Summary, Sessions 1-23

Session 1: The Gathering
Malachi, Cammelia, Minky, and a telepathic fox who has not yet shared a name answer a call at the capital. A house steward leads them to a meeting room where a representative of the High Council offers a substantial sum of gold to deliver an undisclosed gift to the tribes at Hraegard. The fox reveals their name is Ke-Iko, the party accepts a starting stipend, and they prepare to depart.
 
Session 2: The Caravan Departs
The party joins a merchant caravan led by Freedrick, with hands James and Wes and guards Thea (pikeman) and Lance. A band of armed warriors rides out ahead. The group studies a map, banter fills the road, and Malachi conjures food at the first camp. The next couple of days pass quietly.
 
Session 3: Ambush on the Road
Orcs and goblins spring an ambush. The party struggles with coordination. Lance shatters his spear on the first thrust but still lands a hit with the broken weapon, then gets throttled. Ke-Iko reveals a person-shaped battle form. Thea and Cammelia are both wounded. Minky has trouble pinning a goblin. The largest orc bleeds out, the rest rout, and the party returns to camp to tend wounds through a long night.
 
Session 4: House Vilet and Yardham
Nearing Yardham and the Silver Fields, the party spots a House Vilet banner and an escort riding out to meet them. Malachi takes the lead in conversation, with Lance cutting in helpfully. The soldiers ask about the cargo, the destination, and whether the party has seen wild elves. After a brief cart inspection, the party is allowed through.
 
In Yardham, the party resupplies at a tavern where the aleman mentions soldiers are searching for someone headed to Batton Hollow. Rumors of a golden deer in the nearby woods may be connected to the military camp outside the village.
 
Session 5: The Fall of Yardham
A church bell rings in the night as an armed force attacks Yardham. The party evacuates, but Lance and Thea are struck down by an assassin before they can reach the cart. Cammelia disappears into the chaos. Malachi negotiates passage to retrieve Ke-Iko, and the group flees town with exhausted horses. They camp in blessed quiet.
 
On the road, Ke-Iko reveals that someone involved in the attack was familiar to them, and that they had received a warning beforehand. The knowledge that Lance and Thea might have survived weighs on the party.
 
Session 6: The Road to Pella
The morning after Yardham, the party pushes quickly toward Pella. Freedrick and his boys are on edge. Watches are harder with two guards gone. A storm rolls in on the final day, but the party slogs through to Pella and finds lodging at The Old Scoundrel, an inn that seems unusually prosperous for such a small settlement.
 
Session 7: Pella and the Missing Soldiers
At The Old Scoundrel, the party hears that mercenaries have ventured into the Scar and that Gro'Kata has recently received Dire Coeurls. In the morning, Captain Aaron, the village sheriff, arrives asking for help finding soldiers who went missing in the Westarbor. The party takes the job.
 
Two quiet days into the forest, some party members hear something and break through the trees. They find the missing men, and a very large wolf.
 
Session 8: The Soul-Blighted Warg
The creature is a warg, and a terrible one. The militiamen fight bravely but two die when the warg bursts into flames and explodes on its final blow. The survivors are stabilized. Cammelia tends wounds before the return to camp.
 
The warg forces at least Alan to relive his worst memories. After the fight, a woman, angel, or goddess appears in a vision visible only to him. She names him her sentinel, charges him to bring justice and protect the innocent, and leaves a band of silvery metal around his arm. He does not yet know her name.
 
Session 9: Grosok's Vision and the Defense of Pella
A vision comes in the night: a creature calling the party back to a pond, charging them to save the world tree from House Batton. The figure leaves a prophecy:
 
*"Tears of a Leviathan will cleanse the blight"
"A Leaf of the Mother's Tree is as a hearty meal."*
He leaves Cammelia a broken shard of antler. His name is Grosok, Warden of the East. In the morning, one of the rescued soldiers wakes with a new arm where the blighted wolf had taken the old one.
 
Back in Pella, Ke-Iko panics: the individual responsible for Yardham is here, and Pella is next. Alan, called now to champion the defenseless, refuses to run.
 
Session 10: Battle for Pella
Rain falls, the same sorcery that preceded Yardham. At the guardhouse, the party finds a kitsune attended by a shapeshifting druid. The kitsune flees through a portal. The druid shifts into a bear, then fights on even after being forced back to his true form, revealing snake-like teeth, then transforms into an enormous reptile. He lands a near-lethal strike on Minky.
 
Alan drives the fight to its conclusion. The druid falls. Across town, fields burn, but the rain holds, and most homes survive intact. The party moves to catch up with Freedrick.
 
Session 11: Inquisitor Harlin
The party catches up to the cart to find some Pella citizens and an Inquisitor named Harlin, investigating the attacks at Yardham and Pella. He pays the party for their account, then informs them that Freedrick and his boys can no longer safely escort the cargo. Harlin teleports the civilians away, leaving the party the cart and the road to Norrven ahead.
 
Alan wonders why, if the empire can teleport people, the chest cannot simply be sent to Hraegard the same way.
 
