10.1
Key Events:
Kildrak was overcome with a strong desire to return home. En route, the party encountered a merchant seeking an artifact.

The party disembarked the Siren’s Call, having bid Luna a temporary farewell and returned to the Prime Material Plane, near Cormanthyr. Kildrak had decided it was finally time for him to return to Zanhoriloch, the great underground city, home of Clan Battleheart. It was possible, he knew, that everyone he’d ever known was already dead. He’d heard stories told that after his departure, ruin had come to the city in the form of an ancient enemy. Still, the time had come to find out if there were anything left worth saving.

En route, the party happened across a troupe of goblins harassing a travelling merchant named Sharizad. The party paraded Kildrak as a would-be prisoner, and bade the goblins leave well alone–a message that, it seemed, was well received–and spared a quaking, terrified goblin who pleaded “no hurt!”

Sharizad was searching for a legendary artifact, buried allegedly nearby, led by a riddle:

From the great old one a maiden seek
to find that heart-broke lover;
look and you will see her not
look not and you will find her

The party solved the riddle, discovering a patch of foul-smelling Maiden’s Kiss flowers, and dug up a chest containing an Iron Flask. Opening it, a terrible demon–a Marilith–was released and attacked. The party fought against it, but just as the tide was turning in their favour, the goblins, who’d hidden themselves nearby, poured out, daggers and bows drawn.

10.2
Key Events:
The party moved on toward Cormanther; Kildrak recovered a memory.

The Goblins struck, felling Sharizad with a thrown spear, but their luck didn’t last long. Thurmack smashed them against a nearby cliff-face with a magic wave, fatally mangling all but two. The rest of the party continued their fight against the Marilith; Mercy ensured the giant six-armed snake woman bled black blood from numerous wounds, while Viola attended her friends’ injuries. Kildrak, still wrapped in the thing’s tail, entreated it: what did it want? To return to the front line of the Blood War, it said. Send me there and I will release you. Thurmack did so, using Banish, while Kildrak finished the Goblin Captain with a withering Blight, leaving it a leathery, tight, sunken corpse on the ground.

The party moved toward Cormanther after curing Sharizad, who gave them a number of potions and a map, while Mercy hung on to the Iron Flask. While camping, Viola spoke to Kildrak about what they might find in Zanhoriloch. Kildrak struggled to remember–parts of his mind were still broken from the devouring Oblex the party had encountered at the Dragon’s Head Inn the year before–but suddenly it came to him. There was a tunnel just outside of Battledale which would lead to the Underdark city of Zanhoriloch, and what’s more, that their enemy was an Aboleth named Oothoon.

10.3
Key Events
Descending into the tunnel beneath Battledale, the party found a last guard of dwarves. A skirmish began.

The party descended into the tunnel and followed it for a mile or more. Then, it opened into a cavern, within which roared a waterfall. Defending the tunnel’s exit were a half-dozen dwarves in heavy armor led by a one-eyed hard-ass named Orren Elfbreaker, a trio of elven scouts, a strange and gruff Dueregar named Skrash, and Foregmaster Rockfoot, a Zanhoriloch master artisan. They were all that was left of an original force over fifty strong.

The party fanned out and learned what they could. Kildrak learned that Zanhoriloch had fallen to Oothoon and an unlikely alliace between Aboleth and Illithid. Fighting with them–or under their control–were Duergar, Drow and other unseemly creatures of the Underdark. Thurmack learned that the Eldreth Veluthara, famously xenophobic, had supplied the scouts, so the situation had to be dire. Viola learned that some denizens of the Underdark had never seen the surface nor, it seemed, any of its delights, and Mercy learned that there are few if any horses underground.

Kildrak entreated Forgemaster Rockfoot to fashion him some sturdy armor. Rockfoot declaired Kildrak as a traitor and a thief, revealing that he knew full well that Battleheart’s Boon was a relic designed to protect the city from the wrath of the Aboleths and took it anyway, damning them all. Still, he eventually agreed to make something, if only to help the city in whatever was possible–even if it meant helping Kildrak the Loathesome.

