Recap
Drawn through a magic door into the teahouse's inner sanctum, the party found the elf Llyana Soren (General Ilyana Sorn) burning papers. She cast without speaking and taunted them telepathically: this was who had been sent to avenge their orc friend; Thoren Blackthorn should go back to his brother, who needs him; and to Binkette, "how many of your children do you think I can turn?" Reid Ransom realised she was Protocol Theta, the figure in the wagon. She descended through a sinking ring in the floor, told someone named Jorum through an amulet that "the teahouse has fallen, execute protocol cappa" (see Jorim The Tinkerer and Protocol Kappa), and rolled out a sphere that released the ghost face from the mine.
The party decoded the Eightfold's protocols and found the Mysterious message decoded: a note from Lord Cedric Vanthorn, Commander of The Eightfold, saying he can be reached in Rookfall through their location in the Fogsteps. The building collapsed above them; they escaped through a water gate into a sea cave below the Fogsteps and swam to the terraced gardens. Smoke rose from an explosion in the north of the city.
Reid ran into the halfling Rick Soko, an old friend from The Dread Hollow Snags. At The Panopticon Zenith, Brother Thaladrin, a drow soldier Kael Sunstrike knows, and Brothers Turvin and Troff held a female bugbear with mechanical limbs who had carried out a bombing, captured with two more devices.