|
|||||
The party arrives in Drellin's Ferry, where they hear of a magic papaya that has been auctioned by goblins each year for the past 12 years. They also hear of a missing band of adventurers, the Shining Swords, who disappeared a month ago near a local goblin-infested ruin known as the Sunless Citadel, as well as a mysterious killer preying on farmers and livestock. They promise Matron Hucrele, head of an important merchant family and mother of two of the missing adventurers, that they will return with her children (Sharwyn and Talgen) or their signet rings. She asks them to make haste, in case there's any hope the adventurers are still alive.
Then they decide to look into the matter of the mystery killer instead.
The party investigates the farms where the killings have occurred, and set a trap with a goat as bait in the evening, hiding nearby. The trap catches what look like papaya saplings, but twisted and broken, moving of their own volition to attack. The party destroys them, and the next morning Nala tracks one that escaped back to a sugar cane farm. The farmer tells them he won the magic papaya the previous year and planted all the seeds around his property. The party finds that some are missing, though the farmer seems convinced that it's due to "thieving goblins" who don't want to share the magic of the magic papaya fruit. Nala names their bait goat Roger.
Visiting another farmer who won the auction some years previous, they find that she isn't willing to believe them about her precious papayas without proof, either. They return to the first farmer's farm and Nominis casts a spell meant to destroy objects on one of the papayas, but it doesn't have any effect. As they leave, they meet Dalian, a young, gregarious wizard who joins their party.
The loxo return to town while the rest of the party heads for the Sunless Citadel. On their way to the ruins on the Old Road, they come across a colorful half-orc, Orklar, who claims to know more about the Sunless Citadel, and wants to come with them. The party is attacked several times by what Nala dubs "the twiggies," but fends them off each time. Late in the afternoon of the fourth day, they reached the rumored ravine, finding ropes, runes, and ruined pillars to mark the descent. They rest, then head down the next day early in the morning.
Traveling far, far down into the earth, they are accosted by giant rats, and Nala falls prey to a clever mechanical pit trap, but in the end they enter the Sunless Citadel. Orklar tells them the story of the wicked undead that rule there, preparing them for what they might meet.
Inside, the party finds a number of dead goblins, and a theme of dragons in the architecture. They come upon a blue-scaled kobold dressed in green, and catch him to interrogate him. He tells them of his tribe's lost dragon, stolen by goblins, and promises them safe passage if they'll help to rescue the dragon. The party agrees, but when they're stopped by guards a fight breaks out. Through Dalian's (and the blue kobold Meepak's) efforts, diplomacy ensues when the kobold leader, a white-scaled, red-robed kobold named Yusdrayl, emerges from the dark with her royal guards.
In the end, the party is promised a reward in addition to safe passage if they save the tribe's dragon, Calcryx.
The party invades the goblin halls, finding the body of Karakas and a locked door (and the key to it) before being driven off. They regroup outside the ravine the Citadel lies in, then venture down once more, opting to take a different route into the goblin territory. They free the gnome Erky and the half-elf Draugrim from the goblin stockade behind the locked door, and the two join the party. They soon slaughter the remaining goblin defenders, resulting in the victory celebrations of the kobolds. Pressing on, they rout the Durbuluk chief, the hobgoblin Durnn (who kept a potted twiggie in his throne room), and capture the goblin cleric, Grenl. Grenl tells Draugrim that one of his cousins was killed, before Vol kills the cleric. She curses him and Orklar with her last breaths.
The party rests in the throne room, in the middle of which is a violet-glowing pit, then go looking for Calcryx. They find the baby magma dragon in the goblin's trophy room, and manage to soothe his ire before he attacks. He doesn't want to go back to the kobolds, but the party convinces him to spare Meepak's life. Calcryx demands that the kobolds serve him, rather than the other way around. The party give Calcryx the key to the room, then leave. Meepak insists that they return to see the kobold queen, Yusdrayl. The party discusses the wisdom of this, suspecting a kobold ambush. When no one heeds his warning, Orklar leaves. Yet the kobold queen keeps her promise, despite the party refusing to show her respect, and rewards them. She tells them that those who bowed - Dalian, Vol and Nominis - may pass through the kobold kingdom, but those who did not must renegotiate to pass once they leave.
