2025.08.09 Session Notes

"You are a brave little company. Impressive. Resourceful. And more than a little lucky."
- Al-Tasim

The Coliseum

“I will rend that mark from your body, throw it at the feet of the Grand Sultan, regain his favor, and leave this disgusting exile for good.”
- Al-Tasim

• The FGC emerges victorious from their fight with Ig.
• Al-Tasim acknowledges they’ve earned their passage… but he also realizes who Erash is due to the way his tattoo has burned through his clothing.
• He mentions the Azers and others in the City of Brass who are loyal to the house of Al-Khaleed and the promise of revolution.

We both know the tales of revolution. The purging of the Great House of Al-Kahleed. The Bloodied Great Dragon biding his time while his children suffer as both guardians and prisoners beneath the eternally impenetrable Charcoal Palace? You heard the tales, yes? I was there when they were first told. I know of the flame-kin secretly pledging to rise up when Gaushroth calls. 

I know of the hiding Azers - whispering of your rumored existence in shadowed corners - a wistful sign that the Grand Sultan’s reign will soon end. A desperate, misguided, pathetic cult. Propagating their idiotic glimmer of hope over generations. All this, over some mark you were given by some despairing soul.

What a disappointment you would be to them, if they ever were to see you. What dismay the Brass City cretins would feel when all this hope in a chosen one would amount to ….this.

• Refuses us passage… BIG FIGHT!

I call that… the Ass-blaster!
- Khoraka

• Critically injured, Al-Tasim pleads with the twins, Dammos and Malus, for aid; but they realize they’re about to inherit the city, so they do nothing.
• Party defeats Al-Tasim. They ask for the chance to rest and recover but are denied by Dammos and Malus.
• They join hands and pass through the portal…

City of Brass

You stand on a rocky bluff made of basalt overlooking an ocean of lava. A path worn smooth by millions of feet over millennia leads downward to a vast metropolis of fire, blurred by heat waves rising into a blood-orange sky. 

The City of Brass sprawls before you like a living inferno — vast, alive, and utterly alien.

From your vantage, it seems to go on forever: towers of molten brass - their forms twisting and flaring like frozen flames. Bridges of black iron arc over rivers of lava, glowing red beneath endless caravans of chained slaves and gilded palanquins. Everything here burns — some parts slowly, some in silence, and some with screaming.

The walls themselves are a fortress — jagged, obsidian-edged, inlaid with ever-burning runes that flicker with captive souls. They say no fire ever dies in the City, only changes hands.

At the city’s heart, the Charcoal Palace looms like a mountain forged from flame and gold. Its domes blaze with elemental power, flanked by statues of bound djinn — their eyes still weeping molten tears. The Great Ziggurat rises beside it, a rectangular step-pyramid/temple-market hybrid where laws are auctioned off and slaves are bought with curses. 

The streets below teem with life, but not like anything you’d call familiar. Efreeti nobles parade through the avenues with retinues of lesser elementals and enslaved mortals — sorcerers, scholars, genasi, even demons pressed into servitude. Hawkers bark enchantments and alchemical wares from stalls of smelted bone. The air itself is thick with heat shimmer, ashfall, and the slow churn of elemental magic, like the entire city breathes.

You make your way down, passing the occasional beggar, hawker, and ashen corpse. The realm feels hotter, more unsparingly cruel than you ever imagined. 

Reaching the city level, a massive 30’ wall of volcanic stone encircles the city. Various gates are established on several points along the wall. However the gate you approach first seems to be permanently shut. Remnants of a chiseled Ignan text above the gate’s stone arch have been hollowed out, as if the name has been purged from memory. 15’ Towering statues of iron stand as sword-bearing sentinels on either side of the gate. 

Before the gate, canvas awnings stretch taut between scorched pillars and broken statues, their colors faded by ash and sun. The ground is cracked basalt and black sand, too hot for barefoot steps, and the air is thick with smoke, incense, and the constant sound of haggling in a dozen languages. The market is alive with flame-touched life: fire genasi merchants shouting prices, mephits darting between stalls with scrolls and keys, salamander artisans hammering glowing blades on portable anvils.

• There is some idle shopping. [You are all on your own here.]
• A disturbance near the gate turns out to be a large, affluent efreet whipping a group of helpless pilgrims of an unknown faith — a few Humans, an Azer couple, and a red Tiefling family with a child.

“For defiance, you burn. For insolence, you bleed. For mercy— * CRACK! * —you beg.”
- Unknown Effriti

• Exhausted, nervous for Erash, unsure how to proceed, and surrounded by citizens who appear to not see what is happening, the party starts to leave the scene as the pilgrims fall, one by one.
• Until a tall fire genasi standing with Phelan pulls back his hood with a resolute expression on his face, as Phelan places a hand on his arm…