Eona was able to convince her unconvinced allies to engage in a little espionage when entering Szith Morcane. Taking on the persona of a travelling merchant, she disguised herself, Beren and Leith as drow and disguised Morgran as a dwarf “companion.” She managed to convince the guards at the portal to let them into the city and then the head of the city watch that they were legitimate businessmen looking for trade.

Leading them into the bazaar and then the commoner’s caver, Eona met up with a former trading partner, Tooman, a priest of Myrkul. In exchange for clearing some vermin out of his shrine, he promised them information about recent events in the outpost.

Dutifully the group dispatched the black puddings and yochlol that had squatted in Tooman’s sacred place. He told the group that priestess’s of Martec had taken over the city with the aid of a small army from a drow city called Myramadra. The priestess’s had ordered the start of surface raids to gain more prisoners and sew confusion amongst the surface dwellers.

Deciding that discretion was of better service, the companions left the next day with a missive from a drow captain which he wanted taken to his sister in the Twisted Forest. After being escorted out of the outpost and then the crypts, they read the letter and discovered that a great force was being assembled by a servant of Martec known as the White Banshee.

In order to deal with the drow raiders, the companions attacked the portal guards, killing a handful of them and a wraith spider before stoneshapping a cap over the portal and collapsing one of the tunnels.

Returning to the Tapped Hills they gave the less than heartening news that the raiders were dealt with in the short-term, however the future looked bleak. They decided to check out the caves a couple of days north which also contained an underdark entrance but found it unused.

They now travel south to Silverside to restock and then head east to the Twisted Wood to deal with the drow disguised as an Eilestraee worshipper.

They found their final companion, Beren, wandering around the cemetery outside of the crypt. Leith led them a small distance away and their set up camp, filling Beren in on what they had so far discovered in the tomb.

The next morning they returned, leaving Beren to uncover the secrets of the symbols scribed into the floors and doors of the complex. The first one he dispelled and the group entered the room only to find it long since ransacked.

The symbol on the second door proved too powerful to dispel so Morgran took it upon herself to crowbar the door open and deal with the consequences later. The symbol of death blazed as Morgran’s crowbar started to crack the plaster. All but Leith (who stood some distance away around the corner) where forced to run from the light and then wait for the rune to discharge, licking their wounds and readying for round two.

Finally Beren was able to dispel the mark and Morgran once again applied her strength and Leith’s crowbar to the door. A puff of yellow spores filled the passageway as the door cracked open. The coughing and spluttering companions observed inside, a room filled with yellow mould. A golem covered in the stuff stood centre of the room whilst a beautiful painting and sarcophagus against the back wall was untouched by the mould. Beren began carefully blasting the mould with fire, eventually clearing it out of the room. They then turned their attention on the mould golem before cracking open the sarcophagus. Inside lay a toddler’s dress and jewellery and a ring of shooting stars. The magic keeping the painting seemed to dim with the disturbing of the tomb.

Moving on to discover the source of the drow raids, the group encountered a section of wall that was an illusion. Stepping behind they uncovered the lair of two vrocks. After dispatching them they found another illusionary wall which hid a trio of doppelgangers that failed to deceive our heroes and were quickly dealt with. A third wall of illusion nearly took Leith’s face off as a web also lay across the opening, maintained their by three drow refugees. Eventually the companions pushed through the wall and killed the drow. They rejoiced at the supplies they discovered, which included a healthy supply of mushroom wine.

Searching through the crypts, the companions found and dispatched a group of ghouls before finally finding a group of drow guarding a portal to an outpost called Szith Morcane. Morgran called upon the will of Tempus to slay the drow, summoning insects to bite and torment their bodies. Instead of stepping headlong into the portal, the group then decided to bash down a wall of stone that had been constructed beyond the portal. They found an expansive cavern beyond filled with spiders that were busy feeding upon each other. In addition they discovered two driders, exiled and then imprisoned to die of starvation. The companions killed them, putting them out of their misery and then returned to the surface to rest and recuperate before travelling to Szith Morcane.

Arriving in Elturel, the companions crossed the river Waukeen via ferry and into the City of Lights. They immediately set out to find Leosin and inform him of their discoveries concerning the Cult of the Black Egg.

