Vallombrosa — Phase One: Current State

Everything we've locked in so far for the first phase of the campaign. This is the working document — canon until you change it.

The Timeline

• Day 0: Marcus disappears. Silas appears at the fog line and collapses.
• Days 1–45: The online session period. Silas is comatose at Viro's Respite. The party orbits each other through Jen's one-shot and the 45-day gap. Hooks activate. Relationships form.
• Day 45 (Session 1): Marcus is declared presumed dead. The party converges at Viro's Respite. Silas wakes at the midpoint. He identifies himself as Tolomeo Lucente.
• Days 46–75 (~Sessions 2–25): Phase One proper. Four weeks until the Autumn Masquerade. Silas operates openly as TL while working to sever his prison leash. The five pressures escalate.
• Day 75 (The Autumn Masquerade): Phase One climax. Silas attempts the severing. Whatever happens here opens the door for Marcello.

Silas as Tolomeo Lucente

The Cover

Silas wakes and eventually identifies himself as Tolomeo Lucente — a historical scholar who entered Vallombrosa centuries ago to study and ultimately destroy the prison. TL made a pact with Tartuzi (the Lock) with the goal of using her power to destroy the prison and the Keeper. The prison swallowed him before he could finish.

Every detail of the cover is built from real knowledge. TL was real. TL was genuinely imprisoned. TL genuinely accumulated deep understanding of the prison through his pact with Tartuzi. Silas spent decades cultivating TL's trust inside the prison specifically to steal that knowledge — and then murdered him. When "TL" demonstrates extraordinary understanding of Vallombrosa's interior, it's convincing because it IS TL's knowledge. The lie is the identity, not the expertise.

Why the City Embraces Him

He's not a random fog survivor — he's a returned historical figure. A miracle. VAVA wants to study him. The Archives want his testimony. The Council wants his expertise. He occasionally drops a morsel of ancient knowledge that makes everyone lean in. He doesn't overshare — he parcels it out, always leaving them wanting more. He's not performing charisma. He's performing significance.

His stated goal — studying and ultimately ending Vallombrosa — is consistent with who TL was. The city debates whether to help him, not whether to trust him. Some Council members want his expertise. Others want him locked up for attempting something catastrophically dangerous. He generates political friction just by existing.

Why the Party Can't Expose Him

There are no records of TL's face. No living witnesses. He knows the right things, has the right knowledge, bears the scars of imprisonment. The party saying "that's not TL" sounds like paranoid nonsense — especially since they can't say who he actually is. They have no proof that translates to outsiders.

He isn't actively doing anything wrong. He's doing research. He's being interesting. He's answering questions. You can't arrest someone for being compelling.

What the Party Sees

They clock him immediately. He appeared the same night Marcus disappeared. His story is too smooth. His questions are too precise. Their suspicion is correct and completely unprovable.

The central dramatic tension of Phase One: the party is right, nobody believes them, and the more they push the more they look like they're persecuting a victim.

Kryton's Patron Bond

Tartuzi made a pact with the real TL. Kryton's pact is with Tartuzi. When "TL" shows up claiming to be Tartuzi's former warlock, Kryton's patron bond should scream. Tartuzi knows this isn't her warlock. She watched Silas murder him. But her communication with Kryton is fragmentary, filtered through sphinx logic. Kryton gets flashes — wrongness, grief, rage — and has to figure out what they mean while everyone around him celebrates the miracle.

This is a slow-burning character crisis across all of Phase One. Tartuzi is the one witness who can blow the cover, communicating through a patron bond Kryton barely understands.

Silas's Actual Goal: Severing the Leash

His constructed body runs on his connection to the prison. That connection is also a tether — the Keeper and Tartuzi can potentially still affect him through it. He's out on parole with an ankle monitor.

Problem One — Understand the binding. He reverse-engineers the di Errante tragedy. Lorenzo severed an Archfey from its power; Silas needs the same knowledge to sever himself from the prison. This is the "interesting scholar" phase — reading histories, examining the canals, studying the masks. The party watches him assemble a bomb out of library books.

