Book 6: A Shattered Heart of Stone

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## Book 6 Summary

* The party arrives at the Citadel to find the people starving to death, a problem they've faced for twenty years now, since they left the confederation. They confront Thardeck when his approaches him about the state of everyone and how not trying to be at least a little agreeable with the confederation is killing his people. There's an argument that ends with him launching himself at Enilasor, only to be tripped by Morgana.
* He refused to let them see the Elders and walks them to the entrance of the caverns they have to enter, telling them to hurry up so they can leave.
* Arix sneaks into the Elder's council building and finds that there's only two Elders left, the others having died from starvation and being eaten by the remaining desperate Elders. They tell them that Thardeck is in charge as their Dictator until the Elders can find replacements for their council, but the families of the other chosen Elders no longer exist, and the Chalice has been lost and can't pick new Elders. After speaking with Arix and the party about their situation, the party finally leaves and enters the caverns.
* They go through each room, disabling traps, fighting stone dwarves, and killing one of the three Sisters. Along the way, they see murals about the creation of the Flame Wreathed Chalice, with some images scratched away; they rightly assume that those images had elves, given the racism they'd experienced up to that point.
* A magical darkness covers the room after they kill the first Sister, causing most of them to be separated. One by one, they each begin to hear a voice of someone they knew taunting them about their failures or how they hurt the voice. It takes Arix finding the light from the Chalice to remove the darkness, as dispell hadn't worked on it. He gives it to Morgana, who lights the brazier before they continue.
* They come upon a tapestry that shows more about the creation of the Chalice, using the Forge. There are only three remaining, as far as people know. One is with the dwarves above them, one is in Shar, and one is back in Knashthra beneath the Blessings Tree/Great Tree, among its roots, where Enilasor is from.
* They move on and learn what happened to the second Sister. In the next room is a host of dwarves, all petrified. In the center, near the brazier, is a dwarf holding the gorgon's head. It's Morgana's father. There's a message scratched into the floor, a message from her father telling the reader that Thardeck was a traitor and locked them in here with these things. Orestes confirms it by looking into the statue's "memories" but the party has no choice but to move on.
* They meet and kill the third Sister, and in the next room, they find writings on what happened. Thardeck wanted nothing to do with the elves and thought it was a waste and terrible idea to partner with them in creating the Wards. He struck a deal with something old to extend his life and that of his wife and daughters. The wife and daughters were turned into what they were and he continued in the world above, increasing his power. He purposefully caused the split between the dwarves and the surfacers to regain independence from the elves.
* They enter the final chamber and Thardeck shows up in the doorway behind them after a short conversation with the Mother. He mocks them and then slams the door shut and locking it, trapping the party in the room with the Mother.
* They begin to fight her and it takes Morgana taking the Chalice's fire to the alter in the front of the room and relighting the Chalice to kill her. They introduce themselves to the party and give a brief explanation of what happened to them, and then asked what they've missed the last three thousand years. The party told the Chalice about the state of the Wards and what they were doing with the Books. They urged them to hurry and finish restoring the Wards before it's too late.
* They traveled with the party through the different chambers, restoring the petrified dwarves to their original state. They save Morgana's father for last and her father promptly faints once she introduces herself to him.
* The Chalice can't go to the surface with them but they can send a bit of their spirit in Morgana. The party nd the restored dwarves, including Morgana's father, go back to the surface, where Thardeck is waiting for them with a large number of guards.
* He and the party argue about who is at fault, but ultimately, the guards attack Thardeck and kill him on the spot for his treachery.
* They receive a small reward from the Lord in the Silvermarches and he ensures that the dwarves are welcomed back into the confederation immediately.
* Everyone heads back to Silverymoon and spends two days resting before moving on to Neverwinter.

## Chapter 1: The Citadel

In the morning, things are still quiet and tense from the night before. Everyone silently packed up and continued on their way.
It didn't take long for them to reach a solid rock face; there wasn't a door or a gate, but they knew the entrance had to be somewhere. Tihn and Enilasor try investigating, hoping to find a seam or something to press to gain access. The magic that hid it made it difficult to find, but they eventually picked up on the enchantments. Before they could complete their search for the gate, the wall opened and a handful of soldiers came out to meet them. The three elves in the party were quick to cover their ears before they reached them, but it helped little. Arix had taken the shape of a dwarf named Thardeck in the hopes that it would help convince the guards to believe them and let them in.

