Category: Winter Watch

Once recovered by a short rest, Charlie Company eagerly returns to the west area of the undercroft where the chambers revert to a natural cavern rather than worked habitat. Briar slides down a ten foot ledge to an eerily quiet, unexplored area. To the right, Sqyylarr watches a case of icy stairs leaving up from a ransacked supply room. Straight ahead, Watc examines an altar of Ioun, an unexpected find right where the altar of Inle ought to be. Ash points out some newer desecrating markings on the altar and invites Brother Im to look with his eyes but not his hands. Brother Im identifies the altar as definitely dedicated to Inle, never heard of this Ioun fellow, and recognizes the desecration as Frithian-ish. Brother Im explains that Inle is worshipped almost exclusively below ground, above only during an eclipse. More jealous Frith is worshipped almost exclusively above ground, below only during a full moon. The desecration here specifically alludes to a sun, or son, of Frith and really needs to be cleaned away somewhat urgently. Ash, convinced the runes are inherently dangerous, bids him to wait.

Ander attempts to dispel any magic from the altar and confirms the danger is not magical. The runes are painted on with a rusty pigment which Ander attempts to remove with a rope end doused in a dilute acidic solution. A spectral wraith appears at the first disturbance of the runes and inquires as to Ander’s religious predilections. Unsatisfied by Ander’s reply, more menacing specters appear in the crowded chamber. 

Sqyylarr eagerly charges in from the other room and utterly destroys a specter. Two vampires emerge right where Sqyylarr was, grab enraged Barika in the narrow passage where no one else can get by to help her, and rake the dickens out of her with their claws. Barika fights back, chopping at her embracer, but the vampire simply bites her, siphoning her life force. Ash interposes himself to protect nonviolent Brother Im sheltering against a wall. Briar shifts and covers the spectral wraith boss. Ander shockingly grasps away from the specters. Watc ignites a couple of fireballs in the small chamber, popping a few specters and fortuitously revealing a third vampire lurking on the ceiling.

Briar and Ander destroy the wraith. Sqyylarr finishes off the ceiling vampire. Barika, soloing two vampires, gets the worst of the fight and will not last much longer. Ash shoots Barika’s grappler off her. Ander’s force ballista knocks the other away from her. With more room to maneuver, Briar misty steps in and Sqyylarr mauls out the last vampire.

Barika and Sqyylarr take a replenishing rest while Ash searches the altar and finds a wand. Watc identifies it as a wand of the warmage [+2] which goes to Ander. Ander collects 6 vampire fangs and incinerates the vampire remains into collectible ash. 

Brother Im lingers at the altar for a little religious observance. Ash waits just outside the altar chamber to protect him. The rest of the party, mindful of the three heroic weapons that might still be found, returns to the bat pit where a third, unexplored passage leads away north.

Briar carefully scooches along a narrow ledge around the bat pit and throws a rope end back to Sqyylarr. They pull the line tight for a steadying support and anchor Ander with a second rope in case it all goes wrong. It all goes wrong. Ander falls into the bats, dangling from Sqyylarr. The bats swirl thickly around them, flying off to less disturbed Ander-free parts of the undercroft. Sqyylarr hauls Ander out for a second attempt. The second attempt goes almost as poorly. Sqyylarr hauls Ander out for a third, successful attempt. Barika eyeballs dense Watc and jumps the line to go next. She only falls once and, retrieved by Sqyylarr, makes a second, successful attempt. Sqyylarr ties onto 280 pound Watc who spider climbs around the pit wall to the other side. Relieved Sqyylarr crosses the ledge without trouble.

Into the chamber beyond, the subparty gratifying locates three sarcophagi arranged along three sides of the chamber. Each displays a heroic implement: a tower shield, a longsword, and a silver bow. Briar clears the bow for traps and picks it up. Curious Ander touches a sarcophagus with his mechanical hand and that seems to instigate some scratching from inside. The entombed scratcher does not answer shouted queries. The sarcophagus seems intact enough to preclude rodentia infiltration. The generational time passed since the tale of the three heroes seems to preclude the possibility of mortal survival. Briar signals a vote and the ballots come back unanimously for status quo. Ander grabs the shield, Barika the sword, and they beat feet out of the chamber of creepy scratching.

The liberated weapons are identified: a battering shield [+1 AC with 3 charge to boost any push by an additional 10’ or prone], a corpse slayer longsword [+1 with +1d8 versus undead and imposes disadvantage on saves until end of turn versus undead], and a silvered vicious longbow [critical hit is +7].

As Brother Im has completed his devotions, the party reckons the visit to the undercroft is at a successful conclusion. What remains is to ascertain Brother Hlessi’s part in the attempt to trap the party in the undercroft, and the stairs up from the supply room might offer an opportunity to sneak on unexpecting Brother Hlessi in the act of something nefarious.

The icy stairs prove to be far more formidable than any room full of undead without a cleric. After several humiliations and injuries, Sqyylarr alone manages to get enough footing on the stairs to force open a grate at the top. The party emerges in the cold outside air next to the temple of Frith where Briar had sent the bandits to timeout. If that punishment was intended to be humane it failed; all four bandits are found deceased on the temple floor, apparently all with crushed clavicles. Ash locates fresh tracks in the snow, arriving, murdering, departing. One thing Ash can say with certainty is these tracks were not made by the formidable eight foot tall fellow standing large and in charge right there by the temple gates, blindfolded and holding a considerable spear. Even unflappable Brother Im takes notice.

Tall Fellow proclaims, Once again he announces my coming! By “announce”, he seems to mean the bundle he rolls at the party. And by “he”, he seems to mean the head of Cohoreth the Herald rolling within the bundle.

