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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mahiro Satsu" data-source="post: 304787" data-attributes="member: 4970">Episode IX Crown of Fire part 7The History of the Selûnite OrderVol. 12, From Bane to BoonCHAPTER SEVEN: Moradin’s HallStill fearing Zandris Winter’s power, the party made plans to use Selune’s bracers to instantly dimension door to her side, in the hope that they could surprise or break her concentration before she could cast a spell or call upon some other power. The two quietest members, Van and Saeita, took the lead as they descended further into the depths. At one spot, they came upon a hall that was littered with the remains of fungi and slime, with the cracked yet moist shells of eggs in which the young had recently departed. While wanting to remove this evil, the party was resolved to take Winter now, while she could still be surprised. The next door they came to was marked with Clangeddin’s symbol, but the lock was not easily picked by Van. They moved on to a large set of double doors that were unlocked, to a large cavern beyond with a pool of water in its center. Hugging the wall to the right, the party moved along until they came to another set of doors, this time with the burning eyes of Gorm Gulthyn marked upon them. Once again, the doors did not yield to Van’s lockpick. As Velm said, “Clangeddin and the other gods have decreed that we do not need to enter.”Staying along the wall, and still traveling to the right, the next set of doors was the largest they had seen yet. This time, they were marked with the symbol of Moradin. They had reached their goal.Yet the party was much more wary than they had ever been. Opening the doors in the dark, the ones with darkvision were greeted by a surprising site: the crushed bodies of Zandris Winter and a host of troglodyte escorts. The feared confrontation had been taken from them, so while some of the party wished they had had a chance to exact their revenge, others prayed happily because no one died in the attempt to do so.So as not to suffer the same fate as Winter, whose hand still held what she had thought was Hathos’ skull, the party gathered around Cara, who began playing Hathos’ skul. Advancing forward, they came to the spot where Winter had died and they sensed the force pressure, yet the bard’s drumming matched the rising pitch of the pressure on them perfectly and then it was gone. Searching Winter’s body, Bronn retrieved a wand and a ring. Van reflected on the skull in her hand, which seemed to fascinate Hissenspit. Van told him to take the skull, and the bones in the sack where it came from. As soon as the bent creature held the bones in its gnarled hands, it stood up straight and in a clear voice so unlike the one it had spoken with before, said, “these are what Ruathgrym wants,” and disappeared. The party looked stunned, and Van once again cursed his trusting nature before remembering that such is the way of our order.They had to move on, though, and give thought to Ruathgrym later. Cara switched to the Song of Fire. In the hall before them, three large rubies were set in the ceiling. As they appeared underneath them, tendrils of flame snaked out and tried to whip at them, blocked by the wall of force from the skul. As they moved on, Cara switched to the Song of Ice, preventing three cones of cold that froze the moist air around them, except for the bubble of force protecting them.Selune’s Champions, the defeaters of Yss-Fara, the Coiled King, then stood before the large statue of Moradin, whose eyes burst into flame and whose crown began to emit smoke that began to snake up the walls. The statue spoke to Cara, who did not understand it, asking if she were a true son or daughter of stone. As the smoke continued to billow, the party cried out and Bronn took up the skul. Immediately, the statue’s eyes switched to him, and a hidden door opened. The statue said, “Restart the forge, true stone son.”Velm and Bronn, remembering the days of their youth, shifted the two levers in front of them, and somewhere deep beneath, a shifting occurred and the forge was lit once again. In a room beyond, the party discovered treasures worth fighting for—suits of armor and weapons of mithral, all radiating the strong aura of magic. Gathering what they needed, the party returned the way they came, all the way to Clangeddin’s Hall. Here Bronn used a spell of knock from one of his held scrolls to obtain entry to this hall, where Selune’s Champions found vials of healing and rations that were sorely needed.After resting the night, the group decided to leave the hall, but before they could leave, Bronn put forward a suggestion that Van become the leader of the group, quickly seconded by Velm and the others. His first decision was to investigate the hallway of slime and fungi that they had passed by before, convinced that it hid some evil. His instincts were correct, as what they discovered in the room at the end of the hall was a vile creature laying eggs that were hatching what looked to be immature troglodytes and other, worse, monstrosities.Bronn Spellforger cast a fireball centered directly on the thing, blasting the small crawling things around the pool as well as the unhatched eggs. Roman, Van, and Velm hit the thing with arrows, and it sank down in the pool out of sight. Following up to see if it was dead, the thing emerged again—with whiplike appendages holding several different types of weapons or a snakelike maw. Roman was frozen in place by a foul spell, and all the party did their best to destroy the creature, including Bronn, who summoned an fiendish ape. The deepspawn panicked once again and dove out of sight. Velm immediately attacked the ape, recognizing it as a fellow creature of hell. While Bronn attempted to dissuade him, and forcing the beast to retreat, the rest of the party pulled Roman back to the wall, out of the way. Shortly after Bronn dispelled his ape, following the request of both Velm and Van, the deepspawn returned suddenly, its wounds healed. This time it froze Van, then, after suffering some terrible attacks from Velm, it dove again, this time dragging Van and Roman into the pool with it. Saeita, recognizing the danger, immediately dove into the pool, found Roman and used the dimension door capabilitity of her moon bracers to spirit him to the safety of the hall. Velm, fortified by a potion of water breathing from Bronn, took the fight to the deepspawn’s lair, wrenching the ranger from its grasp, and returning him to the surface where the untrained skill of Cara, who kicked the human in the stomach, was enough to cause him to belch forth the foul water.Like before, the party had assumed that they had the strength of thousands, and yet one creature had nearly been the death of two of them once again. They retired to Gorm Gulthyn’s Hall, hiding their tracks from the troglodytes that might be brave enough to see what had happened down in the caverns, to reflect on their greatest challenge yet. For Aerunedar could not yet again be home to the dwarves as long as Nightscale, the black dragon, survived, nor while Ruathgrym, responsible for the ruin of Aerunedar to begin with, was still free.[many thanks to Glen for writing this wonderful summary]</blockquote>

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