Ruins of Myth Drannor [Campaign Log]

[Chambers]

Ruins of Myth Drannor

This is a Campaign Log for my gaming groups run through the Ruins of Myth Drannor box set. We are playing 5e and this is our 3rd campaign using 5e rules with an older edition module. Previously I've run the group through the Keep on the Borderlands (our first 5e game) and we just finished the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. Each time I've been pleasantly surprised with how few changes I've needed to make to the modules to make them 'compatible' with 5e. If the module calls for a certain number of creatures (20 goblins, 4 Trolls, 3 Giants, etc), I've used the 5e statblocks but kept the quantity of monsters more or less the same, and it's worked without any problems.

This Campaign Log will contain unmarked spoilers for the modules Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun and the Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Party: Level 9


Name
Race
Class


Dante
Human
Warlock / Bard


Jasperr
Wood Elf
Ranger / Rogue


Torkin
Dwarf
Fighter (Champion) / Cleric (Life)


Glar
Half-Orc
Fighter (Champion)


Xabu
Dragonborn
Paladin / Sorcerer (Draconic)


Grok
Half-Orc
Barbarian (Berserker)


Merrin
Halfling
Rogue (Thief)



Graveyard

Grudgekeeper Mundgar, Dwarven Paladin/Barbarian. Forked by a Horned devil.


Houserules:

Frenzy: Levels of Exhaustion gained from Frenzy may be recovered at a rate of 1 level of exhaustion per short rest, and all levels of Exhaustion after a long rest. Does not affect levels of Exhaustion gained from other sources.
Critical Hits: When rolling damage for a critical hit, double the static modifier for damage as well as the dice rolled.


Campaign Introduction.

"Welcome to the greatest treasure-house in all the Realms. Oh, and welcome to your deaths."
- The great green wyrm Athauglas, to the Company of the Gauntlet


"Many come seeking, armored in greed
But few return from fair, fey
Myth Drannor, broken city of beauty,
lair of lurking death
The pride and splendor of long ago
still lure foolish and brave alike -
and the grinning skulls
of those who've gone before
coldly watch another band of fools
find a waiting grave."
- Tanthlin Starshann, Bard of Berdusk

The specter that waits the end of the world is rattling its cage. Once buried deep in the nameless mountains, the fabled 333 gems of the Chained God have been found and collected. The Lost Lament of Tharizdun has been read and it speaks a doom of undeniable entropy for the world. The god against whom all other gods rose together to imprison has raised a new Champion and together with the spirits of his First Speaker the two seek the final key to unlock their mad gods prison.

Within the ruins of Myth Drannor stands a tower untouched by the Army of Darkness or centuries of time. Windsong Tower, the former home of higher arcana and itself a temple to Mystra, still stands as it did before the Fiends claimed the city. Protected by wards woven by Mystra herself, no fiendish power or mortal magic has ever breached its walls, for within lays the most powerful artifact of mortal hubris and deific regret - the Nether Scrolls.

The Scrolls are part of the Weave itself, thus unbound by the word of the gods and impervious to destruction unless the Weave itself were destroyed. With the Scrolls power mastered, the Champion and First Speaker could fashion a key to unlock the prison of the gods and release their mad, hungry deity upon to the world.

The gods are troubled by the return of the Champion but argue among themselves of how to deal with the threat. Some say to remove the Scrolls from the Prime, others say destroy them for they cannot smite the two servants of Chained God, protected they are by his divine power from action by the gods. A sword wielded by the hands of a mortal however, may yet stop this doom from coming. While the gods argued in their divine realms, some took action.

The Soulforger sent a vision to his servant who once traveled with the Champion of Ur and bid him come to the temple of Dawnstone, an enclave of Lathander outside the bounds of the Mythal of Myth Drannor. There the Abbess of the fort would receive him and his companions and aid them in their quest to prevent the Nether Scrolls from falling into the hands of those who seek the end of the world.

With the burden of their past deeds hanging over them - for they themselves are in part responsible for the doom that hangs over the world - our band of heroes and rogues leave the temple of Lathander for the silent Cormanthor woods, wherein lies THE RUINS OF MYTH DRANNOR.


