This is the full Faction Campaign recap. A TLDR version is located here.
CHAPTER 1: Midtown
After School Club
Tae, Yancy, Fet, SCHNI, and Mascarpone all find themselves on Alto Street in Midtown one morning. They hear someone getting beat up in an alley and rush to their rescue. The party fights off some muggers and meet the victim, a dragonborn bard and tavern owner named Bardlox. Bardlox proclaims the five his new best friends, and offers them free rooms in his tavern to stay in.
The party finds a flyer on the street protesting the Stability Provision. On the back of the flyer are some encrypted runes that when decoded, lead the group to a bookstore called Mages’ City Books. In the bookstore, they meet a young student named Markistus, who asks the party if they are willing to help overthrow the Stability Provision. The party answers, and Markistus gives them a crystal which points to a location in the distance.
Tae, Yancy, Fet, and Mascarpone follow the crystal into the sewers under Midtown. They find a secret hideout of the organization of student wizards called The Prestige. Their leader, Amethyst officially welcomes the four into the group. They throw a wizard party in the sewers to celebrate the new members.
While the rest of the party were in the sewers, SCHNI goes to investigate the missing person case of Dermon Gamble, an amateur bowler and antique shop worker. He meets his old partner, Weston, who directs him to an apartment. SCHNI finds a card with a blue cloud printed on it at the apartment, and then goes to find the rest of the party.
After the wizard party, Markistus had gone missing. The party finds him in an ooze chamber in the sewers and brings him back. Meanwhile, SCHNI and Weston find the Prestige hideout and attacks them all for violating the Stability Provision. The rest of the party enter, and they all work out a deal. SCHNI won’t turn them in to the police as long as the Prestige helps him find the missing person.
The party makes their first move against the Stability Provision by spreading flyers at the Pumpkin Festival. Fet convinces Bardlox and the Prestige to open a bar Downtown where they can train wizards to fight against the Stability Provision. He then gets a loan from Manchego to buy a building to make it happen.
Markistus finds out that the cloud card was printed in an abandoned building near the docks. SCHNI goes and finds the missing person guarded by an air elemental. Dermon Gamble doesn’t remember anything from the kidnapping. Meanwhile, Tae has been investigating his own missing person case, Jayson of the Travelers’ Temple. He follows some clues and eventually finds him at the Pretzelarium Downtown, also with a cloud card.
As reward for finding the missing person, Lt. Bighammer offers to promote SCHNI to a new position: Preventative Ongoing Governance (POG) Officer, an elite officer equipped with anti-magic abilities designed to enforce the Stability Provision before crimes can take place. SCHNI declines, thinking that punishing crimes before they even happen is wrong.
A Big POG Problem
Bardlox has a rivalry with a Genasi named Eleanor, who owns a competing bar across the street called the Ginkgo Club. Fet, Mascarpone, and Yancy go in disguise and plant a rotten lime at the Ginkgo Club, convincing Eleanor she failed a health inspection and has to close down the club. Yancy and Fet notice each other are Changelings in the process.
Markistus suggests to the party that they should sneak into the Wizard Academy library to find more information out about The Cloud. The party does so, and meets a foreign treasure hunter named Tess Mystique who also broke into the library. Tess explains that she is looking for a secret treasure Downtown, though she hasn’t found anything useful. The party doesn’t find anything older than 100 years in the library, so they break into the restricted section. In the restricted section, they find a book dating an Elven Dynasty up to about 250 years ago, a 500 year old collection of poems to a dragon god, blueprints to a large steel weapon dated 250 years ago, and a book about the Fey realm dated 150 years ago.
Yancy reads the book on the Feywild and learns how to use the red Maple Tree Network to pass into the realm. The party hears from Doubletime Dan that his employee, Delivery Doug, had gone missing en route to the Pretzelarium Downtown. The party finds Doug fighting some POG officers near a red maple tree, before he and the officers disappear. Yancy uses the tree to teleport the party to the Feywild and they track down Doug, who along with the Pog Officers, got cornered by a giant ape. The party get Doug out of the situation and they return to Midtown.
The party goes to Downtown to buy the location for their bar. They get some gargoyle-themed decor from a furniture wizard called Tepis Ornamentum. After setting up the bar, they go to Bardlox’s concert at the Slaghouse across the street. At the end of the concert, several POG officers show up and attempt to arrest Bardlox. The party intervenes and an all-out gunfight breaks out in Downtown between the party, the POGs, and the Curds. The party and the Curds manage to kill the POGs, and they sneak back into Midtown to find the Prestige.
