Campaign Recap — Cards From Beneath

One heavily condensed summary per session, max 5 lines each.

Numbering follows the DM's count: the one-shot is session 1. Most entries are placeholders — details pending.

Session 1

Into Briar Hollow: a village at the edge of an old forest where outsiders are noticed, with a long-abandoned noble estate as the hook — lights in the upper windows, sealed doors standing open, livestock missing, voices where no one should be.
The party meets Mark and enters a house with a marking on the door.
Percival tests the card called the Maiden, asks to be shot for it, and the wound kills him.
Dying, he makes a deal with Valis the Feeding.

Percival is away from the table, in Lantern's Row on his own business, running the trade corridor from the city end. He left the party a note saying so.
An accomplice hands him an envelope; the letter inside says, in substance, meet us at the abandoned chapel.
He does not act on it this session. What the rest of the party did is not recorded.

The start, with the full party, is not yet recalled — to be filled in. A book is found this session.
The session ends with an evening drink by the water: Liora, Nessa, Percival.
Liora swims out to catch a whale and fails.
Valis then tries to drown her; she almost drowns. Percival plays disinterested to take the fun out of it and make him stop.

From the Beachhouse, a card draws the party — Nessa, Liora, Percival — into the forest.
They find a man who cannot remember what he was doing there and escort him home to another village; he is its Sheriff.
In the village they meet Astor the Controlling, and 3 marks are given.
A whole scene follows that the players themselves do not remember: Astor took it.
In a tavern, he tells them about the deities and about a greater evil, a sickness they already knew of.

Mostly in the woods. The party finds a ritual site with three magical threads running out of it in different directions; nobody knows where any of them lead.
They do something to the ritual, and a large tree warden crawls up out of the ground.
It slams Percival against a tree — he had said out loud that he set a small fire in the forest before. How the encounter ended is not recorded.

Percival is away from the table again, and leaves the party a second note.
He goes to the abandoned chapel in the Low Lanterns and is met by a lady speaking for the Congregation of the Hollow Star.
She offers to help him be freed and will not say from what — his deity, this life, and the responsibility for his city all stand in the space where the answer would be.
She hands him a vial that collects card dust. Nothing about it is explained.

A night's rest at the Beachhouse. Percival opens a door with the Veil, the card he carries; everything in the room behind it lies, and the window onto the beach carries no sound. He tries to jump through it, hits it, and takes 3 damage.
They wake Gia, and Percival destroys her sandcastle for not being focused enough on solving anything. The party sets out to find a lighthouse.
On the way they are caught in a loop that only lets them out for secrets, spoken into a stone. Percival whispers that he actually likes Gia in a friendly sense. Liora spoils hers before Gia's turn and Percival helps keep it secret, seemingly already knowing it.
His unseen servant, left behind to watch the others, catches one thing: Onyx's hand covered in blue light that spreads over his body, and Onyx saying he shouldn't be able to do this.
At the lighthouse Astor the Controlling hands over a note in an unidentified script, which Percival reads with Comprehend Languages: the light was built so the Beneath would not be forgotten, and only those who surrender the gift may enter the place where the First Ones fell.

At the lighthouse Gia turns into sand. Percival pockets her, and she later comes out of sand form.
Myra builds a lot of sandcastles and does not want to leave.
The party goes to a cave for the Bone card, does not go in, and fights two wolves outside it.

Into the cave. The party splits up, and learns how a Providence card is made: a Vessel gives the power a shape, a Spirit is the price paid to awaken it, an Echo is what the creator willingly leaves behind. A broken card's bond can be reforged if the Vessel remains and the Echo can be found.
Each card has a vessel object: Bone → Bone, Crown → the Crown, Sword → the Knight, Book → the Thread, Monocle → the Veil, Pocket Watch → the Well, Amulet → the Maiden (unsure), Chain → the Nightmare.
Percival casts the Feeding Mark on Liora.
Percival throws Valis toward the chains (the Nightmare's vessel). Angry, Valis takes revenge by casting the Feeding Mark through Percival onto Liora; Percival does not want it and is given no choice.
Percival reads it onto Liora: she is the Vessel, the price is her becoming a card, her glowing body is the Knight. Valis is bonded to the Nightmare.

Percival reverses the Feeding Mark, draining power out of Valis into Liora, and saves her.
He then tries to restore the Knight, giving up an Echo of his own.
The Echo is his knowledge of his own history — what he did for the Low Lanterns. In its place he now remembers a childhood with Valis.