The party’s second standing assignment from Uncle: find out why the Order of the Phoenix came to Hazad. (S2)
The Question
A Knight-Confessor, two knights, a bound elf, and the Owl interrogation records — smuggled into a kingdom that expelled their order 40 years ago. Why?
What We Know
- Gandolfini, Bren, and Arnolf came in via a smuggler drop-off for illegal immigrants, with Ari and The Recovered Documents in chests. (S1)
- A surviving sailor: Gandolfini mind-controlled the crew until the captain broke free and staged the ambush. So even their smugglers weren’t willing partners. (S1)
- Gandolfini died. Bren and Arnolf were released by the party, then later captured by Uncle’s Men and brought in for “extended questioning.” (GM) They are the investigation’s best living sources.
- One assassination-rumor variant blames “a secret cabal of Imperialists” for the attempt on Baahir (S3) — note the Loyalists (secret western-rite nobles) are considered the largest political threat to the Sultan.
Theories
Theory: The sanctum trail led here
The sanctums are the Owl’s discoveries and the documents are the case file. Sanctum #1 (near Halwa) is the closest to Hazad. Perhaps the Phoenix’s investigation pointed east and they came to follow it — off the books, since officially they can’t set foot here.
Theory: Delivery to the Loyalists
Smuggled knights need local shelter. The Loyalists are the natural network. If so, the cargo (Ari, the documents) was for someone in Hazad.
Theory: Flight, not mission — strengthened (GM)
The Western Church is purging itself (The Troubles); the Owl was dissolved. Maybe Gandolfini was running — from the purge, or with evidence of it — and Hazad was simply beyond the Most Holy’s reach. Mind-controlling the crew fits desperation.
What the GM timeline adds: the papers he carried are almost certainly the Spring 1736 purge interrogations — the record of the Phoenix questioning and then executing an entire order. Gandolfini was a Phoenix knight-confessor and dean of the University of Krenau, which burned in 1731 with Owl sanctum researchers inside it. Carrying that file into the one country the Most Holy cannot reach, by smuggler, under mind control, is not the behaviour of a man on assignment. And the Most Holy is Baldessare Malipiero — see On the Summoning of Guardian Spirits.
Theory: Someone in the Order wanted the file preserved
Variant of the above, and it fits Ari better. If a faction inside the Phoenix thought the Owl was destroyed unjustly, the way to save the evidence is to send it somewhere the Church has no jurisdiction, with a scholar who can read it and a bound elf who cannot refuse. That would make Bren and Arnolf escorts on an unsanctioned errand — and worth asking them about directly.
Next Steps
- Find out what happened to Bren and Arnolf → captured by Uncle’s Men, under “extended questioning” (GM)
- Learn what Bren and Arnolf’s questioning reveals
- Probe (carefully) for Loyalist involvement
- Ask Ari more about the mission she was cargo for