Keepers: Jinnis, Gregorious, Traeceur, Toryn, Sam, Bella
Objectives: Audit the Principality fleet and make sure there’s no undeclared contraband.
Outcome: We uncovered medical records indicating mass miscarriage and stillbirths in Cyre in the year leading up to the Mourning.

I have never travelled on an airship before. It is cramped quarters, but I cannot think of a more efficient route between Sharn and Regalport. You truly can see out a great distance over the whole of Khorvaire. The great height of the Mournland is even more visible from up high, yet still almost incomprehensible in its vastness. By Aureon, what could have caused such a calamity?

Some of our party spotted a golden dragon flying in the distance on our first night of travel, but by the time I looked it was gone. Perhaps it was a blessing from the Host.

Regalport in the Lhazaar Principalities stretches the definition of “regal”, but it was a quite hospitable city, if a bit rough-and-tumble. Captain Rusalka is a fine commander of the port, and her assistance was greatly appreciated.

The fleet audits were tedious but going smoothly, with only minor contraband confiscated, including 120 copies of “The Lusty Argonian Maid” that Sam seemed particularly attached to. However, when we searched a ship that was freshly painted as “The Siren”, we made a truly unusual discovery: hundreds of medical records from Cyre.

The dockmaster said that the ship was registered to Captain Bart, though Captain Rusalka said she did not recognize the ship and that if Captain Bart was in town he would have contacted her. We suspected there may be an imposter in port. Desperate to find out why such records were on a pirate ship – and where they were heading to – we headed to the Limey Grog tavern in search of the captain of the ship.

A lively bar fight was in progress at the tavern. Bar fights seem to be a common and welcome pastime in town. We followed a suspicious individual into the tavern basement and found an underground high stakes gambling ring. Everyone was tight-lipped about where our suspicious friend went, but by pooling our resources we had enough to buy-in at the tables. My time playing cards while on deployment proved valuable, as no one else was suited to play. (I must write to Sergeant Thorne and inform him that poker was, in fact, a productive activity which eventually came to serve the Accord Keepers, and that the extra latrine duty he assigned our platoon for “degenerate conduct unbecoming of a Cyran soldier” was disproportionately harsh.)

Jinnis, Traeceur, and Sam returned to the docks to keep an eye on the Siren, while Gregorious stayed outside the gambling hall and Toryn was granted access as my “security detail”. I was seated at a table with four captains; Agatha, Imani, and Ironsides. They seemed slightly perturbed that I was not a pirate captain myself but were welcoming nonetheless. Captain Agatha seemed distracted. She got annoyed when I played conservatively, giving a speech about playing your hand until the end and never giving up. She left early. Shortly after, Gregorious signalled for us to follow him. Olladra was smiling on me, as I walked away from the table with enough to return the stakes my fellow Keepers had anted up as well as a nice little profit.

When Captain Agatha left, she passed Gregorious a note thanking us for helping with her crewmate. Gregorious confronted her. She confessed to knowing about the Siren and the medical records. It had been Captain Agatha all along who was dealing in the medical records. She said they had been raided by a House Jorasco ship and that a Sylar Brask was looking to receive them. She described him as being from a shifter tribe in the Eldeen Reaches before disappearing in a literal cloud of smoke. It sounds like we are on at least neutral terms with her. She was thankful the records were not destroyed.

Her note about the crewman made more sense when we returned to the docks, which were a flurry of activity. Sam, Jinnis, and Traeceur were sopping wet, and they filled us in. When they returned to the docks, the Siren was aflame. Hearing word of a trapped crewman, Traeceur bravely leapt aboard the burning vessel to save him. The ship exploded as they evacuated (apparently the crewman stored ball bearings in a gunpowder barrel next to his bunk), knocking them unconscious, and Jinnis and Sam dove into the water to their rescue.

That evening as we poured over the medical records, we made a shocking revelation. In the year leading up to the Mourning, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miscarriages and stillbirths with devastating fetal defects and mutations. 

At our church clinic in Making, we sometimes saw miscarriages, but nothing like the scale these records indicate, and the mutations are bizarre as well. It can’t be a coincidence. There must be some connection between these fetal mutations and the Mourning. I wonder if Mamá and Papá were seeing any of these cases. I wonder if they knew something was amiss. I didn’t hear much from them. The mail service in the field was unreliable, to put it diplomatically. I never heard…I never heard from them about anything like this.