Big Mondo is put on trial in Wroat and stands accused of a long list of charges. In order to save the mob boss, the Rabble return to Sharn to intercept important evidence en route to the Kundarak Bank and prevent it from falling into the prosecutor’s hands. But during the course of their quest, they begin to realize that things are not what they seem.

Player characters: Jeeves, Mickey Bishop, Sane

I.

“The trial of Breland v. Big Mondo shall now commence.”

In Wroat, the seat of the nation’s capital, King Boranel presided over the court as Big Mondo stood trial for long list of trumped up charges. Mickey Bishop and Jeeves served as the barristers for the defendant. But the archaic proceedings of the royal court gave them little opportunity to speak on the first day of the trial. The prosecutor, a human noble who appeared to have an axe to grind with Big Mondo, spent the first four hours greeting the court and the next four hours introducing himself. It was almost as if he were stalling for time.

During a recess in the trial, Big Mondo confessed to his barristers that the prosecution might have some dirt on him in the form of incriminating documents. In became clear that the heroes would need to take action both inside and outside the courtroom to mount a successful defense. Handing over the duties of lead defence barrister to Balkris, Mickey reached out to his criminal contacts in the Boromar clan, Jeeves visited one of the many clubs and parlors that served the servants of the nobility, and Sane shadowed the prosecutor back to his estate, in the hopes of gathering more information about the opposition and their strategy.

Together, the Rabble learned that the crown prosecutor was Starrin ir’Tyran, the son of Sterryk ir’Tyran, who blamed Big Mondo for his father’s mysterious death aboard the Portent King. They also discovered that the prosecution was secretly conspiring with the Daask criminal organization to get documents that would incriminate Big Mondo in the trial. The documents were due to be delivered into the prosecutor’s vault in the Kundarak Bank of Sharn. The party planned to intercept these documents, and Mickey planned to use them to gain leverage over Big Mondo so he could rise to power in the Boromar Clan, with Big Mondo serving as his puppet.

II.

The party returned to Sharn to carry out their plan. While Mickey and Jeeves went to shake down a local Daask informant for more information, Sane went to scope out the Kundarak Bank. There she met a local clerk from the bank named Serghum d’Kundarak who longed for a bit of excitement in her monotonous life. Serghum had also read Balkris’s adventure column in the Korranberg Chronicle and was astounded when Sane revealed that she had met THE Balkris in person. But Serghum fell short of taking up Sane’s invitation to join the legendary adventurer Balkris and herself for drinks.

It was then that Sane saw a strange phenomenon. The dwarf clerk seemed to repeat the last few words she had spoken, almost like a broken music box that played the same fragment of a melody on a loop. And for the briefest instant, it seemed as if the dwarf and the Kundarak Bank behind her were overlaid with strange green symbols.

Feeling confused, disappointed, and a little hungry, Sane stopped by a local tavern near Morgrave University called the Lonely Mountain on her way back to meet her companions. In the tavern, a halfling bard sang a forlorn song of longing for his distant homeland, the Talenta Plains, where nomadic halfling tribes lived among the roaming herds of dinosaurs. It was the same song that Sane’s mother used to sing to her on countless nights, and it was the last song that her mother had sung on the evening before she left Sane’s life.

Sane felt a moment of deja vu as she listened to the bard. But it was not brought on by nostalgic memories. Rather, she saw once more the strange phenomenon that she had witnessed earlier. For it seemed to her that the bard was repeating the same line of the lyrics that he had sung only a few seconds ago.

III.

All throughout the day, Sane kept having these same peculiar visions. The people she met and her surroundings were momentarily overlaid with the strange green symbols that flashed before her eyes. She continued to experience deja vu, as though people she spoke to were glitching and repeating the same words they had spoken just a second ago. Somehow, Sane sensed that the phenomenon might have something to do with an heirloom from her parents: a black stone that most people mistook for a lump of coal.

Jeeves saw these visions as well. For the warforged butler, they became clearer when he was meditating or fighting. But he also experienced the phenomenon when he had gone down to the Cogs to seek out a famous warforged healer named Smith, who resided at a magical spring called Onatar’s Pool with waters that reportedly had restorative properties.

Yet when Jeeves met Smith, the latter insisted that he was no healer but a humble blacksmith.

“I am a servant of Onatar, Sovereign of the Forge… *bzzzt*… Onatar, Sovereign of the Forge.”

Smith seemed to malfunction, repeating the last few words he had spoken, and was translaid with green symbols for only a brief instant.

IV.

By the evening, when the heroes had gathered together again, Mickey had gotten the information he was seeking from one of his criminal contacts, the halfling bard Larni from the Boromar Clan. The Daask had acquired the documents from one of Big Mondo’s rivals among the Boromars. It was none other than Mickey’s own criminal contact, Frankie, who ran a gang by the docks. The Daask henchmen were en route to the Kundarak Bank. They had sent a half-orc gang led by a woman named Svorna the Hatchet. They would arrive at the bank on the following day.

The strange phenomenon that Sane and Jeeves had seen would have to wait. For now, the party prepared an ambush for the Daask in a secluded intersection that was a good distance away from the perimeter of the bank. Mickey laid caltrops over the street, which were cleverly hidden by Sane’s illusion magic. The adventurers hid themselves upon the second story balconies of the nearby buildings, readied their wands and weapons, and waited for their targets to arrive.

When the Daask appeared at the intersection, the ensuing battle was swift and brutal. The Rabble took Big Mondo’s documents from the charred remains of the half orcs. Without the evidence that the prosecution needed, King Boranel dismisses the trial. Everything went just as the Rabble as intended. In fact, it was almost too easy. As the grateful Big Mondo was acquitted of all charges, Sane laid down for a nice long nap.

V.

“The trial of Breland v. Big Mondo shall now commence.”

When Sane awoke, she was startled to find that it was the same day when the trial had begun! Everything happened just as it had on that first day. Big Mondo was still in the defendant’s seat, and the prosecutor gave the same long-winded speech to the court. When Sane looked toward Jeeves, she saw that the warforged was looking back at her with eyes full of understanding.

That was when the heroes realized that they were trapped in some sort of collective dream. Sane and Jeeves had snapped out of the dream quickly, but Mickey remained trapped in the vision. From Mickey’s point of view, he had spent three years enacting his plan of surrounding Big Mondo with his own people and gaining power over the Boromar Clan, until one day he felt strangely dissatisfied and realized that something was amiss.

The Rabble turned to R. Sativus in the hopes that the gnome diviner might know what was happening. R. Sativus explained that their dream vision had been created by a powerful eldritch device called the Delirium Machine, built by Merrix d’Cannith to control people’s minds. Merrix used the mystical connection forged by R. Sativus’ repeated sending messages, piggybacking on the signal to target the members of the Rabble with the power of his eldritch device. But being a divination wizard, R. Sativus’ mind instinctively resisted the intrusion by creating visions of possible futures for herself and the rest of her party. The things that happened during their dreams were not mere illusions but events as they may come to pass.

Interestingly, when Jeeves awoke from his vision, he realized two things. Firstly, warforged can experience dreams and visions; however, since they do not sleep, they are both conscious and dreaming, which means they can experience both the dream and the waking world simultaneously. Meanwhile Mickey Bishop, Sane, Timber, and R. Sativus were all in a comatose state. Only Jeeves, Reckoner, and, for some reason, Balkris remained awake.

Secondly, Jeeves recalled that during the dream, he had briefly seen a vision of a world ruled by the warforged, in which he himself led an army of machine soldiers across a war-torn landscape.