Stairwell Harassment

The group find a stairwell winding upward. An opening in the middle goes up to the top.

As they attempt to ascend, they are attacked by a harpy. The stairway is a trap, steps suddenly flattening out into a slide, threatening to tumble them down into the central space. The group work together, protecting the archer to slay the harpy always flying out of melee range. The elf struggles to lock the stair contraption for climbing. As they make headway up the structure, two gargoyles animate to harass them. The heroes maintain their strategy and one gargoyle crumbles from multiple bowshots and one is felled frozen and smashed by Garrosh. Double-doors at the top lead to a narrow corridor leading east.

Yshven opens a door in the corridor. Suddenly they are attacked by creatures made up of a hodge-podge of humanoid and animal parts. The party slays them all – two foulspawn berserkers killed by Kurgan and Garrosh; two foulspawn manglers laid low by Yshven and Quorbin; and one foulspawn grue killed by ‘the betrayer’ Kurgan.

In the room they detect a hidden passage leading to another room with a strange portal. One of the doors show two humanoid figures, one about to stab the other in the back. Kurgan steps forward and he hesitates. Suddenly the door opens by itself. The others look at each other, then proceed. Nothing notable in the room beyond, just two plain iron doors. They double back. In the corridor outside, Kurgan pulls Quorbin aside and says “Something has put a curse on you! There were voices in my head before I entered that door back there.” Quorbin looks at the warlord, not knowing what to say.

The Birth of a Betrayer

Pushing onward through the pyramid, the party arrives at a heavy door that has apparently been barred from the inside. True to their nature as explorers, far from being dissuaded from entering, the group decides to break the door down and, after a few blows from Yshven’s hammer it gives way in an explosion of wooden shards.

Inside, they are confronted by an irate group of armed humanoids, led by an imposing blue dragonborn in finely wrought black chainmail wielding a wicked looking hand and a half sword. “Who are you? What is the meaning of this intrusion?” demanded the dragonborn, sword held at the ready.

The heroes decide to parlay, and soon discover that the dragonborn is Garash Vren, a bandit leader and raider of some notoriety, who, like them, was trapped with a small contingent of his men by the pyramid. Garrosh, noting the similarity between their names and their common origin, speculates that they may be related. Despite this suggested “blood tie,” however, the negotiation soon breaks down and blades are drawn. Vren orders his men to attack, and a chaotic melee ensues. At the end of the battle, Vren lies dead by the hand of his “kinsman,” and Kurgan bears a shiny, albeit somewhat bloodstained, new sword.

After some more exploration, the companions come upon a room with two doors on the far wall. A bronze plate with levers mounted on the wall nearby to the left of it. The plate shows an interior of a large room, nozzles protruding down from its ceiling. Also, it shows a short corridor, a haze of distortion to it.

Yshven opens a door, it reveals a short corridor ending at a door. Beyond in a room with nozzles hanging from the ceiling, a group of men are milling about, surprised at Yshven’s presence. Kurgan speaks out at them, signifying peace, they are wary and suspicious.

After a terse exchange of names Kurgan strikes an agreement with their leader, a human named Borrick, to allow the group and escort them through their hideout to the pyramid’s exit.

Borrick himself comes with two bandit companions to enforce the agreement. Along the way, Kurgan dupes Borrick’s companions to march ahead to their deaths in a room called the hall of mirrors where some devils and a flame skull lay in ambush. Realizing the treason, Borrik turns to attack but  too late, he realizes the completeness of Kurgan’s treachery. And so, flanked with danger on all sides, Borrick falls alone by Kurgan’s stained blade, an expression of utter shock and dismay on his pale dead face.

The group goes on to fight against the room’s guardians and meet with success. However, to know and witness firsthand Kurgan, their noble leader’s capacity for malevolence sowed a seed of fear among his compatriots and from then on they were instinctively wary of his words and were glad that his malice was directed outward of their circle.

