Quick Overview

Season 2 mostly took place in the nation of Chakai. The party was looking into the disappearance of the Arvendors, while staying in their estate in Chakai. This season involved Elder Gods, Insanity, Mad Cults, Governmental Corruption, Gang Warfare, The Lost Lands, Parasitic worm spawn, and the potential end of the world.

Timeline is created from records kept by Maria during the campaign.

Flight to Chakai

Grace, Jade, Finnegan, Rinn, Finn, Nonmirror Zak, Alice, Quick, and Rain left Kana in one of Quick’s airships along with newcomer Veran (an elf adventurer from one of the parties that joined in attacking the king’s castle) while A. Del the Death Knight decided to stay behind to help defeat the undead armies and rebuild Kana’s government. The king’s men turned to fight the undead alongside Brent Embers & Associates’ forces and the druids of the Glade.

During the flight to Chakai to look for Sif’s missing parents and meet with the Noble, a young human man named Howl inexplicably appeared on the wing of Quick’s airship. The party let him inside and he informed them that he had once been the ruler of a place called Elysium, where he was married to the goddess Ehlonna. However, he had died of old age several decades previously and had no idea why or how he had come back.

Quick got a call asking for assistance fighting a Kaiju closing in on Chakai. BE&A arrived at the scene and jumped out of the airship to fight the beast, where they were joined by a changeling conscripted pilot going by the name X. The group scared the Kaiju into retreat and as the rest of X’s fleet had died during the fight, BE&A invited her to join them on their adventures. After this, the party was whisked away to Chakai to begin the immigration process.

Life in the Big City

After two weeks of life in immigration housing completing paperwork and getting to know the new party members, Brent Embers & Associates was able to get to Sif’s mansion, Arvandor Estate. Rain successfully inherited the property; between her possession of Sif’s letter and family amulet and her conviction that she was in fact Sif, the lawyer had no reason to believe otherwise. Beneath the manor the group found a once busy marketplace that had seriously dwindled due to the poor and seedy management that was put in place after Sif’s parents disappeared. Alice left the group briefly to check Nonmirror Zak into a mental asylum.

The morning of the second day, Gwathra appeared to Rain and asked to meet with her in the evening. BE&A split up for various tasks: meeting the Noble, trying to track down the previous landlord, and doing business in the market stalls. Grace learned that the Noble was using her as a pawn in a mysterious scheme while Rinn, a druid completely out of his element in the city, turned into a polar bear and scaled a bank before getting arrested. Howl, Finnegan, and Rain learned that the landlord had probably been kidnapped by a vampire cult that was also kidnapping shifters.

Grace found the group some employment hunting Kaiju with Quick and requested that he import Tessa Dubar, Chelty, and Shaddox Mason. After regrouping at the Estate, BE&A sent a courier to retrieve Rinn from jail.

Later that evening, Rain met with Gwathra in a restaurant filled with secondhand smoke. The calming effects of the drug were enough to bring Rain temporarily back to sanity, only so long as the drug’s effects lasted. Gwathra revealed that a cult called The Eye had burned down Dartha and sold her and Linnathon to the demons they had met in the portal in Tessa‘s basement. She also disclosed that the Bloodroot in her veins allowed someone to control her and force her to assassinate Sif. Rain accepted this and agreed to stay in touch. Meanwhile, Veran, who was revealed to be Nonmirror Zak’s brother, went to visit Zak in the asylum while Howl, Finnegan, and X went to a bar where they met Ian and Fenrir and invited them to meet the rest of the party the next day.

Cults and Gangs

The next morning, a monk came to the Estate and asked for help finding Rina Kita, a student who had been kidnapped by the Cult of the Final Dawn. As Brent Embers & Associates pieced together a map of the Final Dawn’s meeting place from fliers and a pendant the cult had left in their wake, a gang called the Dragons showed up and demanded protection money which the party refused to give. Meanwhile, Jade discovered that Alice had disappeared and left the party to search for her.

With Grace and Howl staying behind to await Ian and Fenrir, the rest of BE&A headed out to scout the Final Dawn’s meeting place in an industrial compound. X found and rescued one of the kidnapping victims, a mercenary gunslinger named Grayson Scott who promised to help BE&A save the rest of the victims on the night of the Final Dawn’s gathering.

That evening after everyone except Jade had returned to Arvandor Estate, another gang called the Triads arrived to beat up the group and demand protection money. BE&A managed to kill all but one of the gang members but lost Grace in the fight. Leaving Veran and the Arvandors’ lawyer, Irevara Kirasaki, behind to deal with the police, the remaining party members and Ian and Fenrir went out drinking. The reprieve from sobriety helped Rain once again remember her true identity, which she revealed to the new party members. Afterwards, she and Finn went off to purchase some Ease to help Rain maintain her sanity. The two confessed their feelings for each other and hatched a plan to get Grace back with the Noble’s help.

