A D&D session recap, written from what was actually said

The party pushed into Emberreach proper, meeting in a rough tavern to plan their approach before splitting up to scout. Ilsa and Tobin spotted a woman named Maren eavesdropping on their table; Tobin tailed her when she left and watched her get waved into Orvane's main hall without trouble, confirming she reports there. Grukk explored the northern shanties and found altars to three old gods still being tended despite the squalor around them, and struck up a conversation with a dwarf named Dunstan Hollowell, who's watching over a nearby adamantium mine that shut down after some unexplained "gloom" event and is cagey about who really runs Emberreach. Pell worked a kebab vendor named Oskar for information and learned the basics of the town's power structure: Orvane nominally rules but is actually a shardmind, a pile of animate crystal shards that used to have a humanoid body; a mercenary band of orcs enforces order for him; and the real power behind the throne is a tiefling named Casimir, who keeps to himself and runs the drug trade. Ilsa checked the graveyard and fields, noting one unusually well-kept grave for an "Aldous Penhallow" and getting chased off by a prickly orc farmer tending potatoes and corn.

Back together, the party pieced together the shape of the Ashroot operation: raw product comes overland from Gallows Quay (sea routes up the river are too dangerous), gets refined somewhere in or near Emberreach, and ships out to feed the region's Hollow Fever. The open question was why Emberreach itself doesn't seem to suffer from the Fever despite being full of Ashroot users, since by their own theory heavy use should weaken souls and invite it in. They staked out Orvane's hall for a while and watched runners handing out small packages to locals in the street, piecemeal, like the refining and distribution was happening close to home, but couldn't get anyone to talk.

That night while camped outside town, Casimir himself showed up to size them up. He confirmed he refines Ashroot with "a little something extra," admitted it doesn't create the Hollow Fever but makes it far more prominent, and confirmed he's built some kind of system (with Orvane's help) that keeps Emberreach itself Fever-free. He was cocky and evasive about his endgame, more or less confirmed Orvane is a tool or captive rather than a true ally, and vanished after getting his fill of taunting the party, singling out Tobin in particular. Once he left, Tobin finally admitted why: Vessrah, the cambion devil bound to him since the siege, manifested and revealed himself properly to the whole group for the first time. He confirmed he's the son of Morrakai, an Archduke of Hell under Sathrys, that he only watches through Tobin's eyes, and that a fiendish and primal invasion is coming through the weakening planar veil, worsened both by the Order's magic and by the party's own totem work in Ravensgate. He advised making a deal with Casimir rather than fighting him, which Ilsa flatly refused on principle. The group ended the night no closer to a plan on Casimir, but with Orvane now looking like a likely prisoner or pawn worth freeing, and general agreement that this doesn't need to be solved tonight, just soon.