The Long Way Home

In the wake of the Elder Brain bargain, the party finalizes terms with Squidward — the proto-elder-brain agrees to wall itself into a knowledge-proof containment field and conduct its research in isolation, in exchange for one last favour: it wants the soul-powered barrier around Gnoble destroyed, which means extracting the two souls still holding it together. Zessium, the city's resident archmage, agrees to siphon them out without destroying them, a process that will take days. With the airship cleared for departure, the party ferries out of the crystal, pausing only to harvest the slain crystalline dragon on the way. Returning to Gorenobyl, they help with the (minimal) cleanup, attend a mission debrief in the Dean's office, comb the city library for buried history, and finally take Reginald's exhumed body down into the Underdark — where a roll of the dice turns the resurrected chicken-man into a white dragonborn.

• The bargain with Squidward is finalized: it will be contained in an escape-proof barrier and left alone to research the captured creature.
• Squidward's favour: it wants Gnoble's soul-powered barrier brought down — requiring the two trapped souls to be removed first.
• Zessium agrees to siphon both souls out intact rather than destroying them; the process needs roughly 24 hours of preparation.
• On the way out, the party harvests the crystalline dragon they had slain, despite only having 15 minutes before departure.
• Gorenobyl survives the incursion almost unscathed — Clank's rampage kept nearly all the damage out in the bay.
• The party helps with city cleanup; Fenwick rescues an old woman's "dog" (revealed to be a Blink Dog) from a sunken ship.
• Mission debrief in the Dean's office: the dragon, the Elder Brain, and the mind flayers are all confirmed dealt with.
• The city rewards the party handsomely and grants Fenwick access to the library's history archives.
• Fenwick takes extended leave from his university job, citing four months absent and a decade of unused holiday.
• Library research session: the party digs into Stakar, the elemental gems, and Fari's lost homeland.
• Reginald's body is exhumed from the graveyard and reincarnated in the Underdark — he returns as a white dragonborn.

• City reward (split among the party): 12,000 gold pieces, 500 platinum, and 500 silver — roughly 3,000 gold each.
• Crystalline dragon harvest: 8 claws, 15 teeth, 2,500 GP of dragon scale, large gems and body-stones, and 500 gold (plus a "Malich"/malachite roll).
• Vadis fully identifies his artifact axe — all properties known except whether it is cursed; he swaps his attunement from the Longsword of Wounding to it.
• A continent map (acquired by Fari; Fenwick also keeps one).

Granted access to the city's history archives, the party splits its research. The findings paint a picture of a deliberately incomplete record.

• The Hero's Party: After defeating the villain Malakar, the legendary party fractured over disputes and scattered across the continent, each finding their own path to immortality. Stakar bound himself to a creature in exchange for subservient power; the paladin is now confined to a chamber in the desert church-cities; the rogue's fate (and immortality) was never recorded; one member, the warlock-like Elandra, died some 600 years after Malakar's fall.
• Stakar's Patron: Cross-referencing the eye-covered descriptions, the entity that empowered Stakar resembles a beholder-type aberration — though far more powerful than any common beholder, capable of bestowing immortality-grade gifts.
• The Elemental Gems: The gems predate the "competition" entirely. Ancient rituals destroyed monsters to collect their essence into the gems, and the practice ties back to the gods. The gems represent the base energies of the universe — the elements, space, time, light and dark. Only one person in recorded history has ever completed the set, and their name is scratched out.
• Censorship: The archives — even the restricted section — have conspicuous gaps. References to a group "harnessing the elemental energies" appear once and are mentioned nowhere else. The librarian's stance is that such books "never existed," which only confirms they did. Fenwick suspects memories are being scrubbed from the authors themselves.
• Vadis's Lineage: Vadis discovers he is an extremely distant relative of the founding family of Nidalisia, and learns the fate of his own house — when he and all his siblings vanished, his father ran the kingdom into the ground searching for them, and his adoptive mother died shortly after his disappearance.
• Fari's Homeland: Fenwick takes the lead in helping Fari narrow down where she came from, working through a continent map and pressing her with questions about climate, the needle-leafed trees, prevailing winds, the unusually large moon, and sky-whale migration patterns. Three eastern mountain ranges emerge as candidates; the calculations give Fari nothing but a headache. Fenwick suggests she use a sending scroll to contact her father, which she resolves to do.

