26 Pharast, 4725 AR

Klause received a Page bird from Seraphine Voss before they descended. He read it. He did not summarize it for the rest of the party immediately, which is very Klause.

The party waited on the airship until Chiezzem left. Then they went in.

The Contrivance is enormous: a stone roc floating above a permanent portal to the Plane of Air, housing something very old and very important in its lower levels. The Witch King’s insignia marked the entryway. Klause went straight; the rest of the party went left through the barracks. Devon picked up a tin plate somewhere along the way. He already had one. His preferred technique involves hurling them with considerable force, and apparently he felt that two was better than one.

The wraiths were a problem. Klause got touched by them in a way that was clearly unpleasant and clearly not his first choice of outcome. The fight that followed was long and confusing. There was a stretch in which Klause was stabbing everyone in reach without notable discrimination, which led to Devon beating him until he stopped. Eli cleaned up the remainder. These things happen.

At the bottom of the Contrivance they found Keloras, the Unbroken King, an ancient strix who has been holding the entire structure together, alone, for centuries. He told them what the Contrivance is and what it does: it holds something vast in a kind of suspended potential, tethered by a silver cord that runs through Keloras himself. The portable anchor that could stabilize it was built at the Fractured Workshops beneath Firebell. Something has to be done about it.

The party debated whether to destroy the whole thing or head back to Firebell to find the anchor. They decided on Firebell. Grizzle remained interested in destroying it. They sat with that tension too.

I wrote down everything Keloras said. I write down everything. But this was the kind of conversation you feel the weight of differently.