The campaign begins in Crown’s Edge, a divided border city split between two worlds: one half belonging to the ordered, militarized Crownlands of Rosenhall, the other spilling into the harsh desert kingdom of Sapest. It is a city of tension, surveillance, smugglers, mercenaries, and uneasy crossings, the perfect place for a dangerous job to begin.
The story opens in the three-story tavern known as The Green Dragon, where Fable, a dhampir and one of the last surviving members of a burned adventuring guild, has been hiding for several days. Her guildmate Vulmer brought her there, told her to stay put, and left her with only a battered fairytale, The Girl Who Fell Through the World, to pass the time.
Outside, in the stables, Fern, an elf monk from the Vaelwood, is cheerfully recounting his adventures to a goat when he is interrupted by Alyviel, a wood elven mercenary. She questions whether he knows why they have been summoned to Crown’s Edge. Naturally, he does not.
Soon after, Behzad, the disgraced prince of Vlorfa, arrives in polished armor, still carrying himself like the noble he no longer truly is. Taking charge with practiced confidence, he guides the group into the tavern. Unseen by most of them, Nys, a shadar-kai rogue, slips in from the Sapest side of the city and silently follows the party inside.
Fable descends from her room, and the party meets properly for the first time. Their introductions are brief before they are drawn to a back table, where Vulmer waits. He lights a playing card marked with an hourglass, and time itself freezes around the tavern.
There, Vulmer reveals the truth: The Prophet, leader of his guild and a dangerous dissident against the Lords’ Alliance, has been kidnapped. After searching through the Prophet’s records, Vulmer found the names of the party members and summoned them for a rescue mission.
The kidnappers are a goblin criminal organization known as The Golden Rat Syndicate, who likely intend to exploit the Prophet’s divination powers for their own profit and schemes. But the situation is even worse than that. Vulmer has received classified Eldamari intelligence suggesting that Crackjaw, the Syndicate’s hideout in the Sapest ridge country near Azmar, is about to be raided by Crown’s Edge’s Magearm Division. If the Crown reaches the Prophet first, he will almost certainly be executed or disappeared. After all, Rosenhall has already tried to kill him once, burning down his guildhall and slaughtering his adventurers, leaving only Fable and Vulmer alive.
With the promise of a large payday and the shadow of the Crown closing in, the newly formed party sets out toward Crackjaw Ridge.
When they arrive, they discover something horrifying: a Sapest deployment has already reached the area, but its soldiers have been turned to stone. Goblins pick through the petrified guards, looting their frozen bodies. The party sneaks closer and discovers the cause, a sleeping basilisk, somehow under goblin control.
The mission erupts into violence. The basilisk hurls Behzad into the ground and nearly kills him, only for Nys to bring the monster down with a decisive shot. Meanwhile, Alyviel captures one of the goblins in a net just as it is cutting Fern apart in close quarters. But the goblin leader escapes, vanishing into a cave.
Following the trail, the party discovers that Crackjaw is no simple hideout. Beyond the cave lies a vast underground city suspended along the cavern wall, held together by rope bridges and hanging platforms above the darkness of the Underdark.