Shortly after the drunken party members returned to the Estate and found that Veran had set up a necromancy workshop in the attic with the dead Triad members’ bodies, Quick arrived with a letter for Grace. Rain opened it and found that it was a ransom letter sent by a woman named Caroline DeLacroix, demanding information on the events on Kana in exchange for Grace’s godchildren’s(1)(2) lives.

The next morning, Veran, Finnegan, and X set off to speak with the Dragons about protection money while Howl, Rinn, Finn, and Rain made a deal with the Noble to plant a tracking parasite on Rina and to rob a bank in exchange for bringing Grace back. Upon everyone’s return to the estate, Jade and Alice announced that they were returning to Nox to lend aid in the rising war with Stahlwacht, and the party baid them goodbye.

Later that evening, Rinn picked a fight with Veran over his skeleton and zombie butlers that ended in Ian and Rain beating Rinn unconscious and throwing him out of the manor. With peace temporarily restored, the rest of the party, Ian, and Fenrir planned out the infiltration of the Final Dawn’s hideout. Afterwards, Veran and Finnegan bought some spells to ask Grace’s spirit how she would respond to the ransom letter while Finnegan forged her handwriting in a reply. Veran tried to make peace with Rinn by giving him his stone mouse, and Rinn seemed more willing to work alongside him.

That night, BE&A, Ian, Fenrir, and Grayson snuck into the Final Dawn’s hideout just as the cult was beginning its Blood Moon ritual. The party watched as the vampiric leader of the cult bit the neck of one of the hostages, a young lycanthrope woman who turned out to be Rina. She fell to the floor, convulsing, but curiously did not die despite the clashing curses of vampirism and lycanthropy.

Combat ensued, and the group discovered in horror that one of the Final Dawn cultists was a woman covered in eyeballs while several others were hosting huge tentacled parasites. One of the tentacled parasites transported Rain to a strange room where another Final Dawn cultist attempted to recruit her and revealed that Sif’s parents were alive and being held somewhere within the city. Meanwhile, the rest of the group defeated the Final Dawn cultists and freed all of the captives, and Rinn planted the Noble’s tracking bug on a ragged and unhappy Rina. Rain was reunited with the party after the Final Dawn’s unsuccessful recruitment attempt.

Patron appeared to the recovering group and asked that BE&A help reunite the planes that were separated by the extinguishing of the First Flame. He also gifted the party a mask that sticks to one’s face and offers to remedy personal tragedies in exchange for new tragedies, saying that it was part of a scattered collection that he wanted to amass.

Following the rescue of all the hostages, Ian and Fenrir officially agreed to join BE&A, while the trauma of the fight with the abominable cultists and parasites caused Howl and Rain to develop the Madman’s Insight, a temporary insanity that allowed them to see versions of reality that were imperceivable to others.

Monsters Old and New

With the first part of his deal completed, the Noble sent over a cleric to resurrect Grace the following day. Rina turned up on the estate’s doorstep, seeking Veran and Rinn’s help with some unusual and unpleasant symptoms she had developed after being bitten the night before, and Finnegan received an invitation to a dinner party with an all-female sect of the Final Dawn called the Matriarchs. Rinn removed the tracking bug parasite from Rina and let it burrow into his arm instead.

Veran stepped out to ask the Noble what he knew about the legend of the Kinsmir. Howl and Finnegan paid a visit to the library to research the Madman’s Insight and found that it was a madness associated with the Outer Planes which provided mortals with the ability to see glimpses of the eldritch realities of the Material Plane.

That night, Finnegan and Veran attended the Matriarch dinner, where they were given instructions to go to a hidden library and bring back information on Kaiijus. The two were then knocked unconscious and infected with worms as collateral.

Meanwhile, Howl succeeded in his search for his descendants, finding the family of 11-year-old Charlotte, who was the one destined to inherit Howl’s magical sword. Chelty and Shaddox arrived in Chakai with news that Kana was still in shambles and that the Glade had been ravaged by the undead. Upon Finnegan and Veran’s return home, Rinn removed the worms from Veran, which caused Howl and Rain to start hearing music in their heads.

At breakfast the following day, Rina and Veran revealed to the party that Rina was the latest incarnation of an ancient and legendary creature known as the Kinsmir, a rare lycanthrope/vampire hybrid that occurred once every 500 years and turned murderous when transformed during a full moon. With a full moon that night, Brent Embers & Associates confined Rina to the courtyard and did their best to keep the Kinsmir calm. Grace, Rinn, and Finnegan discussed how the rest of the party’s dealings with Noble should be handled while Rain introduced her mother to Howl and X.

