The campaign’s first story episode. Orrin, sent by the Magisterium to support the Nightforge guild, enters a fissure below Wriem with a locked crate that holds Wisp. Rue and Vargus arrive in the same cavern from separate scenes of their own. The party fights moon goblins, closes the fissure’s portals at a cost, and the cavern floor gives way beneath them as the episode ends.
Details
Recap
The GM opened with a recap of the setting: the 200th year of the God-Queen, Eleanor Landaluce, and the 200th anniversary of the end of all war (e01 00:03); Sarvothemisues asleep, breathing the Pale into the seas every 11 years (e01 00:03); The Hollowing Plague tearing across the realms while the God-Queen is silent (e01 00:03); and The Hollow King as an avatar of the plague (e01 00:04). The day’s job is “a totally mundane fissure” with the Nightforge guild (e01 00:04) — see Fissures.
Orrin and the Nightforge guild
Orrin arrives at a closed-off street in Wriem, with a locked crate floating behind him (e01 00:05, e01 00:12). The letter he carries assigns him to support the guild, field-test a specimen composed entirely of anti-essence, and use an anti-essence detection wand (e01 00:07, e01 00:08). The guild’s four members are Caspian, Gilbert, and a pair of tiefling twins (e01 00:05, e01 00:06). Gilbert dispels a barrier over the crack in the ground, and the group descends (e01 00:12, e01 00:13).
Below, the fissure opens onto a large cavern where hundreds of moon goblins pour out of three green portals; the twins say it was supposed to be a tier nine fissure (e01 00:17). An arrow hits Orrin in the shoulder (e01 00:24). He was given no key or code word for the crate (e01 00:20); he melts its lock with acid, and Wisp walks out, says “live combat trials, now we’re talking,” conjures a huge two-handed sword, and runs into the goblins (e01 00:26, e01 00:27). Orrin finds a collar on the ground with a tag reading “Wisp” (e01 00:29), and takes notes and sketches of Wisp fighting for his after-action report (e01 00:31).
Rue and Vargus
Rue is lying in wait in a blacksmith shop for a man when an earthquake hits; when a shadowy humanoid comes in the door with its back to her, she flattens it with her maul — it was a small goblinoid (e01 00:32, e01 00:33). She ends up in a cave with half of her shop, its forge half embedded in the cavern floor, and three small goblinoids staring at her in fear (e01 00:34). A giant goblin steps out of the dark, and the Black Wake comes halfway through a green portal and kills it (e01 00:35, e01 00:36). Vargus is on its deck, next to its skeletal captain, Zachariah (e01 00:38, e01 00:39); a tentacle pulls the ship back into the portal and leaves him behind, face down in a puddle of salt water (e01 00:40, e01 00:41). Rue and Vargus introduce themselves and start clearing rubble (e01 00:45, e01 00:46).
The fight and the portals
An earthquake collapses the fissure’s entrance and crushes the crate; when Orrin asks Wisp for protection, Wisp tells him to stick with him (e01 00:50). When Rue and Vargus clear the rubble, moonlight from a portal in the crack floods in and the dead goblins begin to revive (e01 01:01); the four player characters and the guild fight together (e01 01:02, e01 01:07). Orrin and Vargus are both knocked down (e01 01:23, e01 01:27); Wisp stabilizes Vargus (e01 01:41), and one of the tiefling twins later pours a vial of red liquid into his mouth (e01 01:57). Once back on his feet, Vargus heals Rue and Orrin by touch (e01 01:58, e01 02:01).
To close a portal, Orrin lets it take his left arm, coming back at one hit point with the wound sealed by green energy (e01 01:35, e01 01:37); a cricket given to him by a friend at the Magisterium closes another (e01 01:48, e01 01:52); a third closes around Caspian‘s pinky (e01 01:54, e01 01:55). Orrin says he suspects the Magisterium sent him there to be killed (e01 01:50). See Fissures.
The wand
Orrin checks his wand out of the Nightforge guild’s sight (e01 02:00). It glows pink toward Wisp, Vargus, Rue, and the giant moon goblin, and does nothing for the Nightforge guild or for Orrin himself (e01 02:01).
The fall
The giant moon goblin comes back to life in the moonlight (e01 01:56). Rue breaks a window of her half-shop to save some personal effects while Vargus holds her ankle (e01 02:04). As the goblin stands, the crack widens and the floor gives way beneath everyone (e01 02:05).
Still open
- The wand glows for Wisp, Vargus, Rue, and the giant moon goblin, but not for Orrin; the GM says Orrin knows why, and it isn’t said on-air (e01 02:01).
- The GM says this is Orrin’s second time in a place like the fissure; the first isn’t shown (e01 00:16).
- Wisp came out of the crate asking whether it was “endurance tests” or “pain threshold benchmarks”; why he was in the crate isn’t stated (e01 00:27).
- A long, thick, pale tentacle pulled the Black Wake back into its portal; it isn’t identified (e01 00:40).
- The man Rue is hunting disappeared when she was pulled into the cave, and she hasn’t found him (e01 00:38, e01 01:06).
- Why the Magisterium sent Orrin with a locked crate and no key, and what Josiah’s warning refers to, isn’t stated (e01 01:48).
- The portal in the crack shows a night sky with a full red moon; where it leads isn’t stated (e01 00:58).
- What happens after the floor collapses (e01 02:05).
Episode history
- e01 — first story episode; the fissure below Wriem, the moon goblins, and the four player characters’ meeting established.