# Volo's Guide to the Cinderborn *The road from Phandalin to Bryn Shander, faithfully if imperfectly chronicled.* > [!quote] Volothamp Geddarm — Chronicler in Residence > Reader, the Cinderborn are not an easy company to keep up with. They began as seven strangers in a goblin ambush on the [[Triboar Trail]] and have since acquired drakes, dragons, gods, ghosts, a sentient airship, and rather more dead voices than is good for anyone. I have done my level best to keep pace. > > What follows is their story so far, arc by arc. Each chapter opens with a passage from one of my own published volumes on the company — enjoy these, but trust them only so far; a man has books to sell. Beneath each, you'll find the plainer account: the road as the heroes actually walked it, set down as faithfully as I can while the story is still being lived. > > Pull up a chair. The fire doesn't go out. > > — *V.G.* --- ## Arc 1: The Liberation of Phandalin *Sessions 1–6 — [[Phandalin]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Frontier Towns and the People Who Ruin Them* > They were hired to drive a cart. By the end of the week they had emptied a goblin cave, scammed a tavern full of armed thugs, befriended a passing white dragon, unmasked the local tyrant as one of their own dear friends, and eaten the memory of a cursed wizard — and the cart, I am assured, never did arrive. Phandalin called it a liberation. I call it the most thorough property damage ever committed in the name of a delivery fee. > — *V.G.* It began, as many of the best disasters do, with a delivery job. [[Gundren Rockseeker]] — at the urging of [[Sildar Hallwinter]], once [[Reese]]'s mentor — hired a band of strangers to escort supplies from [[Neverwinter]] to [[Phandalin]]: [[Reese]], [[Petra]], [[Wade]], [[Gex]], [[Beregond]], [[Elmo]], and [[Dak]]. They did not arrive. [[Cragmaw Tribe]] goblins ambushed them on the [[Triboar Trail]], and a captured one named [[Gumdrop]] led them to the [[Cragmaw Hideout]] to rescue [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]]. [[Gundren Rockseeker|Gundren]] himself was already gone — hauled to [[Cragmaw Castle]] on the orders of something called the [[Black Spider]], who wanted the location of the [[Lost Mines of Phandelver]] the Rockseekers had found. [[Phandalin]] proved to be a town with a boot on its neck. The [[Redbrands]] ran the streets under a leader called [[Glasstaff]], and [[Halia Thornton]] offered the strangers a bounty to deal with him — keeping her own [[Black Network]] business off the table. A pub crawl became an arm-wrestling scam, and the scam became a brawl that spilled into the street, where a young adult white dragon named [[Cryovain]] dropped out of the dark and tore apart the thugs who had cornered [[Dak]]. The tortle knew him on sight: aboard a frost giant's ship, [[Dak]] had once fed [[Cryothar]], [[Cryovain]]'s father — one of the white dragons pressed into [[Storvald]]'s service — and [[Cryovain]] was the hatchling who had gotten away. The dragon vanished into the night. Those same nights turned up trouble of other kinds. [[Beregond]], a cleric of [[Tymora]], dreamed of a pale, wild-eyed maiden and woke badly shaken — he had dreamed of his goddess's own sister, [[Beshaba]], Lady of Misfortune. [[Elmo]] fell, with startling sincerity, for the gossiping waitress [[Nelly Sell]]. And [[Nelly Sell|Nelly]]'s gossip carried a hook: a woman matching [[Petra]] exactly was being blamed for the murder of [[Darius Duskdancer]], a cleric at the [[Shrine of Luck]] — a killing [[Petra]] had not committed. Then the [[Redbrands]] answered the brawl in kind, storming the [[Stonehill Inn]]. [[Toblen Stonehill]]'s legs were shattered, and a hostage died. [[Petra]] killed for the first time and could not stop being sick about it — though the voice in her head, the one calling itself her *uncle*, told her to keep moving. [[Glasstaff]] turned out to be [[Ianaro Albreck]] — [[Reese]]'s missing friend from [[Neverwinter]]. The infiltration of [[Tresendar Manor]] ended with [[Ianaro Albreck|Ianaro]] fireballing his own men and [[Petra]]'s arrow dropping him unconscious. Beneath the manor, a one-eyed [[Nothic]] gave up its dying memory: it had once been [[Nefarion]], a wizard who served a lich called [[Acererak]] and had been cursed for stealing from him. [[Ianaro Albreck|Ianaro]]'s notes and the captured wizard pointed further — at [[Halia Thornton]]'s ties to the [[Black Network]], and at the [[Black Spider]], named at last: [[Nezznar Xorlarrin]] of [[House Xorlarrin]], a drow lord hunting the [[Forge of Spells]] through a decades-old feud with the dwarves of [[Gauntlgrym]]. And the deposed Sultan [[Ashur Ban]] — the mad patron who spoke to [[Wade]] through his magic ring — handed [[Wade]] two impossible tasks: seize the [[Forge of Spells]], and find a bard great enough to sing the Sultan's glory. The arc closed on the road to [[Cragmaw Castle]]. An ancient red dragon descended from the sky, fixed his eyes on [[Elmo]], and said, *"There you are, boy."* [[Klauth]] had arrived. --- ## Arc 2: The Dread Beneath Cragmaw *Sessions 7–13 — [[Neverwinter Wood]] / [[Cragmaw Castle]] / [[Neverwinter]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to the Dead and the Inadvisable* > Most companies sent to rescue a kidnapped dwarf will, at minimum, return with the dwarf. The Cinderborn watched his throat opened in front of them, lost one of their own to a goblin god's hungry sword mid-sacrifice, picked up a third dead voice for the rogue who already hears too many, and pried the history of a god-killing war-machine out of a goblin too deluded to know his own name. They did not save the dwarf. They did learn a great deal about the people who took him — which is its own kind of progress, if you squint. > — *V.G.