Campaign: Astrodia
DM: Tommy
Players: Jim, Roy, Kat, Emily, Kenyaita (Yemko out — DM ran Drolta)
Date: August 26, 2026 (Session 10)
Where We Left Off
Session 9 ended with Archibald opening a teleportation circle on the roof of Morgana’s Tower and sending The Fallen to the Nephthys temple — Drolta’s home, a day ahead of schedule.
He missed.
Somewhere Else Entirely
The party steps out of the circle with everything they carried — onto a dirt crossroads in unfamiliar woods. No temple. No town. No Archibald, who called the circle and went straight home to Myrna.
“This is definitely not where my temple is.” — Drolta
Whether Archibald botched the casting or something else redirected them is unresolved. The table’s leading theories were divine misdirection and demonic misdirection, in that order.
First question asked, before anything else: what color are the trees? Regular. Not white. Relief all around.
Leif’s investigation — soil, flora, the shape of the woods, and a certain amount of literal dirt-tasting — returned a firm negative: this is not Artmegia. No civilization visible in any direction. Red confirmed it wasn’t his home forest either.
The Army from the North
Red sent Bama up for a bird’s-eye sweep, and the eagle found something a few minutes’ flight north:
An army on the march, under a banner of a sword crossed with an axe.
Úlfr’s history check came back with nothing whatsoever. Asha recognized it instantly: the Endymion Empire.
Which answered where they were, and immediately raised a worse question. The column was roughly 30–45 minutes of marching away and heading south — the same direction the party needed to go. Consensus: travel south, parallel to the road, off it.
Red’s survival roll carried the whole party — keeping the slower members on pace and branches out of everyone’s faces — and after a couple of hours the treeline gave way to crop rows and farmhouses.
Bama went up again for a second look, and this is the detail worth remembering:
At the crossroads the party had passed earlier, the Endymion column went south, then split — half east, half west. They are no longer following the road south at all.
Leif, who knows something about military formations, called it: a pincer. Two fronts. Against what, nobody could say.
Pentamarone
Cresting the last hill past the farmland, the party looked down on a walled city on the banks of a river — and on its banners, a sigil that was very much not a sword and axe:
A hammer, shears, and a needle. “Well, this one seems to be of crafting.”
The party put it together on the spot: they had stumbled into Pentamarone — the border town flagged on Simone’s map as one of only two anomalous green-magic spikes outside a major capital, the town founded by one of the Magistus, and the one place inside Endymion Empire borders the Empire does not rule.
The farmers in the fields waved to each other and went about their day. The gates were open. No artillery on the walls, a couple of guards at the entrance.
The Gate
The lead guard — a woman, arms crossed, entirely unbothered — asked the obvious question of six armed strangers walking up a road out of Empire territory:
“Are you escaping their reign, as many others who have entered the city have?”
Ulfr, constitutionally unable to let a question go unanswered, lied. The deception roll was abysmal even after a Bardic Inspiration die went in on top of it, and the guard’s insight barely needed to work for it:
“I can just tell that y’all are not from around here, and y’all are not escaping the Endymion Empire. This town is open to everybody. I’m just curious why you feel the need to lie and be deceptive.”
Úlfr stepped up and used his full Goliath height to try a different angle — “I think you all have bigger problems than us, based on what we’ve seen on the road” — which did not help either. In the end Red talked them in honestly: they’d seen armed forces on the move, they were behind them, and all anyone wanted was a night off the hard ground. The second guard shrugged. The first stepped aside.
“This is the city of Pentamarone. Home of the WitchCrafters Guild, and the last stronghold against the encroaching Endymion Empire. Enjoy your time in Pentamarone.”
Ulfr’s read, once they were out of earshot: “These guards don’t seem too concerned with safety. Their own city… I don’t think we’ll be safe here if that army comes. We protect ourselves.”
The Market
Walking into the market circle was, per the DM, the shot in the Wizard of Oz where the film turns to color. Everything handmade, everything patchwork, everything vividly colored — nothing like the sterility of the Academy. Gemstones, clothing, pottery, glassware, blacksmithing, paintings, books.
Leif and the Glassblower
Leif went to the glassware stall and found a young woman selling dishware and goblets — “mostly decorative,” she admitted, “obviously inspired by Madame Verre.”
Asked whether glass can serve as a spellcasting focus, she was emphatic: yes. All of Madame Verre’s work is magical, her staff is glass, and she uses it as her arcane focus — “given that she’s actually a powerful witch.” Verre heads the WitchCrafters guild and effectively runs the city.