Midtown has been completely locked down by the POGs. Bardlox’s tavern has been ransacked and Markistus has been arrested. The party hears from Barnaby Bonestrom that Lt. Bighammer intends to attack Downtown in “Operation Grilled Cheese” and take Manchego prisoner for harboring wizards. The party meets the Prestige and they hatch a plan to impersonate POG officers and assasinate Bighammer. They carry out the plan, and Mascarpone, Fet, and Yancy infiltrate the police station and attack the POGs. During the commotion, SCHNI finds Bighammer and assasinates her, taking her place as Police Chief.
SCHNI overturns the Stability Provison and the rest of the party leaves him to reorganize Midtown by himself and the Prestige.
CHAPTER 2: The Canal District
A Vacation Across the River
Fet and Mascarpone return to Manchego and the Curds after the showdown at the police station. Manchego is pleased that Operation Grilled Cheese was squashed, but the celebration is brief as he quickly gives Mascarpone her first official mission. In the form of an encrypted cheese delivery invoice, Manchego orders Mascarpone to travel to the Canal District and ensure in any way possible that the treasure hunter Tess Mystique never enters Downtown again. Mascarpone and Fet agree to go to the Canal District under the guise of a vacation.
The party travels across the Kalashport River to East River, the main economic hub of the Canal District. They meet Clarinet, the head of the Church of the Dragon, who is trying to uncover the lost history of the Elemental Guardian. Clarinet invites the party to the Canal Authority meeting later. They also meet Bubba Bufo, the Small Business Owners’ representative and owner of the Velvet Leaf spa. While at the spa, Fet overhears Bufo’s employee Icy Wendy say something in Thieves’ Cant that suggests Tess Mystique was at the spa, and that Icy Wendy and Bufo dislike the Curds.
In the East River plaza, the party meets Rycan, who is looking for test subjects for his experiments. The party does not want to participate, but Rycan follows them around anyway. They go to Land’s Divide to visit the Fishing Association and look at the Guardian Tree. Fisherman Paul at the Fishing Association accidentally implies to Fet and Mascarpone that Tess Mystique went to the Dark Canals against his advice. The party climbs up the hill to Guardian Spring to check out the Guardian Tree. The tree looks unhealthy and withered, and they take some leaf samples to investigate later.
Back in East River, the party visits Clarinet again and asks about the Guardian Tree. Clarinet is aware it is related to the Elemental Guardian but has never heard of the Network or the Feywild. Interested, however, she asks Yancy to join the Church to help them find out more.
After the meeting, Rycan and Yancy try making some tea with the maple leaves they took from the Guardian Tree. The tea puts them in a hallucinatory state where they can barely see a hazy image of Guardian Spring from the tree’s perspective. They decide they can help the Church not get kicked out and further their research by having them plant more trees around the Canal District. They go to the Church again and bring the proposal. They meet Clarinet’s brother, Cabernet, and Mother Scalehearth, an older cleric who appears to somehow know the party already. The Church agrees with Yancy and Rycan’s plan and decides to plant more trees and stop the Catacombs exploration in the interest of improving their image to the Canal Authority.
Despite the agreement made moments ago with Cabernet and Scalehearth, the party immediately breaks into the Catacombs. In the first room they find Clarinet, who went there straight after the meeting to look for Igni Blacksteel. The party and Clarinet go deeper into the Catacombs and find a 250-year-old tomb of soldiers from the war. Interestingly, the section set aside for the Fey was completely empty. Further in, they find a hallway with a mural depicting the Elemental Guardian leading to another chamber with a large pot. Inside the pot is Igni Blacksteel, who is hiding from wraiths. The party convinces her to come out, and the group leaves the Catacombs through a portal that takes them to Guardian Spring.
The party takes a bounty from the Second Canalvary to find Icy Wendy’s cat. Mascarpone finds it on top of the Church and lures it down with a canal cucumber. When they go to the spa to turn in the bounty, they find Wendy in the back doing some gardening. Happy to have her cat back, Wendy shares with the party that she was a corporate tax attorney with FerrCO, and she knew about the scandal before it broke out. On the way out, Fet steals Bufo’s notebook, which confirms to him that Bubba Bufo is running a thieves’ guild.
The party goes back to Downtown to talk things over. Fet asks Pecorino if he knows anything about the thieves’ guild and finds out that the Curds aren’t aware of any specific group, but there have been businesses in Downtown burglarized by thieves from the Canal District in the past year or so. Rycan and Yancy talk in private about their plans to make a trip to the Feywild to find out more about why the Guardian Tree is dying. Mascarpone and Fet agree to solve the Tess Mystique problem peacefully.