---

Those familiar with the lore of Myth Drannor will note a few changes from cannon in the above, so don't fret if something seemed odd. I'm setting the campaign in the month of Hammer, in year 1374 DR and have changed a few other things. The elves of Evermet failed to retake Myth Drannor during their recent war and the events of the module Tearing of the Weave have not happened yet. We play every other Saturday and I figure that we'll take about 5 - 8 sessions to go through this campaign.

The 'Champion of Ur' referenced above is the former PC who recovered the 333 gems and Lost Lament. The character (Human Monk / Cleric) delved deep into mysteries and secrets that mortals were not meant to know and has given himself over fully to Tharizdun, and thus is now the villain, along with an orc priest (First Speaker) who is possessed by the ancient spirits of orc priests who performed sacrifices to Tharizdun.

Index of Session Logs.

First Session: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19845412&postcount=2) Welcome to Myth Drannor. Now roll percentile for Wild Magic.
Off-Week Update: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19873723&postcount=3) Magic Items.
Second Session: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19908725&postcount=4) Dragon & Drow
Third Session: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19961255&postcount=5) Don't Go Into the Woods!

[Chambers]

Session Title: Welcome to Myth Drannor. Now roll percentile for Wild Magic.

Characters at session: Dante, Mundagar, Torkin, Glar, and Xabu.

The party began at the Dawnspire, the Temple/Fortress of Lathander that sits just outside the Mythal boundary in the Cormanthor forest. As mentioned in the introduction, Torkin (Dwarven Priest of Moradin) received orders from his superiors to take his companions to the Dawnspire and use it as a base of operations for their incursions into Myth Drannor in order to stop the Champion of Ur. It's a first session of a new campaign, so there was a fair bit of exposition / info dump that needed to happen so that the characters weren't just wandering around Myth Drannor aimlessly.

I have the 2nd edition Arcane Age book, Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves, and it provides a detailed description of many of the buildings in the city, so I'm using that sourcebook as a reference. The Ruins of Myth Drannor box set is sorely lacking in detailed information about the actual ruins, so I consider the Cormanthyr: EofE book necessary for anyone wanting to run RoMD.

During their briefing with the Abbess of the Temple I gave out specific knowledge of buildings in the Ruins to each character based on their patron deity, expertise, etc. This was meant to represent downtime research into the RoMD, as well as what characters might just happen to know based on who they are. For example, Dante the Warlock / Bard who is basically a Bardic Sage knew about Uvaren's Legacy, a fairly odd library that the PC's eventually went to later in this session. Torkin knows the location of a few temples of dwarven deities and guildhalls in the city. Xabu knows about Gryllyl's Pool, a natural pond of water high in the trees, so high up that it's actually above the Mythal.

Side note about Torkin: He's the only original character from the Keep on the Borderlands, having played through both Keep on the Borderlands and Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. There were a number of character deaths in FToT and some players decided to play new characters for this campaign.

After the Abbess had briefed them and gave them a map of the city from before it was ruins, she introduced them to another NPC that is aiding the party. Sheylen is an Elf Priestess of Shar who has also traveled to the Dawnspire in order to help the characters defeat the Champion of Ur. Of course everyone at the table assumes she has ulterior motives and they are suspicious, but given the nature of the threat and the history of how it was defeated the last time (different deities banding together to defeat Tharizdun), the Abbess has granted permission to Sheylen to stay at the Temple, though she is not happy about it.

Her first bit of assistance came in the form of a second map the city, this one marked with the known Dead Magic zones in the city. The Abbess was of course surprised that Sheylen had this information. Sheylen also gave the party a token (silver leaf clasp) that she said they could use to contact her.

After a discussion of where to go first, the characters decided to skirt the edge of the ruins and enter the city in the Dlabbradath District where the library (Uvaren's Legacy) was. It being winter, the party elected to travel inside the mythal to avoid the heavy snow, keeping in the woods outside the city. It was about a 3 mile trek through the woods to the district.


---

Now would be a good time to talk about the Mythal. The Abbess told the party some basic information about the Mythal, how it keeps out inclement weather and protects everyone inside with some basic dweomers (Feather Fall, Endure Elements). She also told them about some magical restrictions that are in place. What the party knows:


Divination and Enchantment spells 3rd level and above may not be cast within the Mythal.
Scrying spells may not be cast within the Mythal.
Spells and magic that channel radiant energy deal double damage.
Every spell cast and magic item uses (wands, etc) have a chance to surge with Wild Magic.
All Teleportation magic sends the caster to a random destination within the Mythal.
Spells cast while in a Wild Magic zone automatically Surge.
There is a spell called Weave Mythal that allows the caster to temporarily ignore the restrictions of the Mythal. Characters do not yet have access to this spell.


