The Forge of Fury #6-7: Forges & Dragons

Duergar

We've had even more delays in continuing my Tales from the Yawning Portal game, but we've finally completed The Forge of Fury. We ran two sessions over the kids' school vacation. The first was at my mother's house while we visited her for a few days after Christmas. (This was the first time I've run D&D there in 30 years!) The second, much shorter session, in which they faced the final level, was run just after New Year's.

Our heroes include:

• Raven Flare, female tiefling rogue 4 (assassin, urchin)
• Kalitni, female human ranger 4 (beast master, hermit) with Daikitsu, wolf companion
• Xuri, female blue dragonborn sorcerer 4 (wild magic, sage)
• Sir Dain (NPC/guest-PC), male hill dwarf paladin 4 (oath of devotion, knight)
• Erky Timbers (DM-run NPC), male forest gnome cleric 4 (life domain, acolyte)

See The Story So Far for an index to summaries of past sessions of our Tales from the Yawning Portal adventures.

(Warning: Spoilers for The Forge of Fury follow.) 

Part 6: The Forges Found

Last time, the heroes found the great hall of Khundrukar, where they battled three duergar who were occupying the chamber. After slaying the gray dwarves, they entered a room that was once the stronghold's shrine, but had been desecrated when the place was overrun by orcs. After destroying the undead they found here, the party barricaded the door and used the shrine as a place to rest and recover. 

During this long rest, Kalitni found a secret door in the east wall, so when the party resumed their exploration, they investigated this direction. Beyond a small room (and another secret door), they found a hallway with four doors leading to a chamber with a pool. Before they could continue further, the ghost of an armored dwarf emerged from a wall and attacked. Kalitni, Erky, and Dain were frightened by the ghost, and Raven suffered a blow from its withering touch. The paladin cast protection from evil and good upon himself in order to shake off the fear. The spirit cursed in Dwarven, bewailing its failure to save its kinfolk, so Dain tried to talk with it, but it would not pay heed to him, so he was forced to destroy it. 

The hallway led to many rooms that were once barracks, storerooms, and the like, but now held nothing but demolished furnishings and occasional skeletons of the dwarves and orcs who fought here a century ago. In one of these rooms, a half dozen skeletons animated and attacked, but the doorway and the cramped bunks made it easy for the paladin and rogue to dispatch the undead one or two at a time.

At the far end of the hallway was a second chamber with a pool, and the corpses of a handful of dwarves and over a dozen orcs. Finding nothing valuable or mobile here, they backtracked to clear more side rooms. One of these was not looted or vandalized, and held a bed, desk, and beautiful rug. The heroes were paranoid about traps, so walked around the rug to search the other furniture. They found a chest full of coins and gems under the bed. However, Xuri's curiosity got the best of her and she stepped onto the rug--which animated and grappled her. She fought back with her draconic breath weapon, while the others attempted to fight it. They managed to destroy it before their friend was finished off by the rug of smothering. The rescued sorcerer, still fascinated by the construct, cut off a corner of the rug to study later.

Another seemingly empty room was an armory that held an animated armor stand, which the heroes dealt with handily. They returned to the second pool room, and a more thorough search led to the discovery of a secret door to the south. 

But first, they investigated the last remaining room in this area, which was a library. They found a human woman here, who begged them to release her from imprisonment by a wizard who lives here. The heroes were immediately suspicious of Idalla, so Dain used his divine sense--and cried, "Die, fiend!" upon determining she was one. She attempted to charm him, but he was warded by another protection spell; when Raven resisted her, Idalla swore in Abyssal. She did, however, manage to charm Kalitni, but before she could attempt to turn her against the party--or escape into the Ethereal--the heroes took her down with a divine smite from Dain, a guiding bolt from Erky, and an eldritch blast from Xuri. The dead body reverted to its true form:,a bat-winged woman with horns, claw, and a barbed tail--a succubus. With the threat gone, the heroes searched the library, and found many books of dwarven lore (including Khundrukar's history), as well a handful of spell scrolls.