Some 400 years ago, the temple of Frith and Inle was a thriving hub of spirituality. Then barbarians overran the nearby town. Townies fled to the shelter of the temple. Three heroes successfully defended the temple with their lives and were enshrined, along with their compellingly powerful magic weapons, in the undercroft.

Hlessi became the latest and seemingly final guardian of that legacy, but in his old age has not been up to the task of defending the temple from an incursion of vampires and aberrations from below. Charlie Company, tasked with protecting Brother Im as he prepares to visit the altar of Inle in the natural caverns below, gathers what knowledge it can from Brother Hlessi before descending the stairs into the undercroft. The entrance is barred from the outside.

Ash listens to shuffling and scraping beyond the door. Good-and-evil protected Barika enters the undercroft and immediately finds an undead monk. It is quickly dispatched by the ready party, but Sqyylarr finds five more in the corridor ahead. They are all dressed as though servants of the temple long ago, very possibly lapin although the undead years have deformed their features. Briar shifts and Barika eventually enrages and they join Sqyylarr in trading blows with the ghast monks. Ander flips a copper coin into a turret that throws flames at a clump of three. Ash plants arrows into whatever is left. Brother Im inspects the putrid remains of a monk and retrieves an engraved stick from its robes, confirming its legacy as a temple monk. Briar collects name sticks from the other fallen. Ander dubiously regards the still-smoldering victim of his flame turret whose wooden name stick will not be collected.

Surrounding rooms and areas are quickly checked for more ghastly monks. There is a 7 bed dorm, a study, a dining room, and a storeroom that opens into natural caverns. The area seems generally abandoned, empty, and not at all trapped. Brother Im wanders north into the study. Briar finds another natural cavern opened into the back of a study closet and probes ahead to find a black water pool. Multiple investigations of the pool reveal nothing even slightly interesting about the water. In the next chamber, however, a very interesting, very fresh, exsanguinated bandit corpse is found. Watc doesn’t find a clear vampire track or drag marks, but does find the bandit stumbled from one particular corner of the chamber just before expiring. Ander finds green mushrooms there. Ash shoots one through with an arrow and it bleeds. Bloodless, arcana-trained Watc takes a closer look, fends off a psychic attack, and determines these are vampiric mushrooms. Nosferungi, if you will. Ander burns them up. The only other way out of this area is over a deep pit of bats so the party backtracks in the likely event the other side of the pit can be found from another,more convenient, direction.

Upon returning to the entrance of the undercroft to pick a new direction, the party finds the door barred from the other, entering side. Outraged at the perpetrator, Brother Hlessi or the cheeky bandits, Sqyylarr smashes through the door, breaking the locking bar. The party rushes upstairs with readied accusations and insight, but Brother Hlessi truly seems unaware of any attempts to lock them into the undercroft. Certainly the bandits have not returned. The baffled party returns to the undercroft where Brother Im bafflingly expresses reservations about Brother Hlessi’s sudden change in disposition.

The party fans out through the dining area. Ash finds another natural cavern in a smaller larder to the south, this one noted for its strong putrid stench. Despite Ander’s suspicion that a foul stench leads the way to success, there is general consensus that this putrid corridor will be saved for last. Barika finds the kitchen which seems long abandoned until three spectres project through the walls and surround her. She ducks away from them as Briar drops a radiant moonbeam on them. Watc throws a fireball dissipating two spectres, and Ash eliminates the third.

Ash locates the other side of the bat pit. Watc precariously approaches the edge of the pit and determines the bats are simply bats, nothing more sinister. Sqyylarr and Briar trace out the cavern which splits and rejoins around natural columns. Something about the wall along the south end catches Briar’s attention. Ash identifies the problem: the wall features a veneer of creatures, ready to attack. Watc expeditiously arrives and ignites a preemptive fireball that finds around a dozen tentacled, beaked gricks that grab and peck at any nearby adventurer they find, and they critically find Ash. Ash escapes the mob and picks a couple off. Barika charges in and slays another. Watc amps up a second fireball and finishes the remaining gricks.

The party pulls back to the dorm room for a short rest.

Charlie Company returns from bailing out Delta on a chicken rounding turned lich pounding. Portent Order next assigns them to a VIP escort mission for lapin Brother Im, of secret tanker building fame, as he pilgrims to a nearby temple site of Frith and Inle in the frigid Graypeaks. The party requisitions billy goats and cold weather gear. As Hops will be unavailable for a while, Ander equips the party with spellwrought tattoos of wound curing as well as shield for Briar and Sqyylarr and a revivify for Ash who has a proven talent for surviving catastrophes.

The next morning finds Brother Im fasting. The party finishes preparations and departs the caravan for a valley between two peaks, guided primarily by Brother Im’s intuition and protected from indiginous stone giants by his crushed herbs and tuning fork dinging. 

After spending one night on the trail the party arrives at the broken temple wall. The billy goats are hobbled outside the walls. Inside, fresh tracks of human footprints visit a turret of icy stairs up to the wall, an open pavilion to the west, and a larger temple building to the east. The party pokes around cautiously while Brother Im makes a tour of the pavilion.

Within the pavilion a pair of gongs seem to symbolize sun and moon. There are a couple of prayer wheels and a table covered in frozen blood around a steel and wood box. Watc and Briar make an investigation of the box and figure out that the gold amulet inside is a honey trap designed to sever the hand of anyone helping himself to the illusory amulet. At least eight people have learned the trap the hard way as the secret door below reveals an equal number of severed hands, one of them especially fresh.

