The People
Everyone here is someone the party has met or been told about. What is written is what the party has worked out — no more, and sometimes less than the truth.
The Duke's people
Duke Aldric Westmarch. The city's ruler, and now the party's patron. Once vigorous, he has grown withdrawn and is widely thought paranoid. The party knows why: he carries a secret passed down by word of mouth from Duke to heir — that the Pact is a prison, that seven stones hold the forest, and that someone is breaking them. He broke three centuries of silence to tell the party, because he trusts none of his own factions. He wears a small vial on a cord, meant one day for Sera, and he has not said what is in it. He does not know who the saboteur is.
Lady Sera Westmarch. His daughter and only heir — sharp, quick to learn, and firmly in the party's camp. She saw through the party's questions in a heartbeat and threw in with them anyway. She openly distrusts her uncle Brennan. Now forbidden the forest, she works the city and the Archive. See also The Party.
Ambrose Grieve. The Duke's servant, assigned to the red-doored house on Redbird Street. He is the party's quartermaster, paymaster and message-drop — the man who hands out the fifty gold a month and relays the Duke's orders. Tall, black-clad, unfailingly correct.
Lord Brennan Westmarch. The Duke's younger brother — charismatic, popular with the common folk, and forever arguing that Westmarch must be allowed to grow and the old Pact must evolve. Lyrique admires him and brings him what she hears. Others in the party feel differently: Kaelen suspects Brennan is behind the city's troubles, Mira shares the suspicion, and Sera distrusts her uncle openly. None of them can prove anything. Brennan, for his part, warned Lyrique off trusting the Fey and claims not to recognise the stone from Kaelen's vision.
Handlers and allies
Chief Archivist Elara Moonwhisper. A high elf of three centuries, Quill's employer and protector, and the party's most open ally — she shares everything she knows. She believed the old legends when everyone else dismissed her, and she was right. She was the one who charged and used the Tess-Kydra on the Warren Stone, uncertain and half-terrified, and she is not too proud to say so.
High Ranger Mira Thornweaver. Commands the Rangers from the Greenwatch; Kaelen's superior, and a woman carrying something she will not name. She recognised Edran Holloway's medallion, gave it back to Kaelen to carry, and set him quietly to watch Lord Brennan. When Kaelen brought her the bowls of water, she refused to call them fey — fey should not be able to work inside the walls, she said, and the fact that something can may mean it is not fey at all.
Archdruid Theron Mossbark. Ancient leader of the Circle of the Thornwood, alive since before the Green War, and grown cryptic. He named Lady Oona for Kaelen and warned she was dangerous. He admits he knows about the ward stones and refuses to explain — he does not trust everyone the party answers to. He carries a great deal of guilt he has not put down.
High Priest Davian Goldscale. A gold dragonborn, leader of the Platinum Basilica. He judged the shining figure that saved the boy Ned to be Bahamut or one of his servants. And he has been dreaming, for weeks, of darkness spreading from the forest and of chains crumbling around something imprisoned that is beginning to stir — dreams that started, as near as he can tell, when the fog came.
Lieutenant Kessa Ironfoot. Second of the City Watch, a mountain dwarf and a devout follower of Bahamut. She was the one who brought Drakov to the boy who came back from the fog.
Errol and Braun. Thalia's Warrens contacts — a talkative old smith and a sewer-sweeper who drinks at the Broken Shield. Between them they gave the party its first real trail: cloaked figures in the sewers for weeks before the fog, and two sweepers gone the night before it fell.
The forest and the fey
Lady Oona. A fey lady of great power who keeps the Singing Pools. She set Kaelen's
price — the Sorrow of the Forest — before she would let the party drink or take Source Stone.
She knows who Quill is and why he is cursed, and refuses to say, because she finds his
suffering entertaining and holds that he deserved it. Theron named her dangerous, and nothing
since has argued with him.
