The previous mission we had on behalf of Calimport [see 'Welcome to Calimport' notes] was to obtain stolen materials that were meant for Deryan Kaya.

We are summoned to Calimport today, urgently and quietly, because Deryan's constructs, made with those recovered materials, have been going haywire. It's the Three Days festival in which the Sultana herself will be participating. There are three major points of concerns; a colossal statue that's appeared, nimblewrights which are arresting people they shouldn't, and shield guardians that are guarding more than they should.

Strangely, the shield guardians, Kaya doesn't recall augmenting.

Kaya wants this to be done as quietly as possible. She fears she will be blamed [and blames herself, in part, it seems] and does not want to invoke the Sultana's ire.

The first stop was the Colossus. Salviron's familiar and Snap scouted ahead and found a Dao, an earth genie, carving the Colossus. His name is Pulvi, and he carves it so that Prince Sadir will allow him back into Olympus Dag. He insists it will show the might of the Dao, that they need no protection. After conversing, and a great many questions, Pulvi was sent to Deryan Kaya's lab. He thought it is an opportunity flirting and getting pointers to make his construct less terrifying. We took it as opportunity to investigate the colossus and found nothing dangerous of it.

In the second instance, of shield guardians, we found shield guardians around their unconscious keepers who hade amulets upon them. Salviron informed us that shield guardians tend to protect the keepers of their amulets or runes, though it doesn't explain why their keepers are unconscious. We made a plan to take the amulets off their bodies as soon as possible, Arlis and I set as distraction.

It's the first time I've chosen to transform without any distress. Yashir's illusion... Shifted something. The days of meditation after helped refine it. There was something like control.

Haala El-Salahuddin, a contact of mine, was witness to the events. She informed me the unconscious gnomes, keepers of the shield guardians, are part of the Night Wisp crime family. She offered to round them up to see them to justice, and in exchange for the honor, she said she could keep find more information about the incidents of failing constructs. She invited me to find her in the Muzad, the undercity of Calimport.

The shield guardians were returned.

As we came across the third situation, Nimblewrights supposedly arresting innocents, the Zeraphi, the peacekeeping force of Calimport, were on the scene. Nimblewrights and hulks alike were trying to detain innocent citizens, attacking them with needless force. Arlis was magnificent in this. Some sort of roots stopped a charging horse and pulled it from a citizen it was trying to trample, and Salviron's magical fist destroyed a great many thing. Tealight's spells augmented the group, emboldening Snap.

It wasn't enough. One casualty.

We returned to Deryan. Two of three events were kept quiet, but the third... There was no hiding that.

My companions have, no doubt, filled out the details of this adventure. I, Cyrus Sicarius, look back upon this days later. This is where I acquired the lichen which would plague me and, eventually, seemingly be spread to friends. I have brought this upon them.

In this mission of spiders and trials to prove our worth, we needed more breaks that perhaps rightfully we should have taken. Such is the cost of being in a party with so many magic users. They've no way but to engage but to burn themselves at both ends. It's not something for me to judge. We managed in the end, all the same, to clear the spiders which were attracted to the bait the the spider-golem had. Our job is done and we are paid, and now, we need only live with the repercussions.

Azrael turned into a mammoth. In exchange for letting me ride him into battle, I have made the promise to leave Wuyon'e be from hence forth. And in exchange for him dismissing his undead, I have promised to apologize to Wuyon'e.

It's hard to keep track of everything which has happened.

• At the beginning of the month, C.H.E.F. died. This was the catalyst for me losing control of myself. News spread among some cohorts quickly of what happens when I do, and now, it's becoming a staple on missions. I've yet to discuss with anyone the destabilizing effects, but how can I? Constantly, it seems a necessity, and I can't - won't - risk losing another member like C.H.E.F.
• During this time, the group which resides mostly in Faerdress [Ssrin, Tova, Wuyon'e, and perhaps Snap?] grew paranoid and hostile at fear that I would discover Sylk's secret and use it to hurt Sylk. This treatment inspired curiosity, and I went digging. I learned the secret, and by uncovering it, it drew attention from unwanted forces. How this is to resolve, I've yet to see, but Wuyon'e's attacked me twice now and once on mission. Things are unstable.
• Solia and I went to an extradimensional party. Ashhorn is always a magnificent host even if I never can remember much of what happened after.
• The work for the teleporters continues and I have embarked to help with Calisham. It's a city I fell in love with instantly and I hope we get the teleporter up soon enough.
• I grew closer with quite a few Syndicate members. To discover each, to know the quirks, to understand where it is they come from and where they go; it's a high honor. Even if sometimes I think that the 'where' of 'where they go' should be in a pit six feet down.
• I didn't get Maze pregnant.
• Wuyon'e and Azrael, among others unnamed, broke into a prison, slaughtered the guard, freed a necromancer and some other prisoners, and then proceeded to arm that necromancer with research on how to augment creatures biomechanically AND gave him access to study an extremely powerful animal.
  Somehow, no one sees how this could go horribly wrong.
• Bramnir, my best friend in the world, has come to the Syndicate! It's a glorious occasion.
• Fenris left this month. Some issue about love. He yelled at Tova as he left. I'm starting to understand the urge.
• This is the month in which I planned a feast for Salviron. There was a surprise within, something by which to help him with something, but it all went poorly and destroyed any friendship that could blossom there before it began. I've thought a few times of arranging flowers and choosing them in such a way to convey my apologies, but, well... I grow incredibly awkward around him. I haven't really discerned why.
• I miss my sister. Desperately. I wonder what she would have thought of all this.

