Privateer Zola Parma disembarks the Nü Feral Free, beating it hastily past city guards and into the shining capital of Auraelia. Seeking to learn more about her magic as well as the strange Shard she holds, Zola finds refuge in a quaint tavern known as the Drunken Drake. She meets the halfling tavern owner and unlicensed mage, Barley Aegisia, and her mysterious neighbor, Smyte. Exploring the city, Zola encounters the High Priest, Moss Peacewillow of The Temple of The Wild; learns of diseased cloning rats in the city’s transit stations; and discovers that Smyte is a local vigilante known as Landscorcher, hell-bent on delivering justice to the cruel Empire oppressing them, and protecting the innocents of the outer districts from being kidnapped and disappeared.

Zola applies to the University of Auraelia under the alias Brie Camembert, dead-set on having some semblance of a teenage experience and also hoping to find some of the answers to her quest in the University’s Erudite Study. Along the way she stops at Marfin’s Magnificent Magical Menagerie, acquiring some freelance work from the arch-mage/store-owner himself. Zola hopes to fund her education, while Marfin hopes to learn more about the city’s strange doppelrat issue.

Things start looking up for our half-orc hero, until the changeling rogue named Trick (who’s been trailing her since Driftin) steals the Shard. Zola pursues Trick, relying on her sword’s strange powers to fuel her Orcish frenzy; but with Trick in hiding, Zola’s fury is misdirected, leading her to kill an innocent bystander: a worker named Able Turnpoint. Wracked with guilt and knowing that in the wrong hands the Shard can be used for evil, Zola knows she needs to find it.

With the help of Smyte, the two track Trick through the Auraelian Necropolis. There, they discover some of the lost history of the fallen kingdom of the Lioniel, as well as a bizarre, malfunctioning automaton, technology supposedly alien to the world of Feyfall. They destroy the Automaton and delve deeper into the Underdark, where they find Trick discussing transportation out of the city with Pleabo Underpaddle: the arch-nemesis of Zola and member of the Omni Malum. Zola reclaims the Shard, but once more, her Furious Bloodline takes another life: this time Trick’s. Pleabo is allowed to escape once more, back into the Underdark.

Zola returns to Marfin’s, dropping off the research components he requested, as well as Trick’s dead body. Moved by her teenage plight, Marfin agrees to try and resurrect Trick, who comes back as a haunted shell of themself. Ever busy, Zola takes and passes the entrance exam at the University and meets Arch-Mage Flae Chantris, advisor to the Empire and Dean of the University, a powerful academic who seems overly keen on keeping an eye on our hero.

Joining in Smyte’s fight against tyranny, Zola becomes a member of the Order of the Fallen God, a semi-religious group of misfits seeking to learn more about the fallen goddess of magic itself: Mystra. After hearing the Empire will be making a big announcement on Friday, the group pledges to attend the event together to learn what their enemies are planning next.

The following day, Zola meets Brigid, an elven druid from the Southern jungles and keeper of the All-Fire, a powerful fire spirit gifted by the gods to burn away all that prevents new, healthier growth. Brigid arrives to the Temple of the Wild to give her uncle, Moss Peacewillow, gems to pay off long-overdue taxes on the church, but when she arrives she learns that he has been kidnapped!

Seeing a potential link to the disappearances Smyte has been investigating, Zola, Smyte and Brigid team up. They fight off Omnimalum agents who have been tracking Zola, including Lord Achillon (owner of the mysterious voice Zola heard speaking to Brizalla, back under Paddlewick), and learn that the Omnimalum seeks the crown Zola holds, supposedly a powerful spell-casting focus that could further their influence. After disposing of Lord Achillon, the trio takes to the Underdark once more to follow up on the kidnappings, as well as new lead: something or someone named Paragon.

Along the way, the trio fight strange monsters of the dark, observe slime-covered walls, and even stranger, watch as seemingly random trinkets appear before them, all the while feeling as though someone were watching them. They track down Pleabo and a drow mage named Erica Boderika, tricking them into leading the three to a secret city beneath the capital, known as the Socket: home of the Omnimalum. Through a series of violent deceptions, Zola, Brigid and Smyte escape their foes and flee into the city itself, hiding in plain site. Knowing they’re short on time, Brigid uses her enchanted bag of beans to cause chaos throughout the city, raising a massive tree from the ground (plus a pyramid containing a mummy lord) in the middle of the settlement and throwing the Omnimalum’s forces into chaos.

