Dungeons & Dragons

After an exhausting battle with fire priests and their chimera and their hobgoblins, the party elects to conceal itself in a closet to dress wounds before attempting to move. Theren barricades the room by piling corpses against the doors. Before anyone feels any better, the fire cult returns in force. A fire genasi apprehends Theren despite his impersonation of a distraught fellow cultist. Bromsby et al come out of hiding to rescue Theren from the arresting fire genasi Bastian Thermandar. Eventually.

Meega charges up to Bastian and knocks him on his back, but he steps to the other side of the room and launches a fireball back at the party. Snake Theridan and Lefty whittle away the small force of hobgoblins. Auroch Bromsby pursues a priest and cultist out of the room and down the hall. Snake Theridan bites Theren’s hands free of their bonds. Theren recovers his gear.

Bastian departs abruptly when a tremendous force hits the red cauldron door. A couple of fiery arms reach through the doorway forcing back the blocking pile of corpses. The owner-operator of the fiery arms is plenty ticked at the desecrating invaders of his temple. If Bastian doesn’t want to be here, neither does the party times a hundred. The party cheeses it out of the fire temple.

. . .

After a pleasantly safe and uneventful evening of convalescing, the party makes its way through the underground Besilmer network by way of the iron gate in the air cult area into a compact entry way outside the water cult area. Theridan listens at the door and hears the perfectly unsurprising babble of running water.

Through the door is a badly damaged chamber save for a conspicuously undamaged, engineered fountain of clear water running into a basin. Lefty immediately spots a couple of critters camouflaged against a rocky outcrop. She attempts a friendly greeting and they attempt a telepathic invasion of Theridan’s brain. Lefty approaches them and finds herself staring into the necrotic eye beams of a couple of nothics. Meega charges, Theren shoots, Theridan whips, Lefty punches. The nothics are quickly subdued.

Bromsby and Haerelben check out the fountain situation. The water has some magical healing properties which Meega readily confirms with a practical ingestion test. Theren and Theridan fill their waterskins for later.

The party proceeds through the opposite door into another hallway. A metal plate in the stone door at the far end of the hallway pops open and a challenge for the cult sign is demanded. Helpless shrugging is not the cult sign and the plate slams shut. Meega forces the plate open again and Haerelben commands the occupant to open. The cultist unwisely opens the door for the party and is rewarded with a blue faerie fire painting and thorn whipping from Theridan. A concealing fog fills the room, but Theridan dispels it. Theren leans around the doorway and slays the blue man with a bolt from Diplomacy. Lefty knocks out the other cultist.

Haerelben zones up some truth to question the prisoner. Meega locks the other door into the room. More cultists arrive from the hallway and a paradoxical circle restraining ensues among the cultists and Snake Theridan. Meega, Lefty, Theren, and Snake Theridan quickly defeat the cultists.

Haerelben and Bromsby extract a bit of new information from the prisoner. Gar Shatterkeel is the local boss, possibly prophet, and in fact he does have a favorite weapon called Drown which will be the party’s demise. Gar serves presumed elemental prince Olhydra, all hail.

The interrogation of Sud, of the Eternal Flame, and Orgaal, of the Crushing Wave, winds down. A short rest follows the expiration of the zone of truth. Sud and Orgaal behave but don’t reconcile on any personal or professional level. They are allowed to depart through the eastern hall which connects to the earth cult area, or so Sud claims. The group follows to ensure Sud’s orderly egress but immediately attracts the attention of a nesting chimera when Haerelben clamorously trips down the stairs. The party backs slowly away with the implicit cooperation of the chimera.

The party backtracks in the presumed direction of the fire temple proper. Theren peeks into a room along the hallway which has been secured from the outside by a hasp and pin. Four hellhounds rest peacefully unaware of Theren’s intrusion. Theren resecures the door.

Bromsby produces a flask and takes a swig. Meega realizes they have similar flawed predilections and takes a pull off the flask. Lefty scowls righteously. Theren charges at the flask, predictably agitated by the sudden presence of his second greatest nemesis: alcohol. After an unsuccessful attempt to snatch away the flask from strongly determined Bromsby, Theren resorts to a scientifical explanation that the brain is the body’s main filter for alcohol, and that filter needs to be in prime condition for LOGIC. Bromsby and Meega drink to that. Prosit!