During this exchange, alarm bells began to ring. All took up arms–another wave of enemies was approaching from the deep. First appeared a handful of Intellect Devourers and Duergar, smashing the barriers and skirmishing with the defenders. These, however, were only a distraction from the four Mindflayers silently coming ashore from the nearby river. The defenders, fighting hard, felled one Mindflayer before a great horn was blown. Something else came up the tunnel. Something with dead eyes–ten of them–and the stink of undeath about it.

A zombie beholder.

10.4
Key Events: The party moved from the tunnels to the tombs below the great house of Battleheart.

The Zombie Beholder began firing beam after beam of Disintegration magic. One of the Elven Scouts fled in terror, while a number of the Dwarven defenders were reduced to dust. The Mindflayers, which had encircled the party, ripped the brains from still more defenders. But not all was lost.

Kildrak summoned a Water Elemental, which dispatched one of the Illithid; another, he challenged directly, putting himself between it and Forgemaster Rockfoot. Viola rushed to the rescue of a Dwarven defender, Ingrus, who seemed to have fallen in love with her at first sight, and smote the Illithid which threatened him. Mercy, fearless, rushed the Beholder, Patience aloft and blazing, and hacked away one of its eyestalks after it had nearly killed Thurmack and Kildrack with a Disintegration rays. Thurmack concerned himself with rescuing Orren Elfbreaker, whose brain was hostage to an Intellect Devourer. At last, all save one of the Mindflayers were dead; Kildrack pointed his finger at the Zombie Beholder and fired a Disintegration Ray of its own, blasting it into nothingness. The last remaining Elven scout distracted the final Illithid, that Kildrack might lay his hands on it and run it through with fatal electric vengeance…but that act also cost the Elf her life.

Exhausted but victorious, the Forgemaster rushed to Orren’s aid, telling Thurmack that a Protection from Evil spell would banish the Devourer. The spell worked, and Orren and the party rested in the glow of the small forge that Rockfoot kept. He had fashioned Kildrak a new set or armour, emblazoned with the sigils of the great houses of Zanhoriloch.

It was time for a plan. The party learned that the city was controlled by a hive of Mindflayers, while the mines were controlled by the Duergar. They decided to seek allies with those Deep Dwarves, but were warned by Skrash not to trust them far. Still, it seemed the best way to overcome the Hive and find Oothoon and its fellow Aboleths.

They set off, following tunnels for miles until they reached the secret tunnel which Kildrak had used to escape all those years ago–the one leading directly into the tombs below his house. They found the tomb riven with great holes, and, manoeuvring around them, still managed to get the attention of the thing making them. A Great Worm, its huge, purple body bristling with spikes, its enormous maw filled with row upon row of black, razorlike teeth. The party was trapped. The worm on one side, a locked door on the other. They needed to act fast, or would not survive long.

10.5

Key Events:
The party delved deeper into the Battleheart Family tomb, searching for a way through, and found a great treasure.

Kildrak walled off the corridor with a Wall of Force and Viola threw her whole weight at the door, breaking it into four slabs of stone. On the other side, however, three Drow were looting the hewn coffins of Kildrak’s ancestors. A swift battle commenced, during which a Mindflayer emerged from a small workshop. When the enemies were felled, the party found a number of trinkets and small treasures–alchemy supplies, a strange bottle of viscous oil, a purple gem, a steel mirror and a phial containing a mindflayer tadpole, which was promptly thrown down and smote with a heavy dwarven boot.

