The party began in the Scarlet Shield Tavern, conferring with Tilly and Finn Thistle. They agreed to let them continue their research, tasking them specifically with investigating the Heart Tree and keeping an eye out for Bixby, who was expected to arrive in Balandel soon. They also agreed for Velara follow The Queen throughout the city, as she had been acting suspiciously.
Afterward, the party headed into the shopping district. Among several stops, they visited the Silverbark Armory, where they discovered the owner was the elf they had previously rescued from Granny Louise’s enchanted hut. His daughter, white-eyed and strange, locked eyes with Ferinthria and recited a fragment of what they later confirmed to be the Prophecy of the Wild Spark.
Once their shopping concluded, the group turned their focus to the disappearance of Alith Vaelrin. Their investigation led them to the Crypt of House Vaelrin, where Momeline picked the lock with ease. Inside, they found a quiet crypt containing a single coffin and an ominous book on Blood Magic, identical to the one seen during the cult’s summoning ritual in Lusteris. Momeline pocketed it, anticipating future use.
While inspecting the vault, the group was ambushed by cultist scouts. They dispatched them quickly. Lirielle detected a lingering blood magic aura, and Momeline realized, remembering the cultists’ wounded hands, that blood was the key to opening the hidden passage behind the altar.
Inside the deeper crypt, the party first explored the right-hand chamber. Momeline again picked the lock, revealing a disturbing scene: preserved corpses, including those of Tessa Durn and Kaelen Rynn, who they had killed. They suspected Jesse Durn might be nearby, but they did not find him.
Across the hall, the party found a guard asleep on duty. Momeline assassinated him in an instant. The room held a few useful items, and the party used illusion magic to lure the supposed boss, Myrhan, from his chamber. Lirielle used Prestidigitation to create a burning smell, drawing Myrhan out. Ferinthria cast Invisibility on Momeline, who slipped into the boss’s room unnoticed.
However, Myrhan returned and sealed the door, trapping Momeline inside. She attempted to cast Sleep, but he resisted and retaliated. A pitched battle followed. Though he was a formidable foe, the party brought him down. Before dying, he placed a black marble on a nearby coffin. As it sank in, the coffin began to glow purple—and then came the knocking.
Leaving Dravencoles on guard, the others searched Myrhan’s room. They found a letter addressed to Blacksoul Silas, revealing that the cult’s plans were moving forward and referencing a “ring”. The group rewrote the letter to sow confusion and looted the chamber.
Returning to the crypt, they made the fateful decision to open the coffin. From it emerged a spectral figure, an Elven Revenant, who hissed, “You are not my killers,” before phasing through the ceiling and vanishing.
Late that night, the party returned to the tavern and regrouped with Finn and Tilly. They had uncovered little on the Heart Tree (beyond its significance in druidic symbology), but they confirmed that the First Shrine was real, though hidden somewhere in Solaris.
Velara returned shortly after. She reported trailing the Queen across the city and into the royal library, where the Queen vanished into a locked room deep in the library. Velara claimed she remained unseen and vowed to resume surveillance later that evening.
Meanwhile, the group researched the prophecy the girl had recited at the armory. Within the Book on the relics Lirielle had found in the Marble Academy library, they found the full text of the Prophecy of the Wild Spark. Based on its contents, they theorized that Ferinthria may be the Wild Spark and that the relics they’ve acquired (and still seek) are intimately tied to her fate.
Before Velara retired for the night, they decided to send a coded message to Lyrian Brightwind. Wary of it being intercepted, they kept it simple:
“Hey pants, any status update?”
A phrase they knew only he would understand.