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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The warder swings his axe arm giving Garrosh a bad gash. Darkness closes on his vision but he remains standing. He misses the construct on his turn. Yshven cleaves the warder and the melee norker. A slingers hits the dwarf. The other slingshot sailing ineffectively across the room. The flailer swings for Garrosh but he twists aside. On the floor, Kurgan coughs a gout of blood and lies still.

The warder hits Yshven. Garrosh sees an opening and makes good on a swing, stepping away at the last instant. Yshven takes advantage and connects this time in a shower of sparks and parts. The bronze warder’s reach affords it a swing at the fleeing cleric and Garrosh falls finally, his yelp of pain clipped.  Both swaying Yshven and the warder engage with a flurry, Yshven imbibes a health potion from his belt pouch.

Yshven contends with the Warder, two norker slingers and a flailer. As the situation worsens, he shifts into a more focused form, shrugging off all the pain. This turns the tide. He prevails and end the battle, dropping first the flail norker with a timely hammer strike. Later, another norker slinger is felled with a whopping blow. The bronze warder and the remaining slinger fall before the dwarf’s unyielding constitution.

In the misty room, in a coffer under a bed Yshven finds a hefty amount of coin. A table yields a map of the Nentyr Vale indicating a specific spot as having “Vast power for the taking – Seek Carravacus”; also he finds rituals for Arcane Lock, Brew Potion and Leomund’s Secret. He takes Paldemars’ Staff, as well. He rest til Garrosh and Kurgan come around.

Paldemar looses a shocksphere once more. Yshven takes the brunt this time, howling in delirious pain. Splash damage is taken by both the bronze warder and Garrosh. Kurgan takes an axe wound from the warder, as Garrosh falls bleeding on the floor. Yshven heals the fallen cleric and swings at the evil mage. The mage sidesteps but misses Yshven with his eyebite. The norkers sling away at Kurgan and he yelps taking a nasty shot in the neck. He roars murder and breathes his dragonbeath at them. They are wreathed in fleeting fire. Breathing labored, the front of his mail sopping wet with blood, he closes against one and connects with a vicious cut killing it.

Yshven lunges against Paldemar, igniting the fiery magic of his hammer. Paldemar burns and shockspheres both Kurgan and Yshven in retaliation, The warder swings and misses Kurgan. Garrosh rises but misses Paldemar, he draws inner power and heals Yshven instead. Yshven heals himself some more but misses Paldemar with his hammer. The flailer norker swings at Kurgan, flail heads digging deep, Kurgan hangs on the verge of unconsciousness but still manages to stand. He mutters introspectively and slashes at the flailer with his sword, wounding it in turn. Yshven slams Paldemar but the evil wizard just won’t die. Casval gives up a rattling cry and expires.

Paldemar, still burning, swings his staff at Yshven and surprisingly, connects with a hard thud. Garrosh maneuvers aside and imbues his allies with divine vigor reconstitute themselves. Yshven harasses Paldemar but the wizard shifts away to blast him. The norkers harry Kurgan mercilessly. Paldemar burns and tries to backstep from Yshven but the fiery distraction proves good enough and the craghammer finds his jaw. He topples over flat, half his face a soggy bag! Yshven zeroes in on the bronze warder. It is pummeling Garrosh with its huge axe. Yshven positions but misses. The warder swipes at Kurgan, joining the norkers in concert. He drops at the relentless barrage. Garrosh and Yshven lash back at the warder in tandem while the sling norkers turn on Yshven. The flailer takes a hit stepping in but still manages to find Garrosh’s flesh.

Only Yshven and Garrosh now, thinks Quorbin to himself. Would they survive this? Would the group prevail in the end? Too tired now. Too tired to look. Cold. Darkness falls. Quorbin breathes his last.

Those norkers are a bane, he thought and the fighters don’t need the added aggravation. If  he was to harry them, he needed to reposition outside of… Suddenly everything was shrouded in a white. Searing white. He was screaming for a time but at some point too everything became distant and unimportant. He was falling alone. He fell for an age.

From floor-level, everyone seemed to look like giants. The heavy shadows of the protagonists obscured what was happening. What was happening? It was important that he knew. Also everything was further dimmed by an overlay of dark red. Motion blurred and everything moved sooo slowly. Blackness edged his vision and he struggled against the encroaching peace to stay aware.

