Dungeons & Dragons

GG volunteers for first watch. Hops volunteers for last watch, first bacon. The night passes uneventfully other than Hops being violently abducted sometime between watch and bacon,  GG is able to reconstruct the ordeal from observing three displaced bits of gravel.

Because Deneir never closes a door without opening a window, the party meets graceful and noble newcomer Nicodemus. Nicodemus has prearranged a table of bougie pastries in anticipation of meeting his old friend, Professor Steele. Nicodemus doesn’t give away the plot when he gracefully greets his new friend, “Professor Steele”. The party clicks through the seven stages of party newcomer grief [suspicion of Hops in disguise, suspicion of Hops’s evil abductor tricking party, suspicion of secret benefactor possibly Lady Silverhairhand, suspicion of Fey trickery, suspicion of meta-corrected character fatigue, suspicion of heavy-handed railroading correction to story plot, and zone of truth] before reluctantly accepting the help of Nicodemus to rescue and / or recover Hops.

Professor Steele receives no response sending to Hops. Some consideration is given to requesting help from Lady Silverhand, but Ash wisely points out that seeming so needy this early in the relationship could compromise Quastarte’s cachet. Ash proposes starting with the secret house where he trailed the darklings the previous evening. GG hands around syringes of vigor and Ash leads the party to the darkling dark alley, somewhat less dark in the midday sun.

Several darklings are concealed in the shadows of the building well enough that only Ash can pick them out at first. Barika and Sqyylarr cross by to seal off the other end of the alley. A silence falls over the alley, and not just the dramatic kind. Ash plants a couple of arrows to make the darklings flanking the door hop around in pain a little. The others can see them now. The twin twangs of the bow are audible from the street, but not the sound of a darkling crushed by Sqyylarr’s maul, nor the sound of the other darkling’s skull smashed by a one-pound rock GG launches from a conveniently placed barrel of aerodynamic, one-pound rocks.

A large creature, cloaked like the darklings, stomps silently around a corner. Enraged Barika takes a chop at it joined by Ash’s arrows, Sqyylarr’s maul, and shifted Briar’s axe. Professor Steele locates the edge of the silence zone so he can ray some frost back into the battle, but the flashing light and twanging bowstring are attracting attention from the street. GG reduces Tiny down to medium size, Nicodemus lights Tiny with a guiding bolt, Barika and Ash end Tiny. Sqyylarr takes care of the remaining darkling. Nicodemus deflects the curious attention of a passing potatomonger by explaining away the commotion as a new form of entertainment called LARPing. A silver piece for a dozen potatoes seals the ruse.

Ash taps the secret door knock gleaned from his previous lurking. The door opens a crack in response. Barika, here to kick cheese and chew bubblegum, opens it the rest of the way. Professor Steele crams through the crowded doorway and demands his dwarf back, dodging the answering darkling dagger stab. Barika chops out the darkling and his friend at the bottom of the entry steps.

The party explores the chamber, very well appointed with fancy art, rugs, and collectibles. Ander finds a gambling ledger. He helps himself to some ink and paper. Barika finds a map of the surface with what may indicate access points to the underworld. Briar opens a lower level door south revealing sleeping quarters. Ander opens a chest of 800 thread count cloaks and linens. Nicodemus watches in horrid fascination as ordinarily deft Ash makes a complete shambles of searching the desk. 

The party moves to a pair of doors across an ornate meeting room. Briar throws open both doors nearly simultaneously revealing passages that converge at a third door. Sqyylarr, upon opening the third door, gets yelled at for disturbing someone important. Briar descends the stairs beyond and enters the alchemical lab of the pig-like, pustuled boss, but wishes he hadn’t as nausea ruins his attempt at intimidating the qwyllion. Briar and Nicodemus’s spiritually weaponized floating scroll corner the qwyllion in a statue alcove. The qwyllion misty steps away into the center of the room, noted by GG and Professor Steele since teleportation is strictly suppressed in Silverymoon. Barika, Ash, and Sqyylarr go to work. GG, anticipating a long boss fight, throws down his unfolding force ballista. GG is a little disappointed when the boss is killed a moment later by the floating scroll because it will take the rest of the day to get the ballista folded back into a coin.

Concluding investigations yield:
The qwyllion is a Fey corruption, working here as a mercenary, double threat alchemist and blackmail writer.
The richly decorated hideout has no secret doors, no physical network to the criminal underground.
Nicodemus locates an order to bring the dwarf to the signatory, “E”, as in Eravastika.
A ledger contains, among many others, the names of Tenrath and Verina.
The alchemical projects are a deception themselves, designed for a short benefit but a lingering dependency.
An anti-scry amulet looted from the qwyllion, similar if not identical to that looted from Dom, may also defeat the town-wide anti-fire, anti-teleport, anti-conjuration field.
The prominent statue at the end of the chamber is the unseelie deity Cegilun, goddess of night hags.

