C3 E4 in brief

Imogen wakes from her recurring storm-nightmare changed — for the first time it held a real face, Bertrand, eerily at peace where there’s only ever terror. The dread sends the crew searching the dark Core Spire, and they find him: throat-and-chest punctures matching the pale dwarf’s blades, the killer come back to finish what the warehouse started. They carry the body to a weary, self-blaming Eshteross, refuse his offered exit from the danger, and turn a mercenary contract into a personal hunt.

Working the crime scene, they descend a 1200-foot creeper burrow, track the dwarf across rooftops, and bribe a name from the tavern-keep: Dugger, an ordinary carpenter until something began physically wasting him six months ago, now smuggling Alsfarin-controlled brumestone and running warped shade creepers. A charmed informant ties him to the Hubatt Corsairs — Robin Hood thieves who rob Jrusar’s corrupt elite and war with the Ivory Syndicate — though a steal-from-the-rich murderer doesn’t add up. Eshteross half-admires the Corsairs and wants contact; he also confirms Bertrand’s Vox Machina claim held a thread of truth, so they ship the braggart to Whitestone for a knight’s burial and eulogize the man whose one real gift was binding eight strangers into a crew.

Privately, Orym names his hidden mission to Eshteross — hunting the bodyguard “The Anger,” Oshad Breshio, over an attack on Mahaan house Lumas that mirrors the murder of his own people. Ashton, a fugitive secretly investigating his own patron, works his underworld web — Milo, the Shadow Baker — for a Corsairs password. It leads them through Elder’s Post into a hidden chamber, where some thirty Corsairs ring the walls and their scimitar-twirling leader greets the surrounded crew: “certainly not your luckiest of days.”