The evening calms after an eventful day of soup smelling, question dodging, and manticore chasing. Back in their dorm room, the adventurers share and process two new revelations. First, the Sacred Stone Monastery, headquarters of Black Earth, lies east-southeast of the Feathergale spire. Second, the secret elemental ambitions of the Feathergale Society likely bode ill for ongoing relations. Surely nothing will come of this until morning.
Barrin and Rollen volunteer for watch, but this does not allay their skull-rushing nightmares. Screaming interrupts Barrin’s watch and the two watchmen depart to investigate without alerting the sleeping party. The extraplanar sound of facepalming awakens Blameless and Allana. Blameless taps Meega awake while Allana considers the merits of waking Simon. Argyle begins donning his armor.
Out in the feasting hall, Rollen and Barrin encounter two knights up late smoking and joking, but they know nothing about any screaming and suggest everyone returns to bed. Rollen demurs, but Barrin continues down the staircase, seemingly no concern to the knights at all. Blameless, emulating social behavior, emerges and leans casually on the stairwell smoking his churchwarden yet closely monitoring the knights for signs of aggression. Rollen, master deceptor, sleepwalks around the corner and down the stairs, “Gravy … gravy … gravy …” The confused knights grow increasingly concerned as Allana and Blameless dash off downstairs to help the sleep-walking elf find gravy. The ruse really thins out as Meega runs through with no pretense at all, and Argyle emerges in plate armor looking for the latrine, and Simon sprints past with Argyle’s shield, pardoning himself to the knights, and surfs the shield down the stairs, posterior over teakettle, to the stables.
Outside the second floor kitchen through its closed door, Barrin overhears discussion of an offering that will please the Lord Commander. Barrin anguishes over how to intercede in what could be the ritual sacrifice of a person, but problem-solving Rollen simply opens the door and sleepwalks into the kitchen. “Gravy … gravy … “
“HELP! THEY’RE GOING TO EAT ME!” pleads a diminutive, bound figure. Rollen marks one of five initiates standing around poking at their victim and readies his bow. Barrin leads the investigation with his dagger point at Five, Blameless chills him out, and Meega axes him a question. As Five falls dying, Allana enters with her mommy voice to settle everyone down, scolding that the Lord Commander shall be very cross to find his initiates fighting each other like this. The persuasion works on most of the initiates, creating a pause long enough for Welby, a vocal advocate for continued violence, to free himself with Barrin’s help. Welby jumps up, menaces formerly-calmed Two, and, hardly alarming at all, runs up the wall. Four, ignoring Allana’s soothing plea, stabs at Barrin which triggers an arrow sailing by from Rollen and frozen fingers from Blameless. Two, gaining clarity from Welby’s attempted stabbing, petulantly throws his dagger into Allana and is hit with an arrow from wall-standing Welby. Barrin and Meega end Four while Blameless and Allana focus arcane magic on Three who is yelling for help out the window. Barrin retires Three and delivers his trademark laconic catchphrase, “Shut up.” The unlikeliness of reconciliation dawns on One so he grabs a rolling pin and swings at Barrin. Meega finishes One and decapitates Two, sending his head into the gravy. Rollen fumes at Meega for ruining the gravy but at least wacky wall walking Welby is uneaten. Following hasty introductions, Meega inquires about the nature of Welby’s visit. Welby changes the subject and reveals offhandedly he knows the location of the haunted keeps for the elementals and possesses a book in primordial. With no time to unpack that bit of compact exposition, Blameless offers his last gold piece and a common dagger in trade for the book. Welby seals the deal with a shrug and everyone runs out of the kitchen.
Rollen runs downstairs to the stable to find Simon excitedly babbling at the irritable stable knight. The knight, fed up at last, holds Rollen and Simon at spearpoint and offers to go fetch all the other knights. “To do what?” Rollen inquires innocently. Good to his word, the knight departs up the stairs followed by Rollen’s cautionary yelling. Simon and Rollen set about constructing and optimizing an escape vehicle comprising four hitched hippogriffs with one deployable folded boat in tow. Design flaws, vis-a-vis the exterior door dimensions and aero-gravitational properties of the boat, result in late changes to the specifications, but the assembly eventually is completed and accepted as-built. Rollen, sharing a quiet moment with Simon to admire the finished product, laments, “I’m going to miss ya’, Simon”.
Meanwhile, Argyle has held the third floor stairwell, waylaying the two smoking knights. They learn the difficulty of wounding Argyle through his armor, but their persistent and savage attacks slowly wear him down even while his hammer answers their aggression. They trade hit after hit until, to break up the repetition a little, Argyle lets loose some lightning and a knight tries a ball-of-air spell. Unbeknownst to them, the stable knight climbs the stairs behind Argyle, unbalancing the contest.
About that time, Barrin remembers the cleric and charges up the stairs to aid. Sensing the emergence of a new alpha, Blameless, Meega, and even Welby follow Barrin to stab whatever he stabs. With some difficulty in the cramped stairwell, the partially reunited group overwhelms the surrounded stable knight and one smoking knight. The remaining smoking knight retreats as mad clanging erupts, urgently summoning everyone in the spire to the stable.