A few steps away, Garrosh glows in a healing haze. He pursues Paldemar and but draws an attack from the bronze warder. He grimaces at the pain, his scale armor trailing blood. The warder draws a swing likewise, from Yshven but it is still a ways off from falling. Paldemar shifts away from the attacking cleric and casts eyebite rendering himself invisible to Garrosh. He laughs at the dragonborn clerics frustration. Undaunted, Garrosh pursues the invisible Paldemar, swinging his sword with a growl. He grins as his quarry cries out in pain, a large spatter of blood evidence of the wound inflicted. Yshven joins the pursuit but his passing attack misses Paldemar and the warder both. The norkers concentrate on Kurgan and he falls to the slings and flails.

Paldemar braces himself, daunted by Garrosh’s attack, and blocks Yshvens hammer-swing with an angled staff parry. The bronze warder gives a mechanical shriek and tramples Kurgan and Yshven, hitting the dwarf on the charge. Garrosh mutters a healing word for the fallen Kurgan, steps aside and swings at Paldemar but misses. Paldemar interrupts Garrosh with his eyebite again and connects drawing a bitter curse from him.

Yshven misses Paldemar and bleeds from the warders attack. The norker slingers miss Kurgan, but one of the flailers connect.

Meanwhile, the bronze warder does not relent and moves against Kurgan and Garrosh. Garrosh falls, bleeding profusely from his wounds. Another door opens to reveal an Enigma of Vecna, a spellcaster, The enigma gestures at Kurgan, but Quorbin fires at it causing it to lose focus and miss, scouring the wall instead.

Yshven gives a taunt, drawing the enigma and the warder into melee range, he pounds the enigma drawing blood. Some norkers file in from the open door to join the fray and loose slings against the prone archer, one of them leaves itself open to an attack from the dwarf, Nevertheless, they connect and the bloodied archer goes down. More norkers wielding flails move in, making a line to defend the slingers.

Kurgan shouts egging his friends on, Garrosh and Quorbin wake from their stupor. He heals Garrosh and Yshven some. Quorbin scrambles to rise, aiming at the enigma. He misses but with a surge of effort, lets loose again. The enigma falls, taking a tremendous hit. The deadly arrow imbedded through an arm and into an eye.

Paldemars appears from the doorway again casting a shocksphere against Yshven, Quorbin, Garrosh, Casval and his own bronze warder. The warder takes the brunt of the electrical spell but enough splash damage downs Casval and Quorbin. The warder hacks, missing Yshven.

Heart-in-throat, Quorbins notches an arrow. His companions nervously cast their eyes about, readying. The silence after the gonging seemed profoundly stretched out. The corridor suddenly stuffy, the air inert. Then, from far off to the north, the sound of heavy racing footsteps approach. Something large and fast turns the far corner and closes in. Rapidly. Quorbin quickly lets loose at the shiny blur, badly judging the distance, two arrows bounce off armor. It is a bronze warder, the roaming mechanical minotaur guardians of the place. Casval seemed to falter as well, because before he could act, the behemoth closes the distance tossing Quorbin, Garrosh, Yshven and the mage aside in its path, the construct whirls its heavy axe and all at once, the party suffers grievous wounds.

Prone and wounded, Quorbin sees a door behind them open. A hooded figure appears at the doorway, eyes burning with inner fire crackling with eldritch energy, he intones, “ So, the havock-wreakers in my tower! Pay the price for your intrusion!” He raises a rune-covered staff which erupt in blinding electrical bolts. Kurgan and Casval are hit. Kurgan is barely saved by the magic of his armor, unlike Casval who drops limply in a heap. With that, Paldemar closes the door, his laughter still ringing in the hallway.

It seems like an age since he set out from Harkenwolde forest. Traveling with the Fallcrest Five has almost become second nature to the ranger Quorbin, as if they were his comrades to begin with and not his brothers’. Where they were now, along a dark corridor in Vecnas tower, Quorbin regard his compatriots one by one. Yshven, though stoic and at times gruff has proven himself quite dependable in a fix and trustworthy with the finances. Kurgan, despite his quick dragonborn temper and easy frustration has been quite indispensable in tough situations. His reminders and terse battlefield advice is, without doubt inspiring. The bumbling blonde Casval, at least tries to contribute and could easily draw chuckles even in the direst light. While Garrosh, the new addition is easy to like, his healing prowess very welcome in the heat of battle. ‘Take up Ayeshs’ thread’ the seer Culna said. Will he still locate his missing brother? Is he truly lost? Where might he be in this labyrinthine nightmare? At that, he is drawn to the present and the promise of danger tingles his senses and make his palms sweat. They jostle forward silently and Quorbin tries to peer beyond the scope of Casvals torch.