Lover’s Quarrel

Continuing their quest for Virellis, the group finds a room filled with soft mysterious chanting. The chanting gets louder on entry. Inside stand four statues: a human in full plate hefting a full blade; a dwarf armed with an axe; an elf in leather with daggers; and a dragonborn with a shield and longsword. A search for hidden compartments prove futile and they are stumped about the chanting sound. They leave through large double doors leading east. The corridor leads at a bend with a southern side passage ending at another double door where this time the group hears singing from beyond. They burst in surprising a woman in front of a plain altar lit with candles. Virellis’ orb stirs and tells Kurgan that what she seeks is nearby. The woman, introducing herself as Dana pleads for assistance. She claims to have been brought there by bandits and is prevented to leave by some magical compulsion. The heroes agree to help her.

Suddenly, two devils appear in their midst and focuses attacks on Yshven. The dwarf responds with a cleaving blow, hitting them both. The woman turns into a succubus and attacks. The room erupts into confusion as Kurgan and Garrosh fall under the temptress’ compulsion and hack at each other’s throats.

The scuffle is ended when the succubus is finally slain, apologies are exchanged, and tears wiped off scaly cheeks. Searching the altar, a hidden panel yields a chest containing magical and masterfully made plate armor which looks to distort itself every now and then and a garnet gem that is absorbed by Virellis.

Kinslayer

Yshven bursts through the doors and yells in defiance, Garrash and his men surround him in a rage. The dwarf rushes a crossbowman and spins, making multiple hits. The dragonheaded craghammer slams the dragonborn bandit smashing his clavicle. The enemy warlord combusts. With a cry, he slides away, calling upon his lackeys for assistance.

Yshven is swarmed. The other crossbowmen divide their fire between Yshven and Kurgan to bring them down quickly. The bolts cause them to stagger, dazed. Kurgan and Garrosh dispatch the club-wielding swarm with their dragonborn breaths. Blackened corpses lie on the ground at their feet. More surge forth from the sidelines. Kurgan does his muttering thing. Garrash Vren suddenly bows his head, eyes closed and mutters to himself as well. He does a Kurgan! The group is amused. But the companions suddenly find themselves in a gush of electrical sparks and tendrils as Vren blasts them with his breath.

Surprised, Vren connects with a slash against Yshven. Quorbin surges forth, scoring a double hit at the enemy warlord. The surrounded Garrash blocks Yshven with his shield as the remaining bowmen and club swingers focus on the attacking dwarf. Quorbin ruins one bowman’s shot, his bolt ricocheting across the room. Kurgan shouts something terse to Garrosh making him resolute.

Blades continue flashing, drawing blood. Shafts and arrows fly pinioning hapless targets. The tide swings this way and that. Finally Garrosh, calling upon divine fortune connects with a deadly slash and his dragonborn kin falls lifeless by his hands. The group clears the room of remaining stragglers. One of them opens a door, however, unleashing a captive werewolf on the group! A new wave of fighting ensues, taxing the groups endurance.

In the end, the werewolf is slain. Kurgan’s blade sliding out drenched from the creature’s ribcage.  He quickly claims the fallen Garrash Vren’s equipment while Yshven wonders aloud whether the recently deceased blue-scaled dragonborn warlord bandit is in anyway related to their companion who has a strikingly similar name, Garrosh, also a blue-scaled dragonborn.

The group finds another of Virellis’ items and gives it to the eladrin head.

Garrash Vren

They move out backtracking through the room with the pool and head out north to a staircase rising for 15 feet to a set of double doors. Quorbin listens to the door but discerns no presences active beyond. The doors are open, however, so they file through to a corridor bending east for 20 feet ending at a pair of barred doors. Listening, the elf hears nothing through its thickness. Yshven muscles it down assisted by Kurgan. The doors fly open revealing the chamber beyond. Pillars line the hall parallel to the walls. A group of humans in leather sporting clubs, others with crossbows are standing at the far end. Through their midst, a blue-headed dragonborn in finely maid chainmail, a metal shield strapped to his arm, bastard sword slung across his back approach, obviously a leader of some sort.

