Chapters 32-35:
We hire Berty Levy, a master of irregular warfare and a former explorer-warrior-dissident-criminal-priest-spy-mercenary-what-have-you, to tutor Biliku and Uttu. He is a rather eccentric man with a questionable past, but very good at his job and cheap to boot. He immediately sets to work turning our girls into Che Guevaras.
King Albrecht invites us as key witnesses to the trial of House Eberhardt, where he lays out all the evidence we have gathered (and made up) and even brings out Trakk’s kidnapped son and granddaughter, who were mutilated during their time as hostages. This was a masterful show by the King, the nobility applauds his justice and the whole House Eberhardt is sentenced to death alongside everyone who backed them. The hangings went non-stop for a day and a half. Their fall from grace left a huge power vacuum in Myrgard with a lot of properties now up for sale, which we instruct Mayer, master banker that he is, to seize with an aggressive approach. We choose to take over a security firm, as well as get our hands on some of the merchant contracts regulating trade between Myrgard and Stoneheim.
Trakk’s mutilated family weighs heavily on Derryth's and Thais' conscience, so we decide to persuade Six-Winds-Soaring-Eagle on sharing his Heron Guard expertise to help us with a ritual that will restore them to full health. He is willing, but we are interrupted by a drunken and ornery Damh of House Brannon, the Empire’s ambassador and Eagle’s current ‘boss’ who is distraught over the loss of his son Colin during the Palace siege (the cavalry officer from before), and insists that the Heron Guard stays at his post. We don’t let it lie there and suggest that we should go for a drink in memory of the man’s fallen son. He accepts our offer and takes us to the Silver Flame, the most elite and storied social club in the city. Thais really works her magic there, gets him all drunk and mushy, we sing a song in remembrance of his boy, and he caves in. We also get two one-time passes to the club if we ever want to give a repeat performance.
We also learn from Damh that the relationship between the Empire and the Kingdom have soured after the trial, and that the head of House Brannon have convinced Alric to recall the embassy. The Dwarven Kingdom is now on its own.
We proceed with our plan for the healing ritual for which we buy most of the mandrake roots in the whole Kingdom thanks to Albrecht’s sponsorship, but he insists that we turn this into a PR event for him in full view of the nobility. The ritual works perfectly, but the ceremony is disrupted by House Eberhardt assassins who aim for us and the King. Berty Levy rolled a natural 20, however, and have killed them all with chipped plates and a spoon, all the while disguised as a potted fern. Don't ask.
After being hailed as Heroes yet again, we set out of the city to attend to one of our acquisitions, the mercenary company by the name of Blackrock Securities, formerly belonging to the Eberhardts.
Chapters 36-41:
We arrive at their largest piece of property, Fort Blackrock, introduce ourselves to our troops and officers, discuss future plans and past history with them and get a tour of the place. When we enter the treasury vault for an inspection, instead of gold we find a party of ghols that have tunneled beneath the fort and are stealing all of our money.
We aren’t cool with that, so we intervene, and after a battle that involves throwing bronze electrified midgets around we succeed in capturing their leader, a Pretty Gholish Tsun-Princess Nanshe, 'the Hand of Justice' (9/10 on the ghol hotness scale), but her forces escape with the loot. We interrogate the prisoner and learn that she and most of the ghol leadership are basically slaves to the Watcher (they all have tracking necklaces bonded to their flesh), and that she is here to relay that the Watcher wants to meet us. Later in our quarters Berty Levy tells us about Connacht and how he turned the slaves of the Trow against the masters, demolishing their empire from the inside, and suggests that we do the same here.
We agree; make an alliance of convenience with Nanshe; modify our lead gloves into a collar to hide her presence from the Watcher and his beasts by dampening her necklace signal, and let her escape while we are 'pursuing' the ghols who stole our money. She mostly held up her part of the bargain and retuned our gold and half of our diamonds to us, but stole the other half since she doesn’t want the same fate that befell the Trow Empire’s rebellious slaves - a complete and utter extermination - for her people. But we’re kinda-sorta friends with her now. I think.
