Having survived the devastating ambush on the Crystalsands Tundra, the battered companions finally gain entry into the grand underground city of Uthodurn. Taken in under a strict order of silence by the stern Commander Tormund Ironfell, they seek refuge at the Broken Stool tavern. As they rest and recover, they hear whispers of escalating tensions between the Kryn Dynasty and the Dwendalian Empire, and Elara learns of another celestial being, Reani, living within the city.
The following morning, the adventurers explore the bustling Deliberation Disk, preparing themselves for the challenges ahead. At the Anvil of Smeltborne, Kragor trades an unusual Aeorian sword to commission custom-enchanted armaments, while Doctor Pepe and Scarlet spend their fortunes at Padillia’s emporium on powerful magic items and sturdy armor. Later, at the Plexus Post, the group stocks up on essential arcane and divine components, including a holy symbol of Bahamut for their new companion, Therin.
The centerpiece of their day is a tense audience with Minister Ërethyn Galewing. After delivering the surviving Aeorian relics and detailing the ambush, the Minister points out a troubling contradiction: the attackers utilized beasts of the Kryn Dynasty alongside necromantic undead, forces that are traditionally bitter enemies. Though paid in full and granted the prestigious ‘Friends of the Court’ tokens, the heroes are forbidden from investigating the stolen artifact further. Respectful of the mandate but deeply curious, the party decides to check on the traumatized young recruit Brennik before deciding their next move.
At the threshold of Uthodurn’s monumental gates, Brennik Coalvein hauled himself upright despite the grievous wounds still etched across his frame. The young recruit cupped his hands around his mouth and, in a voice made hoarse by days of marching, announced himself as a Glassblade of Palebank Village, desperately requesting entry for the bloodied remnants of their diplomatic caravan.
A flurry of urgent activity erupted along the battlements. Deep, resonant horns sounded a solemn note of entry, and with a profound, earth-shaking rumble of hidden gears and ancient counterweights, the colossal doors began to part. From the warm amber glow beyond, no fewer than ten armored sentries emerged into the snow, torches held high and crossbows leveled with the sort of professional hostility that suggested they were not in the habit of receiving late-night visitors on the strength of a shouted introduction alone.
Brennik’s halting explanation of the ambush eventually persuaded the duty sergeant to order the crossbows lowered. The convoy was expected, although they noted the unfamiliar Flot goat that was Scarlet in wild shape. Once inside the semidomed courtyard, she dropped her bestial guise, resuming her natural halfling form to the surprise and then visible relief of the sentries. Kragor stepped forward and addressed the nearest guard, recounting the devastation of the ambush in clipped, soldierly tones. The party was told to hold their story and wait for the Commander.
The man who emerged from the barracks was still fastening the buckles of his breastplate. Commander Tormund Ironfell was a dwarf of late middle age, broad as a forge anvil, with an iron-gray beard trimmed short and deep-set eyes that radiated equal measures of competence and displeasure. He strode past the adventurers without a glance, making directly for young Brennik.
The exchange was brief and grim. Brennik, overwhelmed by exhaustion and grief, could only recount that the attack had been swift and that he had been knocked unconscious before the worst of the slaughter. Ironfell’s jaw tightened as he absorbed the news. He announced curtly that he would need to consult with the palace regarding the situation. Then, fixing the adventurers with a look that brooked no argument, he directed them to an establishment called the Broken Stool and issued a single, emphatic instruction: “Don’t talk to anyone.”
With that, the Commander dispatched Brennik home and summoned a pair of Glassblades to serve as escorts. As the party fell into step behind the guards, Kragor drew alongside Therin and quietly asked the dragonborn cleric about the enchanted dagger recovered from the caravan wreckage. Therin confirmed his earlier assessment: the blade was of Aeorian make and carried a modest but reliable enchantment.
Their escorts led them through the cavernous entry hall and into a wide, vaulted archway, beyond which a broad spiral staircase descended into the living rock of the mountain. This was the Auger Trail, the great helical thoroughfare that served as Uthodurn’s primary artery.
The descent was a full hundred and fifty feet, and with each slow rotation downward, the brutal cold of the surface yielded incrementally to a welcome, mineral-scented warmth. The travelers loosened their furs and heavy cloaks, breathing in the subterranean air that carried the unmistakable fragrance of burning pine, smoldering charcoal, and working forges, layered beneath the more civilized aromas of freshly baked bread and slow-cooked meat. Therin, whose dragonborn constitution had suffered the northern cold with a barely concealed, reptilian misery, visibly unburdened himself of several layers at once, his heavy shoulders dropping as the geothermal warmth seeped into his scales.
