The party cleared the last Sahuagin out of the caves on Kingmaker island and extracted the unconscious Captain Arazka, along with some treasures recovered from the island.
As the sun rose on Regalport, Lars directed the Crown’s helmsman into berth, where Reluraun Qindi waited. He exchanged heated words with the crew, and by the end of the conversation a date for a duel had been set—high noon on the twenty-fourth, in the audience hall of Seadragon’s Roost, administered by none other than High Prince Rygar ir’Wynarn.
The party disembarked and opened negotiations with Testra ir’Gawaine at the Brelish embassy. They had brought Arazka—could they get Testra to release Captain Tyrn to them in return? Testra would not budge on this point. She offered only to arrange a visit: the party would board a Brelish ship in Regalport and would be taken to Tyrn, then taken back. The party expressed their dissatisfaction with this arrangement and with Testra’s obstinance, and Testra continued to insist that they might be allies and not rivals, although she dangled an obvious threat before the party as they left: if she had any proof that they were officers under Tyrn’s command, they would, too, be found guilty of dozens of capital offenses.
As the party pondered their next move, Midge took a detour to the nondescript tavern where the crew had stowed Arazka for safekeeping, and she pried into his knowledge with her magical charms. Yet more facts came to light about Arazka’s arrangement with Tyrn: Arazka had been aware that Tyrn was not simply a smuggler in it for the money, but that Tyrn had entered into the arrangement in the hopes that Arazka’s patron—the Lord of Storms—might be endeavoring to somehow restore Cyre, and that the dragonshards Tyrn was smuggling out of Sharn had something to do with it.
Perhaps bearing more questions than answers, the party returned to the Rainbow Inn and Keep and met with Thalm, the local Boromar Clan affiliate. Thalm was able to offer a quite different arrangement than Testra: he knew the location and the disposition of Brelish forces at the prison Tyrn was at. But he required two things: that the party break out a colleague of his, Armo Boromar, and they would need to leave with him a 1500gp deposit to ensure their good faith in the arrangement.
The party returned to Testra and struck the deal with her: they would board the Brelish ship the Lance and sail to an undetermined location, where they would visit Tyrn. In return, they would hand over Arazka.
So they did. The next morning, they met Commander Whugreas Nornfal of the Lance, and they set sail for the mysterious prison. That evening, Captain Tyrn was brought aboard from a longboat—the horizon bleak and grey, the shores rocky and barren, no sign of where the longboat might have shoved off from—for a visit. Tyrn seemed battered and worse for his lengthy captivity, but he was cheery enough and discussed what he could with the party before the gathered Brelish soldiers.
They were able to sneak in a few messages using their pirate’s cant. Once more, they confirmed what they knew: Tyrn had conducted the smuggling operation with Arazka, he had done so with his eyes wide open, and he had deliberately hid it from the party: the way he puts it, because he didn’t want them to associate with Arazka. Tyrn had done it “for Cyre,” believing that Arazka’s patron, the Lord of the Storms, was creating a weapon that would “overcome the Mourning.”
After a few more ambiguous exchanges, the visit was cut off, and the party returned to Regalport. There, a duel to the death await them.
Prince Rygar conducted court and, after dispensing with the formalities, allowed the fight to commence. Krijkor and Reluraun circled, closed, and exchanged blows, once, twice, and a third time. A thunderous smite sent Reluraun reeling, and as he composed himself, Krijkor commanded him with the voice of the heavens to yield. Reluraun, so compelled, tossed his weapon aside… and then snapped to his senses and charged again. Krijkor cut him down, and the matter of honor was resolved with finality.
The party departed court and began scheming how best to recover their captain.
That evening, they put their plan into motion. They waylaid Lieutenant Soranda, the load master for the Lance, as she made a clandestine pickup at the smiths, Xodon and Manfan. Midge put her to sleep and assumed her identity while the party slammed her in the brig on the Crown. She carried with her a delivery: a magic dagger and several vials of nonlethal poison, intended to wrack its victim with pain.
Midge, now the Lance’s loadmaster, arranged some cargo of her own for the Lance to take to Ostarlan: alongside Captain Arazka and heaps of grain and supplies, she would be delivering the crew of the Crown to conduct a prison break.
As the crew was adopting their disguise, Camouflage approached, asking a favor. He believed a close friend of his from many years ago to be in a Brelish prison, and Ostarlan seemed as likely a candidate as any. This friend of his was a late-model warforged who, by his looks, had once warn a Brelish infantry kit, and, curiously, also went by the name of Camouflage.
The party was hauled aboard the Lance and stowed in the hold without incident. “Lt. Soranda” was forced to navigate a handful of meetings with Commander Whugreas Nornfal (where she learned that the ship expected to stay in port at Ostarlan for at least a day), the dour dwarf commanding officer of the Lance, while Fox bluffed her way through a cockfighting ring that had arranged its bouts perilously close to the party’s hiding spot.
