24–25 Pharast, 4725 AR

Klause had missed some things while the rest of the party was dealing with warehouses and stasis. The group caught him up. Then they beat up Eli, which was their strategy for getting Pauline’s attention. They could have asked. They did not ask.

Klause decked Eli twice in the process. Ironmane healed Eli afterward with magic that was, by everyone’s account, considerably more powerful than the situation strictly required. I took this as a sign that Ironmane has opinions about internal party violence that he expresses through the scale of his interventions.

The question of whether Ben is the bad guy came up in the way it always comes up with this group: not directly, not cleanly, but in the spaces between other things. Ironmane’s concerns about Ben are not performative. He has reasons. He has not shared all of them. The party is choosing, for now, to work with what they have.

The heist at the Quinlan Estate was the main event. Three of five points of casing completed. Empty house, dart traps, two aurumvoraxes, which are, if you are unfamiliar, heavily armored otter-adjacent creatures with very strong opinions about being interrupted. Klause went down at some point while picking a lock and kept picking the lock. Devon finished the aurumvorax. The vault opened.

It was full of burnt paper.

Whatever was in there is gone. The party stood in a room full of ash and thought about what that meant.