The night after defeating the Scourge of Thought, Sláine dreams of the lost Cyran city of Metrol being engulfed by a rising tide of dead-grey mist, behind which is a sea of teeth and eyes. Also present in the dream is Miraan, leader of the Storm Hammers, who claims Sláine has invaded her dream rather than vice versa. Miraan tells her that the Storm Hammers are now under the control of the fell taints, which are not creatures of the Mourning but beings from another plane that exist only to spread madness and unmake reality. As the sea of mist and teeth engulfs them, she tells Sláine that the fell taints must be stopped, whatever the price – and then Sláine wakes up.

She finds Master Áedan deep in contemplation, writing a manual of martial arts techniques, and the genasi Janda-Shen leaving Stormreach to explore Xen’drik. Meanwhile, Ash investigates the citizens and militia of Grindstone, Stormreach’s Karrnathi ward, and Caleb studies the helm of seven deaths. Along with Spark, the adventurers converge on the House Tharashk Refinery, where Kaddik is debriefing Marik’aashta and Durgran’Torrn on the battle with the Scourge of Thought. As they move through Stormreach, they see the effect the thought infection had on the now-recovering citizens – and the recognition and admiration those citizens have for the heroes that destroyed the Scourge.

When the adventurers are assembled, a delegate from the Storm Lords presents them with the thanks of the city’s rulers, a reward of gold, and the promise of more if they spearhead the efforts to find and stop the Storm Hammers. Kaddik notes that the Aurum collects magical items and may have a way of finding the Hammers in their collection; Caleb admits that he has contacts with the group and will see if he can gain help.

Ash decides to investigate Dannel’s Pride, the Cyran refugee ward, to see if the Hammers are still there or if they can be tracked. He and Kaddik work the streets, asking questions, until they are confronted by local militia members, suspicious of outsiders. After calming them, they accompany the militia to the Rubble Warren, looking for signs of the Storm Hammers, where they once again encounter Caradoc and his young charges. Caradoc tells them that the Hammers left the Warren a week earlier, moving through Cross to the river and taking boats downstream; Ash and Kaddik decide to work the Harbour District to look for clues.

Later that night, Sláine meets Guin Silverblood at the Wavecrest Tavern. With him is Surrayana, a member of a mysterious race called the shulassakar (or deva) that knows much of the Draconic Prophecy. Surrayana tells Sláine that the Prophecy says that ’Journey’s Scion’ will die and wait in darkness eternal until called by the Queen of Death. Should the Scion answer the call, he comes as the Impure Prince, taking up the ‘banner of blood’ to sack the ‘city of thunders’ and lead death’s forces. But those forces will be opposed by the ‘Captain of Demons’, who leads a group of heroes and brings the coat of purest silver and the soul-cage helm to bear against the banner of blood. Surrayana counsels that if the forces that stole Alarich’s body can be stopped before raising him from the dead, then the Impure Prince will never rise and Stormreach can be saved. Sláine suggests that Ash might be the Captain of Demons, and goes looking for him – only to find him and Kaddik just outside the Wavecrest. Coincidence – or destiny?

At the same time, Spark visits the Candlelight restaurant in Embers to meet Valexia von Ruthvek. She’s accompanied by Professor Ingrim Jarell, a scholar from the University of Korranberg and an expert on the Draconic Prophecy. Ingrim has a collection of snippets and interpretations of the Prophecy, a book called the Caldyn Fragments, which mentions the Impure Prince as part of a larger prediction. According to the Fragments, if Journey’s Scion does not heed the call of the Prince of Death, he returns to life anyway, but falls in with ‘The Conqueror’s Master’ and leads that being’s armies back to Khorvaire to re-ignite the fires of war. Ingrim argues that while the Impure Prince is a danger, the rise of the Conqueror’s Master could herald the Last War starting again – and since one of those two outcomes must come true, Spark and the others must allow the Impure Prince to be raised from the dead.

Ash, Kaddik and Guin accompany Surrayana to the Old Catacombs in the Marketplace – a Silver Flame sanctuary and prison that was abandoned five years ago when it was overrun by the undead. Surrayana undoes the wards around the Catacombs and leads them inside to where she hid a great treasure – the ‘coat of purest silver’ that her people have been safeguarding for the Captain of Demons. The coat is a suit of armour guarded by ghostly couatls; once Ash proves his worth to the sentience within it, it reveals itself as a powerful artifact, the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd. When Ash puts it on, power pulses forth, awakening the sleeping undead force within the Catacombs, and the adventurers race out and seal the wards moments before it catches them.