Kildrak thought he remembered the way out, but Viola found an alternate passage, and heard strange sounds coming from that direction. Investigating, the party spied a diminutive Deep Gnome, a Svirfneblin, tinkering with an ornate door. She wore a strange hat and goggles, and fled when the party saw her. When the Lamplighters investigated the door, they eventually discovered it was unlocked, and let themselves into a central tomb; the final resting place of the original Kildrak Battleheart, also known as the great Kildrak Chainbreaker, ancient progenitor of the Clan. Buried with him was an ornate axe called Hollowheart. Before the group could leave, however, the Purple Worm erupted into the chamber, summoned by the boom of the sarcophagus lid hitting the stone floor. As the battle raged on, a figure appeared near the door–the gnome was back, watching–and just behind her, a small red fox appeared and turned into Luna Celeste.

10.6
Key Events:
Luna returned, changed; an ally, Ulla, seeks a lost relic somewhere in the tomb.

The party, again attacked by the enormous Purple Worm, fought to escape the chamber. Mercy was once again swallowed, but Kildrak’s lightning freed her. The small Deep Gnome, Ulla, joined the fray, firing a powerful but slow explosive weapon of some personal design. The worm, eventually, retreated. Ulla explained that she sought a powerful relic along with her partner, who had gone missing. The party agreed to help her find both.

It seemed as though the Drow had made a foothold in the tomb and intended to convert its Shrine to Clangeddin Silverbeard to one for Lolth instead. The party decided this could not be tolerated, broke into the shrine, and eliminated the Drow Priestess inside, along with her soldiers. Kildrak found a curious magical stone hidden beneath the statue to Clangeddin: a Luck Stone which, once held, seemed unable to part with its holder.

Peeking through a pile of rubble blocking a doorway, Mercy spotted another Deep Gnome being attacked by a Xorn; with no time to waste, Kildrak teleported the party to the other side, where the Xorn and an Umber Hulk turned to attack. Luna, though real, had maintained an ethereal presence–she was ever so slightly translucent to look upon. Whether she could remain, or be pulled back to the Feywild, remained to be seen.

10.7
Key Events:
The party sought Ulla’s treasure and faced a great predator.

The party engaged the Xorn at one end of the corridor and a slathering Umber Hulk at the other. The Deep Gnome was Ulla’s lost beau. Mercy and Thurmack realsed that the Xorn was simply trying to devour the gold and gems the gnome had collected, and the creature became their ally when they began to feed it. Kildrak, Luna and Viola worked together to destroy the Umber Hulk. When the danger had passed, Ulla entreated the party to help her once more–she sought the Manual of Golems, hidden somewhere in the tomb, a magic book which would help her people fend off the great threats of the underdark. However, she also understood that the party had done enough for her, and pointed the way up to the city proper, should they seek it. The party chose to help her, delving deeper into the tomb; eventually, the Manual was discovered with the Xorn’s help, but not before the Purple Worm made one final attempt to feast on the party. Kildrak narrowly survived the encounter. The Worm did not.

The party left the tomb and emerged into Zanhoriloch proper. The city was scarred, and fires burned everywhere, their reflections shimmering out on the glassy surface of the great Lake Thoroot.

10.8
Key Events:
The Party travelled through the ruined streets of Zanhoriloch as though it were some kind of macabre board game; eventually they arrived at the Crystal Mines.

The party left the ruins of Battleheart Manor and travelled the streets of the city, encountering boons and banes en route and evading roving bands of Duergar, Drow, and Illithid. Hoping to rally the Duergar to their cause, they made for the Crystal Mines, where Thringol Stonetooth commanded his soldiers and forced the city’s survivors to mine for valuable crystals. In the mines, the party encountered a pair of holidaymakers, Atthialas and Esseltha, an incubus and succubus from the Nine Hells city of Dis. In exchange for their help, Kildrak promised them Thurmack’s virginity without Thurmack’s knowledge or consent. The party went deeper into the mines, taking a side route, guided by Viola’s mind for Cartography and the two young devils. It wasn’t long, however, before the group encountered a pair of Duergar and a Mindflayer keeping guard over a couple of slaves. The party could not pass without trying to free the slaves, and a battle broke out.

10.9
Key Events:
The party engaged the enemy. A long battle began.

At this juncture, the party, without stopping to consider just how many enemies might be around, plunged into battle. The duergar and mindflayer were defeated, but not before another half-dozen enemies were summoned to aid. The holidaymaking devils wouldn’t join the fray, asserting that it was not part of the bargain, but watched on, bemused. When the enemies were felled, the parry freed the slaves, finding them malnourished, overworked, and brutally tongueless, and forged deeper into the Crystal Mines, seeking Thringol; it was likely, they learned, that he was keeping Kildrak’s mother, Ceridwyn, hostage.

10.10
Key Events
The battle raged on through the mines’ tunnels; the party was surrounded on all sides.

Soon, the Lamplighters found themselves in a narrow tunnel, attacked from all sides–duergar, grimlocks, giant scorpions and an Ogre Zombie. Our hardened adventurers bested enemy after enemy, but their resources were dwindling; how much magic could they cast, how long until they could no longer withstand the droves of monsters? The succubus, Esseltha, offered Viola this deal: if one member of the party would trade their soul to the devils (“ABC”, she said, “Always be collectin’…souls”), the devils would show them the way to Thringol and get them out of harm’s way. The party would not accept the offer, and when Esseltha was injured, the two phased to the Ethereal Plane to make their escape, promising to return and collect their debt from Thurmack. At last, wearied and worn, the Kildrak parlayed with a group of Rock Guardian Duergar who offered to bring him–alone–to Thringol. He accepted and followed to a small, central chamber, where he found that hated foe in a meeting with a hardfaced and dour-looking drow. Kildrak’s mother, Ceridwyn, was chained to a workbench in the corner.

10.11
Key Events
A battle ensued between the drow, Kildrak, and Thringol.

The hardfaced drow, Z’harr Kravval, immediately challenged the imperious Kildrak. After a short back-and-forth, a fight began between the three of them. Meanwhile, Mercy, Thurmack and Viola worked to free themselves and the enslaved dwarves, including their de-facto leader, Ondrisk Deepwell, by defeating a Clay Golem. To Kildrak’s surprise, Thringol turned against his Drow ally and helped Kildrak defeat him, though the battle was hard-won; Z’harr was a powerful foe whom neither Kildrak nor Thringol could have defeated alone. It seemed that Thringol didn’t see his people as thralls for the other, admittedly stronger, forces of the Underdark. He wanted a safe haven for the Duergar instead; a place where dwarf and duergar could live together again in peace. With Kildrak’s word, he agreed to help the Lamplighters liberate the city. He told them that the Mindflayers were nesting under the area known as Barrelhaven, but Kildrak’s father, Korvak, had gone to the Seven Seats seeking a powerful weapon from the vaults that could help in the fight, but warned that the Drow had summoned something truly terrible there. The party chose to go after Korvak and the weapon. Kildrak’s mother, meanwhile, seemed to be in on the plot…indeed, she seemed rather fond of Thringol.

10.12, 10.13
Key Events
The Party travelled to the Seven Seats and found a horrifying creature

Bards would sing of the battle, had any witnessed it, between the Lamplighters and the demon Sibriex. The Lamplighters only just survived the long battle, but Ondrisk Deepwell did not, and Kildrak discovered that the demon’s presence had twisted his father into a terrible monster. Kildrak had little choice but to take the route of mercy. There would be no song. No celebration. Bone weary and blood-soaked, the party opened the vault.

10.14
Key Events
The vault contained a surprise

The party descended into the vault below the Seven Seats, finding a number of small chests as well as three large ones, each in an alcove of its own. After a brief investigation, they began forcing chests open; one small one contained 300 GP, but there was odd; the larger chests contained smaller chests of silver. Why? Viola discovered these chests to be a ruse–one was trapped, frying the party with a powerful lightning bolt–while another was empty. The third had a false bottom leading to a trap door. The key to the trap door, Kildrak eventually realised, was part of his axe, Hollowheart. He opened the trap door and the four descended a narrow tunnel down to an even deeper vault, where waited a single stone chest…which had already been smashed open. A huge hole in the wall, brackish water leaking out of it, stood gaping. The voice of Oothoon resounded in their minds, taunting them and bidding them come to Darkwater Palace. She would wait, Kildrak decided; her Mindflayer army must be disrupted. The party would head to Barrelhaven instead, and kill the Elder Brain.

10.15
Key Events
MINDFLAYERS

Barrelhaven: Ancient Royal seat of Zanhoriloch. It’s crowded with hidden tunnels, and it’s Mindflayer ground zero. The party discovered a hidden door and spied a sleeping troll. Did they investigate the hidden door? No. Did they use stealth to get by the troll? No. Did they exercise their intelligence, wisdom, or charisma? No, no, no.

They attacked. Now, there are Mindflayers EVERYWHERE.

10.16
Key Events
Kildrak Battleheart met his end.

Surrounded by Illithid, the party fought, bracing themselves against wave after wave of Mindflayers, no closer to their goal. When the party was overwhelmed and all seemed lost, Skrash and Ulla suddenly joined the fray, giving the Lamplighters a moment to regroup. It was not enough for Kildrak, however. There was no time for goodbyes or last words as a Mindflayer wrapped him in its tentacles, opened a hole in his skull, and noisily consumed the dwarven wizard’s brain. Kildrak Battleheart fell to the floor, dead.

10.17
The Lamplighters fled

With Kildrak dead, the party made a last effort to overcome the Illithid horde. Skrash heavily wounded a Alhoon leading the group, then Luna summoned a pack of wolves which attacked and pulled it down the room’s central shaft, back toward the nest. With their commander gone, the remaining Illithid showed signs of hesitation and the last remaining Quaggoth withdrew. Bloodied and exhausted, the Lamplighters saw no way to continue. Instead, they carried Kildrak’s corpse back to the tombs below his home, where Thurmack rested and studied a Resurrection spell. When at last he was ready to cast it, the party gathered round.

The spell worked. Kildrak returned, but changed. Now white-haired, he looked as though he had endured some great terror and hardship, and said that he had been gone many years, although to the Party it had been scarcely a few hours. To him, his friends seemed like a dream he’d had long ago. Where before he’d been brazen and brave, now he was unsure and given to fugue moments. He also claimed to have met an Old One at the edge of the planes, but could not or would not say more.

The party needed to decide what to do. Kildrak’s mother, Ceridwyn, and Forgmaster Rockfoot, joined them; they were trying to decide whether to evacuate those they could from Zanhoriloch or gather their forces for a last assault. The party debated; they knew that Kildrak was weakened from his ordeal, but also that if they retreated now, Zanhoriloch might be lost completely. At last, they decided to press the attack, though they did not know if they could win. The decision made, Rockfoot revealed that the liberated slaves in the Crystal Mines had uncovered some kind of lost workshop, and within it had found some notes belonging to the Battleheart clan progenitor known as Kildrak Chainbreaker, whose axe the Lamplighter’s dwarven friend wielded. The notes seemed to detail Chainbreaker’s studies of a mysterious crystal.

10.18
In which the party regroups and attacks Oothoon’s Lair

Forgemaster Rockfoot had gathered intelligence and believed he could help the party reach Oothoon’s lair. At its entrance, the party descended by rope, but the rope then fell–Either Rockfoot had dropped it, attempting to strand the party, or something had befallen him. The Lamplighters found themselves in a dark but sturdily-built series of tunnels; water from Lake Thoroot coursed through it in small canals. Advancing slowly, they were suddenly beset–by Mercy, who had been leading them. Something, it seemed, had taken possession of her. She turned her sword on the party, injuring Viola and Thurmack before her possessor was revealed: a dreaded Aboleth, hidden in the fetid waters. The party freed Mercy from its psychic grip with a hard wallop to the head and went into battle against the creature. Luna summoned a crocodile to help, which would come in the course of the battle to follow to be known as Lil Bebe, and the rest of the party managed to drive the creature back. They soon realised, however, that it was drawing them deeper into the tunnels.

10.19
In which the party come face to face with Oothoon.

The Aboleth fell. In a large chamber, the party found a locked door magically trapped and inscribed with both Dwarven and Netherese. They could not open it and moved on. In the next chamber, Mercy spotted an abnormality in a stone wall–a hidden door. She forced it open and discovered a cavelike tunnel, its floor underwater, leading off into the darkness. The party followed, although Kildrack was frozen, for a time, in terror. The tunnel led around and out onto the body of Lake Thoroot, which stretched far away into the darkness. From there, Mercy espied three more aboleths which had been laying in wait for the party…and a greater, darker shape just below the surface. She returned to the party to strategize, but when they came back, the three aboleths were gone–or so it seemed. The party made a mad dash for a rocky shore as the Aboleths sprang from the water to attack. If this were not enough, a huge, dark form, four times larger than the other aboleths, surged from the depths. Oothoon. A great battle commenced.

10.20
In which the Lamplighters leave Zanhoriloch.

Oothoon was dead. The Lamplighters, bloodied, bruised, and exhausted, stood in the great silence of the domed and vaulted cavern where the enemy had made its lair, its waters now still, stretching away in the vast darkness. Someone laid a hand on Kildrak’s shoulder, but he seemed far away, unaware. Before leaving, the party explored the remaining tunnels. Behind a hidden door, they discovered a small magic workshop containing evidence that Kildrak Chainbreaker had used this secret place to study magic away from spying eyes. Among the dust and detritus, they found a number of useful objects: A magic scroll of Hero’s Feast, a glass flask of Fire Oil, a shrivelled, brown, mummified frog, a wide-brimmed purple Hat of Disguise Self, six coins of ancient Zanhoriloch mint depicting the city’s crest, and a sheaf of papers in the same handwriting as the investigation notes with more information about Chainbreaker’s life and experiments.

Returning to the city, the party took refuge in what remained in the Battleheart family manor, where they rested for two days straight, utterly exhausted, until, on the third day, they found dozens of dwarves had gathered at their gates, and upon seeing the party, broke into cheers. The Liberators of Zanhoriloch were given 1000 gold pieces and it was to be announced that a great feast was to be held in Darkwater Palace in their honor that night.

In the meantime, the party also received three letters: one from a collector of magic artefacts, one from a historian, and one from the succuubi the party met weeks prior; Thurmack answered the historian and was given a quest to retrieve two tomes of great power from an ancient Yuan-Ti temple and deliver them to Candlekeep.

The hour of the banquet arrived. Merriment was had by all, but in the middle of it, Kildrack was summoned away by his mother, who told him that in spite of being part of the group to free Zanhoriloch from Oothoon’s tyranny, he must still stand trial for the treasonous act of stealing Battleheart’s Boon to begin with; it was his fault, after all, that Oothoon was able to bring its terror to the city. Kildrak did not resist, and attended the trial, during which he was interrogated and finally judged guilty. Before his sentence could be proclaimed, however, his mother intervened; she had forged a secret alliance with Thringol Stonetooth to finally make peace with the Duergar. Only one member of the council objected, and Ceridwyn dispatched her immediately. Zanhoriloch would have no council. Now it would have a queen.

The party witnessed the armies of Duergar marching into Zanhoriloch. Rebellions were quickly quashed. Ceridwyn would take no visitors. At last, the party departed, with the message that Zanhoriloch and its Queen would answer the call for allies, should that call ever come. Kildrak, still unsure that his mother had not fallen under some malevolent enchantment, tried one last time to reach her: he invaded her dreams. Alas, she was not ensorcelled, nor mad; she was simply not the woman he’d always believed her to be.