Harpies dive down on the party, coming in on high from the noon day sun. With but a moment to spare the party tries to prepare. Uhr uses an illusion of the party continuing on down the mountainous trail to distract, while others try to hide or prepare spells. The harpies appear to be out for blood and with their peryton companions they feel assured of an easy victory. Little do they know what fate awaits them.
Warned by Luvon the party is ready for a hostile encounter and knows their playbook well by this point. With a few harpies distracted by Uhr’s illusion, Geo uses his spear, Eagle’s Sorrow which shoots out a massive sticky frog’s tongue and wraps around a harpy, restraining her and dropping her 60ft to the ground, where she is quickly dispatched by Nira the Vlazoth guide. Simultaneously, Hulnir is able to cast grease on two of the harpies while still in flight, catching them with a massive glob of grease that brings them tumbling into the mountain slope. They are quickly dispatched by a hail of attacks and flames from the rest of the party. The Harpies and Perytons are quickly dispatched with 3 castings of Grease by Hulnir, an abundance of flame from Luvon, and numerous strikes from Kella, Geo, Uhr, and Hasselfhoff. Mere seconds pass and the mountain top returns to it’s previous quiet state, now only interrupted by the crackling flames of grease, feather, and flesh. The Grease Fire has struck again.
After putting out the flames and searching the remains, the party come away with some shiny bits the terrible monstrosities had collected from their victims. Nira looks confused and concerned as the gruesome task is completed, “Something is wrong, these harpies shouldn’t be here.” After some thought the party guesses that the harpies must have been driven here after losing access to their normal home. Faced with a choice, the party decides to look into the displaced Harpies and see what caused them to flee.
With some effort the party is able to follow sign of the harpies back to their normal roost. Up and up into the mountains. Uhr, Kella, Hassellhoff and Nira range ahead, and as they crest the last ridge, they look down into a small flat bottomed bowl formation near the top of a peak, with a commanding view of several ridges and a path far below. The area has several collapsed buildings including one short tower all made of massive block or bricks of stone. The collapsed buildings are covered in massive harpy nests and simple lean-tos to provide basic shelter. Humanoid and animal corpses are littered around the area, mostly decayed.
Most prominent of all, however, are the forms of 4 massive stone giants, all collapsed into or upon the remaining buildings. All four appear to have skin that looks like it is made of granite. All four giants appear to be in the midst of waking dreams. Arms move, lips mumble, and one sitting mostly upright catches sight of the scouting party and seeming confused yells at them in Giant (that they can’t understand) and throws the corpse of a harpy at them. Thankfully in his current state the throw is wildly off-target and goes sailing off, eventually passing over the heads of the rest of the party a minute’s walk back down the trail. Nira panics, and Hasselhoff fails to keep a hold of her and she runs back for the other party members. Spotted, Hasselhoff makes his way towards the giant who threw the harpy corpse, attempting to show no ill intent while Uhr retrieves the gift of the fire giants from his genie’s vessel. Not too long after Geo is able to finally arrive and start translating.
Geo wears a belt of giant friendship, and so is able to help prove that the party bears no ill will to the stone giants, and is quickly able to explain the party’s mission to Kroatash, and their charge to retrieve princess Vlakith. He also reiterates the gift from the fire giant Zenith that Uhr has proffered, and the giants hand brushes against it. Suddenly racked with convulsions, the giant slowly recovers and when his eyes find the party again, they seem clear and focused. The lead giant introduces himself as Garnok and the party learns that his small band of giants fled from Kroatash, and what they saw as then end of their civilization. Sloth, greed, and an unending dream has befallen the city. They were offered a way out by none other than Draevax, and told to meet at the keep at Elder’s Pass. With the gift from Zenith in hand, Garnok uses it to clear the minds of his fellow giants and introduces them in turn. Thulmar, Beldora, and Vorn. The giants wish to return to Kroatash and attempt to root out the cause of this decay with the help of the stone, and the party convinces the giants to speed the journey by carrying them. Before leaving the harpy lair, the party quickly searches what it can, and finds several powerful items.