* The red dragon was [[Klauth]]. Years before, he had pulled an infant from a [[Reghed]] massacre, ordered [[Morwen Daggerford]] to raise the boy as his own son, and gone on his way. The boy was [[Elmo]]. The reunion ended with [[Klauth]] pressing an egg-shaped gemstone into the boy's hands and departing into the clouds. First came the dead. They crossed a battlefield where [[Gex]]'s old tribe, the [[Gnawbones]], lay slaughtered among goblins and bugbears — the kobold corpses burst open from the inside, packed with abyssal rot. The mad kobold inventor [[Meepo Smartypants]] had been implanting bombs in his own kind and dosing them with performance drugs stolen from [[Gex]] — the very vice that had once cost [[Gex]] his place in the tribe. Years before, he had shared those drugs with an ambitious kobold named [[Skrit]], who took too much, went berserk, and attacked a black dragonborn paladin of [[Tiamat]] named [[Iojad]]; when [[Iojad]] traced them back to [[Gex]], he beat him senseless. Cast out of the [[Gnawbones]], [[Gex]] was left tied to the same tree where [[Reese]] later found him. From a hobgoblin war party, [[Reese]] claimed a greatsword with a blade of deep blood-red — consecrated, unknown to him, to [[Maglubiyet]], the goblin god of war. The road north grew strange. [[Petra]] dreamed of a tomb she could not place, and the [[Nothic]] she had already killed — [[Nefarion]] — found her again, insisting they were *the same*. [[Reese]] dreamed of goblinoid corpses that rose to fight again and woke covered in blood with a hunger he did not recognize — the [[Bloodsword]] at his hip was feeding it. [[Wade]] met a dying elf who whispered *Red Wizards* before turning into a wight, and [[Dak]] broke at the sight, cutting the creature down as an old terror took him: a hag with a peg leg and a necklace of children's teeth, [[Peggy Deadbells]], who had once come for the eggs of his fortress at [[Ahoy Hoy]]. The gemstone hatched, and the drake [[Cinder]] chose [[Elmo]]. The necromancer who had made that wight left a spellbook behind, and it named names. She had served one [[Valindra Shadowmantle]]; she had fretted over a rival called *Petra Belabranta* — which our [[Petra]], who insisted her name was Cassidy, did not find comforting; and she had written of a [[Dread Ring]], of a dragon called [[Lorragauth]], and of her mistress's hunger to bend dead dragons to her will. [[Cragmaw Castle]] fell loud. [[Gumdrop]] forgot they were sneaking and announced their arrival to the whole keep. In the throne room, [[King Grol]] was mid-argument with a drow named [[Vax'zar Xorlarrin]] over the unconscious [[Gundren Rockseeker]]. [[Reese]] dropped under [[King Grol|Grol]]'s blow and woke standing on his dream battlefield before snapping back into the fight. [[Vax'zar Xorlarrin|Vax'zar]] cut [[Gundren Rockseeker|Gundren]]'s throat and tore the [[Forge of Spells]] map to pieces; cornered, he said *"Lolth, strike me down,"* and [[Petra]]'s arrow obliged. Deeper in the keep, at a goblin altar raised to [[Maglubiyet]], the [[Bloodsword]] took [[Reese]] entirely — and the cheerful warrior cut down a captive kobold named [[Skrit]] in sacrifice, the very ritual the party had come to stop. Horrified, he let them bind him; they flung the cursed sword from a window, and the castle's survivors carried it off into the dark. Beneath the castle, down a stair that had no business existing, lay the sanctum of a long-dead wizard. His ghost seized [[Faevynn Moonflower]], an elf ranger the party had freed from the castle's cells, to tell [[Petra]] she was *touched by death* — like the girl who had robbed him, a girl who had worn [[Petra]]'s very name. [[Petra]] crossbowed him; he had wanted only a stolen portrait of his lost love, [[Deneth Starfeon|Deneth]]. That night the dead wizard's voice — [[Kael Vaincrest|Kael]]'s — took up residence in [[Petra]]'s head, marveling that her mind was built like a tomb, and that the thief who shared her name had eyes of a cold blue that [[Petra]]'s were not. That same stretch of road, [[Maglubiyet]] reached [[Reese]] in sleep and seared a horned brand into his chest. On the road to [[Neverwinter]], the party came on a fire giant dig site where [[Vorgal]] the Vonindod Hunter was dragging a severed iron head out of the earth, and took a captive — a delusional goblin named [[Bogsnik Proudfang]], who under [[Petra]]'s questioning spelled out the rest: the [[Black Spider]] had set the fire giants to unearthing the pieces of the [[Vonindod]], a god-machine built to kill dragons. Judging the dig beyond them, they hauled [[Bogsnik Proudfang|Bogsnik]] on to [[Neverwinter]] as evidence for [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]] — where a city guard's notebook had flagged them for someone named [[Cassius Nightwhisper]]. They went to ground at the [[Crimson Kraken]]. [[Gumdrop]], who had taken a particular dislike to him, would see to [[Bogsnik Proudfang|Bogsnik]]'s end before they left the city. --- ## Arc 3: Escape from Neverwinter *Sessions 14–16 — [[Neverwinter]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Cities You Should Flee* > I have been ejected from finer establishments than the Crimson Kraken — but never have I watched a company arrive in a city to ask one small favor and leave three days later having dueled a pirate, throttled a man for the crime of standing still, dragged the Open Lord's secret police into the light, and personally insulted them for good measure. The Cinderborn do not visit a city. They audit it. > — *V.G.