Then the conversation turned, and turned into the session’s best piece of luck.
She is a refugee from Freedale. She fled with her family as a child during the curse. And when the party mentioned the witch’s tower:
“You went into the witch’s tower? Morgana’s? And you escaped? Is it haunted, like everyone said?”
”…A little bit.”
Her family came to Pentamarone because Morgana told them to. Morgana was prolific and well-connected among covens and guilds, kept a list of safe havens — and, per the glassblower, had worked with Madame Verre in the past on something she couldn’t name. The party told her Morgana was dead. “A great witch.”
Leif bought a plate, cutlery, and a glass goblet for 3 gold — the woman’s first sale. Asha quietly cast Detect Magic over it to be sure nothing evil had followed them: nothing. Ambient WitchCrafter magic saturates the whole market, but the set itself is pure craft, “hard work and dedication.”
Leif also produced the glass orb. She couldn’t read anything on it — “remarkably smooth, very nice handcrafted work,” nothing more. Madame Verre would know, she said, but audiences with Verre are nearly impossible; commoners deal with other guild members instead.
Warned about the army on the road, she shrugged it off. Routine patrols. They never come close.
“It’s just kind of an understood thing that this is an area free of their dominion.”
The Other Stalls
- Úlfr — the tailor. Commissioned the bear skin into a cloak, with the head left intact to rest on his shoulder. 2 gold 5 silver, ready the next day. (Still uncollected — see Open Threads.)
- Asha — the book stall. Her investigation turned up a title that stopped her: The Biography of Rellyona — and a history check named her. Rellyona is one of the Magistus: the woman believed to have founded this town. Asha bought it along with a history of the Greater Endymion Empire, haggling 30 silver down to 15.
- Asha — the blacksmith. Ornate but entirely mundane stock. The smith explained the market’s economics: these are novice artisans and junior guild members. Genuinely magic-infused work comes only from the WitchCrafters themselves, at a market they hold once a month — about two weeks out. The guild also teaches open classes to townsfolk, and sufficient skill earns access to the masters. He also talked Asha out of a chest plate (“as a wizard — I’m just guessing you’re a wizard — armor makes casting pretty difficult”) and sold her an ornate curved dagger for 2 gold. Parting note: a firework festival in a couple of days.
- Aren — listening. Kept an ear out for anything religious and caught a passerby praising “the service at the Temple of Venus yesterday.” There is a temple to Venus in this city.
Red and the Jug
Red went to the pottery stall asking after brewing supplies — no farm, no equipment, no beer since he left home. The potter liked the cut of his jib, reached under the stall, and set down a ceramic jug.
“There’s not much magic that goes around here, it’s pretty novice — but I did get help from one of the WitchCrafters with this. I’ve been saving it for somebody I think is gonna appreciate it.”
Red’s arcana named it: an Alchemy Jug. Speak a liquid from its list and the jug produces it — including four gallons of beer. The asking price was 50 gold, and Red did not hesitate for a full second.
He sat down, said “beer,” and has not paid for a drink since. (A competing table proposal to test the word “mayonnaise” remains, as of this writing, untested.)
Housekeeping
The long-unclaimed Clockwork Amulet in the party inventory finally found an owner: Úlfr took it — forgo the attack roll, treat the d20 as a flat 10. Given his dice this session, an extremely well-timed acquisition.
The SS Nap Time
Late afternoon. Asking around for lodging turned up two options — a large inn in the center of town, and one down by the docks. The party picked the docks, on the theory that it would be cheaper and full of sailors (and thus of stories, which is Úlfr’s entire operating principle).
What they found was three ships that hadn’t moved in a very long time — or one three-decked ship, depending on who was describing it — converted into an inn and tavern. The party’s verdict was “gentrified boats.” The table christened it the SS Nap Time, and the DM made it canon on the spot.
Red poured from the jug. Leif drank out of his new glass goblet. Nobody had to buy anything.
The Sailor
Úlfr found a sailor at the bar hauling a shipment up to the Citadel, bound afterward for Bayhaven in Artmegia. On the local craftsmen:
“A little too artsy fartsy for my taste, but they make good stuff. Quality. Especially anything made by a WitchCrafter herself — it’ll last your lifetime, if not more.”
Asked the real question — how does a town inside Empire borders not belong to the Empire? — he gave three competing rumors, and the party has no way yet to tell which is true:
- A truce. The woman who founded the town and the Emperor go way back; they made an agreement before she died, and he has honored it ever since.
- A facade. The town is secretly working with the Empire, and its independence is theater.