The party wakes up in the Goblin warren surrounded by the stink of goblin children. Their host, Glub-glub, had allowed them to stay in his home for free, but there was only room in his nursery nest. As it so happens, all of the party members are heavy sleepers and they all wake up fully refreshed. The leader of the goblin gang, Skab, reminds the party that they are to seek out Balphagore, Lore of Chains (aka Balphy) who was abducted by Kymarians during a raid. Defenders of the warren overheard the Kymarians mention the Mistwood Monarch, which Sixela identifies as a giant edelwood tree in the Southern Mistwood forest.
Before leaving town, the party heads to Stoutheart’s Apiary which sits above Flameclaw Flabreads. The proprietor of the flatbread shop, Pete Zah IX, gives the party a quest to find an ancient family recipe housed in a Volic temple somewhere on the Golden Coast surrounded by trees that sprout multi-faceted yellow fruits with green leafy tops. Various family texts hotly debate whether the recipe is cursed or holds the secret to flatbread bliss.
After receiving this strange request, the party stops by Stoutheart’s where they learn that their recently evolved Bumble-zilla pupa can be sustained by either slathering it in royal jelly, feeding it magic, or bathing it in blood. They purchase more royal jelly.
Finally on the road, the party heads south following the natural bends of the Grishdog river. On their second day of travel a heavy downpour starts, chilling them to their bones. They round a bend in the road, and spot a troupe of travelers who are resting around a large box.
Sixela strikes up a conversation with an impressionable young member of the group, Finn, and learns that the group knows the location of Balphy before Jaren, the group leader, can shut Finn up. Meanwhile, Fen hears growling coming from the large box, and spots a couple of heavily armed members of the group. Using his new psychic messaging powers, Fen coordinates with Sixela and Grizz to hatch a new plan. Grizz and Fen approach the party and fool Jaren into thinking that they are, in fact, reinforcements from town. Sixela asks if she can accompany the band back to town, where she can hopefully find more information about Balphy, and Jaren agrees on the condition that she leaves the impressionable young Finn alone.
After making camp, Fen manages to draw the short-straw for first watch. While everyone is asleep, he and Sixela determine that there is a very grumpy Displacer Beast inside of the large box. Fen tries to undo the locks on the box, but wakes up a few members of the group who raise the alarm. A brawl ensues, and Fen barely manages to escape getting turned into minced-meat by teleporting to Grizz, who looses a volley of arrows at Jaren protecting the party’s retreat. Just as Fen teleports to Grizz, a few of the underlings in the party undo the last of the locks on the box, hoping that the beast inside will chase down the party members…
Cardigan suddenly snapped to. He’d been standing dumbstruck in the street in front of the Crooked Bone for several minutes, ever since he saw a magically conjured giant toad swallow his would-be paramour, the mercenary captain Duran. Turning away from the satiated looking toad, Cardigan watched as Ta’ahsu exited the Crooked Bone with a hobgoblin sporting Restless Dead mercenary gear and the cylindrical metal egg carrying case. Seeing the duo enter the Dank Anchor Inn across the street, Cardigan decided to follow. A quick bribe for the desk clerk and he was on his way up to room 18 to try and assist Ta’ahsu with whatever he had planned.
Outside, the changeling mercenary who had adopted Toof’s appearance burst from the bar in hot pursuit. Just as she reached the inn door, ANOTHER (real) Toof came out of the Crooked Bone, loosing arrows at the imposter. Finally, Andoryx came through the tavern doors, leading a drunken gaggle of patrons and convincing them to lay a beating on anyone or anything that came out of the giant toad’s mouth. He proceeded to the inn to see what part he could play in the showdown that was brewing inside.
Toof, spotting another her hurling daggers at poor Cardigan, loosed an arrow that pinned Not-Toof to the wall, and her features returned to that of a changeling as the mercenary died. The trio of Cardigan, Toof, and Andoryx burst into room 18, where they found Ta’ahsu with the aboleth egg secured, standing over the arrow-stuck, poisoned corpse of the bugbear mercenary. The party decided to avoid whatever commotion they’d left out front and rappelled out the room’s window into the alley out back.