The Quastarte Delegation cures Charlotte of her mysteriously intractable six month ailment and departs the Albessac estate. Ash secretly retains the encrypted notebook from Tenrath’s home office. As the party hits the street, the more perceptive of them have the sensation of being watched, yet the area about the estate conceals no watchers. 

The delegation retires to the Wayward House where attentive owner Verina sets them up with a common bunk room, bardic entertainment, food, and libations. 

As the sensation of being watched recedes, Ash and Professor Steele comprehend Tenrath’s secret accounting ledger. The ledger reflects a business arrangement of a large initial loan from one party, then various outgoing expenditures and collections, possibly sub loans, with various other parties. A year back the pyramid began to break down and Tenrath fell into perpetual, possibly terminal, delinquency.

GG embarks upon an evening project of stuffing egg shells with flour. The egg shells acquired from Mithral Hall are too fragmented so he acquires raw eggs from the Wayward House kitchen and ponders removal of the unusable inside of the egg without damaging the shell. Professor Steele misunderstands GG’s request for help and demonstrates the conventional release of the egg’s contents with no regard for the shell or Briar’s bunk, despite Briar’s severe warning that GG’s project not foul his bunk. GG embarks upon a new priority project of restoring Briar’s bunk to regulation standards.

The delegation’s spellguard meanwhile adjourn to the bar for sustenance. Hops’s heavy thumb presses a gold piece onto the bar, a reward for some proper dwarven beer if any can be had instead of the available Gnomish Apple Ale and Manling Lager. Verina dispatches a courier to earn the gold piece.

A darkling by the name of Dom, resembling by dress and manner the criminal enterprise seen in the marketplace earlier in the day, enters the establishment followed by several henchmen who take up a corner table. Dom accompanies Verina into a side room to conduct a moment of business. It does not escape the notice of Ash and Briar that a bruise develops on Verina’s face after the conclusion of that business.

Hops introduces himself to Dom with a thick poke in the back of Dom’s head. Hops proceeds to explain his lawful-good standard for the treatment of women with a righteous double punch to Dom’s face.

Verina attempts to diffuse the fight. Ash attempts to draw Verina away from the scuffle. Briar attempts to keep the other darklings seated to limit the escalation. The darklings draw knives on Hops and Briar. Hops matches steel with his axes, but uses the flats to nonlethally smack Dom. Dom grabs a green suited civilian shield, and Verina grabs Hops. Sqyylarr lets some punches fly at the darkling menacing Briar. Barika measures her options.

Ash and Professor Steele run out the kitchen back door, circle around the outside of the building, and jump a garden wall amongst several darklings suspiciously hiding outside the windows of the delegation’s bunk room. GG grabs the remaining gear and exits out the window. Once discovered, Ash drops back over the wall and conceals himself, preparing to tail any departing Darklings. Professor Steele leaps past the darklings into the inn’s courtyard where Briar, Sqyylarr and Barika have taken the brawl outside at Verina’s pleading. Many more darklings emerge from the shadows and surround the party.

Hops casts daylight over the courtyard making all the darklings uncomfortable enough to withdraw. Sqyylarr and raging Barika can’t resist some parting nonlethal swings making a tidy pile of unconscious darklings. Hops non-nonlethally attacks Dom standing in the doorway of the inn. An orc wanders into the courtyard, but it’s just GG in disguise. The courier arrives with a couple of dwarven beers. Refreshed Hops sends him off with another gold piece for the next round. 

Ash surreptitiously tails a few of the sylvan-speaking darklings escaping to a hideout. He observes their secret knock and returns to the inn where things have settled down for the moment.

Sqyylarr and Barika keep watch in the courtyard and arrange the unconscious darklings along the outer wall. 

Briar and Verina, passing the anti-scrying coin amulet looted from dead Dom, converse frankly and privately about the pervasive protection racket. Verina is livid about having to add reparations to her protection bill on account of Dom being slain at her inn, assuming that she and the inn even survive this.

Hops resurrects Dom, drags him to a private room, and gives him just a sliver of health for questioning. GG, famous for unhinging other people, slowly reveals his mechanical hand and slams it down in a shocking grasp of the table. Dom is amused. GG shocks amused Dom dead, leaving him to be resurrected a second time. Hops agrees, in principle, to free Dom should he give excellent answers to questions about the local criminal syndicate. Ash moves Dom to the bunk room into a zone of truth to ensure the veracity of those answers.