* The [[Crimson Kraken]], a dockside tavern owned by the pirate [[Blackbeard Thorne]], was a poor place to lie low. [[Gex]] ended up dueling Blackbeard and won, walking off with the captain's magical scimitar. [[Petra]] left with another pirate, [[Valerian Fairwind]], and woke to his sister [[Isadora Fairwind|Isadora]] holding a crossbow on her — then tailed the siblings to the overgrown [[Sunken Gardens]] and watched them speak Infernal to open a hidden stairway. They had come to warn [[Sildar Hallwinter]] and seek a resurrection for [[Gundren Rockseeker|Gundren]]. Reporting the death went badly: [[Reese]] kept derailing into his [[Bloodsword]] troubles and the [[Maglubiyet]] brand newly burned across his chest. [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]] had worse news — [[Dagult Neverember]] meant to seize the [[Forge of Spells]] for himself, and his ally the archmage [[Lucian Margaster]] had summoned [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]] to a meeting. The party floated taking the whole tangle to [[Remi Haventree]], Open Lord of [[Waterdeep]]. They'd already been flagged at the gates — a notebook marked their entry for one [[Cassius Nightwhisper]] — and when the halfling [[Terris Cuttlescar]] turned up watching them, they beat him unconscious and stuffed him in a Bag of Holding. [[Cassius Nightwhisper|Cassius]]'s people surfaced on the street: the musician [[Corynax]] and the enforcer [[Grom Darkfang]], both of his [[Whispered Watch]], [[Dagult Neverember|Neverember]]'s secret police. [[Corynax]] threatened [[Reese]]'s family; [[Gumdrop]] smashed his lute. The heroes slipped out of the city before [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]]'s summons could become a trap. Outside the walls they questioned [[Terris Cuttlescar|Cuttlescar]], who worked for [[Jenessa Morryn]], the [[Black Network]]'s spymaster — whose sending stone, lifted off the halfling, had earlier carried a woman's voice into [[Wade]]'s head asking after [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]]'s visitors. They let him go with a warning. --- ## Arc 4: Frost and Misfortune *Sessions 17–21 — [[Helm's Hold]] / [[Cimber Farm]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Gods You'd Rather Not Meet* > The Cinderborn arrived at Helm's Hold to resurrect one dead dwarf and left having buried a knight, lost a cleric to the Goddess of Misfortune, and survived a frost giant siege that flattened half the town. I have seen companies make a poor first impression. I have never seen one whose own holy man grew claws, an apple-pale complexion, and a knife meant specifically for a kindly nun. Do not follow talking cows. It is the one lesson on offer here, and they did not take it. > — *V.G.* On the road to [[Helm's Hold]], the party's traps caught the [[Gilded Gallows]] assassin [[Domitia Iscitarn]] and killed her. Under [[Zone of Truth]], a captured halfling monk gave them the picture: the Gallows were a cult of [[Mask]], allied with [[Dagult Neverember]]'s [[Whispered Watch]], and [[Domitia Iscitarn|Domitia]] had two siblings more fanatical than she was. That same web reached for [[Reese]] — [[Cassius Nightwhisper]] sent word that his family was *under our benevolent gaze* — so [[Reese]]'s friends in [[Neverwinter]] spirited his people out of the city by ship: his parents [[Aldwin Rousset]] and Daisy, his sister, and her children, away to safety in [[Waterdeep]]. A flashback opened the past of the man the party knew as [[Elmo]]. [[Ingrid Whitebear]], a shaman in wolf furs, visited him in a frozen cell before his arena fight at [[Svardborg]] and claimed to know whose son he was — [[Ulf Drazhan]], said to be the last true king of the [[Tribe of the Wolf]]. She showed him a Red Wolf with ruby fur, a Dragon "of fire and man," and a shadow beast the two were fated to face, and doubted aloud whether he was too *soft* to be the dragon she sought. [[Klauth]] himself erupted into the arena before [[Isarr Kronenstrom]] could deliver the killing blow. The road to [[Helm's Hold]] gave them [[Beshaba]]. She told [[Beregond]] to *follow the cow*, and the cow led them to the [[Cimber Farm]] — where a [[Frost Giant]] and barbarians were demanding [[Artus Cimber]] and the [[Ring of Winter]]. The [[Artus Cimber|Artus]] they wanted was no relation the Cimbers could place, but the immortal [[Harpers|Harper]] the Ring had slowly turned, years past, from guardian into recluse. His fractured old fellowship, the [[Cindersworn]], had once counted the cleric [[Darius Duskdancer]] — the same [[Darius Duskdancer|Darius]] who later took a quiet posting at [[Phandalin]]'s [[Shrine of Luck]] and died there with [[Petra]]'s name pinned to his murder. [[Josif Cimber|Josif]] gave [[Elmo]] a letter of introduction and a [[Cloak of Protection]] that had once belonged to the Ring's bearer. The siege came at [[Helm's Hold]]. Frost giants demanded [[Artus Cimber]] again. [[Sildar Hallwinter]] was slain; [[Wade]] was beaten into the dirt. [[Beshaba]] appeared at [[Beregond]]'s side with a shadow blade and a command — kill Sister [[Garaele]], the cleric of [[Tymora]] who had healed his friends. [[Beregond]] chose misfortune. He took the blade and hunted [[Garaele]] through the chaos; she, rather than run, spent a last safe moment healing [[Reese]] so he could fell his giant — and then [[Beregond]] struck her down. The blow remade him: muscles swelling, skin gone ashen, eyes burning a sick yellow. [[Beshaba]] wrapped herself around her new champion and teleported them away. They left too soon. [[Javen Tarmikos]] reached [[Garaele]] in time, and [[Garaele]], dragged back from death, in turn dragged back [[Wade]]. The next morning [[Astrid Steadfast]] performed the resurrection, with four dwarves who had come for [[Gundren Rockseeker|Gundren]]: his estranged wife [[Hilde Stonefist]], her sister [[Greta Stonefist|Greta]], [[Thoren Blackhammer]], and a singing, digging bard named [[Crag Coldburrow]] who took to the heroes and stayed. [[Gundren Rockseeker|Gundren]] came back and wept for his murdered brothers. The [[Order of the Gilded Eye|Gilded Eye]] judged [[Reese]] pure and made him relive [[Skrit]]'s death anyway — the kobold he had been driven to kill in the grip of the goblin god [[Maglubiyet]]. [[Skrit]]'s reassembled body asked him to look after [[Gex]], to liberate the [[Gnawbones]] from Queen [[Krezia]], [[Venomfang]], and [[Claugiyliamatar]], and to protect a *Heaven Tree* none of them could name. Then [[Reese]] saw a war he could not name either: dragons against giants' floating cities, the elves rising to set them against one another, and a single blue dragon finding a legacy of dominion in the ruins. --- ## Arc 5: The Forge of Spells *Sessions 22–27 — [[Phandalin]] / [[Wave Echo Cave]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Holes in the Ground That Will Kill You* > Picture it: a dwarven forge older than good manners, a dead wizard who simply refuses to take the hint, and a company so unbothered by mortality that one of them was murdered by a succubus, popped briefly into the afterlife to decline three wishes, and was back annoying his friends by morning. The Cinderborn went down into Wave Echo Cave to claim a legend and came up having killed the same ghost twice. I am told they intend to charge admission. > — *V.G.