Further contemplation of the trap is interrupted by a boulder smashing into Barika. Sqyylarr easily spots the origin of the boulder’s trajectory as a huge stone giant looming in the courtyard next to an icy patio. Ander’s persistently readied firebolt finds the giant. Charging Sqyylarr slings a couple of bullets. Barika also rushes the giant but slips prone on the ice short of the goal. Briar makes a running misty step and smacks the giant solidly, backed by Ander’s force ballista and an immolation by Watc halved by the giant’s litheness. The giant smashes Briar and smashes prone Barika but is finished by a sneaky arrow from Ash and a critically fatal blow from Sqyylarr. Barika regains her feet and high-fives Sqyylarr.

Ash resumes his exploration into the east temple but is jumped by a scimitar wielding human, possibly a bandit, who knows? Slippery Ash disengages around a corner and yells a warning to the cheeky bandit and his fellows. Shifted Briar misty steps in and makes the warning officially intimidating. The bandits back off and Brother Im leads in the rest of the party.

Brother Hlessi, lapin caretaker of the structure over the undercroft Altar of Inle, has meanwhile been patching up bandit Jorbar’s right stump. The bandits have already lost some cohorts to the monsters below, including Cap, and mostly they just want to leave. They aren’t keen to fight so Briar sends them out to the west pavilion until this situation is under control.

Brother Im and Brother Hlessi exchange their greetings. Brother Hlessi is mighty sorry that the altar and tomb of the three has been overrun with vampires and tentacled aberrations, but what can one do? Brother Im is undeterred from visiting the altar anyway so the party prepares to escort him down.

Portent Order will arrive soon with a contingent of spellguard in the moments after Cohoreth ripped open the top of a vis tanker and found it unexpectedly empty. A quick investigation reveals no vis, no evidence there was ever vis, no vis under the tanker, no other openings. The next tanker, undamaged, remains locked and obscure as to whether anything is actually inside. The tankers are thickly imbued with protection magic so just maybe the emptiness is a convincing illusion.

Portent Order ropes a cone of silence and again reminds Charlie Company that whatever they think they know, think they don’t know, or don’t know what to think about what they don’t know, they are compelled to keep quiet about it.

Professor Steele, meanwhile, can’t find his lower half with both warforged hands. Ander, still in debt to Barronar Truesilver and her mortal agent Hops for the revivification even after making a downpayment with the magical rain of 250gp, agrees to make a deep dive into the digestive remains of Cohoreth’s vanquished worm mount. Ander recovers several halves of several warforged including a few reusable pieces of Professor Steele.

Professor Steele relates some of his experiences from the other side of the portal. A multifaceted crystalline, light-absorbing black, one meter tall, malevolent evil entity telepathically commands the Quori invasion forces. Professor Steele proposes disrupting any portals bridging in the Plane of Dreams. Silverymoon’s research resources are tapped to quickly concoct a ritual to create an arcane tuning fork that misaligns any portal in the region when struck. The device’s operation is entrusted to an apprentice, Andy the Forkist.

A couple or few days are spent reorganizing the caravan around the remaining undamaged tankers which may or may not contain anything of value. The caravan sets off for Everlund with Charlie in the vanguard.

On the first day of the journey it begins to rain. The rain persists for days degrading the road to a figurative quagmire, then a literal quagmire, and finally a littoral quagmire. Ash, scouting ahead of the first carriage, spots a few areas of bubbling mud. Amateur climatologist Watc makes a determination that no natural weather pattern produces so much rain in this region. Ash hears something on the wind.

Gnoll raiders swoop out of the low clouds on the backs of shadowy black darkenbeasts in a strafing flank all down the caravan. The riders send a barrage of arrows. The darkenbeasts claw and bite as they fly over.

Quick-acting Sqyylarr, from horseback, sentinels a passing darkenbeast, throwing it into a team of horse and skidding its gnoll rider into the mud. Ash picks off a passing gnoll with his new longbow. Hops tries out his new returning hand axe on a gnoll. Briar joins Hops on the back of the lead tanker to draw the barrages of gnoll arrows away from Hops and to himself with his new cursed shield. Watc streaks a fireball into the raiders’ path incinerating a few of the riders. Ander engages his shoulder force ballista with a firebolt chaser. Sqyylarr and raging Barika make a charge for the prone, grounded gnoll and wipe him out while his darkenbeast fights to defend him.

The darkenbeasts wheel around for another strafe. Elemental mudmen rise from the bubbling mud. Ash turns his longbow against the muddy new threat. Briar adds a moonbeam. Hops entreats the mother’s favor for the good health of the warrior types. Watc continues her fireballs and takes shelter behind a carriage. Ander’s turret malfunctions, damaging its own targeting system. Sqyylarr’s maul makes the first darkenbeast fatality. It reverts to a wolf, completely ordinary other than being dead. Briar makes a fatal parting chop on a passing darkenbeast. It also reverts to a common woodland animal. Its gnoll rider tumbles to its death. The mudmen hurl mud at the tanker’s defenders, but they are seemingly intent on getting to the tanker itself.

Several squads of knight-led soldiers arrive from the north and east. The close formations of soldiers invite fireballs which Watc and Ander obligingly provide. 

Watc and Barika interpose themselves between the advancing mudmen and the tankers, but the mudmens’ determination prevails and they pick up the tanker, with Hops and Briar on top, to carry it off. 

Ash makes his way up to a tactical ridge and discovers a lurking red wizard apprentice. Ash fills the apprentice with arrows. A darkenbeast lands to defend the apprentice, but the moment Ash slays the apprentice the darkenbeasts all revert to woodland animals who flee the battle. Ash spies the apprentice’s red robed master on a ridge to the north and sends over a flight of arrows.

