The Lord of Ruins

**The Lord of Ruins** is the 7th session of the New Dawn Memories campaign. It is part of the Return to Sender story arc.

# Synopsis

As the party mourns the death of John, they venture down into the forgotten city of Neverwinter and discover the ruins of the once glorious city and their former lord.

# Development

## Part 1

As Kilijan is comming to his senses, he sees Adona walking down the stairs. She is obviously wounded but keeps going.

Mycha tries to explain to Kilijan what happened, but Kilijan, furious at Mycha for attacking him, produces a thunder wave, knocking the entire party around him. They get into a fight, and Kilijan tells Mycha to not count on him as an ally anymore.

They follow Adona downstairs and find her laying on the ground. Furthermore, they notice a dragon fang ripped into her abdomen. Weneon tries to administer healing potions, but after his snarky remarks while doing so, Adona's pride makes her spit it out, refusing his attempt to help.

Mycha convinces her to stay strong. Weneon leaves three healing potions next to her and Mycha tries to save her.

He manages, however, only to prolong the inevitable and Adona fades away, but not before answering Mycha some of his questions. She tells him that these ruins before them is Neverwinter; that she was the descendant of Darius Lonewalker looking for his grave. She shows him a piece of paper in which Darius Lonewalker informs her that she must find his grave. The party realizes that this Darius belonged to the same group they earlier heard about: the Leaves.

## Part 2

As the party ventures on, they are greeted by zombie guards saluting them. The party realizes that they are near some former guard barracks in Neverwinter and a park adjacent to it.

As they investigate, they notice a snake statue nearby. Weneon, investigating a chimney of one of the ruins, finds a glass eye. Kilijan notices the snake statue is a petrified monster and decides to put the missing snake eye Weneon found into her socket.

As she comes alive, she attacks them immediately. Kilijan notices that she is in great pain. Just as she is about to bulldoze Weneon and Kilijan, Mycha manages to shoot her in between her eyes. The shot triggers an explosion and her intestines are scattered around.

Kilijan notices a yuan-ti emerging from the snake's body, who just fired his first eldritch blast, which was the cause of the explosion.

The warlock introduces himself as Manasa Kitrinos. Before they manage to exchange any more information, they are attacked by a basilisk, who tries to turn the into stone. They fight him off and learn from Manasa that the park they are in was called Even park, in honor of Even, a high elf in Neverwinter who helped built the nearby orphanage.

He tells them about his brothers Kronos and Atlas, and how he was about to meet them when the earthquake started. They were attacked by this monster from the Neverwinter chasm, and Manasa was swallowed.

Manasa is confused by how he survived for more than 1000 years, since for him, it was merely a second that has passed. He learns from his patron Dendar, a snake tied around his body, that the process of turning him into a warlock was suspended for 1000 years inside the snake's belly.

Manasa mourns the ashes of the fallen around him, while the rest notices the ruins of a fort to the north of the park. Weneon sees a faint flame flickering in it, but they decide to follow Manasa to the central bank of Neverwinter to find some loot.

## Part 3

Manasa cannot orient himself in the rubles of Neverwinter and the party gets lost. They see a few basilisks roaming in the distance, but manage to stay clear of their way.

Marla contacts them, telling them to return to the Penthouse. They ask her to have patient since they've found a possible score with many riches. Marla agrees that they follow this lead and updates them that the package is safely stored away by Andre.

As the party ventures further through the ruins, Lorkhan and Weneon fall into a pit and lose consciousness. The rest of the party immediately jumps in and face-off with three basilisks emerging from the hole's walls.

As they successfully fight them off, they notice that their ropes have been untied and thrown inside the pit. An older human male stands above them and asks them to swear loyalty to him. The party hears hoards of basilisks approaching and decide to indulge the old man. He then throws a make-shift ladder down into the pit, and the party climbs out just in time before the basilisks emerge from the walls.

The old man casts a fireball into the hole, killing the basilisks. As he turns to the party, he introduces himself as Neverember, lord of Neverwinter, and tells them that they are now under his command in his attempt to restore his once glorious city and take revenge on the man responsible for its destruction, concluding his speech with: "Gambino must die!"