Once the Nightstone folks get clear of their Dripping Cave prison, the party moves back in to rescue, or recover, Daphne Featherstone. They follow the left wall, the direction indicated by Morak. Thog, still cowering in the stalagmites, remains suppressed by Grund’s stern glare.
Mel quietly explores down a passage past a goblin obliviously waiting in the darkness. Mel has the drop on the goblin and signals back to the others fumbling along behind. She presses ahead toward the scritchy sounds of giant rats, warhammer at the ready. Adrik sneaks past the lurking goblin and rounds a corner where the giant rats feast on a deceased human. Grobkull Grund shields himself with faith and confronts the goblin with a whiffing hammer smash. He meant to miss. Snigbat the goblin surrenders. Snigbat the goblin will help the intruders if they remove her supervisor, Boss Hark. Snigbat will make a great leader. Noncommittal Grund has Snigbat disarm and timeout in the corner.
Mel smashes a giant rat with a single blow. The rats retaliate as do a pair of goblins, Ratcha and Zukluk, from the back of the chamber at the encouragement of their boss, Boss Hark. The rest of the party crushes into the narrow passage. Grund attempts to leap over the front line of rats to stomp around behind them, but falls into the rat pile instead. Adrik chops a rat and scrambles up prone Grund to strategic high ground, but he trips and pins Grund to the filthy rat ground. Baergar pulls Adrik off the pile. Mel, not part of the circus act, smashes another rat in a single shot and bolsters herself against the waves of biting with a healing word. Harry splashes acid into the midst of the rats, weakening several and killing one.
Grund and Adrik regain their feet. Grund fights through the rats trying to get to the goblins in the back. Baergar looks for acid-wounded rats and finishes off a couple. As the ineffectiveness of his pet rats becomes apparent, a shadow of doubt falls across Boss Hark as does a shadow of approaching Grund. Hark offers to negotiate the release of commoners. Grund demands the dropping of weapons. Adrik, eager to not cross Grund, drops his axe. Boss Hark, Ratcha, and Zukluk drop their weapons. Hostilities end except for the rhythmic smash, smash, smash of Mel methodically hammering out Boss Hark’s prize giant rats. Boss Hark winces and recounts the names of the smushed.
Grund confidently binds the hands of the goblins. Adrik and Mel can see the ropes will fall right off, but fumble over each other trying to tighten the problematic knots. Even the goblins are confused. Harry brings Snigbat in from the other room.
Baergar identifies the rat chewed body as Darthag Ulgar, proprietor of Nightstone’s Lion Shield Coster. He spots Daphne in the chamber behind Boss Hark. Daphne recounts the goblin ambush when the town fled to the Dripping Caves. Daphne offers to take Baergar to Hark’s treasure hoard. They shove a concealing boulder out of the passage revealing Hark’s charmingly dilapidated treasure chest. Inside are some coins, valuable items, and a scroll that Harry will identify as Tenser’s Floating Disk.
Grund wraps Darthag’s remains and the party takes the goblins and Daphne back to Nightstone where some loose ends get satisfyingly tied up.
Grund encounters grudge subject Telben Osstra and soberly adjudicates the blighted wheat collection issue: time served vis-a-vis the destruction of Osstra’s farm.
Morak introduces himself to the group and laments that the Xelbrins were slain in the giant attack, unbeknownst to their son living in Goldenfields. Perhaps the same party who defended Nightstone from all comers and slew a cave of goblins to rescue the town’s population could be entrusted to deliver that bad news as well as the Xelbrins’ pet tressyn, Rillix, to their son? Goldenfields Meadery happens to also be the destination of a certain nobleman, Peter, and his dragonborn bodyguard, Srorthen, and Peter’s steward, Dillion. This factoid is of particular interest to Harry because Dillion is a suspect in his sister’s murder. Did someone say Srorthen? That vile bandit attacked a dwarven trade caravan bound for Waterdeep and got a very dark entry in grudgebearing Grund’s big book of grudges. Did someone say nobleman? Baergar always enjoys meeting generous noblemen. Did someone say cute, cute tressym? Adrik is already cuddling Rillix. Did someone say any place other than Quastarte? Mel is always ready to not return to Quastarte. Goldenfields it is.