There are more powers and restrictions of the Mythal, but those are secret and will need to be discovered during play.


---

As the party was walking to the Library I rolled for a random encounter. I've made two random encounter tables, one for the woods outside the city (yet within the Mythal) and one for inside the city. There are lots of fiends of varying strength on both tables, and plently of demihuman patrols (drow, elfs, hobgoblin, orcs, etc). I rolled for a group of Hezrou and the party stumbled upon 3 Hezrou torturing a band of elven scouts they had captured.

Hezrou: Elf is on the Menu.

The party fared well agaisnt the Hezrou with Dante managing to lock down all three of them with Hypnotic Pattern, alowing the party to focus fire one at a time for the most part. Two of the Hezrou managed to make successful Demon Summoning rolls and a band of Dretches and another Hezrou were summoned to the fight. There was no Wild Magic surges during the fight and the party dispatched them handily. After the fight was a different matter. The first healing spell Torkin cast Surged and had the dragonborn breath fire on his companions for minor damage. Next, Dante tried a healing spell and instead Surged and flung most of the party high up into the air via Reverse Gravity. They went above the treetop and out of the mythal, then fell down, taking no damage as Feather Fall kicked in once they were back in the Mythal.

As they correctly assumed that they had just given their position away by soaring high into the air, they quickly healed without any other Surges and made their way into the ruins. The library was a few blocks away and they made it there without difficulty.

Uvaren's Legacy

The characters spent a few fun moments talking to the surly small gargoyle that perched above the entrance to the library before heading in. The entire first floor is a room full of statues of sages of various races (dwarven, elven, human, and halfling). While trying to figure out how to get the spirits of the statues to talk to them (Dante knew that this was possible via his bardic knowledge) they explored the upper levels of the library. The second floor was a room of mostly deface murals on the wall and they passed it quickly. The top floor was more interesting, as the walls and ceiling were covered in crystals of all colors that shone with brilliant light.

The characters began feeling a slight vibration and the most empathic of them, Torkin, figured out that the colored reflections from the crystals were actually memories stored within the crystals, represented in a way that their minds could understand. In the center of the room was a crystal chair and Dante sat down in it, trying to figure out a way to retrieve the knowledge contained in the crystals. As he was not an elf, I had him rolled percentile to avoid becoming permanently insane and he passed. I described it as the chair attempting to forge a neural connection with his mind, but his mind recognized that it was inherently dangerous for him and blocked the connection. Dante explained this, yet Torkin wanted to try his hand at it. He too passed the percentaile check against insanity and no one else sat in the chair.

Back down in the statue room, the characters figure out they each statue had it's own unique method of activation. Dante recognized one of the statues as a famous bard and sung to it, which caused the spirit within to sing along with the duet and emerge from the statue. The party was trying to find out information about Windsong Tower and they gained a few crytpic clues, one about listening "to the harp at sunset." They interacted with a few other statues, Torkin speaking with a dwarven sage who suggested that he simply hit the Champion of Ur with a hammer in order to stop him. Torkin's player then asked which hammer to use, and the dwarf told him about an old dwarven runic hammer that might still be in the temple of Moradin in the city. Xabu spoke with two spirits, an elf mage who didn't care to speak with him but gave him vague directions on how to get into the Tower and later with another mage, this one a liar.

The thief-mage spirit had a special signet ring of Windsong Tower engraved on the statue and Xabu was trying to find out how he could get one. I had the thief-mage lie at every turn and eventually Xabu decided to threaten the thief-mage spirit with a spell. Unfortunately the spell Surged and caused every piece of stone that wasn't tied down to fly up in the air and careem about wildly. Dozens of statues jetted into the air and smashed into each other, dealing some damage to the characters but also breaking the thief-mage statues hand to reveal a real signet ring of Windsong Tower.

While the interaction with the statues was going on a few of the characters were keeping watch by the door and had spotted a pair of drow scouts in position across the street. The drow had noticed them, but when the statues flew about the room that cause enough of a ruccus to get their attention. The pair of drow made some hand signals and disappeared from sight.

