Summary
While Lloyd runs a field ministry through the Hollows and declines Fey's loyalty ring, the rest of the party tracks Clarissa through the Frodbob church network. Bethany Fey swears the oath and kneels to the Queen of Starfall. Beneath a Gatester fighting pit the party destroys a Black Cabal cell that had picked up Tethis' plague work — and lets Clarissa walk away.
Detailed Narrative
The plague is broken at source but the damage is not. Lloyd goes north with a mobile field ministry of cloistered clerics and warpriests, looking for anything that resembles Alric's Waylet before it became Alric's Waylet. He finds none.
Fey offers him a minister's band. He declines the loyalty-oath version and explains why: the Church of Dracarian is built on free will as a structural principle, and a loyalty that is monitored is a loyalty that is not trusted. He accepts a badge of office instead — sending stone and emergency beacon, no compulsion. He also proposes a proper coronation for Fey, performed by the head of the Church. She is not opposed.
Alam Sildwell's lead sends the others south. At Tarton, Bethany Fey denies knowing anything; Fey gives her the full account instead of pressing, and the betrayal visibly lands. Then Fey offers her a ring — and Bethany Fey, whose entire theology holds that compelled loyalty is no loyalty at all, puts it on, kneels, and swears to the Queen, to Drakarnia, and to its people.
She names Harlan Voss, a cloistered cleric operating in the church's darker margins with Black Cabal contacts as an informant. Voss names Liriel, high priestess in Gatester, who runs an open fighting pit out of a waterfront warehouse. His honest read, offered only when asked twice: Clarissa is terrified, running from two of the strongest forces on the continent, probably heading for Twinport and a ship east, possibly to Arla. She is an albatross. Let her go.
Beneath the Gatester chapel: six Black Cabal operatives at alchemical tables and a live plague-bloom vessel sealed in a crystal cylinder. The Cabal had established a research station and was continuing Tethis' work. A dying operative smashes the cylinder; the dead reanimate; the room resolves.
They find Clarissa in the adjacent storage room, moving toward an exit. She thanks them for destroying the research station, cites the guards who died protecting her by name, and asks to be let go. Fey argues the danger is not different in kind from what Starfall already lives inside. Clarissa says she can do more alone, steps through a crumbling wall, and walks out into the Gatester morning. They do not pursue.
Details
GM Content
Campaign Notes
DM only — campaign-sensitive materialThe reveal that matters: killing Tethis did not close the door. The Black Cabal was opening it from the other side, and they are committed enough to staff a research station inside an allied church. Bethany Fey's oath is the diplomatic high point of the campaign so far and cost a Hero Point plus Fey's 14,000gp diplomacy ring — play it as genuinely hard-won. Lloyd's refusal of the loyalty band is his clearest statement of principle in the campaign; it should cost him something later.