C2 E3 in brief

The Trostenwald arc ends in fire and ash on Crookedstone Island. The episode opens with two zombified guards rising at the carnival camp — the group fights half-spent, Molly goes down for the second time in two days, and Nott kills the second husk blind and screaming on a natural 20. They load the bodies onto a cart, become fugitives to protect the carnival, and Ornna stays behind alone among empty tents.

Back at the inn, the fiends book names the creature: a nergaliid — a scaled demon that siphons life from sleeping mortals and leaves undead husks. Kylre was draining the carnival for two years and nobody noticed. The word “nergaliid” triggers something in Molly’s memory he can’t place — toad demons from Xhorhas, a place he shouldn’t know about.

Nott hands Caleb 13 gold she’d been sitting on the whole time and he dances through the street to buy the books. Jester notices Fjord’s old-man voice sounds like his real one from Port Damali. The group escapes the inn again, buys passage from a fisherman named Noah, and sails to Crookedstone Island — cursed land, witch’s ruins, nobody visits.

The boss fight is brutal. Kylre summons three imps and weaponizes Toya’s voice. Beau elbows the child unconscious to stop the singing. Fjord’s Wrathful Smite puts fear in the fiend’s eyes — barnacles growing on his blade, phosphorescent water. Caleb goes down to an imp stinger. Nott covers his unconscious body with her own. Fjord finishes Kylre with Eldritch Blast. Then an imp drops Fjord — three PCs unconscious in one session. Beau stomps the last imp. Nott stabilizes Caleb with a natural-20 mouth-to-mouth, mask off, face revealed.

In the quiet after, Molly takes Toya: “I should be the first face she sees.” They frame a cover story — Caleb killed the creature alone, the rest were at the inn. Six people sit in moonlight with a skillset that overlaps.

Unresolved: clearing their names with the Lawmaster, Toya’s future, Gustav and Ornna in custody, what Molly’s memory of Xhorhas means, and whether six strangers who just survived a boss fight together will admit they’re a party.