During all this, Caleb is lauded at a celebratory dinner at the Aurum chapterhouse, where Jaris Cantar introduces him to Jonas Wylkes, the city’s Harbour Lord, and lends Caleb a powerful crystal ball to help with finding the Storm Hammers. And Sláine returns to the Golden Wing Inn, only to find Master Áedan missing, leaving only his manual of secret ghost-fighting techniques – and a trace of sticky, dead-grey slime…

Having defeated the forces of the Emerald Claw and the Shrouds, the heroes return to the House Tharashk Refinery to find almost all of its workers and staff struck down by the illness that afflicts the Silver Flame’s congregation. The sufferers writhe and gibber, raving about eyes and darkness, begging their attendants to cut off their limbs and occasionally shouting out numbers – numbers that slowly but constantly increase. Ash attempts to make sense of their ravings – as does Spark, who fears that this sickness could afflict even warforged. Sláine checks this by speaking to the Refinery’s few warforged workers, while Rufus tends the sick and Kaddik speaks to the Refinery’s sentries. Amidst all this, Caleb tries to glean the secrets of the helm of seven deaths, but it defies his magical skills.

Eventually the heroes work out that something has infected the Refinery’s water supplies – or, more accurately, the water flowing down the Koronoo River to Stormreach. Rufus uses an alchemical reagent to purify the Refinery’s well, and the contaminants reveal themselves – insubstantial flakes of telepathic infection, like broken insect wings, that form a clump like a slab of rotten ice and then dissolve in the sunlight. Durgran’Torrn sends the heroes to get a barge from Surrinek’s Riverboats in Oldgate and head up-river to stop the infection, which likely is the work of the Storm Hammers. All but Rufus head off; he stays behind to minister to the infected.

The heroes pilot the barge upriver, passing clump after clump of infected thought bobbing down to the city. At one point a fallen tree blocks the river; when clearing it, they are attacked by fell taints and two Storm Hammer cultists, twisted men who speak in eerie unison and tell the heroes that they were expected. After defeating the Hammers, the heroes continue further upriver until the Koronoo flows through ancient and massive giant ruins, where they find the source of the mind-disease – Telos, an agent of the Hammers, and a huge fell taint called the Scourge of Thought (plus a hivemind of telepathically-corrupted alligators). In a hard-fought battle they defeat the enemy, but the Scourge’s death throes momentarily connect their minds – and let loose a handful of telepathic spores into their consciousnesses.

The Storm Hammers have been stopped once again – but at what cost?

Travelling through the Marketplace together, the adventurers see that the people of Stormreach are still terrified by the Storm Hammer threat. There are few people at the markets, and the stall-keepers seem frightened to the point of illness. Soon they split up, and Kaddik, Ash and Sláine continue through the city towards the Temple District.

Caleb, Rufus and Spark stop at Splendours of the South to ask Valexa Von Ruthvek about the prophecy of the Impure Prince. Unfortunately, she knows little of such things, and is instantly suspicious on seeing the Aurum’s symbol on Caleb’s armour. The discussion is going poorly when it is interrupted by members of the Shrouds, who demand something called the helm of seven deaths. When Valexa demurs, the Shrouds attack, and the adventurers battle not just an elf assassin but a pair of zombies and a wight wielding necrotic magic. After they defeat the Shrouds, Valexa asks them to take the helm for safekeeping, and tells Spark to meet her the following night at the Candlelight, a restaurant in Oldgate, as she may be able to provide him some information on the Prophecy after all.

