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.
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
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.
A rare and powerful anti-toxin, prized as a possible answer to the Serpent’s Sickness. It is wildly unstable and wilts soon after it is picked, so a stabilized sample is worth a great deal to a great many dangerous people. The party carries one, stabilized by the Whitefire Arcanist, and it has drawn enemies to them ever since.
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 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, that the Ottomans did not build the pylons. They found them, and are still learning how to use them.
Bobby was built by a creator he barely remembers, who was killed before he could explain why. All Bobby has left of him is his head, which carries something Bobby cannot read on his own. The party has come to suspect the old Clanks were made differently from Bobby, closer to the living world, and that Cybin and his connection to the mycelium may be the one who can finally hear what the head is trying to say.