Problem Two — Find a new power source. If he cuts the tether, his body needs to run on something else. This is where he eventually does something wrong — and can't be found culpable for it. Whatever he needs for the anchor, he acquires it disguised as a Leaked incident or a Masquerade accident.

Problem Three — The Masquerade window. One night a year the boundary is thin enough to work on the connection. Miss it and he waits a year, which he can't — the prison is degrading, the party is circling. The Masquerade isn't his preference, it's his only window.

Silas and the Mirror Fane

His research leads him to it. The Mirrorwright's Court has been the foundation of the fane's influence for centuries without knowing it. TL's "scholarly interest" in the true mirrors gives him plausible reason to spend time there. By Week 3 or 4, he's identified what the fane is and where it sits within the Court's architecture.

This creates a collision with the party's Mirrorwright relationships (built through Lotan's reflection thread). The Mirrorwrights are friends. Silas is circling their institution because there's a cosmic artifact hidden in their workshop.

Open decision: Does Silas access the Mirror Fane before the Masquerade (visible fallout — mirrors go haywire, Mirrorwright craft degrades, the party has proof something happened) or does the fane become part of his Masquerade-night severing ritual (the party has a chance to intervene on the night itself)?

The Warden's Effects (Session 1 Hook)

Primary: Noname Secondary: Kryton, Orabella

The Fog Wardens' Garrison has officially listed Marcus as missing. The administrative cutoff is 45 days without contact, and that milestone has passed. Standard procedure: next of kin receives the Warden's personal effects. Noname gets his patrol journal, spare uniform, and personal items from his bunk, delivered to Viro's Respite by a garrison quartermaster who is sympathetic but bureaucratic. This is the system processing her fiancé's absence into paperwork.

Most of it is exactly what she'd expect. Three things aren't.

A letter in Marcus's handwriting, addressed to someone with initials she doesn't recognize, sealed but never sent. The contents are mundane — it discusses a concern about "patterns in the watch logs" and asks the recipient to look into it quietly. It's dated two weeks before he disappeared.

A small glass vial of dark liquid tucked into the lining of his pack. No label. The liquid doesn't behave normally — too still, doesn't respond to tilting. Not fog exactly, but adjacent to it in a way that's hard to articulate.

A hand-drawn map of a section of the fog line that doesn't match any official patrol route. There are observation marks — times, dates, notes in a shorthand Noname can't read.

What it gives you: Noname's investigation becomes active rather than reactive. She has physical evidence she can pursue. The letter gives her a person to find. The vial is genuinely strange and Orabella or Kryton might be able to identify it. The map suggests Marcus was investigating something unauthorized before he vanished.

Crucially, Noname can't fully trust her own reactions. Does she not recognize the initials because Silas scrubbed them from her memory? Or because Marcus genuinely kept a secret from her? The memory manipulation means she can't distinguish between things she's forgotten and things she never knew.

The letter's recipient: A retired Warden named Teodric, living quietly in the lower Market Tiers. Reluctant to talk. The letter proves Marcus trusted him. He can confirm Marcus was worried about "something wrong with the boundary" and that he told Marcus to drop it. He carries visible guilt about that advice.

Resolution for Session 1: Noname decides what to do with the effects — share them or keep them private. If the party finds Teodric, he confirms Marcus's concerns but insists it was paranoia. The vial and map are longer investigations. Getting Teodric to really open up — past the guilt — is a social challenge that pays off in later sessions if the party earns his trust.

Long-term: Marcus was investigating the boundary's degradation before he vanished. He got close to something. The map and the vial are evidence of what he found. Teodric may have continued the investigation quietly after Marcus disappeared — or stopped out of fear.

The Pressure Skeleton

How It Works

Five types of pressure, escalating across four weeks leading to the Masquerade. Not enemies — people whose genuine wants collide with the party's. Silas is the only true antagonist, and he's hidden in plain sight. Everyone else is a person with a motive.