Kaddik, Ash and Slaine make their way through the Temple District (Stormreach’s entertainment quarter) to the run-down Keep of the Silver Flame, a much smaller and shabbier temple than those found in Khorvaire. While Ash’s appearance causes disquiet, temple guardian Guin Silverblood takes them to meet Minister Jirian Zayne, who is just wrapping up a service for a small group of worshippers. Jirian knows little of prophecy and nothing of the Impure Prince, but Slaine notices Guin react to the phrase. Before she can question him, though, the Keep is attacked by Emerald Claw troopers, backed up by a half-tame krenshar. The adventurers defeat the Claw, and Jirian is grateful, but still cannot help them – especially as her attention is taken up by a sudden outbreak of a mysterious ailment that is afflicting people across the city with blindness, sickness and delirium. She agrees to take in Master Áedan for treatment, and as they leave, Guin pulls Slaine aside, asking her to meet him the following night at the Wavecrest Tavern to discuss the Prophecy in private.

Armed with a little more information and a mysterious artifact, the adventurers return to the Refinery – only to find its inhabitants struck down with the same sickness that afflicts the Silver Flame’s congregation!

Most of the adventurers regrouping at the Tharashk Refinery after the Emerald Claw’s attack. Kaddik tells the House leaders all he can about the events in Zantashk and the makeshift treaty he developed with the drow, before heading to the Harbour to get information and pick up some tools sequestered by Marik. Spark communes with Shinra and obtains some alchemical weapons and supplies. Caleb hides a magical scrying sensor in the Viceroy’s office (but not very well), leaving an unconscious administrator behind him. And Rufus goes shopping for an impressive new waistcoat.

Meanwhile, Ash and Sláine make their way through the marketplace, where terrified citizens scurry from place to place, certain that another Storm Hammer terror attack is coming. Ash explains that he is a follower of the Blood of Vol who overheard a plot to attack the adventurers at the dock, and came to their aid because it was the right thing to do. His demonic appearance nonetheless terrifies the locals, and when they reach the Golden Wing Inn, Sláine’s genasi ally Janda-Shen nearly attacks him, believing him to be a servant of the infernal City of Brass that she recently escaped. As they talk things over, Sláine checks on her ailing master; a wound he suffered in the Mournland now leaks a dead-grey mist, possibly connected to the fell taint creatures tamed by the Storm Hammers. Hoping for divine aid, she and Ash go to the local temple of the Sovereign Host, but are disappointed to find them a money-hungry sect that will do nothing for her without an impossibly large payment.

During the night, a pair of villains meet in an underground lair – the White Raven, commander of the Emerald Claw, and the necromancer Whisper, leader of an assassin cult called the Shrouds. Speaking over the stolen and preserved body of Alarich, stolen weeks before by the Claw, the Raven tells Whisper that his forces have been decimated by the adventurers that seek to find the missing corpse – which must be prevented so that it can be reanimated as the Impure Prince, leader of the armies of evil, as according to prophecy. Whisper proposes that her Shrouds steal an ancient helm from Von Ruthvek’s Emporium, which can be used to trap Alarich’s soul and prevent him from being raised back to mortal life. At the same time, the Emerald Claw will raid the Keep of the Silver Flame to obtain enough sacred incense for the reanimation ritual.

Come the morning, all of the adventurers reconvene at the Refinery to meet with Marik and Kurn. Before they begin, Ash explains his background, and Caleb claims that he got drunk after the battle and accidentally punched out the aide (rather than admit that he planted a sensor on behalf of Jaris Cantar and the Aurum). Kurn cedes the floor to Steeljack, leader of the Iron Watch, and the warforged commander fills them in on the events of the past two weeks while questioning them on their previous battles with the Storm Hammers. The gang has turned into a terrorist cadre armed with foul magic and fouler beasts, intent on unleashing chaos without purpose and bringing the Mourning to Stormreach; their tactics are everything from and killing sprees to convincing a throng of citizens in the markets to commit mass suicide. Marik explains that the fell taint creatures are knots of Mournland energy that have gained an alien sentience; they feed upon the thoughts of the living to grow stronger and spawn. Their nature leaves them vulnerable to psychic attack, though, and since several of the adventurers command psychic magic, they can do more than the Iron Watch. Steeljack attempts to learn more, but the meeting is interrupted by a burst of mental static from Shinra – and from the similar docent in Steeljack’s chest. Before the two ancient items can push their bearers into conflict, the warforged quickly leaves, but warns Spark that he will return.