They first search him out in the church district of the city, successfully navigating the small city and finding the temple of Bahamut. Leosin was staying at A Pair of Black Antlers inn as a guest of a prominent leader in the city and Tormite – Sir Ontharr Frume.

The inn turned out to be fairly clean and well kept, stocking a wide range of liquors and Paladins of Torm, Helm and Tear. The small crate of fruit that Thava had laboured to bring lay undisturbed on the floor whilst the group enjoyed Lashonna’s banquet. Thava was invited to join the Paladin’s in a round of drinking that soon developed into a serious and conservative contest of wills and sobriety. All the while, Mirelan played a series of tunes onstage to entertain a fastly growing crowd. The pinnacle of the night was not the arrival of Leosin, but instead the pie eating contest. Leshonna entered the competition, joining the ranks of four others much larger and more suited to gorging themselves on blistering hot cherry pies. However, her previously untested skills came to the for and she matched the dwarven champion pie for pie until the very end when body overruled brain and she was forced to disgorge her stomach contents. Second place was her just reward along with the mockery of her companions. At least she had a well appointed bath filled with pillows to sleep in that night.

The next day the did some shopping, stocking up on supplies that the stingy (and recently raided) town of Greenest were unable to supply. In the afternoon, they met with Sir Frume and Leosin to discuss the Cult and their future plans. Sir Frume revealed that he was a member of the Order of Light, whilst Leosin was a member of a faction called the Watchers. With the cargo travelling the Northgate, Sir Frume suggested that the companions could travel by boat to Balder’s Gap and overtake the caravan should they be heading north. If the stolen goods failed to arrive there, they could head south to Northgate and try and pick up the Cult’s trail. The companions left to think on the plan and enjoy the current festival events being held in the city. Torin and Leshonna stayed behind to discuss becoming members of the factions Sir Frume and Leosin represented.

Over the next two days, the group engaged in archery, wrestling, horse riding, a talent show and a dancing competition. All but one of them (Leshonna) was successful in taking a prize.

With their plans finalised to travel to Balders Gap, the group spent coin on changing their appearance to hinder Cult members from recognising them. An evening before their departure, found the companions responding to the city’s alarm, heading down to the dock where they found a group of milling paladins and priests arguing about the presence of a dark knight on the other side of the river. During the confusion, the companions acquired a boat and sailed across to confront the creature. The Dread Knight introduced himself as Sir Tarsk and questioned Leshonna regarding her travels and her departure from Bastion. He claimed that he was the one that rescued her from a burning orphanage dedicated to Sune around 15 years ago. He left the borders of the City of Lights without further incident, telling Leshonna to seek out answers to her past in the ruins of the cursed orphanage.

Soon after the companions took a swift boat east to the huge city of Balders Gap.

Jack and Leshanna made camp a few miles away from the former raider’s base and rested through the night. The next morning, Leshanna casted Invisibility upon Jack so that he could safely infiltrate the cave complex and rescue their companions. A slight misstep near the fungus grove had him “tripping balls” once more; the walls caught on fire and Jack emptied his water skins onto himself in an attempt to keep him cool.

Searching out the meat locker room to get himself cooler, he came across a strung up Mirelan. He obviously been drugged and tortured, however the guard in the room prevented his rescue at the time. Jack decided to try and find Thava first and then use her muscle to aid in the escape.

On the way to the dragon hatchery, Jack found the body of their former companion, Marryneck, being consumed by the roper that protected one of the caverns. After a brief internal struggle (involving trophies), Jack continued on and discovered Thava bound to a stalagmite in the hatching room. One of her eyes was missing; a worm had burrowed through the socket and Thava had began the transformation into a guard drake. Another dragonborn was also present in the room, bound and gagged. Jack cut the ropes to both prisoners and began his onslaught on the creatures guarding the room. With the help of the two dragonborn, the trio were able to escape but not before some dragon dogs had alerted the complex.

The three companions then managed to rescue Mirelan who had been poisoned in an attempt to brainwash him into becoming a cult member. And then on escaping, “white Thava” or Torinn (as he prefers to be called) was drugged by more mushrooms, sending him into a laughing fit.

