The Betrothal Ball, and the Long Fall After

The GM set the scene: Ironwatch, southern Bearhold, on the edge of a depthless gorge called the Abyss, fifteen years into a peace nobody young remembers being without.

A ball was underway at the lord's manor to celebrate Adrian Valecourt's return from the military academy and to announce his betrothal to a noblewoman.

Lord Garrick Valecourt was described as the first of his noble line, raised to Warden of the Abyss by legendary feats in the field, an archer who has held the abyssal line for fifty years.

The Montclairs were established as a much older house, far across the kingdom, respected but quiet for generations and dealing in commerce rather than war.

Positions were taken at the ball: Lia in servant's clothes with a tray in the courtyard, Lux lingering and chatting, Shim at the courtyard entrance, Ottora circulating with mushrooms, Rowan chatting with guests.

Lux used a religion roll to notice something divine and mythic clinging to the plain-looking serving girl, and started shadowing her.

Lia established that she keeps her bright orange hair dyed brown and stuffed under a bandana, and that it keeps escaping.

Ottora offered a yellow mushroom to Lady Elara in the gazebo and was politely, disgustedly declined.

Shim introduced himself to Lux as a sailor and merchant-for-hire attending in his captain's stead, and asked about the dragon's insectoid-less wings.

Shim offered to introduce Lux to a sea dragon he knows, guardian of a far coast; Lux found the name maddeningly familiar but could not place it.

Lia brought Lord Garrick a glass of champagne in the great hall and got a look of genuine curiosity from a man everyone else gives a wide berth.

Lux quietly told the head steward about the goblin who kept telling guests the mushrooms weren't poisonous.

Vosk pressed Lord Garrick on the soldiers' unmet contract: bunks, personal space, liquor rations, and shorter watches.

Garrick admitted the kingdom had cut his funding, that he pays soldiers out of his own pocket, and that he would rather have 30,000 disgruntled men on the wall than 5,000 comfortable ones when the Abyss returns.

Vosk warned of protest, sick-call and desertion; Garrick said the Montclair marriage might bring in funds and gave the nod of dismissal.

Vosk dropped a silver on Lia's tray as a tip; she told him she didn't need money and walked off.

Ottora was sent to the kitchen to surrender the mushroom plate; the head chef nearly exploded and had cut the mushrooms himself.

Adrian was seen quietly leaving the gazebo and heading toward the dining hall.

Lux told the party the story of lindworms — that killing one curses the killer in a debilitating way, leaving them alive but a passenger in their own body.

A strong gust of wind and a concussive boom came from up the hill: the Adventurers' Building, the city's anchor for all gates and teleportation, was billowing fire and smoke.

Lord Garrick stood up and vanished, reappearing in his archer's tower to arm up before teleporting away with an order to stay put.

Lia leapt from the six-story tower and slid down the wall into a tumble; Lux floated down onto her shoulder and Shim followed with a swashbuckler's fall.

Lux conjured a flaming spear into Lia's hands and cast Guidance on Shim as the party ran.

Ghouls appeared out of thin air throughout the manor and guests began screaming; the party turned back into the great hall.

Lia tackled a ghoul off a guest and was bitten, taking ghoul fever's first stage.

Vosk taunted ghouls off wounded civilians and stood as a guardian for the party.

Rowan and Ottora cast Divine Lance and area heals to burn the undead down and stabilise the dying.

The head chef held the kitchen doorway alone and swept ghoul bodies out of it.

Out in the courtyard, a failing guard line was holding back ghouls pouring from a magical portal maintained by three hooded figures.

Lux cast Needle Darts using three silver coins as ammunition.

Shim tumbled past a cultist and broke the concentration of the last one holding the portal open, collapsing it.

The fight ended; the party mopped up the last ghouls and cultists and began treating the wounded.

The dead cultists were found to carry almost nothing but articulate finch-shaped masks.

Lady Elara was noted to be unnervingly calm, and said Adrian had gone to the wine cellar for a rare bottle for the celebration.

Shim and Vosk went down to the wine cellar and found a second, smaller and very stable portal, with one cultist concentrating on it.

Behind the cellar door they found Adrian Valecourt bound and slung over the shoulder of a figure in a raven mask, unlike the cultists' finch masks.

Vosk disarmed the raven-masked figure of Adrian, shoved him into a wall, and kicked Adrian clear.

The raven-masked man carried Adrian up the stairs; Shim sprinted after him shouting for someone to stop the man in the raven mask.

Lia charged across the courtyard and disarmed the raven-masked man of Adrian a second time.

Beyond the wall an enormous serpent rose out of the Abyss, naming itself Thessarak, the Coiled Prophet, and preaching the love of its lord to the sun-blessed creatures of the surface while the wall's defences opened fire.

The raven-masked man pulled out a token brimming with more power than anyone present had ever sensed and snapped it.

Lia's reactive strike cracked the raven mask before it broke, revealing an unremarkable man's face beneath.

The whole party found itself in freefall over the dead centre of the Abyss, the raven-masked man wishing them a farewell as he vanished.

Adrian was left behind in the courtyard rather than taken — the abduction was interrupted.

After a very long fall in total darkness, the party crashed through layers of sticky white webbing that finally broke their fall.