Session 18 — The Merchant Road
Date played: April 18, 2026 Location: Silverthread — The Silver Bough, The Watch Post, The Goldwalk Road
The morning started quietly at the Silver Bough. A young Watch guard came in for Commander Arran’s breakfast — armor slightly too big, clearly proud of being trusted with the errand — and said enough in passing that the party decided to follow up. At the Watch post, Commander Veth Arran gave them a job with no ceremony and no stated price: a merchant wagon two days overdue on the Goldwalk road. She needed to know what happened.
They went.
The road out of the city is Feywild-strange in a way that stays just below alarming — trees slightly too large, light falling at wrong angles. Twenty minutes out, the birds went quiet. Thirty minutes out, they spotted wagon wheel ruts veering off the road where a horse had shied hard at something in the tree line. Tracks in the undergrowth confirmed it: a trained pack, moving in coordinated formation, pacing the wagon.
The wagon was found further down — one wheel in a ditch, horse gone, harness cut clean. Perri Vansel was dead against the wheel. His guard was dead ten feet away. A third body was in the underbrush, forest leathers, wounds from the same animals that killed the merchant. The attack pattern was consistent with displacer beasts — Feywild predators sometimes kept by nobles, whose bodies appear to occupy different space than they actually do.
Dash’s investigation of the cargo produced more questions than answers. The crate lining held traces of something that wasn’t quite ink and wasn’t quite reagent — a specialty product, produced in small quantities. The manifest didn’t match the cargo weight; the discrepancy was deliberate. A separate ledger notation, in a different hand: S. — Inkwell — urgent. An off-record delivery, arranged after the manifest was already filed. Cyrene remembered: the Inkwell is in Silverthread’s Shadow Market.
The Echo Stone showed Dash the shape of what happened: an elf in forest leathers leading the pack to surround the wagon, killing the merchant and his guard. The guard wounded the elf before going down. The beasts turned on their injured handler and finished him.
Someone sent trained displacer beasts to intercept this shipment. The person they sent is dead. The cargo is gone.
On the way back, the party heard something that resolved into a scene they weren’t expecting — a wide clearing near the river, four displacer beasts arranged in a loose circle around a wounded juvenile owlbear, and inside the circle, the body of a female Fey.
That’s where the session ended.
Combat status: Mid-fight, displacer beasts, Lucian’s turn. Willow has been down twice. Luna’s bear form depleted. Cyrene is back up. The beasts are hurting but not finished.
What you’re carrying: The manifest and ledger from the wagon.
What’s waiting in the clearing: Nobody has searched the female Fey’s body yet.