The party spends an especially restorative night in Nightstone [ding 4] and sets out for Goldenfields in a flurry of vengeance. One day into the journey, they can’t help but stare up into the sky at a floating sky tower sporting a jaunty wizard’s hat. Cloud stairs descend toward them. Grund menaces the disinterested stairs. A verbal invitation to ascend seems reasonable to Adrik despite Grund’s warnings of smiling lions. They ascend a thousand stairs to giant doors. The giant doors open to reveal a giant who introduces himself as Zephyros the giant wizard.
Zephyros is pleased to be introduced to the party now. Suspicious Baergar introduces himself as Adrik. Mel loves a practical joke and introduces herself as Adrik. Grund loves a dwarves grudge, especially the ancient one against giants, and introduces himself as Grund Malnarson Dimdylkin Grimstoen, Grudgebearer of Drunget Mogh Buldohr. Adrik introduces himself as Adrik. Harry wavers on the metaphorical precipice of perpetuating a dumb joke and introduces himself as Harry. Zephyros, having been consulted by planar management, expected this meeting, albeit with a more plausible standard deviation of Adriks. Speaking of standard deviations, half of the giant sky castles in the area this week destroyed Nightstone, but Zephyros wouldn’t know anything about that at all. Zephyros, convinced of the party’s significance to world events whatever those may be, is eager to give the party a lift to any destination of their choosing. Baergar the Adrik shrugs and indicates Goldenfields.
Levitating Zephyros excuses himself to the higher levels of the sky tower for a few uneventful days while the tower presumably progresses toward Goldenfields. On the third day, Zephyros descends again to answer a knock at the door. It’s the local chapter of Howling Hatred motoring around on their giant vultures raising awareness and support for their elemental ambitions to return the world to primordial soup state. Amarath and N’von, adherents of Yan-C-Bin, offer a complimentary bag of pixie dust to Zephyros from their smiley faced bag so he invites them in. Zephyros, discombobulated by the religious pressure, excuses himself leaving the two groups awkwardly alone. There is a giant thud from the upper level.
Grund fills the awkwardness with pointed probing regarding this dubious plan for elementalism. Hands go to weapons as Grund meanders defiantly in the midst of the cultists. Amarath’s hand goes to his smiley face bag. Grund “compliments” Amarath’s purse. Amarath releases an invisible stalker from his purse. Grund cracks a flatulence joke and shields himself with faith.
Harry ignites open violence as he ignites a couple of cultists with Aganazzar’s scorcher. Mel crashes into N’von with her hammer and withstands several retaliatory attacks. Amarath tries to jab a dagger into Grund, but Grund has learned to shift, deflecting the blade on the reinforced sections of his armor. The invisible stalker slams into Grund. Baergar breaks the Marley’s bottle he was enjoying from Zephyros’s larder and jams the broken bottle into N’von’s neck. N’von goes down. Adrik and Harry work on the cultists. Grund wades through punishing attacks from the mob of cultists to judge Amarath with a divine smite. Amarath is pulverized. Mel heals Grund. The cultists lose nerve at the sight of their leaders’ demise and begin to flee. Mel breaks the spine of a retreating cultist and others get wounded on their way out.
The invisible stalker lingers to avenge his master, buffeting Grund with slams from all directions. Sometimes the gusts reveal the location of the stalker, but it’s only Mel’s lucky hits that make any contact, and Mel has to exert a lot of effort to protect Grund’s health from the single-minded stalker. Baergar notices a tussle of Grund’s hair and Grund tosses the smiley face bag straight above him. The bag makes contact and captures the invisible stalker. Will the invisible stalker obey any summoner? No one wants to find out tonight.