Dom explains that the local crime syndicate, organized for about a year now, is run by notably attractive mistress Eravastika. Townies like Tenrath get themselves disappeared because they don’t keep up their payments. What ultimately becomes of the disappeared is unknown to Dom, but GG, for one, suspects necromancy. Thanks to the mistress’s anti-scry amulets issued to her lieutenants, the entire organization operates under the proverbial nose of the town boss lady Silverhand. Dom can’t exactly commit to leave town with no final contact; he has his tribe to consider. The interrogation concludes when the constabulary shows up to investigate the kerfuffle at the inn.

Constable Stout is more curious than outraged about the pile of unconscious darklings in the courtyard. Barika doesn’t know how to explain any of it so Briar takes over. The Quastarte Delegation, on a diplomatic mission to lady Silverhand, was innocently checking into the Wayward House when the thuggish darklings showed up, assaulted Verina, and escalated the violence to the entire establishment until getting their tyrannical clocks cleaned. Hops invites Verina to verify this version of events, and she does so. Guards haul away the darklings, including protesting Dom. Constable Stout seems on the level to GG. Briar requests a security detail for the inn.

The beer courier delivers a cask of Burleson’s Dwarven Ale to Hops. The bard improvises a song about eggs. The kitchen whips up a feast of hens, roast beast, and veggies for the guests, then helps GG prepare a dozen flour-stuffed egg shells.

Master Brand and Portent Order condense the five unit caravans into a single train, leaned by removing all civilian refugees and other non-essential employees. Charlie Company will probe ahead to Silverymoon with two intentional objectives and one incidental bonus objective:

1. Deliver a gift, an ornate cylindrical box decorated in runes, to Silverymoon boss lady and notable archmage Alustriel Silverhand. Lady Silverhand is not an especially close ally of Quastarte and is powerful enough she doesn’t really need to be. This cordial relationship must be carefully cultivated. Therefore, and this cannot be emphasized enough, it is neither necessary nor recommended for the party to make personal contact with Lady Silverhand. It is sufficient merely to safely conduct the gift to her without dismantling it out of curiosity. 
2. Professor Anton Steele, before buckarooing into Cohoreth’s escape portal, corresponded with a Silverymoon merchant by the name of Tenrath Albessac, proprietor of Lost Things Found. Steele was apparently arranging to acquire a partial planar map strategically valuable against the Quastarte incursion. The party must complete this negotiation and acquire the artifact.
3. Quastarte in general, and the caravan in particular, has unrealized enemies all around and the local reaction to Quastarte must be evaluated. The party, as high profile representatives of Quastarte, will collect social data to further Quastarte’s diplomatic strategy.

One little non-negotiable mission requirement is that Charlie Company will be operating surreptitiously as Professor Anton Steele (Watc), Assistant Professor Grim “Gee-gee” Greycastle a.k.a. Griffen Garterrobe, a.k.a. Glitter Goateater, a.k.a. Goblin Grumbly, a.k.a. Grundlehorn Gutrot, a.k.a. Gruff Gimbleman, a.k.a. Gregg Gobbledygook, a.k.a. Geddy Gorecorpse, a.k.a. Giuseppe Gigglesnort, a.k.a. Gary Giddi-Up, a.k.a. Greg Gobstopper, a.k.a. Galloping Gilbert, a.k.a. Gordon Googlyeyes, a.k.a. Gordon GoodGrapple, a.k.a. Glenn Gleamingteeth, a.k.a. Grimace Gingerroot, a.k.a. Gimp Greaseeater, a.k.a. Gilbert Getbackinthebox, a.k.a. Giggles Gingerbread, a.k.a. Greta Garbo, a.k.a. Grappling Gavin, a.k.a. Gerald Goopygrin, a.k.a. Golly Goatroper, a.k.a. Geoffry Glibmouth, a.k.a. Gerhard Gunndersen, a.k.a. Goose Ganderson, a.k.a. Goodman Grey, a.k.a. Glengarry Glenn Gross, a.k.a. Green Gardenias, a.k.a. G’dayy Govna (Ander), Spellguard Captain Briar Quicksilver (Spellguard Captain Briar Quicksilver), and Spellguard Redshirts (Barika, Sqyylarr, Hops, and Ash).