* [[Astrid Steadfast]]'s Greater Restoration broke most of [[Maglubiyet]]'s grip on [[Reese]] — the tattoo vanishing amid searing pain, the goblin god promising *you can't escape me*. [[Javen Tarmikos]] offered [[Reese]] a place in the [[Order of the Gilded Eye|Order]] for the coming strike on [[Venomfang]] at [[Thundertree]]; [[Reese]] pushed for an alliance instead. Word came from [[Waterdeep]] that [[Remi Haventree]] was having [[Sildar Hallwinter|Sildar]] raised from the dead, and [[Gundren Rockseeker|Gundren]] asked the heroes to hold the [[Forge of Spells]] in his murdered brothers' name. Two darker omens trailed the company. Sister [[Garaele]] carried a vision from [[Tymora]]: [[Beregond]]'s mother [[Bronwyn]] had once begged [[Beshaba]] to ruin a rival in a love triangle, and the curse had eaten the family by inches, taking even [[Beregond]]'s twin sister [[Asha]] in childhood. He was touched by both goddesses and fated to serve one — and he had been leaning the wrong way. And [[Petra]]'s recurring nightmare — the one that returned her again and again to a long hallway and the night her dead voices first came — showed her something new this time. The rival noble girl from her childhood, [[Nathaly Kormallis]], had been there too: the same necrotic shadow that swallowed [[Petra]] was crawling up [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]]'s falling body. [[Phandalin]] was under attack when they returned — [[Cryovain]] feeding on the village until [[Crag Coldburrow|Crag]] talked the white dragon into eating cows instead. The deeper threat wore a dwarf's face: [[Garin Rockharvest]], a [[Black Network]] tyrant who had once ground [[Wade]]'s home village of [[Kessel]] beneath his heel, was bound for [[Phandalin]] with men already combing the [[Sword Mountains]] for [[Wave Echo Cave]]. [[Crag Coldburrow|Crag]] — no friend of the Rockharvests — sang of [[Garin Rockharvest|Garin]]'s banishment from [[Citadel Adbar]] to the dwarf's own men, and [[Halia Thornton]] floated an alliance against him. Here Sister [[Garaele]] joined the party for good, and [[Petra]] told her about the voices. Outside the [[Miner's Exchange]] a tiefling charmed [[Wade]] into a rendezvous at the [[Sleeping Giant]] — and, pressed for a Forge location he had never learned, into pointing [[Cassius Nightwhisper]]'s agents at [[Icespire Hold]] instead — then revealed herself as a succubus. *"Cassius Nightwhisper sends his regards."* The Draining Kiss left [[Wade]] dead on the floor. He woke in [[Ashur Ban]]'s throne room. The Sultan offered three wishes, resurrection among them, but [[Wade]] could feel his friends pulling him back — [[Garaele]]'s scroll, [[Crag Coldburrow|Crag]]'s song, [[Reese]]'s interpretive dance, [[Elmo]]'s coin trick. He chose them. In [[Wave Echo Cave]], two new voices crowded into [[Petra]]'s head — [[Vorcryn Nommlosetel]], the gnomish wizard whose counter-ritual had once broken both [[Mormesk]] and the original [[Forge of Spells|Forge]], and [[Vax'zar Xorlarrin]], the drow she had killed at [[Cragmaw Castle]]. [[Vax'zar Xorlarrin|Vax'zar]] tried to take her body; she pushed him out. Through his memories the old enemy filled in: [[House Xorlarrin]] had raised [[Q'Xorlarrin]] in the bones of [[Gauntlgrym]], forged weapons there, and been driven out by King [[McMickey]]'s dwarves — and [[Nezznar Xorlarrin|Nezznar]], the [[Black Spider]] they had been chasing since [[Phandalin]], was his matron [[Zeerith Xorlarrin|Zeerith]]'s favored second son, hunting both the Forge and an [[Iron Flask]]. [[Mormesk]] rose from the [[Forge of Spells|Forge]] as a shadow and nearly killed them all, a necrotic blast dropping [[Petra]] unconscious before [[Reese]] put him down — yet his essence only seeped back into the metal he had corrupted. [[Nezznar Xorlarrin|Nezznar]]'s drow [[Black Spider|Second Sons]] hit the chamber soon after and were driven off. When [[Vajra Safahr]] the Blackstaff arrived with [[Elkane]] and [[Force Grey]], [[Mormesk]] reformed once more and raised his ancient host of spectral orcs and zombies before being beaten back at last. The Forge stayed tainted — it had even begun to corrupt the heroes who drew on it, until [[Force Grey]]'s clerics cleansed them. [[Vajra Safahr|Vajra]] admitted she lacked the skill to purge it and left for the [[Feywild]] to find someone who could; [[Elkane]] stayed, and hired the heroes to hold the Forge in her absence. --- ## Arc 6: The Nightmare *Sessions 28–35 — [[Nightmare Realm]] / [[Wave Echo Cave]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Sleeping Soundly* > Most companies, when weary, lie down and rest. The Cinderborn lie down and are dragged screaming into a realm of flesh-cribs and frozen cities, there to be greeted by a demilich who calls one of their own his "little soulmonger." I have slept like a babe in haunted ruins that would whiten your hair — but I would not close my eyes for a single hour in whatever these six call a nap. They went to bed to rescue a friend and rose a day and a half later having torn down a loom that weaves nightmares. One does not recover from such a holiday. > — *V.G.