Session 1 Recap: Operation Gatefall
General Summary
THE CHRONICLE
What follows is the account of the events of the night of 5 Ches, 1487 DR — the eve of the final assault on Suzail, as recorded for the archives of the rebellion.
I. The Soldier at the Basin
The rebel encampment south of Suzail had lived in a state of restless expectancy for two weeks. The Stormweather fleet had been grinding through the last of the loyalist ships on the Dragonmere. The trebuchets stood silent, waiting. And across the water, the violet towers of the city glowed faint in the night, their Magistone wards sputtering at the edge of exhaustion.
It was into this atmosphere — taut as a bowstring, heavy with the smell of forge-smoke and fresh snow — that Hans Ashvain stepped away from the chaos of the camp to a simple wooden washbasin at the edge of the lamplight. He leaned forward. The cold water rose to his face. His reflection waited in the dark surface below.
The night had found him without much in the way of clothes. This was, by all accounts, not unusual.
II. The Summons
It was Perrin Dossel who found him — breathless, ink-stained, slightly trailing mud, one hand clutching a sealed dispatch and the other holding his belt together where something had come loose. The House Crimson liaison straightened to something resembling attention, took in the full picture of Hans Ashvain in his evening state, and visibly reconsidered the next several sentences he had prepared.
"It's official. Well — the message is official. We've got the go-ahead. Are you ready? Please come with some clothes. Leadership could be there."
The orders were simple: gather the team. Meet at the southeastern edge of camp. The night was finally beginning in earnest.
III. The Assembly
Hans collected his brother first. Gustav Ashvain was found exactly where one might expect to find him — in the personal tent of the quartermaster's lieutenant, which had been quietly converted over the preceding weeks into something between a lounge and a place of worship, fragrant with the smoke of a hookah pipe and the quiet devotion of a man at peace with his goddess. A small black cat named Klaus dozed in the corner. The lieutenant himself sat in a state of contentment that suggested he would not be seeing much of the rest of the evening.
Gustav rose without surprise, extinguished nothing, and said simply:
"Ja, so it is time. Let us gather the troops."
Carver and Jasper were found in an auxiliary tent at the northern edge of the quartermaster's area, bent over maps and already mid-argument. Carver — a dwarf whose skin and beard had been permanently flecked with the pulse of Magistone from years of proximity to the crystals — was adamant: the experimental Magistone glider was not ready to carry more than one person and should at best serve as a distraction. Jasper, the wild mage, counterargued for its potential in equal measure. The sewer, they had both reluctantly agreed, was the most viable path.
Varsen Gleenhammer was the last to be collected, and the furthest from the camp — half a mile beyond the southern edge, alone on a low hill with a campfire and his greataxe across his knees, staring at the walls of Suzail. The copper-red of his beard was rough and uneven. The left side of his scalp bore a pale scar. Iron had left its mark on his wrists. A desiccated rat hung from his belt, tied there like a talisman.
He said nothing as the party approached. He turned the rat between his fingers and murmured something that disappeared on the night air. Then, slowly, he rose — lifting the axe in a single smooth motion and resting it on his shoulder — and waited.
"It's about time. We're going to the halfling's tent."
IV. The Briefing
Perrin's tent was slightly larger than the rest, and inside it two surprises waited.
The first was a figure whose silhouette extended above the reach of the lantern light entirely — an eight-and-a-half-foot figure in a poncho and a wide-brimmed hat, who tipped that hat at the assembled party with an equanimity that suggested he was accustomed to this exact reaction. Onataro. A specialist, vouched for by Perrin personally and by Lord Gaius Crimson himself. His revolver was unlike anything manufactured in Faerûn — intricate workings and unfamiliar piping suggesting something exceptional and possibly not entirely of this world. Carver, who had looked it over, could not identify it. He noted this with professional admiration.
The second surprise was Creed Crimson, who arrived a few moments later with an apology for his lateness — his father had kept him — and who looked up at Onataro, stopped mid-stride, and said simply:
"Well. Dad did say you were big."
Perrin called the room to order. He knocked over an inkwell in the process, caught it with a reflex that surprised everyone including himself, set it carefully back on the table, and proceeded.
The intelligence was thorough. Patrol rotations had become predictable. The city's Magistone wards were depleted. The window was narrow. Four insertion options had been identified — the wall, the sewers, the harbor by skiff, or the experimental Magistone thopter. Creed and Perrin would be available as support if needed. The decision of the final strike team composition rested with the party.
