A Shadow of the Future

After hours of reckless carousing and gambling, Nadu is thrown in jail on charges of disorderly conduct. Taigus finds and visits Exal's safehouse in the Mutant District, and decides against turning him in. He learns that Exal's crew discovered suspicious runes in the city's sewers, which were drawn by a Councilman named Fenslin Rook.

Exal wants to expose Rook as the scheming dark mage that he is, ever since the retired mercenary was betrayed and almost killed by him several years ago. However, the Council doesn't believe Rook to be involved with dark magic. Taigus offers his help in taking down the potentially corrupt Councilman, then buys a six-shooter to replace his old gun.

Meanwhile, Roach, Hachiman, Lau, and Kojo are arrested at Demek's house and taken to the same cell as Nadu. Huddled in the corner and fast asleep, he is not noticed by the party as their strange dwarven cleric. Hachiman pries apart the bars, allowing Kojo slip through them and investigate the adjacent cells. The gnome spots a cloaked figure in the leftmost cell, but soon forgets what he was even doing, leading the party to assume that this prisoner is one of the people they had faced earlier in Demek's house.

A plan is concocted. Roach puts his memory onto paper and draws one of the cloaked figures. He then asks a guard to bring the drawing to his superior, so wanted posters can be produced and placed around the city. As this is happening, Taigus returns to Nimrya and convinces the Lieutenant that Exal is dead. Trusting Taigus implicity, she believes this lie and says that the Council will want to speak with him about the man's death in due time. After paying the contract, Nimrya seductively traces her finger across Taigus's shoulder and leads him to her quarters.

In the morning, Roach, Hachiman, Lau, Nadu, and Kojo are personally released from jail by Lieutenant Nimrya and her cohort. She informs Roach that the city's scribes and artists tirelessly worked overnight to make dozens of wanted posters featuring his image of the masked figures. The party then meets with the cloaked prisoner next to their cell and discovers that she is Tenaia Nailo, Lau's missing sister. She tells the party that the masked people are called Fatesworn and that they are psychic time travellers. She was once one of them, before she chose to walk away from the dark path they had begun to take. Roach instantly recognizes her boots as being the exact ones that left the bootprints outside Demek's house, and he asks her why she tried locking them in the cellar.

Explaining the nature of time travel to Roach and Hachiman, Tenaia says that she did not lock them within the cellar, but that the presence of her bootprints means a future version of herself travelled back in time and did. The exact reason for doing so is unclear, but Tenaia deduces that she might have go back in time to protect them from a Fatesworn assassin, called an Ephemeral, who will most likely be sent to kill them in the cellar as retribution. Taigus shares Exal's notes on the runes with Roach. Studying them, Roach concludes that they are part of an elaborate and dangerous ritual to open an infernal gate below the city, which would cause unspeakable destruction.

With so much weighing on their minds, the party spends some vital downtime by gambling in the Seventh Ruby. Lau and Hachiman play the dice game Dragonhunt several times, attracting quite a crowd and the attention of the casino's guards. After an hour of gambling, the party comes out ahead and Hachiman uses his winnings to buy samurai armor.