* Dropped unconscious at the [[Forge of Spells|Forge]], [[Petra]] did not wake in [[Wave Echo Cave]] with the others. She woke instead in a nursery built of flesh and bone, with [[Peggy Deadbells]] grinning over the crib. The [[Sewn Sisters]] had stolen her as a child and planted the dead voices in her head — a *gift*, they called it — and they served [[Acererak]]. While she lay senseless, the body she had left behind stopped being hers: an evil thing calling itself the [[Clarence Adorellan Shandalar Crestthorn|Marquis]] seized the reins, and he spent them making deals — first with [[Ianaro Albreck]] to hand the [[Forge of Spells]] to [[Neverwinter]], then with [[Lucian Margaster]] himself, a fellow sociopath he took to at once. Outside the dream, the long hunt for the [[Black Spider]] ended on the [[Sword Mountains]]. [[Gumdrop]] and [[Gex]] felled [[Klarg]], and [[Gumdrop]] took up the [[Bloodsword]] the bugbear had carried; then [[Wade]] struck down [[Nezznar Xorlarrin]] himself — though the severed head reanimated long enough for his sister [[Shriala Xorlarrin]] to swear [[House Xorlarrin]] would claim the Forge yet. During the preparations [[Wade]] had found the Warforged [[Arcanist Bolt]] studying an [[Iron Flask]] etched with the same flaming scimitar as his own ring. That night the [[Nothic]] [[Nefarion]] — once [[Acererak]]'s follower, cursed for stealing the [[Tome of Unlife]] — dragged the sleeping company into the [[Nightmare Realm]]. To save [[Petra]], he said, they had to destroy the [[Nightmare Loom]] at its heart. [[Petra]] fled the nursery into a twisted [[House Kormallis]] and found [[Nathaly Kormallis]] waiting — her gold hair run to crimson, her grace gone to grave-finery. The truth came clear between them: it was a voice in *Nathaly's* head that had murdered [[Darius Duskdancer]] in [[Phandalin]] under [[Petra]]'s name. Both women carried the same affliction, and they stopped being rivals — [[Petra]] swore to help her. Together they ran, past [[Kael Vaincrest|Kael]], past the child-demon [[Glee]], to a [[Beshaba]] shrine where a statue of [[Beregond]] knelt in dark armor — and there [[Tashara]], a skull-making mage bound to [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]], watched them with murder in her eyes. The rest of the company crossed the realm behind [[Nefarion]], nightmare into nightmare. A frozen [[Isarr Kronenstrom]] — a wight who had found *strength in death* — taunted [[Elmo]] with the murder of his father, until [[Klauth]] erupted onto the field, denounced the man he had once saved with *bitter regret*, and was torn to pieces by [[Iymrith]] and her ghost-dragons. They crept through the lair of [[Claugiyliamatar]], Old Gnawbones, who lounged over four crystal balls: [[Remi Haventree]] at play with her grandchildren, [[Klauth]] in his fury, a storm giant whispering into the ear of Princess [[Serissa]] upon her throne, and a noblewoman named [[Esvele Rosznar]] cursing a paper bird that burst into flame each time she tried to send it. Further on lay a grim village ruled by "King" [[Garin Rockharvest]], where [[Wade]]'s brother [[Garth]] sat in a cell for defying him. [[Petra]] and [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] were pulled into [[Acererak]]'s throne room, where the demilich called [[Petra]] his *little soulmonger* and named [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] *a surprise*. None of this had been necessary, he told her — but her *father* had insisted on being heroic and clever, and so her world would suffer for it. The two women fought free of [[Tashara]], and [[Petra]] dared the mage to come for her in the waking world. At the Loom's foot, [[Elmo]]'s arrows and [[Crag Coldburrow|Crag]]'s [[Thunderwave]] brought the [[Nightmare Loom|Loom]] crashing down. The heroes woke at [[Wave Echo Cave]] after more than a day in the dream, to find [[Petra]] gone — the [[Clarence Adorellan Shandalar Crestthorn|Marquis]] had walked her body into [[Lucian Margaster|Lucian]]'s column. One thing the heroes told [[Force Grey]] turned [[Elkane]] grim: [[Acererak]] was an old enemy of the [[Heroes of Waterdeep]], and the green dragon they had seen had designs on [[Waterdeep]] itself. [[Petra]] reclaimed her body carrying [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]]'s memories of [[Lucian Margaster|Lucian]]'s cruelty, slipped a paper bird to [[Elkane]], and stole back to the cave. When [[Lucian Margaster|Lucian]] reached the Forge, [[Elkane]] saw through his silk and his threats and turned him away with the simplest of refusals: *over my dead body*. The archmage left seething. --- ## Arc 7: The Mountain's Wrath *Sessions 36–42 — [[Phandalin]] / [[Sword Mountains]] / [[Giltvein]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Mountains That Hold a Grudge* > Let it be recorded that the surest way to start a war is to insult a stone giant's anatomy — and the surest way to win one is to lie about who did the insulting. I have watched the Cinderborn talk a beholder-king's court into a civil war, drop a would-be god's head in the street, and stroll out of a collapsing vault into a flying wizard's hat without breaking stride. They do not conquer mountains. They aggravate them until the mountains conquer themselves. > — *V.G.