DavesGaming

We entered the underground river/cave system with Crusade credentials, yeah we’re real spies now. The Crusade does seem fully as confused and inept as any government operation. The initial entry area was crammed with boxes of supplies. Apparently further movement was blocked by Sahuagin. Everyone seemed pretty relaxed about the issue. We offered to get things moving and went across the narrow river to the opposite cave, where two sahuagin had moved in. They seemed happy to be in another supply room, my guess would be they had deserted some more “official” task and were here to goof off.

Continuing on, we found numerous Crusader patrols. And confrontation between a patrol and a group of Drow. The Drow were looking for a pair of their youngsters, we agreed to conduct the search while the two groups stared each other down. We found them off to a quieter side, actually they were about to be eaten by an Ankheg. We dispatched the big bug and discovered they were fleeing their peoples’ caste system and wanted a life together. Young love? With Drow its hard to tell! We agreed to fake their deaths with acid from the Ankheg and sent them on their way.

We saw in this quieter area, a large archway of some sort. On investigation a large spirit-Dragon appeared to block our way.

The dragon had been forced to guard an entryway to an ancient underground town. It bore no friendship towards those that forced it’s service! We discovered it would make mild threats but do nothing to actually block us. Good life lesson, unwilling servants are not the most dedicated! This town had been taken over by some sort of death cult, necromancers. We didn’t even discuss it much, all six of us started prepping for combat and charged the evil scum. Bonus, we broke some sort of charm during the fight, that apparently was the key to Halatathlaer’s servitude, and we soon found a very angry spirit-dragon rushing in to our aid.
Significantly, this group was clearly in the employ of Haephernon. Supposedly one of the top “advisors” of the Crusade. Obviously there is a powerful dark evil at the Crusades core.

From here we went back to give the Drow the “sad news” that their youngsters had been eaten by a bug. I hope we did the right thing! I know Drow society is evil and corrupt, but Drow trying to live on the surface often face a lot of difficulty. I can count on one finger the Drow who have accepted into surface society.

The string of caves along the river finally brought us to a guarded gateway that led to the large caverns beneath Dragonspear Castle. Our Crusader badges got us a friendly greeting and passage through the gate. Into the belly of the beast…

A lot of soldiers were training, or lounging in yet another large storage room. We were completely free to look around, and even had a nice chat with a couple ogres who were operating the lift up to the Castle basement. That was all easy. At the top, well I guess we failed to make the right impression and had to neutralize the guards. Poking around the basement led us to our goal, we eavesdropped on Haephernon and a group of flunkies communing with something straight from the Abyss. And our cover was blown in an instant.

This led to a large, general engagement with several wizards, guards, and a pair of golems. The fight went well enough. Corwin is a vicious archer, with a stock of “Arrows of Dispelling” we’ve been amassing for weeks she shot the wizards to pieces. Haephernon got a boo-boo and gated himself out with a threat, we’ll see him again. We had to put down 20 or so guards, I suspect those on this level knew a fair amount about what they were doing. We got out through the lower caverns, but the alarm was raised by the time we got back to the river and combat was general until we fought clear.

We got back to camp and found we were all meeting with Caelar for a parlay in the morning. Well this could be interesting.