We ended the session there and plan to start the next session with the drow fight.


---

Thoughts: No one seems to be upset at the Wild Mage surges yet, and they've certainly added some interesting twists to the story already. There are some really dangerous results available on the Surge table, so we'll see how it goes.

[Chambers]

Off-Week Update: Magic Items

This week I'll be talking about the magic items that the party has. I have really enjoyed how magic items have been handled in 5e. In my opinion, 4e had a better system for magic items than 3e in most regards, but I prefer how 5e treats them over both previous editions.

As we're playing through 1st and 2nd edition modules I've had to modify a few of the magic items that the party has received, though the case is more often then not that we'll just use whatever the 5e version is. For example, the party found a potion of Hill Giant Strength and in this case we used the 5e version of the potion with no changes. Other magic items found have needed to be tweaked. During Keep on the Borderlands (which we started playing before the DMG was released) the party found a Staff of Healing. WoTC had already released a few pages of magic items that showed that staves and wands functioned differently than the 3e version of 50 charges and done, so I basically made up a 5e version of the Staff of Healing. I decided it functioned like a cleric domain (specifically, Life) and allowed the attuned spellcaster to prepare those spells without them counting against his/her prepared spells. As the parties cleric was already a Life domain cleric, they gave the Staff of Healing to the wizard.

The party currently has one Legendary item, Groorg's Belt of Cloud Giant Strength. Groorg (now deceased) was the 'boss' of the monstrous humanoids and giants in the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun module and when the party killed them I felt it an appropriate situation to hand out the belt. The belt is currently worn by Glar, the Half-Orc Fighter (Champion), and I don't feel that the increased attack and damage of the character is a balance concern at their level (9th), especially given the difficulty of the current module they are in.

There's been one Cursed item so far in the 3 campaigns, a Shield of Missile Attraction. After they discovered it was cursed they decided to keep using it because of the unique tactical advantage it can offer given proper coordination from the party. They eventually got rid of it, but while they used the shield it was an advantage roughly the same amount of times it was a hindrance.

I've introduced a few custom magic items throughout the campaigns, items that were related to the quests and offered unique powers but had a drawback. During the Keep on the Borderlands they found an item I called the Key of Shadows and it was a key that could change itself to fit any lock, at the cost of 1 Hit Die (i.e. healing surge) per use. That character was retired after he claimed the Crown of the Skeleton King (another quest item) that led the character towards Evil. The Crown of the Skeleton King allowed the wearer to attempt to command any nearby undead creature.

As the parties level has increased throughout the campaigns and new characters are introduced I've allowed new characters to use the DMG table that suggests starting wealth and magic items for higher level characters. This hasn't been a problem and lets each character choose a magic item or two, most characters opting for a basic magical offensive or defensive item.


Glar: Maul +1, Belt of Cloud Giant Strength
Mundgar: Warhammer +1, Cloak of Protection
Xabu: Goggles of Night, Shield +2
Torkin: Adamantine Full Plate
Grok: Greataxe +1
Dante: Instrument of the Bard (Doss Lute)
Consumables: Spell Scroll (3 Raise Dead, 1 Greater Restoration, 1 Resurrection, 1 Heal); Potion of Hill Giant Strength, Greater Healing, Fire Breath; 3 Beads of Force


Characters who had magic items and left the party kept their magic items when the player brought in a new character. For example, the wizard from Keep on the Borderlands still has the Staff of Healing and if the player decides to bring the wizard back he would come back with it. So far there hasn't been an issue of looting the corpses of dead party members for their magic items as the 3 characters that died in the Forgotten Temple just happened to be disintegrated, along with their equipment. That led to an interesting bit of hex crawl for a while as one of the disintegrated characters was carrying the map. The Champion of Ur (former PC, a Monk/Cleric) had a Mace of Warning that the party had found and took it with him when he defected to Tharizdun (along with the 333 gems and Lost Lament of Tharizdun). As we're only 1 session into the Ruins of Myth Drannor the party has not found any magic items though I expect that to change significantly as the campaign advances.

The party left the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun fairly rich in terms of coins and gems. I'm still trying to get a final count of their non-magical treasure from the party but I think it will be about 20,000gp worth of treasure. Once we get the final number I'm going to suggest some things for the party to spend it on, as they can't buy magic items with the money. If you have any suggestions, please share.