Evening's End
The next morning, Bardlox goes with the party to see if the dust has settled in Midtown since the battle at the police station. He finds the Brasserie du Bardlox boarded up, and says he is going to move back and reopen the tavern in a week or so. Yancy and Rycan find Delivery Doug and ask about the Feywild, specifically if there are any settlements. Doug tells the two about Evening City, and reluctantly agrees to take the party into the Feywild jungle, but not all the way to the city.
In the Feywild jungle, the group finds a Fey jungle ranger named Spore being attacked by vines. They help him and he takes them to Evening City in turn. At the base of Evening City, the party finds the Guardian Tree underneath what appears to be an enormous treehouse built between four towering jungle trees. The tree is in similar condition to its Material Realm counterpart, and Rycan and Yin (who has been pretending to be Yancy while in the Feywild) notice a trail of necrotic energy leading from the tree up to the Evening City platforms.
Spore takes the group up the trees to the Evening City Safety Office in the Canopy layer. He phones the Emergence layer to inform the Druids that outlanders have appeared in the city. To everyone’s surprise, the reclusive Archdruid Humphrey comes down to greet the party personally. They all have several questions for Humphrey, but he ignores them all and invites them to dinner in the Emergence.
Before the dinner, Rycan and Yin find out that the trail of necrotic energy leads to four buildings called “mills” where mages condense and bottle up the energy and send it up to the Emergence. Mascarpone accidentally gets caught sneaking into a mill, which starts a fight. Fet shoots and kills the guard, and Humphrey suddenly appears. The party thinks they are in big trouble, but Humphrey simply revives the guard and cheerfully reminds everyone of the dinner invitation.
The dinner is very awkward. Although Humphrey is friendly to the party, Cypress and his other subordinate druids clearly hate them. The party is reluctant to try the food, thinking the druids are planning to poison them, but upon tasting it, find that it is loaded with restorative life magic. Humphrey insists that the party share some stories with him, and in turn, Humphrey reveals that he was originally from the Material Realm and got taken through the Guardian Tree as a baby. Yin mentions how the Maple Tree Network is dying, and the room becomes very tense. Before abruptly ending the dinner, Humphrey assures that the Guardian Tree was a gift to the Fey, and that nothing they are doing causes it any harm, which everyone knows is a lie. Before he leaves, Humphrey tells everyone “The password is Chestnut”
After dinner, the party goes back down to the Guardian Tree. Rycan casts a spell to ask the tree some questions, and the tree confirms that the druids are all at least 250 years old, the Elemental Guardian was last seen 250 years ago, and that the mills are what is causing the Network to die. Suddenly, Delivery Doug appears escorting Tae (who had not gone with the party the day prior) to Evening City. Fet and Mascarpone secretly get Doug to take them back to the Material Realm.
The party sneaks into Cypress’s room and finds out some information. Cypress was a mage in the war 250 years ago. He invented the necrotic potion by draining the life energy of the wetlands, which is why no Fey died and were buried in the Catacombs. When the Elemental Guardian created the Network for everyone to evacuate through, the Fey closed it off on the other side. Cypress then started using the Guardian Tree as a source for the potions and has made himself and the other druids immortal since. The party then remembers Humphrey’s hint and opens a chest in his room. They find letters between Humphrey and a jungle ranger named Violetberry. Humphrey appears and confirms that he used to love someone from the lower levels over a hundred years ago but outlived her due to the necrotic potions generated in the mills. Humphrey agrees to make things right and help the party stop Cypress and the druids. He tells them to meet him at the top of the Emergence for “Evening’s End”
Yin, Tae, and Rycan show up to the top of Evening City, where the druids are already waiting, confused. Humphrey appears, announces that he will be righting the wrongs the druids have committed against the Guardian Tree, and then turns into a golden eagle and takes one of the druids away. The party is left to fight Cypress, and he is killed. Humphrey and the party then go around Evening City destroying the mills before returning to the forest floor to see the Guardian Tree.
With the enchantment broken, the tree shows signs of healing, and the Network portals once again work like normal. Rycan and Tae go through the newly restored Guardian Tree back to the Canal District. Yin stays behind reveals their real form to Humphrey, who, for a brief moment, shows an expression of recognition. Humphrey only has a few hours to live in the absence of the potions, so he and Yin say goodbye before he goes back up to the Emergence to die in the sunset.
Over the Swamps and Down the Trench
While Rycan, Yin, and Tae were still in Evening City, Mascarpone and Fet snuck out to go find Tess Mystique in the Dark Canal. They stole Clarinet’s boat in East River and paddled into the swamps under the cover of night. They get attacked by algae ropers in the swamps and nearly die until a witch shows up and blows the algae away with an enchanted shotgun. The witch takes the two to her hut and explains that she is the Witch of the Bog, tasked with finding and defeating the “swamp beast”. Fet and Mascarpone make friends with the witch and name her Bleu as an honorary member of the Curds. Bleu shows the two a severed head of a behir, which Tess Mystique supposedly brought as an offering. Bleu tells them Tess went to Deep Trench in search of the Clamshell Casino Pearl, which can answer any question. However, Bleu recommends not going to Deep Trench, as it can be dangerous.
