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…