The discussion was practical. Varsen eliminated the harbor and the thopter in a single sentence, citing his inability to swim and his disinclination to enter anything Carver had built. Gustav and Hans were willing to go anywhere, though Gustav made clear that his feelings about sewers were complex and required fragrant mitigation. Jasper argued briefly and sincerely for testing the theoretical Magistone siege weapon in the armory. Carver held firm.
The sewers it was.
Before they dispersed, Perrin produced two final items from his belt. The first was a Signal Stone — a smooth emerald shard no larger than an inch and a half, which when thrown skyward would light the night and trigger the full frontal assault on the gates. The second was a small pouch that clinked softly as it hit the table.
"These are Dawnstones."
Ten of them. Each one capable of providing the benefit of a full rest when concentrated upon for ten minutes outside of combat. Expensive. Difficult to make. Not to be wasted.
The team took their leave of Perrin and made their way to the supply lines, where Prince Darius Obarskyr met them in the controlled chaos of his domain — ledger in hand, runners orbiting like satellites, the whole machinery of the rebellion's logistics flowing through him in a quiet, unrelenting current. He provisioned them without ceremony: rags treated with charcoal to filter the sewer's worst, medical supplies, two Magistone charges, and enough weapons and armor for a dozen soldiers — because Carver had asked, and Carver had asked because the intelligence had noted prisoners.
Nobody was getting left behind in irons. Varsen had said so.
V. The Sewer
The approach to the outer wall was clean. The intelligence had been accurate — the patrol gap between towers Varnath and Krell's Tooth was there, and it was long enough. The grate at the sewer entrance was iron, aged, poorly maintained.
Varsen looked at it. He looked at the rat at his belt. He said: good idea. Then he wrapped both hands around the bars and tore the grate from its moorings with a single focused effort, the sound swallowed by the thunder of the Stormweather fleet still working the Dragonmere behind them.
The sewer beneath Suzail was everything the intelligence had described and worse. The smell struck before the darkness did. Gustav produced a perfumed rag from somewhere on his person and immediately shared it with his brother. Jasper deployed Prestidigitation across three more members of the party. Carver pulled his cap down. Varsen and Onataro simply walked in.
Varsen, moving through the tunnels with the particular focus of a man who has spent time in places darker and worse than this, located a false door triggered by a torch sconce — the scrape marks on the floor giving it away to those who knew what to look for. Beyond it, a secondary chamber.
The chamber contained zombies.
The zombies were, in the fullness of events, not a significant tactical challenge. They were, however, the contribution of House Morvain — a necromantic house fiercely loyal to the Crown, though not of the royal line itself — and their presence confirmed what the intelligence had not explicitly stated: that the dead of the previous battles had not simply been buried.
Gustav Ashvain raised the symbol of his goddess and turned four of the six with a single invocation of divine will, his eyes lit with something between devotion and satisfaction. His brother Hans delivered a sequence of insults in a thick accent that left one zombie psychically rattled and apparently self-conscious about its personal hygiene. Varsen bisected one cleanly from skull to groin. Creed smote another with a flaming blade that left the air smelling of scorched flesh. Carver and his hammers worked methodically. Onataro shot things from the back of the room and did not miss.
Perrin, to his credit, was swinging his short sword with something that could be described as determination if not accuracy.
When it was over, Hans turned to Perrin — who was covered in the remains of a zombie that Gustav had caved in at close range — and told him he looked better with the gore.
Perrin did not take this well. The matter remains unresolved.
VI. The Discovery
A search of the cleared chamber yielded a spell scroll containing a Shatter spell, a modest collection of coin, and a hidden staircase leading upward — its location confirmed by Jasper's ongoing Detect Magic, which had been pinging at something just above street level.
Carver identified a second ladder — in a separate room to the north — as emerging near the armory in the Magistone District, within reach of the Ember Horn and the confiscated weapons. The first staircase, Jasper calculated, would bring them up directly adjacent to the tax barracks where the captured Crimson soldiers were being held.
The party did not need long to do the arithmetic. They could move from objective to objective entirely beneath the streets — extracting the prisoners, arming them from the armory, and reaching the western gate without exposing themselves to the patrols above until the moment they chose.
At the base of the stairs, with Suzail directly above them and the clock still ticking toward dawn, the party paused.
Above waited two Magistone soldiers and four troopers, stationed in the square outside the barracks.
Below waited the rest of the night.
Tonight, the gates come down.
— The Chronicle of Operation Gatefall, 5 Ches, 1487 DR
Comments