Sqyylarr, intent on finishing what she started, trades hits with a mudman. Because the other mudmen, intent on carrying off the tank, are indifferent to Barika, Barika adopts indifference back at them and instead engages a knight perfectly willing to flail her. Ander has a similar notion and drops scorching rays on two other knights. One of those rays is such a stunning failure that it incapacitates Ander. Briar summons rapid growth impeding plants over most of the area. Hops hoists his holy symbol channeling the mother’s life preserving refreshment for the injured. A bonus spiritual mace appears and snaps the red wizard in the face.

A knight flails Watc hiding behind the carriage. She misty steps into a nearby tree, providing an excellent magic missile path to the red wizard. The knight lobs a couple of harmless javelins into the tree before climbing up to Watc who misty steps back to the carriage.

Briar and Hops surf the mudman-borne tanker right up to the red wizard. Briar misty steps into the red wizard’s personal space. A knight castles the red wizard, taking his place. The wizard retreats away either magically or martially, no one knows for sure. But when he leaves, the mudmen become suddenly uncoordinated, abandoning the tanker and attacking any convenient target. One finds Sqyylarr convenient, but the other tears into the squad of soldiers surrounding Barika. Ash shoots a soldier off of Sqyylarr and leads a painfully slow chase through the thick vegetation. His soldier pursuers are, in turn, pursued by Hops’s spiritual mace. 

Sqyylarr finally emerges victorious over her mudman nemesis who gloops down to an adobe brick. Briar, Barika, and Ander work on the remaining knights. The knights see how the battle is going and withdraw with their lives if not their honor.

The caravan, though damaged and in disarray, is successfully defended. Apparently the red wizards of Thay have not abandoned their pursuit of vis. 

The royal steward grants the Quastarte Delegation lodging for a few days while Osvoril regrows his face and Tenrath, at the Halls of Inspiration, regrows his feet. Grateful Osvoril gifts magical weapons and armor from his stash and offers officially sanctioned anti-scry tokens in exchange for their collected black market versions. The party offers him the ledgers from Tenrath, the darkling house, and the hag tent to help the city watch roll up the last vestiges of the crime syndicate. They exchange information regarding the Quori incursion from Dal Quor. The relationship between Quastarte and Silverymoon is off to a fine start.

Relentlessly following up on Tenrath’s suspicious trepidation for returning to his family from the Halls of Inspiration, the party deduces that Osvoril is actually a pretty nasty character who attempted to poison his own wife, Charlotte, when she disapproved of his significant involvement acquiring underground anti-scry amulets for the syndicate. Briar cajoles Tenrath into writing a letter that directs his son Elrith to turn over the planar map fragment to them. Professor Steele authenticates the map retrieved by Elrith and produces a personal copy before the map is later surrendered to Master Brand. The party finks on Tenrath once the deal is done. 

With a little time remaining before the arrival of the caravan, the party adjourns to the Vault of the Sages where they prevail upon the librarian to gain access to non-public VIP areas of the great library. Hops researches their destination, the Firepeaks, and learns the region has some affiliation with dwarven forebears known as the Siremun, the Iron Men. Ash researches Dal Quor, aka the Plane of Dreams, inhabited by the evil psychic symbiotes known as Quori. Seems as though they broke their own planetary rotation to defend against an otherworldly invasion. GG heads to the gift shop for a copy of the regional map. Briar marvels at the asking price of 50 gp for a map copy. GG offers to wager for the map instead, but the proprietor insists on his nice new ring of spell storing for collateral. GG borrows 30 gp from Briar’s mission fund to buy the map instead.

The party returns to the caravan to report to Portent Order and Master Brand. The map is turned over, and diplomatic progress with Silverymoon is presented. Just as Master Brand is heaping praise on the delegation’s efforts, a portal opens in his wagon. The upper half of Professor Steele drags itself out of the portal and shouts a warning that Cohoreth the Herald is coming!

A giant worm bursts through the ground, disturbingly close to the vis tanker wagons. Cohoreth, as promised, rides the emerging worm. Ash fires off a couple of slayer’s prey shots from his new [+1] longbow. Ander pops off protection from good and evil onto Briar from his new, unwagered ring of spell storing. When Ander summons and fires his force ballista turret, something goes “wrong” and he is showered by 200 magical gold pieces. Watc flexes her new immolate spell on the worm and sets it afire. Hops aids Barika, Briar, and Sqyylarr as they run into Cohoreth’s cold cone which is defeated by layers of paladin auras and flashes of genius. The ring-borne protection spell prevents Briar from being eaten by the worm.

The flaming worm and irritated herald retreat back into their hole. Barika observes the withdrawal  and shouts a warning that the menace is heading south. All hands charge south and prepare for the re-emergening. Unfortunate Ander leads with a ready firebolt that goes horrifyingly wrong [crit failure]. The firebolt backfires [100 on the d100 magic botch table] and frags Ander unconscious, profusely bleeding, and significantly older. Cohoreth’s followup magic missiles slay him before the bleeding can do so. 

The worm goes for Ash who ducks for cover behind a rocky outcrop and puts a couple more arrows into the worm. Cohoreth counterspells a fireball from Watc. Briar critically and thunderously smites the worm. Barika has some difficulty connecting her strikes, dropping her axe into the wormhole, but at least avoids being stung. Sqyylarr surges a couple of maul smashes and indomitably avoids being swallowed. Hops dashes for crumpled Ander and considers for only the slightest of moments before imploring help from Barronar Truesilver to relight Ander’s proverbial inner forge, purchased with a handful of diamonds dropped on him. Longbowing Ash and fireballing Watc keep focus on the worm and slay it before it retreats again. Angry Cohoreth, deprived of his sweet ride, falls to the ground.