* [[Serissa]] reached [[Reese]] through a Dream spell from a moonless cliff. Her mother [[Neri]] had been murdered by smallfolk; her father [[Hekaton]] was missing; the [[Ordning]] — the ancient law that ranked all giantkind — was collapsing. Through the dream she shared the one clue she had from the scene — a wooden coin marked with a golden goose, found near [[Neri]]'s body — and begged him to help her make sense of it. A [[Waterdeep]] agent, [[Geoffrey Montagu]], thought it might be a gambling chip. [[Petra]], meanwhile, discovered she had stopped breathing — and that her mother's [[Paper Birds]] kept failing to reach her. [[Phandalin]] had been seized in their absence by [[Garin Rockharvest]], a [[Black Network]] dwarf hunting the [[Crown of Avarice]] to make himself a Chosen of [[Abbathor]]. [[Gex]] played every side — an alchemical brew meant to lure [[Cryovain]] onto the dwarf, and a lie to cover the party's own crime. They had killed three [[Stone Giants]] in self-defense, and [[Gex]] had cut the testicles from a corpse for one of his brews; when the giants found their kinsman mutilated, [[Gex]] swore [[Garin Rockharvest|Garin]] had done it and hung them as trophies. A stone giant named [[Korgal]] led the giants down out of the [[Sword Mountains]] and demanded the dwarf's head. [[Garin Rockharvest|Garin]] sneered that the mountain was his and wondered aloud whether stone giants bleed; [[Wade]]'s [[Eldritch Blast]] severed the head for them. [[Korgal]] gave the town a deadline on his thane [[Kayalithica]]'s behalf — out of the mountains by next evening. Through it all, [[Remi Haventree]]'s agent [[Geoffrey Montagu]] paid the heroes for the Forge and dangled a darker errand: [[Thundertree]], where [[Claugiyliamatar]] and her daughter [[Venomfang]] were stirring. The party tracked [[Garin Rockharvest|Garin]]'s inner circle into [[Giltvein]], a dwarven ruin claimed by a Duergar court under a crown-wearing beholder named [[Nagish]] — keeper of the [[Crown of Avarice]] and a vault that held both the [[Orb of Skoraeus]] and the [[Nightmare's Fangs]], the daggers [[Dak]] had been sent to keep from a "serpent" assassin. The ambush nearly killed everyone: [[Wade]] died to [[Nagish]]'s death ray and [[Garaele]] revived him with diamonds pried from a Treasure Golem; [[Gumdrop]] climbed the beholder and killed him. In the vault, [[Garin Rockharvest|Garin]]'s surviving agents lunged for the Fangs and lost — [[Petra]] took the Fangs and the Orb, the [[Crown of Avarice|Crown]] went into the party's keeping, and [[Garin Rockharvest|Garin]]'s ghost joined the voices in her head. Far off in [[Neverwinter]], the hand behind the chaos showed itself. A noblewoman named [[Lyrielle Storm]] — white-haired, electric-eyed, wrapped in storm-blue silk — met the Yuan-ti [[Gilded Gallows]] leader [[Ravenna]] and took credit for taking the [[Storm Giant]] king off the board. An "Eye of the All-Father" had shown her a band of adventurers who threatened her designs, one of whom — [[Reese]] — she had met in dreams. She set the Gallows on them once more, this time the siblings of the assassin they had already killed. [[Abbathor]] tried to bring the mountain down on them as they fled. [[Zephyros]] caught them in a floating cloud castle shaped like a wizard's hat. He had cast Contact Other Plane until it broke him, and had seen two bands of mortals who could restore the [[Ordning]] — though he could no longer remember which was which. [[Karthus]], the Stone Giant prisoner who opposed Thane [[Kayalithica]]'s war — and her murder of her own father to seize it — got the [[Orb of Skoraeus|Orb]] back when [[Petra]] handed it to him. [[Zephyros]] scried on [[Harshnag]] and found him chained and beaten by a cloud giant called [[Haayon]] the Punisher, servant of the [[Elder Elemental Eye]]. Two angry blue dragons climbed the sky behind them. --- ## Arc 8: The Fate of Thundertree *Sessions 43–49 — [[Phandalin]] / [[Thundertree]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Surviving Your Own Allies* > The Cinderborn went to Thundertree to put down one green dragon and a mad kobold's doomsday device. They succeeded — by setting the woods on fire, befriending a revolution, summoning the single most terrifying red dragon in the Realms, and then watching him fly off with the doomsday device. I am told one of them quietly pocketed the detonator. I am told this is meant to be reassuring. It is not. > — *V.G.* The blue dragons hunting [[Zephyros]] caught up, and the heroes killed two of them aboard the cloud castle — [[Garaele]] turned into a giant ape and ate one of the corpses. Then they put down at [[Phandalin]]. They installed [[Daran Edermath]] as townmaster and met their new [[Force Grey]] monitor, the wizard [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] — and that same night the [[Gilded Gallows]] struck, seven assassins across town. [[Petra]] woke to [[Decima Iscitarn]] standing over her — sister to the [[Domitia Iscitarn|Domitia]] they had killed on the road to [[Helm's Hold]] — asking about the voices and the hags; [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] was a [[Soulmonger]] like her. A ruthless [[Harpers|Harper]] named [[Osah Firesong]] put a blade in [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]]'s back and drove her off, then saved [[Wade]] from two more — she plainly knew [[Petra]], and knew her father was missing. Across town, [[Elmo]] found that [[Nelly Sell]] was an [[Oni]] wearing her face; it took the real [[Nelly Sell|Nelly]] hostage, and [[Elmo]] shot it anyway. [[Petra]] finished it. They fell back to [[Zephyros]]'s castle to recover. There [[Gex]] picked another fight with the [[Stone Giant]] [[Korgal]] and nearly died for it — and in the scramble [[Wade]] cracked open the [[Iron Flask]], loosing the djinni bard [[Khalida]], imprisoned for thousands of years for opposing the Sultan of the [[City of Brass]] before [[Wade]] thanked her and shut her back inside. Chastened afterward, [[Gex]] promised to stop running off on his own and stay with the party. Warned that travelling with him only drew the hunt nearer, the heroes had [[Zephyros]] set them down on the outskirts of [[Thundertree]]. The warning was sound. Once the heroes were off it, [[Zephyros]]'s castle — carrying only him and [[Karthus]] now — was run down by three blue dragons, [[Iymrith]] herself with her sons [[Chezzaran]] and [[Anaxaster]], and torn out of the sky. The two giants teleported clear at the last second. [[Thundertree]] was the [[Order of the Gilded