There are, I am sure, a dozen different instances I forget. What one man marks as important, another deems useless.

Something went wrong with the teleportation and we ended up in the middle of the desert. After a few hours, we came across a caravan that came from Memnon and was heading to Calimport. Led by the gregarious and friendly, Shezar Han, I... admittedly got distracted with the absolutely magnificent specimen of an axebeak that loved being scratched. He said something of transporting goods for Deryan Kaya.

For the uneducated, Deryan Kaya is the woman responsible for replacing slaves with robots. An artificer of legendary renown.

In exchange for a ride to Calimport, he asked us to go check the road further ahead and ensure the path clear of the water elementals. Out we went, but there were no elementals to be seen, and just as we determined that - Shezar Han summoned us back urgently. He'd been robbed.

When we arrived, he explained quickly; the entire camp had been lulled to sleep and when they awoke, Deryan Kaya's shipment had been stolen and the guards they had hired to protect them were gone. We tracked the footprints to a rock face and revealed a cave hidden by illusion, and within, two werejackals! Imagine my surprise! Before I could register it, Ssrin had slaughtered one and the other surrendered. His name is Hellwatch, and we had killed his brother.

With some convincing, he agreed to get the other werejackals, hired by Shadzy to do the job of stealing purely for profit, to leave. They went to hold a service for their fallen brother as we dealt with the half-lion, half-persons within and Shadzy, a massive speaking serpent. The details therein get fuzzy.

After we dealt with them, we returned the package to Shezar, and Shezar introduced us to Deryan. She told us that the teleporters have not been working correctly since some of the wars to the north, in the Calimsham desert. Impressed with our work, she said that if the Glassfang Syndicate continues to show its worth, she can help us in establishing a permanent teleporter to the area.

Ah, and I bought silks for Sylk [funny, I know] and clay for Biscuit, native to the region! Sylk's done me no wrong, even if I don't want to be close for the absolutely insane company he keeps, and I do hope he enjoys the patterns. As for myself, I intend to stay in Calimsham for a while. My grandparents are from the region and I intend to explore this culture to the fullest my few days will allow.

This is why they freed a necromancer from prison? This is why they killed those guardsmen?

We saved a village, there's no denying that. Without us, they would have been overrun. Maybe destroyed. But all we needed from that previous blunder was the intelligence. Intelligence that could have been gathered by investigating, that could have been gathered by reaching out to others, that could have been gathered a dozen different ways.

These biomechanical horrors, they're fierce, but there was never a moment of doubt. Never a moment where I thought we wouldn't make it. Azrael's responsible for that in no small part. Seeing the man turn himself into a mammoth - twice - is something to behold. It's a dangerous form. Breaks when his concentration does.

It's only as we see a goose, a strangely powerful goose, that Azrael reveals his secret; he's promised Phalor, the necromancer he broke out of prison, the necromancer that already has some form of research on how to biomechanically augment animals, that he would give Phalor the goose to study. The, may I write again, the strangely powerful goose.

There was an argument. We brought the goose back to the farmer. There was another argument.
Wuyon'e kicked me in the nuts for flipping her off after she began yelling.
Jue argued with Azrael to convince Phalor that he needn't take the goose.
It was all for naught.
Phalor dimension door'd the goose, kidnapping it, and it was all made irrelevant.

Gods help us all, their short-sightedness will kill us.

We managed to convince the kidnapper to bring forth two kobolds as proof of their living status. We followed them best we could, and ambushed them... To just to be ambushed in return. It was fast. Bloody. They were hidden, always out of reach, always too far. Rokka yelled at me to- ...

