Laurel tells the party that Astrid is also the Company Board’s Advocate, Lena, and they corner her at the Great Council Palace. Astrid lures Laurel back to her side, but the party kills Astrid and recovers the Penance Stone. They find the lich Ishild and convince him to bury Fey Extinction Event in exchange for Word Without Warning, the Circle’s assassination spell. Ishild reveals that Casca was his fairy test subject, and that “casca” is his cypher word for encoding spells, not her name.
Rowan got an inspiration point and a thank you for being a Coven villain and a good sport in Game 4.
Hughe got an inspiration point for escaping the Admiralty marines in game 4, with Minor Illusion and quick thinking.
At the end of Game 4, the party had just beaten the Duchess Hecate and her devils, and freed Luna, Flora, Gertie, and Thelonious from their cages. Now they went back out to the cliffside opening to climb up. While they were climbing, two harpies appeared from other holes in the cliffside. One attacked with a Sleep song, which Beale countered with Counterpoint, and one attacked Rowan and Hughe on the mountaintop. After one round the harpies left to find help.
A swarm of harpies appeared just as everyone reached the top, but the party escaped into the forest with Hughe’s Pass Without Trace.
They crossed the bridge back into Braddock and dropped off Gertie and Thelonious, then went to Dunham to drop off Luna and Flora. The Hollinsheds were thrilled to have Luna back, and asked if they could do anything for the party, who said no. Similarly the Shaws were thrilled to have Flora back and asked if they could do anything for the party. The party asked for a short rest in the Shaws' house and some wine and cheese.
The party decided not to tell either family that their children were changelings, but suggested they leave Hollin for a few days in case the harpies came back.
The party discussed what to do next. They wanted to find Astrid before the Fey Extinction Event, and Beale suggested asking Laurel where Astrid might be (inspiration point for Beale). They rolled well on Persuasion, and Laurel told them:
Carver House is a Hollin trading house that controls the import of guano. The Admiralty uses guano to make gunpowder, so Carver House has become very wealthy and even has a seat on the Anhault Charter Company board. Carver House’s board member is named Lena. Lena’s current role on the board is the Advocate, who can call a trial on anyone in Hollin.
However, Carver House has long been controlled by the Coven, and Lena is actually Astrid.
The board’s weekly meeting is right now, so if you hurry to the Great Council Palace in Dunham, you might find Lena/Astrid there.
The party headed to the Great Council Palace, just a few blocks up from the Shaws'. They didn’t immediately see anyone entering or leaving, so they went to the Glitterglobe coffee shop nearby to watch the Palace's grand entrance and enjoy some cake pops and beignets.
After about an hour, no one had used the grand entrance, so Beale and Rowan decided to scout the Palace more actively. Just inside, they found the Grand Council Chamber on the first floor. Beale went to the second floor and found one door there. Listening there, he heard a few words suggesting a mundane meeting, and thought the speakers were close to the door, possibly suggesting a small room.
Rowan scouted the sides and rear of the Palace, and found a man loitering at a rear corner of the building. She also noticed that there was a second floor overhang in the back of the building. Soon she saw an official, naval-looking man exit from a secret door on the corner, and the "loitering" man let him pass and closed the door after him.
The party approached the doorman and Casca Charmed him. He started to tell the party about his job, but three men who’d been watching the secret door from the overhang came out to dress him down. The party quickly subdued all four, took them through the door, and tied them up under a spiral staircase inside.
They found one door next to the spiral staircase on the first floor. Peeking in, they saw an upscale office and apartment, with access to the back of the Lion’s Mouth mail slot. So, this was the Keeper of the Lion's Mouth's apartment.
They went up the spiral staircase, where they found a long hallway with five doors and another spiral stair at the far end. They listened at the doors and only heard noise behind one of them, and they concluded it was the same room that Beale had already listened to. Still invisible, Beale and Rowan opened the door a little and saw that it was the Board room. The Master of Revels was telling the Board about his search for an illegal cabaret and the second-to-last Master of Revels, who was missing.