Eye]]'s assault on [[Venomfang]]'s old territory. [[Jitters]] briefed them on [[Meepo Smartypants]]'s plans — the demon grinder, the abyssal bomb, the kobold experiments. The heroes took [[Meepo Smartypants|Meepo]] alive and he sang: [[Claugiyliamatar]] lived in [[Waterdeep]] as the noblewoman [[Sybille Artisane]] of the [[Emerald Coalition]], and the bomb was meant for a false-flag attack on [[Waterdeep]] itself. [[Reese]] saw [[Palien of Neverwinter|Palien]]'s last charge against [[Azdraka]] in a vision and felt the call to take up [[Dracoslayer]]. [[Petra]] killed [[Iojad]], the paladin who had cast [[Gex]] out of the [[Gnawbones]] years before. [[Reese]] cut down [[Arzan the Unstoppable]], commander of the [[Scaled Legion]]. [[Venomfang]] arrived. The heroes were losing until [[Klauth]] materialized and burned her to charcoal. He greeted [[Elmo]] as *son*, asked [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] if they had eaten his siblings, and flew off with the abyssal bomb. [[Petra]] had quietly pocketed its remote. [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] revealed what he was — a "Venusian" artificial intelligence summoned into his body by a [[Gilded Gallows]] wizard named [[Aldric Vorn]], a riddle the company could not begin to parse. His sleep showed [[Klauth]] in a vast cavern eating golden dragon eggs, each one a piece of his own soul. Far away in [[Waterdeep]], [[Lyrielle Storm]] walked the streets wearing the Blackstaff [[Vajra Safahr]]'s face — so [[Waterdeep]] itself would be blamed for the strike — and called down a meteor that obliterated [[Sybille Artisane]]'s estate — musing, as it fell, on a world *where the sky is ruled by wings, not castles*. The kobolds went to [[Skullport]] with [[Jitters]] as their queen. *"We have dragons to slay,"* [[Gex]] said. --- ## Arc 9: The Dread Ring *Sessions 50–59 — [[Dread Spire]] / [[Gauntlgrym]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Necromancers Who Cannot Take a Hint* > A lich, I have found, is much like a houseguest who refuses to leave: she charms your friends, she sits on a throne of bone and stolen souls, and she will not stop talking about how she owns you. The Cinderborn descended on the Dread Spire to retrieve one captured woman and left having killed Valindra Shadowmantle, lost and revived a man on a celestial casino's beach, and detonated an abyssal bomb inside a necromantic megastructure that nearly unmade a red dragon. The crater, I am told, is a perfect circle. Even ruin, in their hands, has standards. > — *V.G.* [[Reese]] pulled [[Dracoslayer]] from [[Azdraka]]'s skull in [[Palien of Neverwinter|Palien]]'s tomb. The sword detected dragons — and pinged on [[Viro|Viro Magnus]], for reasons no one could explain. They followed a centaur named [[Xanth]] to a [[Red Wizards]] excavation — a dig into old Netherese ruins for a [[Mythallar]], a buried font of raw magic [[Valindra Shadowmantle]] meant to use to wake the long-dormant [[Dread Ring]] and raise the dead dragon [[Lorragauth]] from it as a dracolich. [[Petra]] spotted [[Nathaly Kormallis]] there among the wizards serving her. The heroes stormed the site and overwhelmed its Thayan guards and undead, [[Petra]] and [[Elmo]] cutting down the excavation's master, the [[Red Wizards|Red Wizard]] [[Hamun Kost]], before he could hold it. A flashback opened them both. [[Petra]] and [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] had been noble friends in [[Waterdeep]], then rivals; the dead-voices came to both of them at sixteen. [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] had killed her sister [[Rosalyn Kormallis|Rosalyn]] by accident and carried her soul. She had joined the [[Red Wizards]] to find a way to free her, come to [[Phandalin]] to kill [[Darius Duskdancer]] and steal the [[Tome of Unlife]] he guarded — the price of [[Valindra Shadowmantle|Valindra]]'s trust — and stayed because he was kind. [[Garaele]] heard the confession and forgave her. [[Osah Firesong]] — one of the old [[Heroes of Waterdeep]] — sent them to [[Gauntlgrym]] for an alliance with its king, [[McMickey]], another of that same fellowship. At a gambling hall there they traced the golden-goose coin from Queen [[Neri]]'s death to the [[Grand Dame]], a riverboat casino in [[Yartar]]. Then the festival turned ambush: [[House Xorlarrin]] struck the Great Forge to steal the fire primordial [[Maegera]] in an [[Iron Flask]] — fuel for Duke [[Zalto]]'s forges at [[Ironslag]], where he meant to rebuild the [[Vonindod]], the dragon-killing god-machine the fire giants had been unearthing since [[Cragmaw Castle]], and turn giantkind against the dragons. [[Valindra Shadowmantle|Valindra]] herself materialized in the chaos, charmed [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]], and teleported away with her. [[Petra]] told the party what she was. And [[Eldraki]] reclaimed his name — *Fire Dragon* — from [[Brynjar Rimeheart]], who had helped murder his father and now knelt to the son. At the [[Dread Spire]], [[Khalida]]'s [[Wind Walk]] flew them past the [[Red Wizards]]' army with [[Lorragauth]] circling overhead. Inside, an icy blade was already killing [[Red Wizards]] one by one — [[Artus Cimber]], corrupted by the [[Ring of Winter]], hunting revenge for [[Darius Duskdancer|Darius]]. [[Petra]] screamed *no*, and her Shadow Protector poured out of her — [[Mirt]], a portly spirit in a broad-brimmed hat — pleading with the corrupted [[Artus Cimber|Artus]] to lower the blade. [[Garaele]]'s duplicate Dimension Doored [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] off [[Valindra Shadowmantle|Valindra]]'s [[Soul Throne]]. [[Petra]] lifted the [[Ring of Winter]] from [[Artus Cimber|Artus]]'s finger and the corruption broke. Then [[Valindra Shadowmantle|Valindra]] killed [[Reese]] — and her magic dropped [[Garaele]] too. [[Garaele]] woke at [[Tymora]]'s celestial casino, where the goddess let her draw blind from three cards, one of which would have forfeited her soul to [[Beshaba]]. She drew the Fates, and brought [[Reese]] back. On a beach between life and death, [[Reese]] had met Queen [[Neri]] of the [[Storm Giants]] — [[Serissa]]'s mother — who had glimpsed two futures aimed at her daughter: a blue dragon's godlike tyranny and a red dracolich's ruin. Her court, she warned, was compromised. [[Tashara]] talked [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] into letting her in long enough to kill [[Valindra Shadowmantle|Valindra]] — then locked both [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] and [[Rosalyn Kormallis|Rosalyn]] away inside their own body, took the wheel, and vanished with the lich's remains to hunt its phylactery in [[Thay]]. [[Petra]] had struck the killing blow herself, shouting her siblings' names — *Mertonius. [[Artus Cimber|Artus]]. Iolah.