[09e04] Time Travel Shenanigans

Mary is unmasked as Seirye Qin. She claims to be from a future where a “calamity” has occurred—a calamity she is now trying to prevent by stopping the eight artifacts from being brought together and potentially destroyed. She says that Vondal sent her back in time, and that she cannot say much more for fear of polluting the timeline.
The next morning, MAD shows up and kicks out the SPI—they have a writ from the Aecus Concord Council of Nations designating the SPI as the site of a threat to security. They refer to “the Incident” a lot.
The five people from the MAD posse:
- Sennik Cromwell, grizzled but fatherly Luminous Defender, a paladin of vengeance.
- Donovan Morvain, half-dragon dragonborn bard, last seen in Case 01 as a member of the Luminous Defenders. The SPI knows him to secretly be a cambion: i.e., his father is a fiend.
- Leopold Gardenblossom, from Case 03, a gnomish professor of magical theory. He’s the one who made Gurin Aldrimor’s life clock.
- Ceowyn Mandragoran, the Grandmaster of Earth, a wood elf. He was present during “the Incident,” and left with Mallory to get help.
- Sil Aldrimor, also from Case 03, former general of the dwarven armies, now dour-faced and stoic. She is silent for the entire encounter.
Notably, Mallory is not among them.
Vondal blurts out that Morvain is “the guy whose dad is a secret,” then challenges Morvain’s authority to take control of the SPI headquarters.
Ozborn and Cal secretly raid the evidence locker, taking the Lamp of Seeming and Amulet of Vecna’s Lore, giving them to Zanqaa the Devoted (earth genie) to conceal them in Vondal’s ring of spell storing.
Freki annoys the MAD agents—e.g., he gives his branch from the Shadow Forest tree to Morvain, claiming it was “involved in the Incident.”
Cassandra decides to free Panthea and Meroe from the holding cell and bring them along. She confides in Freki that their best course of action is to extricate themselves from the situation, to avoid ending up powerless in the holding cell themselves.
Ghensh escorts Leopold Gardenblossom to the breach. He removes his carpet, thinking that Gardenblossom knows what he’s doing as he begins to pull out a large number of scrolls and other arcane paraphernalia. Ceowyn Mandragoran hustles to the breach so that he can reseal the breach with his elemental magic.
Cassandra and the SPI agents teleport away.