We take Marlowe’s unconscious body and put it over a horse, then start riding toward the town. Worried that we would be caught, we split up and Celestiah, Max and Kargrath head into the sewer and go into the Academy. Celestiah makes a shield bubble around them to help traverse the nasty environment.

Gordon and Felric take the horses back into town, then head over to the gates of the Academy and keep watch.

The first group make it to the Academy and ask for a temporary place to stay. Then we meet back up at the barracks. Celestiah fetches the healer. It will take five days.

Celestiah uses all of her magic ability, tiring herself out completely, to slow the decay of the crystal heart. It gives us 18 additional hours, which gives us less than 3 days before it completely expires.

We head to Hogs Dogs. After drinking for a while, we see a guard from the Thaumaturgical Society across the way. We discuss murdering him or something else heinous, then we decide to leave instead.

Gordon uses magic to speed Marlowe’s healing, reducing his recovery time to 3 days, and he has a vision:

“Brandon Three Stars forged the settings for the Seven, not of metal alone, but of star-iron fallen in the age when the Mordun still sang. He believed each Heart needed a vessel that remembered the stars, or the Maiden’s flight would shake the vessel apart. His mark, the forge with three stars, is no family crest. It is a warning: three of She Who Fled remain in the iron. Do not forge a vessel for the eighth without them.”

We head to the Menagerie to check on the other pieces of the contraption. Celestiah sees that there is a ward on this place, and is able to deactivate it. We find the pieces of the machine but we don’t understand how to put them together.

Kargrath and Max look through the place and find some of Marlowe’s notes.

We bring all of the pieces to the Academy and lay them all out. But Celestiah thinks that Marlowe may have missed something. The pieces aren’t coming together. She keeps seeing three stars in the design, exactly as in Gordon’s vision.

We go to the Gilded Page and ask the proprietor about the kidnapping of Marlowe. He gives a very thorough recounting. He describes the two automata that took him, and he says that they took him to the East. The only thing he said was “Run!” though it’s not clear who he said it to.

Celestiah says that she wants to learn more about the automata at the academy. She will take some time to go and do some research. She does some scrying and sees that they are several hours away by now.

We go to the Silver Stag Stables to get a horse. After setting off and riding for over an hour, things start to look strange and the trees are stunted. The horses are nervous.

We finally reach the location where they are holding Marlowe. We figure out how to open the doors using a central lever. Descending to his location, we hear him being tortured. He is saying that he “doesn’t know anything about a heart.”

We hide in the hallway. From here, Celestiah summons her cat familiar and casts a protective spell over Marlowe.

We had stayed up all night last night to get away from the keep, so we are exhausted. We have 2 more days until the stagecoach comes to pick us up.

Celestiah has the key to the observatory. Felric says that he can’t leave a mystery alone, and that we should all check it out together. After a while we head up to the second story and she opens it.

Felric finds in a small, hidden cabinet a set of 5 clay tablets created by the Singhara — the lion people — called the Stalking of the Star Paths. He knows very little about what they are describing, but it’s a long lost magical tradition about how they do Celestial Hunting Magic. These likely haven’t been seen in millenia.

Using the Arcane Lexicon Lens, Felric reads them and he sees they are called Stellar Hunting. There are 4 main mechanics: Track Star Shadow, Pounce Across the Void, the Unmaking Gaze, and Mantle of the Night Sky.

The Ushuri-Nga believed that the stars themselves were the scattered remains of a celestial being, She Who Fled Across the Sky.

At the end, scratched in — do not gaze too long at the Heart Star. We have closed our third eye forever.

• Track the Star-Shadow — Augment + Divination: Find any creature whose name or essence you know, no matter the distance. The target feels a faint sensation of being watched.
• Pounce Across the Void — Teleport: Step through starlight from one shadowed place to another. Only works at night or in darkness.
• The Unmaking Gaze — Curse + Attack: A dangerous, forbidden attack — you channel a sliver of the same void that consumed Asharan-Ma. High-risk (adds automatic Despair on certain results), but devastating.
• Mantle of the Night Sky — Augment: Cloak yourself in starlight, becoming nearly invisible in darkness and resistant to divination magic.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Gordon Gemhammer finds the maker’s mark of a forge with 3 stars above it, which references an ancient blacksmith named Brandon Three Stars.

Max finds a sapphire that absorbs light then glows in the dark.

Celestiah meditates for the rest of the day.

We rest for the next day and chill in the town, and then take the stagecoach back to our town. When we arrive at the Menagerie, however, there are signs of a struggle and Marlowe is nowhere to be seen.

Celestiah uses her magic to see the abduction in the past — about 10 hours ago, he was dragged out by mechanical automatons.

This was a cleanup crew to halt the spread of forbidden lore. Usually they wipe the memory of the person before disposing of their body.

Felric suggests using his space lion magic to find Marlowe. Celestiah says that it “might” not be too dangerous. However we are going to do some digging first, just some legwork.

The time of the Elder King was over 3000 years ago.

We head to the inn. Max asks for some hot stew but they don’t have any. He orders a sandwich and some wine. The places we can stay are called (from most to least expensive) the Celestial Rest, the Silver Stag and the Rusty Nail.

A woman named Seraphina Dawnweaver speaks with Celestiah and tells her that she has unlocked something . The Celestial Rest was once called the Observatory of the Third Eye.

Celestiah makes wards around her room to protect her and the Crystal Heart. She sleeps, and then after waking in the morning she sees that the ceiling above her is transparent and she can see the sky.

The next morning, we wake up and spend some time in the town.

Felric searches for old lore in the area. At Mother Eldara’s Herbs and Remedies, he finds a children’s book that is over 200 years old and teaches the local lore through fairy tales. He pays her five copper for the book. It reads:

“Seven hearts of crystal bright,
Made to hold the Maiden’s flight,
Love and Sorrow, Joy and Fear,
Anger, Hope, and Grief sincere.
When the seven beat as one,
The Maiden’s work is done.”

We are exhausted and decide to stay the night here in the temple where it’s safe. During the night, Celestiah has nightmares about the tentacles.

As we wake up, she feels terrible. Using her insight, she probes the dark energy and, with effort, is able to break the hold of the tentacles.

We make our way back into town and see that everyone seems disoriented. They have been under this dark power for a long time.

We try the Garden of First Joy next, and this time Kargrath is completely overwhelmed with joy. Felric again goes to save him, but gets stuck in there with him.

The others go into the other gardens, and the main chamber opens.

Kargrath and Felric are joined by a young boy who challenges them to a game. He will jump across a stream and step on certain rocks. We must follow him exactly.

Both Felric and Kargrath succeed early on but fail toward the end. They both lose memories that they had — Korgrath from both sides of his heritage, both ork and civilized. Felric loses the knowledge of his first invention.

-1 die to Knowledge checks the rest of the session.
-1 die to Culture for the rest of the session.

Celestiah has true love pulled away from her, but she realizes that all of the memories in the place are connected and are powering the crystaline heart.

Max gets emotional whiplash — he must make a test when he speaks or he will say the opposite of what he means to.

We go down into the main temple and there is memorite in the walls, where we hear the echoes of memories stored in them.

At the bottom all of the stairs there are five crystaline hearts floating above five pedestals arranged in a circle. In the center there is another heart, which we think is the true one. The floor is in the shape of a mandala.

Celestiah pulls out her spyglass and sees that the one in the center is shining very brightly, so bright that she has to turn the lens away. The other five are connected to it by energy.

There are five pressure plates in the floor that we might need to

Max realizes that this is a music box, and the song is based on the journey through all of the rooms above.

We step on the stones on the floor and the heart is released. We grab it and head for home!

We finally arrive at Willowbrook. It is quiet and creepy here. A woman is sweeping her stoop and greets us warmly, but we see that her knuckles are white as she grips the broom. She invites us in but we decline, thinking that she may be corrupted.

Celestiah checks the area and sees that the black tendrils are everywhere. We decide to move on, quickly.

We finally arrive at the temple and see that there are rooms laid out like a flower. There are 6 chambers:

• North – The Garden of First Joy
• South – Pure Terror
• West – True Love
• Southeast – Ancient Rage
• East – Deep Sorrow
• The center chamber

Max uses his cloak and passes through the closed doors of the center chamber. He finds some runes, however he can’t read them. He scrawls them down and brings them back to Celestiah, who translates them.

In order to gain access to the middle chamber, we must occupy three of the gardens at the same time.

We start at the Garden of Deep sorrow. Kargrath goes in and becomes deeply depressed, not able to move. Felric goes in to save him but starts becoming depressed as well. They are finally able to break free.

We fight the wolves!

We sleep through the night, though everyone is now on higher alert now that we’re aware of the music. However, Celestiah’s dome keeps us safe.

We wake up and there is a chill in the air. The stagecoach driver remembers hearing the music but not that it affected them.

As we set off, we notice on the map that the forest is much closer than it is supposed to be — miles. We see that the others who are with us don’t notice this at all. There’s nothing we can really do, so we continue on.

While traveling, we make very good time. We notice contradicting wind patterns, and other strange things like birds flying back and forth between trees, and squirrels. However later, the road goes back into cobblestone. After not too long, there is a fork in the road that should not be there! We decide to go to the left, and the NPCs go to the right. Things get even more weird; deer are walking in perfect circles.