Finally inside, the party finally sees the extent of the trouble the dwarves were facing because of the divide between them and the surfacers. Tihn asks one woman what's wrong and how long this has gone on for. Without that relationship, their food supply is severely cut off and the people are starving; nobility and commoners alike. The pride of the elders and representatives is what's killing them. Twenty years later and their people suffer and die without food.

Thardeck appears and scares the woman off so he'd be alone with the surfacers.

They all start off on the wrong foot, courtesy of Thardeck being rude to half of the party. Immediately making snide remarks at Orestes and Morgana, calling them "pointy-eared freaks" and other rude names. Unhappy with his racist attitude and treatment of the elves in the party,, Arix draws his knives and threatens him with injury or death if he didn't knock it off.

The party asks if he had any details that he could give them that would help them below, and if possible, could the Elders grant them any assistance with extra sets of hands. He denies them both and any information on why they're taking so long to fix the famine and the fractured alliance. Tihn, Arix, and Morgana point out that his people are dying right and left, and that the longer they remain disagreeable to any sort of compromise, the more of them that will die off. As the argument continues, Tihn and Arix have the idea to amplify their conversation so the whole citadel could hear how he was willing to let everyone die if it meant they didn't bow to anyone.

Thardeck touts the pride of the dwarves, and how they won't lower themselves for anyone or anything. When Tihn and Enilasor point out that that sticking to their independence and "traditions" will ruin them. 'Then they'll die with their dignity, honor, and pride', he argued. Enilasor responds with who will be around to care that they were? They'll become a cautionary tale of what not to do, of what happens when you put your pride above your people and how isolation is so damaging to nations. They'll be forgotten, and their pride will mean nothing, reciting a piece of an unknown poem, describing what it'll look like.
He lunges at her but Morgana trips him with a few vines to keep him from reaching her. Without meaning to add insult to injury, Enilasor tries to kindly offer him a hand up, which he swats away, calling her a point-eared freak, and then tells them to hurry up and do what they have to so they can leave.

After he leaves them at the entrance to the caves and mines below, Arix takes one look at the Council House and decides he's going to see them anyway; Orestes charms a piece of copper wire with sending so he and Arix could communicate together while Arix is in there. The kobold sneaks passed the guards with the Traveler's help and enters the building. After reaching the viewing balcony just over the elders, he notices that there's two elders, not five.

With a rope, he drops down to the floor in front of them and has to quickly calm them down after their surprised shouts. He just wanted to talk, to see if they could tell him and the party more so they could help. To try and convince them to cooperate, he gives them and the two guards inside the room some of his rations. The four of them looked just as emaciated as their people; like the dwarven woman had said, no one was safe from starvation. It's quickly determined that the other three are gone because they died, and the remaining two elders were starving and ate them.

After the party is allowed to join them, the elders tell them about why their people are starving and why they can do nothing to change their situation. When a seat among the elders is left empty, a "Dictator" is put in place to rule until the seat is filled again by someone else in their families. (J also may have hinted at them believing that the seats can't be filled without the Chalice; according to their traditions, the Chalice selects the council. With the Sisters and their Mother preventing the dwarves access to it, they can't seat a new elder) Multiple parties have gone below to try and kill them to get rid of the problem, but none have returned.

They want to fix the relationship between the dwarves and the surfacers, but it's not in their power to do so. Unlike Thardeck, they understand that arrogance is killing them slowly, and that isolation is doing them no favors.

The party promises to do their best to fix the mess below the kingdom, and then depart for the entrance again.

## Chapter 2: The First Sister

As the party enters the cave, they find a chasm with no bottom in sight and nothing but an old and rickety latter to get them down. Orestes drops a rock but no sound reaches them after several moments. It's a very long, very dangerous drop. They didn't know how long it would take them to get down, nor if the ladder would even hold them all for the trip.
Before they could head down the ladder, Enilasor asks Orestes if she could see the bracelet she made him for just a moment. He's reluctant, holding his hand over it protectively and sure that it is keeping him safe, but he relents and passes it to her. She weaves a copper wire through the leather braid that anchored a glowing, red bead. When she passed the bracelet with the enchanted bead to him, Arix joked that she made Orestes into a bomb. He started to panic and Enilasor quickly reassured him and the others that it wasn't, and that she wouldn't give them anything that would hurt them; she didn't, however, tell them what the spell was. The bead was to help her help them, and she had several more to go.