Percival. A faerie dragon the party met on the road to the Pools — curious, vain, and fond of them for reasons of his own. He warned them of danger once, saved Quill from a bear once, and has now followed them into the city simply because "watching you and your friends is very fun." He tells stories at the Sleepy Dragon and thinks his are better than Lyrique's.
Riven-Vow. A redcap sentinel who guards the way to the Singing Pools with a riddle. The party answered it truly and he let them by. He is fey, and the cap is the colour it is for the usual reason.
The enemy, as far as the party can see it
Verdanthis. A dragon. The Poison Scale kobolds worship her as a god, and she left the Tess-Kydra in their charge at Harrow Keep — but she was not there. By Chief Scris's own slip, she lairs elsewhere, and the party has no idea where, or what she wants. Her name is one of the few hard threads they have that points past the sabotage to whoever is behind it.
Chief Scris "The Claw." Leader of the Poison Scale at Harrow Keep. Dead — Drakov's mace, one critical hit. His tribe is scattered, one sorcerer taken prisoner, at least one kobold fled.
Torque. The largest of the captured kobolds, and the one Lyrique won over with a cup-and-ball game. He gave up how the Poison Scale think, that they worship Verdanthis, and that they war endlessly with the gnolls of the deep forest.
Petra. The businesslike woman behind the desk at Vane & Daughters, and the party's first contact with the Eighth District — Westmarch's thieves' guild, long thought a myth. She sells information the way the yard sells cartage: by contract, coldly, and only once your name is in the Manifest. She set the price of the saboteurs' paymaster at 250 gold, and when the party could not pay, took Kaelen's future services instead — forest work, some of it on the grey side of the law, none of it killing — at the District's discretion.
Rowan Redd. The name Petra sold. An "orchestrator" — a man hired to do what others do not want to be seen doing — who bought the use of the Undercroft routes on Greenleaf 1st, two weeks to the day before the fog. He can be reached through the bartender at the Ledger and the Lamp in Duke's Bridge. The party has not met him; he is waiting for their return.
Met on the road to Celindara
The knight of the court. A tall figure in green-and-gold armour, built like an elf, visor never raised, who stepped out of the trees three days up the Westrun and demanded the party's business under the Pact. He knew Kaelen for a Ranger on sight. Told the truth — that they would take only what they could hold in their minds — he let them pass with a warning: "We will be watching. Should you violate the Pact, you will pay the price." Name and court unknown. The first creature the party has met who plainly polices the Pact from the forest's side.
The troll at the old ford. Lives in the river where a paved road once crossed it. Takes a toll. "This my river. Must pay. We hungry." The party paid four days' food and crossed. It is still there, and the road home runs through its water.
Lady Titania (a guess, not a meeting). The red-haired woman in the emerald gown whom half of Westmarch has been dreaming about. The Archdruid thinks she is Titania, Archfey of the Summer Court and a peer of Lady Oona's. He does not know why a city full of sleepers would be shown her.
Joss and Kellan. Two regulars at the Sleepy Dragon who have the dreams almost every night, both kinds — the chained thing in the dark, and the moonlit glades with the woman in them.
Coriveth. A name in The Measure of the Westrun: the hand that wrote, in 928, that the road from Celindara to Westmarch was open and that the captain at Harrow Keep had asked for a copy of the mile-marks. Whoever Coriveth was, they were on good terms with Westmarch thirteen years before the war ended. Nothing else is known.
The thing that holds the city. Unseen. Heavy-footed, large enough to push branches aside as it walks, and it speaks Elvish. It stopped outside the wall where the party was hiding and said: "The city is held. You are counted: five, out of the east. State what you intend here. Stated things bind, on this ground." Kaelen answered "We seek knowledge," and it said "Knowledge you may have," and went away. Its tracks — if the big tree-like prints on the switchbacks are its — are a larger version of the awakened trees' that attacked the camp. The party has not named it, and does not know what it would make of the gold.