The Copper Piece Gang

D&D Session Summary

This session returned to the memory-realm for what turned out to be its final stretch. The party found themselves in a courtyard with a body lying beside a fountain that flowed with liquid shadow instead of water. The visual was exactly as wrong as it sounds. The shadow moved like liquid, flowing and pooling with a physical weight that normal shadows do not have. The body near it was male, fully dressed, and positioned as though he had simply sat down and never gotten back up.

Rae recognized the shadow immediately and moved to collect some of it in the flask he carried. The decision was made carefully: he understood the substance might be dangerous, but he also understood it might be connected to whatever Selganth had become or might become after the events of the portal. Zarnak, doing what Zarnak does, went straight to the body and began searching it. He found magical gear, a locket, and a scroll written in the memory-place’s language.

Nucky touched the locket and was pulled into a vision. Through that vision, the party learned more about Naveena and the collapse of the city that had created this realm. She described a failed bridge between worlds, an attempt to connect the memory-place to something more stable that had ultimately broken apart rather than held. The vision confirmed that the city had once had a purpose beyond simple habitation. It had been an experiment in connecting different forms of existence through shared memory, and when that experiment broke, the people inside it became the corrupted shadows the party had been fighting.

While the party was processing that, a hostile shadow appeared. It had red eyes and moved with aggression rather than the confused, frightened behavior they had come to expect from the ordinary remnants. Nucky reacted immediately by shouting the name Ivan, a name they had learned earlier connected to the body and to the locket. The shadow stopped. Not fully, not calmly, but it stopped in the way that something stops when it hears something it cannot quite ignore.

Rae moved to the body and placed his hand on it without attacking. The gesture mattered. The shadow’s aggression faltered further, and it sank back into the ground before reappearing near Rae in a posture that was less predatory and more conflicted. Selganth spoke to it directly, urging it not to become one of the corrupted shadows that had destroyed the city it had once helped build. The shadow reacted to his words visibly, growing and shrinking in response to different phrases.

Rae could feel the gem in his arm responding as well. The spirits of Stefania and Naveena were already inside it, and they seemed to be reaching outward toward Ivan in some way the party could sense but not fully explain. Looking into the shadow’s eyes, Rae saw a terrified, screaming person trapped inside the darkness. It was not a monster. It was someone who had survived the collapse in the worst way possible.

The ritual that followed was improvised but coherent. The party understood that Ivan needed to complete the same kind of memory-binding that the other two spirits had already undergone. Rae brought out the gem. Zarnak made the unconventional but important choice to lie down beside the body, taking the position of a supplicant or someone offering to receive a memory rather than take it by force. The reenactment worked as a kind of invitation. The gem’s light flared and hurt Rae’s arm but also accomplished what they needed. Ivan joined the gem. The shadow dissolved. The fountain slowed.

With all three spirits inside the gem, it reached its full brightness. The party had accomplished what the memory-realm had been waiting for, knowingly or not. But the realm was now collapsing faster because of it. What had been gradual instability became active breakdown, and the group had only a short window to get back to the portal before the whole place folded in on itself.

The navigation back was an exercise in staying oriented through a reality that no longer wanted to be traversed. Spaces looped. Distances stretched. The group moved through familiar-looking corridors that refused to lead where they should have. They pushed through and reached the archway, dealt with the shadow creatures trying to escape, faced the Forgotten, and made the final desperate exit.

Selganth stayed. Rae lost his arm. The portal closed.

The party stood in the woods outside Red Tower with more than they had arrived with and less than they had left with. The flask of liquid shadow from the courtyard fountain was still in Rae’s possession, still resonating in ways the group had not fully understood. Whatever Selganth had sacrificed himself into, and whatever the shadow-stuff carried from that moment, the flask was the physical connection that remained.

By the end of the session, the party had completed the arc of the three spirits, fully charged the gem as an artifact, navigated the collapse of the memory-realm, made the final sacrificial trade that cost them both a companion and a limb, and emerged into the real world carrying losses and trophies in equal measure. It was the kind of ending that does not feel like a victory so much as a survival that mattered.

Quick Recap

• The party began in a courtyard with a body beside a fountain flowing with liquid shadow.
• Rae bottled some of the shadow safely, while Zarnak searched the corpse and found magical gear, a locket, and a scroll.
• Nucky touched the locket and experienced a vision of Naveena describing the collapse of the city and a failed bridge between worlds.
• A hostile shadow with glowing red eyes appeared, but the party realized it was tied to the body and to someone named Ivan.
• Through calm actions, ritual reenactment, and the power of the gem, the party helped Ivan join Stefania and Naveena inside the gem.
• With all three spirits in the gem, it reached full brightness and gave the party what they needed to deal with the portal.
• The group navigated a collapsing memory-realm where distances and directions no longer behaved normally.
• At the archway, three shadow beings tried to escape, and Zarnak used the memory scroll to destroy all three.
• The Forgotten appeared with orbs of positive and negative energy and unleashed a devastating blast.
• The party rushed through the portal while damaging it to prevent the Forgotten from escaping.
• Selganth stayed behind to hold the Forgotten in place while the party lured an owlbear into the collapsing portal.
• The escape succeeded, but Selganth died and Rae lost his arm as the portal closed.
• The session ended with the party back in the woods outside Red Tower, scarred, leveled up, and carrying the consequences forward.