The Erovast Codex

2026.09.22#

Summary#

Azrith’s player was absent this session, so the GM ran Azrith. The GM’s recap added a detail not recorded before: besides sending the party to Havenport to lie low, Duke Tristan Blackwood has instructed them to seek out Mauve Marigold and stay with her until he sends word. The spelling of her name is unconfirmed. The party turned down any last shopping or drinking. Cassian was glad to leave behind “these nobles marching around with their pretentious attitudes,” and Odine called them “a bunch of fakers.” After a long rest, they reported at dawn to the Blackwood camp. Captain Garran was waiting at attention with a few knights. He rebuffed Cassian’s offer of a hug (“just personal space, man”) and slung a massive bag of coin over his shoulder. The party would not be walking to Havenport: Duke Tristan Blackwood had sponsored the party’s travel through the Gleaming Keep’s teleportation circle — paying roughly 5,000 gp as tribute and providing spell draught to power it. Source: Transcript.

The party climbed the King’s Road to the Gleaming Keep, its metal walls blazing in the sunrise. Oathkeepers at the open metal doors checked Garan’s name against their list and let them in. It was the party’s first time inside King Aldrich’s castle. Cassian’s Perception check (23) took in the interior. The walls had once been pristine stonework, perhaps by master masons, dwarves or elves, and King Aldrich’s archmages had transmuted them to near-impenetrable steel. The halls held ornate pews, banners and candelabra, but the place was vast and hollow, kept only by “bannerless knights” guarding it from the noble houses. Cassian was left open-mouthed, and Odine walked straight into his back while gawking. In the circle chamber, six Oathkeeper knights and a robed acolyte greeted “party Blackwood.” Garan dropped the bag on a table, spilling roughly 5,000 gp of Blackwood’s money as tribute, and handed over a crystal vial of bluish-silver liquid. Source: Transcript.

The acolyte named the liquid spell draught. It is a transmuted liquid made from the mana crystals mined in the Thornwood Vale, the crystals House Godrin harvests whenever it holds the Vale’s deed. According to the acolyte, it took nearly 60 years to learn how to use it, and House Godrin was influential in its discovery. It is the only known way to power the circle, which connects to a few other key circles surviving from King Aldrich’s time. He traced the circle’s grooves with the draught, and they glowed and hummed. He then handed Aldric a plate-sized metal keystone and told him to stand in the center and speak the destination’s name. Aldric was worried, after Cassian’s jokes, that he might leave parts of himself behind. He raised the keystone and said “Havenport.” Just before he did, Azrith started to ask “hey wait, before we go, shouldn’t we—” and was cut off. It is not recorded whether Garan came with them. Source: Transcript.

The party landed in a tarnished, neglected version of the Gleaming Keep’s metal halls: Westermere Manor on the cliffs above Havenport. A lone Oathkeeper rose from his chair, surprised by visitors. He was Ian, a long-stationed knight with a white, unkempt beard. Cassian later called him “Ian Wren”; that surname is unconfirmed. Ian took back the keystone and recognized Cassian’s name at once: “Lord Fortescue’s son,” adding that “people tend to have short memories.” He also treated Havenport as Aldric’s home, asking how long it had been since he’d returned. Aldric said about eight or nine years, perhaps longer. He admitted to “a little bit of a past there” but said he tends not to reminisce, even about the fall of House Westermere, the manor’s former family. The town has been in disarray ever since. Source: Transcript.

Ian laid out Havenport’s troubles. There is a growing infestation of undead beneath the manor, and “Mav and her people” have taken refuge from it in the village. Ian keeps safe with an amulet that he says keeps the dead away, and he tries to warn off the village children who wander up at night. Meanwhile the Wither, which he named himself, has been taking more and more of the weak and sick in Havenport. Odine told him her own home is in the Vale. Asked where the blight comes from, Ian told the veteran Oathkeepers’ legend of the Dark King (also called the Nightmare King). This was a ruler from a “far realm,” not of men, elves or dwarves, and “the very essence of corruption itself.” It began by using fairies and will-o’-wisps to lure children to their doom, then learned to corrupt people from within and make them part of its mind. King Aldrich marched against it with all his forces and nearly lost; Ian’s own grandfather fought beside him. Then Aldrich withdrew his troops and went on alone with only his elite circle of mages. The Dark King was defeated, and “all that was found left of him in the Vale was a statue of himself.” Source: Transcript.

