Session 8

## Turmoil in the City of Blades

On the morning of 18 Kythorn Sebastian Joab developed a cough. This turns out to not be overly relevant, but it is a thing that happened.

The Young Adventurers push past this minor setback and decide to head back into the Whorlestone Tunnels. They have a discussion on the way, trying to decide whether or not to cooperate with Captain Blackskull, but ultimately decide that’s a problem for future them. In the meantime they’ll try to find the dragon egg then make their decisions.

Kaia, Ralkor, Sebastian, Nespip, and Derendil re-enter the tunnels through the sewer entrance and find a flumph floating in what used to be the mind flayers lair. The flumph, named Darren (setting note: flumphs all have common english names now for some reason), was feeding off the mind flayer’s psychic energy and now must move on, but first wanted to encourage the Young Adventurers to deal with the derro in the tunnels. He tells them that the derro are experimenting on a large egg of some kind, plus some animals in another place, and a third group are currently engaged in a ritual of some kind. The group asks where the ritual is and get some fairly vague directions.

Combining those instructions with their even shakier understanding of how the tunnels are laid out, the group somehow walks directly to the correct room. Seriously, it was pretty unexpected. Kaia and Nespip scout out the room but can only hear some weird chanting and see a single derro standing near a caged two-headed dog without walking into the open. The Young Adventurers quickly hatch a plan: murder that dwarf super quick so he can’t release the dog, then stop the ritual, avoiding the super-obvious pit trap. They also try eating some of the bigwig mushrooms they took yesterday, but the mushrooms do nothing.

The plan is put into motion, however the moment of surprise is ruined by a shrieker (a large fungus that makes a piercing noise when anything gets close to it) planted near the entrance. Kaia is, nonetheless, able to quickly put down the guard before turning towards the platform where the ritual is taking place. Several derro, including a couple casters, are on the platform as is an ettin, who moves to attack Kaia. The fight is fairly tough, involving Kaia being banished and lightning bolts being thrown around, but the Young Adventurers are ultimately victorious.

Afterwards they search the platform, finding a locked chest containing a book of rituals, a journal, and various letters, including one from Droki to Narrak who is presumably the dead leader. They also find statues of what look like stone giants, one with an extra head. They deduce that these derro are responsible for what happened to Rihuud and take the two-headed statue. A crack is the far wall, too narrow for anyone but Nespip, leads away from the room and it seems that the pygmywort they took yesterday also does nothing. Nespip decides to explore on his own.

Nespip checks out a few different places before finding a room where he can see a single derro and smells of animals. For some goddamn reason Nespip decides to rush the derro. As he does he sees the room contains a second derro and cages containing three apes and some sort of ape monstrosity with four arms. This nearly leads to his death, but some quick use of moonbeam and judicious retreat to the crack allow him to survive. Meanwhile, Ralkor tries eating a fresh pygmywort, finding that it does shrink him down. The rest of the party heads into the crack after Nespip. They arrive at the room just as Nespip retreats, then make an attack together, killing the animals and derro, except one ape that runs away.

As they leave through the door of this room they run into Droki, who is apparently on his way into the room. Droki flees, but Kaia is able to get her hunter’s mark on him and track him a short distance where he met a second derro, a savant, on a ledge overlooking a roomful of zombies and corpses. Droki and the savant fight the party, but they are quickly defeated, with Droki knocked out. The party steals his boots and questions him over a short rest from inside Kaia’s rope trick. Droki is not very forthcoming with information. In a surprise move they leave Droki tied up rather than killing him.

The party then makes its way to a large room containing an obelisk and a dragon egg, fighting four derro guards on the way. They work out a solid plan of attack--rush in and kill everything--and proceed to carry it out. The Young Adventurers are surprised to find the derro in this room surprisingly good fighters and are very nearly killed themselves, but ultimately pull out the victory. The highlight of the battle comes when one injured derro falls trying to climb down a 10’ drop and dies.

We leave off here with the Young Adventurers in possession of a dragon egg and still not sure what to do with it. Do they let Themberchaud be killed? Do they collect their reward from Captain Blackskull and leave town? Is there anything they can do to stop the impending civil war, and do they care enough to do it? Find out next time, maybe!