A mad dash out of the cave, with Mirelan and Torinn riding shotgun on the back of Jack the Horse, rushed past a waiting Cyanwrath who sought to defeat the companions once and for all. But the group were in no condition to fight as they out ran him through the camp and to safety.

Thava and Leshanna travelled quickly back to Greenest on Jack the Horse where Thava was cured on the parasite infecting her body. Jack then travelled back into the wilderness to find Torinn and Mirelan who had become lost in their drug induced fugue. He managed to find them but exhausted himself; the three slept through the night without sentries.

Fortunately, the next morning, all three awoke and they travelled back to Greenest where they were reunited and welcomed back as heroes. Food and alcohol and rest was provided.

The group decided to follow the orders of Leosin and travel to Ertruel and meet with him to relay what information they had uncovered in the caves. Mirelan had managed to overhear that Mondath was heading east to catch up with the rear-guard before continuing on to Northgate and then north along the Iron coast road, possibly to Baldur’s Gap.

With provisions packed, the group began the seven day journey north. An attack by a revenant and a pack of death dogs has provided light entertainment (and raised a few questions) in the three days that have passed travelling the rolling grasslands.

PREVIOUS SESSION

After a long night’s boozing, our reduced group of heroes set off to find the origin of the drow raid which had killed a few members of the community only four nights previously. The local militia had tracked the raiders to an old haunted crypt only 10 miles from Tapped Hills.

A quick journey through sparse forest and low hills led to a broken down cemetery. Whilst Eona and Morgran waited, Leith scouted the area ahead, finding drow boot marks leaving and entering the crypts cut into the hillside. He also found strange bootprints leading to and from one of the mausoleums and after further investigation, found a secret entrance built into the roof and sealed from the inside.

With dwarf and half-elf in tow, the group scaled the roof and set to work busting open the secret entrance. It was loud, busy work which Morgran enjoyed, he hammer strikes reverberating across the still cemetery. Having complete her task, Morgran stepped back for Leith to drop silently into the tomb. Hiding behind two sarcophagi, were two vampires who immediately tried to spring upon the elf. Morgran swung into the room and thundered he hammer into the face of one of the vampires as Eona entered the chamber and stabbed one of the vampires. However, she found that her rapier could not easily mark the undead’s flesh. The vampire’s managed to grapple Leith and Morgran and bite them until Morgran called upon the will of Tempus and sent one of the vampires scurrying into the corner of the room. The companions then turned their attention on the second vampire and once he was slain, they were able to take their time and destroy the second one.

The large stone doors leading into the hill were weather worn but still had a sun and dragon’s tooth symbol emblazoned on the door. Flanking it were two dire wolf’s adorned in armour carved into the lintel. The door itself was chained from the other side, but Morgran and Leith’s crowbar managed to break the door open releasing the smell of decay within.

Inside the entrance of the passageway, the group discovered a 5 dead drow, their bodies riddled with crossbow quarrels. Leith followed the tracks left behind by more drow boots which led them past a couple of crypt doors which they avoided because of the subtle runes and symbols carved upon them.

Stairs led down into a natural cavern where more dead were entombed in graves carved into the walls. They encountered a large statue of a beautiful woman standing protectively in one cavern, a strange tattoo of yellow mould on one forearm.

Pushing deeper into the cavern, they were attacked by a roper and it’s piercer offspring. Despite being surprised, Eona managed to fire a shot off at the beast just as she was enveloped by it’s strength depleting tentacles. More tentacles wrapped around Leith and Morgran. Eona was reeled towards the beast’s gapping maw and savagely bitten whilst piercers fell from the roof onto the stationary dwarf and elf. Eventually, Leith managed to break free momentarily from one of the tentacles whilst Morgran cast a spell that rendered the tentacles ineffective. Casting the spell again on Eona allowed the trio to finished off the roper and its offspring which were slowly crawling back up the wall for another attack.