She also mentions that we shouldn’t be returning to Blackrock since the whole operation was a distraction and the Thin White Mage has probably seized it already, BUT THIS IS CODEXIA, and so we turn back to get them off our property even as we are chased by the Watcher's forces. The Fort has indeed fallen into enemy hands, so we end up trapped between its defenders and whatever is following us. We rig the slope leading from the mountain the fort is built on with explosives, and offer a battle to our pursuers. When the raiders led by TWM come out of the fort to strike us in the rear, we blow up the satchel charges and watch their remains rain from the sky. The fortress is retaken, and the Thin White Mage is killed again. Too bad death does not stick to him and the Watcher’s armies are all coming down on us. Berty urges us to capitalize on our stroke of good luck and do not let the Watcher solidify his position in the mountains. We send word to any allies we can reach and bunker down in an anticipation of a siege.
One of our officers, Rand, deserts us. We don't make a big deal out of it.
Chapters 42-48:
We clear out the ghol remnants in the fort, huddle up in the fortress and strategize. Bari and the Pathfinders are quick to answer our call, and Ceannard and his Arrows show up soon after that. Not a day later we catch the sight of the Watcher's main army - about 400 thralls, as many soulless, only a few ghols thanks to the rebellion Nanshe started, and about 50 mages of varying strengths, led by undead archmages of enormous power, as well as TWM, again. We spare a few moments to take in how fucked we are, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS BY NOW, and thus we get to work.
It seems like TWM is offering us battle yet again by sending an advance party ahead of the main army and having them construct a building of unknown purpose not far from the fort. Not willing to find out what it is the hard way, we sally out of the fort and duke it out with them. This time, our gambit is Lyssa’s eagles: we put spell rings on them which could unleash the Greater Elemental Bolts on command. As the TWM goes in for the kill and aims for our leadership using a large shard of the Watcher to bind our souls, we commence Operation: Avian Assault, and the birds swoop down on the mage and destroy him with a double airstrike.
We pick up TWM's journal and learn the name of one of the enemy archmages/generals marching their forces on our fort, a Shade by the name of Gullveig. We also learn the purpose of the pavilion TWM tried to build - it is a magical cannon of immense destructive strength aimed at our fort and designed to be powered by eight mages. We rig it to blow up in case they ever attempt to fire a shot, and withdraw to the fortress with the enemy on top of us. Unfortunately, we are ambushed by yet another Shade on the way back, and are nearly wiped out. We manage to break through, thanks to Bari's and our tracker Neel's heroics, but they are cornered by the undead forces and have to dive in the mountain tunnels to make their escape. Their fate is unknown.
The enemy falls for our trap not long after, and the pavillion blows up with eight of their best mages trapped inside, severely crippling their offensive. However, Gullveig remains alive and now is the sole commander of the whole army. Much more careful that her deceased colleagues, she takes a patient approach as her forces sit outside our walls for a week without doing anything. She is preparing something, but we have no way of knowing what it is.
Encouraged by our recent success with the eagles, we make efforts to modify our spells to allow animal teleportation. Sadly, the first attempt goes FUBAR, and our guinea hare ends up picking a bit of an extra while travelling through the Void between the worlds. Thankfully, it is just our acquaintance, Morpheus. He offers us a deal - if we bring him more souls for his ever-growing collection, he will give us power, information and wealth. We decline for now.
We have Lyssa recruit some of the local critters to help with the scouting of the underground tunnels and passages, and that is how we come upon the rodent community of fort Blackrock. Apparently, the previous owners of the fort experimented on the local mice and rats and that made them extremely intelligent. There are even mice who can cast spells, being raised on a diet of the energon dust mixed with whiskey! Taking advantage of this opportunity, we enlist the help of the mice and rat clans and commence Operation: Molehill. We have our rat and hare (and even some marmot) volunteers dig up a burrow under the Gullveig's command tent and start filling it with gunpowder and any other explosives the rats can carry. Over the course of the week we have enough to blow the undead commander up to pieces before she could spring her own trap.
The undead army routs. One of the surviving necromancers takes charge of the remnants and tries to buy his fellows some time to escape, but they ultimately fail and we utterly crush and slaughter them. As if on cue, we receive a message from King Albrecht that the dwarven army will come to the fortress to reinforce us and beat back the undead. Uh, thanks, I guess.
Chapters 49-50:
We once again employ our rodents, now to map out the tunnel system and discover the fate of our missing people. It is easy to find our way into the mountain with their help, whereupon we encounter some truly fucked up Lovecraftian abominations, flesh-eating slug-centipedes that communicate through song, which they use to hypnotize their prey, and steal people’s heads to attach them to the creatures' bodies. The people we have come looking for have been horribly mutilated - Bari is now no more that a head on a torso, - but they are kept alive by some strange substance that seals their wounds. There is also a mage from the Thin White Mage's entourage, an immortal child, bound to the slab together with them. The eldritch horrors apparently do not discriminate between the Watcher's followers and ours.