The party waited for the meeting to finish. Astrid came out with Durer, the Secret Police Chief, and went down the hallway and into the fifth door. The party burst in on them and attacked. Astrid cast Detect Fey, which lit up Casca and suggested Astrid might kill Casca with Fey Extinction Event; Astrid also Persuaded Laurel to come back to her side. But, the party beat Durer and Astrid, with Casca's Witch Bolt delivering the killing blow to Astrid. The party let Laurel live.
They found the Penance Stone in the room and claimed it.
As a cleric Hughe wanted to return the Stone to the Chapel of Ajana right away, but first Casca wanted to make sure that the Stone couldn't be used for Fey Extinction Event again.
Casca knew from decoding Fey Extinction Event that Ihsild was the author, and they went back to Kasskar at the Mooncalf for information. Kasskar told them that his former colleague Aeris had given Ishild the Hollin Grimoire seventeen years ago, and that nothing had been heard from the Grimoire since then, so Ishild might be there. Kasskar said the Grimoire was hidden under Gramercy Books in Braddock.
They went to Gramercy Books, which seemed to be long abandoned. They found their way downstairs, though the Grimoire's ten levels of bookshelves. On many levels they saw disturbing, monstrous-looking people in cages - stunted, translucent, and hostile.
They found Ishild on the bottom level, a grotesque lich slumped in an easy chair, smoking a cigar. He was thinking aloud that each reflection in a puddle or lake is actually a slightly different, fey copy of our world, and that left-handed people in Hollin actually come from those reflected worlds. He then noticed the party, and seeing Casca said, “You’re back!”
Ishild told Casca he'd kept her in a cage for 400 years, to use as a fairy test subject while he developed Detect Fey and Fey Extinction Event. He'd then Mind Wiped her, knocked her unconscious, and dumped her in Lofton Forest, expecting the seventeen-year silvermote brood to eat her. One of the party suggested Ishild should have just killed Casca directly, and Ishild agreed, saying that Cankerblossom had also suggested he just throw her off the bridge.
He said that she had no name and that when he wanted to address her during the 400 years, he’d just bang on her cage and shout “Hey you!” He said Casca wasn’t a name, it was just the random letters he used as the cypher word to encode Detect Fey and Fey Extinction Event. What would she call herself going forward? She said the first thing she saw when she woke up in the forest was a waterfall or cascade, so she’d go with “Cascade.”
Casca asked about the monsters they saw coming down. Ishild said that hundreds of years ago, naturalists in Hollin discovered that if you bred foxes for aggression, they became surprisingly hostile after just a few generations. Ishild tried to do the same with people, but the time to adolescence was too long. So, he started to breed people for shorter times to adolescence. He eventually got time to adolescence down to two to three years, but that made the people sickly and grotesque. Ishild said that after he'd achieved the three-year breeding time, then he started to select for both time to adolescence and aggression, producing the monsters they saw.
Casca asked what deal they could make for Ishild to forget Fey Extinction Event. She gave him the fairy assassination spell that Aurora had given the party to bargain with. Ishild accepted it with glee, saying he’d long wanted it, and saying it was called Word Without Warning. In exchange, he agreed not to reproduce Fey Extinction Event.
Casca asked what guarantee Ishild could give. She asked him to selectively Mind Wipe himself, but he declined. Somewhat stymied, Ishild suggested he give the Circle the names of three other Caliphate gods who secretly lived in Hollin, which would be valuable information and also give the Circle some leverage over him. The party was skeptical that Ishild's offer was valuable, but grudgingly accepted it after a little discussion.
We briefly discussed what the characters might do after the campaign. Wendy said Cascade would spend the next few hundred years creating a Fey Extinction Counterspell to counter Fey Extinction Event if it ever surfaced again.
Beale had asked Ishid if he could seek out history in the Hollin Grimoire, and Ishild said yes, but also suggested that Beale chronicle Ishild’s own history. So possibly Beale is doing that after the campaign.
The Circle gave the party the Word Without Warning spell to use in negotiating with Ishild, mentioned above, but my notes don't say which meeting with the Circle that was.