At last, the staircase opened onto the vast expanse of the Volition Disk— an enormous cavern one hundred and twenty feet high and fifteen hundred feet across, alive with the warm, flickering light of countless torches, braziers, and arcane sconces. Colossal natural pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, and many of the homes carved into their bases had channeled their chimneys directly into the stone. High on the cavern walls, elegant elven dwellings hung like swallows’ nests, their delicate Art Nouveau facades a striking counterpoint to the angular, Art Deco severity of the dwarven architecture that dominated the disk. Here and there, rivulets of fresh water wound between the structures, feeding small but astonishing gardens that thrived under the sustained warmth of permanent Daylight enchantments.
The Auger Trail continued its descent into the deeper levels of the city. As they passed the junction, a group of soot-streaked miners trudged upward from the lower disks, pickaxes slung over their shoulders and lanterns swinging at their belts.
Five or six rotations into the Volition Disk, their escorts turned off the trail and led them into the Broken Stool.
The tavern was a wide, comfortable establishment carved directly into the cavern wall. Fifteen sturdy tables filled the room, of which only a handful were occupied— a scattering of miners, a pair of local merchants, and a solitary dwarf slumped in a corner booth, fast asleep. The air was thick with the mingled sounds of Common, Dwarvish, and Elvish conversation.
Behind the bar stood Luda, the inn’s proprietress: an older female dwarf with gray-brown hair pulled into a severe bun, a few defiant strands flying loose. She wore impressive mutton-chop sideburns and bore old, faded scars on her chin and clavicle, visible above her folded arms. Her expression, upon receiving the Glassblade escort’s explanation, softened from suspicion to a gruff, wordless sympathy.
The party ordered stew and ale— fifteen silver for the lot, though Kragor pressed two gold pieces into Luda’s calloused palm— and collapsed into chairs with the particular bonelessness of the profoundly exhausted. As she served them, the innkeeper’s curiosity proved sharper than her stew. Luda let fall a series of carefully casual questions— what manner of travelers warranted a Glassblade escort at this hour of the night? Had they come far? Had anything happened on the road? The party, mindful of Ironfell’s injunction, offered little beyond tired smiles and grateful nods. Luda accepted their reticence with the practiced grace of a woman long accustomed to tight-lipped patrons, and shifted to gossip of her own: tensions between the Kryn Dynasty and the Dwendalian Empire had been escalating of late, she confided, with rumors of outright war circulating through the city’s lower disks.
Several off-duty Glassblades entered shortly after, looking nearly as haggard as the adventurers themselves. Kragor attempted to draw Therin into conversation, probing gently for the dragonborn’s origins. Therin confirmed that he hailed from Draconia, but offered little else, maintaining the stoic reserve the party was quickly learning to expect.
A young, red-haired adolescent dwarf delivered their meals and nearly dropped the tray upon catching sight of Elara. The boy stared openly at the bard’s celestial features— the faint luminescence, the unearthly symmetry— with the unguarded astonishment of someone who had clearly not encountered many aasimar. Recovering himself with an embarrassed cough, he offered that he knew of one other person with a similar look about her— a halo and everything, he said— who worked at the smithy down on the Liber Disk. Elara’s interest was visibly piqued.
After supper, Therin inquired about bathing facilities and was directed to the warm baths on the next level down, the Liber Disk, heated by the mountain’s deep geothermal veins.
The party retired to their windowless rooms for the night. Kragor, ever vigilant, warded the doors of two adjoining chambers with Alarm rituals. Before the candles were doused, Elara cast Invisibility on Doctor Pepe, who slipped out to conduct what the rogue diplomatically termed “reconnaissance.” His survey of the hallways and common room yielded nothing of consequence, and the invisible rogue eventually returned, slightly deflated, to his own bed.
The party woke to the aroma of fresh bread and the rhythmic percussion of a distant anvil— a resonant, ceaseless hammering that the locals fondly called the heartbeat of Uthodurn. Somewhere beyond the stone walls, the lilting strains of elven music drifted through the warm subterranean air.
