Interlude: lore master roundup

The petrified monk we pulled out of the melty room was identified as Lia, the missing member of the justice squad from Gideon's time. In her pocket was a note from the tinkerer instructing us to handle the truth of her passing delicately after reviving her soul in this near perfect replica. Other than that we informed her of the current state of the world including the Mazverik dilemma. She seemed willing to help us with our next step infiltrating the Vine village. Flyn and Justine prepared their disguises as the rest of the group hid close by. Justine, as Valerie, presented a corpse fashioned after her personal likeness to offer as a token of good faith to their leader Lan'ro. However this did not satisfy him and he required veritable proof of her loyalty and demanded she take the lives of some captive dwarfs before the tribe. Also unbeknownst to us, Lia disappeared as the ultimatum was dropped, giving us another variable in our planning equations. Eventually we decided to send an invisible Darren to the dwarfs to brief them on the escape plan. Next Justine would veil them with a wall of fire while Darren took one with him on a thunder step and Penny took the other through a dimension door while the last would be given invisibility to try escaping on his own. Jeeng and I had to remain behind to give Penny and Darren the best chance at a stealthy approach while also keeping a watch for the missing Lia. We waited in anticipation. After a little while, Penny and Darren burst through the jungle with their respectively rescued dwarfs. Not long after, Justine also returned and we could finally conclude the mission as a success however bittersweet. We learned from Lia, who invisibly scouted the village during that time, that most of the lizardfolk in that village had already been sacrificed to fuel the animal abominations in Mazverick's army. Thus did we agree with the war council to take action against the village of remaining enthralled cultists on two fronts. The main forces with most of the artillery would rain down destruction but not before Mystery Inc could attempt to smuggle out the lore masters under disguise. The next order of business was claiming our now finished airship which we dubbed "The Scrappy" piloted by Renna Lyrendar, Ray, and Charles. Contrary to what the title might suggest, our moderately sized mobile had enough amenities for our team's needs. While in Last Stop, we checked up on Darren's companion Lyse who seemed to have mostly recovered but still seems like she needs more rest before she's able to help us in the field again. Darren also informed her of our finding the petrified Lia and she warned us that though the Red Tide and Scarves seem quiet for now, they are still most likely making cautious moves in the shadows. Jeeng visited his old captain to follow up in hopes of learning more of the RT movements who confirmed the rumors of similar hauntings that plagued Lyse in various towns in the region. Afterwards we took Scrappy out for her first voyage, with Ray and Charles giving us a rundown of ship management, sailing over the Serpent's Scar (the region still devastated by the powerful miasma) back to Hearth. Hear we gathered our resources to outfit the ship and sold our most recent loot with Reno's help for some extra coin. With some spending money in hand we also paid Herman's Arcanum a visit and the team got some nifty trinkets while I traded in one shield for another. Darren's accomplice Jaws confirmed the haunting rumors with further details of a manifest zone near the Herb tribe which we hoped to address after our impending operation at the Vine. On that note we hopped back to Norlahold to regroup with the war council headed by House Canith and coordinated our efforts. We recruited Alli, Riken, Jeanette, and 2 more Silver flamers to join the infiltration squad while Alphy commanded the airship with Jeeng's old crew. They would commence the bombing run on specific targets we would designate on the ground with smoke signals.