May 24,2026
1 Dulthila
Calloway’s army departed Silberhafen, moving north toward the other side of the peninsula.
The Pink Unicorn crew sought an audience with Calloway, which was easily granted. Annais, with unnecessary rudeness, tried to convince her of the virtues of making for Annais’ homeland of Messara. As a subject kingdom, Messara enjoyed a greater degree of autonomy than any of the grand duchies. By the same token, the crown was rarely interested in the defense of Messara; King Baudrain’s forces usually sufficed, but with the current buccaneer crisis, Calloway’s army should be hailed as heroes.
Calloway said she would take their suggestion under advisement, but warned them not to question her decision in front of the men. In light of their performance investigating the ruined village a few days earlier, she offered them the position of outriders. The would ride at some distance from the army, scouting and screening it.
Calloway dismissed all of them but Aida. Aida trembled with fear, but Calloway asked whether she thought “that creature’s” judgement could be trusted on the welcome the army might receive in Messara. Aida said that Annais (who, let us recall, had been trained as a musician) would probably know a receptive audience when she saw one.
Calloway then stopped the army. She (and centurions down the column) gave the army new orders. They had paid for passage across a farmer’s fields. They would take this path to vanish from the road, leaving any spies confused and their movements unmarked for a few days. She emphasized that the farm was not to be interfered with.
The Pink Unicorn crew was ordered to the rearguard. A mile or two back from the rear of the column, they held up traffic so no one would watch the army depart. They asked the other rearguards what kind of spies Calloway feared. The rearguard said that they had seen some of the same travelers multiple times, even after the many turnings of the march.
After a while, they received the signal to follow the column. They crossed into the fields, and a pair of vert wizards brought up the very rear, restoring the trampled crops to erase the army’s tracks.
On the other side of the field, the army entered a wild rocky area with a scraggly young forest.
2 Dulthila
The army found an old logging road and marched west out of the rocks. Calloway kept them at a lightning pace to put as much distance between her true and feinted positions as possible.
3 Dulthila
It was the Pink Unicorn crew’s turn to take point as outriders. On the road ahead, they spotted a low cloud that resolved into a swarm of carrion birds. Investigating, they found the remains of a battle. Corpses choked the road for nearly a mile, stripped of their armor and weapons. Carrion birds and beasts tried to tear at the corpses, but fought among themselves. Watching a vulture rake a giant rat, and the blood running down its flank, they realized that the first lines of the prophecy had come true.
The beasts and birds, bloodied with strife,
On meat of men make their supper.
Chasing off the carrion-eaters, they investigated the bodies while the army came up. It appeared that a crown legion had fought against a huge body of bandits. More than a thousand had fallen. The legion had stripped the bodies of their metal but left them where they lay.
Calloway’s army stopped to burn the dead.
4 Dulthila
The army resumed its westward hustle.
5 Dulthila
The army sighted the southern eaves of the Farnwald, turning slightly south to skirt them.
6 Dulthila
The army arrived at the city of Gelbefelden.
Calloway called the Pink Unicorn crew together and gave them a mission. She asked them to make some visible, and preferably constructive, trouble so that the countryside would be buzzing with the news that Calloway had appeared here.
Calloway also gave Aida a secret mission: to leak the false rumor that the army would move north to cross the Farnwald.
The party joined the soldiers heading into Gelbefelden for the evening. The city was at the height of some kind of festival. The civilian guard were all on leave, attending the festival, while some dour-faced mercenaries remained on duty to keep the peace.
The party checked in at the local Golden Talon hall, which was quite modest. There, they heard that a party of novice adventurers had disappeared in the past week while investigating strange monster spoor in the warehouse district. Two of the bodies had turned up, headless, while the third member of the party, one Xanaphia Holmien, was still missing.
They investigated a sample of scat that was still on file at the hall. It came from a large, perhaps bull-sized, cold-blooded creature of some kind.
The Pink Unicorn crew went down to the warehouse district. There were a few festival tents set up there, and some people on the streets, but it was largely quiet. The mercenaries patrolled heavily here.