Briar strikes Cohoreth ensnaringly leaving him no choice but to misty step away rather than lightning bolt Ash, which is what he really wants to do. Ash, entirely not lightning bolted, gives chase. Briar, Sqyylarr, Barika and Watc join the chase. Hops slows eager Ander’s precarious roll long enough for a bit of wound curing. Ander flies toward Cohoreth, no longer visible, and casts shatter at his last known location. A wild shot from Ander’s force ballista catches a piece of Cohoreth. Sqyylarr takes note of the firebolt’s impact and makes a wild hit on Cohoreth herself.

Cohoreth appears atop the nearest vis tanker and throws open the top, envisioning a massive vis-fueled fireball that destroys meddling Charlie Company aka Hag Slayers aka Coven Busters, and probably much of adjacent Silverymoon, once and for all. Cohoreth, peering into the open tanker, appears puzzled and disappointed just before teleporting harmlessly away.

Briar, Barika, and Nicodemus return to the temple of Ogma, the Halls of Inspiration, to stay with Tenrath Albessac and to promptly follow up on his partial planar map once his foot regeneration progresses.

Sqyylarr, Hops, Ash, GG, and Professor Steele hasten to the Silverymoon palace with their evidence for Lord Protector Osvoril Aerasume that the real hags put one over on the knights executing the overnight raid on the three faux, foe, pho hags. The outraged palace guard wonders why the Quastarte Delegation should haul a revolting hag corpse through the main entrance of the palace. A couple of tired looking knights, up all night killing some hag-dressed townies, respond to the commotion. Hops nudges Professor Steele forward. Professor Steele dramatically invites their attention to the corpse: THIS is a hag. 

The persistent party is ushered in to see Osvoril. Osvoril makes his own examination of the hag and retrieves a soul bag containing a black gem from her. The party persuades him that the real hags perpetrated an illusion by invisibly framing the three faux hags. Alas, it turns out that the three faux hags have already been burned, but maybe not beyond Lady Silverhand’s considerable talents. 

The three piles of dresses taken from the hag tents are presented to Osvoril. He uses a psychometry spell to discover that at least one of the dresses was recently worn by a current occupant of the palace. GG proposes that knights be dispatched immediately to secure his bride, Elienyphe, and their child against this possible threat. Aerasume charges out of the room and disappears unexpectedly. 

Hops urges the knights into action. They hurriedly lead the party up to a mezzanine and down a corridor. The knights no sooner step through a door into a throne room than their gored remains and shredded armor hurl back down the hall at the party. GG pops off a ready firebolt and a cunning insult, and the party engages the waiting fomorian. 

Hops blocks the doorway with his dodging body. The fomorian ducks for cover behind a column and improvises projectiles to lob. Hops points out a few darklings waiting inside the doorway. Sqyylarr moves to engage them. A hag reveals herself from invisibility just as Sqyylarr flattens a darkling. Professor Steele ignites a fireball in the middle of the room. Ash slayer-preys the hag while Sqyylarr and GG mow down the darklings. Hops bolsters his health and takes out the hag but gets the evil eye from the fomorian. Sqyylarr takes out the fomorian with a double mauling.

The party follows a spiral staircase up to a covered courtyard. A couple of palace servants lie slain next to a central water feature minus one head. Several redcaps leap from the surrounding bushes to attack, kicking with iron boots and triple slicing with iron sickles and scythes. GG lends Professor Steele a flash of genius preventing a potentially fatal kick. Ash and GG cover the onrush from range. Hops and Sqyylarr gather the fast-moving damage to themselves. The party overcomes the redcaps without too great a setback in time or resources. Sqyylarr and Ash track them from the east where they have evidently slain Elienyphe’s mother in her bedroom.

The party rapidly searches other residential areas off the courtyard for Elienyphe and her child. Hops finds a quartet of statues down a decorative hallway. One has an arm rigged presumably to alert the guard to intruders. Professor Steele wiggles the alarm; more help is better. Hops follows the direction of the arm alarm and finds blood trails. The party stacks up for a fight and Ash opens the door to reveal Osvoril, seizing, bound by black cord, and shooting a fountain of blood from where his face used to be. Ash attempts to stabilize him with cure wounds. Sqyylarr cuts him free of the bindings. Hops removes his curse. Contrary to his appearance, Osvoril gasps that he is fine, and the party should immediately turn its efforts to locating his child in the passage west from the courtyard. 

The party dashes back to the courtyard and meets emerging Elienyphe. She carries the child in her arms and Osvoril’s flayed face on her belt. Professor Steele banishes her on sight. The child and Osvoril’s flayed face fall to the stone floor.

Ash revives the child with a curing of wounds and carries him away from the banishing point. A couple of knights show up and tend to Osvoril and the child, freeing the party to prepare a broad selection of readied attacks for Elienyphe’s return from her planar timeout. Hops abjures a beacon of hope.

Banished Elienyphe the redhead returns as Eravastika the blood hag and survives the prepared onslaught. She grapples Hops with her hair and takes some of his life force before misty stepping away from Hops and Sqyylarr. They run her down again. She misty steps back to her original location but has absorbed a great deal of damage including a critical divine strike by Hops. She curses Hops with blood eye. GG scores a final hit on the hag. Confused Sqyylarr scores a critical hit on Hops.

Several more flayed faces and a medallion are fetched out of the irrationally large pool of blood oozing under Eravastika.

Briar hacks at the bars imprisoning Hops and the footless man while Ash works on the lock. A cloud of kill rolls over the rest of the party and takes out Professor Steele. GG runs to help but is also overcome. Nicodemus heals Professor Steele and GG back into action. Jump-empowered Professor Steele makes a running leap for safety out of the cloud kill but instead falls into the misty chasm. Sqyylarr, running just ahead of the cloud kill, hucks a rope end to Professor Steele and, backed up by Barika, arrests his 280 pound fall.