They all finally went down the ladder, with Orestes and Arix beating the others to the bottom. Unfortunately, Artemis had a problem, slowing all of the ones that remained above her. It took them an extra hour to reach the bottom, but they eventually made it. In the meantime, Arix showed off the bead he made the night before with Enilasor, the one that was enchanted with Twinkle to make already existing light brighter. After a few attempts to engage Orestes in conversation to distract them both, the others finally arrived.

Arix volunteered to go first to check for traps. In the first room, he found a pressure pad that triggered a massive wall of loaded crossbows. He quickly disabled it and the party entered the room behind him. Inside were piles of rubble and several stone statues, carved to look like dwarves in varying degrees of anger and fear. With the rubble strewn across the stone floor and the pressure pad still raised, Orestes tripped on it and fell, with Tihn falling on top of him. They quickly discovered that the clatter of metal and stone and yelps brought the creepy stone statues in the room to life. The fight was short, the statues defeated when Orestes and Enilasor finished them off with a thunderous blast from her and two solid strikes of his sword.

With the threat dealt with, the party took a moment to examine the room, noticing that there was something on the walls. There were several murals that depicted the creation of the Flaming Chalice, but they quickly realized that any parts that likely contained images of elves were scratched away. On the final image was a curious picture of the finished cup, but the flames appeared to have a face in it. Enilasor asked Arix, Artemis, and Morgana if they could remember which Ward the Tree thought might also be able to speak. The four of them swear that he said it was the dagger. Orestes pressed them, asking if they were absolutely sure that the Tree said it was the only other Ward or if it thought it might be the only one: the Tree thought that they were the only two, but he wasn't completely sure himself.
The door to the next room was an odd one, and trying to pick the lock wasn't working. Arix and Enilasor asked the Traveler if he had any ideas, and he merely said 'up and then left'. Orestes tried to get a good handhold on the door, lifted it, and then tilted it to the left. It popped the door off of its stone hinges, hinges that looked like they were one made of wood.

Behind the door was a large, circular room with the first sister Rilerra, a gorgon abomination. There wasn't a chance to discussion, and the party was forced to attack when Arix provoked her with insults. Tihn, Orestes, and Morgana gave her several, solid hits, but she remained upright and demanded that they look at her. She wanted to charm them somehow, convince them to look up just long enough for her to turn them into stone.

Tihn, far too close to Rilerra for Orestes's liking, nearly gave in, but he managed to resist it. Arix was not so lucky when she spotted him on the edge of the fray, and his feet became anchored to the floor with chunks of rock, beginning the process of turning him into stone. Tihn, Orestes, and Morgana drew close to the gorgon to attack, each delivering punishing strikes against her. Remembering that the dwarves in Silverymoon had said the sisters were cursed and twisted by their "Mother", Enilasor asked the Horae if trying to remove the curse would help them, and maybe help the Sister by freeing her from whatever did this. They replied that it would break her tie to the mortal plane and kill her. She charged the Sister, keeping her hood tucked down low to try and avoid seeing the gorgon's eyes. Enilasor grabbed her robe and cast the spell, ignoring her shrieking demands that Enilasor to look at her. The spell broke the curse on Rilerra, and it turned her into rubble just as she picked Enilasor up by her throat.

Rilerra's death came with a quiet warning from the Horae. It worked on this Sister, but the last was granted part of her Mother's profane magic; removing the curse wouldn't be enough...

The voice of the Mother shrieked through the caverns, cursing them for killing her daughter followed the warning. When the party tries to respond, they hear nothing.

With the fight over and done with, the party examines the next set of murals and the unlit brazier in the center of the room. The first mural says that a chorus will be summoned when the 5 are summoned, and then something about the music of the universe, but Orestes isn't quite sure what that means. He explains that the next one says that the Wards all have something in them, but it it unclear what. The third is completely worn away and scratched out, and again, they assume it had something to do with the elves. The last is the image of two dwarves with the Chalice between them, and the words, "When ashes are two, a flame will alight that will banish the dark from the halls of the five."

In the center of the room is the unlit brazier. Orestes and Enilasor both try to light it with magic and a tinderbox but nothing worked. It refused to light.