They caught a whiff of a smell that reminded them of the Zoological Garden in Colossea. Armed with this additional intelligence, they quickly found one particular warehouse.
They tried to talk the mercenaries away from the front door, but failed. They went around back and started to climb onto the roof in search of an unguarded entrance, but were caught in the act. A pair of mercs tried to detain them.
Oskraks checked and found that they were both evil. He and Annais got into a protracted struggle with one, eventually knocking him out. The other ran for reinforcements. Aida pursued him and peppered him with a few darts from her pistol crossbow. He pulled his matchlock pistol and began pursuing her in turn. She kept ahead of him, luring him away from the other mercs.
Oskraks and Annais broke down the door. Inside, they found that they were too late. A cage had once stood in the room, but a crane had loaded it onto a wagon that left visible tracks out the door. A great pile of papers had been burned in the center of the room. An area was partitioned off with a curtain beneath an elevated office.
Behind the curtain, they found an operating theater, with manacles sunk into the slab.
They hurried upstairs. They checked a broom closet, and a figure chained up in a shroud toppled into them. They tore the shroud open and found Xanaphia. Her arm was stitched up and bore the scars of several recent surgeries, and she was still drugged from the most recent. They dragged her along between them.
Checking the office, they found that all the papers had been removed and burned. A safe stood in the wall; they decided they did not have time to crack it. Beneath a rug, they found a recent mosaic. It depicted a twisted tree with thirteen branches, each bearing a fruit consisting of a skull atop a shrunken rib cage.
Surmising that a cult was probably about to release a monster into the festival, they went outside and, indeed, proceeded in the direction of rising screams. Aida moved in the same direction, meeting up with them at the courthouse plaza.
The tents and stalls were overturned and smoldering. The mercenaries were panicking, forcing their way through the crowd to make their escape. The mayor was holding one, alternately screaming imprecations and interrogatives into his face.
A massive mollusk lashed at the crowd with squidlike tentacles. It had a thick spiral shell, a mass of tendrils below for locomotion, and two eyestalks.
Annais found a group of Calloway soldiers taking cover behind an upturned wagon. She gave Xanaphia into their care and ordered them to organize the evacuation and detain the mercenaries. The mercs drew swords and began to fight back.
Aida positioned herself behind the creature, expecting one good backstab before it turned one eyestalk and denied her a blindspot.
Oskraks stepped up to the beast, swung at its front surface… and killed it instantly, cleaving its shell and dropping both of its brains onto the floor.
Annais identified the creature as an enormous specimen of tidal sea snail, and surmised that the cult had struggled to get enough saltwater to keep it healthy.
The mercenaries had fled to the winds. The mayor’s captive had disemboweled him. Annais cradled his body and called for a physicker, but he died without being able to speak.
From other witnesses, they gathered that the leader of the mercenaries had gotten on stage, unleashed the snail, and told it to eat the town guard but spare “[his] new slaves.” His control over it had been less than absolute, however, as he had been the first to be eaten.
7 Dulthila
After midnight
Calloway’s army calmly entered the city to restore order. She assumed control while the mayor was incapacitated, gathering his most skilled advisors and ordering the Pink Unicorn crew to lead them to the cult lair.
Xanaphia began to revive. She told them that she had been captured when the rest of the party was defeated. She had been held captive for several days, her arm repeatedly vivisected by an anatomist as though searching for something.
A skilled physicker arrived and resuscitated the mayor, who joined them.
Aida cracked the safe, while a scribe sifted through the ashes. Inside, they found a ledger containing the most recent census of the city. Many of the names had been struck out, and several loose leafs at the back of the book had the names of travelers that had also been struck out. One name, however, had a star next to it instead: Xanaphia Holmien.
Annais insisted Xanaphia come with the army to get as far from the city as possible.
Meanwhile, the scribe had managed to piece together a page of notes. It was an exploded diagram of a humanoid arm. The imagewas labelled, “Sign of the Chosen One.” The peeled-up skin was oriented facing the viewer, and bore this sign:
