Session 13: The Ketra Pit Mines

It is late at night on the 2nd to last day of the year 1136 AV.

#### Kur's Hunt for Gilderval

Under Kur the Inexorable's questioning about the location of Gilderval Callistran, they revealed he had been looking for Neo-Vessics - not the whole truth, but not a lie, either. Kur refused to name his employer, but hinted that it was outside work rather than a command from his devil lord, and said he was searching for Gilderval dead or alive. When the party attempted to play a trick on him with an Unseen Servant, Kur grabbed and crushed it, then winked in and out of existence, implying he had the powers of both invisibility and truesight. Eventually he left the tavern to continue hunting his quarry.

#### The Parthenian Emperor's Quest

The party continued riling up the miners in the tavern, spreading rumors of gashauling difficulties and starting a conga line. They then spoke with the blue lizardfolk woman, who introduced herself as Scra Kacedon, an Adjunct Trade Minister of the Parthenian Empire, a large interstellar government that controlled a wide swath of the Astral Sea to the galactic west of the Bralian Vassalages. Scra said she was one of many Parthenian ministers on a recruiting assignment outside the Empire, intent on directing adventurers of all kinds to travel to the Parthenian capital world of Parthenon to meet with the Parthenian Emperor. She did not know much more about the assignment than this, other than that there were rumors the mission involved ancient secrets uncovered at the planet Sandsea.

#### Seline's Stalkers

Finally, they talked to the heavily armored trio at the back of the bar, who introduced themselves as Stubbs, a bugbear with heavy tundra fur, Fezzel Farstone, a short, gruff, and aggressive mountain dwarf, and Seline Starshadow, an elf. The party challenged Stubbs to the cinnamon challenge and he handily succeeded - on his home planet, Seline told them, the tundra bugbears ate spices by the fistful.

#### The Dwarvenstars

Fezzel, who has a short fuse, felt insulted and started shouting, but ended up calming down over connecting with Torman, a fellow dwarf. He told the party of the plight of the Dwarvenstars, a region of space believed to be the ancestral home of all dwarves. It was filled with a "paradise" of rocky worlds like Fezzel's homeworld of Kag Thuldor, which means 'Gray Mountain' in dwarvish. But fifty years prior, the treacherous duergar kingdom of Duergola led by the Voidking Belrigg Bonebeard had subjugated the Dwarvenstars through subterfuge and conquest in a series of events called the Night Wars, so named because the duergar possessed a weapon that could snuff out light, even from an entire star, giving them a decisive advantage. Now, Duergola's chief enemies were Beholder raiders coming from the Blood Stars to the galactic south, and Fezzel had encountered teams of duergar on missions to find ancient Beholder secrets to give Duergola an advantage in these fights.

### To the Pit Mines

The next morning, the party awoke and met up with Captain Glimmerhook. The party headed toward the Ketra Pit Mines, sneaking up and around some Thri-Kreen guards. They surveyed the scaffolding below, and plotted their next move...