Downstairs, Luda informed them that a pair of Glassblades had stopped by at dawn. Their presence was not required until just past midday— the appointed hour marked, in Uthodurn’s timeless caverns, by the shifting of arcane sun-globes from one side of the main thoroughfare to the other. Until then, their time was their own.
Over a breakfast of tea and coffee, the party bombarded Luda with questions about the city’s commercial offerings. The innkeeper, warming perceptibly to her eager guests, rattled off a series of recommendations: Padillia’s emporium on the Liber Disk for arms and provisions; the Anvil of Smeltborne for fine metalwork; the Plexus Post for antiques and curiosities; Oltgar’s Chest for novelties; and the Watersmith Baths for the weary of body and spirit. Having reserved their rooms for another night, the adventurers set out to explore.
The streets of the Volition Disk were now bathed in the soft, steady glow of arcane sun-lamps that lined the broader avenues, lending the cavernous city an illusion of perpetual, golden late afternoon. The party descended the Auger Trail to the Deliberation Disk— oft called the “Liber Disk” for short— where the bulk of the city’s commerce hummed and clattered.
Elara and Kragor made directly for the Anvil of Smeltborne, drawn by the rising waves of heat and the relentless, musical clangor of hammer on metal. The smithy was a grand, open workshop— kilns roaring, tables laden with gauntlets, tools, sheets of iron, and blank metal forms— yet what caught the eye most immediately was the improbable profusion of fresh flowers arranged in every available nook and crevice.
At the forge’s center labored a young dwarf with long blonde hair tightly braided, a magnificent mustache plaited to match, and not a whisker upon his chin. This was Umagorn Smeltborne, master of the establishment and, as Elara swiftly discovered, entirely susceptible to aasimar charm.
Umagorn’s eyes widened as he took in the bard’s celestial features. He mentioned that he knew of one other aasimar— or at least, he believed her to be one. A woman named Reani, who lived nearby and was, in fact, responsible for the smithy’s abundant floral decoration. Umagorn spoke of her warmly: a heart of gold, he said, though very serious in temperament.
Turning to matters of business, Kragor drew the magic longsword he had recovered from the Aeorian ruins and laid it across the counter. Umagorn’s eyes lit up. The smith turned the blade over in his practiced hands, running a calloused thumb along the flat and tilting the edge to catch the firelight. “Interesting,” he murmured. “This has never been struck by a hammer.” He explained that the blade appeared to have been shaped by some arcane or alchemical process entirely unknown to him— no forge marks, no grind lines, no evidence of any metalworking technique he could name.
Kragor nodded appreciatively but confessed that, fine as the weapon was, he preferred “a more honest weapon”— a warhammer, enchanted to match the longsword’s potency. Umagorn considered the proposition, weighing the Aeorian curiosity against the commission. He agreed that with the longsword as trade-in, he could forge an enchanted warhammer at a discounted price of two hundred gold.
Kragor was not finished. He also inquired about an elven chain shirt, which Umagorn quoted at two hundred gold, with the option of weaving remorhaz scales into the mesh for an additional two hundred to grant resistance to fire. Kragor counted out three hundred gold as a down payment on the lot.
Umagorn, warming to his customers, produced several other fine weapons from his stock, each bearing some measure of enchantment. Kragor examined them with appreciation and then murmured the syllables of a Message cantrip, reaching out across the city to Therin, who was at that moment submerged to the chin in the Watersmith Baths. The dragonborn’s reply was succinct: he desired an enchanted mace. Kragor relayed the commission to Umagorn and left two hundred and fifty gold in deposit against the mace’s full price of five hundred. All three pieces would require a fortnight’s work.
As they prepared to leave, Umagorn gestured toward the rear of the forge, where a slender young elf named Deilin worked the bellows and beat ingots with arms that belied her willowy frame. She was mute, Umagorn explained, but heard and understood everything said around her. Kragor and Elara nodded a polite greeting as they departed; Deilin returned it with a brief, steady look and a small inclination of her head before turning back to the anvil.
Meanwhile, Doctor Pepe and Scarlet arrived at the imposing double-width storefront of Padillia’s Boutique of Ample Armaments and Boutique of Bountiful Provisions— a single establishment split neatly down the middle, one half bristling with weaponry, the other stacked with adventuring supplies.
