Session — The End of Gan Porter, the Death of Desmond, and the Crown Shard
Or: the night the Blades stopped being “local heroes” and became a problem for empires.
Gan Porter did not make it easy.
The fight that had started in the pillars-and-sigil chamber continued like a curse that refused to end. The party learned quickly that this was not a battle of sword and spell so much as a battle of patience—waiting, listening, readying strikes, and praying the ghost would become tangible for even a heartbeat.
Gideon Kael planted himself in the center of the room like an anchor and readied his blade. Leda Gebhart mirrored him—spear poised, eyes tracking every shadow. Mol Potts clutched holy water like it was the only honest thing left in this dungeon. Zel Cunningham—blood on her fingertip—anointed Gideon for luck, raised her shield, and nocked an arrow for the moment Gan dared to show herself again.
She did.
Gan slipped out of the wall and went straight for Mol. Holy water splashed across her form—one of the few things that actually hurt—and she still managed to rake Mol with a vicious strike. Acid proved useless. Fire proved worse: splash caught the living as easily as the dead.
The pattern repeated. Gan would vanish, reappear, strike, and melt away again—an endless loop of dread. Leda’s magic battered the spirit with Spout, but the damage came in drips, not waves. Zel called thunder and fire and arrows into the dark, most of it swallowed by stone and bad luck. Gideon, stubborn as ever, kept catching Gan in the instant she became real—snagging strike, off-guard, pressure, pain.
Then Gan turned her attention to Zel.
Zel’s readied shot missed. Mol’s fire missed too—splashing Zel and the spirit alike. Gan’s blade did not miss.
One hit dropped Zel hard—twenty-eight damage in a blink. For a moment, everything went quiet in that awful way it does when you realize the next hit could end a friend. Mol dragged Zel back from the edge with a vial. The party reset. Readied again. Held their breath again.
And finally—Gideon found the seam.
Gan appeared. Mol’s fire hit and did nothing. Gideon struck anyway—again and again—each blow more decisive than the last, until the ghost’s body came apart like a bad story being torn up: elbow, shoulder, waist, head—then nothing but fading light and silence.
Gan Porter was gone.
The room felt lighter the moment she dissipated, as if the dungeon itself exhaled.
The Spoils of a Witch and the Door Beyond
They didn’t celebrate. They survived, then patched each other up for hours.
When the shaking stopped, Gideon searched the chest. Inside was a handkerchief—strangely pristine for something buried under centuries—and beneath it, a jade cat. The cloth wasn’t just fabric; it hid the cat the way a trick hides a coin. Zel identified the trinket as a Jade Cat, but the handkerchief resisted easy understanding.
Then Gideon opened the door Gan had been guarding.
A hallway stretched beyond, with a side passage to the left and doors waiting like clenched teeth at the end. They moved carefully—because after Gan, everyone understood what “careful” actually meant.
Gideon opened the north door.
Inside stood a rectangular room with a staircase rising in the northeast corner—and a man in the center, collapsed and wrong.
It was Desmond (Clerk).
The head clerk. The one who had issued their charter. The one who had seemed too competent to ever be a victim.
Now he was a body: sunken face, runes along his robe, death clinging to him like damp cloth. Gideon judged it fresh—within twelve hours. Leda recognized the signature: the same kind of wound as the necromancer’s death in Skade, likely from that magical golden blade.
Desmond had been murdered down here.
Someone wanted the Blades licensed… and someone wanted the man who licensed them silent.
The Children of Beauty
Zel sifted through scrolls while the others watched corners and doors. What she found changed the shape of everything:
There had been an order called The Children of Beauty—keepers and guards, tasked with preventing the release of something dangerous. Once, it had been the elves who held that duty. Later, that burden passed to their human slaves.
No one was sure what, exactly, was being kept locked away.
Only that it was important enough to build prisons under temples… and die for.
Mol noticed the runes on Desmond’s robes weren’t what they appeared to be—an illusion, a deliberate masking. Even in death, someone had tried to hide what Desmond was doing here… or what had been done to him.
Then Gideon found a secret door.
And beyond it, the dungeon stopped pretending.
The Vault
The hidden room was a sandstone vault—plain by design, the kind of space built to hold power without ornament. In its center sat a massive obsidian box, pulsing like a heart. Runes glinted along the sides of the chamber. The air felt heavy, almost pressurized.