With Reginald's soul confirmed trapped in Gnoble's barrier, the party commits to bringing him back. Zessium can only siphon one soul at a time and is given the high priest first, leaving Reginald's recovery for later — but the body must be ready. After learning Veric can cast Reincarnate (needing only ~1,000 GP of oils and a piece of the deceased), the party exhumes Reginald's freshly buried corpse from the Gorenobyl graveyard, ignoring the furious groundskeeper that Fari silences. Down in the Underdark, Veric casts the spell. A D10 roll of 2 turns Reginald into a white dragonborn — his chicken features morphing into a snout, scales, and ice-breathing wings. He cracks his knuckles and breathes a spray of frost. The session ends there.

• Fenwick: Spends his cleanup hours genuinely helping injured citizens, owning the disaster as "technically my fault." Later pays Ronald 500 gold and pledges support, and formally cashes in his decade of backlogged university leave.
• Fenwick: Patiently helps Fari work out where her homeland is — poring over the map with her and asking question after question about terrain, weather, and the night sky — and suggests the sending-scroll plan to reach her father.
• Clank: Hailed by the city guard as a hero for keeping the bay-side fighting away from the populace; gives the saluting guard a silent up-nod and "don't you forget it."
• Grover: Names the spreading mushroom on his shoulder "Lil' Grover" (or "Mini Me"); it claims its purpose is simply to "protect Grover," then sprouts new copies in a library book.
• Vadis: Reluctantly shakes Captain Iron Fist's prosthetic hand after Fenwick deliberately offers the wrong one first; admits he still doesn't like him.
• Fari: Tries tea for the first time, courtesy of the inn's cook, and decides she does not enjoy it — she is, by her own admission, "a warm milk in a saucer kind of guy."
• Fenwick: Dons a tinfoil hat in the library, fully convinced something has been "scraping the memories of people writing these books."
• Grover: Twice wakes up with frost on his backside and a mushroom sprouting from his cheek — "Oh no, not again."
• Fenwick: Argues Reginald can't afford to be picky about resurrection — better "a mildly inconvenient rash on his gooch" as an undead than oblivion. The table immediately commends the word choice.
• The party muses on whether Ronald's cure would be covered by Medicare; the table concludes you'd "have to go private for that one."
• On exhuming Reginald, the party discovers the gravedigger runs a two-for-one burial deal — "like a punch card."

"I am no longer a servant to cleanse things. I am the adventurer Clag."— Clank

"Clank is a cold-blooded fucking killer."— on finding an executed body aboard the airship

"It's more like a four-finger discount for you, isn't it?"— Fenwick, on a teammate's shoplifting plans

"We call that book Camino. Doesn't exist."— on the library's conspicuously missing volumes

"Beggars can't be choosers."— the party, on Reginald's body preferences

• Resolved: Reginald is brought back to life — now a white dragonborn.
• Open: Six elemental gems still uncollected; the gems' true purpose ties back to the gods.
• Open: A censored group "harnessing the elemental energies" has been scrubbed from the record — who, and why?
• Open: The single, name-redacted figure who once completed the full gem set.
• Open: Zessium still has the second soul (the high priest) and then Reginald's to extract from the barrier.
• Open: Fari's homeland — the eastern mountain ranges, and the visions of her father in shackles and her sister on a throne of white orcs.
• Open: Vadis's awakened artifact axe — still possibly cursed; he intends to one day kill Stakar.

• Next, the party intends to visit Stakar in his tower — not (yet) to fight, but to learn how honest he'll be.
• A quest board lead: Clockwork Jenkins's unsigned "help wanted" notice lies along their route.
• The party still operates, reluctantly, under the "Ashmoon Banner" name — no one can agree on a better one.
• Fari plans to contact her father by sending scroll.
• Reginald (NPC) is alive again and back among the party's allies — now a white dragonborn.