Setup

• Who calls it: Falling Fire who holds the cathedral. Frame it as an armistice.
• Pre-meeting: Let the PCs talk to each faction first. This lets you gauge standing, and factions can team up against a party that ignored them.
• Run it light: Summarise leaders’ positions rather than performing every speech. Keep the PCs involved, and don’t linger on politics they can’t affect.
• Mood: Everyone expects violence, but nobody wants to start it.

Who attends

• Eldrick Runeweaver: Simulacrum, homunculus and River. They carry a potion of invisibility and a scroll of dimension door, and flee at the first sign of conflict.
• Queen of Thieves: A decoy under dominate person, disguised with seeming, and she directly controls the decoy. Her spies and assassins are positioned to strike a vulnerable leader or a PC. Blackjack Mel is absent.
• Drexel and Ansom: Petra leading large troop contingents wait nearby, ready to storm the cathedral if violence breaks out.
• Mathias: Has a large collection of Falling Fire followers (who are immune to Delerium corruption) in the Cathedral. Ready to un-consecrate the Brazier if needed.
• Marshal: Alone since troops are killed. Has a dead-man switch (see Secrets).

Key questions (each leader raises these)

1. What to do with Delerium: destroy, contain, or use? This is the main fork, and it sets which ending you can reach. The Heart is hatching something, and the party saw that hitting it speeds it up.
2. Who rules Westemar - Drakkenheim?
   1. Katarina is barred by the true will as Mageborn. But could use Sebastian’s ring to suppress her magic.
   2. Leonard is missing. But actually Nathaniel Flint and only Lucretia knows about this.
   3. Barnabus is judged unfit. But still in line of succession, so would need to remove him.
   4. Ansom and Preta. A secret only Queen of Thieves and Elias Drexel knows.
   5. The von Kalthenfels regency (Axel’s sister) is the fallback. But she hates nobility and Drakkenheim, and may not give up power to him.
3. Who has the royal documents to prove line of succession?
   1. Party has the unaltered Will, QoT has lineage record and blood vials to test.
   2. A claimant needs two or more factions behind them, and a new dynasty needs three.
4. What about the apocalypse prophecy in 12 years? Lucretia’s vision says the planet explodes in 12 years. The Clocktower won’t run past 1138, which is 12 years after the current year (1126), and its last stop is the Plane of Eternity.
5. Is destroying the Heart possible? In the vision, nobody ever destroyed a core, and nobody ever tried sanctification either. Damaging the Heart seems to help the creature inside hatch, which splits the party. Rythan and Axel want to destroy it, while Aarathayia and Tormund see it as dangerous.
   1. Alternatives to destroying it. The options are Rythan’s idea of turning the city or the Heart into a flying vessel as the elves did, Lucretia’s sanctification, the Academy’s containment dome, or the Silver Order’s purge with Argonath.
   2. The hatchling. It is larger than Gargantuan, resists magic, and is weak to sonic damage. It might be the thing Lucretia sees watching from the moon.
6. Whether to Sanctify? Do party back Lucretia’s untested soul-transfer, or find another cure for contamination?
7. Who carries the Seals? The coronation ritual needs all six Seals.
   • Lord Commander Spear -> Elias Drexel
   • Archmage Staff -> Elrich
   • High Flame Keeper Phylactery -> QoT (-> Lucretia?)
   • Spy Master Signet -> QoT
   • Steward Glasses -> Party
   • Chancellor Crest -> ??? (Sebastian + Brain in the Deep Vaults?)