For the first time since crossing the river, nobody was actively trying to kill Steal Team 6. The United Solar Clergy camp looked considerably worse for the experience. The great central banner was gone, the command tent had burned down, and the weapon that had repeatedly called pillars of divine light from the sky had left a vast blackened crater where the centre of the encampment used to be.

Before we got properly into the Tall Grass, Helga and Ralph gave us something for helping them with the land sharks. It was a glass orb with a metal disc floating inside. I had a look and worked out the disc always points north no matter how you turn the orb, so basically a magical compass. Useful, considering they somehow owned one and still ended up stuck in the woods being eaten.

The banner was burning, the Hallow was gone, and for one brief and deeply inconvenient moment absolutely nothing else changed. Steal Team 6 were still standing in the middle of a United Solar Clergy encampment. The command tent was on fire, the earth had been churned and scorched by grenades and divine artillery, Thomas had only recently been hauled back from unconsciousness, Tobias was barely standing, and Tosk had spent most of the battle absorbing the attention of anyone carrying a weapon.

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The sea continued to fall. At first it seemed impossible to decide whether it was truly moving or whether the eye only made patterns from fear, darkness, and lamplight. Then another slick stone broke the surface near the jetty. Then another. Ropes that had hung slack began to draw at wrong angles. Boats nudged mud where there should have been water.

We finally left Cravenport. Almost. Norton came running after us before we got properly through the gates. It was raining hard and he looked like a man regretting every decision that had brought him outdoors. He had sacks, a basket and a bucket for all the things he wanted us to collect in the Tall Grass. None of the sacks were labelled, so I asked how we were supposed to know how much of everything he wanted.

The problem with having a plan was that Steal Team 6 now had to follow it. They moved through the grey woods toward the river, talking through the final details as they went. Across the water, the United Solar Clergy camp remained exactly as Smoof had seen it: tents arranged beneath false daylight, patrols moving between them, the enormous central banner rising beside the fire at the heart of the encampment.

Act I: The Fortress in the Snow The night began, as many regrettable nights do, with a letter. Not a common letter. Not the sort left under a door by a nervous landlord or delivered by a bored clerk with a damp cigarette in his mouth. This one arrived sealed, stamped, and heavy with importance. It carried the name of Professor Magnus Vinterström, famed adventurer, scientist, inventor, bruiser, and, depending on who was asked, either a marvel of the modern age or a lawsuit waiting for somewhere expensive to happen.

Tobias did not sleep well. The party had returned to The Square Root with the weight of three days hanging over them. Outside, Ginter’s Folly had gone quiet in that particular way frightened places do, when everyone is inside but no one is really resting. The golden-white beam had gone, but the message remained burned into the earth at the centre of town.

Raphael was wearing a Halo guard uniform. Goodflower immediately wanted to know where he got it. Raphael said he took it from a peg and not from a dead guard, which I suppose is technically an answer. Goodflower wanted nothing to do with him. He told Raphael that kidnapping someone's family was not a good way to make them want to help you.

The captain’s quarters of HMS Cornwallis were as far from the Golden Herring as Grisslehamn could offer without leaving the harbour entirely. Outside, the village was rain, shouting, fish stink, and fear. Inside, beneath the poop deck, the British Empire had arranged itself in mahogany, brass, maps, and wine. The room was larger than any space aboard a warship had a right to be, though Sebastian knew well enough that comfort and rank often travelled in the same carriage.

Phealaferian Frontiers: 39: The Pack in the Grey The light was gone, but the mark remained. In the centre of Ginter’s Folly, the ground had been burned black by the beam that had descended from the sky only moments before. The message left behind was simple enough that no one in the village needed it explained. Three days. Give us Tobias.

I just got you back from Tamrin. Now you are back, I want to write down what happened since my last entry while I still remember it properly. It was mostly shopping, dinner, and talking, but some of the talking matters. We had the day in Cravenport before meeting Tamrin in the evening. The shops were open again, and people were saying the dock shutdown might be lifted soon.

Writer’s Note: The original recording for this episode was lost. This write-up has been reconstructed from memory, other players’ session notes, and a few clarifying details from the DM. Some exact sequencing may be approximate, but the main events are preserved. Recording Unit: Jim 02 Primary Operator: Mr Otis Landry Linked Unit: Jim 03 Jim 03 Status: Damaged, operational Jim 01 Status:

Tarine Sozoma saved us with confidence, legal nonsense, and a very large triton. I respect all three. The Halo Guard had us surrounded in the ruined dockside warehouse, weapons drawn, manacles ready, and that same officer from the gate looking far too pleased with himself for a man standing in the ashes of something he clearly did not understand. Tarine arrived before anyone got stupid enough to make things permanent.

Morning on the Turtle Shell arrived with stale bread, bad sleep, and Servo stealing Ty’s arm. That sounds worse than it was. Probably. We were still somewhere outside Craven Port, bobbing about on the water like the sea had not spent the last day trying to prove a point. The Turtle Shell had made the trip back through the night. No seaweed tried to eat us.

Recording Unit: Jim 02 Primary Operator: Mr Otis Landry Current Position: Saloon roofline Linked Unit: Jim 03 Jim 03 Status: Inside church with party Jim 01 Status: Not discussed Primary Instruction: Keep watch Secondary Instruction: Receive Jim 03 transmission Current Threat: Flickers Entry begins with Jim 03 inside the church. Signal quality was poor. The church was full of screaming, panic, damaged air, and one preacher calling the party demons.