Once Leosin had fully recuperated from his imprisonment he was able to confirm that the Cult of the Black Egg was responsible for the raids. He also said that a half-black dragon called Rezimar was in charge of the attacks though he had a couple of lieutenants under his command, including the half-dragon Cyanwrath who had defeated Thava in Greenest.

Leosin asked the companions to return to the camp to find out more information and to possibly avoid capture this time. The hatching cave was to be of particular concern. Taking a couple of days to rest and prepare, the group left around midday so that they could arrive after dusk and then creep into the camp.

However, when the companions arrived at the raider’s camp they found it abandoned. The dragon dogs’ section near the front of the hollow was smouldering and there remained only a couple of hunters in the camp proper. Sneaking down the side of the cliff, Jack and Mirelan captured the scouts and then as a group, they put them to the question. Apparently the raiders had left as soon as they realised that the prisoners had escaped. There were some cult members still in the caves but the hunters were simply paid to provide fresh meat, not concern themselves with the comings and goings of the cult.

Into the cave the companions crept but they were surprised by a pair of cult members who managed to cut down Leshanna’s pseudodragon familiar. In a rage they were dispatched and the group continued to explore the cave complex.

In one chamber they found a large contingent of cult members engaged in a ritual initiation. Jack turned into a bear, surprising his fellow adventurers and then romped into the, laying waste to the cultists. Leshanna found a drunk and stupefied cultist in the old treasure room, and perhaps still feeling angry about the destruction of her familiar, she smashed his brains in. With a handful of cults retreating down a passageway, the companions decided to retreat to another area and explore.

The fungus chamber with its violet fungi and “tripping balls” spores proved a slight diversion with Jack the Bear frolicking through the mushrooms and charging off down the passageway. Mirelan discovered his first trap of the day and the violet fungi made a mess of Marynneck.

Creeping past the satiated roper in the next room they searched through a large cavern which was unnaturally cold, used by the cult as a meat locker. The Bear and the wizard searched through a garbage pit only to meat a fun loving group of troglodytes. Finally after defeating more dragon dogs and some guard drakes, the companions took a well earned rest.

The first step is often the hardest, as Mirelan discovered, when Thava triggered a trap which dropped a series of boulders from the ceiling. Treading carefully down the steps allowed the dragon dogs bellow to form up at the base of the stairs and it took Jack the Spider and then Jack the Bear (and a surprisingly useful reformed Pseudodragon) to disperse them.

Continuing down more stairs brought them into Tiamat’s shrine room. Waiting for them was Cyanwrath and is berserker warriors. Once again he challenged Thava to single combat, however this time she declined. Cyanwrath and his warriors then laid waste; Thava was cut down and Marynneck killed. Mirelan was then also knocked unconscious. Leshanna managed to electrocute Cyanwrath the Blue to his surprise, and then she managed to escape to her own surprise. Fleeing into the night, Jack the Human and Leshanna sought refuge to plan their next raid into the cave and the liberation of their companions corpses.

Meanwhile back in the caves, the Cult begins to work on the survivors…

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After only a couple of hours rest, Governor Nighthill sent for the heroes of Greenest. Despite the short sleep, they felt rejuvenated. Nighthill asked them to follow the tracks of the raiders back to their camp and find out more about them – their motivations, future plans and their leaders.

After they agreed, he introduced them to a nimble fellow named Jack who was to guide them through the countryside. His previous life as a bandit in the region would help them avoid any potential pitfalls in their pursuit. Despite the money that the Governor promised them, Leshanna had personal reasons for travelling to the camp since her friend Leosin had been taken prisoner by the raiders.

With the town in a shambles, the group was unable to equip themselves completely to their liking, however they soon set out to follow the large trail left behind by the attacking party.

Before midday they stumbled across a group of stragglers, lax in returning to the raider’s camp. A plan was concocted and then ignored as each member of the group waged a war against reason, storming the camp and putting down the group of cultists and dragon dogs. A brief interrogation involving a camp fire and a piece of chicken revealed an ambush a couple of miles up the road.

With Jack scouting ahead, the group managed to find the sight of the ambush but little evidence that anyone was present. They circled around, attempting to come up above and behind the rearguard and they somewhat succeeded in surprising them. A brief skirmish saw the rearguard taken down and the companions quickly looted the bodies of their equipment and uniforms before heading towards the enemy camp.

