Genesis IV: Tan-Sul

Meanwhile the rest of the party met with the werewolves, who introduced them to their "living idol": a being made of sentient, amorphous Janastone named Tan-Sul. Tan-Sul claimed to have a very important mission for Nel, but first he had to be sure he could trust the party. He asked them to retrieve two clay urns containing "important souls," gathered by a group called the Collectors. They agreed, and went to look for the Collectors to the east, where they had last been seen.

Xenovitus, in the city of Torm, witnessed the giant hybrid elemental wreak total destruction over swaths of the city until it seemed to stop dead. It then knelt down before a copper-haired woman, seemingly just a commoner, who seemed to have gained command over the entity. She was hailed a hero, and carried upon the shoulders of the Tormsen to the Tormodrome, to be named Torm V. Not wanting any part of this, Xenovitus teleported back to the party, who was setting up camp and preparing to hunt for food in the wilds of Azreidel.

Xenovitus joined Lantis in the hunt, and after a series of disastrous failures ended up being killed by a wolf. His death plunged the area into permanent ice and frost. The party left him where he was and continued east, and due to a navigational error accidentally stumbled into the Mir Prison, the primary prison in Azreidel, run by the House of Mir. Mostly underground, one section of it proved to have a particularly weak ceiling, and it collapsed due to a summoning of Zulg above it.

The party grappled with Paraccio di Mir, the disenchanter who ran the prison. Things were ultimately settled more or less peacefully (after more High magic shenanigans), but the party had to take on a burden for Paraccio. They offered to discreetly take the most dangerous criminal off his hands and "deal with him," but Vothug Sunfist proved just a bit too crazy for their liking, so they took the runner-up instead: the dwarf artificer Belgar Brokkisnev. Also, as a second condition on their walking out safely, Paraccio demanded that Lantis assist in an experiment: Paraccio would put a partial sigil of disenchantment on Lantis, who would then attempt a summoning. The result was a trip into the "Void," where he was forced to surrender his prized Dream Orb.

They then found their way to Dakan, the border trade city of Azreidel run by the House of Vask. They looked for job postings, including a request from an arcane botanist, a job to harvest pieces of a sentient castle, and a complex task to retrieve something called the "Staff of Magic." While investigating they were approached by a swarthy man who hired them to pick up a package from a hermit living in a ruin a short distance away. They took the task from this man, who called himself Adiq, and left the city.

They found the ruin, the Halls of Desolation: a dwarven outpost from during the First Nexus War, now long abandoned. On their entry they contended with nightmare swarmers who projected their worst fears into their minds as hallucinations. They managed to fight off these creatures and met with Norr, a priest of shadow and Adiq's contact. He gave them two clay urns to deliver, which they realized were the same ones Tan-Sul was after, and so decided to return them to the Janastone entity instead. Norr demanded a cut, and in exchange offered to take them there quickly via a shortcut through the Grey Demesne. His "cut" took the form of negotiating with Tan-Sul before the party could. They agreed.