Mascarpone and Fet keep going anyway and find Tess at the edge of the swamp. Before they can talk, they are suddenly surrounded by a pack of Lizardfolk. Tess talks to the leader in Draconic and tells Fet that the Lizardfolk think the three are here to steal their “recipes”. Tess gives the leader a bracelet of comprehend languages, and Fet diffuses the situation. The leader, now known to Fet and Mascarpone as Kris, explains that the Lizardfolk are a tribe called “Lagoonshiners” of Legume Lagoon, and they are wary of outsiders who might come to steal their distilling recipe. Kris, Fet, Mascarpone, and Tess, then go to the distillery on the beach of the lagoon.
At the distillery, Fet and Mascarpone convince Tess to share what she is looking for in Deep Trench. Tess knows there is some kind of weapon beneath Downtown Kalashport, and she intends to enter the Clamiseum Gauntlet to ask the Pearl where it is. Fet makes a deal that they can work together so that Tess can get the information she wants while the Curds can be satisfied with their mission. Before they go home, Fet hires two Lizardfolk Lagoonshiners to work at the Bargoyle.
Everyone converges at East River to attend the Canal Authority meeting. However, they find that Bubba Bufo and the entire staff of the spa had disappeared overnight without any trace. The vote to kick out the Church easily fails. Clarinet finds out that Mother Scalehearth also has gone missing overnight. During the meeting, Rycan’s lab is ransacked and the red dragon scale armor he got from Humphrey is stolen. In its place is a cloud card similar to the ones found in Midtown from the kidnappings.
Fet tells everyone about the Clamshell Casino and the Pearl and they all prepare to go to Deep Trench. They cross the swamp and find Triple C near Bleu’s hut. They destroy the beast, fulfilling Bleu’s quest. She thanks the party and stays in the swamp, thinking there must still be much worse out there. The party gets to Legume Lagoon and reunites with Tess and the Lagoonshiners. They enjoy some time at the beach before heading down the trench toward Saltside Reef.
While swimming down, the party is stopped by a patrol of Tritons. They take the party into Saltside Reef for questioning, but immediately release them once they find out nobody is trying to steal the Saltcider recipe. The party figures out the Lagoonshiners and Saltsiders hate each other on superstition alone, and Fet hires two Triton Saltsiders from the brewery to work at the Bargoyle.
They swim down to the casino and find Barnaby Bonestrom also making his way down the depths. They find a shipwreck on the trench floor, which conceals the Clamshell Casino entrance. The party explores the casino, and they register for the Clamiseum Gauntlet in two teams - the party altogether and Tess. The party clears their first three battles, only to find out that the Clamiseum ran out of monsters for the last fight. As a result, they have to fight Tess Mystique, who is revealed to have been a silver dragon in human form this whole time.
The party defeats Tess in the Clamiseum and they get to ask the Pearl their questions. Based on their questions, the party now has an idea of where the Cloud base is, as well as where the elemental dragon scales are. They return to the casino, where a defeated Tess awaits. Tess congratulates the party, saying that silver dragons are nothing if not honorable. She then offers to take the party back to the swamps. Tess flies the group back to the Canal District and gives Mascarpone a silver dragon charm to turn in to the Curds for the hit. She then announces she will stay in the swamps with Bleu.
Farewell, East River
Tae decodes the coordinates for Rycan and Yancy. They find out the Cloud base and two scales are located right at the Guardain Tree. The other two scales are in Downtown at the Bargoyle and somewhere in Highland Heights. Yancy is mortified to hear that they might have to go back to Highland Heights and runs away. Rycan follows and the two make a tentative agreement to help each other find the scales.
Meanwhile, Fet and Mascarpone return to the Curds to turn in the hit. On the way, Fet notices encrypted Thieves’ Cant engravings on several businesses downtown. He scratches out the one on the Bargoyle and writes “Friendly”. Manchego is happy the Tess situation is dealt with and asks how things are in the canals. Fet tells him about the Thieves’ Cant markings, and Manchego assigns additional patrols Downtown as a precaution. Manchego currently has no missions for the two but says the subway tunnels will be finished in about a week. Before they leave, Pecorino tells Fet that Manchego has been invited to a “business meeting” in the Heights.