Freed Hops heals Briar. Ash passes without a trace into a side area to rummage for Hops’s armor. Nicodemus heals GG and drops his large scroll man spiritual guardian between two of the hags. They claw at it disturbingly. Sqyylarr and Barika reel in Professor Steele. The cloud kill mercifully rolls off the edges and dissipates into the misty chasm. The elder hag, behind her two sisters, lightning bolts through Sqyylarr, Barika, and one screaming sister. Hops preserves the lives of Sqyylarr and Barika, but not the stricken hag. GG summons a force turret that combos with his scorching ray to hit back at the hags. Nicodemus, while keeping GG alive, pops a spiritually weaponized scroll on the elder hag. Briar attempts to turn the faithless hags, but they are not so faithless and scoff derisively. He lays hands on Barika and on Nicodemus. 

The party begins a general advance to the rear. Hops abjures a beacon of hope. A phantasmal killer sticks to GG and he has difficulty staying conscious. Sqyylarr hauls Professor Steele up to the edge of the chasm in view of the strangely charismatic elder sister who resists his banishment. Ash comes sailing over the misty chasm with Hops’s gathered armor and weapons, and he boops GG with a bit of healing on his way by.

Nicodemus’s guiding bolt drops a hag. GG aims his turret at the next hag and catapults a rock into the elder sister. Briar covers the retreat until the party is safely at the exit. The two surviving hags appear to withdraw as well.

The party spends an hour in the marketplace preparing a rescue mission of the footless man. GG speculates, and Hops confirms, that the footless man is none other than Tenrath Albessac, the proprietor of Lost Things Found who featured prominently in the mission briefing for being the source of a much-needed partial planar map. Nicodemus is dispatched in haste to prevent the final destruction of the three “hags” slain in error earlier by Silverymoon’s finest.

The refreshed party returns to the hag cave. The area is quiet, and the body of the slain hag remains unrecovered. Briar ties off 20’ of rope to the nearest bridge support and leaps non-magically over the misty chasm and through the anti-magic barrier to Tenrath’s cage. He slings Tenrath over his shoulder and, under the extra weight, does not succeed the return jump. Briar holds on to Tenrath as they fall to the end of the tether. Briar effortlessly climbs the rope, dragging Tenrath to safety, and clobbers a grabby tentacle with Ash’s help. Hops takes Tenrath and, with a healing word, carries him from the hag cave.

The party whisks Tenrath to Nicodemus’s beautiful Temple of Ogma for regeneration. Once Tenrath’s safety is secured, the party decides to risk another foray into the hag cave to retrieve the body of the defeated hag as evidence.

Briar, covered by his cohorts’ readied spells and ranged weapons, dashes across the bridges up to the fallen hag. A tentacle foolish enough to reach for Sqyylarr gets an overdose of readied brutality. Briar capitalizes on the absence of obvious threats to explore a nearby tent, the apparent dwelling of one hag with a penchant for deconstructing humanoids and chewing their bones. Ash clears a chest for traps and Briar finds a stash of bougie dresses within. GG shares his suspicion that the lady Aerasume might be one of these hags.

Sqyylarr carries off the load of dresses for evidence. Briar makes a 20’ tether to cross a rotten bridge to a second tent where he locates another chest, containing more fine dresses plus a ledger which he gathers into the handy haversack. Hops and Barika follow Briar and are fortunately tethered when the bridge collapses under Hops’s mass.

Briar locates the third hag’s tent, this one characterized by a pool of water and pervasive dampness. Briar collects fine dresses from a third chest.

Briar and Barika examine a conspicuously placed chair fashioned from skulls. Briar can’t help but think there is some significance to the skull chair, but he and Barika fail to discover anything at all special about it. A nearby wooden panel seems to be a gate into another area, but it’s already mid morning and everyone is too spent to want to find the hags again.

The party departs the hag cave for the third time and makes for the palace with the dead hag and a pile of dresses.

The Quastarte delegation gets an early start from the Wayward House to the marketplace. A legionnaire guards the entrance to the underground area of operations that the party recognizes from yesterday’s basilisk encounter. A dozen knights of Silverymoon executed their overnight raid on the darkling syndicate, slaying many darklings and three very obvious hags at the cost of two of Silverymoon’s finest. The suspicious party dashes to investigate the dead hags, incredulous of the knights’ success. Eravastika is rumored to be notably beautiful and, kinks aside, these droopy hags are not objectively so. They are also, as Professor Steele determines, entirely human. The tetchy knights collect their bodies and go home.

Nicodemus ponders the sudden absence of what he surely recalls being the entrance to the fomorian cave only yesterday. Perceptive Sqyylarr indicates the outline of a concealing blockage. Barika critically forces the secret door, and it cracks. Sqyylarr’s maul further opens the crack revealing the fomorian cave Nicodemus remembers.

The party combines its talents to determine that the knights did actually battle something formidable beyond the three haggish women and the darklings. Perhaps the knights did not realize there was a single, concealed spell slinger providing the danger behind the haggish women. Sqyylarr tracks that presumed true hag into the fomorian cave. Ash fortuitously overhears some whispered giant talk from the fomorian cave that indicates a waiting ambush.

GG eagerly rushes into the ambush, gets smashed twice by a great club, shockingly grasps the waiting fomorian, absorbs a debilitating curse, falls unconscious, is dragged by Barika back to Nicodemus for divine preservation, gasps back to life, “Giants…!” runs back in, gets smashed unconscious by hurled boulders, receives encore divine curation, and runs in a circle. The Aristocrats!

