Episode 1: Secrets in the Stone

Next: Episode 2: The Long Walk

The 1st episode of the 1st season of A Brighter Sun.

This episode spans the following sessions:

Quest

Synopsis

Phoenix Dawn, still C-class adventurers eager to prove themselves, spots a B-class Templar mission on the guild board: capture the fugitive architect Haven, accused of murdering his fellow masons and fleeing into the dangerous Undercroft beneath Tyr. Guild Master Lumi sponsors their ascension bid, providing them with a psionic suppression circlet and essential gear.

Investigating the crime scene at the Architects Guild, the party uses chronomancy to witness the truth: Haven is innocent. A mysterious basalt-skinned mage killed the masons with precise force cuts, absorbed the ziggurat blueprints into a glowing orb, and teleported away. The Templars, it seems, are pressuring witnesses to frame psionics rather than arcana.

En route to the Undercroft entrance, the party is ambushed by rival guild Demon's Hand—Haken, Ulu, Lisi, and Orson—but defeats them non-lethally through clever use of sleep gas, spores, and persuasion. They confiscate Haken's Froststeel blade and descend into the aqueducts, tracking their quarry with a Seeking Star spell until ghouls emerge from the darkness.

After dispatching the ancient, blind undead, the party descends dwarven-carved stairs into a 2000-year-old cult complex. Murals depict worship of a "Holy One" and a sleeper obelisk; braille-like etchings speak of sacrifices and forbidden names. Beyond ritual thresholds of water, sand, salt, and magical darkness, they find the glowing Eidolon obelisk—surrounded by 40 slain monks and the dwarf architect channeling its power.

The architect reveals the terrible truth: Eidolons are shards of Kalak's soul, created for his eventual rebirth. He has been mapping them, hoping to absorb their power to prevent nascent sorcerer-kings from rising. The party subdues him with sleep gas and the psionic circlet, but attempting to rewind the obelisk backfires catastrophically. A nine-foot slate golem emerges, disintegrates the dwarf, and attacks. Only the timely intervention of S-class adventurer Alistair—with prismatic sphere and emergency portal—saves Phoenix Dawn.

Back at the guild, Lumi debriefs them, secures the architect's scroll case mapping the Eidolons, and promotes them to B-class. In an ominous epilogue, a pale woman scries on the events and dispatches an agent called Arrasus to recover a lockstone.

Rewards