Theridan explores ahead to discover a room of meticulously maintained machinery. Haerelben, enrolled at Ardak’s college of technomancy at Quastarte, studies the works through the proficiency of divine knowledge of the ages. Nudging the single obvious lever ever-so-slightly causes the mechanism to satisfyingly drive and then settle again.

A temple rando runs by the foot of the stairs at the end of the hallway. The party sneakily deploys at the corners of the intersection to reconnoiter the hallway. Nothing else is coming, and the runner is out of sight. Haerelben stomps into the hallway. Theren takes the lead and finds himself the punctured subject of an ambush by a room full of waiting cultists and hobgoblins. Theren trades back some crossbow bolts. Meega bashes in a cultist. Theridan speeds things along with a maelstrom summoned into half the room slamming half a dozen cultists to death.

A high level caster enters the far side of the room and immolates Theridan. Theridan maintains concentration on the maelstrom. A hobgoblin captain, singing encouragingly for his troops, comes at Bromsby who has flamboyantly presented himself in the geometric center of the room according to Lefty’s calculations.

Haerelben conveys Sehanine’s blessings and ducks around a corner. Theren marks the caster and sends crossbow bolts across the room. Surrounded Bromsby goes to snake form and Theridan trades his maelstrom for boar form. Meega charges the hobgoblin captain and knocks him down. Lefty claws up a cultist. A clog of magmen join the fight.

Theren’s wounds are lightly cured just in time for the caster to drop a wall of fire through the party. Walled-in Lefty ignites. She and Meega take out a couple of the magmen. Boar Theridan charges around the tussle toward the caster. A guarding magman smacks Boar Theridan afire which makes everyone else hungry. Snake Bromsby puts the choke on the hobgoblin captain.

Refreshed Theren charges through the crowd of druid animalia, fighty fighters, cultists, goblinoids, and prodigious piles of perished people to get to the caster who inconveniently ducks around a corner between casting her hurtful spells. Here’s Theren!, he yells at her. She regrettably does not yell her own name in return but instead suggests that Theren will find the power he seeks behind that curtain over there. Theren demurs the invitation and instead shoots her lethally in the face with his heavy crossbow.

Encouraged by the demise of the troublesome caster, the party focuses its efforts on a heroically dressed tough. Flaming Lefty puts the final hurt on him and he explodes violently. Lefty evades with cat-like agility and finishes off the troublesome hobgoblin captain as well. He does not explode. Meega chops down a pair of cultists and they don’t explode. Flaming Boar Theridan gores a magman and he explodes.

Theren is just finishing off the very last hobgoblin when in runs the chimera, evidently summoned by the caster as a desperate final act. Bromsby summons a fire wall around the chimera. Lefty and Meega strike blindly through the fire wall at the chimera. It bursts out, fire breaths Meega, and flies over for a bite of Theridan. Theren marks the chimera and slays it with a bolt.

The party observes the room for the first time. There is a red door to the east which someone wanted to paint with a black cauldron. There are forges with anvils and bedding around the sides. Twenty-one recently created corpses are strewn around, but a search of their pockets yields no intelligence or treasure. It’s all very compelling and difficult to leave, but the party is too weary to risk any more encounters today.

The party takes an hour in the secret Findon and Gitte tomb to dress wounds and plan the next move. Fortunately for the safety of Faerûn, if not the entire natural world, the next move is to continue exploration into the fire cult.

The party retraces its steps to search the sleeping quarters of the slain dullard and fire priests. Bloody drag marks down the halls indicate the slain were dragged toward the foundry. Scorch marks indicate not all the slain had sufficient remains to leave drag marks.

Soggy documents found in the living quarters invariably end with hails to Imix and Vanifer. The documents reveal that the forge produces weapons and armor for an army, specifically the army who attacked Shrine of the Iron Oath. Documents also reveal the extent of Enit’s annoyingness.