Sneaking inside the walls, they discover admin buildings filled with information on the organization’s history and plans. They also discover a secret laboratory where a tinkerer named Suladead Diddlepiss conducts experiments on innocents, creating terrible weapons to further the Omnimalum’s agenda of conquest and control. This work, they find, has culminated in the creation of the Auric Army, automatons powered by the souls of those captured, using a twisted clone spell. They also learn that the War of the Mare Emara was a set-up. Prior to it, the Omnimalum had infiltrated many of the regions’ governments, except for the First Might nation of Formaggi. To eliminate the First Might and bring about the coup that would eventually put the Emperor in power, they stole a sacred object from the Formaggi and framed the Kingdom of Lioniel for it. This lead to both of their destruction, the establishment of the Aurelian Empire, and the fleeing of the First Might’s forces north of the Ouroboros mountains. These forces had been led by none other than Zola’s mother, Mozza Rella, who apparently was the daughter of their Chieftain— making Zola heir to the Orcish throne!

During a rest in a supply closet, Limburger once again speaks to our hero as she drifts off to sleep, revealing her title: Stregarede, or witch heiress. Limburger offers Zola his assistance in saving the imprisoned. She refuses to free him and he hints that he can’t be held long— that the Shard is becoming corrupted. Zola sleeps, knowing yet another fuse is nearing its end.

Storming the cloning lab, the three save Brigid’s uncle as well as many other innocents just before their souls can be removed and robotized. The group split up for their escape, with Moss and the other civilians heading for Brigid’s enormous conjured tree to begin casting a powerful teleportation spell called Transport Via Plants. Meanwhile the trio would themselves raid the central column known as the Pupil to save the rest of the captured people. As they part, Zola promises Moss she’ll ensure Brigid’s safe escape, no matter what.

Zola and the gang infiltrate the Pupil, listening in on a meeting of the Council of Lords, ambassadors of the various regions of the Empire. While spying, Zola finally catches sight of the leader of the organization: a paranoid monster known as Paragon, a cycloptic, spherical abomination with ten twisting eye-stalks. Paragon plans to burn the jungles to the south, march on the nations north of the mountains, and instate Zola’s friend Quince’s dad as a new member of the council, displacing the disgraced Lord Cravern Eaglebottom (former mayor of Paddlewick and loser of the golden crown). Before they can learn more, tiny spy Stilton is spotted by the ever-vigilant Dean Flae Chantris, who also sits on the Council. Though he tries to escape, the Dean is able to catch and recognize Silton’s pied hide, realizing her student Zola (aka Brie Camembert) is nearby.

As Zola and Stilton spy, Smyte and Brigid explore a strange garden, filled with an ecosystem kept alive by brightly glowing crystals, similar to those seen in the Underdark. When Zola joins them, they find that the garden is a prison meant to keep a golden-haired woman, known only as Paragon’s pet, hidden. The trio persuade the woman that they can help her escape, and she joins them, taking on a new name: NP (or Not a Pet). Together they free the shackled citizens and flee out into the streets of the Socket to meet up with Team Teleport Via Plants.

At the base of the massive tree, a battle for their lives breaks out against the ever-increasing forces of the Omnimalum. The trio team up with Moss to tear open a portal in the tree, and over a grueling combat, grant Moss with their combined spell-power while holding off hordes of Grimlock and drow agents. They even convince NP to join the fight, who reveals herself to be a young gold dragon, and they realize that NP’s egg was the sacred object that was taken from the Formaggi to incite this war. All of the kidnapped civilians are able to escape from the city, along with Brigid, Smyte, and a mysterious elderly woman. However, in the presence of such magical energy, the Shard surges multiple times, causing a wave of magical chaos to radiate out from Zola.

Zola and NP are captured before they can flee, throwing Moss through the portal before it closes, and leaving her and her draconic companion stranded and alone, surrounded by the recovering forces of the Omnimalum…

And that is where we end Arc III! Tune in to Chapter Forty-Nine to listen to Arc IV: Heritage, or continue on to the next recap!