“What is this racket?” He demands. “Who are you?” Kurgan fronts, offering cooperation to escape but the dragonborn says, “Escape? How? There is no escape here! Trust me, we’ve tried and we’ve been here longer.” To impress him, Kurgan shares their victory over the Charnel Lord. The dragonborn stranger is incredulous but remains unconvinced. He asks not to be bothered again and sends the group on their way without trouble. He advices them to avoid their area of control — the rooms beyond the southern stairs, from the lizard room. “My men are there. The next meeting will bring battle.” he warns.

The group leaves. Just then, Virellis pipes up asking for them to go back, “I can sense something I need in one of the rooms near where we were,” said the head. Without second thoughts, the group backtracks.

Wet and Wild

Muttering to himself, Kurgan connects with renewed vigor versus his wounded mark. Quorbin assaults his quarry with one hit of two. Kurgan’s flanker moves for another sneaky barrage but Quorbin fires to interrupt him. The rushed shot hits air and Kurgan’s flanker menaces him yet again with a pair of painful lunges. Garrosh’s opponent closes in on Yshven but misses. With a sweeping blow, Yshven crushes the skirmisher and lands an impact on the bruiser as well.

Garrosh moves to flank the hulking reptile but opens himself up for an attack. Yshven swings in at the momentary lapse of the bruiser’s attention. Kurgan lets loose with a guarding strike against his skirmisher and connects. Quorbin aims at the the bruiser and hits home twice. The reptiles attack Yshven and Garrosh but both prove to be too battle wizened. Both hit in retaliation, Garrosh with a divine strike lining the bruiser with divine light, Yshven with a hard-hitting charge. Kurgan surges against his mark hitting it twice, bloodied and sore.

Quorbin looses on his hulking quarry but is still vexed by his misses. Garrosh and Yshven continue to dance away from harm delivering tremendous blows in return. The club wielding reptilian hulk goes down with a blazing attack from Garrosh. Kurgan trade tremendous blows with his target but the smaller reptile proves inferior, it falls a flayed crisscross of slashes.

Virellis directs the group to a small dry room, there is a statue of an eladrin knight. They spy the moonstone, one of the objects Virellis needs on a table before it. “Touch it to the orb!” Virellis says and Kurgan tries to do so. He fails and asks the elf to do it. As Quorbin touches the moonstone to the orb, it disappears.

Scattered Engagement

Garrosh ducks beneath the two flailing bruisers. As the caster rises, it attempts to duck the incoming arrows but two projectiles hit him nonetheless, it attacks Kurgan but misses. The skirmishers circle Kurgan again and he takes three hits of six thrusts. Yshven shouts a challenge peeling the skirmishers from the spear riddled dragonborn. He hammers one but misses the other.

Garrosh keeps planted from the whirlpool’s suction and casts priest shield. Hackfrost arcs and falls, leaving a fatal freeze dried gash on the bruiser’s torso. He faces the other one as his target falls to its side, a mean gleam in his eye. Kurgan breathes fire at the pair of spear wielders including the mystic. With a croak, the mystic falls boiling fat mixing with the darkened water. He continues with his attack, making an ugly gash at a skirmisher’s arm.

Quorbin designates one of Yshven’s targets as his quarry, leaving two arrows sprouting from its scaly back. It sloshes down slowly under the surface, very surprised and very dead. Garrosh ducks from a massive club swing but the reptilian bruiser is wise to his maneuver and clubs the dragonborn back toward the suction behind him.

Yshven dodges two spear thrusts. Kurgan’s fair closes in, his flanker gets lucky and he grimaces at a pair of wounds at his side. Yshven attacks, pushing his enemy back with hammer blows and shield shoves. Garrosh advances out of the vortex, healing himself and bracing for the next swing.