- Fear. The WitchCrafters are powerful enough to hold their own, and the Empire won’t risk provoking a fight it isn’t sure it wins.
He also confirmed the borders are hard: get caught outside the town doing unauthorized magic without keystone authority and the army will make it your problem.
Word from Tobin
Tobin’s Satyr roll succeeded (Simone’s failed — no word from her). His sending stone message, in 24 words:
“Tobin here. Checked Academy. Knows of four Sinful Spoils. Spear, book, chalice, dress. They think Seeker already has one. Will continue to investigate.”
Four items — and they match Asha’s dream exactly (lance/spear, book, chalice, white gown/dress). The new and unwelcome part: the Academy believes the Seeker already holds one of them. Which one is unknown.
The party’s reply, after some negotiation with the 25-word limit:
“Tobin, what is the Academy’s plan to get the chalice back from us?”
What Asha Hadn’t Told Them
Prompted by the conversation, Asha finally shared a vision from her exhausted rest two sessions back:
A figure matching the Seeker’s poster — white hair with red tips — throwing magic at a man: long blond-gray beard, heavily built, in a whitish-yellow robe. He may or may not have been fighting back.
She reminded the party of her own limitation: she cannot tell whether what she sees is past, present, or future.
That fed into the other item the party wants to ask the Satyrs: on Simone’s map, the yellow (divine) speck that appeared at the Academy was assumed to be the Golden Chalice — so did that yellow dot move when the party left with it? If the chalice’s magic travels with the chalice, the map is a tracking device pointed at them. If it stayed put, the yellow was never the chalice at all.
The Night
Rooms were a gold piece each. Leif, freshly poor from buying dinnerware, asked to sleep on the deck and was refused by the barkeep; Aren offered to sponsor him out of party funds. Everyone got their own room. “There’s more money to be spent on lodging when we don’t have to spend it on beer.”
Dream rolls. Several PCs have now rolled through their entire bank of dreams and get nothing but the consequences. Red, Úlfr, and Asha failed and took exhaustion — Úlfr, already carrying a level out of Morgana’s tower, now sits at two. (The tally got a little muddled at the table; worth confirming with Tommy.) Aren and Leif rested well — Leif “slept like a baby. It felt like I was being rocked to sleep.”
Only Red still had a dream left to receive, and it was two images:
Something grand and good — a great city, or a temple. And then the same thing in ruins.
No context. A bad feeling attached. Over breakfast the party threw out guesses — a floating city, Drolta’s temple — and got nowhere.
The WitchCrafters Guild
In the morning the party went to the guild hall — walled off from the rest of the city, flying the same banner as the gates. Inside: an entry hall busy with people carrying paint, smoke, and half-finished work between doors, and a receptionist named Dolly.
They asked to see Madame Verre. Dolly laughed, kindly.
“A lot of people want to talk to Madame Verre.”
What she could offer was Genni — the guild’s knowledge-seeker, its bookworm, the one who’d know. Dolly offered to carry the chalice to her. Asha’s insight said absolutely not, and a successful persuasion got the whole party walked back instead.
On the way, Dolly explained the guild’s structure: open classes for the townsfolk, advancement to study with a master witch once you show sufficient skill, and very few who ever reach that level.
Genni
They found her in her study, which doubles as the guild library.
Genni cast Identify on the Golden Chalice — and hit the same wall the Academy hit, and the same wall the party hit themselves. Three attempts now, three failures.
“I’m sorry. There’s some non-detection magic. I can’t quite figure out what exactly it is.”
“How often does this happen?”
“Not often, to be quite honest.”
The party laid out the whole chain for her: found by Lucian in Caelwyrm, stolen, sold to goblins, recovered, submitted to the Arcane Reclamation Initiative at the Academy, signed away under a disclosure form, and now on a clock before a repo man comes to collect it. And the name they’d attached to it: the Sinful Spoils.
Her ears perked at that. She’d heard it. She went through her books and came back with “the Seeker of the Sinful Spoils” — the same title the Academy uses — and nothing else. Beyond the name, she had nothing.
On the White Forest: she knows the curse (it threatened Pentamarone before it receded) but little of the forest’s history, except one thing the party has now heard from three independent sources — a coven of witches lived in there.
On the town’s founder, she confirmed what the biography implied and what the party had been hoping was false:
The town was founded by one of the Magistus. She is no longer with us.
Rellyona is dead. The Magistus the party came here half-hoping to consult has been gone for years.