Theridan stealthily probes ahead to the foundry where the bloody drag marks terminate into the channels of lava that power the forge. A pair of guards conspicuously protect stairs exiting the opposite side of the foundry. Haerelben trips in a clatter of purloined hobgoblin half plate, attracting the attention of the guards nervously anticipating another wave of rampaging liberated salamanders. The guards relax when Theren offers the correct passphrase, Fire is Eternal. The guards tense again when Theridan, transformed into a fire elemental, crosses toward them crackling in ignan. Theren joins in the ignan convo. The guards beg forgiveness at their lack of diligence learning the ignan language so Haerelben translates: you are relieved, go away. That directive is countermanded by a supervisor who emerges between the guards. His ignan and spear are both sharp.

Supervisor demands to know why this unscheduled fire elemental is here, standing in his forge. Theren explains he has tamed a wild elemental. Supervisor is impressed but also ambitious. He looks forward to presenting this accomplishment to Vanifer personally. Theren would accommodate that desire if he only could, but the elemental only answers to Theren’s commands. Supervisor becomes suspicious. Theren shoots him with a couple of debate-ending bolts.

The cultists attack Fire Theridan, but fighting fire with fire is less effective than rumored. Bromsby erupts earth and ignited Lefty punches in with yet more fire. Fire Theridan jogs through the guards while the party focuses on Supervisor. Meega fatally plants Giant Slayer into Supervisor and he explodes. Bromsby calls up some lightning through the guards slaying one of them. The other goes to strike Meega, but Fire Theridan sentinals him dead.

Theren adds a looted flaming longsword to his collection. Haerelben looks around for a lava control panel to flood the forge but, to Meega’s relief, does not find anything. Fire Theridan begins opening doors in the now unguarded hallway. He finds a couple of rooms piled with junk, both sorted and unsorted. Fire Lefty and Theren poke around in the rooms. Theren comes up with a few gold pieces, but otherwise it’s really just junk.

Fast moving Fire Theridan backdrafts around the passage ahead. He impresses a couple of guards with his fiery presence, but the ignan language barrier prevents any meaningful contact. Theridan finds a decorative dwarven brazier and some furrows of ash. He reports the situation back to Theren who then translates back to the rest of the party. Theren is challenged by the guards but flubs the passphrase and then breaks a string trying to shoot them. Très awkward.

Bromsby erupts earth around the brazier to injure the guards. Fire Theridan and Fire Lefty rudely burn through the party to get to the guards. Lefty non-lethally fire claws down one guard while Meega and Theren lethally take out the other. Another guard enters. Lefty and Meega soften him up so that Bromsby can kill steal him with a thorn whipping.

A door opens allowing through a fireball that envelopes most of the party. The party attacks the fiery source of the fireball while Lefty engages a guard. Meega knocks the caster down but catches another fireball before Lefty extinguishes the priestess. Theridan, out of elemental form, shillelaghs the guard to death.

Haerelben revives the unconscious, unbound guard. The guard comes up swinging, gets knocked out again, and is bound. With everyone but Theren gathered around the guard, Haerelben casts zone of truth.

Sud the guard got here a month ago or so, drawn to the lifestyle by the cool, yet hot, weapons and armor. Prophetess Vanifer has the coolest weapon of all, a dagger named Tinderstrike that she uses in service to Imix, all hail Imix. Sud knows how to get to the fire temple, of course, but is terrible at giving directions to others. His schedule today was mostly to torture a water cultist there in the back room, breaking his wrists as one does. Theren drags the broken water cultist, Orgaal, into the zone of truth.

Orgaal serves Gar Shatterkeel who serves Olhydra. There does seem to be a satisfyingly symmetrical artifact of elemental water, and Orgaal proposes that it will be the party’s demise.

Haerelben examines the statues in the fire cult lobby. One of them is unusually breezy. Lefty slips behind that statue and finds a stale room, undisturbed by the cult occupiers. Within, Theridan locates a pair of sarcophagi for short folk. Bromsby reads the twin Dethek inscriptions:

Rest well, Findon Stonemender, dream of hammer and chisel echoing in your halls.

Beloved Gitte, heavy are the hearts of all who knew ye.

Haerelben recollects the dwarven legend of a Stonemender who slew a kraken. Said Stonemender had a main squeeze, so it could be this pair.