[Chambers]

Session Title: Dragon & Drow

Characters at session: Xabu, Glar, Grok, Merrin, Dante, Torkin, Mundagar

We had a full table yesterday with all 7 players. We organize our attendance via google calendar so I knew beforehand that we'd have a full table and planned accordingly for the session. We started with a recap of what the characters had learned from the library and then went into the encounter with the drow. Wild Magic played a big role in this session. I remembered to take some pictures, so here they are.

http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae206/unnamedhero91/IMG_20151003_100757_zpsoagtugg3.jpg

The long building on the left is the entrance to the Library. After the drow had spotted the party and did their ninja vanishing trick, the party gathered in the entrance while trying to figure out what to do. They figured (correctly) that their loud ruckus they had just caused would attract unwanted attention and were deciding between finding and fighting the drow or just running away. The drow answered their dilemma for them by dropping globes of darkness around the party, forming a corridor of light that ran in the alley between the buildings. The white index cards represented the darkness.

Accepting the trap, the party ventured forth and were hit by an Evard's Black Tentacles, cast by the drow mage hiding in the building on the far right. Poisoned crossbow darts shot out of the buildings covered by darkness and the fight was on!

According to the XP budget rules in the DMG this was a Hard fight for the party but they managed it very well. The melee characters moved up to engage the Drow Elite Warriors that emerged from the darkness while the rogue and spellcasters dealt with the snipers and mage. As the drow suffered hits they lost concentration on their Darkness and slowly revealed the Drow Warriors hiding in the buildings, who were no challenge for the party. The Elite Warriors proved to be troublesome and managed to crit Glar a few times with their poisoned shortswords. Her half-orc ferocity kept her on her feet long enough to be finally dropped by the mages second attempt at a fireball.

http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae206/unnamedhero91/IMG_20151003_104251_zpsw3ilumfs.jpg

The drow mages first attempt at a fireball surged and instead of roasting the party the Wild Magic turned Mundagar Ethereal for a number of rounds. The player didn't know how long he'd be Ethereal and tried to position himself to attack the drow when he dropped back to the material plane, but after a few rounds of waiting he decided to explore instead and made his way up into the tower by the end of the fight. Xabus well placed Vitrolic Sphere nearly killed the drow mage and weakened the restraints on the Balgura demon that was chained in the room with the mage, but Grok made short work of the demon.

The party mopped up the drow pretty well, with only 1 character dropping unconscious from Hit Point loss (Glar), which our priest Torkin quickly took care of. After the fight as Mundagar was exploring the tower he found a drow warrior on the top level making coded notes in a small book as the drow watched the fight, unaware that he himself was being spied on ethereally. Mundagar left the tower and the wild magic soon ended and he alerted the party to the presence of the drow, after which he and Glar broke down the door to the tower, taking a Fire Trap spell to the face for his efforts which was handly avoided by the Shield Master feat. Upon hearing that he'd been discovered, the drow dropped his own globe of darkness on himself up in the tower. Glar and Mundagar charged up the stairs of the tower in a race to get to the drow before he escaped on Glar set off another trap, this one a Glyph of Warding holding a Phantasmal Killer spell. The Half-Orc's greatest fear was that he would forget who his friends were and was thus beset by doubt for a brief time before shaking off the spell. The top of the tower was abandoned by the time they got there, as the drow had somehow managed to sneak away.

The party quickly looted the corpses of the drow and found a number of things of interest. The first was that the drow were wearing clothes and armor of the surface elves, and wielding swords that bore the marks of surface elves as well. Dante, the bardic sage, remembered that the magic items that drow craft for themselves lose their potency soon after being exposed to sunlight, so the drow's real gear was likely stashed somewhere else. On the dead drow mage they found a wand that was identified as a Wand of Fireballs, a dirftglobe that made darkness instead of light, and a sealed deck of playing cards. Not wanting to waste time in the are, they gathered up their finds and headed west to find a place to rest.