The party enjoys themselves at the Canal Lights Festival in East River despite the concerning news they received earlier. Clarinet and the Church of the Dragon are especially happy that the Tritons, Fey, and Lizardfolk are once again connected to each other through the Canal District. At the end of the festival, Weston appears, looking for Yancy.
Chapter 3: Highland Heights
Dinner Plans
Weston the private investigator returns after over a week of investigating the Highland Heights dome on Yancy’s behalf. Weston says famous FerrCO investor Richard Halibut has been murdered, and the Kalashport Security Company put up the dome to keep everyone in the Heights contained until the murder is solved. Furthermore, Weston found Yancy’s father, Norm Riesling, on the side of the road without any memories of the past month. Norm had a letter addressed to the entire party inviting everyone to a party at Abigail Halibut’s estate.
The group finds a tunnel behind Doubletime Donuts in Midtown toward Highland Heights. They encounter a fork in the tunnel, and choose to go down the path with the sign "Property of FerrCO. No Trespassing". SCHNI appears and says he is looking for an artificer named Dunkenheimer who made the POG technology. At the end of the tunnel, they find Dunkenheimer and his lab. SCHNI tries to arrest the artificer and the rest of the group intervenes. SCHNI manages to corner Dunkenheimer in a wall of force, however, and persuades him to come to Midtown to work for the police. Dunkenheimer says he will build Yancy an eldritch gun if they fetch an arcane battery from the FerrCO factory above the lab, but the remaining POG officers took up camp there. SCHNI fights all the POG officers himself while everyone else sneaks by to get the battery. Dunkenheimer builds Yancy the gun, and he and SCHNI go to Midtown, leaving the party alone in the factory. They explore the abandoned offices upstairs and find the FerrCO CEO Sylvester Machado's office, which contians an elf skeleton and evidence that FerrCO was run by descendants of the Elven Dynasty. Sylvester had been keeping track of the Dynasty lineage, showing that he had two children potentially with different mothers - one named "Manuel" and one whose name was scratched out.
Everyone meets back up with Rycan and Mascarpone and they leave the tunnels to emerge in the center of Highland Heights. They meet a young Halfling named Tiffany Spotless, whose family owns the clothing store Dwarfstrom's. Tiffany was also invited to the dinner party, and she takes everyone to the store to buy fancy clothes. At the store, they encounter Norm Riesling, who appears to be perusing bowties. Yancy speaks to him and tries to lie that they found a way to manage the "parasite" Yin. Yancy and Norm agree that something strange is happening in Highland Heights regarding Richard Halibut's murder and the erection of the dome. Yancy tells Norm that they can use telepathy to communicate in case something happens at the dinner. Norm leaves them a pair of enhanced hearing glasses to help eavesdrop on the dinner party attendees.
At the dinner, they find out that Abigail Halibut was unaware the party was invited, but she lets them in anyway. Along with Abigail, Norm, and Tiffany, the attendees are Eleanor from the Gingkgo Club in Midtown, Emeraldina the Wizard Academy Headmistress, Bardlox's parents, and Manchego and Pecorino. Fet and Mascarpone find that Manchego and Pecorino were invited on a mysterious recommendation to Abigail. The dinner goes normally and Fet and Yancy network the Bargoyle to the Highland Heights elites. They discover that Abigail Halibut owns the white dragon scale, which several of the dinner party attendees show interest in taking or buying.
Suddenly, everyone except the party, Tiffany, and the Curds gets up to leave in different directions around the estate. The room fills with toxic gas and the party hears glass breaking and gunshots going off elsewhere in the building. Everyone manages to escape without harm. Outside the estate, Abigail announces that in the commotion her dragon scale has gone missing, and that Norm has disappeared. She orders the KSC guards to lock down Highland Heights until both are found.
Suburb Sleuthing
The party splits up the following morning to find Norm and the dragon scale. Yancy and Tae fairly easily find Norm in the Feywild directly parallel to the Heights where he had built a campsite. Norm asks for their "top 10 religions in Kalashport" to which they have no answer (as there are only two religions mentioned in the game). Norm claims he is innocent about both the murder and the dragon scale's theft. He thinks Abigail is tyring to frame him for some reason. He tries to make a deal with Yancy for them to clear his name in exchange for some information about the cloud. Yancy refuses and leaves angrily. Yancy and Tae then sneak into Norm's study at the Riesling Estate and find his cursed notebook. Tae dispells the curse and they read the contents, finding out that Norm met Mother Scalehearth in the Feywild. Scalehearth told him at least part of her plan and tried to memory hex him afterward, but it didn't work because of Norm's meteorite protection amulet.