Theren enlists Meega’s strength to open Findon’s stone lid. For the good of the mission, Theren retrieves a sapphire-eyed mask from the skeletal remains. Theren exchanges his hobgoblin graft for the new mask which gently sucks onto his face with a slight foomp. He can see and breathe easily despite having neither mouth nor nose holes. He next retrieves what seems to be an oak oar but with a sharp point instead of a grip. Bromsby reckons the mask and weapon are a set, designed for unimpeded combat under water. Martial master Meega accepts the set wondering when she would ever find the opportunity to use them.

Meega opens Gitte’s stone lid. Theren and Theridan examine the remains while everyone else capitalizes upon the secret room to grab some sleep. It is during the second watch that Haerelben and Lefty find Gitte’s lovely crown beneath some wood chips. Lefty dons the crown, and nothing terrible happens. Haerelben wonders about Gitte’s fish-like skeleton.

Rested, the party explores deeper into the cult. A hallway of symmetrically spaced doors, many of them secured by hasps on the outside, attracts Lefty’s attention. She hears faint snoring at the first unlocked door. Theridan opens the door just a tiny bit. The door thunks, waking the occupant who wonders whether it is already time for his watch. The roused cultist ignites into his work uniform of fire. Theridan backs away in time to avoid Bromsby’s conjured sphere of water that traps the fire guy in his room. Lefty is ejected farther into the hallway, isolated from the party but safe from the fire guy.

Meega, seizing the perfect timing, dons her new water breathing mask, hefts the new oar weapon, and charges into the sphere of water toward the fire guy. Meega knocks the fire guy to and fro with the oar axe from within the sphere while the fire guy fire punches at the sphere. When punching proves futile, he steams the place up with an equally futile scorching ray.

Theridan peaks down the stairs ahead where an efreeti oversees operation of a foundry worked by enslaved azers, salamanders, and dwarves. So far the tussle in the hallway has gone unnoticed from the commotion of the foundry. Theridan backs away.

A cult dullard exits his room and demands an explanation from isolated Lefty. Lefty ignites. The dullard is unsure whether ignition makes Lefty his superior. He yells down the hallway for others to wake up. Bromsby, observing the unfolding complication on the other side of his water sphere, shifts the sphere into the fire guy’s room. The sphere engulfs the fire guy and all his TPS reports. Meega wails on this floating, drowning, extinguished person. The hallway is now open for Theridan to thornwhip the dullard. The dullard retaliates by punching Bromsby. The sphere spell falters. A second fire guy emerges from his room and cones up some burning hands. Lefty gives him the claw treatment and Theren lends his crossbow. The fire guys begin launching fire balls into the clustered party. Bromsby drops and Haerelben retreats around the corner with a sliver of life.

Meega switches back to Giant Slayer and extinguishes the last bit of her fire guy. Theridan becomes a water elemental and absorbs the other fire guy, forcing him back into his room. Lefty finishes off the dullard. Theridan slams the last fire guy dead. Haerelben revives Bromsby. Theren, mind full of visions from his brother’s clockwork goldfish of the destruction of his ancestral village by the fire cult, impatiently heads for the locked doors to find and release the enemies of his enemies, extracting promises from the salamanders not to engage the neutral azers. The party barely has time to duck into one of the vacated rooms before a parade of liberated salamanders files past to wreak havoc on their former captors. Theren yells encouragingly in ignan, ¡Viva la revolucion!

Once the commotion of slaughter subsides, the party slips out of the living quarters. They meet several liberated azers and dwarfs. Theren encourages them to arm themselves from the many dead goblins and hobgoblins before showing them the way out of the cult area.

The party returns to the secret tomb of Findon and Gitte.

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.

Limping Lefty looks for some Sehanine sympathy, but the party is otherwise in good shape after the cloaker(s) encounter. Lefty finds 150 gold from the real deceased real cloaker and receives a light curative via Haerelben. Meega points out that the bustling noises of departing cultists has ceased, leaving open the possibility of returning to investigate the two large, initiate-powered mill wheels discovered earlier, and their relationship to the changing water level. Bromsby and Theren continue to explore the marketplace, listening at a couple of different doors. Decorative walls and flagstone floors in this area are embedded with coins featuring a smiling dwarf which match signage above one of the doors. Haerelben confidently identifies the likeness of Smilin’ Mordy.