A ghoul lay on the ground nearby, embroidered with the unmistakable mark of the Infernal Empire.
On the ghoul’s body: an unfamiliar dagger.
And when Zel stepped closer to the vault, something rose—not from the floor, but from the power itself.
A spirit. A fiend. A thing that had been waiting.
The Fight They Lost
The creature was a Vordine, and Leda’s knowledge came fast and grim: resistant to physical blows and poison. Spells that should have mattered landed like raindrops on stone.
Gideon struck hard—snagging strike, a brutal critical—trying to force the fight into a shape he understood. Mol hurled acid and fire; it didn’t matter. Leda’s Spout did nothing. Zel tried to retreat, to breathe, to create space.
The Vordine reacted faster than thought.
It turned on Zel and struck—
—and killed her instantly.
After that, the rest blurred into catastrophe: the party collapsing under pressure, the fiend’s blows, the room’s panic, the certainty that they had finally reached a place they were not meant to survive.
The The Blades of Strangeways wiped.
Waking Up Somewhere Else
Zel opened her eyes in a room she didn’t recognize.
Beds. Clean sheets. Salt air.
The others were there too—alive, battered, and confused. Corwin stood off to the side, pale and exhausted, as if he’d been running for days. Duke Elric Strangeways was in the room—calm as a man who could rewrite death if it inconvenienced him.
There was another figure as well: High Priest Tomor, the one who had brought them back. He did not linger. He left, as if resurrection was a favor you did quickly and then refused to discuss.
Zel remembered a dream: a library of endless books.
Then the Duke gave them the truth:
Twenty-one days had passed.
It was now the 6th of The Sailor.
And they weren’t in Strangeways anymore.
Gideon looked out the window and saw a city—a real one—stretching toward the coast. Mol stared at the ocean like it was an alien thing. When Leda demanded to know where they were, the Duke answered with infuriating casualness:
They were in Valinport, in Valin College—the capital. Lighthouse. Docks. Palaces. Temples of the Father and Mother. The world suddenly wider than Strangeways had ever allowed.
Gideon stormed out, furious—at the dungeon, at the Duke, at himself.
Leda asked why the Duke had saved them.
He simply said he enjoyed their company.
And then he showed them what he had truly retrieved.
The Shard
A small triangular piece of metal.
The Duke said the Infernal Empire was after it. He laid out the larger truth: the Infernal Empire—warlike, expanding, a cold war brewing with the Iron Union of Arkon—had begun moving pieces across the board. Valin had been distant enough not to feel the pressure… until now.
He asked Mol to touch the metal. Nothing happened.
Leda touched it. Nothing.
Then Zel touched it.
Her eyes went blazing white—and a vision slammed into her:
A king on the deck of a ship at night. A verdant shore ahead. A battle raging—elves against hulking monsters. A servant offering an impossibly huge iron crown. The king placing it upon his head and whispering: “I hope the gods forgive me.”
Then a beam of white light split the heavens and struck the earth—spreading like wildfire—turning everything it touched into sand.
When the vision released her, the Duke named the truth:
The metal was a piece of the Crown of Iron.
An apocalyptic weapon from the ancient elvish age—broken into shards and hidden long ago.
And the shard couldn’t be teleported.
It had to be carried.
The New Mission
The Duke’s plan was simple, which meant it was terrible:
They must take the shard to The Free City of Gax, to the Wizards Hall of Gax, one of the greatest magical authorities in the world—someone capable of keeping it safe.
But travel would be expensive. Ships to Gax were rare. And worse—
If the Infernal Empire was watching, the party had to appear harmless.
So the Duke did what only Duke Elric would do: he had them enrolled as visiting students at Valin College. Six months to train, respec, rebuild, or even arrive with a new face if needed—before they began working for coin, taking quests, and quietly preparing for the long road to Gax.
And the shard?
It disappeared into the handkerchief—hidden, safe, and unseen.
Zel carried it.
Because of course she did.
And somewhere, far away, an empire marked with IE likely turned its gaze toward Valinport—toward a group of backwater adventurers who had stumbled into a secret meant for kings.
Next Session Reminders
-
Six months pass at Valin College (training / respecs / new character options)
-
Letters from home (parents, fallout, consequences)
-
The Infernal Empire’s attention—and how to look harmless
-
Money, ships, and a plan to reach The Free City of Gax without announcing the Crown shard to the world