Overview

The false echo of Seren Vell steps out of a memory and into reality and confronts the party. With no obvious ill intentions, the False Seren politely banters with the party before the party decides to attack. After some fierce and deadly combat, the False Seren echo fractures into dozes of echos before exploding into piles of black thread that formed a crooked smile.

Key Moments

• An echo of Seren Vell stepped out of what seemed to be a memory, emerging from the wardrobe inside the memory, then addressed the party and stepped into reality
• The party felt rejuvenated despite not having a long rest.
• False Seren seemed to know things he shouldn't, know things real Seren forgot, and finish Seren's sentences, sometimes even talking through Real Seren
• False Orren joined the battle with jerky movements as though his body was a marionette controlled by some outside force
• When False Seren was defeated, both bodies burst into spools of black thread that formed the shape of a familiar crooked smile on the floor
• The smile seemed to react to the party, though there was no actual object under the illusion
• Party finds documents pointing at Eastwatch Tollhouse, a crooked smile token, and pages in Seren's sketchbook that have redrawn themselves
• The room seemed to be stripping away from reality during the fight. It came back immediately once it was over.

NPCs Involved

• Seren Vell
• Nessa Quill
• False Seren Echo
• The body of Orren Vale

Notes

We started precisely where session 3 left off. After watching an echo of a memory of what seemed to be Orren's last moments play out, the False Seren from the memory turned to face the party, stepped out into reality, and politely greeted them.

After some brief banter that did not seem to go anywhere, Nigh had enough and began to attack. The battle was fierce. Feltein summoned his ferocious sabretooth tiger, Calcifer, made entirely of flames. Shiny filled part of the room with his noxious poison gas. Nigh covered Seren with glitter and proved that she was not messing around. During the battle, the room began to fall apart as if reality was slowly forgetting it was there. It was awesome.

Shortly after the battle started and after many fails by False Seren to frighten and intimidate, Orren's body began to rise and make its way towards the party. False Seren did not react, as though this was an expected outcome. Orren's body moved like a marionette as though controlled by some external force not present in the room.

The False Seren was defeated with Shiny making the killing blow. The False Seren split into dozens of other Seren echos, each speaking its own words. Some of the words included:

• "the laughing flame"
• "the still reflection"
• "ashwater"
• jovial female laughter
• a deep, cackling laughter

The False Seren and the body of Orren both exploded into black thread that landed in the shape of a wide smile, a smile that seemed to laugh and react to the party. Upon investigation it was revealed that the string was an illusion with no source object underneath, an illusion pretending to be an object. Real Seren noticed that his sketchbook was rewriting itself, specifically several overlapping images of a place called Eastwatch Tollhouse. Also on the floor were papers and pieces of maps with multiple roads leading to/from Eastwatch Tollhouse. At the center of the roads where Eastwatch was located on the map was a coin with a crooked smile scratched into it.

Enemy Stat Blocks