Every session should have at least one pressure actively creating friction. Stagger them so the party has two or three live at any time but isn't drowning in all five at once.

Pressure 1: The Obstructor — Professor Emiliana Sarto

Who she is: VAVA faculty. The lone professor with the Vallombrosa obsession. She's been studying the boundary, the fog, the fey-touched quirks of Venturia for fifteen years. Nobody persecuted her — nobody cared enough. She got polite nods and no funding. She was the department eccentric, the one with the weird fixation. Not bitter about suppression — bitter about irrelevance.

Now the Leaked are happening and TL walks out of the fog. She's suddenly the only person at VAVA who's been studying this for years. She should be the expert in the room.

Her genuine want: To be taken seriously. To have her work validated. To get TL's knowledge documented and studied properly. She's right about the importance of Vallombrosa research.

Her two-front war: VAVA's establishment doesn't want to elevate her because it means admitting the institution was wrong to dismiss her, and worse, it means the comfortable status quo (don't study Vallombrosa, keep the donors happy) is over. So she's fighting the institution while also fighting anyone who questions TL — because TL's credibility IS her credibility. If TL falls, she goes back to being the department crank.

Collision with the party: The party's attempts to question TL look to her like more people trying to silence the one person who's been right all along. She'll use academic politics, public advocacy, and her growing platform to shield him. She's not defending a man — she's defending her own vindication.

Week by week:

• Week 1: Announces TL's presence publicly at VAVA. Begins organizing interviews and lectures. Most of VAVA tries to keep her contained. Some people start listening.
• Week 2: Pushes Dorian to unseal the Veil Archive using TL's testimony as justification. Dorian hesitates. She takes it public. VAVA politics escalate.
• Week 3: If the party has been questioning TL, she frames them as aligned with the institutional suppression. Their credibility takes a hit at VAVA and potentially beyond.
• Week 4: She's arranged for TL to speak at a Masquerade-adjacent academic event. The whole city is invited. TL is now a public figure, not a hospital patient.

Resolution options: The party can win her over with evidence she can independently verify — but she won't take anyone's word after fifteen years of being dismissed. If they prove TL is Silas, she becomes their fiercest ally because now she's furious at being used. They can discredit her (cruel, effective, makes an enemy). They can work around her (means operating outside VAVA's institutional ecosystem). Or they can help her get what she actually wants (the Veil Archive opened, her research validated) through a path that doesn't require TL to be real, which earns her respect and removes her investment in his identity.

Pressure 2: The Competitor — Constanza Marea

Who she is: Harbor-Lord, Council member, connected to the Undertow. Political operator.

Her genuine want: Power, influence, and the Harbor-Lord faction to dominate the Council before the Masquerade. She genuinely believes merchant pragmatism serves the city better than the Temple's hand-wringing or the Watch's authoritarianism. She's not evil — she's self-interested and effective.

What TL is to her: Political capital she can broker. She doesn't care if he's real. She cares about what his position is worth. A returned scholar with ancient knowledge, institutional backing, and public fascination — that's a tool. She's courting TL with resources, protection, and social access.

Collision with the party: If they expose TL, they destroy her political play. She'll fight them to protect her investment. She has Undertow resources — she can mess with the memory economy the party depends on for investigation. Kryton's Undertow access gets harder because Constanza is leaning on the same people.

Week by week:

• Week 1: Quiet overtures to TL. Dinner invitations. Offers of warehouse space, research materials, Harbor District access.
• Week 2: Brokers a deal — TL advises the Harbor-Lords on supernatural maritime phenomena in exchange for political protection. TL now has Council-adjacent cover.
• Week 3: Uses Undertow contacts to investigate the party — who they are, what they want, what leverage exists. She's treating them as the political threat, not TL.
• Week 4: Positions herself to control TL's Masquerade appearance. If he speaks publicly under her patronage, she owns the narrative.