The two fomorians rearrange themselves shoulder-to-shoulder. Shifted Briar, raging Barika, and hill people Sqyylarr square off against them. Ash and Professor Steele cover with longbow arrows and skirmishing fireballs. The fomorians are no match for the party’s focussed efforts, but are defeated at the great cost of expended spells. Nicodemus removes the curses from GG and Briar.

Nicodemus finds a pair of amulets on the fomorians. Watc finds a pair of secret doors. Sqyylarr finds the trail of the hag leading north to the secret door. Barika finds that she is strong enough to remove the rubble from the secret door. The party finds its way to the other side of the secret door. 

Wood and rope bridges over misty chasms connect little islands illuminated here and there by torches. The first bridge is an easy long jump. From the bit of ground on the other side, Watc and Briar can just make out Hops, caged in a cell to the northwest without an obvious way over the misty chasm. Briar misty steps over the misty chasm but smacks into a magical barrier halfway and begins to fall. GG catches willing Briar with a smooth levitation, but some green tentacles from the mist take a cloying interest in Briar. Hops yells over a warning that there is a magical field surrounding the cell. Briar tosses a non-magical rope end to helpful Hops as GG increases his altitude away from the tentacles. Hops reels Briar over. Briar goes to work attacking the bars.

Professor Steele, Sqyylarr, and Nicodemus take the next bridge south in search of a less magical path to Hops and line up perfectly for a lightning bolt from a gleeful hag to the south. Two other hags attempt ranged spells but are far less successful. More tentacles grab from the mist for Barika and Professor Steele. Restrained Professor Steele rays frost on his attacker and Sqyylarr lends some maul bashes to the effort. Professor Steele drops offline. 

Ash calls prey on the next hag he sees and takes aim…

The party flees the fomorian sector and scouts for a place to camp in the legacy dwarven underground. From the unsecret side of a secret door, Ash hears shuffling scratching sounds. Camping in the hallway is not a great option so the party prepares to enter with diplomacy, intimidation, or violence as needed. Barika opens the door quietly, but darkling Varn knows the sound of that secret door when his roommate returns. Oh Henry, is that you returning? Ander a.k.a. Grim Greycastle, self-disguised as a darkling, answers Varn that he has returned, yes. Well, not Varn’s roommate Henry, but Second Henry. The large number of debtors Second Henry has brought along for the mistress displeases Varn, especially the large bear prisoner. Nicodemus prays for better deception. When Varn sticks a blade to Bear Briar, Sqyylarr and Ash are forced to take him out. Watc a.k.a. Professor Steele searches Varn’s dorm room for personal effects and official correspondence or other intelligence. 

Briar proposes that Second Henry scout around through the next door. Second Henry steps out into the darkling area. A couple of darklings unload luxury goods and provisions from a couple of mine cars at the bottom of a chasm through the ruined floor of the dwarven ruins. Across the chasm a gathering of darklings dine on turkey and mushroom sauce. Second Henry nonchalantly strolls along the edge of the chasm. As he crosses the bridge over the chasm, a large hound takes note of his problematic scent and growls suspiciously until Second Henry drops down a tinkered meat smelling rock. He continues along making note of some other doors, a dwarven statue, a very nice anvil — wait! What are all those unguarded potions?

Second Henry’s euphoric cataloging of potions in a corner of the chamber is interrupted by Bernard the human concierge. Would Sir like a potion bag prepared for Sir’s night out? Maybe some turkey in a to-go box?

It doesn’t sound like Second Henry is doing too poorly so the rest of the group, enormously aided by Ash’s pass without trace, follows him discreetly. Professor Steele, fire-enabled thanks to one of their two exception amulets, hangs back to cover the dining room full of darklings with a fireball if plan A goes wrong.

Second Henry, attempting to attract the chasm workers and Bernard into the dining room to clear an escape path for the party, offers everyone free drinks. Unfortunately, the darklings have been working on a utopia where drinks are always free and the workers prefer to continue working for the good of society. Fast walking Barika has almost reached the exit door but is discovered by a second growling hound, Killer, lurking in the storeroom. The chasm workers spot the party crossing the bridge. Second Henry insists that everyone should really, really enjoy a FIREBALL whiskey right about now. Professor Steele streaks a fireball into the center of the dining room.

Bernard ducks behind the bar; this is not his fight. GG shocking grasps a darkling survivor and rejoins the party who find themselves in Killer’s aura of misfortune. Briar overcomes the misfortune and places two excellent smite-boosted axe strikes on Killer. Barika has the misfortune of fumbling her attack on Killer, enraging her. Nicodemus takes out Killer, but the second hound has leapt 20’ from the chasm to the bridge to battle Sqyylarr. Ash takes out a couple of the darklings, GG gets another one with a scorching ray. Sqyylarr, already exhausted from digging out the bouldered passage earlier in the day, discovers a new level of exhaustion after a botched swing of her maul. Briar’s searing smite, Barika’s twin flying handaxes, and Professor Steele’s fireball fare better against the hound. Ash’s arrows get the final piece of the hound, leaving only a pair of darklings hoping to escape in the chasm mining tunnel. They do not.

The area is ransacked for potions and intelligence.

Rat: advantage on smell
Snail: potion of speed
Syringe: appearance of zombie for 1 hour
Pink Bottle: speak with animals
Carved Dwarf: armor irritant
Coconut: immunity from fear for 10 hours
Invisible Bottle: darkvision
Juice Box: induces vomiting
Sword Hilt Bottle: disguise
Pendant Flask: feather fall
Box of Popsicle: box freezes anything put in it
Popsicle: potion of not having a shadow
Teal Liquid: turn to caricature familiar

A crumpled note is found directing the abduction of Hops the Quastarte Dwarf to the mistresses’ chamber, the plural possessive revealing either a grammatical error by the note writer or the party’s error in assuming a single leader. Bernard clarifies that the organization is a triarchy of mistresses: Eravastika, Footeater, and Bogfingers. Hag names if GG ever heard one. 