I did.

It felt different than it usually does. More choking. More total. An eclipse, with only glimpses of light and healing and... Unwanted memories. We finished the first lot after a harrowing battle, and made it to the safehouse where they were holding the rest of the kobolds.

We were worn.
We were tired.
I write these excuses even with my stomach full of things that should not be there, and I am equal parts sick and starving now. The hunger is growing.

Arriving to the coastal town of Bhast, where the mayor is a goat and the harvest festival's in swing. Unfortunately, mayor Snowball, too drunk from the bowls of beer left out from him, made a mad dash for it.

We followed after, killing will'o'wisps along the way. My smite was ineffective, but with the help of my steed and Forvist - who slew two snakes with a single arrow - the job was quickly done. Onward we went, to find Snowball partying with Good Fae who invited us to partake. Apparently he's intended to be used as a sacrifice, a particular shame given his sentience. [Kyani's was willing to dance and drink with me, a kindness; she's grown in my esteem. Maze had no interest in dancing. It's understandable given the last time we did, she broke a heel, but it's disappointing all the same.]

Lief managed to convince the Fae they need to give up Snowball, who drunkenly didn't want to go, in a sight that was terribly intimidating. Truly, the man seems handy with his weapon and his threat of taking the mayor back by force didn't seem idle. They gave up peacefully, even if sadly. Maze wishes to return Snowball at the end of this; agreeable.

(The handwriting of the notes shift. The writing presses on the page so hard it tears through it in spots.)

THEY WERE CHILDREN! THEY WERE CHILDREN, THEY WERE CHILDREN, THEY WERE CHILDREN!
=====================================================================================

When that thing appeared and started ripping into the group, I felt the first pang of fear. When Theoden went down under the onslaught, I felt nausea. All I could see was CHEF. All I could do was hope. I took the potions I thought might help and I accepted what might have happened.

I don't know what happened after. I woke up soaked in blood, aching, and my stomach too full of... I don't know. I can assume, but...

Theoden's alive. Everyone's alive. It doesn't matter.

A job for the Lord's Alliance.

Teren, a now-dead scout found by the prior team, field notes were mostly missing but what survived pointed to an individual by the name of Tavian Rusk as the next link to go speak to.

Rusk is a city freight clerk, a possible lead that may be able to tell us more about the shipments that these strangely intelligent, mutated trolls have been attacking caravans or these missing components.

Unable to track the strange trolls. Came from the moors?

These magical components, specifically for the defenses of Neverwinter, have been going missing for two or three weeks. A few things have been going missing 'here and there.' Merys Vein (spelling), a Lord's Alliance intelligence officer, has more information of what the components do.
__________________________________________
We've been teleported to a private room in the Moonstone Mask. Merys Vein awaits us. Three suspicious shipments have been put through Tavian Rusk's office. Missing materials include:

- Planar grounding stones
- Electrum conductors
- Crystal matrices
- Silvered focus rods

Rusk knows where the second transfer goes. Do not arrest him until the destination is confirmed.

Tavian's disappeared from his normal routine. Most recent activity places him at the freight district, dock side.

TASK: Find Tavian. Keep him alive. Determine where components went. Recover evidence to tie the responsible party to the crimes.

__Tavian, physical description:__ human man. Freight clerk, short, heavy set with warm brown skin and thick curly hair, black. Hang in his face. Wears round spectacles.

Unknown if he has priors.

Whoever has access to the defensive stores (multiple city employees and contractors), Tavian's office handled the transfers of equipment that went missing.

__________________________________________

Heading to the church of Mystra near the docks to inquire if any priests have seen Tavian. As we approach, there seems to be a bubble of some kind arcane magic around the temple. There's a - second image? A translucent copy? Everything is duplicated and set apart, some crack in the wards.

Rokka knows the ward and we manage to save the two trapped in this shifted reality, and were directed to the docks.
__________________________________________
Orri was surrounded. Rokka disappeared into an alley with what sounded like too many boots. I woke up covered in blood, Rokka looking up at me in fear, or shock, I don't know.

We captured Tavian alive. Notes of what we go on him:
- He falsified six shipments.
- He initially did it for money. He later tried to stop.
- All six shipments eventually passed through the same waterfront warehouse.
- Some components remained there.
- Others were repacked and shipped north.
- He repeatedly heard the word Aegis.

This information will be given to Merys. Everything hurts. The blood's soaked through.

The caravan we were hired to guard was waylaid by an avalanche. Only seven survivors. It would have been six, if not for Zena. Rations are low. The party agreed not to try to consume our own dead and burned them on the pyre instead. Thanks to Chef, it was an option; he made of the wolves meat that may sustain us.