Allana, directed by her concerned patron to check on the recent endeavors of Simon and Rollen, surveys the improvised chariot in the stables. Extrapolating the probable results, she rhetorically asks, “Good king, what are you doing…?” Rollen explains the design even while he securely tethers Simon to whatever fixed object he can find; in the miniscule chance something goes wrong with the flight at least some of Simon won’t fall into the canyon. Allana magically commands Simon, convincing him to delay his launch plans at least until the rest of party joins them. Eager for the flight, Rollen uses Simon’s Argyle shield to make a summoning ruckus.
As he passes the first floor headed to Rollen’s clanging summons, Barrin runs into three initiates led by Magic Girl who were roused from sleep by someone banging on a shield in the stables. One of the initiates asks, “What insanity is this?” which is pretty laughable considering he lives in a remote tower with a paramilitary society eating people and riding vultures. Meega makes some small, failed attempt at deception but then hews to her raisin debt, striking initiate One with two axing motions and killing him. Barrin runs into the newly opened space between the two remaining initiates and uses a double-punch-stab to knock Two back into his room and over a bed. Meega kills Five. Blameless runs for the main entry door, shocking Magic Girl as he runs past her. Argyle hammers Magic Girl and she retorts with a thunderwave. She runs for another room with Argyle in pursuit and evades him. Meega intimidates initiate Two into surrendering and revealing that Magic Girl is actually Hurricane Girl. Two is tied up for further questioning later.
About that time, hurricane winds outside the spire become noticeable. With Barrin’s help, Blameless lowers the drawbridge despite the winds, voiding its warranty, but it looks too dangerous to cross. Down in the stable, Rollen similarly concludes that flying the hippogriffs would be fatal in the strong winds violently shaking the doors. Upstairs, Welby loots the locked chests and discovers a couple of cloaks he knows are of the Howling Hatred as well as some gold pieces for his personal charity fund. Pursued by a knight, his plan to escape down the outside of the spire is similarly thwarted by the winds outside.
Everyone regroups in the entry foyer. Merosska’s voice on the wind decries the betrayal of hospitality and Savra’s voice urges surrender. Rollen, returning the courtesy in primordial, urges the surrender of the Feathergales, answered by windy laughter. Simon, unfamiliar with primordial, offers to help Rollen with his food allergy. Now realizing that their speaking is overheard, Simon and Allana telepathically link the adventurers to discuss their cunning plan, or any plan at all for that matter. With the cloaks and Blameless’s “alter self” spell, pulling a Star-Wars-Chewbacca-Death-Star-Prisoner deception is possible, maybe even an Ocean’s-Eleven-SWAT-uniform-vault-heist, but then how to capitalize on the momentary confusion? It seems unlikely Merosska will be tricked long enough to permit vulture-jacking on this scale.
Merosska’s wind voice, tired of waiting, says they will come to the foyer for the final epic battle. The wind suddenly stops, opening the possibility of fleeing out the front door, but the Feathergales have a flying advantage whereas in the foyer there is a bottleneck of the stairwell and doors. Rollen, concerned the hippogriffs could be used against them, runs down to the basement and panics the beasts into scuttling each other.
As promised, knights begin pouring into the room, not just from the stairwell but from the adjacent room with a window. Readied actions from Welby and Allana strike the first wave with a shortbow arrow and eldritch blast. Rollen and Barrin clash with knights in front. Blameless puts twin chromatic orbs into Bravo and Charlie and the ripple of wild magic calls a unicorn into existence right in the middle of the foyer. Simon, busily firebolting a knight, hears a voice requesting that he please move aside. Argyle, hammering Charlie, hears a voice offering aid. Barrin, Rollen, and Meega continue soaking up punishment at the front, holding back the arriving knights. Meega ripostes a miss from Alpha. Hurricane Girl blasts a jet of air from the side room knocking Simon unconscious into the foyer wall. The unicorn revives him and proceeds to charge Charlie and stomp him to death. Speculation of the unicorn’s name prompts him to introduce himself, but his name can only be experienced as a feeling of warmth and peace. It probably translates differently to poor old Charlie who was one day from retirement. Rollen chases the troublesome Hurricane Girl out the window, puts a well-aimed arrow through her dark and windy heart, and she plunges to her demise on the canyon floor. The furious battle for the foyer continues.
Outside, meanwhile, the unicorn has teleported Simon and Barrin to the far side of the bridge to restore them to good health and they identify the cloaked figure of Merosska standing on the bridge, potentially cutting off the only escape route if things go pear-shaped inside. Although confused by the presence of a unicorn, Merosska keeps his composure as he frost rays Simon. The unicorn entangles Merosska while Simon critically firebolts him and Barrin runs up to strike as does the unicorn. The doors open as the foyer is secured with the surrender of the last remaining Feathergale knight just in time to witness Simon rid the world of one Lord Commander Captain Merosska. The two captives, one knight and one initiate from earlier, are made ready for interrogation.
Welby, only barely surviving the long night, stumbles off into the sunrise, foolishly declining a thirty second unicorn ride.