Meanwhile, Fet and Rycan find out at the Good Bard Center that Eleanor rented out a book on illusion magic and they wait to share this information until everyone is gathered. Rycan meets Emeraldina, fully confident of her innocence in the situation, and resigns from his position at the academy because of his worsening health. While that happened, Fet went to the taco shop where Manchego and Pecorino are waiting out the situation. Fet tries to ask Manchego about what he found at FerrCO, but Manchego dodges every question. He tells Fet that he, Mascarpone, and "the book translator" (Tae) should meet him at a future date to discuss in private.
Everyone gathers and exchanges clues. Rycan suspects that Eleanor and Abigail may have had something to do with the theft, so he casts an illusion that makes it look like the dome is fractured near Establishment Ridge in order to gauge the two suspects' responses. The scrying spell failed on Eleanor, but worked on Abigail. Abigail leaves her estate to go check out the dome, leaving it empty for Yancy and Fet to sneak in and investigate. They find a secret entrance in the main hallway leading up to the scale room, which had disabled but not broken Wall of Force generators. They also find an empty invisibility potion in the foyer, which they deduce belonged to Norm.
Cloudy Weather
Now night time, the party goes back to Norm's campsite and wakes him up. Norm seems to be happy Yancy found his notebook and freely gives everyone information about Scalehearth and the Cloud. Supposedly Scalehearth is collecting all the elemental dragon scales as a "heritage project". Yancy realizes that Norm truly just wants to sabotage the Cloud as revenge for what Scalehearth tried to do to him.
At this point, the only remaining suspect of interest is Eleanor, as Norm for some reason gave the party all the information he had and Abigail was shown not to have the scale after all. Rycan's scrying had failed, so the group decided to find her manually. They end up finding her piano in the HHSA auditorium, but they all get attacked by water elemental assassins in the process. They defeated the assassins and found Abigail walking into the school looking for Eleanor. Abigail confessed to everything.
Once they were established business partners, the two women made a deal that Eleanor would kill Richard Halibut in exchange for his family heirloom dragon scale. Abigail didn't care for the scale anyway, and she only wanted Richard gone so she could rebuild the Halibut family wealth. When Yancy banished Norm to the Feywild, the two took advantage of the situation to hand off the scale and blame both the murder and the scale's disappearance on Norm. Eleanor's partner, Mother Scalehearth traveled to the Feywild once the portals were back open to find Norm, wipe his memories, and send him back to the Heights to take the fall. As far as Abigail and Eleanor were concerned, the plan went smoothly and Norm was found the next day in Highland Heights with supposedly no memories. They organized the dinner party where Eleanor cast Fog Cloud laced with illusion magic to make it taste and smell like poison gas in order to get everyone out of the Estate. Once the coast was clear, they handed off the scale and waited for the KSC to find Norm. Scalehearth's memory hex was blocked however, and Norm invited the party to the dinner in order to intervene while he hid in the Feywild.
Abigail begs the party not to hurt Eleanor and scolds them for trying to take the dragon scale for themselves. The party attempts to explain why the dragon scales in the hands of the Cloud are dangerous. Besides Eleanor, Abigail knows next to nothing about the Cloud but she doesn't trust them. She worries what might happen to her business partner if the organization finds out the handoff was unsuccessful. The party convinces Abigail that they would keep her safe, and Abigail tells them she might have gone to her sister, Olena, in Midtown.
The party races for the dome gate and find that Eleanor attacked the KSC guards and opened a break in the dome to escape. Manchego and Pecorino show up and follow the party outside toward Midtown. Around 1AM, they reach Alto Street and hear shouting coming from the Travelers' Temple. A moment later, they see several explosions go off in the distance around Downtown. The party makes the split second decision to pursue Eleanor instead of investigating the explosions and they go into the temple.
Inside, they see that Eleanor has attacked the clerics who lay unconscious on the floor. Yin establishes a telepathic bond with Eleanor trying to convince her to surrender, but Eleanor sees no way forward that aligns both their interests and lashes out at the party, summoning a waterspout around her and using the white dragon scale to spawn three air elementals. The party and Eleanor have a dramatic battle in the temple, but she is bested in the end and the party snatches up the dragonn scale and revivies the clerics. Tae heals Eleanor just enough to revive her, and they insist that she come with them to the Bargoyle to hide from the Cloud. She agrees, and they all leave the temple.
Chapter 4: Downtown
Wild Cheese Chase
Back outside, the party sees the smoke from the explosions rising above the Downtown skyline. They reunite with Manchego and Pecorino outside the temple and they all run toward the city center. In Cheesetown, they find Curds running around frantically trying to put out fires. They see Cheddar in the plaza giving out orders. Cheddar tells everyone there was some kind of fire bomb attack, but he dispatched all patrols to deal with it and they chased off the attackers with surprising ease. Manchego pulls all his gangsters toward the Curds HQ to go over what happened.