Yshven leads them past a bend in the corridor and the splash of light reveal a short length of more corridor before another bend beyond. Three doors face into this area. A porting circle is nearby on the floor, akin to previous circles they’ve found earlier. Yshven tries the door closest, mist from inside the room escape into the corridor. Suddenly a loud gonging sound shatters the silence. Kurgan hefts his sword, readying against anything that might emerge from the room. None does. The reverberating sound go on through the area like a rapidly expanding circle, stifling silence in its wake.

They recover a note from the corpse – written by Paldemar, the rogue Sarunian mage. An offer of alliance with Black Fang Keep against his former colleagues. Hinting at powers gained beneath the mountain, an acquisition of lordship on a ‘Tower Of Mist’, of powers gained from Vecna! The key will show the way, it says, when you walk the path of lanterns.

Along the path they spot a door which they key fit. In the cavern beyond, they find the ghastly black tower. No entrances seemed apparent from the distance. As they circumnavigate the base, they come upon a scarlet-robed, half blind, and maimed apparition standing on a runed circle. For entry, Vecna demands sacrifice of lore, power or soul from the new arrivals. The group fails to sate the dark entity. Consequently, bolts of lightning hit them and they find themselves transported inside, their powers greatly diminished.

In the first level, they are beset by goblins whilst bolts of black energy beam out of the faux skull-eyes of sculpted pillars. Quorbin falls and the remainder race around the bend to find some goblinoid casters. At length they are dealt with, the fallen revived and the dead looted. At the next level, they find a bronze warder patrolling the corridor. Before they even deal with it, more goblinoids appear. The elf falls again, trampled by the warder. When the enemies are finally dispatched, Kurgan ministers to the wounded and revives the elf. They continue the exploration, they come upon a laboratory. Of interest was a contraption that controlled the warders. Casval fiddles with it but fails to divine its workings.  Later, they find a library. An eclectic selection of scrolls and books on lore. Casval discovers that the tomes have a spell of beffudlement cast on them and tries to trick Kurgan into being beffudled. ‘Tries’ is the operative word.

The key opens a set of gilt double doors where chanting could be heard from beyond. Inside, a gnoll-priest is in front of an elevated wooden altar of some sort. To one side, two large cauldrons stood where, on each a force bubble held the two captured townsmen the heroes sought. Stairs led down from the altar where a large minotaur skeleton, a barlgura, and three carnage demons stood waiting to bar the way.

Quorbin lets fly against the barlgura, twice, hitting once. Kurgan and Casval look at each other and at Yshven. Yshven clamps into a defensive position, bracing. Casval casts a stinking cloud but it does not seem to affect the monsters inside it. The chanting continues and reach a crescendo, a flash, a scream of agony. Suddenly one of the villagers is gone, dissolved to ash. The room goes warm, engulfed in a reddish hue.

The heroes realize that time is not on their side. The barlgura moves against the archer but misses. Yshven positions to intercept but misses in turn. Kurgan steps in and slashes at the apelike demon. The minotaur skeleton strides in and clobbers the red dragonborn with a mace, connecting with vicious effect. Kurgan shaken by the impact begins mouthing something to himself. Steel swords and shields collide, blood is let, faces are pounded, shouts and cries ring out, arcane blasts and rays heat the already molten air, arrows fly into the tangled combatants.

The barlgura is down, a pincushion of shafts. The three carnage demons are downed as well, chopped and pounded to bits. Only the looming skeletal minotaur remains. The monsters have delayed the heroes successfully and the last villager turns to dust. The rooms’ crimson hue deepens and the gnoll cackles with glee, gloating, stoking the warriors’ rage. They close in past the minotaur in desperation but the gnoll is quick with a spell on Garrosh. The blue dragonborn is lifted off the ground, immobilized. A glowing radiance encases the dog-faced caster, a burning aura that sears Yshven as he steps in to engage. Meanwhile, Kurgan sweeps in against the Minotaur skeleton in Yshven’s place but is clubbed down by its huge mace as he bounds atop the platform. Seeing that the hulking skeleton is still a threat, the party focus on it to finally stop its assault. Yshven divides his attacks between the brute and the caster. The dragon-head hammer finally brings the barlgura down as it shifted away to come after Garrosh. Now only the cackling gnoll remains. There is a grim set to each face as the group finally rounded in on their gloating adversary; the creature simply had to pay. He fought madly to live or perhaps, in the end it was only madness that fueled him. There was still a half-smile on his dead and crushed face as Yshven drew the bloodied crag-hammer from it.