As their reward, the party takes the kobolds' treasured dragon key. Yusdrayl commands them, as Hucrele's Motley, to take more territory in the name of the Tooth of Calcryx.
Instead of heading below at the kobold's command, the party goes back to the locked dragon door they came across earlier. As they suspected, the kobold key is able to unlock it, and they find within a strange hall lined with musically tinkling glass balls. After some experimentation, they move on, only to find themselves in a pressure-plated hall, peppered with arrows. Brick finds the secret pressure plate, and he and Draugrim disable the trap. Finally, they come to a caverous room lined with elven statues. At the far end, limned in green light, lies a sarcophagus in the shape of a dragon, behind a spiked pit. Nala crosses the pit, only to be assaulted by a quasit. The party battles it briefly - until it claims to have been released from its binding, and disappears.
The party finds a hidden room with an inscription naming the corpse in the sarcophagus a Dragonpriest. The party leaves without disturbing the tomb further.
The party heads to the pit they found in the goblin chief's throne room, and descend - but the quasit cuts Erky's vine, and he falls, though he isn't killed. The party ambushes some sleeping goblin youths who failed to raise the alarm, killing one and taking the other, Ungol, captive. They find the skeletal remains of adventurers past digging in the mulch piles in the huge room below the pit, and destroy them. Then they drive away Balsag, the Great Hunter hero of the goblins, and his "hounds" Grip, Fang, and Snapper. Continuing into another dragon-columned hall turned into a goblin commons, the party locks in, fools, or slaughters the goblins they meet. Then they rest for the night. That night, Balsag creeps back to murder Nala while the wounded gnome is on watch - but in a stroke of luck, she's able to strike him in a critical spot, making him flee. The others wake, and make an ignominious end of the hobbling, fleeing bugbear. In the morning, they scout the rift, finding it full of holes - and the reason for those holes is a red-hot worm-creature, which threatens them when they invade its feeding grounds. With some trouble, they manage to put it down, though Brick's beard is sadly a casualty. They also find a sealed room, within which sits a dragon statue holding a tray. A little experimentation elicits no response, so they move on.
The party heads back towards the goblins, ambushing one that was busy trying to roll the abandoned liquor barrels into parts unknown. They gain a little intelligence from it, then prepare to storm the goblins.
The party finds a fungus-lit, mulch-lined gallery with a bugbear gardener. It calls for reinforcements, but the party makes short work of the wave of goblins that emerge. In return for safe passage to freedom, the remaining two bugbears answer questions for the party before fleeing. Vol wanders into an adjacent fungus arboretum when he spots a fascinating black bow half-hidden there, which he takes as his own. The party puts down another of the glow-hot worms, with considerably less trouble this time. The party settles in to rest in the worm-arboretum, wedging the door shut after they're bothered by twig blights during their rest. When they emerge in the morning, a sea of skeletons is waiting for them - but the party destroys them easily.
The party explores the gallery of arboretums, all of which appear to show slightly different examples of fungi, and they run into an otyugh, but defeat it. Nala tries to convince the bat swarms to fly away, but the bats are still just animals and don't understand her directions on how to get out. The party leaves the bat swarms behind them, agitated and angry. They also find another fire-worm, but press on without confronting it.
The party explores a passage found in one of the arboretums, which leads to a shrine to another dragon. Nala finds a loose brick in the wall, but when she goes to investigate, the statue's shadow breaks free and attacks! Vol and Brick manage to destroy it with their magical weapons. The party passes through a trashed library, a long corridor that goes under the arboretum above, and another, locked library that Brick unlocks with his axes. Vol finds a few interesting things there, but Brick opens the far door - and Draugrim charges out after the twig blights waiting there, which flee into a twilight-fungus-lit grove of pale briars. The party eventually finds Belak the Outcast, a druid tending the Gulthias Tree. He has Saer Braford and Sharwyn with him, but they're strangely wooden and act as his puppets. While the party is distracted fighting them and the twig blights Belak sets on them, Belak escapes with his giant tree frog. The party sets fire to the grove, and departs the Sunless Citadel to bring Sharwyn and her brother's signet ring to Matron Hucrele. Sharwyn and Saer Braford die not long after the party leaves the citadel.
|