Bernard, initially committed to his great job with the darkling syndicate, is now reconsidering. In exchange for everything he can carry away from the storeroom, he will start a new life on the straight and narrow path. Bernard’s first step on that path, out the door of the darkling bunker, is met with the drawing of town guard steel.

The party stands down for Belfaerd, the officer in charge. Briar recounts their situation since arriving at the Wayward House and the subsequent urgency of locating Hops. Ash points out that in fact many Silverymoon citizens go missing the same way. Nicodemus agrees. But, all of that is above Belfaerd’s pay grade. Apprehending the party on the orders of Lord Protector Steward Osvoril Aerasume, on the other hand, is exactly on Belfaerd’s pay grade so that’s what happens next.

At the palace, through the great hall, the Quastarte delegation is met by Osvoril and Elienyphe Aerasume, son and daughter-in-law of Lady Alustriel Silverhand who is currently out-of-pocket. Osvoril politely explains that here in Silverymoon, they rather like to avoid violence on the scale demonstrated by that last encounter. GG explains the events of the destruction in a level of detail that causes Elienyphe to excuse herself. Ash introduces the topic of the Silverhand gift which Professor Steele awkwardly produces. Osvoril opens the cylinder of chilled vis but does not recognize it for what it is. Professor Steele awkwardly disavows any knowledge of the cylinder’s contents since, technically, he wasn’t actually informed of it.

The party is in no fighting condition before a night’s rest so, in the interest of urgency, Osvoril offers to organize an overnight raid to roll up the darkling syndicate. The Quastarte delegation returns to the inn for much needed rest and much needed identification of looted potions. What news will tomorrow bring?

The party attempts to convince Ash that there is absolutely, positively no secret doors or underground passages to be found in the darkling lair where the qwyllion’s illicit alchemical lab was violently decommissioned. Ash persists, not even believing his own eyes to the contrary, and accidentally locates a secret door concealing a hidden passage leading to a wine cellar containing one crapulous darkling.

Briar intimidatingly introduces himself to oenophile Jax. Jax stumbles into Barika’s left hook. Jax knows only that a couple of his co-workers were dispatched to abduct a dwarf, that said dwarf may or may not be taken to the boss’s lair as roughly indicated on the surface map, and that he is willing to stay here quietly with this fine vintage of wine. Ash obliges with a tight, immobilizing binding.

The party continues on through a concealed passage indicated by Jax. Sqyylarr orients the party’s underground progress to the surface location indicated by Jax to be the most direct entrance to the underground location of Eravastika. 

The passage opens into a round chamber with a closed hatch in the floor. Barika, at Ander’s urging, opens the hatch and finds an abundance of raw sewage. She lets it close urgently. Briar explores rapidly north where the stonework turns to natural cavern. Giant centipedes flank the party. Ash plugs his attacker with a ready arrow, but the centipede sprays acid over him, Nicodemus, and Barika. GG’s turret destroys the centipede. 

A gazing basilisk begins to turn Briar to stone.  Ash, probing around to see Briar’s problem, catches the gaze as well and only has time to choose a dignified pose before he fully turns to stone. Nicodemus reaches for his restorative ointment but has none so he chops out a centipede instead. The basilisk goes for Sqyylarr next and gets a little nibble as she begins to turn to stone. Briar, resisting back to his bendy self, slays the basilisk as it attempts to flee. Nicodemus and Briar lend their righteous talents to help Sqyylarr shake off the petrification. Ash, however, does not pull through.

Professor Steele can find no way to apply his proficiency in medicine to the situation. He and Sqyylarr tend each other’s wounds while Ash’s fate is considered. Nicodemus is well connected in town and could easily arrange the services of a temple priest to restore Ash. Briar, concerned that time is a factor in rescuing Hops, wonders if there is a more immediate solution. Since a basilisk is able to consume its victims by reverting them back to meat during ingestion, GG reasons he can make a restorative solution if that particular organ is retrieved intact. He explains the process in exquisite detail, but Nicodemus botches the removal.

Nicodemus revivifies the basilisk after neutralizing its gaze. They kill it all over again, and this time Nicodemus masterfully retrieves the intact organ. GG soaks the restorative into lamp oil and coats Ash in the solution. Stone returns to meat, Nicodemus cures the meat, and Ash is back.

Once rested, the party continues in the direction indicated by Sqyylarr right into a blocking pile of rubble. Sqyylarr, Barika, and Briar exhaustingly dig out the rubble. Sqyylarr orienteers the party on to the den of a pair of fomorians who bash and curse her severely. Raging Barika inspires those around her and Briar’s holy aura helps prevent any further cursing. Professor Steele banishes one of the ugly fomorians and Nicodemus banishes the other. Nicodemus removes Sqyylarr’s evil eye curse.

No passage is found directly in the direction Sqyylarr wants to go so the party takes a hallway south looking for a way to turn east before the fomorians return. The first room they pass is a round chamber of seven sarcophagi and zero other connections. The door at the south end of the hallway opens to a very fancy sarcophagus guarded by a pair of warrior statues. All the sarcophagi already show signs of thorough looting.

GG, using an amulet-permitted firebolt, confirms that at least one of the entombed skeletons is not undead. The same cannot be said for the specter he releases which scares him into dashing to catch up to the party. 

Professor Steele and Barika find a couple of loot chests. The first is full of earrings, still on the ear, and necklaces, still on the neck, and rings, still on the finger. Barika lets the lid close, and they elect to forego examination of the second chest.

The party finds an east exit and beats feet just ahead of the fomorians’ planar return.