The things obviously want to add our heads to their collection. We disagree, and remembering our encounter a few days before, we summon the Demon Prince Morpheus to cover our retreat in exchange for the child's soul. A three-way rock off ensues - Morpheus and his boys set up a concert stage and start blasting Dio on max volume (no, I am not joking; they fought off singing shoggoths with the Power of Rock), while we flee to the surface with our men howling a ribald song at a top of their lungs to drown out the creatures’ enthralling melodies (no, I’m not joking; we executed a literal singing retreat as our cadence). This has resulted in the most awesome battle scene to date and is truly a highlight of the CYOA.
Back at the fort, we receive a request to return to Myrgard from Albrecht and a direct challenge for another battle from the Thin White Mage, who is waiting for us in the mountains to the south - which is quite handy, as Morpheus comes to us in a dream and promises us any favor that would be in his power to grant in exchange for the child's master.
Chapters 51-52:
We contact Morpheus again and establish a contract requesting his protection in the Dreaming in exchange for entertaining him with various stories from our lives, a la Scheherazade. We also ask him to contact Nanshe - who has broken the ghols from under the Watcher’s influence and has now crowned herself their Golden Empress - through a dream and propose that she ambushes the TWM’s forces in the south and helps us capture him for her share of rewards.
Back in the waking world, the rodents have discovered a secret dungeon in our fort, and we go down to explore. Inside, we find a half-spider demon named Nephila, who is a daughter of the Spider Goddess and Morpheus. She has been trapped in the fortress since its foundation and knows its every secret. She has seen the first dwarven kings, Balor and his Fallen Lords, necromancers, ghols, mercenaries and scheming nobles as the fort changed hands through millennia. Her webs are woven into the very stones of the fort, allowing her to eavesdrop on anything that takes place within its walls.
Not thinking too hard on it, we make a blood oath with her that we won’t work to knowingly harm one another and release her from the prison. We ask her about the origins of the Spider Goddess and learn how she came to power. Apparently, the Goddess usurped her plane from an original Dark God by the name of the Swimmer with the help of her 7 sisters, 3 princes of the Dreaming (Morpheus and his 2 brothers), and two other demons Nephila knows little about. We ask her about the dealings of House Eberhardt, and learn that they opposed House of Albrecht because they believed that the Crown and most of the Great Houses supporting it were conspiring with the Dark (oh, the irony!). There may be a traitor in the royal family serving something
unnatural, and half the reinforcements the King sent to our fort are led by the Lord of a compromised House. We also learn the our deserter officer, Rand, is an agent of the Spider Goddess and her cult, and are warned not to trust him.
We give her money and a recommendation letter to one of our friends in Muirthemne, but first we ask that she and Ceannard collapse the tunnels leading to the fort to seal the rhyming beasts under the mountain if any of them survived our musical onslaught.
At this point the dwarven Lords sent by Albrecht finally arrive and act like total jealous dicks to us. We confirm our suspicions that at least one of them is a possible traitor and a cultist, but we still have to leave the fort in their care while we go back to the capital on the King’s summons.
While we were gone, Mayer pursued an aggressive approach to the expansion of our financial empire, which cost him an eye and a couple of fingers over a disagreement in policies, but he came out ahead in the end. It also greatly strained our relationships with some of the Great Houses, which may partly answer why most of the Lords want us dead.
In the meantime, Albrecht is beset by enemies on all sides and is very much concerned for the survival of his country. The south is a total mess - the dwarves lost contact with Stoneheim, and there are reports of a major clusterfuck happening down there (ghol raiders, the Watcher’s armies, Mazzarin’s return, demonic invasion, Eberhardt rebels etc all clashing together). The army was mobilized and have moved to respond to these threats, but Albrecht does not believe that they will be able to succeed. There are also rumors that Lord Eberhardt was resurrected somehow (it appears that the research on the clones Dr. Miosguinn did did not die with him), and this news have revitalized the rebellion. The Kingdom is being torn apart, and there are no people left Albrecht can trust safe for us.
He narrowed down the potential traitors to specific Houses and some of his ambitious children, though he knows nothing for a fact. He requests our help resolving either the conspiracy in Myrgard or the crisis in the south. We take a balanced approach and will depart for Stoneheim in a few days, after we have refilled our supplies and procured some leads that would help Albrecht unfold the conspiracy in our absence.