In the aftermath of that incident, Rufus leads the adventurers to the refinery’s cells to interrogate their captive, the leader of the Claw war party. The warrior refuses to answer questions, but Rufus manages to provoke him into blurting out important details – the coming of the Impure Prince, the prophecy that marks his coming and the ritual that will be enacted in five days’ time. Knowing that prophecy is involved, the adventurers decide to go ask experts on the topic. Caleb, Spark and Rufus go to ask Valexa Von Ruthvek, antiquities dealer, while Kaddik, Ash and Sláine go to ask the sages of the Silver Flame.

Just as was foretold…

After ten days at sea, the House Tharashk supply ship returns to Stormreach, laden with the former residents of Zantashk, the gnoll troops of the Liondrake’s Roar, some drow warriors and assorted adventurers. Kaddik has spent his time at sea training with his mentor Marik’aashta, Spark has been learning the history of the giants from Shinra, and Rufus has been seasick. But at last they are returned, and as the ship docks they head down the gangplank.

Meanwhile, Sláine and Caleb head for the docks, eager to see their compatriots and fill them in on the explosive events of the last week that have left Master Áedan near death and much of the southern rim of Stormreach in flames.

As the two groups begin to converge at the waterfront, something seems amiss – until the silence is broken by a horned, red-skinned humanoid bursting from an alleyway, warning them that it’s a trap. Suddenly the various dockworkers, sailors and stall-owners on the scene throw off their coats and cloaks to reveal heavy armour, spiked flails and surcoats bearing the device of a twisted green hand. As one they scream ‘FOR THE CLAW!’ and attack!

Outnumbered three-to-one, the adventurers fight desperately to survive, aided only by their new teifling ally. The Emerald Claw warriors pin them down with flaming arrows, setting part of the docks alight; heavy infantrymen and troopers batter them with terrible coordinated blows while a swordsman blazes around the docks like a streak of murderous flame. The heroes fight well at the beginning, but the weight of sheer numbers takes its toll, and soon they begin to fall. Eventually only Kaddik and Spark are left standing, but when all seems lost, Caleb recovers and manages to rouse the others, turning the tide. A single archer escapes the scene, and the heroes manage to knock out and capture the leader of the fanatics before he can take his own life.

Exhausted and spent, the adventurers have no time to recover before more warriors arrive – from the Iron Watch, Stormreach’s elite warforged army, come from the fighting in the south to respond to this emergency. Their leader, Ironjack, advises the adventurers to escort the refugees to the House Tharashk Refinery, where they should find shelter – but to be careful, as the refinery lies close to the region where the mad Storm Hammers are terrorising the city. They make their way to the refinery, bringing the tiefling (who finally introduces himself as Ash’uk Caarn, or Ash for short), and seeing signs of continued violence in the streets.

At the refinery, they are greeted by Viceroy Kurn d’Velderan, who agrees to house the villagers, gnolls and drow until better shelter can be found. As Sláine leaves to check on her master, accompanied by Ash, Kurn takes Kaddik and Marik’aashta aside – whereupon Marik reveals himself to be a spymaster of the Tusks, House Tharashk’s secret intelligence group, and that Kaddik is a spy in training. Marik knows much of the fell taint creatures that the Storm Hammers use as weapons, and perhaps how to defeat them – even if Kaddik’s companions must be sacrificed in the process…

Tensions mount as Spark, Kaddick and Rufus face off against Duuth Velderan (and his cronies) on the one hand and Venna and Garrett of the Red Nails (and their henchmen) on the other, with Ballast out of action and the gnolls about to return.

The adventurers argue with Duuth as to who is responsible for riling up the gnolls, and while under pressure Duuth says that the Red Nails stole something from the drow that has made them press the attack. Tempers fray even further as Rufus and Kaddick attempt to intimidate Duuth into standing down and explaining everything. Finally he snaps and attacks them, as do his thugs. The Red Nails stay out of it, quietly signalling to their henchmen to recover something from upstairs, but are soon drawn into the fracas, choosing to help the adventurers against the reeve. As the battle progresses, Rufus snaps Ballast from his reverie, and the warrior immediately attempts to attack Venna, who runs outside to revive the incapacitated Pike for protection.