We travel need to get to Icewind Dale.
___

We've been traveling for a day, past a ravine, past two celestial owls that were never unsummoned, their summoner dead. Victor terrified them, mimicking a natural predator. Perhaps I would've smiled, if only I could feel my face. We hid in a cave, to get away from the blizzard. I have been leading from the front. I have been navigating, planning, directing. The responsibility to keep them alive falls on me. The responsibility for the knight's death, dragged away into the snow and ripped apart by some massive, terrifying beast... Is mine.
___

Exploring the cave further, it was a vault of sort, protected by pebbles. When we opened the door, the dwarf touched it and it spelled his name in blood. He ran, screaming, outside - and the moment he was out, the beast reappeared, shoving him into its maw and- I will spare the details. Another is fallen.
___
Necromancy. That's what this tomb hides. The mage who seems interested in this seems genuine in her intent.
___
WHAT IS THAT? GODS BE DAMNED, WHAT IS THA-
___
C.H.E.F. is gone. I was meant to protect the new adventurers. It does not matter if the Gods forgive me. I will not.

The expedition went poorly. An avalanche. A white muskrat guided us to a cavern, and we were met by a talking walrus. Mother Tusk. The unnatural weather here is concerning - a curse, she calls it. She says she can get us to where we go, but in order to gain her help, we must help her in turn.

The three options:
- Find one of her missing creatures, sent out as a scout.
- Dethaw the spring.
- Clearing the cave.

The scout, Whisket, is a small, white snow fox, missing after a scouting mission to the spring.
____
Sleds. Hyenas. Victor attempted to leave me behind after he tumbled the sled. A fair enough response given we were in pursuit. It was far more pleasant to ride behind Maze.
___
Tent over the water spring. A woman does rituals within. Gone, now, but I can't feel my hands. Can't feel my feet. My teeth won't stop chattering. Ritual stopped. Within, Jeb, and a spear, tipped with strange eye.

There's so much magic afoot here, problems cropping up.
___
The dead do not pass. They do today.
___
A greedy halfling. Zombies galore. I am tired. Cold. She is divinity among death. My blood runs hot and I swing again.
And again.
And again.

I am no match for the paladin. For Yap. I persist regardless.
___
Home. Somewhere warm.

The Lord Sage of Phlan summoned us to investigate an old structure up the river. Reportedly, an insane wizard, U'rosh, lived there who had a large silver pyramid. The wizard was defeated by Reno the Blade and his fellows, but before he fell, he made this structure which was described to us as a 'death trap for adventurers.' It's begun to leak and it's poisoning the river.

Lord Sage of Phlan spoke on how chaos infects the local ecosystem around the pyramid. Fish with too many eyes; grass turning purple and fuzzy. The base of the pyramid is a labyrinth. The Lord Sage of Phlan presented to us a charm to stop from mutations as we traverse. Wuyon'e took it but I traded her 20 gold to wear it myself.
____
The shrubs moved. The water looked like oil. It reminded me of the Plane of Limbo, a plane of chaos. I've only heard folk tales and this was the first I had encountered it myself.
___
Azrael summoned a small army of skeletons. It made all of us save Wuyon'te uncomfortable.
___
Slimes. Ghouls. A chimera. The chimera's been trapped and it's starving. Biscuit and Wuyont'e helped me to cook it a meal; a surprise Wuyont'e didn't poison it. It was pleased with the meal and allowed us to pass. I'm shocked it allowed us to pass. There was discussion of shrinking it down that it might escape these halls, but it would not promise us that it would not eat people once it was free. To investigate.
___
There was a strange fish people. Like fish, with lizard, with- fur? They had been touched by Chaos. I was able to commune with them thanks to my advanced communication training, and they led us to their queen. She informed us her people were taken by a 'frog man' who had made his way to the upper floor, and that since he arrived, the water pressure of their chaos-tainted water has gone down. He's the source of the link.

Should we bring her people back to her, she will gift us treasure.
___
The frogman atop was a gruesome thing. A slaad. It died and the fish-lizard people were freed. On our way back we tried to convince the Chimera to enter the Plane of Limbo, a way for it to be free. It disliked the suggestion and tried to attack, but we were haggard and it was time to leave; we fled with the treasures the queen gave.

Teleported to Blasingdell, a town of about 2k. Homesteads, spread out, no temples. Sergeant Grendar Kuln wrote a letter to summon adventurers.