Everyone else goes toward the inner city only to find that every building besides the Bargoyle has been torched. They then remember the markings on all the buildings, especially that Fet crossed out the ones on the Bargoyle and wrote "friendly" instead. The fires are now mostly out and the Curds have set up a temporary medic tent in the middle of the square. Inside the bar, they open the interior realm inside the pyramid artifact where the lizardfolk and triton employees are hiding. They let them out and drop off Eleanor inside. Upstairs in the bar, Yancy and Tae find Bardlox who had been shot in the commotion. Bardlox explains that he came to check on the bar, but he found Weston in the alleyways investigating something. When the attack happened, Weston got up and charged one of the attackers for some reason. Weston died as a result and Bardlox had to run back to the bar to hide.
Meanwhile at the Curds HQ, Manchego leads everyone to his office. He finds the door unlocked and the office completely ransacked and graffitied. He tears through his file cabinets looking for something and then unleashes an angry rant at all his subordinates. Manchego thinks the attack and the invitation to the Heights dinner party was a distraction to get him and the Curds out of Cheesetown so someone could come in his office and take his map of the subway system. Manchego and Pecorino were stuck in the Heights after the dinner party fiasco, and Cheddar sent all patrols to chase off the attackers, which left the Curds HQ completely open. Speaking honestly for perhaps the first time in the campaign, Manchego laments that someone else is going to find the Empire Drake before he can.
Mascarpone and Fet try to comfort the boss and explain that they could find a way to navigate the tunnels without a map. The three go back toward the Bargoyle and reunite with the rest of the party. They go to the medic tent and find Weston's gun he attacked the firebombers with. They discover it had divination tracking bullets and that one shot was already fired. The gun is engraved "Return to SCHNI, KPD" so they leave toward the police station.
At the police station, the party sees SCHNI ordering his officers to go assist the Curds with the firebomb situation. They decide to lie to him about Weston and ask Dunkenheimer the artificer about the tracking bullets instead. Dunkenheimer recognizes the type of technology used, but says he didn't make it. He deduces that it must link to something belonging to the police chief. The party tries to ask SCHNI about it, doing their best not to bring up Weston. SCHNI says his reconnaissance robot was stolen, and the thief left behind a cursed dagger from Makovia. Everyone leaves before SCHNI could figure out what happened.
Now at least 2AM, they go back to Highland Heights to ask resident magic item expert Norm Riesling about the dagger. They stop at FerrCO however to ask the skeleton in the abandoned office some questions (Tae didn't have Speak With Dead prepared the first time). They confirm that the skeleton is Sylvester Machado, who was killed by his son Manuel. The scratched out name is Sylvester's firstborn, whom he had to banish to avoid "disgracing the family". Necromancy out of the way, they find Norm asleep once again in his campsite. He hasn't seen the dagger before, but he admits that anything imported to the city that didn't go through his company must be from Skyline Market on Nations Street.
At the ripe hour of 3AM, the party arrives at Skyline Market, a bustling black market (even at three in the morning) located in Kalashport's former financial district Downtown. They push their way through the street and come upon the Kalashport Trade Society building, one of the tallest and most glamorous in the city. They enter and find a series of rooms full of high end magic item vendors. The place is guarded by what look like Curds, except they wear blue vests and work for someone called "The Sapphire". The party trades some items with the market to gain the Blue Vests' trust and they are let higher up the building. Many vendors interestingly begged the party members to trade their Bardlox pins for large sums of money, saying it's "incredibly powerful". The party comes upon a dueling arena set up on the tower's observation deck below the penthouse. A fighter challenges Yancy to a duel for their Bardlox pin, and they accept. Yancy wins the duel (and the party wins a lot of money at the betting table) and they decide to go all the way up to the penthouse. The Blue Vests allow them up, as they all have a "Badge of the Flame" which they realize is the Bardlox pin.
They reach The Sapphire's penthouse to ask about the dagger and SCHNI's missing robot. The Sapphire reveals himself to be Forik, who runs the black market to buy discounted bar supplies for Bardlox's tavern. Forik tells them the robot was brought in a few days ago and purchased by someone named "Gorgonzola". He also asks the party not to reveal his secret operations to Bardlox. Exhausted, everyone returns to the Bargoyle.
The next morning, Manchego calls in his personal assassin, Havarti, to help the party find Gorgonzola. They track him down to the Monterey Jack Casino where he works, but he wasn't there today. They burn some time playing card games and notice that one of the patrons is winning every game. Barnaby shows up in the casino's cheese fountain and tells Tae to look up at the skylight, on which a man is standing, pointing the recon robot at the card table. Havarti vaults up to the ceiling and shoots down the skylight, plunging the man into the cheese fountain. Yancy flies up and catches the robot. The man on the skylight, who turns out to be Gorgonzola, was working together with the patron to cheat at the card games. Furious, Havarti takes the two back to Manchego.