The two fights meant that the companions arrived at the camp after nightfall. Three of them decided to infiltrate the camp as raiders, pretending to be stragglers much like the ones they had disposed of earlier in the day. Leshanna, the spokeperson, for the small group arose suspicion in the guards when she got confused about who was in the rearguard. They were stripped of their weapons and some of their belongings and sent to the prisoner tent until the rear guard (who were all dead) returned and confirmed the story (lies) that they had told the guards.

Jack managed to get them out of their chains and investigate the camp whilst Leshanna helped her friend Leosin who was badly beaten in the tent. After a little healing, they decided to try and use the cover of night to climb the cliff wall nearby and make a run for it back to town. Stealthy the prisoners made the climb and met Mirelan andThava at the top. Though tired and injured, the freed prisoners and the companions made it back to Greenest exhausted but alive.

The companions were rewarded with a heroes welcome.

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After a couple of long days travelling fast from Bastion, the town of Greenest slowly materialised in the distance. Day was giving way to night, but the band of travellers could still make out that the town was under attack by raiders. Swiftly they marched towards the outskirts, lingering only momentarily before running down the main street.

Dodging through back streets and surprising the raiders when the could, the group managed to gather a small group of civilians as they made their way towards the central keep. They had only just made it inside when the gates were closed behind them but they were “safe” inside.

In charge of the keep (and Greenest itself) was Governor Nighthill and a dwarf called Escobert the Red. The group wanted to help, so Escobert handed over the keys to a secret tunnel that would lead them out of the keep and allow them to save people in the town. The tunnel had never been used before and whilst unlocking the gate at the far end, a swarm of rats never overwhelmed the group.

After brief rest, they headed out into the town and toward the temple of Chauntea. The building was completely surrounded but they managed to use a diversion to sneak into the church and get the priestess and her followers out. Using the creek bed to hide their trek, they managed to save a lot of people, However, on the trip back to the castle they also witnessed the arrival of a great blue dragon which began smashing into random building in the town.

Once inside the keep they began interrogating a cult member who they had captured. During the “questioning” the dragon began it’s assault on the walls of the keep. Many of the heroes ran up to the roof only to quickly turn around as dragon fear ripped through their bowels. Only Leshanna and one other remained. Leshanna probed the dragons mind, sensing that the great beast was bored and may be persuaded to leave. Her companion though took the opportunity to hurl a hand ax at the beast, hitting it but doing little damage. A single swipe of the tail sent him to his death. The dragon’s rage multiplied as it killed many guards before once again returned to raze the town.

Hiding deep below in the basement of the keep, an alarm called out that the keep had been breached. Mirelan and Thava led the charge and managed to defeat the invaders before an errant blow by the dragon above caused the sally port to collapse and stop any more intruders from entering the keep.

By now it was well after midnight and the group who had been travelling all day and involved in a numerous number of skirmishes through the night, were very tired. Nighthill found them as they attempted to rest and asked them to seek out the mill since it appeared that a group of raiders were attempting to burn it down. The mill contained the majority of their food supplies and if it was destroyed, then the town would suffer greatly. The group agreed and once more sneaked out of the keep using the tunnel and slowly made their way towards the mill. They attempted subterfuge at the mill only discover that it was in fact a trap made for them. Guards poured out of the mill and tried to overwhelm them. In the end, only Mirelan and Leshanna remained standing but reinforcements from the keep shortly arrived and the small band survived.

In the early hours of the morning, the raiders were escaping with their stolen goods. The sounds of battle eased around town. Then a massive voice boomed out and a blue half-dragon named Cyanwrath announced his arrival at the front gates. He demanded a one-on-one fight against the town’s champion or he would kill a handful of prisoners he had with him. Thava bravely faced the warrior and struck him a couple of times before Cyanwrath cut her down. Spitting on her body he walked off into the darkness. However, Thava was not dead and her companions carried her back into the keep where the healing powers of the cleric of Chauntea mended her wounded flesh.

The battle over, the companions gathered in the relative peace of the cellar to rest after a night of horror.

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