October 19, 2024

Hook

Stormwatch IV [Gilded Slumber] || Ley'Ork, Cahyali

Plot Synopsis

The party wakes up and scouts out the 777 Casino, noticing that there is a parking structure nearby. Airships are parked on the roof. The magic users in the party notice that a leyline, for whatever reason, is flowing directly through the casino. They head in, and several members of the party immediately notice a strange poker game happening. Domino, Vulvenaar, and Jessie watch them carefully, and find out that they're communicating something through a covert method, using wins and losses in poker hands to convey numbers. Jessie gets into the poker game, and writes down a string of numbers which turn out to be coordinates.

After the poker game concludes, one of the players goes down and enters an employee only door, which leads to the boiler room. The party follows him, but are stopped by some kind of magic barrier. They can hear him tell other people where the coordinates are, instructing them to go and receive a missive. The party rushes out and intercepts it, finding it to be a message written in cipher text. They manage to decode it, finding out that it contains instructions to begin a ritual and to lay low when the roaring begins. The party returns to the 777 Casino, now much more busy at nighttime, and sneaks back to the boiler room.

There, they find a small group of Crimson Circle mages, in the middle of some ritual. A leyline there is swollen with magic, to the point of being faintly visible as a golden thread in the air. They attack the mages, killing them just in time to stop the ritual from exploding and destabilizing the building. In the process, power is cut to half of the city block and a panic begins upstairs. The swollen leyline still shoots off to the east as the party retreats and muscles their way out of the casino to take the mages' airship. In the scuffle, they found the rest of the black dragon egg, and the shard they previously obtained fits perfectly. They are stopped by police in the air, but Jessie flashes his NSID coin given to him by the late Rykers and they are let go.

Robin calls them and lets them know that the dragon skeleton they had found, named Slipstream, is a warship set to fly over Shinneok in a show of force from the HTUC. They assure her that they will find Jessie's wife and return, as she could be a significant asset in stopping the ship's launch or commandeering it. They take the night to fly over the mountains, and arrive at ancient, uncannily empty ruins. After making their way through it, they find a mournful note left in Draconic, speaking of the death of its people and the theft of their egg. They keep heading downwards, eventually coming to a massive cavern where the same ancient dragon slumbers in a shallow pool of water. Across the cavern, watching with an aghast look, is Jessie's wife.

Noteworthy Postgame Events