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Session_6_Recap

Session 6 Recap

The clue that followed them out of the Unloading Bay was small enough to fit in Prill’s hand.
It was only a scrap of paper left behind by the elf who had vanished during their meeting with Areska and Rynna—but the black smudge across it was enough to change the air around the whole group. Prill recognized it almost at once. This was not ordinary ink. It was the same soot-dark substance tied to Tomas Venn, the same mark connected to Soot & Ash. Whether the paper had been left by accident or design, the implication was the same: someone connected to Stillforge’s shadowed operatives had been near enough to watch who came and went from Areska’s meeting place. The party left with more than one problem on their hands. They had a kidnapping lead to chase, and now a fresh reason to believe they were being watched in return.
Still, the kidnapped Tideborn had to come first.
Rather than waiting for dark, the party decided to move immediately on the strongest lead Rynna had given them: Blackmire Dyes and Tannery, the business linked to the cart witnesses had seen used in the abductions. The deeper they went into the outer reaches of the Gold Market, the more the district changed around them. The polished wealth nearer the heart of Vi-Upper thinned into something rougher and more practical—less ornament, more labor; fewer silk flourishes, more callused hands. Blackmire fit that edge of the district perfectly: a small, humble, long-standing shop that looked more worn than sinister at first glance.
And that, in its own way, made it more unsettling.
As they approached, Bodrin noticed what mattered first: tracks heading around the back, and tucked near a hay bale, a cart bearing the Blackmire name. That alone would have been enough to sharpen suspicion. But when Prill examined it more closely, she found something worse—blood, dried into the wood at the rear. Not a dramatic smear, not enough to scream its story to the street, but enough for someone who knew what to look for. The cart had carried something more troubling than leather and dye.
The party split.
Silas, Brixton, and Lyra went in through the front like customers. Brixton remained under his disguise, careful not to advertise what he really was. Silas took the lead with easy confidence, spinning a story about supply chains, contracts, leather tolerances, and merchant redundancy so smoothly that it almost sounded like truth. Harlan, the older proprietor behind the counter, received him warmly enough. The shop itself looked exactly like what it claimed to be: a showroom for samples, with strips of leather displayed in different shades, a few carpets, and the feel of a business that had been standing for generations.
Silas pressed with professional politeness, asking after clients, orders, and production capacity. Harlan answered without much hesitation. He named legitimate customers—a tailor, hunters, a rug-maker—and produced books and ledgers that appeared, at least on first inspection, to support the story. Business, he admitted, had been slow. He had no active orders at the moment. Nothing in the front room screamed conspiracy. Nothing in Harlan’s manner did either. If he was lying, he was doing it beneath decades of ordinary habit.
That uncertainty mattered.
Because outside, the others were finding a different kind of truth.
While Silas kept Harlan talking and eventually lured him around back to inspect storage and tools, Prill, Vaelrik, and Bodrin worked the edges of the building. There was no clean rear entrance into anything secret—only a side door into the same front area, a balcony above, and a second-story window. Vaelrik used his street sense to judge the rhythm of the area, watching foot traffic and finding the opening when no one would be looking. Bodrin offered the brute practicality the moment required, giving Prill a boost upward. Prill took to the climb with enough practiced ease to answer a dozen questions no one asked aloud. She reached the balcony unseen and found a locked door leading into the second floor.
That was where subtlety began to fray.
Prill could not pick the lock. Bodrin, eventually joining her, solved the problem the way Bodrin often solved problems: with a crowbar, careful intent, and more force than the wood could survive. It was not elegant. It was not truly quiet. But it worked.
Inside, they found not a villain’s den, but modest living quarters.
A bed. A stove. A table. Books. Notes on tanning methods. A chest with a small amount of coin and silver that looked like household money, not hidden wealth. Letters from someone named Harriet Blackmire, written like family correspondence from a daughter who had moved away. A music box. On the surface, the upstairs room made the place feel painfully ordinary. Poor, even. Human in the broadest sense of the word. It complicated everything.
And then Prill found what had been hidden.
Beneath the bed lay a set of longer papers, deliberately tucked away and written in Dwarven. Neither she nor Bodrin could read them, but the very fact that they had been concealed was enough. They took those papers and nothing else, leaving the household money and personal effects undisturbed. Whatever Blackmire Dyes and Tannery was, the party had not yet proven that its owners deserved to be robbed along with their secrets.
Meanwhile, the front-room deception kept evolving in stranger directions.
With Harlan led outside, Lyra and Brixton were left with Lessa, his wife, who swiftly and cheerfully decided on her own version of events: clearly these two were some kind of couple shopping for shipboard comforts. Brixton leaned into it, improvising talk of hammocks in need of replacement. Lyra, reaching for a distraction and perhaps inspired by panic, claimed she was prone to seasickness and needed curtains to keep from seeing the water. It was absurd enough to work. When Lyra then pretended she might be ill, Lessa, practical as ever, moved to help—offering a cauldron in the back.
And in the back, Lyra noticed the real thing.
A draft at her feet. Blood on the brick around a floor panel. A space below.
She caught Brixton’s eye and gave him what warning she could without betraying the act. Brixton understood immediately. Then, because subtlety had already been stretched thin everywhere else in the operation, he chose the most Brixton solution possible: he cast magical darkness across the room.
The world vanished for everyone but him.
Lessa cried out in alarm, suddenly blind. Lyra played along at once, folding confusion into the performance. Brixton sold his own surprise loudly enough to keep suspicion pointed anywhere but the truth, then slipped through the dark to the floor panel and worked it open. Beneath it, hidden from the showroom above, was a stair leading down into a cellar. Using Devil’s Sight, Brixton moved through the magical black as though it were merely another kind of lantern light and descended alone.
Above him, the distraction was beginning to tear.
Lessa reached the door and shouted for Harlan. The darkness still covered enough of the threshold to keep her from seeing too much too soon, and Lyra stayed with her, trying to contain the chaos. Outside, Bodrin, Prill, and Vaelrik had only just gotten clear of the upstairs intrusion, with Vaelrik having earlier created enough of a street-side commotion to keep Harlan’s attention from turning at the wrong moment. It was all fraying at once—plans colliding, timings slipping, each thread barely holding the others together.
Below, Brixton found something far larger than a hidden crawlspace.
The cellar itself was small and dark, no more than a transitional chamber. Ahead of him stood double doors with light on the other side and the sound of voices beyond—calm voices, not alarmed ones. He hesitated just long enough to realize he had already gone too far to retreat cleanly.
So he opened the door.
Beyond it lay a broad underground workshop: vats of dye, barrels marked for trade, hides hanging from walls, tools for carving and stretching leather, the full shape of a real working tannery concealed beneath the ordinary shop above. And seated in the middle of it, at a table, were two armored figures.
Each wore a copper skull mask.
They turned and looked straight at him.
And that was where Session 6 ended.

Appendix: Session 6 Key Facts & Threads

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