The Steele Delegation (Charlie Company) sets out for Silverymoon in appropriate costume and with a livery upgrade from hillbillies to horses. Barika names her horse Gregg Gobblygook. En route east, an owlbear contending with a wolfpack for ownership of a stricken elk spooks the horses throwing Barika, Ander, Briar, and Hops to the ground. Watc evokes a wall of water around the elk diners. Ash and Hops prepare to defend the party. Barika and Sqyylarr catch their horses by the reins. Barika prepares to fight, and Sqyylarr helps Hops catch his horse before it can flee. Ander grapples his horse by the haunches as confused by his athleticism as his horse is. Eventually Ander’s horse wrestles out of the hold, but by that time Sqyylarr has caught hold of it and calmed it. Briar tries to reason with his horse; the horse comprehends but does not understand at first, but together they work through the confusion and Briar remounts. The party regroups and rides out just as the owlbear defeats the wall of water by walking through it.

After another day of travel, the Steele Delegation arrives at the north gate of Silverymoon. The party’s magic users can feel the magical pressure of the city wards that prevent conjuration magic, fire magic, and teleportation magic within city limits. They have also been warned of a city scrying network that can detect criminal or deceptive conversations. It is blocked only by anti-scry coins issued by local government. 

Owing to Watc’s flaw of being unable to keep a secret, Assistant Professor Grim Greycastle answers the guard’s queries under the pretense that Steele’s vocal processors are malfunctioning. The answer seems excessive and vociferous at first, but then the guard realizes the extraordinary importance of admitting the party without delay or challenge.

The horses are stabled with a pleasant fellow with a severe cough. He recommends a couple of nice inns, but can’t help with locating lost and found items. 

The party heads to the market center. Hops samples the food and drink, local news of which there is none, and decidedly avoids the aura cleansing bath, his aura already being the perfectly developed dwarven aroma as the rest of him. Barika checks out some crystal glass jars and then joins Hops at a flower vendor. Assistant Professor Greycastle finds several excellent potions, but can’t close the gap from his 20gp stipend to their extravagant price tags. Ash casually probes for local underworld contacts and meets four short, cloaked, possibly fey loan sharks who are the town bosses. Briar acquires some discount pumpernickel bread. Professor Steele approaches a dour town guard and inquires as to the location of Lost Things Found. Guard Jod has never met a living warforged before now, and he doesn’t care much for it now. Briar smooths out the escalating encounter and gets directions to the Lost Items Found in the southern district.

The party heads south, crossing the town’s iconic moon bridge over the River Rauvin. They find Lost Items Found along Ghost Way. A gawky teenager greets them as Master Albessac. The confusion clears up when it becomes evident that he is Elrith Albessac, son of the recently missing Tenrath Albessac. Professor Steele has no curbside order ready for pick up, so it seems like the party will be drawn into Albessac family drama.

Tenrath went missing a few weeks back, but there were no warning signs or likely enemies. His business was successful enough to afford him the indulgence of fancy clothes, wines, haircuts, and foods. If they could find Elrith’s pop for him, he would gratefully repay them with an anti-scry coin. Oh, also his mother has been pretty sick for months, if they wanted to have a gander at that.

The Steele delegation follows Elrith home to a very nice dwelling that backs up to the river. Elrith feeds bread and water to a frail middle aged lady in a bed of comforting magic. Hops detects that her ailment is poison, not disease as the family believes. Hops and Briar give her three magical curatives to eliminate, hopefully permanently, the source of illness so that she may recover on her own. The unusual, man-made poison, Hops suspects, was a trace amount delivered initially and only once by a needle.

Ash uses the distraction to slip away in the otherwise empty house. He finds Tenrath’s home office and deftly picks open the desk drawers. He finds accounting ledgers and coin sacks, but a maroon, tied book of encoded writing really catches his interest, despite and because of the fact he can’t quite decipher the code right away. He slips only the book into the Echo haversack and restores the office otherwise to its original condition.

Ash tracks the super soldier east and verifies the mine car bridges are sturdy enough to cross. The mining caverns evolve to worked dwarven ruins going eastward. Ash and Briar find hounds waiting in ambush ahead. Briar bear shifts to meet the challenge. Enraged Barika and slinging Sqyylarr engage the hounds. Ash claims the first hound, but more hounds swarm around the chamber’s columns. Arachnoids descend upon the party with spearing tails and acid webs. Hops keeps the party alive in between dual smashing hounds. Ash’s sneaky longbow and Ander’s and Watc’s firebolts go to work on the arachnoids engaging from high on the columns. Sqyylarr, Barika, and Briar try to hold the hounds at a perimeter.

