C2 E1 in brief

Six strangers collide over breakfast in Trostenwald — Caleb and Nott hiding at one table, Fjord, Beau, and Jester at the next — and by noon they’ve drawn swords over a card game, blessed each other’s stealth, and agreed to spend the day together because being alone seems worse. A carnival barker named Mollymauk Tealeaf and a silent wall named Yasha sell them tickets to the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities.

The carnival delivers real spectacle — contortionists, fire dancers, and a dwarven girl named Toya whose voice makes the entire tent weep — until an old man in the front row tears apart, his flesh going grey and his bones cracking into something undead. A second husk rises from his first victim. The party fights disarmed, Yasha raging through the first kill, Beau caving the second skull with its own teeth.

The aftermath is worse than the fight. The Crown’s Guard arrest Gustav, Bo, and Molly. The Watchmaster tells the rest: find answers before the investigation ends, or share the carnival’s judgment. Yasha tricks a guard and vanishes into the Marrow Fields. Molly stays behind bars. The party walks back to the Nestled Nook with their names on a ledger and a mystery they didn’t ask for: what made an old man into a monster, and is Toya’s singing connected?

Unresolved: the source of the transformations, Toya and the devil-toad Kylre’s whereabouts, what the Watchmaster will do if answers don’t come, where Yasha went, and whether six strangers who just met will stay to help a carnival that isn’t theirs.