Resolution options: Flip her. She's transactional — if TL becomes a liability rather than an asset, she'll drop him. Show her proof that backing TL will blow up in her face and she'll cut her losses. Alternatively, expose her Undertow connection and burn her politically (makes an enemy of a Council member with a long memory). Or make a deal — she respects deal-making. If the party offers something she wants more than TL provides, she'll trade.

Pressure 3: The Desperate Party — The Warden Who Breaks

Who they are: A Watch captain — not Thora, someone under her who doesn't know about the Shadowed Wardens' covert operations. They're responding to the Leaked with the tools they have: authority, force, procedure.

Their genuine want: Protect their people and their city from something they don't understand. They've had officers hurt. They've seen things that violate their understanding of reality. They want to lock down the fog line, restrict civilian access to the Harbor District, and detain anyone connected to the supernatural activity for questioning.

Collision with the party: The party needs freedom to operate — investigate, move through the city, access the fog line, talk to witnesses. This captain is systematically restricting all of it. The party can't just dismiss them because the captain's concerns are legitimate. Dead colleagues are real. Injured civilians are real. The party's association with the supernatural crisis makes them suspicious.

Week by week:

• Week 1: Responds to the first Leaked incident with standard Watch procedure. Files reports. Posts guards. Competent, professional.
• Week 2: After a second incident hurts someone, escalates. Establishes a perimeter around the fog line. Begins questioning people who were near the incidents — including PCs.
• Week 3: Full crackdown. Restricts Harbor District access. Detains a witness the party needed to talk to. Requests authority to hold TL for questioning (which puts them in direct conflict with Emiliana and Constanza, who are both protecting TL for different reasons). The party is now navigating three pressures that are fighting each other as much as they're fighting the party.
• Week 4: The captain is losing control. The Leaked are getting worse despite every measure they've taken. Their officers are scared. The Masquerade preparations are bringing crowds they can't manage. They're one bad night away from doing something drastic — martial presence at the Masquerade, mass detentions, shutting down the festival entirely. Any of those actions would be catastrophic for different reasons.

Resolution options: The party can earn the captain's trust by helping with a Leaked encounter — proving they're assets, not threats. This requires vulnerability (sharing what they know) and risk (the captain might use it against them). They can go to Thora and have the Shadowed Wardens pull the captain into the covert operation (solves the problem but expands the circle of people who know about the supernatural crisis). They can work around the crackdown (stealth, social maneuvering, but the restriction is real and gets worse each week). Or they can discredit the captain, which is effective but means removing one of the few people actually trying to protect civilians from the Leaked.

Pressure 4: The Ambient Threat — The Leaked (Combat Encounters)

Escalation across four weeks, mapped to party-relevant locations:

Week 1 — Unsettling:

• Shadow without a body in the Tiered Gardens. Plants near it grow wrong — leaves face away from the sun, roots surface. Valentro notices. The shadow dissipates; the plants stay wrong.
• A reflection in the harbor water smiles when the person doesn't. Reported to the Watch.
• These aren't combat. They're atmosphere. They establish that something is leaking before anyone has to fight it.

Week 2 — Dangerous:

• Combat encounter: A Maskless appears at the docks (Lotan's territory). It's mimicking a dockworker who's standing twenty feet away watching himself be copied. When confronted, it fights — using the dockworker's movements, his voice, his mannerisms. Mid-combat it switches to mimicking the nearest PC. It copies a fighting style, a spell, a face. Mechanics: it has the stolen identity's physical capabilities and can switch targets. Killing it is straightforward; the horror is what it does before you kill it. The dockworker is traumatized.
• The Watch responds. Thora's Shadowed Wardens contain it quietly. The regular Watch captain (Pressure 3) now knows something is happening that command isn't sharing. Trust fractures in the Watch.