Still in the Dlabbradath district, they found a three tree dwelling that was at one time an inn. Named the Owl's Inn, they camped out in the main taproom up in the tree for a short rest. Xabu examined the deck of cards and the players sighed with relief as they discovered that it was not the deck of many things. Instead it was an old deck of playing cards, with the face cards depicting different members of noble elven families, each suit a different House. Xabu cast identify on the cards and through dealing out different hands discovered that when the cards were dealt in a certain way a portal was opened. In this case the long mirror behind the bar changed scenes, showing what looked like a prison inside a dungeon,

The party was sorely tempted to travel through the portal but resisted and shuffled the deck back into it's case, closing the portal. After that display of magic Merrin noticed something odd about the mirror and I described how it felt like those paintings where the eyes always seem to follow you, except in this case it was the parties own reflection. Getting nervous about what kind of magic the mirror might have Mundagar and Glar smashed the mirror, upon which a quiet sobbing was heard throughout the bar. Mundagar cast a spell of detection and learned that there was an undead presence in the room with them. They tried interacting with the invisible spirit, with Dante eventually ordering a glass of wine while speaking Elven. A broken glass lifted itself onto the bar and was filled with wine from an invisible decanter.

Dante proceeded to try and speak with the presumably elven spirit of woe but the spirit wanted nothing to do with them, desiring only to be left alone in it's sorrow. Upset that the spirit wouldn't help them Dante threatened to burn down the bar upon which the temperature dropped and broken furniture around the bar started to rattle. Sensing an appropriate time to flee, the party left the mysteries of the elven spirit for another time and left the bar.

They decided to try and make for the temple of moradin on the west banke of the river, where one of the statues said rested a religious relic that would help the party and set out through the ruins, making their way to one of the bridges. The dwarven constructed bridge was in poor shape, with half of it being destroyed. As the party made their way across the bridge they heard the sounds of pitched battle coming from somewhere in the city west of them, but before they could make head or tails of that they had their hands fulls with the three nagas that came up out of the water to harass them.

The naga fight went quicker than I expected with the party managing to kill all 3 nagas (2 spirit nagas, 1 bone naga) in a single round. Mundagar jumped into the water and quickly dispatched the bone naga. The nearby spirit naga attempted to summon a snake made of force to drown Mundagar (Bigby's Hand), but the spell surged and instead a section of the ruins nearby was blasted by a disjunction spell. Suitably alarmed by the wild magic, the party focused their efforts on the nagas and killed them quickly, with the other spirit naga only managing to cast a single lightning bolt before the party killed them.

Their troubles weren't over however as the battle that they heard made itself visible. A warband of hobgoblins emerged from the ruins heading straight towards the bridge and the party, managing a fighting retreat against a huge red dragon. The party decided to get back off the bridge on the east side and hide among the ruins to wait out the fight. The hobgoblins made it to the base of the bridge and formed a shieldwall against the dragon, with the warcasters sending out powerful rays of frozen magic to hit the red dragon. Unfortunately only two of the three polar ray spells were successful and the third one surged, causing the stones of the bridge to soar up into the air in a massive whirlwind, battering the dragon and the hobgoblins for a number of rounds.

The dragon decided to retreat from the whirlwind of heavy stonework and flew back they way it came and after the wild magic ended the stones dropped to the ground. When the dust had settled most of the warband was dead and the bridge was completely destroyed. As the party began swimming across the river (which was deep but was not swift), the few remaining hobgoblin soldiers spotted the party and made a decision to retreat again, taking a few moments to grab what pouches and equipment they could from their dead leaders and running away into the trees before the party could make it across.

We ended the session there, with the party reaching the west bank and standing amid the battered remains of the hobgoblin warband.

It's still Day One in the campaign and since entering Myth Drannor the party has had 3 fights and managed 2 short rests. It's currently just after lunch time in the Day and in two sessions of play the party has traveled about a dozen blocks within the city.

[Chambers]

Session Title: Don't Go Into the Woods!

Characters are session: Xebu, Dante, Merrin, Torkin, Mundgar, Grok

We started this session with the party reaching the west side of the bank, catching a last sight of the fleeing hobgoblins before they disappeared into the woods to the southwest. Most of the party wanted to stay and loot the corpses of the hobgoblins while Mundgar was drive by his hatred of the goblinoid race to pursue the retreating hobbos. Torkin grudgingly went along with Mundgar to keep him safe and the two dwarves set out at a hustle to try and catch the hobgoblins.

Xebu, Dante, Merrin and Grok spent a few minutes carefully searching through the bodies, restocking on military grade rations and replenishing ammunition. They found a handful of potions as well, though no other useful intelligence as the surviving hobgoblins had grabbed whatever was most important before fleeing. While they were searching we focused on Mundgar and Torkin running to follow the hobgoblins.