Eventually Ballast stands down and a terrified Duuth surrenders. He admits that he set the gnolls up to be attacked by the drow after one of their hyenas uncovered his secret alchemical lab where he and his cronies make the illegal drug dreamlily. The gnolls were sent to sell slaves – Marik and a number of inconvenient villagers and prospectors – to the dark elves while the Red Nails robbed their temple, framing the gnolls for the crime; they were meant to destroy each other but the plan backfired. Garrett admits that they took an item – a massive stone engraved with giant runes and sigils – from the drow as part of a ‘job’, but didn’t expect to be stranded and under siege as a result.

The gnolls arrive at the end of the confession; their leader, Blacktooth, demands the heroes surrender themselves to pay for the Liondrake’s Roar’s betrayal of their pack to the drow. Kaddick successfully convinces Blacktooth that Duuth alone was responsible for sending them to their deaths. The gnolls agree to pull back and return to Stormreach, but demand Duuth be surrendered to them for justice; when he is handed over, a pack of hyenas maul him to death.

But the danger is not past; the drow are still arrayed in force, and as the gnolls withdraw a dark elf matriarch appears at the back of the hall, demanding the return of their sacred relic, which holds the souls of generations of drow warriors. The adventurers turn to the Red Nails, and Garrett agrees to give the stone back. That still isn’t enough, though, and the matriarch demands further compensation for their losses; knowing the outsiders represent powerful forces, she demands they leave but return with weapons and reinforcement to help the drow – the Vulkoori – defeat their chief enemies, the Firebinders. Kaddick again agrees, only to be told that as assurance, he must leave one of his party behind as an ambassador – or a hostage. With that, drow warriors carry the stone outside, where a giant scorpion claw bursts from the earth to drag it under, and they fade into the night.

Come the morning, the adventurers signal the House Tharashk ship to come to shore to collect them, the Red Nails, the gnolls and the surviving townsfolk. The drow emerge from the jungle to return their slaves, including (at last) the missing Marik’aashta and send a trio of their brave to accompany the adventurers. And when it comes time to leave someone behind, Ballast volunteers for reasons of his own, watching his erstwhile companions leave on the overloaded ship back to Stormreach.

Stranded in the village of Zantashk and besieged by gnolls and drow, the adventurers – Spark, Ballast, Kaddick and Rufus – scope out the inn/trading post in which they and the other survivors are taking shelter, while attempting to size up their erstwhile allies, village reeve Duuth Velderan and the adventurers known as the Red Nails. Ballast explores the inn’s cellar to find a locked door and a strange chemical smell, while Kaddick starts asking the villagers and inn staff if they have seen his missing mentor Marik. A servant girl recalls seeing him with the gnolls that arrived a few weeks back, but not since the gnolls rounded up some of the villagers and local prospectors and took them into the jungle a couple of days ago.

Further investigation is sidelined by a sound in the inn’s chimneys, followed by lithe drow, a lizard creature and a sackful of scorpions tumbling out into the cold fireplaces and immediately attacking. The heroes fight off the invaders on the ground floor while the Red Nails and their hirelings take care of a second force on the first floor. The drow are fanatical, screaming in the Giant tongue that they are prepared to die to rescue the souls of their tribe, which no-one in the team understands.

Wounded but undaunted by the fighting, the heroes regroup, and Ballast decides on a sick plan – to arrange the bodies of the dead drow and some broken furniture into a macabre ‘tea party’ that would demoralise the remaining drow forces. He convinces Garrett and Pike to help him in this; as soon as the three step outside, Kaddick and Spark slam Duuth into a wall and demand an explanation as for why the drow and gnolls are attacking. The terrified reeve tries to dissemble, but finally admits that the gnolls had ‘got out of hand’ and he was trying to get rid of them. Before he can say more, Venna and some of Duuth’s henchmen demand that they let him go and explain themselves.

Meanwhile, outside, Ballast needles and pushes Garrett and Pike as they assemble the grim tablueax, until they are spotted and attacked by a small party of gnolls. The Nails attempt to leave Ballast outside to be killed, but he battles and defeats Pike as the gnolls mob the inn’s door. Soon chaos erupts as those inside attempt to push the gnolls out, but Ballast brings up the rear to push them inside and force a confrontation. When Kaddick orders the wounded gnolls to surrender, as they are Liondrake’s Roar troops, the gnolls become enraged; they draw back, but demand the heroes surrender themselves in ten minutes or be wiped out. To make matters worse, a furious Ballast then attacks Garrett, only to be incapacitated by Venna’s magic.

