Summary
The party returns to Starfall with Tach for Grant Taver's WARD briefing, where Alam Sildwell breaks cover as a former Black Cabal operative and names the Dawncrest stewards as the contractor. Adair Square then erupts: plagued merchants attack from within, led by Tethis' herald Adept Helvi the Silent — and the exhausted party is hit a second time on the same ground by the Cabal strike team. The chapter reveals the plague's vector is the currency itself.
Detailed Narrative
Act 1 — the briefing. Sildwell, listening from the back, finally speaks: the Cabal is in Starfall to kill the kingdom's leadership and is coming for him too. Direct Moonguard force failed at the sanctuary; this is the deniable second strike, paid for by the same council that displaced Tach.
Act 2 — the plague uprising. Citizens who have handled tainted coin from the northern trade routes for weeks bloom on a signal the party cannot trace. Helvi anchors them, speaking Tethis' philosophy in his cadence.
Act 3 — the Cabal ambush. Captain Idris Vell's strike team hits the same ground while the party is scattered and spent.
Act 4 — aftermath. The healers find the vector within the hour: every Plague-Bloomed corpse shows coin-handler wear — callused fingertips, grooved thumb pads, gray discoloration spreading from the cuticles. The bad coin is Hallows-minted but originates in Ubrover, moving Ubrover → Hallows → Drakarnia along the northern road for at least eight weeks. A DC 28 Occultism or Religion check reads the seeding as sacramental: not a poison disguised as money but a divine working that uses trade itself as its medium. The merchants are not victims; they are the ritual. Vell or Sildwell confirms the contract is Dawncrest stewards, that the party leadership — not Tach — is the kill list, and that the plague was not Cabal coordination: 'That was someone else. We adjusted.' Sildwell becomes a sworn ally and takes the kingdom's vacant General post.
Details
GM Content
Campaign Notes
DM only — campaign-sensitive materialEstablishes Tethis' voice without putting Tethis on the field, resolves Sildwell as an ally, and ties Dawncrest's hostility to Pax Nox's contracts. Vell should attempt escape below 50 HP; if he escapes, Sildwell delivers the same content as analytical observation. Henderson quietly asks Fey whether to close the northern road — Tach counsels quarantining the coin instead, since closure signals Tethis that the seeding worked.