10 - Zayne's dead, baby

Previous session: 09 - Withering of a Jonquil

Upon getting Persy out of hole and stabilizing him, the party reacts about Nesvalyn having wings and being able to fly, to which he seems perplex, until Graath touches them, making Nesvalyn reacting. Upon that, Graath let go a sarcastic "Great."

After a quick moment, Persy wakes up, physically fine, less mentally however, as he's being a bit in the fog. Upon emerging, he shares what happened in the hole with the entity, and seems conflicted about the last moments and unsure who or what he is.
Nesvalyn asks Persy arm, and upon agreement and knocking on the arm, Nesvalyn confirms he's still a Warforged. Along that, the party learns a part of Persy's past, as he used to be a Tiefling.

Once the party caught up, we decided to see Chef Cook to gather the resistance.
On the way, Persy stops at Kargog Yalva's place to heal him from his attack before the Bal.

Gathering the resistance
...

Upon arriving at Chef's Shop, we ask Chef Cook to gather the resistance, as we're starting to plan and gather the allies. We wait a bit and he asks us to follow him, to join the council room.
Once arrived, we start to propose our plan to do a siege/assault on the Collars' HQ, making the resistance reacting. As they're mostly merchants and not fighters, we start to propose some ideas, like selling goods of a lesser quality (like partly spoiled goods).

[Intelligence check] The group spends the evening thinking of ideas to slow down the Collars.
While the group thinks of strategies, Nesvalyn spends the evening talking to Pria, summarizing what happened at the Brothel, and convinced her to be the next Matron.

The Resistance (of Merchants) will help us

They will sell spoiled good and find ideas to slow down the goods and foods of the Collars' HQ.

After some hours of brainstorming and convincing, the meeting is adjourned and we head to the safehouse to rest.

Back to the safehouse
...

When arriving at the entrance of safehouse, we notice that door is cracked, and open slightly.
[Investigation check - Pass ✔] The door was open magically.
We decide to be cautious, and Persy turns invisible to scout inside. However he has an issue getting in, as it's barricaded from the inside. He manages to squeeze inside, and notices it's been ransacked.
Upon exploring, Persy finds in a bedroom Grappi, curled up as a ball and terrified. He gets back, clear the path a bit and gathers the party before interacting with Grappi.
Willum enters first the bedroom and calls Grappi, where he wakes up and was about to attack, but recognize us. Upon recomforting him a bit, he explained that the Collars found out he's still alive. While being infiltrated, he noticed that Jil was being escorted somewhere else, and he tried to rescue her. However, that blew his cover, and he ran away.
He mentioned that he managed to lost the Collars halfway.
At that moment, we heard some glass breaking in another room. Persy, still invisible, goes investigate the noise, and notices a rock in the room, along the window broken.
"Hey Grappi, we know you're here~", to which instantly recognize Lazar Zayne. The rock contains no note, as it was thrown to gather the intention.
Lazar Zayne is not alone, he has a mob of 20-30 Collars with him. Persy regroups and warns the group, who goes to check too.
"Grappi if you don't bring your ass down there, we'll burn the whole building~"
On that situation, Reylynn mentions her cannon, and we'll do a small guerilla to disperse the mob and we'll eliminate the survivors.
After quickly establishing a plan, Reylynn fires her cannon and Graath reloads it.
"Alright Grappi, I'll count to 10 and if you're not down with us, we'll burn the building. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...? Hey, what the-"

Once the threat has been dealt with, Persy goes to Willum to check how he feels. But he finds out Willum who keeps attacking Lazar Zayne once down (and stabs him 28 times).
Persy slaps Willum to make him react, who holds a malicious/angry look, then drops his rage, and worries about Persy (by asking if he's hurt/ok), to the point he mentions that he seemed far away and didn't fully realize what he did.
The party regroups and discuss about what happened.
We discuss mostly about Willum bloodlust, how it goes against how he usually acts (he went really reckless, killed someone and kept stabbing a dead person), where Nesvalyn mentions that we seem to be a bunch of enigmas at this point, and there could be something that change us all.
Willum goes on his side alone for a while to the Grove of Summer, to reflect and take some time, while the rest of the party checks the aftermath of the situation.
Persy checks the Collars' corpses.

We take a moment to think what we should do with all the corpses (if we give more to the Hole's entity, bury them, move them or leave them there).
We decide to leave the bodies in the street as they are currently.

The next morning...

(Willum came back during the night).
Before leaving, the party gathers all their belongings, as we're assuming that the safehouse is now compromised. Grappi will start follow us, disguised from now on.
As we arrive downstairs in the street, we notice Hosta starting to reorganize the corpses with a few volunteers.
She seems really passive-aggressive when we're asking if we can help her, and mentions that death seems to be around us or nearby when we're travelling.
[Insight check - Pass ✔] Hosta holds her emotions and hides them from us.
We try to convince Hosta that she can be angry at us and let her express her feels, but she shrugs us off as she has a lot of work to do.
Before she leaves, Persy explains the situation related to the portable hole, and Hosta stops him midway during the explanation and asks him to check with her later.
Upon wondering what we should do next, a Forge worker comes to see us and mentions that Bron wants to see us. We decide to go right away as it seemed urgent.

Checking Bron
...

As we arrived, we notice five stands with a curtain each, with Bron being really excited who mentions that he finished the Skeleton Key and has some props for us (making Persy excited as well).
He gives the Skeleton Key of the Collars' HQ first (given to Nesvalyn), then presents these items to the party:


Current status of the allies (post-session):
✅ The Resistance (Chef Cook): Will sell goods of low quality to the Collars
✅ Builders' Guild (Foreman): Agreed to help us (fighters)
✅ The Forges (Bron): Agreed to help us (fighters, gear + skeleton key)
🟥 Jonni: Physical form eaten by Or.
⬛ The Brothel: To recheck (suggested Pria to be the next Matron)
Raina: Will help us with the poison (asked to knock out/incapacitate, not kill)
⬛ The Temple (Hosta): To be contacted
🟨 Grappi: He has been discovered, he's following us for now (but can be useful to guide us during the siege.)
⬛ The townsfolks: To be contacted
🟧 Or: They came for Jonni then left, they'll probably won't help us.
Wingnut: Could be contacted (for intel + plans for hookshot)
🟥 Bucci, Tagi & Razzo: Sailed away