The Copper Piece Gang

D&D Session Summary

This session was mostly a long-form recap and setup session, but it pulled together a huge amount of important story context. The party reviewed the chase through the Feywild after the shadow figure that emerged from Krovuur’s shadow, following Zevron’s lead in an attempt to recover the shard. That pursuit became a reality-bending skill challenge at the edge of the Feywild, where space, time, and matter were breaking down. The group had to improvise constantly, using teleportation, acrobatics, magic, foresight, and pure stubbornness to keep up. Zarnak parkoured across floating books, Krovuur exploited a trap to launch himself forward, Nucky tried to read the path ahead, and Rae used the shard’s lunar energy to keep the pursuit on track. Even when Zarnak managed to rattle the fleeing shadow figure with an intimidation check, the enemy still kept moving, driven by something stronger than fear.

That chase eventually dumped the party into a hot, crowded city environment, with harbor air, slums, rooftops, and a large urban sprawl beneath them. The group kept pursuing the shadow thief through the city using a mix of rooftop scouting, crowd manipulation, magical tracking, and reckless movement. Nucky even tried to draw public attention to jam up the target’s escape route. The thief finally fled into a large building that felt like a trapped warehouse, with heavy doors, barrels, mechanical sounds, and a glowing exit farther in. Instead of blindly charging, the group slowed down just enough to think, but still pushed forward because losing the target was not an option.

Inside that building, the situation turned stranger. Shadowy figures emerged that all resembled the man they were chasing, but each party member also became linked to one specific shadow. At some point, those shadows effectively stepped out of the heroes themselves and attacked their source. Each one reflected something personal and dangerous: strangling, stabbing, mauling, and similar focused attacks. The shard was clearly the cause, or at least the catalyst, creating these shadow doubles through the essence or shroud hanging over the group. Nucky succeeded in blasting away the weakening shrouds affecting the party, and the group managed to defeat the shadow clones, avoid the traps, and push through the portal beyond.

On the far side, the party reached an opulent chamber cut off by a blue curtain of energy, full of luxurious fabrics, smoke, lantern light, and a very out-of-place man in worn traveler’s clothes sitting with unsettling calm. In front of him stood the thief with the shard. This was Barrabus the Gray, and the thief’s debt was apparently owed to him. The thief tried to exploit a technicality, delivering the shard to the location but not directly into Barrabus the Gray’s hand, then vanished into smoke. That left the party standing in front of a deeply dangerous figure who immediately decided they would pay the debt instead. The group got a warning not to fight and instead negotiate, because this was clearly far beyond a normal combat encounter.

The negotiation that followed was one of the biggest turning points in the campaign. The party tried to bargain for survival, offering to recover the shard rather than kill the thief outright. Barrabus the Gray made it clear that each of them had something valuable to offer, even if they did not yet understand what it was. He offered five coins, one for each party member, and explained that taking a coin meant agreeing to owe him a future favor when called upon. In other words, the group traded immediate death for a life debt to Barrabus the Gray. One by one, they accepted. That created the soul coin problem that later haunted the campaign.

The recap then connected that moment to everything that followed with Qalifar, the shard, and the larger hell arc. The party established that Qalifar was the thief, that he had betrayed Artemis rather than hand over the shard, and that he did so because direct exposure to the shard convinced him it was too dangerous to let anyone like Artemis possess it. The shard was draining life, corrupting whoever carried it, and seemed powerful enough to threaten something on a divine scale. The group also recognized that in escaping his own burden, Qalifar had effectively passed soul coin debts onto them, whether by accident, manipulation, or some mixture of both.

From there, the session pivoted into a recap of Zevron’s explanation of the Vitriol Fulcrum and the true scale of the quest. The Fulcrum resides in the Charhold of Silence, an ice fortress physically anchored in the eighth layer of hell, though it touches multiple realities and sometimes intersects with other planes. Zevron had been researching ancient mystical doorways through the Astral Sea and needed a key that could open any lock. The tears of the Vitriol Fulcrum had become the shards, each one infused with pain, fear, sadness, and rage. Zevron’s ultimate goal was not merely to possess the shard but to use it in a way tied to reaching or confronting the Fulcrum herself.

The party also recapped why Zevron was not carrying the shard himself. Like a classic cursed artifact situation, he knew touching or holding it would be a terrible idea. Instead, he had prepared the first leg of the journey, mapping out dangerous jump points through the Astral Sea that would lead the party toward the seventh layer of hell and, from there, eventually to the eighth. Hell itself was described not as a simple place of fire and monsters, but as a physical manifestation of hatred, malice, poison, acid, sewage, lava, and spiritual corruption. This was not a quick side mission. The group realized they were now committed to a major, multistage descent through infernal territory.

So while this session did not revolve around one main fight or dungeon crawl, it served as a major campaign anchor point. It tied together the Feywild chase, the soul coin bargain, Qalifar’s betrayal, Barrabus the Gray’s bargain, the danger of the shard, Zevron’s true objective, and the terrifying scale of the road ahead. By the end, the party had a much clearer picture of what they were walking into: a long, dangerous journey through the Astral Sea and the layers of hell, carrying an artifact nobody should touch, burdened by debts they do not fully understand, and chasing a goal tangled up in pain, divine danger, and very bad odds.

Quick Recap

• The party recapped the Feywild chase after the shadow figure that emerged from Krovuur’s shadow.
• That pursuit became a reality-warping skill challenge involving teleportation, floating terrain, traps, and magical navigation.
• The chase led into a hot city, then into a trapped warehouse where shadow doubles tied to each party member attacked.
• The shard caused or intensified the shadow manifestations, and the group fought through them to reach the next chamber.
• In an opulent hidden room, the party met Barrabus the Gray, who held them responsible for the thief’s unpaid debt.
• To survive, every party member accepted a coin and a future life debt to Barrabus the Gray.
• The group confirmed that Qalifar betrayed Artemis because the shard was too dangerous to hand over.
• The session clarified that the Vitriol Fulcrum is in the Charhold of Silence on the eighth layer of hell.
• Zevron prepared a path through the Astral Sea, but the party must carry the shard and make the journey themselves.
• The campaign’s next major arc is now fully framed as a descent through the seventh layer and into the eighth to confront the Fulcrum.