Theren hears a fluttering just outside Vergedain’s hall and then a knock at the door. Lefty answers the door to a wood elf named Theridan, recently obliterated at the Vale of Dancing Waters but more recently rescued from Black Earth. Theridan impatiently explains that Ardak, recently missing but more recently not missing, eagerly desires for the party to hasten toward the vulnerable fire cult.
Bromsby leads the party through the tunnel network below Dessarin Valley. The rock appears increasingly obsidian as they approach the fire cult quarter. They descend a volcanic flute and enter a hallway with an obvious archer defense slit, presently and fortunately unoccupied. Theridan dashes forward attracting the attention of a hobgoblin guard unit. The guards demand the secret passphrase and/or gesture. Theridan stands dumbstruck, but that seems not to be the desired secret response. Meega flies by and buries Giant Slayer into the nearest hobgoblin.
Theridan identifies the guards’ commander and heats his metal armor. The commander commands the guards to increase their efforts, and they do. Theren crossbows the first casualty of the day. Meega knocks the commander to the bone-strewn floor. Lefty slays a second guard and leaps into a wounded third, killing him too.
The ruckus attracts a pair of magma-armor-spear-guys who request Imix’s prompt protection. They emerge from a room up some steps where four columns ignite into shimmery magma. The spearmen flank out around the party as the hobgoblin commander finally cooks to death.
Theridan faerie fires and shillelaghs one spearman with Meega and ignited Lefty critically attacking until he explodes into fiery shrapnel. Bromsby erupts earth with Iron Oath into the other spearman. Haerelben casts a hold on him to escape his anticipated fiery shrapnel explosion. Lefty swoops in to slay the spearman in a fiery shrapnel explosion.
A short rest allows the dressing of wounds, concealment of hobgoblin corpses, acquisition of fire cult armor by Haerelben (half plate with cult tabard) and Meega (chain with cult tabard), and some primo hiding in plain sight by Theren who spends an hour indistinguishably pressed against the wall.
Theren flays the face off a hobgoblin for the ultimate hobgoblin disguise. Lefty disguises herself for the penultimate disguise, a cat-like hobgoblin. Druids Bromsby and Theridan opt for the antepenultimate disguises of an auroch and a huge anaconda, respectively. Meega and Haerelben don their hobgoblin armor and hope for the best.
The rested and “disguised” party inconspicuously resume exploration of the underground fire cult complex. They are immediately spotted by a pair of crossbowmen across the painfully heated room of magma columns. The guards have never met such a rough specimen of a hobgoblin as Hobgoblin Theren, and that’s really saying something. They demand the secret passphrase and/or gesture. Hobgoblin Theren, slurring through his carrion mask, explains that the cat-like prisoner critically injured him, thus his disheveled appearance, trouble recalling the passphrase, and general confusion. And then of course the cow got loose. The guards dubiously observe that the cat-like prisoner is unbound. Lefty ignites. Behold the conversion of an infidel!
Ultimately unconvinced, the guards send a couple of bolts at Theren and withdraw to covered firing positions across the magma room. Anaconda Theridan starts to cross the hot room, but is burned. He summons a tidal wave across the left two pillars to cut a cool path through the room, but instead the room fills with an obscuring fog bank. Theren ignores the pain and runs through to engage the guards. They surround and pummel him with flaming swords. Lefty, immune to the heat in fire form, easily crosses between the magma columns. Encouraged by the absence of scalding death screams, the rest of the party crosses to rescue Theren.
Anaconda Theridan constricts one guard while the party drops his cohort. Meega knocks the remaining guard unconscious. Haerelben revives the disarmed guard and channels divinity to read the passphrase from the his thoughts: Fire Is Eternal. Haerelben commands the guard to make the secret gesture: a two-handed bowl surrounding a pinky finger flame. The guard is allowed to depart through the magma room with his precious few hitpoints to start a new life. He is unable or unwilling to shut off the magma columns as he leaves.
Haerelben goads tired auroch Bromsby into continuing the exploration. Haerelben promptly walks into a swinging axe trap amidst a hallway lined with statues set in niches. Theridan once more stumbles into a room of fire cult guards, one ogre and one half-ogre. As the three-halves of ogres plan a meal featuring the bounty of fresh snake meat, cult-armored Meega steps in and authenticates with the secret cult gesture. That’s her snake the ogres are pummeling, that’s her roasting auroch they smell, and that’s her pseudo hobgoblin cat. None of them are for eating. That puzzles the ogres. Meega offers to arrange a food delivery for them indefinitely later.
The party turns back, deducing that the ogres are guarding a second entrance into the cult area.