Bromsby and Theren detect sounds of breathing and shuffling beyond the barred doors. Lefty starts hand burning her way through a wooden door, but gives up when the door does not ignite. Theren knocks on the Smilin’ Mordy door and offers cheerful greetings to the shufflers within. The reply invites Theren to go away. Theren inquires whether that would be Smilin’ Mordy speaking. There is no Smilin’ Mordy, go away.

Once verbal diplomacy yields nothing, Bromsby suggests the occupants either unbar the door or step away from it. He pops a hole in the stone wall with Iron Oath. Lefty peeks in and sees a robed cult sorcerer evocating up some nastiness. Meega, with Sehanine-enhanced strength, kicks the door open a couple of feet.

Lefty dodges the lightning bolt that erupts through the hole. The bolt singes Bromsby and catches Haerelben full in the face. Haerelben staggers around a corner to collect himself. Bromsby erupts earth under the sorcerer. Lefty charges in through the ajar door, sees several other waiting cultists, and charges right back out. Meega dashes in, face to face with the sorcerer. What name? KILL HER!

Killher the cult sorcerer passes a lightning bolt through Meega and into Bromsby. Theren makes his entrance yelling for diplomacy and shoots a couple of bolts from his crossbow, Diplomacy. Cultists leap over the tables to assault Meega and Theren, and one slams the door shut. Bromsby picks off a cultist through the hole. Lefty can’t shove the door open so she squeezes through the hole. A thunderous boomerang smashes into Theren, but he continues diplomacizing his assailants with bolts.

Meega chops down the sorcerer, already gravely wounded by the crushing eruption of earth. A second chop splits a cultist. Meega scrambles through the erupted earth to assist Theren by taking out another cultist.

Lefty runs down the last cultist, cornering the thunderous boomerang thrower. Bromsby orders him to yield. His boomerang [Storm Boomerang] is surrendered to Lefty. The obliging cultist answers questions, revealing that the large mills control water gates. He is released and departs.

Bromsby reads engravings in the room: Welcome to Vergadain’s Hall. Strange that the dwarven god of trade would use the likeness of Smilin’ Mordy. Bromsby proposes that this area has been thoroughly explored, and the fire cult area is conveniently nearby and ripe for disruption by the increasingly capable [ding 10] party. But first, a rest.

With the umber hulk in retreat for now and the distant sounds of the air cult in panicked disarray, the party is free to contemplate the very, very hot flame stone plucked from statue Moradin’s lantern. Meega attempts to persuade Theren to not attempt to persuade Lefty to pick up and handle the stone. Meega fails, and Theren succeeds.

Lefty picks the stone out of the cast iron pot. Her paw erupts in searing hot pain and she drops the stone back into the pot. Haerelben examines her paw, but it is physically undamaged.

The party continues exploring the abandoned Besilmer market. Bromsby and Meega cautiously listen at doors before opening to a crumbled Besilmer haberdashery and a crumbled Besilmer pottery barn. Theren yanks open tall, stone double doors, kicking out the spike set by cultists to keep in the ghouls.

Theren plugs a ghoul with a couple of bolts. Bromsby shatters it with a ray of frost. Lefty punches the next ghoul in line. Haerelben gets between a pair of ghouls and turns the undead. Sehanine’s disdain for the undead leaves one undead, but crumples the other. An array of tall crypts obscures the fact that the undead turning has destroyed eight unseen ghouls surrounding the party.

Meega dashes up in time to watch Theren, Bromsby, and Lefty take out the surviving ghoul. The party fans out to gather up any remaining ghouls. Only three more are found and are quickly exterminated, especially the unfortunate ghoul found by Meega, irritated at missing so much of the action. Meega critically double chops the ghoul into an unrecognizable re-dead torso heap.

A search of the crypts is made for anything that might help the fight against elemental evil. Theren decides that 27 figurines, masks, and keepsakes [50 gp each] would help, if but indirectly. No one disputes it.

A short rest is made while Meega repairs Theren’s heavy crossbow. Again.

