A Good Day to Bard Hard - S04E13 - The First Note - Grand Conductor’s Stone

After the Fight the band search the bodies and find:

  • 150 gold and 300 silver in various pouches
  • Each bard held a note
  • a Magical Ring

Note 1

To be read only by those who can hear between the beats.

The Blue Meenie Directive moves quietly, cloaked in distortion and absence. Their purpose: to dismantle the world’s living score, strand by strand, until no song remains.

Phase One: Dissonance Seeding — implanting fractured tones into public spaces, so that harmony collapses into unease.

Phase Two: Silence Bloom — a creeping hush that swallows every note before it can take flight.

Phase Three: The Great Unscore — erasing all memory of rhythm, leaving only the cold geometry of unbroken quiet.

From the College of Unsound & the College of Silence

Note 2

For those who walk the thin line between noise and nothing.

The Blue Meenies’ devotion is split between two deities:
  • Discordia, the Goddess of Dissonance — she who delights in tangled harmonies, fractured chords, and the sweet ache of unresolved tension. Her followers scatter chaos into every melody, ensuring no note rests where it belongs.
  • Harpocrates, the God of Silence — keeper of the still air, guardian of the unspoken. His disciples weave blankets of quiet over the world, smothering sound before it can take shape.
Together, these twin devotions fuel the Great Unscoring — a plan to unmake the world’s music. Discordia’s chaos will shatter the structure of song, and Harpocrates’ hush will swallow the fragments whole.

The Colleges are torn:

Some see this as a sacred cleansing, a return to the primal void before the first note was struck.

Others fear it is the death of joy, the extinguishing of the heartbeat that binds all living things.

If you hold this message, you are a Keeper of the Hidden Tune. Guard your hums. Hide your harmonies. Pass the song in secret.

The last chord must not fall silent.

— Signed in the resonance between chaos and quiet

Hear Ring

Ring, common
While wearing this ring, you are immune to the deafened condition. You can use an action to switch the item into enhanced mode until you switch it off as an action. While in enhanced mode, you have vulnerability to thunder damage and advantage on Wisdom(Perception) checks that rely on hearing
 

Back in the Bastion

Levetar provides the band with 2,000gp and a Quill of Transcription

Quill of Transcription

Wondrous item, uncommon
A black feather quill with a rainbow sheen
When copying strange glyphs or an unknown language with this quill and any ink the bearer may make a DC 12 Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check to see if their copy is accurate. If they make an accurate copy, a translation appears nearby on the same surface in common.

Research

The band then explore the Library and get assistance to find further information around the sites for spires or ingredients within:
I took a while for Hydrica to fully understand that the Quest for the Manuals was now complete as the band have the information and manual for both amplification and resonance network.

To gain the favour of the Librarian Bards in the Storied Bastion, Lemmog regaled them in the tale of treason and treturary of the scoundrel Hydrica stealing the championship from the gracious King Lemmog.

From this research they found that their map was missing a vast number of cities and towns

And further that this is just part of a wider unexplored map.

After skim reading the manuals, the band identify a few areas they could go to obtain the ingridients of where the spires may be.

Arcane Resonance Network

  1. Grand Conductor’s Stone in the Amphitheater of Echoes within the The Vine-Choked Canyon
  2. Stormspire in the coastal village of Gullhaven
  3. Sunspire in Tomb of Tarraketh? within the Golden Dunes Desert or possibly City of Citadel Spire
  4. Moonspire Deep in the Whispering Glade between Neem and Ankhor
  5. Deepspire at Kalisway Bay
  6. Shadowspire at City of Drakos

Electric Amplification

  1. Lightening Struck Dessert for Fulgur-Stone Crystals
  2. Blacksmith or Dwarven mines for Copper Filament Coils
  3. Skyfang Peaks for Stormglass Crystals
  4. Skybreaker Caverns for the Aetheric Capacitors
  5. Town of Briarford for the Runed Soundboards
  6. The Tempest Wastes for Power Sources
  7. Gumwood Forest for Sovereign Glue – Magical Glue Item
The band almost headed off to one of the spires first, then slow (extremely slow) realisation that they needed to go to the Vine Canyon first.