Now tensions are high, confusion is rife, swords and bows are pointed at erstwhile enemies, and the threats outside grow ever closer…

Two weeks after their last adventure, Spark, Ballast, Rufus and Kaddik come to the mining outpost of Zantashk, 1000 miles from Stormreach. Thanks to their previous efforts in the city, where they captured renegade House Tharashk scion Taryn’aashta, they have learned that Kaddik’s mentor Marik’aashta is being held prisoner by Liondrake’s Roar mercenaries in this small mining waystation. House Viceroy Kurn d’Velderan has hired the four of them to rescue him, and has sent them there on the monthly resupply ship that sails from Stormreach.

Their ship nears the inlet where Zantashk is located, only to be greeted by an explosion and a column of smoke rising from the outpost. The captain of the ship refuses to dock, so the heroes make their way to the shore by longboat, finding bodies on the beach. On the path to the outpost they are attacked by a war party of savage drow, but manage to fight them off without too much difficulty. Once they reach Zantashk they are attacked again – this time by a band of bloodthirsty gnolls. They defeat these enemies as well, before being hurried to relative safety by an axe-wielding ranger who seems to be an ally.

Once inside safety – the tavern/town hall/trading post at the centre of the outpost’s walled compound – they meet their contact, village reeve Duuth Velderan, and his remaining employees and assistants. It turns out that the gnolls are the Liondrake’s Roar mercenaries that brought Marik to Zantashk, but that they have turned on their employers, taken many villagers as slaves (including Marik) and become embroiled in a bloody battle with a local drow tribe for reasons unknown. Also on site is the ranger Garrett, leader of an adventuring company called the Red Nails, assisted by the half-elf Venna and the warforged Pike (who takes an instant dislike to Ballast) plus their hirelings; they were in the area on an unrelated adventure when they were caught in the violence. Duuth and Garrett had hoped to lead all the survivors to the Tharashk supply ship that the PCs arrived in, and had set off an alchemical explosion to distract the besieging monsters – but that didn’t work out, and with dusk falling, the humans need to barricade themselves into the hall for the night and perhaps try again at dawn.

The heroes rest, get their bearings and prepare for a dangerous night – and agree amongst themselves that Duuth and Garrett are lying about something…

Picking through the burned-out remains of the Black Wrack, the adventurers are approached by Durgran’Torrn of House Tharashk, who seeks to speak to them privately about whatever evidence they’ve uncovered regarding the actions of the Liondrake’s Roar. They meet with Durggan and Kurn d’Velderan, Viceroy of the House’s activities in Stormreach, to tell them what they’ve discovered and show them the note they found after the battle at the White Oubliette.

Kurn tells them that the ’T’’ in the note may be Taryn’aashta, a House scion who came to Stormreach several months ago to manage the Liondrake’s Roar, which House Tharashk wants to further develop as a source of income in the city. Taryn is nominally Kurn’s deputy, but internal politics and the desire to see the Roar grow has meant that he has gained significant internal clout – enough so that Kurn is reluctant to openly move against him. While the heroes’ allegations are concerning, things like selling fell taints to the Storm Hammers aren’t necessarily illegal or of concern to the House – but kidnapping (and possibly murdering) Kaddik’s mentor Marik’aashta is, and must be investigated. However, Taryn has vanished, presumed to be hiding somewhere in the city after the failure of his Liondrake’s Roar agents to finish off the heroes. Kurn offers them a significant payment to track the missing scion down and capture him quietly, without combat or a great public hullabaloo – attention will make it harder to get answers and attract unwanted interest from Taryn’s backers.

The heroes split up. Rufus and Kaddik check the financial records of the Tharashk Refinery and question some workers. Caleb takes Spark to the Aurum chapter house and asks Jaris Cantar for assistance. And Ballast and Slaine beat up ruffians in a seedy bar. All three groups narrow things down to a set of warehouses in the Harbour district that the Liondrake’s Roar have used for storing weapons and ‘offensive beasts’. Ballast stumbles across one warehouse to find Taryn’aashta (a well-dressed, well-armed half-orc) arriving in secret in a boat moving under the jetties and wharves, while a similarly-dressed decoy moves off to another warehouse to confuse pursuers.