Howl’s family moved into the estate the next morning, and Howl began training Charlotte to wield his sword. Finn and Rain paid a visit the local insane asylum to see nonmirror Zak, who revealed that he also had the Sight and wanted a statue from the marketplace to help him “remember” something. That night, Gwathra pulled off an information heist on the Eye while X provided a distraction. Finnegan unleashed the jar of worms pulled from Veran on Rinn, and Veran ended up dealing Rinn massive dexterity damage while removing the worms from his spine. Outside, Howl and Rain chased after a large, glowing creature as it climbed over rooftops. Partially recovered, Rinn almost killed Finnegan while trying unsuccessfully to remove the worms from an unwilling Finnegan’s body.

The following day, Howl, Veran, and Rain brought the statue from the marketplace to Zak, who used it to open a portal to another realm where he was carried off by eldritch abominations before the portal closed behind him. The rest of the day was spent on the job Quick had enlisted BE&A in, killing a Kaiju and retrieving a talking crossbow from its corpse.

A House Divided

On the flight back from the Kaiju fight, a faction of the Final Dawn known as the Sight blew a hole in the party’s airship. With the ship grounded, the Sight demanded to take Howl and Rain away, and with the group in no shape for another battle, the two reluctantly agreed to go. The faction leader brought them to the Sight’s own fifth dimensional space known as the Compound, where he explained that the Sight was working to use the Madman’s Insight to learn more eldritch knowledge in hopes of gaining the attention of the elder gods. He also warned that the Matriarchs of the Final Dawn and the worms that they had given Finnegan were dangerous.

Given the choice between leaving with their new knowledge or joining the Sight and learning more, Howl and Rain chose to join them, hoping to find a way to rescue Zak and to ultimately stop the cult from drawing the eyes of the elder gods. During Howl and Rain’s time at the Compound, an agent of the Eye got in contact with Howl and informed him that Elysium had been erased from time itself. He provided him with the tools to potentially restore its timeline before slipping away. Rain’s addiction to Ease reached its worst. Both adventurers learned how to use the eldritch word “Jaunt” to travel along the fifth dimension.

Back at home, the Noble spoke with Grace about the planned bank heist and her godchildren’s (1)(2) kidnapping, and also recommended that she get to know Finnegan better. Grace decided to do this by introducing Finnegan to her old master, the Pilgrim, turning over to Finnegan the ring with which he could summon the Pilgrim and travel through Pilgrim’s Portals. Veran set off to complete the bank heist alone.

The next session was more or less a legendary clusterfuck of insanity so I (Maria) am just going to copy/paste what I recorded with minimal editing:

“Grace finally received a letter back from her godchildren’s ”/characters/delacroix" class=“wiki-content-link”>kidnapper demanding the same documents that the Noble wanted Brent Motherfucking Embers & Associates to steal from the Matriarchs’ bank vault and of which the Matriarchs wanted BE&A to retrieve a copy from the Lost Library; Rina disappeared; Ian warned Grace not to trust the talking crossbow; Howl and Rain finally returned to Arvandor Estate after six days with the Sight; Rain introduced Finn to her mother; Grace and Howl went to a fancy party and got a job and the names of some corrupt nobility; X (drunk), Finnegan (drunk), and Rinn (not drunk) stole a bull by polymorphing it into a mouse so that the courtyard cow they had bought for the Kinsmir could have a companion – with which it woke half the party with late-night mating; BE&A got Rina’s location from the Noble and sent X, Howl, and Rinn to rescue her from the basement where she’d been tortured; Grace made hamburgers and steaks out of the cow and bull when Finnegan left the estate to meet Rinn on his way back with Rina; Rina latched onto Rinn to feed while the party was healing her and had to be restrained; Finnegan planted a worm on her before running away to his room and locking the door; Grace chased after him and punched down the door, activating the explosive wards he had installed after the last time the party had broken into his room; Grace fought off some more worms Finnegan had been keeping in an egg; Finnegan flew out the window and cast Banishment on Grace; and now the fUC KIN HOUSe IS ON FIR E."

In the end, half of the mansion burned down, and Finnegan and X fled on an early flight to the Lost Library. Disheartened by all the chaos, Ian and Fenrir took their leave from the party. Veran returned from his successful heist but elected not to destroy the documents. The remaining members of BE&A arranged for Tessa and Gwathra to look after Howl’s family and Rina while the party was away at the library. Before the group departed, Howl bought a specially made mech suit and Gwathra gave Rain a sending stone.

Quick flew the rest of BE&A to the Lost Library excavation site. The party dropped in and promptly had their asses handed to them by some Matriarch cult members trying to infect them with the worms. All except Howl in his mech suit retreated to the surface and found an older version of Howl (dubbed “Dark Howl”) waiting for them.