Ander’s draconic shield stops an arachnoid, but he catches the void death from a hound. Hops slaps some curative goo on Ander’s tired, achy face, and he feels better. Raging Barika puts the pain on the hounds and advantageously inspires others to do the same. Sqyylarr finds the skull-cracking, critical sweet spot of her magic maul and wrecks eyeless face. Ash slays prey. Watc takes a tail spear and hangs unconscious in an acid web. Briar cuts her out, and a with healing word from Hops grants she disengage from the melee. Ander’s firebolt and Sqyylarr’s maul eliminate the last two arachnoids.

While the party takes an expedient rest, Ash explores a hidden control panel that may or may not retract a bridge across a chasm to a dwarven structure east. The super soldier’s trail ends at the bridge, but Ash supposes the aberration can leap the chasm when the bridge is retracted. As this seems like the final bridge leaving the mine, the safety lines are packed away. 

The refreshed party files in breaching formation along stairs up a 10’ Dias to a door into the structure. Ash makes a thorough examination of the perfectly ordinary door. There is no evident danger other than an ominous “H-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-” rattle of murderous chitin on the other side. Bear-shifted Briar opens the door.

Unhatched egg sacs dot the matrix of columns in the room. Barika goes to work smashing eggs which seems to provoke earnest shrieking. Sqyylarr, Hops, and Ander join in the smashing. A soldier drops on Hops but falls critically prone in the botched attack. The failure is systemic as a second soldier falls critically prone on Sqyylarr as well. 

A disapproving “H-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-” from the darkness convinces Ash to favor Briar with a bit of protection from all aberrations, good and evil. Briar comes to Hops’s defense with a restraining entanglement of vines around the soldier. Barika critically rages on the soldier. Hops adds some critical cleric damage. Sqyylarr pounds her own prone soldier. Ander and Watc toss in a couple of firebolts. Super soldier mama emerges from the shadows to super grapple and super bite Sqyylarr. The bite damage is undone by Hops’s preservation of life and Sqyylarr’s second wind.

Briar polishes off the surrounded, entangled soldier and quickly joins Sqyylarr in contact with super soldier mama. Ander critically scorches it with rays. Super soldier mama lashes out at Briar, but finds him disappointingly protected. Watc expeditiously excuses herself around Ash long enough to drop a fireball in the room that catches super soldier mama, a bunch of eggs, and a wounded soldier hiding in the corner of the room. Super soldier mama takes it out on Barika with a bite that ends up being not so bad thanks to her enragement. Hops repairs the ouchie and Barika has another go at it.

Ash searches for likely vulnerabilities; it has none. It shrieks fear into Ander, Barika, Ash, and Watc. Irritated by a second fireball, super soldier mama crosses the room and bites Watc unconscious. Hops favors Watc with a healing word. Watc disengages while the party attempts to regain combat momentum, surrounding it again. It doesn’t give up on the dream of killing squishy Watc and pursues her out the door. The party chases it out, jumping off the dias to keep the pressure on. With a bit of well-struck cleric damage, Hops slays super soldier mama. It crumbles in acid-etching death.

The party makes a final sweep of the caverns, eradicating the remaining egg sacs without further opposition. They recover Ash’s fallen comrades in Echo for proper memorial and burial. After convalescing in Queen Waybeard’s hospitality, Portent Order assigns Ash to Charlie Company and debriefs them.

The caravan will be reconfigured. The civilian evacuees will remain in Mithral Hall and the wagons combined in a single, leaner train of the three remaining companies, Alpha, Charlie, and Delta. Destination: Silverymoon.

Charlie Company takes an expedient rest to plan their next move against the most powerful soldier yet, prodigiously egg-laying throughout the mining complex below Mithral Hall. An elfy voice from the darkness inquires whether it has located friendly forces of Quastarte. Startled Hops blesses some sugar snacks. Charlie welcomes Morsandoriash Siannodel who was hours ago detached from Echo Company when the super soldier, which they were also hunting, irreversibly killed them all. 

Briar, mindful of his recent brush with mortality, uses Echo Company’s rope to tether each party member to hub Hops in a star configuration. Hops makes a pile of glow stones for illumination of dark corners, blesses the meat shields with extra health, and wards the healers from death. Charlie Company sallies forth, prepared to meet dangers from above, below, and sideways, 

Ash tracks the super soldier where it has clawed across rock and leapt the gaps over depths unknown. He longbows a couple of egg sacs across a significant jump. The arrows are consumed by sac acid. Hops looks for routes that minimize jumping and uses the safety rope to brace the party when jumps, and falls, are unavoidable. Barika and Sqyylarr engage hounds that Ash locates ahead while the rest of the party completes the jump.

