Summary
The party investigates the sabotaged dinner, traces criminal intermediaries, and gains official authority from Captain Lena Glitz. Their encounter with resistance scout Skumpy reveals that Project Sunrise connected Rosenthorne to Naa and enabled an ongoing hostile incursion.
Detailed Narrative
The party begins the formal investigation of Markus's death and the Project Sunrise disaster. Baby focuses first on the kitchen and serving chain. A distressed household worker admits that she participated in handling/swapping the object that ultimately produced the magical darkness, but says she did not understand that it was part of a murder attempt. Trevor postpones judgment rather than immediately punishing her, recognizing that the conspiracy used household access and deception.
Constable Captain Lena Glitz arrives at Rosenthorne, secures the manor as a crime scene, and interviews the family and staff. The party cooperates while also conducting its own parallel investigation. Baby and Gaby use Baby's underworld contacts in nearby Zalnik to trace suspicious purchases, magical objects, and people associated with the assassins. The trail points toward professional/local criminal intermediaries rather than an obvious ideological enemy.
The party also reconnects with Penwin Zuk, an elderly and unusually powerful diviner/cartomancer who knew the family. Penwin performs readings for the principal characters. The readings are deliberately symbolic but consistently establish that the PCs were not responsible for Markus's death while also foreshadowing their weaknesses: Trevor's seriousness/ignorance of some deeper truths, Giles's future test of courage, and Baby's vanity, greed, and reliance on friendship.
Captain Glitz expands the investigation beyond the manor. Nearby communities have reported disappearances and strange attacks, making it possible that the Project Sunrise event has produced an ongoing incursion. The party receives legal writs/deputy authority to assist.
Following reports into the countryside, they encounter alien/extraplanar creatures and track an elusive survivor/fugitive toward a river/grove area. There they meet Skumpy, a four-armed outsider who is not part of the hostile Nardic group. Skumpy explains that she is associated with a resistance on another plane, Naa, and that her people have been dealing with the consequences of a corresponding bridge. The synchronized bridges created a route between the two worlds.
This is the first decisive expansion of the campaign: the disaster was not merely a failed experiment. Project Sunrise has connected Rosenthorne to a populated other world with its own conflict, and hostile forces have already used the connection.