The secret door led to a passage with two branches. The first one led to a secret door into the closet of a once-fine bedroom. The room seemed empty, but Kalitni heard a scraping noise, and warned her companions. Xuri used her wand of entangle, which revealed something large but unseen which resisted the spell. Dain stabbed at the space with his glaive, and hit something. Then the invisible foe revealed herself--an enlarged duergar struck Dain with her greatsword, but it was surprisingly weak blow. She took a witchbolt from Xuri and an arrow from Kalitni, and struck the paladin another feeble blow. Dain scoffed at her as he struck the killing blow. [The duergar's damage was 4d6+2 while enlarged, but I rolled only a few points above minimum damage for her both times.]

Besides her sword and armor, the gray dwarf had only a couple satchels of mundane supplies (food, clothing, etc.). The party tried to take a short rest here, but were interrupted by another duergar coming to the room. They heard the heavily-armored dwarf coming, and killed him very quickly. They pulled him into the bedroom, and investigated the audience chamber beyond. After using a scroll of alarm on the door on the far side of that room, the party resumed their rest in the bedroom. This time, they were undisturbed for the full hour.

The party then checked out the other branch of the secret passage, which led to a small ledge overlooking a chasm in which a waterfall poured down into darkness. A chain ladder was bolted to the edge of the cliff, going down. Xuri lit a torch and dropped it down next to the ladder, which let her see that the chasm went down about 120 feet to rock next to the waterfall; at the base, the water appeared to flow north, out of sight. The heroes decided to finish exploring this level before risking the climb down, so returned to the audience chamber. 

That room's exit opened into the great hall. They could no longer hear the sound of hammering to the south, so decided to explore that direction next. The southeastern door opened into Durgeddin's old bladeworks. A narrowed stream flowed through the room, with two bridges over it. On the far side, three duergar stood near a glowing forge. Two of these dwarves moved to block the bridges, while the third cast hold person on the hill dwarf paladin. Raven leaped over the stream and scored a critical hit on the caster. Xuri used an elixir of healing to free Dain, who then followed the tiefling to flank the duergar spellcaster. The other two duergar enlarged themselves and moved to flank the paladin and rogue, but Raven downed the wizard with a sneak attack before they could reap the benefits of that tactic. (The wizard's rat familiar, which was hiding behind one of the cold forges, fled when its master died.) Xuri cast twinned witchbolts on the remaining duergar, and hit them both. Dain hit one, and it turned invisible to try to escape. The other hit Raven hard [for maximum damage], and laughed evilly, but the ranger's arrow and rogue's rapier finished him. Xuri's still-active witchbolt took down the other, who became visible--and smaller again--in death.

They stripped the duergar of their gear, and found their stash of coins, jewelry, and a potion [which they later identified as hill giant strength]. Beyond the bladeworks, the stream continued a short ways to a waterfall into the chasm they had seen from the other side. 

They returned to the great hall, where only one door remained to investigate. This led to a kitchen, where an animated table attacked them. When Dain realized it was ignoring him to attack Xuri behind him, he yelled at it to stop--and it did. The sorcerer concluded that it had been placed here as a guardian but would not attack dwarves, but she doubted that Dain could command it to do anything but stop attacking. While the paladin watched the table, the others searched the kitchen and pantry, but found nothing of value here. They departed, Dain going last, and left the table here, behind a closed door. They returned to the bedroom--which had obviously been Durgeddin's in life--to take advantage of the alarm spell to take a long rest.

[They now just have the final level to explore.]

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Part 7: The Dragon at the End of the Dungeon

After their long rest and other preparations (such as Erky's habitual casting of aid on the melee types), the heroes returned to the chain ladder and descended it, one at a time. At the bottom of the chasm, the waterfall filled a pool that flowed out to join an underground river to the north. The muddy edge of the pool held some tracks of a Large four-footed reptile, which faded away when the tracks reached the harder stone near the river.