The party fights its way north into an egg sac room defended by a few hounds and some stranglers. Stranglers hatch and join the fight immediately. The room is cleared of hounds, stranglers, and unhatched sacs. Another expedient rest provides the opportunity for bandaging bites and salving tentacle slaps.

Ander uses firebolts to cull the sacs in a dead end ahead leaving no stranglers behind. Hops moves to the center of a long parallel span so that the adventurers can, without untying their safety lines, maneuver around a couple of rock faces where there is no safe path. The trial goes very well for most, especially misty-stepping Watc, but Ander just can’t find his footing. Hops slings scrunched Ander onto his back and totes him around the obstacles.

Ash scouts ahead, and the twang of his longbow alerts the party to more hounds. The hounds charge into the party as Ash falls back to range, sneaking a fatal bowshot on one while Barika critically axes the other. Sqyylarr sends the rest running with a mighty, slung bullet.

The hounds’ apparent retreat may have less to do with Sqyylarr’s intimidating sling than the largish arachnoid who emerges from the depths and acid webs frontliners Briar, Sqyylarr, and Barika. It hides down the chasm. 

Ander’s artificed soldier armor protects Sqyylarr from the acid. Sqyylarr and Barika break free of the web and run down a pair of the hiding hounds. The arachnoid tail spears Hops across the chasm and hides again. Ander evokes a shatter over the arachnoid’s hidey-hole but no one hears a falling spider.

Briar remains stuck despite Hops and Watc attempting to free him. The hounds are quickly dealt with by Sqyylarr, Barika, and Hops. Ash, Ander, and Watc prepare volleys for the lurking arachnoid and nail it when it pops back up. Ash’s entangling shot prevents further escape. Briar misty steps to the nasty arachnoid and smites it dead with his battleaxe.

Charlie Company, deep in the caverns and taxed on resources, takes an uneasy expedient rest while Ash picks up the trail of the super soldier.

Queen Waybeard’s host returns to Mithral Hall with some notables rescued from destroyed Quastarte about the time the caravan arrives. Cleanup ensues and a council hosted by the queen, Regent Stonespeaker, and Master Brand convenes to exposit the situation.

This invasion of creatures, the Quori, from the plane of Dal Quor pushed through a portal at Quastarte by using a zero day exploit of dreamstate, but not before there were warnings from a Very Good Source. The university successfully evacuated people, material, and valuable commodities via portal out to Villa Glamhoth dal e’ Anto. Professor Anton Steele, famously preserved in a constructed body, and Regent Stonespeaker, famously preserved in his own dwarf body, stayed behind at Quastarte to lead the doomed defense at the cost of 1100 spellguard souls. The caravan with its secret cargo is ultimately headed to a monastery of Brother Im at the Firepeaks.

Steele disrupts the exposition as he obsesses over the location where Cohoreth escaped through his gate portal. Steele etches a burned circle into the floor despite the queen’s objections and gets an idea. Caravan companies are dispatched with instructions to gather and return with any living thing exactly five days old. Charlie Company commandeers a druid ringer and heads to Settlestone. Mushrooms of the correct maturity are purchased from a reputable mushroom dealer.

Steele sprinkles the mushrooms on the circle, incants a little deepspeech, and Cohoreth becomes visible through the mushroom hole. Gotcha! Steele jumps through the mushroom hole.

As the queen’s floor is already ruined, Ander tests out some acid-resistant armor made from the vanquished soldiers. The armor performs better than the floor. Sqyylarr, last to “not it”, becomes the recipient of the experimental psychic control armor.

Somehow the creature trapped in the guest room, assumed to be a soldier, has gotten loose. Charlie Company is tasked with exterminating the dangerous beast. They descend into a dark cellar and explore along dilapidated rail bridges.

Barika discovers a new creature when it strangles her. Ander’s turret slays the strangler but falls when the bridge collapses under it dividing the party on either side. Ander embiggens a board and demonstrates its structural integrity, but Watc, at 280 pounds, is not so sure. 

The stranglers attack nonstop, but fortunately succumb to the slightest injury. 

Hops misses a jump and falls, but Ander reacts to featherfall him and, tied by rope, jumps over and snags Hops. Sqyylarr, at the other end of Ander’s rope, feels the tug get lighter when Ander reduces Hops. Something very powerful knocks Briar out. Watc helps Sqyylarr to help Ander to help MiniHops up where he can heal Briar with a word.

The thing what almost killed Briar escapes in the darkness. Briar and Ander examine some open egg sacs along the walls. 

Hops rejoins the party from the secret conference room now that Dordo Husac Onearm Bristlejaw has rejoined his ancestors. Hops wonders why the party would have walked by so many unopened doors. 

