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3. Session Recaps/8. Oils - 6-29-26.md

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+In the dimly lit Pigskin, the party gathered around a table as Karen's subordinates delivered _Oils_ to them. After confirming to _Karen_ that these were indeed the ones who had aided his escape from the Casino, the little automaton drew close to Janos and, in a low voice, revealed that he believed he had found what Janos had been searching for. Karen, ever the accommodating host, offered the group the tavern's back room so that the matter could be discussed in private. Once the door was shut behind them, the party expressed their concern for Oils and apologized that they had been unable to save his friend. Oils admitted that conditions had proven far worse than any of them had anticipated — but he had, all the same, completed the task Janos had set for him.
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+From among his effects Oils produced an observer's plate and laid out what it had recorded: the _Ashfall_ Squad's mission had successfully reached the mountains, entering through a cave mouth connected to the Mines. What troubled him was what came next — the Mine had been reported flooded the very following day, a coincidence he found far too tidy to trust, and he warned that Janos's companions might well be trapped somewhere within. Using the party's map, he pointed out the precise cave entrance the Ashfall had used to slip inside. It was here that Janos finally admitted aloud what he had been chasing all this time: former army companions from the Ashfall who had vanished in the middle of an investigation. The group set Oils's account beside the flooding they had already been looking into and reached an uneasy conclusion — the repeated flooding was no accident at all, but deliberate.
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+Curious, Odatina asked whether "the Reach" meant anything to him. Oils recalled hearing Casino figures throw the term around, and to his ear it had always sounded less like a place than an objective. He remembered too that _Cassian_ had spoken of the Reach often, describing how he had been made to wait on private meetings at the Casino, where he had watched maps being pored over. One meeting in particular stuck with him: several distinct groups dividing sections of land across a map, with _the Spade_ standing silent watch over them all. When Odatina described Commander Taylor, Oils confirmed that a man fitting that very description had been present at the meeting.
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+Piece by piece it came together. Odatina and Saif linked the note about "diggers" and the Reach "going quiet" to the miners and the flooding of the Mine, and the party resolved that the Mine itself demanded a closer look. Janos offered up more of what he knew of the Ashfall: the squad had been sent to the southern edge of the Talar Plains to investigate magical disturbances that had only grown more dangerous, until contact was lost entirely. When Janos pressed him for any further thread to pull, Oils gave up a name — _Felix Tanner_ — cautioning that Felix kept dangerous company and an even lower profile, and asking that they never breathe a word that the tip had come from him.
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+The group then showed Oils the Ring they had taken from the vault. He turned it over and studied it with his stone slate, and after a quiet moment handed it back, saying only that it was bound to a figure of real historical weight. The name meant nothing to most of them, but Saif recognized it at once as that of _the Explorer_ — a renowned name in _Faken_ history, tied to ancient relics of the old world. Oils explained that the stone slate itself was a rare and precious thing, a device that could store away information and memories. Asked what he meant to do now, he said he would remain in Caford; Karen had given him a room at the Pigskin, though he confessed he had already given most of his coin away. Odatina gently urged him to keep what was left for himself, and he agreed.
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+As the conversation wound down, Janos found himself picturing Felix Tanner — an older, haggard man sheltering in something crude and makeshift — and, drawing on what he had glimpsed of Oils's thoughts, fixed on the location of the man's hideout: tucked away behind the Vault Singers' Church. The party parted from Oils on warm terms, wishing him well. Out in the street, Janos shared what he had pieced together and put it to the others that Felix Tanner might be their next best source on both the Ashfall and the floods. Odatina insisted they do nothing that might expose Oils as their informant, and Six suggested they present themselves as representatives of the Church.
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+With time pressing, Six asked the bartender about catching a train back toward Brefield, but the man had nothing useful to offer. So the party made instead for the nearby Vault Singers' Church. Circling around to the rear of the building, Janos recognized the loose, removable fence slat exactly as he had seen it in Oils's mind. Peering through the gap, they made out a dark shelter of stacked boxes and heaped blankets — but before they could step through, a voice out of the darkness ordered them to stop, promising violence if they came any closer.
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+Janos called back that they had come from the Church, having heard that someone here might be in need of help. The hidden speaker drew a long sniff of the air, declared that one of them was a gnome, and repeated the threat. Six, meanwhile, felt the pull of something arcane: strong warding magic wrapped the whole of the Church, and beneath it a distinct necromantic pulse throbbed from within. Deciding the threat behind the fence was not worth forcing, the party withdrew and came back around to the front doors. Inside they found no sanctuary in any ordinary sense — instead a hushed, library-like hall of desks and crowded shelves, tended by black-robed attendants who regarded the newcomers with complete indifference.