Soon we see a pillar made of marble with veins of gold in it. Celestiah believes that this might be the emotion stone of joy. We come nearer to it and it says “the first laugh of the first child” on it. There are scenes of celebration. Some of us uncontrollably smiling for several minutes due to the effects of the stone. Any fear that we were holding onto disappears. Celestiah looks through her telescope and sees that it is glowing.

Later we come upon another one that is blue and black obsidian. Another emotion stone, and this one is “sorrow”. Celestiah realizes that she doens’t know how long she has been walking. This is possibly 3 miles away from the last one. We decide to head back and meet up with the others.

They are back where we originally split up and are pretty upset — the path to the right follows the edge of the forest but never goes into it. We discuss and eventually take a vote. We decide to go left as a group.

After a long while we haven’t passed any pillars. Continuing on, we finally reach a path that goes into the forest. It is strange in here, with no animals or birds anywhere to be seen.

As we keep on walking it seems to be perpetual twilight. The sounds around us are muted and it gets colder. The trees seem to lean toward the path; it’s thicker where we are but brighter elsewhere. Some of us get very disoriented. Mist starts spiraling up from the ground in little wisps, and we hear children singing again, but this time we hear it from above. Three wolves appear, their bodies like shadow and mist rather than corporeal. They make no sound and the grass is withering as they go near it.

We prepare to fight. The other adventurers take shots at the wolves with their crossbows. One guard hits the lead sorrow wolf. There is a meaty *thunk* but the bolt passes through. The creature stumbles slightly and we can see its eyes that they are flaring with pain. It lets out a blood curdling howl.

AKA “42% Tip”
AKA “One Holler, That’s a Dollar”

In the morning, we head for the stagecoach. It is us and a random woman. It is a 3 day journey. As we are leaving Vale’s End, we hear the driver and guards at the gate talking about a risk of bandits in the local area. On the guard’s station there is a small sign that says “Increase Patrols, Refugee Situation.”

We transition from city cobblestones to packed earth roads. We pass a working farm and see that the gate is open. We see wagon tracks leading out toward Vale’s End. Also the chicken coop is empty.

The family is packing up to leave. The father says that things are getting too bad here and they can’t stay. The mother says that he is overreacting but their daugter has been acting strangely after going into the woods. She has been obsessively drawing the same thing over and over.

We stop the carriage and go inside to see what the girl is doing. Her drawings are of trees with faces, a crystalline heart in a temple, and the same phrase “they remember everything.”

Gordon sees that she is under a mild enchantment. Celestiah checks her aura and sees something grasping her, but she can’t dispel it. We decide that we can’t help her and we head out.

A few hours later we cross the Silver Flow River via Bertram’s Ferry. We overhear Bertram speaking with someone, saying that the river started flowing backward. As we complete our crossing, the water goes completely clear and we see visions of the ferry being built, and then we see ourselves, older, crossing back this way. Korgrath, Celestiah, and Lupin are especially affected by the vision and suffer strain.

We glimpse the forest soon after. Later we pass a merchant who has very strange wares like a mirror that shows other people’s reflections.

As we are heading into the forest people pass us. They hand a map to Lupin and say “you will need this more than us.” The map supposedly shows safe paths through the forest. Similarly someone gives Felric a vial of Liquid Courage.

We approach a tower that is three stories. The temperature starts to drop, and mist rises up from the warm ground. The door is broken open and there is faint light coming from the windows. There are ancient carved warnings in multiple languages. Celestiah knows that it is very old, from the Mordun civilization, and was likely made by dwarves. The Mordun were the “first rememberers” and were more in tune with emotions than anything else. Their healers didn’t just mend bodies, they mended hearts and minds. Gordon’s great grandmother would have talked about these areas.

We decide to check out the tower for 20 minutes. We see carved everywhere the words “they remember.” The second floor is abandoned guard quarters. There are personal effects here left behind in haste. We find a journal entry and part of it says “day 12. The dreams are getting stronger. I can see her face. Tomorrow I go to find her.”

On the top floor we see an elf, and we startle him. He says his name is Malanis and he’s here to study the Mordun. In his journal he is sketching out the construction of the tower. He says that he is unaffected by the forest because of the pendant he’s wearing. He says that the pendant is from the order of Anamnesis. They are the “rememberers of the forgotten, the chroniclers of the lost.” He wants to understand why some things choose to be forgotten.

At night we hear music, like a child’s lullaby, coming from the forest. Celestiah summons her familiar to check out the forest.

Felric stays up to keep watch. He notices after a while that the coach drivers are humming the tune. Suddenly they get up and start walking toward the source. Lupin and Felric grab them and pull them back.

Celestiah casts a spell to create a dome around us to protect us from the music. It takes her a few moments to create it, but two more hours to make sure it is sustained for the next eight. Using her astrolabe and being under the open sky, her powers are greatly increased.