Dramatis Personae
Captain Horatio Gurthus, human barbarian
Dwalin Codbiter, dwarf artificer
Through a Haze of Nightingale Bell
After the tragic events of the last adventure, Captain Horatio Gurthus was searching for a way to bring his comrade Brother Albany back to life. To that end, he teamed up with Dwalin Codbiter, who was looking for a way to send his departed uncle past the veil of death, as he was currently stuck in a half-life as a floating skull with many opinions on the doings of the living. The duo made their way to the fabled city of I'Cath, but upon arrival at the docks they were surprised to see that instead of a metropolis of endless wonders, they were instead in a squalid, poverty-stricken port of call.
They headed to the Yeonido ward, where they had heard the boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead was particularly thin. Unfortunately, all they discovered was the run-down remains of a park in which homeless people were huddling around the base of a worn statue. When asked for directions, one of the homeless, an obviously diseased man with a wooden prosthetic nose strapped to his face, offered to taken them to the "Nightside" of the city--if they were willing to pay the price of his admission as well.
They were surprised when the man took them to a sordid drug den, where the proprietor brought them each a wooden pipe packed with a substance called nightingale bell. As they smoked, they felt their bodies relax, then grow numb. As they begin to drift away into the intoxicant's revery, each of them closed their eyes. When they opened them, they found themselves standing again in the Yeonido ward, but instead of the squalor they had experienced prior, the city was now a bustling, glamorous metropolis filled with beautiful, decadent citizens.
Memory Holes, Government Work
Now in the Nightside of I'Cath, Dwalin and Horatio began to explore the mysteriously altered form of the domain. They were on a busy street, teeming with people, when a strange fog began to rise from the cobblestones. Out of the fog emerged a jade gargoyle with the contorted face of an angry human woman. The creature slew a passerby with its claws, but was soon slain in turn by our heroes. However, as the fog retreated and the gargoyle's remains melted into mist, a strange thing happened: the people who had witnessed the creature's attack looked bewildered for a moment and then went about their business as if nothing strange had occurred!
Seeking answers, the duo met with Kun Ahn-Jun, a local magistrate. The harried Ahn-Jun bluntly asked them if they had had an unusual experience in the Yeonido ward and was relieved to hear that they remembered the gargoyle's attack. She told them that the strange fog and the monsters it brings was a regular occurrence, as was the people of the city immediately forgetting these bizarre incursions as soon as they were over. Until meeting Horatio and Dwalin, Kun Ahn-Jun seemed to be the only person in the city who could remember the murderous oddity plaguing the ward.
Since they had the ability to remember the mists and their horrors, Ahn-Jun offered them a few leads that might intersect with their own interests: she told them of a construction site that had suffered multiple attacks, a royal park that had witnessed several attacks, and a tea house when two nobles had been found grievously wounded.
A Light in the Woods, a Cup of Tea
The pair decided to investigate the construction site first, and found it to be an area of the city that was expanding into the surrounding forest. Laborers were hard at work felling trees, while an overseer and two guards stood watch. While looking around the site, they found a cobblestone path leading into the woods; following it brought them to a moss-covered monument and a stone lamp whose flame shone with a strange blue light. Brushing the moss from the marble slab revealed it to be a memorial to a woman named Dae Won-Ha, a "Warrior of the People." Below her name was a long list of the civic accomplishments she had achieved as a magistrate of the ward.
Taking the stone lantern with them, the pair found that the strange fog had returned and that the workers at the construction site were under attack by huge tigers with the faces of an angry woman--the same face that had encountered previously on the jade gargoyle! With the aid of the overseer and the guards, they managed to kill both creatures, but not before casualties were inflicted on the workers. However, as the fog receded, no one present save Dwalin and Horatio remembered the attack; the workers assumed their comrades had had "an accident."
Their next stop was the Phoenix Tea Shop. When they arrived, they were perplexed to discover that its proprietor was the same man who had taken them to the drug den in the squalid version of the city, but here in the Nightside he was a kindly and healthy man. The tea shop was decorated with a number of cups that had been signed by local celebrities and people of importance. When asked if he had a cup signed by Dae Won-Ha, he brought forth a matching pair of cups: one signed by Won-Ha and another signed by Young-Gi.
The proprietor helpfully explained that Young-Gi had been a close friend of Won-Ha, that he was formerly an advisor to Tsien Chiang, the ruler of I'Cath, but that he was quite old now and lived in retirement in his mansion in the Estate Gardens area of the ward. He also revealed that although Won-Ha was once regarded as the savior of the Yeonido ward, she had died largely forgotten. Interestingly, when the teacup was brought into proximity with the stone lantern they had found earlier, it shone with a similar blue light. They took the teacup with them.
The Guilty and the Grand Guignol
Horatio and Dwalin used a letter from Kun Ahn-Jun to gain an audience with Young-Gi. Young-Gi was an elderly dragonborn gentleman whose red scales had faded to a rusty color. In contrast to the bustle and noise of the city, his house was a bastion of tranquility and serenity. Dwalin was initially suspicious that Young-Gi was summoning the monsters to preserve the memory of his departed friend, but Young-Gi was much more sanguine about the situation; as he reached the end of his own life, he had come around to the perspective that legacies are fragile things that cannot always be preserved.
When presented with the teacup, a soft glow came from within Young-Gi's silk robes. He produced a gold amulet--Dae Won-Ha's badge of office as a magistrate, which she had given him as a token of their friendship. Young-Gi gave them the amulet in hopes that they might be able to use it to solve the mystery of the attacks on the city.
In the Park of the Elders, the pair decided to get a closer look at the statue of Tsien Chiang that a local drunken teenager had described as "creepy." The statue depicted Tsien Chiang as a beautiful paragon of wisdom; however, closer inspection of the legend inscribed at the base of the statue revealed that all of Dae Won-Ha's accomplishments had been ascribed to Tsien Chiang! The unnerving fog once again rose from the ground, and with it arrived the ghost of Dae Won-Ha, accompanied by two more jade gargoyles who bore her face.
The ghost of Dae Won-Ha complained of being forgotten by the people of ward; she threatened to take everything form the populace that she had poured her life into fostering. When presented with the lantern, the teacup, and the amulet, she began to believe that she had not been wholly forgotten. However, it wasn't quite enough to sate her. She offered Horatio and Dwalin a bargain: if they would find a way to bring her name back into public prominence and expose Young-Gi's role in Tsien Chiang getting the credit for her good works (because despite their deep friendship, Young-Gi was too loyal to the vile ruler of I'Cath), she would cease her attacks on the Yeonido ward, help negotiate for the return of Brother Albany's spirit, and usher Dwalin's uncle's spirit into the afterlife.
The pair settled on an ingenious solution: they commissioned a playwright to pen a play that cast the spirit of Dae Won-Ha as a boogeyman haunting the Yeonido district. This pleased Won-Ha as it reimagined her role, gave her prominence, and included Young-Gi's treachery as part of her villainous origin story. By the time the play premiered in the endless night of I'Cath's Nightside, it had become a thrilling Grand Guignol-style production with special effects overseen by Dwalin's keen eye for artifice. The play was a success; Won-Ha's terrifying name was now back on the lips of the people of her district.
She also kept her word. As Dwalin and Horatio dozed in their private box at the premier as the dose of nightingale bell wore off, they awoke in the city's squalid true self again--but the skull of Dwalin's uncle was now gone and Brother Albany's eyes shot open and he gasped with living breath!