The party continues further into the Underdark towards the famed city of Skullport. However, a detour is in order to liberate a stash of beskar that we’ve heard chaos dwarves hold in a fortress nearby. The chaos dwarves are sworn enemies at this point.
The fortress is in an enormous cavern, carved directly into the wall. Large stone double doors prevent entry, along with a moat of poisonous mist, and patrols of heavily armored chaos dwarves with gas masks. Towers with arrow slits are visible on the sides.
Niaelo sends Elli forward to scout the area. The spider returns with patrol counts and the location of a chimney that leads into the fortress, high atop the structure. Inside, deep gnome prisoners toil away mining under the watchful gaze of their captors. The group hatches a plan to lure the patrol away from the fortress towards where we’re hiding, a small copse of mushrooms. With the dwarves’ gas masks in hand, the main group can approach the gate while Niaelo creates a distraction via the chimney. Chet asks her to try to spare the deep gnomes so they can be questioned; she responds not to worry, she can reanimate their corpses for questioning.
C’Nut uses his powers of illusion to conjure a gnome merchant who begins setting up camp nearby and the plan starts to unfold. The dwarves are lured and quickly dispatched between C’Nut and Beskar’s blades. Niaelo leaves to begin spider climbing towards the chimney entrance, with Elli in tow.
Niaelo reaches the interior entrance of the chimney which overlooks the main mining chamber, chock full of chaos dwarves and deep gnome prisoners. From her perch high above, she screams that Lolth will claim all of their souls and summons her greater demon right in the middle of them all. Mayhem ensues.
Meanwhile the rest of the group has pulled the Prisoner Trick yet again to approach the main gate. Using the screams of terror and roar of battle as his cue, Beskar wields the Architect’s Maul and smashes in one of the mighty stone doors. Chet and C’Nut rush inside to find themselves in a grand entrance hall, including ballistas pointed directly at them from a landing above. Thankfully, they’re unmanned and it’s clear why. The battle between the dwarves and the demon has clearly gotten the fortress’s attention.
The battle rages. Niaelo hurls a fireball into the melee from above and C’Nut, Beskar, and Chet reach the landing with the balisatas, which overlooks the main mining cavern as well. C’Nut throws his rare Dust of Sneezing and Choking into the group, incapacitating nearly everyone including the demon. However, more chaos dwarves are nearby, and a shaman of some kind.
The shaman announces himself to be Hastur the Demon Summoner, wielder of the Staff of the Oathkeeper. And begin summoning a demon he does.
Chet attempts to counterspell Hastur, but the power of the nearby chaos dwarf shrine is too much. A huge bird demon called a Vrock appears from a miasmic portal and unleashes a soul wrenching scream that shakes the cavern walls. Reeling from the dust of choking and sneezing, the sonic attack, a fireball, and each other, Niaelo’s demon and the chaos dwarves continue to fight.
Out of nowhere, a colossal purple worm bursts through the wall of the mining cavern and into the middle of the melee. It appears to have been drawn by the sound of the Vrock’s scream. The battle devolves further into chaos as Hastur flees to his shrine, Beskar ignites his jetpack to claim a stash of beskar ingots, the worm swallows the Vrock whole while smashing Niaelo’s demon to paste, and Chet incinerates more chaos dwarves with magical fire from cover.
C’Nut and Elli chase Hastur into the passageway that leads to the profane shrine of the chaos dwarves. He’s begun a new ritual to summon another demon. C’Nut puts a swift end to the ritual by pummeling Hastur with his sword, but the demon summoner survives for now.
The worm turns towards the shrine passage and slams through into the next room, trapping C’Nut, Elli, and Hastur. Niaelo runs along the ceiling of the cavern towards the passage and commands the worm to flee. It obeys and burrows straight down and out of sight for the moment, leaving a huge hole in the middle of the entrance to the shrine. C’Nut and Elli flee out of the destroyed passage back to the main cavern, while Niaelo runs into the shrine to claim Hastur’s soul for Lolth and his staff for herself.
Hastur is slain but it proves to be a nearly fatal choice as the worm returns and she narrowly avoids being swallowed whole. She’s less lucky when it comes to the worm’s deadly stinger and gets hit right in the chest. Her innate poison resistance and Lolth’s divine protection are all that keeps her from being instantly killed. C’Nut manages to drive the worm away once more with a powerful psychic attack and the group flees the fortress.
Shaken but alive, the group looks themselves over and admires the newly acquired beskar ingots and Staff of the Oathkeeper. Next stop, Skullport.