Episode 62: The Guardians of the Treasure

The Heroes of Bingle have found the king and queen of the Tritons, deep in the underground Habitat of Uchalass. Is this where the Shaxen Gao have hidden their cache of riches? What magical secrets still wait to be revealed, and who - or what - are the guardians of the treasure?

#### **DM/GM Intro**

*It started as a simple dungeon run…*

*A quest for treasure, hidden deep underground.  And now, 8 levels of experience later, we’re delving even deeper, looking for an even more valuable prize.*

*But how the Heroes of Bingle found themselves in the home of the Tritons, searching for Dragonborn treasure, is an extraordinary tale, indeed.  A tale of time travel. For incredible magic has pulled these 5 adventures out of their own time - out of their own bodies - and thrown them 22 years into the past, into the lives of 5 sellswords.  Five mercenaries working for the pirate captain, Whitebeard.  In his service, they captured a Triton by the name of Cho’Ran.  A wanted man, on the run from the Shaxen Gao empire for the crime of falling in love with a princess of the royal family and fathering a half-Triton, half-Dragonborn child with her.*

*A bounty of 5,000 gold was placed on his head - a bounty coveted by Whitebeard and his crew.  But when they apprehended Cho’Ran, the Triton told them of even grander riches, waiting to be plundered.  The treasure cache of the Shaxen Gao, hidden by the Tritons under the city of Kingdon in a place his people called The Mantle.  The Tritons had agreed to safeguard the riches and magical items - to ensure that they were safe - and far away from Dragonborn lands.*

*But Whitebeard betrayed Cho’Ran, setting up a meeting at sea with the assassin monks of the Shaxen Gao to turn over the Triton and his family, and collect the gold.  When that meeting went bad, Cho’Ran was slain - but he managed to tell the heroes to seek out the Triton king and queen, Uchalass’Voy and Uchalass’Wei, to tell them Cho’Ran and his beloved were together at last.*

*So Whitebeard sailed for the mainland and traveled with the team to the city of Kingdon, in search of Dragonborn treasure.  What they found was a city destroyed, razed to the ground by an apparent attack from above.  Only insects and scavengers remained in the once-thriving city’s ruins.  But they also found… an entrance.  A hole in the ground that led deep into a subterranean chasm.  As the Heroes of Bingle descended into this enormous cavern, they found stone platforms, waterfalls… and monsters.  Giant toxic bats, and crawling kruthiks protecting clumps of pulsating egg sacs.*

*James cast Fly on Uggo and Siv, who battled the winged bats in the air over the dizzying chasm.  Lily and Fahima fended off kruthik hatchlings that spewed from the cracks and crevices of the chambers, trapping them in magical cages and threatening them with intimidating flutes.  But when James dropped concentration on his Fly spell to manifest an illusion of a terrifying red dragon, Siv and Uggo came crashing to the ground, and the party was forced to defend themselves across hundreds of vertical feet of rock and stone.  The battle was on, and it nearly cost them their lives.  But in the end, the presence of the illusory dragon discouraged more predators from joining the fight, and allowed the team to make it to the bottom of the chasm in one piece.*

*Fahima granted Uggo frigid ice breath, which he used to flash-freeze the remaining kruthik eggs, tossing them harmlessly into the water below.*

*After a long rest inside Fahima’s magical tiny hut, the team leapt into the water themselves, shooting out through a dark tunnel, carried by the briskly flowing current.  The flume ended in pools of standing water, illuminated by bioluminescence, and at an archway, framed in coral.   Above it, in Aquan, was written: Habitat of Uchalass.*

*Fahima turned Siv and Uggo invisible, and the team sloshed through the water at their feet, emerging into a large chamber, ringed with dead and dying coral. In the center of this large room were two high back chairs, decorated with shells.  Sitting in them were two figures, wearing coral crowns.*