Conferring further, the heroes come up with a plan. Ballast bursts in to the second warehouse to capture the decoy; when a messenger pulls away in a skiff to warn Taryn, Kaddik immobilises him with a magical crossbow bolt. Rufus uses illusory magic to impersonate the messenger and tells Taryn that the decoy has been taken. Taryn sends a pair of orc soldiers off to the next hideout, along with a valise of papers – the financial evidence of the Roar’s unauthorised operations – and then moves down to the boat, ordering Rufus and another assistant to row him out to a ship. In the street, Ballast and Spark stop the orcs and seize the papers before they can be destroyed. On the water, Rufus’s magical disguise wears off, and he struggles with Taryn in the boat, until Slaine leaps from the jetty and runs across the water using her psionic martial arts to tackle the half-orc. The slight scuffle and minor explosions do not attract much attention, and once Taryn surrenders, the heroes take him back to the Refinery for questioning.

As dusk falls on Stormreach, lights flicker around the twelve vision circles scattered around the town. These small rings of standing stones throw up silent images at irregular intervals – a strange phenomenon that the locals have come to accept and ignore over the decades. Tonight, though, they all come alive at once, showing an image of the Elemental Chaos. Then static cycles through the rings, faster and faster, the image coming back brighter and brighter as it passes, until suddenly a bolt of lightning erupts from a cloudless sky to strike the westernmost ring in the Oldgate district…

…and when the glare fades, the heroes who were lost in the Elemental Chaos (Rufus, Sláine, Kaddik and Caleb, along with the genasi Janda-Shen) are standing in the ring, back in the mortal world once again.

Splitting up, Kaddik and Caleb head back to their rooms at the Black Wrack, where Kaddik finds a note from Durgran’Torrn saying that he will come to the tavern to meet with them tomorrow. Caleb slips out to meet with Jaris Cantar, who berates him for letting the Key of Eleven be destroyed when the White Oubliette collapsed. Still, he pays him for his work, and tells Caleb to keep tabs on Janda-Shen, who may be key to accessing the power of the Elemental Chaos – and on Ballast, since the signet ring he’s trying to sell is apparently connected to the Cantar family.

Meanwhile, Rufus heads off on his own, and Sláine and Janda-Shen go to Respite, after they obtain a hooded cloak to disguise the genasi and her crystalline hair. They tell Master Áedan what happened, and the monks consider the possibility of relocating to Dannel’s Pride to protect the local Cyrans from the Storm Hammers. And while all this goes on, Spark – having lost Ballast, but witnessed the light display over the vision circles – attempts to find out what happened and where his allies have vanished to.

—
The next day, Kaddik goes to meet the gnome Valexa Von Ruthven, positing the idea of her sponsoring an expedition into the depths of Xen’drik – which is primarily a ploy to help him learn about the House Tharashk outpost where his master is apparently being held. Valexa is dubious, and asks for more details about the expedition’s purpose and destination, but does show him a map of the continent, where he finds the location of the prospector’s supply outpost Zantashk, 1000 miles to the south-east.

Meanwhile, Caleb investigates the vision circle in which they materialised the previous night, only to find it guarded by the Ninth Wands, an Aundairian military unit that has set itself up as one of Stormreach’s ethnic/cultural militias. He doesn’t, however, realise that the leader of the guards is Tyrnan Thiel, who rescued Spark from danger the previous day.

Eventually the team meets up at the Black Wrack, where they fill each other in on what’s transpired and discuss what to do next. That conversation is cut short as the bomb explodes, the tavern erupts into flames, and Sinruth and a cadre of Liondrake’s Roar mercenaries attack them while loudly claiming to be members of the Storm Hammers. The battle is dangerous and difficult, and the heroes barely manage to defeat the mercenaries, before escaping the burning tavern by the skin of their teeth, and with a prisoner to question. The captured mercenary admits that he was hired to flesh out the Roar’s ranks and told to talk about the Storm Hammers in earshot of witnesses – and that the note from Durgran’Torrn was a fake meant to lure the heroes to the tavern. As the Black Wrack collapses in flames, Ballast arrives on the scene, and the heroes contemplate what to do next…