DavesGaming

Ila

We were able to get right back to where we were, entering Lower Dorn’s Deep. It was a massive forge area of the old Dwarven city, but it had been turned to darker purposes and was being run by Gnome slaves. That had been savagely abused.
We cleared the main area of those flaming serpent demon things [Ila is not familiar with Salamanders], and an alarming number of animated suits of armor. Really just the armor! They do not seem to be undead spirits or such.

Across the main floor was a watch tower, as we were surveying it a Gnome girl with a box of food approached.

I felt my face go purple. She had a key on a chain around her neck. “Fengla is that key for this tower?” She nodded. “why don’t you let me have it? We have some business with these guards. And start handing out food to everyone who’s hungry, the men in there won’t be needing it”
I was in no mood to talk to these tower guards, we went floor to floor clearing it out.
Next we went to the palace, this seems to be the center of this operation. After battling our way in, we found an opulent bedroom to one side.

A Drow Elf woman was in here. A captive, a courtesan. She’d been beaten. Unlike the last Drow we met I detected no evil on her.

I asked who’d beaten her, she says it was Marketh. We’d already encountered that name, he fancied himself Lord of this place. She must have seen it register on my face and begged us not to kill him. She claimed it was all her fault for speaking Drow to him. I was disappointed at the thought of not killing him.
And Ginafae was still captive here. Some sort of spell had her confined to this room, leaving it would kill her. Her brother, a powerful mage who had a lab elsewhere in Dorn’s Deep had trapped her here. I told we would look for a way to release her.

Heading upstairs we fought many more guards and mages. Marketh himself was the sort of coward you’d expect. He dropped his gear and promised to leave and not return in exchange for his life. We told him what he owed the Drow woman he’d been beating, she saved his life.
After this, we went to the palace kitchen and cleared it out to feed the slaves. After running a food service for a couple hours, we set off for the mage’s lab. He was a true psycho, long story.

Charity went right to work on bringing his defenses down. He may have been the most powerful mage we’d faced? But he had little support, a few Invisible Stalkers, and we put him down pretty fast.
His lab area had a lot of magic items and spell research that Charity was eager to get a look at.

We also found a counter for the binding spell on Ginafae, and used it to release her. We offered she would be welcome with us, but she said she had a place she could go.

From here we continued into the mines killing more of those serpent guards and freeing the slaves. Even deeper down was a an elemental research area, or something? We had to fight a number of elementals of different types. And I think another type of Giant? They were bigger than the Frost Giants we’d fought earlier, and seemed to like staying close to a river of lava at the far side of this room.

The last area to investigate was an old temple. It had been completely corrupted and was over-run with undead.

We’ve learned a supposed priest of Illmater, the long suffering God, known as Poquelin, is directing everything happening here. And with the cleansing of this temple we have access to him, apparently just down a set of stairs at the back of the temple.

Well, we all know where we’re going.