behind, but unempathetic Blameless gesticulates emphatically at the evil manticore. The flumphs choose life and flee. Allana ends the manticore and it begins to lifelessly tumble into the deep canyon with all competitors in nosediving pursuit.
Fenegar and Allana are in an early lead alongside the anonymous knight. Chowd and Barrin pass them easily and maintain their lead all the way down, but Chowd misjudges his speed and heavily impacts the ground. The vulture, who had only one day until retirement, dies instantly. Barrin and Chowd are thrown unconscious and it suddenly occurs to everyone else to slow down.
Rob’s vulture lands and Rollen runs toward the crashed vulture where Argyle also tends to the dying. Blameless fetches the manticore head, tossing it to Meega so she can fly it solo without overloading her hippogriff.The injured are recovered to the spire where the Lord Commander’s rejoicing leads to an important disclosure: the location of the Black Earth, a rival of Feathergale, is the Sacred Stone Monastery.
Retiring to their room, some of the group are intercepted by Savra who, in a hushed voice, seeks to recruit them to the Feathergale Knight’s secret organization attempting to control elemental air for the destruction of the enemies of Waterdeep. It seems the allure of hippogriffs has coincidentally led the adventurers to some startling discoveries as the elemental evil tapestry exposes another thread.