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50: The Wall Comes Down

April 17, 2026

Setting​

Greyport. An orphanage lab deep in the building, then its lobby and loading bay, then a racetrack somewhere in the city, then back to the brownstone. The session begins mid-combat and ends in a champagne lap.

Players Present​

  • Topher (DM)
  • Taylor Ramsey as Silas Fairbanks — Halfling Rogue/Sorcerer, currently braced against the ceiling
  • Justin Hale as Bru — Goblin Artificer, thunder cannon deployed
  • Ali Leonard as Elspeth Cooper — Dwarf Artificer/Gunslinger, about to have a very busy morning
  • Luke Neverisky as Leliana Goldspring — Human Bard, reliable in every crisis except the ones that require staying quiet

Olivia is offscreen for the lab sequence, pulling Iron Claws documents from the headmaster's office. Silas mentally sends her the idea to look.

Plot Events​

Silas on the Ceiling​

The session resumes exactly where the last one left. Silas is flat against the ceiling, daggers in hand, positioned directly above the Doctor — the architect of this entire operation, an Elizabeth Smith figure who runs the lab, the vats, and the simulacra conditioning program.

Below him: four simulacra still connected to racing simulators, four more children suspended in growth vats, and the Doctor in the open middle of the room.

Bru's familiar Crimson has slipped outside to scout. The psychic report arrives fast:

"Hey guys, we only have probably a couple of minutes before the police show up, so we've got to make whatever we're doing snappy."

One Cadillac approaching. Three or four police cars behind it.

Silas throws his first dagger. A magical blur intercepts it — the Doctor carries a deflection field. The blow lands but skips wide. He adjusts.

Leliana attempts to polymorph the Doctor into something manageable. The Doctor rolls a 19 on her Wisdom save. DC 17. She holds her form.

What Leliana's second spell accomplishes instead: hallucinatory terrain cast across the lab floor, making the room appear as a racetrack to the simulacra in the simulators. Two of the four break into disoriented confusion. Two remain unaffected.

The Doctor launches a fireball. DC 17 Dexterity, 32 damage on a failed save. The door is on fire. The party is scorched. The room now has two problems.

Elspeth, carrying Bru on her shoulders with the thunder cannon braced forward, draws her gun on the Doctor. She addresses the room — the simulacra, the children she can see — in the direct tone of someone who has been yelled at by enough officials to know how to cut through noise:

"Teens, we're here to rescue you. I don't know any of your names except Meera, but we're here to help."

Persuasion: 22. Two simulacra, still connected to their rigs, look up.

Silas drops his second dagger straight down from the ceiling.

"Dark Side of the Moon."

Twenty-seven to hit. Nine psychic damage, twenty-nine sneak attack. Thirty-eight total. The Doctor crumples.

Another Brick in the Wall​

The moment the Doctor goes down, something shifts in the simulacra. The ones still connected to their simulators begin unhooking themselves, methodically, like people waking up from a long dream.

They sing while they do it.

"We don't need no thought control."

One simulacrum — the most mobile, the one who had been approaching Elspeth from the moment the party entered — reaches her and presses close, still moving through Pink Floyd:

"Hello, hello. Is anyone there? Is anyone there? Just nod if you can hear me... Is there anyone home?"

Then, arms around Elspeth's shoulders:

"When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye, and I looked, but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown. The dream is gone."

Elspeth, holding a gun and a goblin, does not pull away.

When she uses the Message cantrip to reach one of the simulacra trying to flee:

"No. We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control."

Two simulacra make for the door. Elspeth grapples both of them at the frame — Athletics 18 with disadvantage — and holds. Silas fires the wand of webs he received as a birthday gift. One simulacrum is caught in the entryway. One breaks free. Another two have curled into fetal position on the floor. The room is a controlled disaster.

The Vats​

Silas drops to the lab floor and crosses to the growth vats. Perception: 21.

What he finds is worse than anyone expected.

Children — real children, varying ages, varying stages — suspended in a fungus-like substance that is congealing over them slowly from the legs upward. One is half-covered already, the substance creeping toward the face. They are being transformed, gradually, into Elizabeth Smith copies.

The simulacra racing in the simulators. The children dissolving in the vats. The Doctor. The race car tracks on the monitors. The full picture assembles.