Sucked In

Kurgan moves but gets sucked by one of the whirlpools. Emerging confused and staggered behind the first two reptile bruisers. Quorbin fires at one of the smaller reptiles, grazing it with an arrow. Kurgan is attacked by the bruisers, one connecting with a large club. Meanwhile the caster churns mud beneath Yshven, immobilizing him and then dives underwater. Yshven thrashes about unable to free himself from the churned mud.

Garrosh, still dazed closes in on his attacker. Kurgan ignores the large club wielding reptiles in front and instead goes after the caster hiding beneath the water level. Quorbin readies for when it surfaces. The bruisers attack Garrosh, one connects and slams him into the churning vortex behind. He keeps his footing and resists getting pulled in.

The caster pops above the water surface but is met with two arrows connecting in chorus. Undeterred, he sends another gas cloud towards Kurgan and dives again to hide from the archer. Kurgan holds his breath in time. The skirmishers circle Kurgan wielding spears but he avoids their thrusts. They are more agile than meets the eye and Kurgan is severely wounded by an assault of ten spear thrusts in mere seconds.

Garrosh shaking off his confusion, strikes his attacker and breathes catching it in electrical tendrils and sparks. Kurgan moves away from the flanking skirmishers taking a spear thrust in the process. He mutters to himself and engages the caster with an invigorating strike, connecting with the prone reptile.

Reptilian Delights

The fight with the two-headed giant (an ettin, according to the widely travelled elven ranger, Quorbin) was vicious and brutal. The creature fought with a fearsome strength, and the heroes, particularly the battle-leader, Kurgan, received terrible blows from it. In the end, however, experience and teamwork prevailed, and the ettin was laid low.

Rummaging through the monster’s possessions, Kurgan discovered a strange glass orb, within which floated the disembodied head of a striking eladrin woman. As Kurgan examined this oddity, the woman’s eyes opened and the head spoke! It introduced itself as Vyrelis, an eladrin princess, whose head, and life essence, were trapped in the orb by the foul sorcery of a wizard she named Karavakos, “the master of this place,” as she claimed. Vyrelis offered to help the heroes, providing advice and information, in exchange for undertaking several “minor tasks” for her. “Without my help, you will not be able to free yourself from this prison, this pyramid to which you have been drawn,” the head declared.

Lacking information, and options, the party reluctantly agreed to the offer. With Vyrelis in hand, they set off down one of the passages from the chamber.

The group follow stairs leading down to water. The stairwell opens into an irregularly shaped flooded room. At certain places, there is a churning of the water. The water is thigh deep. The interior is lit with a dim magical light, as with the rest of the places within the pyramid the party has been to, its source unseen but its effect predominant.

Wading within the room, two upright reptilian hulks wait ready to engage on contact. Quorbin looses with a well aimed arrow followed by another quick shot and connects with both drawing first blood. However, another reptilian biped, obviously a caster of some sort brings forth a cloud of poison gas from deep across the room shrouding the elf and Garrosh, the dragonborn cleric. They are dazed and poisoned. Smaller reptilian skirmishers pop up and make a fighting line just beyond the churning vortex, Quorbin nimbly shoots at the caster who responds with another cloud of poison engulfing everyone.

As Yshven moves, he is sucked into the churning water but holds his footing, continuing his movement to avoid the fighting line and close with the distant reptilian caster. Garrosh is likewise pulled in and with a splash disappears from view. He is spewed out deeper into the room but obscured from view of his friends. He emerges dazed and slowed behind another duo of hulks. One of them senses him and charges trying to slam him with meaty arms, Garrosh ducks, evading the initial onslaught.