Asha cast Detect Thoughts on her — surface only, no deeper probe (Genni would have felt it, and Asha wanted to stay trustworthy). What came back was confirmation rather than betrayal: Genni genuinely does not know, and she was already planning to take it to Madame Verre. Asha’s follow-up persuasion for an audience failed — Genni would go ask, and report back, but the party was not coming with her.
The Safe
While they waited, Asha walked the perimeter of the room and looked past Genni’s desk.
There is a safe under the desk, and on its face is the symbol of the magic the Endymion Empire uses — the same symbol Asha then noticed on Genni’s own staff.
The party’s read: this is where the guild stores its Keystones — the Empire-issued gems required to cast legally anywhere outside the town’s borders. A brief, immediately-vetoed suggestion to steal them followed. The more uncomfortable reading also got raised: is the guild’s independence a front?
Genni’s Verdict
She came back twice for clarification, then delivered the answer: Madame Verre couldn’t help either. “Best of luck to you all.”
But pressed on what she would do with it, Genni gave the party the single most valuable thing they learned all day:
The nondetection is not a spell laid on the chalice. Dispel Magic would do nothing. It appears to come from the chalice itself — “almost like the chalice is casting non-detection constantly, on itself. Which I don’t really know how that works.”
Nobody put a ward on this thing. It wards itself.
One last exchange, easy to miss. Asked about the guild’s relationship with the Academy, Genni was diplomatic — scholars, mutual respect, magic as academic study versus creative expression, “some say they have radical overreach, but they’ve also held out against the Endymion Empire.” When Aren said the Empire was worse, Genni answered:
“Yes. But I would know.”
And left before anyone could ask what she meant.
The Chalice, Finally
Five months of carrying it. Three failed Identifies. A bounty, a deadline, and a repo man.
And then, sitting in a library with a magic jug that makes beer on command, Aren asked the question nobody had thought to ask:
“A chalice is technically a cup. What would happen if we tried to drink from it?”
Red rinsed it out, filled it, and handed it over.
What Happened
Aren drank first. She lowered the cup, and — poof —
Cats. Cats appearing all over the guild library. Solid. Warm. Real to the touch. Held up by the tail, a cat just… lets it happen.
Asha drank. Behind her appeared her missing mother — exactly as she looked the last time Asha saw her in person. She feels real. She doesn’t react, doesn’t recognize her daughter, just looks blankly. She carries nothing of value, and anything taken from her disintegrates the moment it leaves her.
Asha hugged her anyway, said “I will find you,” and walked out of the room.
Leif drank, and conjured a second Golden Chalice.
Úlfr drank, and — with the inevitability of a man who has spent this entire campaign trying to acquire a horse — conjured a horse. It would not be ridden. It would not move on command. So he punched it, on a genuinely terrible attack roll, and
the horse exploded. Anatomically. All over the guild library.
Aren was done. Dolly was allergic. Genni had gone very quiet.
Rules of the Cup, As Observed
- You drink, you think of a thing, the thing appears. No incantation, no components.
- It has to be something you know. Úlfr tried to conjure the repo man — to see the face of who’s coming for them — and was refused.
- Living things are copies, not creatures. Physical, touchable, and completely inert — no will, no reaction, no use in a fight. “Physical, but not exactly the thing. Not spiritually.”
- Objects may be another matter. The duplicate chalice is sitting right there. The party immediately started doing math on duplicate gold and decoy chalices left in every town they pass through.
The Catch
The DM’s closing note on the subject, offered without elaboration:
Everyone who drank from the chalice feels a little weird afterward.
Weird how? “Hard to tell.”
“You know what they say. If something’s too good to be true, it probably is.”
The Glass Throne
The party made for the exit at speed, ahead of anyone doing an inventory of the library floor.
They got as far as the central courtyard — and then everyone rolled a Wisdom save. Every single one failed. (Úlfr rolled a natural 1, for the record.)
Paralyzed. Frozen mid-stride, and then turned — magically, bodily — to face the garden.
Genni was standing there, wide-eyed and frightened. She took one step to the side.
Behind her: what appears to be a little girl, seated on a floating throne of glass.
Madame Verre.
“Well, well. I haven’t had something like this happen in quite a while.”
End of session.