The first trouble they had was a boundary of wild magic. The expectant magical energy in the air wasn't immediately harmful and Mundgar pushed forward through it to the zone of dead magic that surrounded the woods. His spell of tracking vanished but kept on as the hobgoblin trail was easy to find. In their haste the dwarves didn't spot the falling net tripwire until it was too late, but thankfully no one was there to harass them while they cut themselves out. Over Torkin's protests the pair went further into the dead magic woods following the hobgoblin tracks until they split. Choosing one way, they followed them through an encampment of ruined tree dwellings and Mundgar literally stumbled upon the hobgoblins, dead now and being eaten by a Horned devil.

The fiend looked at the dwarves with hunger in it's eyes and Mundgar charged the devil, while shouting to Torkin that he should go back and get the others. Torkin instead stepped up and tried to fight off the horned devil with Mundgar but the fiend was too strong and Torkin retreated while Mundgar fought in the grips of a rage with the devil. Though Mundgar fought well and with surprising shield tactics, the natural strength, toughness, and flight of the devil was too much for the dwarf, and Mundgar died with the horned devils military fork lodged in his guts.

Torkin ran back and met with the party but the others refused to go further into the woods when they discovered the wild magic boundary. Fearing that Mundgar was already dead, they decided to head back across the river to the Dlabbradath district and into the Six Tyryl Towers, hoping to find some bit of ancient Netherese magic that might help them get into Windsong Tower and defeat the Champion of Ur before he could released Tharizdun and destroy the world.

While Mundgars player made a new character, the party trekked the few blocks to the Six Tyryl Towers. Dante had his imp familiar fly a rope up to an open window and secure it so the party could gain entry, as the 30ft stone walls of the mage's academy were greasy to the touch and magically reinforced. Once inside a small meditation room, the party walked up the sloping circular walkway that lead around the south tower, home of the Divination Master of the school. They found a number of strange rooms within the tower, one filled with water that was solid while walked upon, another room a botanical garden seemingly untouched by the fall of the city, and the room at the top was a dining hall guarded by suits of elven plate mail, inscribed with the names of the previous Coronals of Myth Drannor.

Upon the dining table was a miraculous feast which some of the characters ate and found themselves refreshed and fortified afterwards. When their meal was finished an aged and blind sprite flew in and treated them as though they were the masters of the tower and sought to carry out their wishes. Xebu took the opportunity to treat the servant sprite badly, heaping verbal abuse upon the poor creature. The unnamed sprite - for no one bothered to ask it's name - led the characters back downstairs past where they entered to the library and study and the arcane sigil carved door that guarded it. Despite Xebu's commands and insults the sprite insisted it could not open the door. Dante managed to identify the wards as requiring a pass phrase, and the act of learning that opened the door - the door of questions, opened by divination magic.

Once inside the sprite fetched books for the impatient Xebu who only grew more angry when the pages were all blank. Merrin found a locked cabinet that contained dark ink and incense, and upon the burning of it the words on the pages were visible. To the characters annoyance the books were mostly self-serving diaries and thesis's of arroant mages. Dante began questioning the sprite for books that contained actual information about their objective, namely how to stop the Champion of Ur from releasing Tharizdun. The sprite at first did not believe that to be their goal but quickly came to understood it to be the truth and just as quickly the sprite dropped it's persona. It's voice became deeper and it spoke with authority, seeking truths from the characters in order to gain it's help.

Each character was asked some question by the 'sprite' and the creature knew whether they were being truthful. Truth came easily to some, such as Dante who answered "nothing" when asked what he loved more than himself. Torkin admitted that the thing he hated most was what he had just done, leaving a comrade to a certain, grisly death. Grok's greatest fear was that his clan and himself would be forgotten after his death. Merrin had the opportunity to steal his brothers sorcerers jewel but held back, while Xebu thought he served an aspect of Silvanus but ultimately admitted that he wasn't sure who his snake cult really prayed to.

With each truthful answer the 'sprite' seemed to absorb part of the characters, taking their knowledge into itself. In return it gave them a gem that could let them see the hidden gates that would take them inside Windsong Tower, and the 'sprite' bid them leave the Towers.

[Continued Later]