Merchants complaining/killed by kobolds. Chickens missing. An adventuring party was already sent out about a week or two ago, never returned. We're here as their backup. Their leader is loud and they headed down river Mirar. Attacks happened within the month.
_____
Traveling on the road, we were set upon by a group of kobolds. We killed most. One cried for his brother, wanting vengeance, but ran. Azrael ran it down on his horse, slaughtering it. He wanted to trick a second kobold that gave up, that had handed us his notes, his map, offered to guide us in exchange for his life.

I did all I could to protect it.

It led us to the Stone's Tooth.
___
Biscuit. I like Biscuit. A sense of morality. Azrael and Wuyon'e have none. I do not yet know Forvist or Glitrende.
____
There was a giant weasel, chained. Freed. It likes Azrael more. Can it smell what I am?
____
Kobolds in the cave didn't attack. They were tired of these conditions, their leader. My wounds hurt; the blood weeps through the chinks in my armor. I could not stop thinking of Death's sweet embrace. Would she be gentle? Nausea rose and bile scored the back of my throat. They were inappropriate thoughts. Unwelcome. I breathed deep and crushed them until I no longer saw gold and black in the corner of my vision.
____
Azrael spilled out the bodies he collected in his bag of holding before the kobold guards of the leader. He relishes the violence, the intimidation, the power. It had the unintended consequence of sparing lives. It is the only saving grace. The guards fled. The leader stayed. He did not win, but thanks to Biscuit, he survived.

Azrael showed his merchant license. Wuyon'e showed her criminal brands. Everything in me wants to turn her in. I will sleep on it.

The others will not swear an oath of silence, but I will not speak on the things that happened to me today. I am still blue and I keep having phantom pains where once there was a third eye. Being this short again - I think I am suffering vertigo.

We were summoned to assist a Dryad by the name of Maple. When finally we managed to get away from the world's most interesting sign, we learned the forest has been overrun with parasitic mushrooms.

Tealight's tried to assist this before, but unfortunately, their solution of carving eyes into the trees to watch the mushrooms so they do not regenerate (something they do when damaged, so long as they go unwatched) failed only partially; the dryads, she mentioned, looked better than before.

Maple sent us to Shiitake, another dryad whose forest had experienced the same issue. Shiitake had survived by choosing to embrace the mushrooms were so many of her fellows died. On our way there, we were set upon by mushrooms made sentient and beasts infected with spores; the infection grows.

Shiitake, seeming somewhat complacent to the mushrooms (a side effect of joining with them, I'm sure) examined the mushroom we gave her and remarked it was many species of mushroom slammed into one. She suspects that the Drow man who did this to her forest, now all flesh-like mushroom and spores, is still experimenting and that it's spread.

She's asked for a few weeks to study the specimen and learn what she can. I fear Maple does not have a few weeks.

Jacob, a druid in the college of Silvery, was kind enough to teleport us back home.

Summoned with Orri, Tealight, Rokka (and Wilson, of course), and Azrael to the library, they meet with the Arch keeper there.

Two scribes who had been hired months earlier had been caught red-handed stealing two priceless tomes; one, the history of a druid of circles known for enslaving dragons and the other, a geography of the northern mountains, specifically Dragonspine.

One had been caught by the guards and hung, but the other fled north, toward the Dragonspine mountains by the time we'd arrived.

The two thieves had left behind replicas of the tomes they'd stolen with two important changes; the first saw that the druids' history of enslaving dragons was erased and in the second forgery, it included a spot of standing stones in the Dragonspine mountains. This, along with the information collected by the others, suggested we head northward bound.

There, we ran into a pack of kobolds protecting a staircase that led underground. Making short work of them, we encounter zombies, and they, too, fell. In the exploration, we discovered yet more grey oozes and Rokka discovered a great many robe that, for whatever reason, she deemed necessary to keep.
(Note: she seems to enjoy looting. Perhaps spread some coin around next time for her to discover?)

One question remains unanswered for me; why were the kobolds guarding the top, lying in wait for an ambush, when their kind had been slaughtered below, and why were the zombies all humanoid?

Battle cries. Yells. The second wave hit. Cyrus had been too late to help with the first.

On the western front, goblin archers bombarded Fenris, Arlis, and Yashmir on the front, empowered by their hobgoblin captains. In the back, Jue, Cyrus, Salviron, Wutony'e, and Ivor cast spells, fired ballistas, and held the line as they could.

When a call to retreat sounded, Cyrus echoed it, moving to help Wutony'e heal an injured Arlis to the front and dousing the bridge with oil as he left. He followed the orders and retreated into the Syndicate where he helped the injured kobolds as he could.