Padillia herself presided over the chaos: a tall, broad-shouldered attalwen with copper-colored hair and a faint but undeniable five o’clock shadow. Upon hearing Doctor Pepe’s request for new studded leather armor, she bellowed for her assistant, a fastidious dwarf named Borric, who descended upon the rogue with measuring tape, chalk, and an air of grave professionalism. The fitting that ensued was an exercise in meticulous indignity, ending with an order for studded leather at forty-five gold. Not content to stop there, Doctor Pepe acquired a full climber’s kit— pitons, hammer, vest, grappling hook, and silk rope— for thirty gold, along with chalk and a hand mirror for five more.
Scarlet, browsing with more discernment, was measured for her own suit of studded leather and began examining the shop’s more rarefied stock. Borric, sensing a serious buyer, escorted the druid to a roped-off alcove where the establishment’s finer wares were displayed. There, Scarlet’s practiced eye fell upon a cloak of protection, a pair of brass goggles enchanted to pierce the dark, and several potions of healing. She assembled her purchases with quiet efficiency: studded leather armor, the cloak, the goggles, and three healing potions, the total of nine hundred and ninety-five gold negotiated deftly down to nine hundred and seventy.
Doctor Pepe, drawn irresistibly to a display case, selected a pair of finely made green boots of elvenkind and a shortsword that hummed faintly with enchantment. With five enchanted crossbow bolts added to the pile, his total of eight hundred and sixty gold was similarly haggled to eight hundred and twenty.
The party returned to the Broken Stool as the arcane sun-globes completed their slow migration across the cavern thoroughfare, signaling just past midday. Two Glassblades were already waiting outside. Without ceremony, the guards escorted the party down the Auger Trail to the Grand Disk, Uthodurn’s deepest and most prestigious level.
Here, the cavern walls were polished to a mirror sheen. The homes carved into the rock were grander, more refined in their ornamentation, and the light was softer, emanating from elegant sconces rather than the workmanlike sun-lamps of the upper levels. At the far end of the disk, the grand palace of the Diarchy loomed— a monumental facade of carved stone and mithral filigree.
Commander Ironfell met them at the entrance and led them not to the palace itself but to an administrative wing, through a succession of guarded corridors, and finally into a long chamber of polished stone. A detailed map of the Greying Wildlands dominated one wall, and a brazier in the corner added its warmth to the scent of ink and parchment that permeated the room.
At the head of a long, formal table— the sort used for council meetings, its dark surface bare save for a few sheaves of parchment— sat an elven woman whose silver hair was pulled back with severe precision. The symbol of the Diarchy was embroidered upon the breast of her formal robe, and ink stains marked her slender fingers. She did not stand as they entered.
“Sit,” said Minister Ërethyn Galewing.
They sat.
“I authorized that caravan,” she continued, her voice level and precise. “And I authorized you to protect it. What happened?”
The party recounted the ambush in full— the eruption of the purple worm, the shadow-trailing ghasts, the silent rider on the Moorbounder who had cut down Therin and seized the artifact with terrifying efficiency. Therin produced the surviving lockbox, returning the enchanted dagger and the grapefruit-sized Aeorian orb that had been stored in the smaller coffer.
Galewing listened without interruption. When they had finished, she shared that Uthodurnian scouts had long established that the Kryn Dynasty employed purple worms as instruments of subterranean warfare, and Moorbounders were common mounts throughout Xhorhas and the Dynasty’s territories. However, she noted a troubling inconsistency: the Kryn did not abide undead, yet the shadowghasts and the rider were unmistakably creatures of necromantic origin.
“And how,” she added, her gaze sharpening, “did they know precisely where and when to ambush you?”
The question hung in the warm, lamplit air. The party had no answer. She asked them to report anything further they might learn.
Turning to the matter of compensation, the Minister counted out seventy-five gold to each of them— the promised fee for the escort mission, paid in full despite its catastrophic outcome. She then produced a single brass disk inlaid with silver, mithral, and copper, bearing the Uthodurnian crest. This token, she explained, marked them as Friends of the Court— a designation that would extend certain courtesies and privileges within the city. At Padillia’s, for instance, the disk might secure them a discount on clothing suitable for a court appearance. Kragor accepted the token on behalf of the party.
At a loss for anything more to inquire regarding the incident, Kragor asked about the Mawcotters. Galewing recommended the Vellum Steeple, Uthodurn’s great archive and center of scholarship, as the best place to research the flesh-eating cult and their frozen patron.