Chapters 53-56.
Albrecht's children currently in the city are all from his first wife: Timo, Albrecht's second son, right hand and shadow chancellor; Wenzel, Albrecht's third son, a never-do-well, a drunk, and a crime lord to boot; and Jan, Albrecht's fourth son, a Professor in the Royal Magical Adademy. We deside to start in the reverse order.
We meet Jan in his private study, which he had devoted to researching the cult of the Spider Goddess. He dodges our questions and does not trust us, so we use a bit of deception, pretending to be fellow scientists searching to exchange our findings with a colleague. He caves in and demonstrates a number of documents that our girls, who formerly belonged to the cult in Muirthemne, readily translate for him. However, once it comes to translating the story about the origins of the Goddess, Jan suddenly excuses himself and bolts out of the study without so much as a goodbye.
We pursue him to the hidden temple in the deepest levels of the Academy. There, we find our dwarf in possession of a strange spearhead. Jan is convinced that we are cultists and threatens to destroy the artefact, rather then see it fall into the hands of fanatics. He is interrupted by actual cultists, led by Rand's clone, who followed us to the temple. It is a bit of a close call, but we manage to wiggle our way out of the situation by playing the middle-man between the hostile parties, and then slaughter the opposition when they give us an opening.
Apparently, the spearhead was designed to kill anything, even a God. It may have been the same one that an ally of the Spider Goddess used to dispose of the Swimmer. It might be used to get rid of the Watcher as well, but it needs to be activated, first, and that secret is lost to time. Jan promises us to look into that.
The story of the origins of the Spider Goddess mentions another two 'demons' Nephila spoke about: a 'mortal wanderer', whom we strongly suspect to be Faceless, and 'a wyrm of flame and shadow'. No information is available on that one, though it is likely that if Morpheus, the Goddess and Faceless are still around, so is the Wyrm.
Chapters 57-59.
Albrecht also has a number of bastard children, the most interesting of which is Letta, an owner of a small mercenary group 'Ten Sovereigns'. We've heard good things about her, so we think it might me worthwhile to recruit her and her team. However, when we reach the tavern the Sovereigns are supposedly staying at, we soon learn that Letta and a half of their number were kidnapped by Wenzel, who now demands a ransom for their freedom. As we have scheduled to meet the jerk on the next day anyway, we decide to kill two birds with one stone, and have Albrecht summon him to the Palace for a talk.
The talk does not bear fruit, and as it ends, we are no closer to understanding if Wenzel is involved in treasonous activity than we were before. So we settle on tricking him into freeing Letta by obtaining a sample of his writing and forging a letter to his lieutenants holding her imprisoned. Wenzel leaves us without suspecting a thing, but he will likely be furious when he finds out.
Unsatisfied with the results of our investigation, we order one of Wenzel's captains captured and secretly brought to us for an interrogation. Meanwhile, Letta agrees to look into one of our leads - a series of strange graffiti with the words 'Unforgotten, Unforgiven' appearing all over the capital.
Chapters 60-61.
We have convinced the King to hire a company of battlemages called the Seekers to be sent south with us, and we go meet their leader, the Old Man. The mages are really creepy, and they appear to serve someone, though they do not trust us enough to say who. They seem to oppose demons and Dark Gods, though, which may be a mixed blessing, considering how deep we are mired in their affairs.
Timo is the last suspect on our list. We arrive in his office in the Silver Flame and have a little chat about the current situation in the Kingdom. Timo does not hide that he is a believer in absolutist monarchy, and that he has more than a few disageements with his father over how the Kingdom should be run, but he seems solid. He offers us to work for him instead of Albrecht, which we politely decline.
Timo is certain there is no traitor in the family, and that it was due to Wenzel's carelessness that some of the state secrets were leaked. It remains to be seen whether it is really the case.
We arrange for a meeting in the Dreaming with the sister of the Spider Goddess, the Silver Lady, who is well-disposed towards us, and has a desire to stop her sibling. We try to cross-reference the information we have with her, and learn that the Silver Flame was founded by her daughter, that Mayer is an agent of Morpheus, that the Wyrm may have taken an interest in us, and a few other interesting and disturbing facts.
Morpheus tells us that Nanshe informed him she had a 'parcel' for us, and that we should hurry to claim it. We assemble our forces and prepare to head south.