They then reorder the path to:
  1. Arcane Resonance Network: Grand Conductor’s Stone in the Amphitheater of Echoes within the The Vine-Choked Canyon
  2. Arcane Resonance Network: Shadowspire at City of Drakos
  3. Electric Amplification: Lightening Struck Dessert for Fulgur-Stone Crystals
  4. Arcane Resonance Network: Stormspire in the coastal village of Gullhaven
  5. Arcane Resonance Network: Deepspire at Kalisway Bay
  6. Electric Amplification: Town of Briarford for the Runed Soundboards
  7. Arcane Resonance Network: Moonspire Deep in the Whispering Glade between Neem and Ankhor
  8. Electric Amplification: Skybreaker Caverns for the Aetheric Capacitors
  9. Electric Amplification: Blacksmith or Dwarven mines for Copper Filament Coils
  10. Electric Amplification: Skyfang Peaks for Stormglass Crystals
  11. Arcane Resonance Network: Sunspire in Tomb of Tarraketh? within the Golden Dunes Desert or possibly City of Citadel Spire
  12. Electric Amplification: Gumwood Forest for Sovereign Glue – Magical Glue Item
  13. Electric Amplification: The Tempest Wastes for Power Sources

Grand Conductor’s Stone

Centuries ago, the Amphitheater of Echoes was the jewel of a canyon city, where bards and mages performed in harmony, weaving magic into music. At its heart lay the Grand Conductor’s Stone, a crystalline relic that amplified sound into spellcraft. When the city fell, the amphitheater was swallowed by creeping vines and forgotten.

Now, strange roars echo through the canyon. Magical beasts—drawn to the stone’s lingering power—have made the ruins their lair. The party is tasked with recovering the Resonance Stone before its magic destabilizes and unleashes a destructive sonic wave across the region.

Leaving the Grease Lightening Caravan behind, the band navigate Narrow ledges, crumbling stone bridges, rock falls and aggressive vine-creepers animated by residual magic.

Heironimyo stumbles and falls off the cliff edge, only to trigger his flight and fly back to the ledge.

Bo and Hydrica take flight to avoid any further missteps, only for Bo to fly too close to the edge and get hit by a falling rock.

Finally out into wider space, Lemmog rests for a moment and is . The band work together to free him, even if he is seeing stars and bright lights for a few moments after.


The Amphitheater

Overgrown seating tiers now serve as nesting grounds for Chorus Apes —predatory Apes whose roars can shatter stone.


The Resonance Stone floats above the cracked dais, encased in a shimmering dome of sound and light. The air hums with layered tones, like a chord that never resolves. Four vine-wrapped crystal pillars surround the dais, each glowing faintly with a different colour and emitting a distinct note when touched.

Ekham and Bo Dimension Door to the Floating Crystal Throne, only to find they are standing on an invisible sound barrier around it.

Hydrica Flys up up n away

Gribble gets a face full of ape

Big Fight, Hydrica and Gribble causing confusion in the apes, Bo and Ekham de powering them, Lemmog and Heironimyo beating the Apes to death.

Gribble created a Large Cauldron which he hoped to animate and attack the Apes with, but one ape just picked it up and hurled it at Hydrica, setting a new record at the Cauldron Discus Throwing Championship.
Whether it was a Dark Cauldron or not, Hydirca was defiantly in a dark mood about being hit with something that his own band created.

The band managed to clear the Apes by the Nests.

But still have the Resonance Stone floating in a sound barrier and four coloured vine-wrapped crystal pillars
  • Gold (Lemmog Heard a bright, sustained tone)
  • Blue
  • Red (Bo via her Imp? heard a warm, falling tone)
  • Green
Hmm what to do what to do..

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