Scarlet pressed for details about the stolen artifact itself. The Minister weighed her words carefully. The information was closely held, she said, but this much she could share: the scholars of the Vellum Steeple had not yet determined the artifact’s precise nature. What made it exceptional was that it was the first Aeorian relic whose residual magic actively disrupted the teleportation network normally used to transport such items to Uthodurn— hence the need for the overland caravan that had proven so disastrously vulnerable.
Galewing acknowledged that the party’s earlier service— the recovery and delivery of the Frigid Woe and its antidote from Salsvault— had been of significant value to the Diarchy, ensuring the plague would not fall into the hands of rival powers.
Before dismissing them, Commander Ironfell, who had been listening in silence, spoke up with a question of his own: from which direction had the attackers come? Doctor Pepe and Elara conferred briefly and agreed that the ambush had originated from the east.
Her parting request was delivered with the diplomatic precision of a closing door: she asked the adventurers not to pursue the matter of the stolen artifact further. The Diarchy wished to handle the situation with appropriate delicacy.
The party was escorted out to the edge of the Liber Disk, where one of the accompanying Glassblades quietly encouraged them to check in on Brennik Coalvein. The young recruit’s quarters, the guard mentioned, were on the Volition Disk, near the copper mines. His mentor Dolgrim’s death, the guard implied, had hit the boy hard.
Finding themselves back on the Liber Disk with the remainder of the day before them, the party made their way to the Plexus Post— a large, gaudily decorated building festooned with paper lanterns crammed into every conceivable nook. The interior presented itself as the well-organized collection of a deeply committed hoarder: scented candles and dried cedar, cured meats and old leather, frankincense and myrrh, all arranged with a logic that was evident to the proprietress alone.
That proprietress was Ava Endlewood, a woman of wide shoulders and fine, long gray-green hair matched by a faint gray-green mustache. She was dressed in a patterned frock of Marquesian make, layered beneath a loose cotton robe, and she regarded the party with the shrewd, knowing gaze of someone who had heard every negotiating tactic at least twice.
Doctor Pepe expressed interest in stocking a poisoner’s kit. Ava raised an unsurprised eyebrow and produced wolfsbane, dragonsbane, and several other noxious botanicals from beneath her counter. But she admitted that the shop could not provide the equipment required to transform these into poison.
Scarlet asked about magical items. Ava gestured airily toward the higher shelves, where an Amulet of Protection from Scrying sat tagged at three thousand five hundred gold, and a Bag of Holding at an eye-watering four thousand.
Kragor made several purchases in the service of his arcane practice: a pearl worth one hundred gold, the necessary component for his Identify ritual; gems totaling one hundred and fifty gold for the etching of eldritch tattoos; and incense worth one hundred more, set aside for the conjuring of his familiar. Emboldened by the transaction, and perhaps by some deeper impulse, the warlock attempted a more creative exchange— offering a vial of Frigid Woe for the Bag of Holding, sweetening the pitch with an undetectable invocation of Suggestion. Ava’s eyes glazed for a moment, then cleared with a counteroffer: bring her a Yeti pelt, and she would consider a trade. She then leaned in conspiratorially and mentioned that she might, from time to time, have need of individuals willing to acquire items through channels less conventional than purchase. Doctor Pepe, who had been browsing a nearby shelf with studied indifference, caught the implication immediately and offered a subtle, knowing nod that conveyed his fluency in the language being spoken.
Therin, who had largely observed the proceedings with the quiet patience of the devout, asked whether the shop stocked any symbols of Bahamut. Ava produced a small, folded ladder from within her robes and set it against the nearest shelf. As she climbed, the rungs extended beneath her feet, the contraption stretching impossibly upward until she reached the high shelf she required. She descended with a platinum-on-bronze holy symbol, priced at fifty gold. The dragonborn bought it without hesitation.
Stepping back into the warm, lamp-lit streets of the Liber Disk, the party fell into an easy discussion of what remained to be done. Doctor Pepe and Scarlet’s enthusiastic accounts of Padillia’s stock had piqued the interest of those who had not yet visited the emporium. Elara, who alone among the party had not yet spent a single coin, declared her intention to rectify this oversight, and Kragor expressed a desire to browse as well. After that, they agreed, they would make their way up to the Volition Disk to check in on Brennik. The young recruit had lost his mentor and very nearly his life, and the least they could do was see how the boy was holding up.