With fresh minds, the party gathers to brainstorm the fire stone. Meega holds the bright stone aloft with her smith’s tongs for Bromsby and Haerelben to examine. Theren convinces Lefty that pain is an excellent teacher. Lefty grasps the burning stone and this time holds on to it despite the pain. She learns that the pain goes away.

Lefty bursts into flame. Bromsby and Meega freak out while sociopaths Theren and Haerelben look on. Lefty insists she is no longer in pain despite the flames. Theren calmly conjectures that all her pain nerves have burnt away. Haerelben touches Lefty’s nose to see if she has a fever and recoils in burning pain. Lefty relaxes her grasp of the stone and the flames extinguish leaving her quite well.

Exploration of the market resumes. Lefty pokes into a room and is attracted to a black leather duster hanging on the wall. The duster envelopes Lefty’s head when she advances for a closer look. A moaning attack paralyzes Meega and Theren. The cloaker’s tail whips at Lefty.

Haerelben slips around Meega who is blocking the doorway. There are three leather cloaks flying around the room while one engorges on Lefty. Haerelben casts confusion which has no effect except upon Lefty’s assailant who stops attacking but remains attached to suffocating Lefty. Bromsby, Theren, and Meega take out the other three cloakers quickly. Too quickly. Bromsby pulls the confused cloaker off of Lefty and the party goes weapons-free on it. Meega knocks it to the floor and Lefty ignites, killing the prone cloaker with a fiery punch.

Bromsby cautiously follows the golem who has resumed patrolling around the moat that traces the temple pyramid. Unconscious Theren has been thorn whipped out of the water. Haerelben boops Sehanine’s wound curative into Theren’s Lefty-stabilized nose. Meega studies the golem to learn its number of seasons and to quantify its well-being. Satisfied with the golem’s further disinterest, the party retreats to the Flametongue throne room for a badly needed snooze.

Lefty times a quick bath in the moat, avoiding the golem patrol, to remove the previous day’s gore splatter. The party explores a walkway north where a giant statue of Moradin stands at a crossroads of what was once a network of underground shops, now fallen into ruin. Haerelben ponders [critically failed arcana] a perpetually illuminating lantern the statue holds aloft. He gets a headache. Meega, eyeing discarded cultist garb and indications of bloody struggles, remains vigilant. Theren enters a long-abandoned jeweller’s shop and finds no valuables in the rubble. Something about the lantern continues to tickle Bromsby’s curiosity and he returns to examine the statue, much to Haerelben’s annoyance. Headached Haerelben, having thoroughly examined the statue and lantern already, dissuades the others from wasting any more time on it. Bromsby persists after encouragement from Meega.

Meega climbs up Moradin. Bromsby tosses Iron Oath up. Meega deftly breaks out the top crystal facet of the lantern exposing the brightly burning rock centered within the lantern by a spork. Lefty runs up Moradin to have a look for herself. Bromsby shifts to a giant bat and critically inspects the phenomenon. He squeaks excitedly, takes the temperature of the stone, and shifts back into a svirfneblin who cannot safely fly back to the floor.

Nearby shuffling is heard.

Meega retrieves the burning rock with her smith’s tongs. With Lefty’s help, Meega transfers the burning rock to her double gloved hand. The burning rock burns into the gloves. She transfers it into a cast iron pot she’s been lugging around. Haerelben, despite his disadvantageous headache, confirms the arcanic significance of the artifact, quite possibly one of the anticipated elemental foci.

Haerelben holds up the iron pot and dashes toward the shuffling noises to test the artifact’s channel of sacred flame. Lefty explores ahead and quickly locates an umber hulk. The radiant energy of sacred flame erupts into the umber hulk, but no differently than usual. Disappointed Haerelben returns the pot to Meega. Bromsby, using Iron Oath to make enough sand to extinguish the burning rock, maneuvers to erupt earth under the umber hulk. The umber hulk creates a zone of confusion. Lefty gets doubly confused and attacks the umber hulk. Theren, with perfect clarity, pours crossbow bolts into the umber hulk. The umber hulk burrows away.

The party gathers around the burning rock artifact to collaborate, but ultimately cannot reach a conclusion as to the nature of the item.