Loot & Acquisitions
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Alchemy Jug | Red — 50 gp. Speak a liquid from its list; produces up to four gallons of beer. Ceramic, looks like a one-gallon jug, holds far more |
| Clockwork Amulet | Claimed from party inventory by Úlfr — forgo an attack roll, treat the d20 as a flat 10 |
| Glass dinnerware set | Leif — 3 gp. Plate, cutlery, glass goblet. Handcrafted, non-magical. The glassblower’s first sale |
| The Biography of Rellyona | Asha — the Magistus who founded Pentamarone. Unread |
| History of the Greater Endymion Empire | Asha — bought together with the above, 15 silver for the pair (haggled from 30) |
| Ornate curved dagger | Asha — 2 gp. Beautiful, entirely mundane |
| Bear-skin cloak (commissioned) | Úlfr — 2 gp 5 sp, head left intact to rest on the shoulder. Not yet collected |
| A second Golden Chalice | Conjured by Leif from the chalice itself. Physical. Whether it’s real is untested |
| Cats | Numerous. Inert. Aren’s |
| Exhaustion | Red, Úlfr, and Asha failed dream rolls; Úlfr now carrying two levels |
Open Threads
- Madame Verre has the entire party paralyzed in her courtyard (the cliffhanger) — the head of the WitchCrafters, on a floating glass throne, appearing as a little girl, amused rather than angry. She is also the one person everyone agrees could read the chalice, and the party just destroyed a horse in her library to get her attention.
- The Golden Chalice conjures what you think of — five months of carrying it, and it was a cup the whole time. Living copies are inert; objects may be real. It refuses things you don’t know.
- “You feel a little weird.” Everyone who drank is carrying something unexplained. Aren, Asha, Leif, Úlfr, and Red all drank.
- The nondetection comes from the chalice itself — not a spell, not dispellable. Why does an artifact hide itself?
- Four Sinful Spoils: spear, book, chalice, dress — confirmed by Tobin against Academy records, matching Asha’s dream exactly. The Academy thinks the Seeker already has one. Which one?
- Pending Satyr task — Tobin is investigating the Academy’s plan to reclaim the chalice. Still owed: a question to a second Satyr about whether the yellow divine speck on Simone’s map moved with the party or stayed at the Academy. Simone’s star-tablet task is still failing.
- The repossession clock — roughly 15 days before the Arcane Reclamation Initiative can seize the chalice.
- Rellyona is dead. The Magistus who founded Pentamarone is gone, confirmed by Genni. Asha carries her unread biography — and Emperor Endymion remains the only Magistus known to live.
- The Endymion army split east and west at the crossroads north of town rather than continuing south — a pincer around something. They are not, apparently, marching on Pentamarone. The town insists these are routine patrols that never come close.
- Why the Empire tolerates Pentamarone — three mutually exclusive rumors from one sailor: an old truce with the Emperor, a secret collaboration, or the Empire is afraid of the WitchCrafters.
- The keystone safe in Genni’s study bears the Endymion Empire’s magic symbol, as does Genni’s staff. Storage for legally-required Keystones — or something worse. And Genni’s “but I would know” about the Empire went unexplained.
- The green fourth-magic anomaly at Pentamarone is still completely uninvestigated. The party is standing on top of the exact thing they came north to find and has not asked a single question about it.
- Madame Verre worked with Morgana — per the Freedale glassblower, on something she couldn’t name. Verre also uses a glass staff as an arcane focus, which bears on both Leif’s glass orb and Úlfr’s plans for the Nithing Pole.
- The WitchCrafters’ monthly market is ~2 weeks out — the only source of genuinely magic-infused goods — and the guild teaches open classes to anyone who shows skill. There’s also a firework festival in a couple of days.
- The Venus temple in Pentamarone — Aren wants to pay respects; Red has an unexplained Venus connection from earlier visions. Unvisited.
- Red’s dream — something grand, then the same thing in ruins. Unidentified.
- Asha’s undisclosed vision, now disclosed — the white-and-red-haired figure attacking a bearded man in white-yellow robes. Past, present, or future: unknown.
- Úlfr’s bear cloak is finished and sitting at a tailor’s stall the party has not returned to.
- Nobody has been to the Nephthys temple. Drolta’s homecoming is deferred again, and the White Forest rescue — Asha’s mother, tied to a tree — is now further away than it was at the end of Session 9.
(Carrying forward: the Guardian Command Amulet and the Academy’s guardian network, Verelda at the Biblioplex, Yssa and the forest coven, who took Morgana’s eyes, The Whispering One reaching for Howl, and the true nature of Archibald — whose aim, it turns out, is not perfect.)
Next Session
The Fallen are frozen in the courtyard of the WitchCrafters guild hall, facing the most powerful witch in Pentamarone, with a stolen-adjacent artifact, a duplicate of it, a room full of cats, and the remains of a horse behind them.
The good news: Madame Verre is the one person who might actually be able to identify the Golden Chalice — and she has just decided they’re interesting.
Next session: Wednesday, September 9, 2026.