Inside the library, Howl teleported himself into the fifth dimension, where he met a tiefling who told him that the Matriarch’s worms were setting up a True Wish ritual and that Howl must stop Dark Howl from using the wish. Dark Howl informed the adventurers on the surface of the True Wish spell, saying that he intended to use it to reunite the planes but that he needed their help to get past the traps in the library. Patron reappeared to the group and revealed that Dark Howl was his new muse; privately, he urged Grace to use the True Wish spell to reunite the planes before Dark Howl could do whatever devious thing it was that he was actually planning to do. Howl rejoined the surface group and informed Grace and Rain of what he had learned from the tiefling. Faced with the pressures and precariousness of keeping reality itself together, Rain changed her mind about searching for Zak in the outer realms.

Finnegan and X contacted the surface group via sending stone to warn them that the Matriarchs had planted worm eggs all over Chakai that were going to hatch in a few hours and cause deadly chaos; in response, the party asked Quick to have his employees fly their friends and family out of the city. Shortly thereafter, Grace and Rain’s old vampire friend Von Strauss appeared to lend her aid.

Sufficiently recovered and with new information and reinforcements, Brent Embers & Associates began again to push their way through the Lost Library. Dark Howl and Von Strauss held off the Matriarchs while Grace, Veran, Howl, Rinn, Rain, Finn, and Patron continued on and reunited with Finnegan and X. Finnegan declared the he was defecting from the Matriarchs in order to protect his one true love: all the knowledge of the Material Plane.

Gwathra contacted Rain through their sending stones to tell the party that they had almost made it out of the city when all hell broke loose, just as Finnegan and X had warned.

How It All Ends

Brent Embers & Associates fought their way into the Lost Library’s inner sanctum, where they encountered a large, sinewy thing that sucked Howl inside it. From there, Howl was presented with the option of viewing and potentially choosing an alternate timeline in which Elysium had never been erased from existence. He could pull any of his friends in to help him decide, but only he would remember ever making the choice. Howl elected to pull everyone in.

With Howl appearing as a ghost and the rest of Brent Embers & Associates and Patron acting as shoulder angels (or demons), the party visited alternate versions of themselves and the people they knew. They found that in this alternate timeline, after Howl III, Elysium’s power-crazed royal counsel had secretly ousted Howl’s family from the throne and had been ruling the kingdom under the name of nonexistent Howls ever since, becoming increasingly despotic while the First Flame they guarded died down to a barely glowing ember. It was also revealed in this timeline that X had been secretly a member of the Dragons and that the Noble was a title rather than a singular person.

With the party divided over which timeline to choose, Howl ultimately decided to maintain the current timeline and find another way to free his people from the Lost Lands.

The group returned to the present and left the True Wish spell to Patron, who wished for the death of all the worms. Gwathra informed the group through the sending stone that the wish had worked in time to prevent mass hysteria and death.

Patron and Finnegan reignited the First Flame inside the library’s inner sanctum. Then, much to everyone’s astonishment, Patron walked into the Flame, sacrificing himself to wish that the Flame would no longer be necessary to connect the Material and Astral Planes. The Flame died out and Howl at last ascended, finally reunited with Ehlonna. Dark Howl vanished from existence, and the remaining party members and Von Strauss returned with Quick to Chakai.

Epilogue

Howl used his godly influence to long-term prevent any of his fellow Brent Embers & Associates members from going to hell. He also found a way to reconnect Elysium with the Material Plane, so there are now a few portals between the Lost Lands and the Material Plane out there somewhere.

X and Finnegan managed to convince some people that they were the saviors of Chakai, but others believed that the death of the worms was more connected to the reunion of the planes.

X gained a “respectable” reputation as a thief and managed to pull off some pretty big heists.

Finnegan founded the University of Nox, where he taught classes on Kaiju.

Rain managed to overcome her addiction to Ease and her split-personality insanity, partially thanks to her subconscious memories of Sif and Rose’s happiness together in the alternate timeline. She and Gwathra learned that their village had been massacred by a splinter group of the Eye known as the Cleaners, who had charged themselves with wiping out all knowledge of Elysium and knew that Gwathra had once traveled to the kingdom. Together, Rain and Gwathra tracked down and killed every remaining member.

Rain and Finn spent many more years adventuring together before settling down on Kana with Gwathra, getting married, and having a daughter.

Grace discovered that DeLacroix was the same unremarkable woman she had been in the alternate timeline; the letters had been a ruse crafted by Stalwacht warmongerers in order to extract information about the First Flame. Her godchildren (1)(2) were safe and sound, and she was able to retire to take care of them. Grace finally rescued her sister from the Nexus, and she founded the Church of Patron, which gained enough of a following to bring Patron back to life as a god. She founded a town and officiated Rain and Finn’s wedding.

Rinn and Rina started a relationship and prevented the elder gods from paying the Material Plane a visit. They settled down together in Nox and had a daughter.

Veran constructed a massive stone golem, in the process creating Relic, and repaired the mirror.