Silas does not say anything out loud. He begins moving.

Command​

Bru recalls Crimson and switches to defensive posture. The police window has narrowed to minutes.

Leliana upcasts Command — "Relax" — targeting three of the simulacra. Two fail their Wisdom saves. One shakes it off and runs.

The fleeing simulacrum makes it into the hallway. Leliana follows. She finds it pressed against a wall, frightened and confused, the Pink Floyd programming still cycling somewhere behind its eyes.

"Don't you want to be amongst your friends? It's awful lonely and scary out there in the hallway by yourself."

The simulacrum looks at her. Something settles.

"What's going on? Can you help me?" "I feel like I'm a different person." "I feel itchy."

Bru, watching from the doorway, conjures a minor illusion of the headmistress rounding the hallway corner, buying Leliana exactly the pause she needs to bring the simulacrum back.

"Hey teacher, leave those keys alone."

Jasper Arrives​

The party gets the simulacra — all of them, eventually — to the lobby. Elspeth locks the lab door behind them. The label on the door reads Routine. She notes this without comment.

The front door does not open normally. It opens by being ripped off its hinges.

Jasper fills the frame, face red, already mid-sentence.

"I know what you're doing in there and we're going to save these goddamn kids."

Behind him: a detective in a fedora, medical staff, several officers.

Leliana moves through the arriving medics, helping triage. One child — pale, clearly sick — grabs her hand:

"I hope I do well enough to be in the race." "Dinland's the best racer there ever was."

The child has never been outside. Never had anything but gruel. Has spent their life in this building learning to worship a man who is using them as raw material.

Elspeth speaks with the lead detective directly. She discloses what they found in the lab, advocates for the children, and conceals Silas and Bru's presence with a Deception check of 21 using Flash of Genius.

The detective asks her to stay in town. She agrees.

On the subject of Thomas — one of the orphans, who has never in his life left the building:

"He's never had a hot dog. And I will say that."

The Loading Bay​

While Elspeth handles the detective, Silas and Bru slip around the back.

The loading bay holds shipping containers. Multiple. Silas picks the lock — roll of 29 — and opens the first crate.

Inside: raw violescence chunks, packed in straw. Bru runs an Arcana check: 20. The material is reactive. Handling it loosely is inadvisable.

They work fast. The portable hole swallows three large crates cleanly. The fourth presents a problem — the hole is full.

The solution is the party's proudest engineering moment of the campaign.

Bru casts Enlarge/Reduce on himself — Tiny size. Silas picks him up and holds him upside down. Bru, inverted, casts Rope Trick. The extradimensional portal opens downward, directly over the fourth crate.

The crate goes up and in.

"This is our finest problem solving of the whole campaign."

The stolen violescence is transferred to the pocket village, which the party deploys in a nearby alley for the handoff. Four crates secured. Denland's supply chain has a hole in it.

A Visit to Zachary​

The party reconvenes at the brownstone. It is late morning. They are exhausted.

Before heading to the racetrack, Elspeth makes a detour. Her brother Zachary has a garage in town.

What Elspeth knows now, confirmed: Zachary tampered with her violescence crystal, swapping it for an unregistered one. That is what got her disqualified. He is the most personal piece of everything that has gone wrong in her racing career — more personal than Denland, who is merely a villain. Zachary is family.

She walks into his garage, insults him in the flat, weary tone of someone who has spent years cataloguing a person's failures, and punches him in the face.

He is wearing a helmet. Her hand takes the damage.

She leaves without a further word.

On Silas's assessment of both Zachary and Denland:

"They both go to elaborate evil schemes to achieve mediocre results."

The Denland Gambit​

Denland, meanwhile, has been arrested at the racetrack. The detective in the fedora delivers the news in person:

"Sir, I have been made aware that you are using child labor to process violescence... you're going to need to come in for questioning."

Denland's response:

"Oh, you can't do that, I got a race today!"

The detective's Miranda addendum:

"If you annoy me too much, I'm going to kick your ass."

Denland is handcuffed and placed in a cop car.

This means Denland's car is at the starting grid with no driver.

Elspeth scopes out Belspeth Booper's garage first. She sends Belspeth a message through whatever channel she has — about the rescue, about the replacement clones, about what was happening in the orphanage where Belspeth grew up. Then she crosses the paddock to Denland's team.