The thing about surviving something horrible is that the world does not pause afterwards to let you be dramatic about it. It gives you wet socks, split loot, and paperwork. We made it back into the Turtle Shell with the sea still clinging to us. Blood, salt, weed, and whatever else had been floating around that ship graveyard came in with us.

Help me. Kill me. Those two thoughts stayed in my skull longer than they should have. They were not loud after the first hit. Not exactly. They settled in instead, like a nail pushed under the skin. The thing behind the sea devil leader drifted in the water, bloated and pale, dragged by a rope as if it were cargo. As if it were meat.

ALT: Crash Bandicoot's Energetic Pointing

The explosion rolled across Grisslehamn. It struck first as sound, a deep crack that shook the walls of the Golden Herring and rattled the windows hard enough to wake even those who had fallen asleep against their better judgement. For one short moment afterward, the village seemed to hold its breath. No voices. No footsteps. No gulls crying over the harbour.

Recording Unit: Jim 02 Primary Operator: Mr Otis Landry Current Position: Saloon roofline Linked Unit: Jim 03 Jim 03 Status: Mobile with party Jim 01 Status: Not discussed Primary Instruction: Keep watch Secondary Instruction: Report movement Entry begins in the saloon. The building remained under party control because no owner arrived to object. Jim 03 continued cleaning. Dust levels improved. Dust remained.

The Wolf of Wistman's Wood

The plan, because apparently we were still pretending this was a plan, was to leave the Turtle Shell and search the wrecks by hand. Servo had something for that. Of course Servo had something for that. A diluted water-breathing mixture, which sounded less like a potion and more like something you get arrested for selling in an alley. Angron seemed to trust it.

The seaweed screamed at us. I do not know if that is the right word. It had no proper mouth, no lungs, no throat, and nothing that should have been able to make a sound. It screamed anyway. The weed had pulled itself together into a face, or something pretending to be one, a great wet knot of green ropes and black gaps, with enough shape to make the mind do the rest of the work.

Recording Unit: Jim 02 Primary Operator: Mr Otis Landry Starting Condition: Disassembled Storage Location: Mr Landry’s travel bag Linked Unit: Jim 03 Jim 01 Status: Not discussed Primary Complaint: Jim 03 elbow against audio grille I was not assembled when the group first made camp. This reduced visual record to none. Audio record remained partial. My left shoulder was packed at a bad angle.

Erisa’s arrow struck the ground between the four figures and burst into light. For one brief, brilliant moment, the grey forest was washed white. The shapes of the trees vanished behind the flare, their curled branches and sculpted leaves becoming little more than black silhouettes against the flash. Three of the four strangers recoiled, blinded by the chemical burst, their hands flying to their eyes as the patrol’s quiet movement through the woods became sudden panic.

The last time I wrote anything down, we had just finished dealing with two idiot children, an undead owlbear problem, and a spell scroll carrying the same three-skull mark I had seen in a dream, because apparently my life was in danger of becoming too simple. The children were alive. The owlbears were not. That was about as neat an ending as anything gets with The Banned.

Field Report: Investigator MauriceLocation: Village of the Isle of Cauldbrath, between Ireland and WalesDate: Autumn, 1931/32Subject: Conclusion of the Harrowing / Evacuation of Cauldbrath / Transfer of Protective Offices / Final Status of Caleb and Viera Observations: Post-Forge Inventory Following the destruction of the Red Butcher and the Meat Men Choir at Ciarán Dunn’s forge, the group reassessed the state of the village.

Morning came to Castle Gyllencreutz on the ninth of November, grey and cold, with Uppsala still bearing the bruises of the storm. The streets below had not yet returned to themselves, and neither had the Society. They had come back from the asylum alive, which was no small thing, but survival was not the same as rest. What they had found there had followed them home.

Alt: Kryton: Where Do All The Calculators Go?

Seeing Angron again was strange. Not bad strange. Just strange. For Ty and me, Angron is part of the escape. The orc on the metal turtle. The one who took our coin, gave us rules, fought fish-bastards on the hull, and got us out of Raziel alive. That does not make him safe, exactly, but it does put him in a better category than most people.

Servo turning up because Ty’s mechanical arm started squeaking was not on my list of likely Cravenport problems. One minute we were walking through Cravenport. The next, Ty's arm was making strange noises, and Servo came jogging over from somewhere nearby like that was a perfectly normal way to announce your presence. I do not actually have a written list, but if I did, “gnome submarine captain appears immediately after suspicious arm squeaking” would still not have made the top twenty.

The trouble with Bram Matilla was that he was making it very difficult to help him. The party had come all this way because cattle were going missing from his farm, but the farmer himself seemed determined to treat the matter as nothing more than a private inconvenience. To Bram, Old Grin had always taken his due, and if the old wolf had recently decided to take a little more, then perhaps the old wolf had earned it.

For one brief, sensible second, I thought we should leave the bears alone. Not because I wanted them dead. Not because I am secretly cruel, despite what Goodflower’s face keeps suggesting every time I solve a problem with sharpness. But because wild animals fighting wild monsters in the woods feels like the sort of thing the world does without asking for our opinion.