Happy and Huuk, disguised as orc slaves and shackled without the majority of their equipment, are being escorted to "The Keep" by Commander Sundra and two Songblade guards. The medium sized tower in the west of Fort Valyssa is frequented by a small amount of guards. While Sundra excuses himself for a moment, the escorts already start properly shackling the two "slaves", leading them through some sort of magic aura detector and giving Happy magical restraints as a result. However, they do not find Happy's religious amulet or the spell scroll hidden in Huuk's fake arm. When the commander returns, he begins negociations with Smellyfeet Joe while the half orcs are further escorted to the North Camp.
Meanwhile, Gawrth and Florian who just knocked out a shopkeeper in his shop and killed a Songblade, decide on their further approach on how to disable the teleportation circle in Fort Valyssa. Flo pulls a mystery potion out of his bag of tricks and both drink it, first without any immediate effect. When Flo then starts to blink into the ethereal plane, a semi translucent and mostly phase-shifted version of the material plane, he decides to take the opportunity to run into the warehouse that he scouted with his owl previously, pretty sure it contains the teleportation circle.
But closely before Flo can run through the tower wall, he blinks back into reality, faceplanting into the stone wall. Right at the same time, Gawrth blinks away, still in the shop, unsure of where Flo went. He makes his way towards the teleportation circle as well while Flo tries to vanish from the view of any patrols. Gawrth enters the big donut-shaped warehouse where various expensive looking crates levitate in the air. While he is looking for the teleportation circle, he blinks back and forth from reality, scaring a bunch of gnomes that call for guards as a result. Gawrth is not able to hide successfully, but luckily blinks out just before being restrained. He takes the opportunity to locate the circle and right as the effect of the potion wears off, he blows a stream of acid from his mouth which apparently destroys the teleportation circles enchantment.
While Gawrth bursts his way out of the warehouse, surrounded and being attacked by songblades, Flo argues and annoys a flying songblade patrol that orders him to go back to his ship. Before Gawrth reaches the exit of the structure, he blows the horn of Arnold, which spawns a big storm cloud and a spectral weapon falling out of the sky. Gawrth squeezes quickly through the closing doors and bolts back towards the The Floating Seamen, as the alarm sounds and songblade guards swarm towards them. Flo sends his owl to the waiting pirate fleet to "bombard the light house".
In the south, Team Estate receives Florians letter of sending that they're having "some problems", but decides to still go for the noble elf capturing plan in the Theyarus Estate. Leaving Baraka and Cabuga behind, Drem and Jeff sneak into the courtyard without being noticed, able to infiltrate the big hall on the ground floor of the platinum tower. They find a pulsing sending stone that they activate, to hear a message from Commander Sundra, talking about "an interesting crocodile creature that just arrived with some mercenaries and that might interest Prince Theoden". Naturally, they steal the stone.
Hiding under a table, they open their Eversmoking Bottle in the room and after an awkward while sitting lonely in the smoke, guards start notice that something is wrong. While they enter the hall, they do not find the sneaky intruders that follow one of the guards that runs off to "protect the young prince". Both end up in the stables not too far from the platinum spire, where the followed guard, a stablehand and a young elven boy and his caretaker notice them coming in. Drem quickly casts a bubble of Silence while Jeff storms towards the child to grapple it. A combat situation breaks out, which in the end leads to Jeff hurting the caretaker by swinging the elven boy at her, resulting in the unconsciousness of the child. When Jeff then opens the stable's door to the outside to escape, the noble Lord Theyarus stands right outside, sitting on an exotic creature...