C3 E3 in brief

The split-party cliffhanger resolves into farce, then horror. The fractured crew bungles its way through tailing the spooked forewoman Danas — losing her across Jrusar, breaking into the warehouse to find doctored ledgers proving an inside job — before running her to ground in an upstairs room at the Weary Way. Through the door, Orym hears her murdered the instant she admits they’ve been found out. They smash in one beat too late to a sallow cloaked dwarf the table dubs “Dugger,” who drops his act and births a swarm of shade creepers from the shadows.

The fight curdles into chaos — necrotic claws drop Orym, dying creepers burst into fire, and Dugger drowns the room in magical darkness until allies stab allies blind. They burn the swarm to ash but Dugger slips out a balcony window unseen; Imogen drags Danas’s near-decapitated corpse from the dark, the price of his escape. The crew fractures over blame, bluffs past the inn staff, and hauls the body to Eshteross, who takes the death as his burden, puzzles over shade creepers hoarding brumestone, and — softening at last — formalizes the alliance over a homemade carrot cake while opening his history as a reformed sellsword.

The triumphant night turns dark three ways. Ashton secretly sets Milo to investigate Eshteross and betrays he’s hiding from a “she.” Bertrand confides this crew is his real comeback after a lifetime of failure — then, drunk and alone, is ambushed and run through twice by Dugger in an alley, left dying with a mocking “Good night.” And Imogen dreams of her home village devoured by a blood-red storm, her mother screaming “Run” as a proud older man walks willingly into it. Unresolved: Dugger, the brumestone, Bertrand’s fate, and the storm.