The party doubles back and finds an array of six communal bedrooms behind the closed doors. Sqyylarr discovers that one of them contains a young, unscathed dwarf, Orek Copperforge, strategically sheltering in place to defend his own filth for three days now, and he is plenty ready to fight Sqyylarr. The party’s dwarvish speakers talk him down. Hops leverages their shared cultural sense of obligation to duty and convinces Orek to join the party.

Briar suggests that Hops teach everyone some introductory dwarvish phrases in case more survivors are found.

Orek informs the party that the stranger, Cohoreth, was admitted to Mithral Hall under the pretense of escaping the weather. Once inside, he summoned the eyeless aberrant army, houndacles, soldiers, and arachnoids, to destroy the garrison of 18 left by Queen Waybeard. Cohoreth took over the hall. He is probably in the throne room right now.

Now that one statistical survivor has been found, Ander begins crunching through the numbers like an aberrant houndacle crunches through inexperienced dwarves, and the expected survival rate of the garrison is not great. 

The party wanders into a hall of statues and finds a dwarf hung by his muscles and organs upon a pantheonic statue. Orek recognizes him as Queen Waybeard’s nephew, Helm Strongshield. As Briar and Hops prepare to remove Helm from the statue, two scared dwarves protest from the opposite end of the room. Removal of the ignominious display will get everyone into trouble! 

On cue, two of the really tough soldiers drop from the ceiling shadows onto the party. Barika critically hits the left one, Sqyylarr smashes the right one. Watc, exactly in between, fireballs from her position. The soldiers shift positions giving Briar the opportunity to get a piece. Barika runs down and finishes off one, Watc’s missiles of magic slay the other. The party flexes this decisive victory to impress and convince the dwarf younglings to join them. They bring along two more friends making five presumptive survivors.

Hops holds an improvised service to bolster the dwarves’ morale, and he blesses Ander, Barika, and Sqyylarr with a bit of fortification. A long rest would be better, but time is of the essence. 

The party charges to the throne room hoping to surprise Cohoreth with the question on everyone’s mind: is he an illusionist or a conjurer? But the surprise bounces off of Cohoreth and sticks to Ander because Cohoreth is both, yet neither, yet so much more, and he already knew they were coming apparently ever since Ander was born. Ander, noting Cohoreth’s Eberron aberrant dragonmark, freaks out. Hops, however, remains confident and casually offers to make Cohoreth some dwarven herbal tea from his bag.

Once the cunning barbs finally taper off, Briar initiates the fight popping one of several houndacles flanking around Cohoreth with his spiritual weapon. Sqyylarr flattens a houndacle in two hits. Enraged Barika and the martial dwarves engage the remaining houndacles. A pair of  soldiers drop in behind the party and start to mess up the dwarves. Ander and his turret focus on Cohoreth. Watc attempts to engage Cohoreth at range, but Cohoreth uses counterspells and other reactions to neutralize her best attempts. Hops, while personally engaged with the houndacles, drops a giant, distracting spiritual guardian in Cohoreth’s face.

The party is making good progress against the aberrant army when Cohoreth circles some death on the entire scrum. The dwarves catch the worst of it. Cohoreth smacks his staff onto the ground and retreats through a summoned portal, pausing to try and think of some witty remark in parting.

The last few abandoned houndacles surround Sqyylarr, right where she wants them, as she catches her second wind and surges into action. Briar lays hands upon Sqyylarr as she flattens two houndacles. Hops heals the masses and all the dwarves pop up again. Barika claims the final houndacle.

The gates of Mithral Hall, now under new management, are opened to the caravan.

The refreshed and improved [level 7] party departs Dordo’s secret hall and enters Mithral Hall proper at the end of a hallway. The concealed door’s dwarven workmanship is so impressive that Sqyylarr can’t even recognize where she just came through.

Unconcealed doors to the left and right open to a gurgling well and larder, respectively. Briar replenishes his waterskin from the well.

Two eyeless, black hounds with tentacle manes charge around the corner. Barika’s great axe takes out one houndacle just as a third shows up. Watc firebolts the second dead, Sqyylarr’s maul gets the third.

Ander upgrades his turret for a longer stride and it keeps pace along the ceiling. Watc finds a dead dwarf in a washroom. Briar convinces Watc the dead dwarf is missing a few of his most important organs, apparently eaten by the houndacles, and is beyond repair. The body shows signs of acid damage as well. Watc tries unsuccessfully to ID the dwarf by his runic cube. More slain dwarves lie scattered ahead in a grid of hallways to the north.