The Empire Drake
The party fixes up the robot and it starts to point toward the tracker Weston fired. Before they follow it, Tae-hyun resurrects Weston, who explains that he figured out the Stack and the Cloud are working together. The party and Manchego then go down to the subway system and follow the robot. The robot leads them to a maze where they find some keys to a large door with the symbol of the Elven Dynasty. They enter a chamber where Bubba Bufo and the Stack thieves sneak attack the party, but the party emerges victorious and forces Bufo to abandon the green dragon scale and his alliance with the Cloud. They take the final key and enter the door, finding the Empire Drake guarded by ancient SCHNI units.
The SCHNIs recognize the party as hostile and they begin an emergency weapon launch, slowly opening a shaft above the Empire Drake that leads to the surface. The mechanical dragon charges the party and tramples Fet and Manchego. Rycan gets cornered by a SCHNI and nearly dies. However, Mascarpone pulls the Empire Drake off her fellow Curds, Tae revives his half-brother, and Yancy shields Rycan from dying. With a critical hit from Yancy's maple seed projectiles and a final Guiding Bolt blast from Tae, the Empire Drake is destroyed moments before it could escape. Relieved, they all return to the surface.
Chapter 5: Kalashport
With some time off for once, the party decides to explore the city a little. Fet brings his plans to expand his personal business to Abigail and Forik, who agree to invest. Yancy talks to Norm again and learns that he bought the powerful Kalashport Security Company and took down the Highland Heights dome. Tae-hyun visists Manchego and the two learn some more about each other. The party encounters the Prestige again and follows them back to the wizard academy to see one of their contraptions they made for a school project. Their device breaks the floor in the library, revealing a secret chamber full of books from before FerrCO.
The party receives a letter from Scalehearth threatening that if the party doesn’t give her the white and green scales, she will try to resurrect the god with just the two scales she has. Eleanor helps Fet and Mascarpone retrieve from her jazz club instructions on how to get to the Cloud hideout.
Market Research
Tiffany Spotless comes to the party one afternoon looking for Fet to help her conduct market research for opening a Dwarfstrom's in East River. The party goes with Tiffany to the Canal District, only to find that everyone is panicked over something called a "Dead Zone" in the swamps full of undead. Some Evening City representatives present say the same thing is happening in the Feywild as well. The party and Tiffany go to the swamps and find Tess Mystique and Bleu fighting a huge undead air elemental. The party helps defeat the monsters and they catch up with Tess and Bleu, who explain that there is a region of the Dead Zone where a large "shadow" appears at night. They travel to the epicenter, avoiding some more undead along the way. There, they find a red maple tree completely burnt to a crisp and completely drained of energy. They travel to the nearest other maple tree in Legume Lagoon and use it to portal to the Feywild.
In the Feywild, they find the Dead Zone epicenter with another dead maple tree. Attached to it is a broken prototype automated potion mill built by Cypress. It had been running constantly since he died. They deduce that the machine corrupted the tree, and something from inside it escaped and caused the Dead Zone. A jungle ranger shows up and warns the group that the "shadow" will appear soon in the area. The party waits for it to appear and engages it, traveling through portals to attack it at once in both the Material Realm and the Feywild. They defeat the shadow and the Dead Zone fades.
Finale
A few days later Bardlox comes to the Tavern to tell the party about something happening outside. They go outside and see the material realm and the feywild colliding into each other and glitching each other back and forth. The party realize that The Cloud must have attempted their ritual, so they travel to the Canal District to act. They use Eleanor's instructions to get inside the hideout under the Guardian Tree and find that the KSC and Norm had attacked the Cloud, causing them to start the ritual in panic. It backfired and created an explosion, taking out all the Cloud members and KSC soldiers and creating a rift portal. The party goes through the portal to a corrupted Dream Realm, where Scalehearth and Norm lay unconscious. The ritual summoned an incomplete and corrupted Elemental Guardian in the Dream Realm. It attacks the party, starting a fight. Through a long and difficult fight, the part finally defeats the Corrupted Guarian, while Norm eventually wakes up and kills Scalehearth.
With the corruption removed, the Dream Plane quickly reverts back to normal. Rycan recollects all his fragmented silhouettes and dies, turning into an orb of light that grows into a spirit dragon and disappears after a moving speech. Yin explains to the party that Rycan made a deal with them and the Network to become a Dream Realm protector spirit rather than letting the chronal illness consume him. The party celebrates their victory, and they all head home.