They sent King Knut, Feldrimax, and Artair off with the egg to keep it safe on Captain Churg’s boat, then traversed several blocks and emerged back onto the main street, acquiring some charcuterie and the location of Beholder Bay’s Shar’eth temple from a kindly duergar meat vendor. En route to the temple, Andoryx heard the dulcet notes of “Windsong of the Ice Maiden,” an incredibly complex duet, being played with great skill. He found an old, cloaked figure playing both parts himself, his fingers a blur over the strings of his lyre, and his grizzled voice full of emotion.
Andoryx tossed a gold piece into the man’s hat and he, noticing a fellow musician, offered to teach Andoryx a rare, forgotten tune in exchange for a small donation. Andoryx agreed immediately and learned “Wounds Washed Clean by the Moon’s Gentle Waters,” an old sonata that, when played correctly, could heal the performer when they used the song to inspire others.
With a song in their hearts and charcuterie in their bellies, the party found their way into the Church of Shar’eth, where spider-like priests clad in white robes administered sacred rites and played worship music on a pipe organ. One of the priests informed them that their order was forbidden from revealing the location of The Hanging Tower, as it was one of the Mistress of the Moon’s most sacred places, but that the determined seeker could find clues in the church.
Cardigan quickly noticed that there were stanzas of a rhyme inscribed in the Undercommon language on the pillars about the room and used his Channel Divinity ability to boost his brain power enough to read the unfamiliar language. He deduced that the answer to the riddle of the pillars was “spider” and that they were being prompted to kiss one. There happened to be a hand-sized, hairy spider clinging to the ceiling of the church some 20 feet above them and the party began to consider how to reach it.
Andoryx approached the priest playing the pipe organ, whom he guessed was a music lover, and wowed him with a performance of “Wounds Washed Clean by the Moon’s Gentle Waters” that was so lovely, so perfect, that all six of the priest’s eyes were streaming tears by the time the last note finished ringing. Andoryx asked if the priest would carry him to the highest point of the room so that his song - meant to give glory to the Moon Maiden Shar’eth of course - could more adequately fill the room and bring joy to her followers. The priest allowed Andoryx to mount him and together they spider climbed their way to the ceiling, where Andoryx leaned over and planted a kiss on the spider or rather THROUGH the spider, as he quickly realized the arachnid was an illusion as his lips pressed against the cold wood of the ceiling and a hidden glyph began to glow. A section of the floor below slid away, and the other three adventurers tumbled through.
Andoryx headed back down and hopped through the opening, falling a short distance into darkness before being pulled back by reversed gravity and landing on the ceiling, which now served as the floor. He had rejoined his companions in a white marble room with a spiral staircase curving upward from them, which of course meant it was heading down. Outside the lancet windows lining the stairs, the party could see a landscape of alabaster white hills and ivory mountains, with bone-white trees extending their skeletal limbs downward to a full moon hanging coldly in the sky below.
Cardigan threw up.
Mounting the stairs, the adventurers found themselves in another room with a large open archway flanked by two more arachnid priests. They found the way through the arch blocked by an invisible wall, and the priests told them that no one could enter while another petitioned Shar’eth inside. Gazing in, the party saw Jemwise Faroot, unconscious and lying on a stone altar with a huge hooded statue of Shar’eth looming over him. Beside the altar stood his sister Elune, who was convening with a striking pale elven woman. The woman, who identified herself as Tallyn, daughter of Shar’eth, produced a scroll and began to read it aloud, verbalizing a binding agreement between Elune and Shar’eth whereby Shar’eth would implant a Suggestion spell in Jemwise’s mind that could only be activated with a series of secret words known exclusively to Elune. This Suggestion would compel Jemwise to kill his father Ribble Faroot, governor of Landfall.
In exchange for this powerful spell, Elune was to appoint Tallyn Minister of Coin once she had assumed governorship in the wake of her father’s murder and brother’s imprisonment and probable execution. Elune hesitated only briefly before signing the contract, and Tallyn opened a portal to the surface and whisked Elune and Jemwise through, snapping it shut just as the heroes were able to enter the chamber. They had come tantalizingly close to capturing their quarry, but now, once again, they found themselves alone in the dark.