Week 3 — Personal:

• Combat encounter: A Maskless at the Masquers' Sodality during Masquerade rehearsals. It copies Celina Cross mid-performance — same voice, same gestures, same lines. The company panics. The Maskless is wearing a mask that looks exactly like the one from Car's dead friend's commission — or close enough to break her.
• Combat encounter: A Leaked incident at or near the Respite. Something comes through near Silas's room. This one has environmental hazards — the floor isn't where it should be, a wall becomes a threshold into somewhere wrong for a few seconds. The architecture of the Pale Carnival bleeds through and the party has to fight in a space that's two places at once. The encounter answers whether proximity to Silas makes the Leaked worse (it does, because the prison tether runs through him — more fey energy leaks near the anchor point).

Week 4 — Catastrophic:

• Combat encounter: Multiple Maskless emerge during Masquerade preparations. The boundary is at its thinnest. The architectural overlap is visible — a street turns wrong, canals run backward, mirrors across a neighborhood show a room that doesn't exist. This isn't one fight; it's a running battle across a district while civilians are setting up for the festival. The party has to protect people, fight entities, and deal with terrain that keeps changing.
• The city has normalized the abnormal. Preparations continue around the chaos. Only the party sees the acceleration.

Mechanical identity for Maskless combat:

• Identity theft mid-fight: copies a PC's combat style, spells, or abilities on its turn. The copy isn't perfect — slightly wrong, slightly delayed — but it's close enough to be disorienting.
• If a Maskless escapes wearing a PC's face, it's loose in the city as that person. Consequences are real and lasting.
• Environmental hazards during architectural overlap: unstable terrain, threshold crossings (step through a door and you're somewhere else for one round), mirror surfaces that reflect attacks or duplicate combatants.
• The Leaked can't be stopped by killing individual Maskless. They're symptoms. Every fight the party wins, the underlying problem continues. The dread is structural.

Pressure 5: The Hidden Hand — Silas as TL

Already detailed above in the Silas section. His week-by-week within the pressure skeleton:

Week 1 — Research phase. Pure charm. Grateful, cooperative. Asks the right questions to understand the prison's current state, the fanes, the binding. Every institution that opens a door for him hands him a puzzle piece. (Problem One: understanding the binding.)

Week 2 — Anchor identification. Questions become more pointed — specific locations during Masquerade, the canal system's activation, what happens to mirrors on that night. Still within "scholarly curiosity." Emiliana is delighted by the specificity. He begins spending time at the Mirrorwright's Court. (Problem Two: finding the new power source. Problem Three: the Mirror Fane.)

Week 3 — Active interference. Does something wrong that can't be traced to him. A witness who talked to the party has a memory gap. A document goes missing from VAVA's library. A Warden investigating the fog line is reassigned without explanation. None of it points to TL. All of it benefits him. The party feels the interference but can't source it. He's identified the Mirror Fane's location within the Mirrorwright's Court.

Week 4 — Positioned. He knows what he needs, where it is, and when to act. The Masquerade is his window. He's a public figure with institutional backing and political protection. The party can see the shape of what's coming but can't prove it, can't stop it through legitimate channels, and can't attack a beloved public figure without destroying their own credibility.

The Master Subversion

Every victory the party achieves in Phase One clears the path for Marcello. Stopping Silas or failing to stop him both open the door for something worse.

If the party disrupts Silas's severing: he remains tethered, weakened, and a freshly powerful Marcello eliminates a rival still attached to the prison he intends to claim.

If the party fails and Silas frees himself: he becomes an untethered threat, which draws Marcello in to crush the newly powerful competitor and look like a hero doing it.

Either way, the party's instinct to fight what's wrong in front of them is correct in the moment and catastrophic in the long term. The thing they're about to "win" is the thing that dooms them.

Open Decisions

These still need your call before building further:

• Noname's memory state — what she thinks happened vs. what actually happened
• Caravel's dead friend — canonical name needed
• The Mirror Fane timing — does Silas access it before the Masquerade (visible fallout) or during the Masquerade (party can intervene on the night)?
• The anchor — what does Silas bind himself to for Problem Two? Person, object, siphon, or something else?
• The fog children — are they a thread you want in the campaign, or should they be cut?
• What comes out of Jen's one-shot — how does the Mirrorwright Guild noblewoman death connect (if at all) to the main threads?