The story hit Odine hard. She clutched her pendant and remembered once finding that very statue, alone in the forest: a human king kneeling with his sword in the ground. “I’ve seen this statue that you speak of with my own eyes,” she said, shaking, and told Ian the tale sounded very similar to her family’s stories. Aldric and Cassian both knew versions of the legend from childhood; it is told across the realms of men. Ian added that no one knows what King Aldrich did that day, but the symptoms of the Wither resemble what their ancestors suffered back then. There is little literature in Havenport to research it, “perhaps amongst the wealthy… but these people here are very much humble folk, survivors.” Ian stands his post alone, and a fellow Oathkeeper relieves him every two weeks. He pointed the party toward the Salt House, a former shipyard warehouse that is now the survivors’ community center. He said they would likely want coin for lodging “but they aren’t bad people.” He also told them the ghosts are in the undercroft below the manor. Source: Transcript.

Outside, rain lashed a decaying seaport. The town had once held perhaps 1,000–5,000 people, with ragged ships at the docks and farmland behind, but now its only lights were in the Salt House. Rather than wait out the rain, the party went down into the undercroft, with Aldric leading and Odine at the rear. The manor looked 10–15 years abandoned. In the first large room, an archway to a hallway was blocked by a floating sphere of swirling black mist. Cassian’s Arcana check was a natural 1, and he pretended to taste it. Odine reached toward it with one hand on her pendant and spoke to it telepathically. It whispered back one word: “door.” While Odine urged caution, Azrith took a running jump into the sphere, which shrank and vanished with him inside. “This isn’t the first time he’s just disappeared on us,” Odine sighed. Source: Transcript.

A silvery ghost drifted out of a room beyond: Samantha Westermere. “Bold of your friend to take the gate,” she said. The sphere is the Curtain, “a curtain to the realm of death” and a passage between the ethereal and material planes. Azrith may come back “if he survives,” when it reopens; that could be a day or a week, and the timing is unpredictable. Samantha said the manor belonged to her family, and she died in her own room down here after “many catastrophes” brought her house down. She refuses to pass on until the living restore Havenport to how it was in her childhood. Cassian flirted, and she blushed, as much as a ghost can. She offered them rooms but warned that residents of “the other side” might try to possess them. She led them to a black veil, a shimmering black wall sealing off part of the undercroft ever since the Curtain opened. It is impenetrable to her. She said much of the undercroft has “fallen into the ethereal realm.” Source: Transcript.

Odine’s History check (14) told her this was not elven magic. It felt foreign and alien: the ethereal and material planes, normally separate, were converging here. Her Mage Hand did nothing against the veil. When she touched it with her own palm, it felt like cold steel, and black mist crawled up her arm, stealing her warmth. It didn’t feel evil, but it felt like entropy. She channeled Sacred Flame through her palm, and the radiant light drove the shadow back. Cassian then tried it himself. Odine warned him telepathically (“be careful, it’s really strong”) as the shadow crept up his arm, “almost like it’s turning your essence into living shadow.” His magic check (a natural 20) found that no one is casting a spell there. The wall itself is the source, and whatever lies beyond it is reaching through. His Light cantrip showed that the wall swallows light completely. Samantha, who had learned “more in the last five minutes than in the last five years,” said the wall wasn’t there in her lifetime and is likely tied to the Curtain. She added that both the living and the dead use the Curtain, “some of them are vile,” and that traffic has grown as more people have died in recent years. Source: Transcript.

With night approaching and Azrith gone, the party decided to find lodging in town and come back later, possibly to pass through the Curtain together (“I’ve seen it done,” Samantha said). Cassian promised Samantha they would return (“A Fortescue always keeps their promise”), and they walked out into the rain toward the Salt House. The session ended there. Source: Transcript.

Open Threads#

  • Azrith is lost through the Curtain into “the realm of death.” He may return if he survives, whenever the Curtain reopens, which could be a day or a week. The party plans to come back and possibly go through together. His last, cut-off question (“shouldn’t we—”) is unanswered.
  • Mauve Marigold: Blackwood’s contact in Havenport. The party must stay with her until he sends word. Not yet found; she may be among the survivors at the Salt House (unconfirmed).
  • The Salt House: the party is heading there for lodging, which will likely cost coin.
  • The black veil: what lies beyond it, why radiant light repels it, and whether it is tied to the Curtain. Odine believes she can figure it out.
  • The Dark King legend: what King Aldrich did, the kneeling statue Odine has seen in the Vale, and the parallels to her family’s stories and the Wither. See Investigate the Pestilence.
  • Havenport’s decline: the fall of House Westermere, the undead beneath the manor, the Wither’s toll, and village children wandering near the undercroft.
  • Aldric’s past in Havenport: he confirmed this is his home, but is reluctant to talk about it.
  • Samantha Westermere: refuses to pass on until Havenport is restored. She warned about possession, and Cassian promised to return.
  • Spell draught: its link to House Godrin’s Vale mana crystals and to the teleportation network makes the Vale deed matter even more.
  • Whether Captain Garran teleported with the party or stayed in Everdale is not recorded.

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