Briar presses bravely forward. An eyeless, black thing with segmented carapace drops on Briar from the ceiling. Shrugging off some otherwise excellent swings from Ander and Barika, the critter takes a couple of swipes at Briar and Sqyylarr and scampers off into the darkness entirely unscathed.

With guidance from Briar, Watc attempts to circle around and contain the critter in the hallway between them, lighting it up with a few can’t-miss magic missiles. Ander scorches it with a few rays and Barika debuts her ice breath weapon on it. Barika gets a vicious double clawing for that ice breath, and the critter escapes again, though not before Barika gets an opportunity to nick it with her axe. The critter gets the last pro quo as the slashed wound sprays her with acid. Watc finishes it with follow up magic missiles.

A discussion of how much everyone hates this latest enemy is interrupted by a second one leaping from a dark corner. It grapples Briar with a hideous claw. Ander shrinks the critter and it lets go of Briar with it’s tiny, hideous claw. It tries to run and hide, but Ander’s scorching ray slays it.

Ander spends an hour harvesting the very durable carapaces for some later artificing. Injured Briar takes a wee sip of the local well water and feels quite a bit better. He keeps drinking it until he feels completely better and invites the others to fill up on this excellent revitalizing water. Amazing as it is, the well cannot swing an axe or charmingly deride one’s lack of dwarven sense and therefore could never replace Hops who has stayed back to tend to Dordo.

The party returns to the hallway complex and follows the three parallel stairways west up to a well-lit grand hall. Watc and Sqyylarr are pinned by a slung acid web as four eyeless, black, segmented arachnoid critters drop around them from the high ceiling. Sqyylarr breaks free because she is freakishly strong. Watc misty steps out because she is not freakishly strong. The arachnoids can tail-spear Briar from several feet away, and they do so. Briar is surrounded by three arachnoids and dodges just to stay alive. Sqyylarr holds off the fourth. Barika, who has been fairly chill all day, gets enraged. Watc fireballs the lot of them and drops the one that Sqyylarr and Ander have already softened up. The party picks off another arachnoid as Briar clings to his deity-infused life. The last two arachnoids, very tired from a long day, attempt to flee. Barika slays one but the other escapes.

Barika frantically inquires as to Watc’s preferred personal pronoun.

After an hour spent salving the spike wall-induced holes in Briar and Ander, Charlie Company resumes progress through the labyrinth side door toward, hopefully, Mithral Hall. Several skeletons stand opposed to this progress. Hops clerically turns five of them, one fatally. Sqyylarr and Briar mop up the others.

Briar hands Watc an unlit replacement torch which Watc prestidigitates into ignition. Catching the torchlit sight of a black pudding oozing up behind Briar, Watc reverses to safety.

Hops summons a spiritual flaming sword pommel-to-shoulder with Briar to block the pudding. Hops’s spiritual flaming sword is statistically ineffective against the black pudding, alternating critical failures and whiffs. Briar’s battleaxe is a victim of its own success as it cleaves the pudding into more puddings which corrode the blade. Barika draws a javelin, which she doesn’t really enjoy carrying around anyway, and works on one of the puddings. Along with Sqyylarr’s slung bullets and firebolts from Ander and Watc, the black puddings get cooked down to black residue which Ander collects.

Bas relief eyes gratuitously adorn the passages ahead. They seem to urge a course of action, but each appears exactly the same therefore offering no clear direction to select. A section of wall catches Barika’s interest. Ander finds a concealed door. With only a stonecunning glance, Hops easily swings the secret door open and Barika leads the torchlit way.

There are no visual cues to follow, but Watc traces distinctly fresher air to the left leading them to a lit staircase. Briar cautiously proceeds up the stairs and finds a grievously wounded dwarf slumped at a long table. 

Briar lays hands upon the dwarf who jolts back to axe-wielding awareness. Briar introduces himself to Dordo Husac Bristlejaw and explains they seek an audience with Queen Waybeard but were unexpectedly denied access to Mithral Hall; hence the arrival by way of labyrinth. Dordo explains that two weeks ago the good queen gathered her entire host of warriors and cavalry to ride southwest to Neverwinter, leaving behind only a minimal garrison under the command of her nephew, Helm Strongshield. Two nights ago, a visitor arrived seeking refuge from the weather and was granted entrance to Mithral Hall. This proved to be a big mistake. The stranger, intensely interested in some approaching caravan, murderously subdued the garrison with summoned fell beasts. Dordo managed to narrowly escape to this secret chamber to tell the tale, but seems to have lost one arm in the battle.

Dordo offers Briar his uncorroded battle axe if Briar will agree to wet it with the blood of their mutual enemies. Briar accepts that condition, but not before a long rest.