Only Bards

The session picks up halfway through the William Moon barrow, cult reinforcements pressing the party from the far door and Kaldur still wedged in the choke point. Before the next wave crashes in, time freezes for Rico. William Moon himself steps into the tableau, calls Rico his "paladin of lunanescent suffocation," and offers a mechanic to the whole band: any bandmate who raises a weapon and shouts "By the power of William Moon, I possess the wherewithal!" will instantly level up. Rico takes it. Kaldur, Enjee, and Roadie flatly refuse. Dreadie holds out for a while before shouting his own version — "Ground Control to William Moon, will you reach out and help me soon?" — and gets his level. The rest of the band stays a level behind on principle.

The second wave is Cult of Ragnarok plus a Gillitrut Troll — a barking troll-dog whose regeneration only stops from fire. Enjee identifies it instantly and starts putting Sorcerous Bursts through it while Kaldur holds the doorway, Roadie drops a fog cloud, and the party fights blind (except Kaldur, who has tremorsense and starts landing every swing). Rico gets mauled by the troll dog to a fugue state — "floating in moonlight with multiple William Moons singing in a choir" — before Roadie potions him back up. Party wipes the wave. The troll skin gets harvested for Dreadie to craft into a potion of longevity later.

Through the next door: another cult cell, led by boar-scarred Bolgrim Borskar. A chittering squirrel-man on Bolgrim's side steps up and openly mocks the leader for the scars — turns out to be Kostov, a Ratatouille moon knight from the World Tree, come to help. Between Dreadie's heat-metal on Bolgrim's sword, Scales' spear through a cultist's heart, and Enjee's drumstick-focused Sorcerous Bursts, the cell dies. Finulf hands the shears to Roadie. Kostov docks Sig's Swig in Port Last and books the band a future gig there. The band decides they will not hand the shears to anyone — Roadie's plan from last session stands.

Back in East Haven at the Big Fat Knucklehead, Barbara Bush the low-bearded dwarven barmaid takes their order and closes with Scales at 11 pm. A cloaked courier slides a stone cylinder to Enjee — coordinates for Argent Hall, an old moon-place in the Spine of the World, wrested from the Duergar generations back. Kaldur immediately recognizes the site. Meanwhile Kaldur takes an astral phone call from his cousin Astro — son of the Proxy of Klangadin, hero-of-a-realm — patched in via a bloodstone rune. Astro rambles about a family reunion in the Desert Valley for the better part of an hour. Kaldur, respectfully outranked, lets him.

William Moon shows up in person at the inn to work on Dreadie. Reveals the gay-stuff prohibition was a mistranslation, rewrites Rico's pamphlets in real time to say so, and when pressed on his true nature drops that he "once banged a horse" before vanishing through a wall. Dreadie is not buying it. His read after the encounter: "Pretty sure he's Loki." His strategy: dismantle the establishment from the inside. Meanwhile Rico reads the entire book of Moon-nite tenets aloud to Enjee while Enjee "sleeps" upright in a chair with his eyes wide open — leaving Enjee, in the morning, involuntarily knowing every tenet.

Noon gig at the Wet Trout. Scales opens hammered on Aurel's Tears with pussy-breath sax and craters the meter; Enjee kicks it back up on drums; Rico plays basic chords over Scales' discordant mess and, on a nat-20, harmonizes with it. Roadie starts hallucinating undead hooligans in Adidas tracksuits charging the stage, reverse-stage-dives through a wall trying to tackle one, and bloodies his nose on empty air. Scales somehow closes with a critical tenor-sax note that sings like a clarinet. The gig ends in a standing ovation. Band name goes public for the first time — Rico shouts "Chaos Wolf," spelled Q-H-A-O-S V-U-L-F.

Mid-gig Kaldur clocks a man dragging an unconscious woman out through a window into the killing cold. He and Roadie break through in pursuit; the man escapes. The woman, Samantha, has a cold-shaped scar and thanks Kaldur with a secret Cespilar blackberry-wine recipe from her diluted elven bloodline. The attacker is rumored as the "Cold-handed Man," name Sifos Cifik — sacrificing people to a cold entity in the old Aurel style. The party boards the East Haven ferry to hunt for Bot Withers on the northeastern shore. Kaldur immediately spots a shrunk-hole in the hull sized for a Mind-Master Duergar. Session out.