Lore

The Reaping Eye

An artifact Haven took out of Fanewick, the act that lit the war still smouldering between them. Haven believed it would help cultivate Crimson Veil against the Serpent’s Sickness. Cybin holds, with rare gravity, that it must be returned. What it truly is, and what its removal set loose, remains an open and uneasy question.

The party has now seen it at the Crown Physic Institute: roughly four feet across, large enough to make carrying it out a problem of its own. Bobby solved Albert Huber‘s experiment by fitting the copper shielding closer to the Eye. That knowledge is theirs, but the Eye remains in Institute custody.

Their chosen heist brings one team through the sewers and another from the surface, meeting in the Eye chamber. Bobby knows of a shrinking potion they hope to acquire and pour onto it, reducing it to half size while leaving it heavy and awkward. They still need the potion, a workable route down to the sewers and onward to the coastal docks, and a boat to carry it out of Haven.

Khepri, the World Roller

A vast entity out of Fungril legend, neither wholly awake nor wholly understood. Tradition names the curved rocks of the Pinch as Khepri’s mandibles and ties the Black Scarab to it. The stories agree on one thing: Khepri is not cruel, only enormous, and the world is better with it sleeping.

Mentioned in The Pinch

The Witherwild & the Serpent's Sickness

A corruption creeping through Fanewick’s forests, and the wasting illness that follows it into living bodies. Crimson Veil eases the Sickness but does not cure it. The Whitefire Arcanist suspects the realm’s supply has been choked off on purpose, and the longer the party travels, the more reason they find to believe her.

The Golden Mandrake

A rare and powerful anti-toxin, prized as a possible answer to the Serpent’s Sickness. The Whitefire Arcanist stabilized one sample for the party, and it drew enemies to them for weeks. In the deep level under Stalkholm, a corrupted Witherwild creature consumed it before the party destroyed the thing. For now, Silas’s clearest treatment path is gone.

Crimson Veil & the Pinch Trade

The medicine that holds the Serpent’s Sickness at bay, and the drug it becomes in the wrong hands. The Greefs cut diverted Crimson Veil with ooze from the Pinch to make their product, and have been hunting cheaper substitutes by crueler means. Where the medicine goes scarce, the drug grows rich.

The Weather Pylons

The hidden engine of the Ottoman family’s power: a network that can summon storms and clear skies to order. The party has watched it ruin farmland, cover a murder, and burn a ship. Inside Stalkholm they learned something stranger still: the Ottomans did not build the pylons, and the pylons were not made as weapons. Ancient Clanks built them for balance, and the Ottomans found and repurposed what they did not fully understand.

Clanks & Bobby's Creator

Bobby was built by Cogsworth, a creator he barely remembers, who was killed before he could explain why. All Bobby had left of him was his head, which carried something Bobby could not read on his own. Beneath Stalkholm, Cybin helped Bobby understand enough to accept Cogsworth‘s hidden connector. Now the head is grafted onto Bobby’s back, visible and awake, and the party knows the old Clanks were closer to the living world than modern ones.