The party enters Zielgarden and stops at an inn near a large Incarnum crystal.
 
Session 12-13: The Crystalline Wayhouse
At the Crystalline Wayhouse, innkeeper Elan offers free lodging and hot stew. He is friendly and seems experienced with adventurers. Malachi grows suspicious. Investigation turns up missing rations, evidence of a tampering attempt on the chest, blood upstairs, and a secret passage behind a sconce in the basement.
 
Down the passage, the party finds an old mine-like tunnel, an abandoned camp, and a massive Incarnum crystal pillar extending deep underground. They also find a body, likely the woman Cammelia's plant companions had mentioned. Malachi, Minky, and Ke-Iko begin fashioning explosives from the crystals. The party buries the dead woman among her plants.
 
Session 14: Bandits on the Road
A man lying in the road springs an obvious trap. Alan approaches to help and is caught off balance before the party reacts. The ambushers are unskilled, but one, a deserter with an axe, is a real fighter. He recognizes Alan and mentions rumors, either about him specifically or the group. Alan realizes his disguise may only hold for another month at most.
 
The bandits were trying to stop the party from reaching Norrven.
 
Session 15: Faerstow and a New Weapon
The party arrives in Faerstow, which is calm and in good spirits. Alan visits the armory to commission a weapon that can change shape, solving the recurring problem of shattered spears. He is not yet ready to pick up his old sword.
 
Sessions 16-17: The Mayor's Warning and Kloffi
The mayor of Faerstow offers the party tailored clothing and, in private, warns Alan that Inquisitor Harlan has been instructed to report his reappearance. The mayor agrees to stay quiet as long as the party causes no trouble. He can see Alan is not the man he once was.
 
At the Hunter's Guild, the party meets an old warrior fond of a woman named Peony. They convince him they did not kill her and that they intend to make her cousin answer for his role in events. Malachi secures extra mounts and the group rides north toward an old Dagatani fort.
 
Shortly after leaving town, a wounded and enraged Dragon Ogre blocks the road, believing the party are guild hunters pursuing his companion Kloffi, a giant boar that has been soul-blighted. Minky recalls the Ferryman's Incantation, a ritual to send the soul onward peacefully, if the creature can be put to sleep.
 
Session 18: The Ferryman's Incantation
The party finds Kloffi and the guild hunters sent after him, all dead. Minky and Ke-Iko approach invisibly and dose the beast with tranquilizers. The party surrounds it while the drug takes hold. Kloffi thrashes, sprays caustic blood, and Ke-Iko slows it with magic. Malachi wades into the fray. As the beast weakens, Alan binds it and the ritual is performed. Kloffi takes one last breath and passes on.
 
The party rests in the Dragon Ogre's cave. In the night, the Lady of the Stars appears again in a vision. She thanks Alan for performing the mercy she set before him, warns of dark forces and those who would lead him astray, and tells him a moment of judgment is coming. She promises to come to his aid if called, and says he will learn her name when the time is right.
 
Session 19: Approach to the Fort
Morning is quiet. Alan begins training Malachi in physical conditioning. The party decides to visit the old Dagatani fort first and check on Korval on the return to Faerstow. They camp a day out from the fort. Arriving, the structure looks more like a castle than a fort, with guards on the walls and one tower still standing. Ke-Iko volunteers to scout alone.
 
Session 20: The Fort Fight and Ke-Iko's Death
After too long a wait, the party enters the fort. It is crowded with bandits, organized fighters, orc outriders, and Illan. Ke-Iko breaks cover too early. Alan tries to pull the group into a defensible side room, but Ke-Iko takes off alone. The outriders leave, and the party fights through the main hall and into the courtyard, where a sharkman joins the fray.
 
Alan draws his old sword for the first time. The last enemies flee when the sharkman falls. Alan climbs for a view over the wall and sees that Ke-Iko has fallen.
 
He calls out to his patron by name for the first time: "My Lady Seren."
 
Session 21: Seren's Gift
Alan finds himself floating in a sea of stars. Ke-Iko is there, held at the threshold. Ke-Iko resists, unwilling to let others bear the cost of his choices. After quiet convincing, he accepts the gift of life, though he makes clear he will want a full conversation when his work on the Material Plane is done.
 
Back in the waking world, Alan tells the party about Seren. The group sweeps the rest of the fortress and finds a meeting room with notes about Gro'Kata and a possible alliance with a crime group in Highport, along with the bodies of a merchant and his guards, a noble from Norrven, in the holding cells. The party makes camp and Alan prepares to explain everything.
 
Session 23: Faerstow, Luca, and the Road Ahead
The party reports back to Luca in Faerstow in the rain. Alan reflects on whether he should be praying to Seren and what that would even look like. Luca joins them for breakfast, then calls the group to a basement meeting room. His tone is more cautious than usual.
 
The party has a lead on Illan at a place called the Jack-o-Tavern. The gangs are growing dangerously organized, wild elves are emerging from the forest, and someone needs to disrupt both. But first, the original mission remains: the chest must reach Hraegard.