In the sunny afternoon, the Lance arrived, sailing directly through the flat rock face that the party had faced once before—it had been an illusion—and crawled its way to the pier before the secret prison complex of Ostarlan.
“Lt. Soranda” arranged for her cargo to be offloaded and then made her way to the cellhouse to complete her delivery. It wasn’t long, however, before the game was up, and the party burst forth from their barrels just in front of the grain silo to incapacitate the guards who had come to investigate them.
The guards raised to alarm before they were slain, and the party withdrew into the grain silo for protection. After a brief deliberation, Fox climbed through the grain to locate the roof hatch, and Krijkor, Oracle, Seabern, and Henry kicked down the front door to engage the converging patrols outside. The brief fight was punctuated by an enormous explosion Fox had initiated using the packed grain in the silo. This caused the evident leader of Ostarlan’s garrison to recall his forces by way of a chime issued from his perch on the guard tower.
This leaves the main body of the party standing before demolished grain silo. Midge, still disguised as the Lieutenant, is currently being escorted to what is ominously being referred to as the Black Room by a pair of guardsman, and Evie, invisible, creeps toward the base of the guard tower, seeking the garrison commander.
The party converged on the mysterious Black Room from two directions: Midge, being escorted from the Cellhouse by guards who believe her to be Lt. Soranda making a delivery, Evie, tailing them invisibly, and the rest of the party from the burning silo to the east. Inside, they encountered and were forced to fight off the prison interrogator, a wizard of frightening and unseemly talents. They scoured the Black Room and found no prisoners there.
Instead, they found the Warforged Camouflage, friend to the Camouflage now serving aboard the Crown. This Camouflage had been partially dismantled and discarded, revealing a strange and seemingly modular chassis upon which the markings and accouterments of a standard Brelish infantry model warforged had been attached—a kit that is normally permanently built in.
The party made note of this and struck out toward the cellhouse. On their way, they encountered the garrison commander, an imposing and grim-faced man who wore the golden breastplate of a devoted paladin of Aureon beneath the ceremonial black half-cloak of a Dark Lantern; a prestigious career on display for all to see. The commander fell, however, and now the party stares across a wide field at the seventeen remaining guards and their lieutenant, now acting executive officer, who hold their positions at the cellhouse.
Finally, they charged. Oracle led, disguised as the fallen paladin making his escape from the rest of the party, running hot on his heels. When they finally closed, he and Evie (again, tagging along invisibly) unleashed their arcane bombardment, and the entire party rushed in to break the guards’ defensive position.
At the end of the day—thanks in part to a hobbled Tyrn preparing on Midge’s signal and leading a prisoner vanguard out from within the prison—the party stood victorious, imprisoning the guards and leading the 92 former prisoners down the hill and toward the uneasily waiting Lance.
But there was trouble on the Lance: two flashes of lightning arced across its deck. The party would soon identify it as the magic from Arazka’s wand, much like the bolts that lanced across the deck of the Crown just three weeks ago on the first morning of the year. They found him leaving the jungle, on his way to the cellhouse: desperate, panicked, and lusting for violence. He raised his wand to strike, and the party cut him down.
After a short discussion, Commander Nornfal did the only thing he could and surrendered the Lance to the party. His crew had been terribly bloodied by Arazka’s escape and to command his remaining marines to hold against 92 angry prisoners would be to sentence them to doom. He asked only that he be allowed to remain outside of the brig, that he might better see to the safety of the ship and her crew, and the party (looking to Midge, disguised as Arazka returned) granted him this.
The party held a brief discussion with Tyrn who finally admitted what he had been hiding from the party: the XLVII Legion, the last of the Cyran legions, had been organized to restore Cyre to her former glory. He was one of its members and had been acting as its agent as he smuggled with and was ultimately betrayed by Arazka.
He and the party began to discuss their future course but agreed to get some rest before going much further. But as the afternoon gave way to the evening, and the evening gave way to the night, a terrible, terrible storm approached.
The party dragged their new crew, kicking and screaming, through the worst storm they had experienced in years, but they came out the other end unscathed. Midge magically instructed Camouflage to set a course to meet them in the open sea north of Regalport, and then she used similar magic to strike a bargain with Thalm—their new rig, the Lance, was a bit too hot to bring to Regalport, so if Thalm would go through the effort to meet them outside of port, they would offer him the first opportunity to buy it… at a discount.
Then, they met Thalm, luring him onto the Lance to bargain, and Henry set it alight.
They quickly drove the Boromar into retreat, and before long both the Crown and the Clansman had detached from the smoldering Lance and were sailing into open water. The Crown’s savage run-down of the Clansman was briefly interrupted by the return of the Reclamation from the depths, but the crew repelled them, too. A few minutes later, it was all over: the Reclamation reduced to flotsam and the Clansman and her crew sent to the depths.