The party returns to the Prophet’s demiplane, the strange purple refuge of crystal statues and impossible silence. The Prophet is surprised to see all of them. He expected that only Fable would come back. After rescuing him and receiving their payment from Vulmer, he assumed the rest of the party would return to their old lives.
The party quickly corrects him.
They explain what has happened in Azmar: Sand’s threat, ACE’s control over the Baroness, the burned body in the desert, the lead-shuttered factory, and the blood-soaked machine hidden upstairs. The Prophet immediately understands the severity of the situation. He tells them that his guild, the Overseers, was founded to fight atrocities like this, before the Lords’ Alliance destroyed them for refusing to become obedient lapdogs of the Crown.
He is proud of the party. They could have walked away once the job was done, but instead they chose to fight because something evil was happening and someone had to stop it.
Then the party asks the obvious question: why were they not paid?
The Prophet is stunned. He explains that he is, in fact, quite wealthy. When he hears how Vulmer dismissed them and tried to send them away, he is disappointed but not surprised. Vulmer lost too many people when the Overseers fell, including Francis, the brilliant mind behind much of their organization and the mutual best friend of both Vulmer and the Prophet. The Prophet believes Vulmer is afraid of letting new people into their circle, only to lose them again in the coming civil war.
There is also a more practical tension between them. Vulmer wants the Prophet focused on rebellion, strategy, and overthrowing the Crown. The Prophet, however, still wants to do what the Overseers were made to do: fight monsters, stop atrocities, go on adventures, and help people. Vulmer knows him well enough to know that if the party stays close, the Prophet may be pulled back into heroics instead of remaining fixed on the war.
With the party now committed, the Prophet reveals the true purpose of his “rolodex.” It is not a list of contacts. It is a catalogue of deaths.
The names Vulmer found belong to people whose deaths the Prophet has foreseen: significant, important deaths that have not yet happened. Every member of the party is in that collection. But because Vulmer interfered with fate by pulling them away from the places they were supposed to be, the Prophet no longer knows whether those deaths will come to pass.
Except for Nys.
Her death already happened. She was butchered in Charmed Cove by an unseen assailant. By some miracle, the Raven Queen brought her back as one of her shadar-kai. For the others, their deaths remain open on the books.
The revelation unnerves everyone.
Then the Prophet directs them to a recent vision: Benedict Sev lying on the ground while a gloved hand reaches through his chest and pulls his heart out whole.
Someone is going to kill the lord of Azmar.
The party leaps into action. Returning to Azmar, they break into the ACE factory warehouse and begin searching for proof. Among the scrap and records, they uncover damning documents. One is a collection notice from Lord Sev to Jasper, stating that his initial investment in ACE was meant to strengthen Azmar’s economy, not drain it. ACE had failed to deliver the promised weapons.
Comparing the letter to a nearby ledger, the party realizes this was from ACE’s first year. The company was delivering only one-third of its promised units and running a catastrophic deficit. ACE had nearly bankrupted Azmar, draining the city’s reserves on Jasper’s promises.
Nearby, they find a newspaper clipping revealing that Benedict Sev was once the Baron of Azmar. As the city’s economy collapsed, the Emperor pressured him to step down or face decisive action against the Sapest. Benedict abdicated, and the title passed to his sister, Liliana Sev. In the chaos of that transition, ACE suddenly began meeting its numbers. With a new Baroness on the throne and the city politically destabilized, ACE slowly took over Azmar’s economy and rebuilt the city around its own power.
As the party pushes farther into the warehouse, they find more signs of occult industry: jade statues used to summon and bind demons, abandoned hospital wings, and finally something far worse, an ooblex youngling trapped in a dark room.
The party learns that the creature can rudimentarily duplicate objects. Then Fable’s scars ignite across her body, and the horrible truth becomes clear: she can control the beast. Whatever magic scarred her is the same magic used to summon and bind this thing.
Behzad puts the ooblex out of its misery.
Fable breaks down sobbing in Nys’s arms.
The tender moment is interrupted when the cigar-smoking factory worker enters the warehouse and finds them. Fern fey steps forward and charms him, allowing Fable to teleport the entire group, including the man, back to the Prophet’s demiplane.
There, the party attempts to interrogate him. Alyviel, once again unable to resist taking over, tries to use the same seductive tactics that worked on the Crackjaw goblin, forgetting that the man is under Fern’s charm, not hers. The man flatly tells her he is proudly gay and wants nothing to do with her.
Fern tries to calm him, but a failed persuasion check breaks the charm. The man reaches for his gun, forcing the Prophet to dominate him with magic. The Prophet warns the party that the domination will only last a short time, and that if they push too far, they risk causing permanent brain damage or even death.
The interrogation reveals the man’s name is Ollie. He is from Charmed Cove, an artificer who came to Azmar because he believed in what ACE was building. But as constructs increasingly took over the main factory floor, Ollie was relegated upstairs to the blood work.
He tells them ACE has a mysterious Investor who fills its warehouses with supplies and ensures production begins each morning. But the infernal machines require payment: ten-gallon tubs filled with fresh hearts and blood. If ACE misses a quota, the supplies do not arrive, the machines do not start, and the company falls behind schedule, threatening economic collapse.
ACE has been killing bandits and adventurers in the Sapest, harvesting their organs and blood, then burning the bodies beyond recognition with a flamethrower before leaving them for guards to find. The burned corpse at the crossroads was not random. It was part of the system.
Ollie also reveals there is a shutoff switch in the factory that can halt the machines. But Jasper has warned him that the Investor is “testy,” and that if the Investor is not paid, the consequences will be very, very bad.
This should have been enough.
But Alyviel continues asking unnecessary personal questions for nearly another half hour: where Ollie came from, how he felt about ACE, his family, his life, and details far beyond what they needed. When the domination finally breaks, Ollie collapses, convulsing and seizing on the floor. The damage is done.
The party is forced to put him out of his misery.
With a dead man at their feet, Alyviel does what comes naturally to her. She drags Ollie’s body out of the demiplane and stages his death in the factory as a suicide. She places the gun near the dead ooblex, framing the scene to suggest that Ollie discovered the creature, killed it in horror, realized what would happen to him, and then took his own life.
Then she returns to the demiplane casually, as if she had merely stepped out to get a sandwich.
The episode ends with the party holding the clearest proof yet of ACE’s crimes: infernal production, murdered travelers, harvested organs, demonic machinery, a mysterious Investor, and a prophecy that Benedict Sev is about to have his heart ripped from his chest.
Azmar is not merely corrupt. It is being fed to something.