Ladrengielle – blogpost 2

Our adventure begins in the Yawning Portal inn. I get taken aside by someone I know: Threestrings. He asks me to deliver a pouch containing three Moonstones to Cal’al. It is a request of my faction: the Harpers. Cal’al lives in Skullport, at the third level of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I have no idea what it’s all about, but I want to help my faction and embark on a new adventure with Borac and Perqen, so I accept the quest. At a somewhat away from the bar, we discuss the matter amongst the three of us. We also see the black Tabaxi that saved us a couple of times in the past. The latter was that he got us out of a fight with bugbears in the vault underneath the theater where we found Aurinax the dragon and left our party-stash with him. We walk up to him. He is drinking a glass of milk. Apparently, he is excited to begin a new adventure too, and he is very keen to explore the dungeon and its riches. Smokey will be a member of our party from now on and will join us to explore the Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

In a corner, we see a cloaked figure. Smokey approaches him out of his undying curiosity, and we follow. It is a skeleton warlock named Aasim el-Masood. He is looking for his daughter and needs some strong adventurers to accompany him. I prefer to make new friends than enemies, so I say he can join us, as long as he stays with us and assists us in a fight. Because it is busy at the bar, I go along myself and buy us all a ticket down the portal. It costs one goldpiece, I already have some, but I’m short two gold pieces. I yell back that they have to pay up. Borac responds and throws a goldpiece at my head, but thanks to my quick reflexes, I grab it out of the air in full flight without really turning around. Smokey does the same, and again I catch it!

We are lowered down the portal into nothingness one by one. We find ourselves in the dark, many meters below the Yawning Portal. We cannot hear the bar noises anymore and see a small spot above us that casts a little bit of light in the dungeon entrance. We enter a hall with statues. There is a skeleton on the floor pointing its finger at a demon statue that looks like a pig. Odd. It feels really ominous in here. We see something shimmer in front of us. What could that be?

The hall full of mirrors
Smokey immediately spurts forward towards the shimmering lights. The first thing we see is a hall filled with mirrors on both sides. We are hesitant to come close to the mirrors because it could be a trap. We quickly but carefully move through the hall, avoiding the mirrors. Perqen takes a long time to get through and is holding a bronze mask in his hands. He got it from a mirror! Smokey is really interested, but when he sees it is just a mask, he leaves it alone. Still, there is some arcana in it – we can all feel it.

Some snakes lie on the floor – dead. We turn a couple of corners and encounter a couple of bugbears. They attack us, and we defeat them. What strikes us is that these halls and passages are pretty clean. Apart from some skeletons, it looks like these passages are used often and in some way cleaned – how weird that may sound. After a while, we enter a new area that feels like an outpost with many smaller rooms and shorter passages. We hear more sounds here, and we know we’re in hostile territory. Borac and I step into a room. There are two Goblins and two Bugbears here. We convince them we are part of the Xanathar guild, just like they are. They are not that suspicious because we have many details about the home base to back our story – we just blew the whole thing up. Borac is wearing a Xanathar cloak and is even more impressive than I am. He even persuades the Bugbears to go to Aurinax to get a ‘treasure’. They’ll probably get reduced to ashes by the dragon! What a joke! We get to know them and ask for backup to clear the dungeon from monsters that oppose Xanathar. There are Vampires in the north and Manticores somewhere else: they provide an outline of the dungeon – including the other Xanathar outposts. The Goblins (Pebble and Groin) tell us that they cannot arrange more creatures to help us to clear the dungeon for them. Instead, they will accompany us. Together, we make our way to the Vampires.

The ‘Vampires’
Pebble and Groin get anxious while we approach the Vampire area. We see the Vampires pray to a deity, but when we come in they stop and prepare to fight. During the fight, we discover that the Vampires are not vampires at all. They are actually normal humans that worship vampirism and want to become a vampire. In my mind, that’s just wrong, and it is for the best to kill them all before they bite or attack good people. Unfortunately, Pebble died during this fight, but Groin is alive and kicking. He did some damage and helped us out. We continue our way to other monsters and Xanathar outposts together with Groin.