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. 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.
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: 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.
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.