A low stone bridge crossed the river, and a second one re-crossed the water a short ways further upsteam. Kalitni's sharp eyes spotted a problem with the second bridge: it had settled some, and was pitted by acid. Dain's dwarven stonecunning told him that it would not hold his weight (and that of his heavy armor), but would hold the others if they crossed one at a time. Once they did so, he jumped the distance safely.

The bridges led to a ledge along the edge of a large underground lake. Just as they came to a place where the ledge devolved into a series of stepping stones, most of the party noticed a serpentine shape swimming towards them under the water's surface. They had time for Dain to ready his glaive and Erky to cast bless before a black dragon's head and neck rose from the water and the beast spit a line of acid at them. This breath weapon hit Raven and Kalitni (whose saves allowed them to take reduced damage). The tiefling's hellish rebuke scored the first damage on the monster, but then the severely wounded rogue drank a potion of invisibility and ran for cover. Xuri spat her own (much weaker) electrical breath weapon at the dragon, and demanded "What is your problem?!" in Draconic.

Erky summoned a spiritual weapon (which failed to strike the dragon, but followed it for a few rounds), and healed the ranger. (He saved his Channel Divinity healing power because he did not know where Raven was now.) Dain leaped across the stepping in order to reach the dragon with his glaive, and delivered a divine smite. The dragon cursed in pain, and Xuri replied, "That's a terrible thing to call your mother" (which greatly amused Kalitni, who also knew Draconic).

The dragon disengaged, and took cover under the water while its breath weapon recharged. This gave the heroes a moment to rearrange themselves and ready attacks for its return--and for Raven to drink a potion of healing. When the dragon resurfaced, Kaltni and Xuri shot it, but it breathed acid on the paladin and sorcerer. (As a hill dwarf with a martial class, Dain can absorb far more damage than Xuri, who was reduced to single digit HP, just as Raven had been.) Raven used her invisibility to sneak attack the dragon with her bow, then Kalitni shot it, Erky hit with a guiding bolt, and Dain hurled a javelin--while insulting the big lizard's ancestry--all of which wounded the dragon enough that it submerged and fled. It swam past a small island at the edge of Dain and Raven's darkvision, and was never seen again.

[The young black dragon had been dropped to 22 of its 127 HP. That's close enough to death that it abandoned its lair and hoard.]

The small island turned out to have the dragon's hoard piled atop it. This consisted of several thousand coins and a number of magic items: a wand of magic missiles, a +2 greataxe with Durgeddin's smith-mark, a +1 shield, and two potions. The party took a considerable amount of time removing the treasure from the cave, and carting it (and their previous loot from this adventure) back to town.

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After selling the various nonmagical gear, goods, and jewels from Khundrukar, each PC ended up with over 2,000 gp--not counting the magical items they had already divided between themselves. They now plan to use some down time to learn new languages (Xuri now has a small library of Dwarven lore books she can't yet read), and get the orog's plate armor resized for Dain. The paladin has claimed the dwarven greataxe for himself, but his player is torn between using it and retaining the ability to protect allies with a shield. (I will probably allow him to retrain his fighting style, rather then rain on the fun of having a rare magic weapon forged by a master smith of his own race.) 

Our heroes ended about 1,000 XP short of 5th level, but the next adventure in Tales from the Yawning Portal is designed for 5th-level characters. While I could just say that they advance to 5th level, I will probably run a short adventure to get them there instead (perhaps one from the Mini-Dungeon Tome, for which I backed the Kickstarter). That would also give Raven an opportunity to find better armor (she would love some elven chain), and for Kalitni to seek out a magic bow. However, I will have some time to figure all that out, because we won't be continuing the campaign right away. Now that my kids are regularly involved in Pathfinder Society, and my "Time of the Tarrasque" campaign is active again, it's much harder to make time for D&D. But my family is still very interested in continuing with these characters.

This concludes The Forge of Fury! 

(L-R): The dwarf ghost; Idalla (in human form); Idalla (succubus)

Nightscale, the dragon at the end of the dungeon