She disguises herself as Denland. Deception: 20. The team receives her without hesitation. They speak to her in the careful, jargon-padded language of people who have learned to manage a fragile ego. She matches it perfectly.

She straps in. The starting grid holds eight cars. She is fifth.

The flag drops.

The Race​

Round 1 — Driving check: 27. She picks up two positions. Denland's car moves from fifth to third.

Round 2 — 29. She overtakes into second. Belspeth Booper, starting sixth, has climbed to fourth. The field is compressing.

Round 3 — 28 with Flash of Genius. She closes to the leader's rear bumper. Belspeth rises to third. The top three cars are within reach of each other.

Round 4 — 31. A complex overtake sequence that burns the lead driver through multiple defensive lines. She takes first. Belspeth also overtakes in the same window, moving to second. The two of them are neck and neck with one lap remaining.

Final check: Natural 20. Total 31 or better. Belspeth throws a 31.

Elspeth wins by two tenths of a second.

She takes the victory lap holding a bottle of champagne, helmet still on. The crew chief, who has been working at maximum intensity without once asking who this driver actually is, greets her at pit lane:

"I don't know who you are, but I don't care. That was amazing."

Elspeth pulls off the helmet.

"Thanks, bud. You really shouldn't be such a pushover, but you're a great crew chief."

She catches up to Belspeth on the cool-down lap:

"The police will want to speak with you."

Belspeth — second place, just outrun by the woman whose name she was given, whose identity she was built to shadow — takes this in.

The Ticking Clock​

Back at the brownstone, the party is finally still.

The information surfaces that had been sitting somewhere offscreen through the whole session: Luna's decline has a deadline. May. If the party doesn't act — doesn't bring her more violescence, doesn't hold a concert, doesn't do something — she may not survive the month.

They have the violescence now. Four crates of it, stored in the pocket village.

They do not yet know if that is enough.

Notable Character Moments​

  • Silas's killing blow is pure tactical poetry — braced against the ceiling for the entire fight, recording everything mentally, then driving the dagger straight down with "Dark Side of the Moon" as the only announcement. The Doctor never had a clear shot at him from below.

  • Leliana in the hallway is the session's quietest success. No spell slot needed in the end — just patience and the recognition that a frightened child responds to gentleness. "I feel itchy" is the most human thing a simulacrum says all session. Leliana hears it as a person.

  • Bru upside-down over the fourth crate is exactly what goblin artificers are for. Tiny size, inverted, extradimensional portal aimed down like a drain. Everyone else contributes violence or deception or persuasion. Bru contributes spatial reasoning that no one else would have reached.

  • Elspeth and the simulacrum holding her shoulders and quoting Comfortably Numb — this is the scene that makes the whole orphanage plot matter. The simulacra were conditioned, trained, programmed. But whatever was done to them, the part of them that reaches for human contact is still there, reaching with Pink Floyd lyrics because that's what they were given, and reaching anyway.

  • Elspeth's race is the session's final statement. She was stripped of her credentials, framed by her own brother, and replaced with a copy. She wins Denland's race in Denland's car in Denland's name, and then takes off the helmet so everyone knows it.

Themes​

  • What conditioning leaves behind: The simulacra were built to race and to comply. What actually remains after the Doctor dies is something still reaching toward other people — through Pink Floyd lyrics, through embraces, through asking for help. The orphanage was designed to produce replacements. It produced people who want to be seen.

  • The shape of revenge: Zachary gets a punch that hurts Elspeth more than him. Denland gets arrested before the race. The real satisfaction comes later, on the track, when Elspeth takes everything he built in her name and wins with it. The elaborate evil scheme achieves a mediocre result. The career it was meant to bury wins the race.

  • Clock and consequence: The violescence heist was urgent. The Luna deadline makes it urgent retroactively. The party now holds four crates of reactive crystal and a deadline they may not have known was there.

Session MVP​

Elspeth — For the full morning she put in before the race even started: locking the lab door, handling the detective, visiting her brother, scoping Belspeth's garage, infiltrating Denland's team, and then winning the race from fifth on the grid. The crew chief is right. She doesn't know who she is. But it was amazing.