Moving On

Returning to the Mages of Saruun with news of their triumph, the heroes — the dwarven warrior Yshven, the elven archer Quorbin, the human wizard Casval, Garrosh, the warrior-priest of Kord, and their leader, the dragonborn Kurgan — much to their dismay, were met, not with gratitude, but further demands. “These papers you recovered from the renegade indicate that he had discovered a source of magical power somewhere up north, a source he was undoubtedly planning to harness, and which we must now have information on,” declared the  Magus Onotor, the representative of the Mages. “Fortunately,” continued the mage with a slight sneer, “you still owe us a service for the many debts your group has incurred during its visit to these halls. Take the map, go to the site, and return to tell us what you discovered.” The magus tossed the map to Kurgan and turned to leave the room.

“But what of our reward?” asked the dragonborn, “We were promised recompense for undertaking the quest against your traitorous brother.”

With a sigh of irritation, Onotor looked back. “Oh very well,” muttered the magus. He made a curt gesture and uttered a few sharp syllables and suddenly, there a flash of light quickly followed by a small explosion of air. On the floor before the adventurers was a bulging cloth sack and a huge, two-handed sword in a scabbard of white leather etched with silver. “Payment in full,” declared Onotor, as he walked out of the room, “I shall expect results on your new ‘assignment’ within a few weeks.”

Kurgan bent to pick up the sack, which he noted was filled with gold coins, while the priest Garrosh took up the sword. The magus suddenly stopped at the door. “Oh, and the sword is called, Hackfrost,” he said before finally stepping out of the room.

The dragonborn drew the blade and saw that the steel was rimed with ice.

***

Before travelling north to the “place of power” indicated on Paldemar’s map, the party decided to tie up some loose ends. First stop on their journey was their hometown of Fallcrest. Here, they sold most of the treasure they obtained from their adventures in the depths of Thunderspire.  With the gold thus gained, Yshven and Garrosh commissioned the town’s armorer, the famous dwarven smith Teldorthan Ironhews, to craft several suits of magical armor.

While in Fallcrest, the mage Casval, whose increasingly erratic behavior was starting to become a cause of concern to the party, suddenly declared that he was setting out on his own and demanded his share of the treasures reclaimed by the heroes from the labyrinth. Yshven, the keeper of the party’s coin, gave him a magical staff as his portion of the spoils. At first, it seemed that Casval would refuse and that the conflict over the treasure would explode into violence. Eventually however, the mage backed down and took his leave, but not before uttering several dire threats against the remaining heroes.

While the rest of the party rested waited in town for the armorer to finish his work, Quorbin took a trip into Harken Forest, home to his clan of wood elves.  Here the ranger brought word to the clan elders that his brother, Ayesh, was lost in Thunderspire Labyrinth, apprently fallen. This task done, Quorbin travelled back to Fallcrest to rejoin his companions.

Their business in Fallcrest concluded, the heroes then travelled by riverboat to Riverdown, home to the captives they had freed from the hobgoblins, duergar, and  gnolls in Thunderspire. Here they were greeted with gratitude and celebration. A feast was held in their honor, and various public tributes given them. After two days of feasting, they left, heading for Winterhaven.

At this remote village to the west of the Vale, the party delivered the goods they had procured from the drow merchant in the Seven Pillared Hall. After collecting their payment for this task, they set out north, following Paldemar’s map.

After over a week’s travel through the rugged hills and tangled woodlands of the northern Vale, the heroes arrived at their destination — a strangely silent clearing deep within the Winterbole Forest. Immediately upon their arrival, the party was  ambushed by a well-armed group of brigands. The heroes, however, had faced and triumphed over foes far more fearsome, and made quick work of the bandits.

The threat repulsed, they searched the clearing, and discovered a discovered a mound of stone, oddly placed in the center of the clearing. Before their eyes, the mound seemed to grow, sucking them into its depths. Suddenly, they found themselves transported into a deep pit with stone sides, filled, most gruesomely enough, with the corpses of various humanoids. As they were still taking in this strange turn of events, a booming voice emanated from above the pit, “Heads! More heads for my collection!”

As the heroes looked up, they saw peering down on them, a two headed giant brandishing a huge club studded with spikes. They were in yet another fight for their lives.