From the ancient dwarven throne room most recently occupied by vanquished elemental air prophet Aerisi Kalinoth, the party hears a ruckus. Bromsby and Theren investigate the scale model map. Haerelben finds Kalinoth’s mundane hand mirror which is anything but mundane to Lefty. Meega repairs Theren’s snapped crossbow. The ruckus persists.

The party descends to the entry level of the pyramid temple where a mob of initiates has cornered a halfling known to some as Welby. Kalinoth’s demise has unleashed a starvation revelation within the cult, and Welby is on the menu. Again.

A pair of cult warriors attempt to establish order over the initiates preparing to bisect Welby at his wishbone. Theren drops an initiate with a crossbow bolt. Lefty hands a starving initiate a vial of poison which he gratefully drinks and dies of. Meega and Bromsby join together axe and thornwhip to slay a third initiate. Haerelben makes his way to Welby to find him healthy if a bit tenderized. Haerelben commands the initiates to eat some air instead of Welby.

The cultists are trounced, especially the one Theren explodes with a boosted crossbow shot. A cultist escapes by jumping into the howling air pit and descends to parts unknown. Parts unknown seems worth taking a few moments to explore. Theren combines their ropes into a 200 foot length secured to a nearby column. Welby walks down the side of the shaft like a spider. Lefty ties on the rope and jumps in, featherfalling. Bromsby floats down in a controlled fall by gathering his priestess dress. Theren and Meega follow Brombsy’s example, using cloaks and clothing to modulate speed and direction to fall into the updraft. Meega pipes up some bubbles which begin to fill the temple above. Haerelben waits at the top, peering down and messaging for news from downshaft until the rest of the party floats out of range. 

Lefty dangles at the end of the rope, within view of the bottom where Bromsby, slowing with his cloak, can make out a pile of corpses in the chamber below. Welby hammers pitons into the stone shaft to secure the end of the rope. Lefty shadow steps to the floor, and immediately a gust viciously assaults her and smashes her into the wall. Theren desperately fires a silvered crossbow bolt at the cyclone, but the bolt strikes the floor right through the elemental. Apparently not a werewind. Lefty runs along the wall and jumps back into the shaft, smacking Meega into Bromsby. Meega quaffs a potion of spider walk to steady herself, but the cyclone attacks and throws her into the chamber.

 

Theren plays the magic flute and enthralls the cyclone, now hovering and awaiting Theren’s command. Unsure whether he has committed himself to a lifetime of flute playing, Theren experimentally commands the cyclone to gather corpses and feed them into the shaft for looting at the top. The cyclone complies.

Lefty has had enough and floats to the top of the shaft. Haerelben inquires as to the fate of the rest of the party. Lefty shrugs and starts a cat nap. Welby lowers a rope from the bottom of the shaft to allow Meega, Theren, and Bromsby a way up out of the chamber. The rope is slackening as though it won’t drop into the chamber.

The corpses fed into the foot of the shaft by the cyclone get churned up by the air turbulence and form a gore plug that chokes the updraft, isolating Meega, Theren, and Bromsby below. The gore plug begins to accelerate up. Bromsby hangs ten on the gore plug and rides it to the top. Haerelben sees the approaching danger and reacts in time to shield himself with his cloak, but Lefty is caught napping and is sprayed with gore, presumably the remains of Meega, Theren, and Bromsby. Lefty and Welby co-vomit.

The dangling rope Welby prepared, now generously coated in slick gore, drops into the chamber. Meega, Theren, and Bromsby make their way into the shaft and float to the top, reuniting the whole party. Some restful time is spent cleaning gore out of wounds in the relative cleanliness of the upstairs throne room.

The party abandons the gore-coated temple to investigate the change in water level of the moat. The water level is some ten feet lower than the edge where it had been. A stone head pokes from the surface of the water and is slowly heading downstream toward the waterfall flowing out a break in the surrounding chasm wall. Theren quickly hatches a plan to tether himself with the gore rope and leap into the rushing moat toward the stone head. The plan goes without a hitch. Theren discovers the head belongs to a stone golem who begins beating him to death. Bromsby thorn whips Theren away from the golem and Meega reels him up the edge of the moat. Lefty stabilizes Theren’s unconscious body.