* — and [[Artus Cimber|Artus]], hearing his own among them, turned and said hers. As the spire fell, [[Aldric Vorn]] — the [[Gilded Gallows]] wizard whose botched ritual had made [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] what he was — came after them riding the white dragon [[Cryothar]], [[Cryovain]]'s father; only [[Vorcryn Nommlosetel]]'s Teleport, cast through [[Petra]], got the company clear. [[Klauth]] had flown through the wall to fight [[Lorragauth]] — roaring that he would not let the dracolich kill his *son*, which dropped [[Brynjar Rimeheart|Brynjar]] to his knees swearing the Red Wolf and Red Dragon prophecy true. He tore the dracolich's head off and told [[Eldraki]] he had hidden the stolen abyssal bomb inside the [[Dread Ring]] to destroy it himself. Instead, having teleported clear to [[Gauntlgrym]], [[Petra]] hit the remote from safety. The void-black explosion ate stone, flesh, and magic alike and left a perfectly circular crater where the Ring had been. Even [[Klauth]] was almost dissolved — though not even that unmade Old Snarl. --- ## Arc 10: City of Misfortune *Sessions 60–68 — [[Yartar]] / [[Halls of Calamity]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Games of Chance and the Houses That Cheat* > The wise gambler reads the room before he wagers. In Yartar I read a room where the goddess of luck wept blood from her own statue, the casinos kept a private floor for the cult that murders its winners, and the city's luckiest man dropped dead beneath a scaffold six hours after his hot streak. I cashed out and left by the window. The Cinderborn, naturally, went down the stairs into the basement — and came back up having unmade the curse on the whole rotten town. I would call it reckless. They would call it Tuesday. > — *V.G.* [[Klauth]] reached out to demand who had detonated the abyssal bomb. [[Eldraki]] stalled; [[Petra]] warned him in plain words what would happen if [[Klauth]] ever learned. The dragon let something else slip: beneath the borrowed wizard's shape, their companion [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] was a young gold dragon — [[Virovirens]] — whose clutch-siblings [[Klauth]] had eaten as eggs, and who meant one day to kill Old Snarl for it. The party crossed to [[Yartar]] through a teleportation circle — cast by a [[Harpers|Harper]] named [[Ged]] — that catastrophically misfired, flinging the party apart across the city, each into separate trouble. [[Eldraki]] and [[Wade]] crashed down onto a high-stakes table at the [[Golden Drake]] casino; [[Petra]] landed on the floor of the [[Waterbaron's Hall]] and caught the assassin [[Decima Iscitarn]] watching her in disguise before she slipped away; [[Gumdrop]] dropped into a treasure vault where a water elemental rose out of the dark, and a young paladin named [[Lynne]] hauled her clear of the security that came howling after; [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] alone struck the true destination; and [[Reese]] and [[Garaele]] arrived at [[Tymora]]'s temple to find the goddess's statue weeping blood. [[Yartar]] was broken before they arrived. [[Beregond]] was here, hollowing out [[Tymora]]'s church from inside while [[Asha]] — his dead twin sister, [[Beshaba]]'s [[Calamity]] — whispered through him. [[Asha]] visited [[Lynne]] in person and demanded [[Garaele]] renounce [[Tymora]]. Soon after, Commander [[Duncan Parrish]] of the Church of [[Tyr]] told [[Lynne]] that her mother [[Aribeth de Tylmarande]] had been killed at [[Fort Ten-Torch]] by frost giants and the [[Tribe of the Wolf]] — though [[Lynne]] doubted a legendary paladin would die in so meaningless a war. And a worse misfortune was on the march: [[Zaltimar]] the Crimson Bastard — Duke [[Zalto]]'s spurned, servant-born son — was leading an army of fire giants and hobgoblins on [[Yartar]] to dig the [[Vonindod]] piece out from under the city, with [[Goldenfields]] to burn after. The other thread was [[Decima Iscitarn]]. She seized [[Reese]] and pressed him for everything he knew about [[Petra]] — which was almost nothing — before [[Garaele]] confronted her aboard the [[Grand Dame]], wearing [[Petra]]'s face. [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] told her own story instead: her mother [[Lyra Iscitarn]] had signed an infernal contract with [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]]'s father, [[Owynn Firesong]], an agent of [[Asmodeus]] — the bargain that damned the family and left [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] born already carrying the dead-voices. She wanted to know why. The fight that followed was interrupted by [[Chezzaran]] himself, who had tracked [[Dracoslayer]] from the ruins of the [[Dread Ring]]. [[Cinder]] called himself *the unmatched* and was obliterated by lightning breath. [[Eldraki]]'s arrow brought the dragon down anyway, and [[Petra]] told the city it was *[[Eldraki]] the Dragonslayer*. But it cost them the sword: in the chaos [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] had stripped [[Dracoslayer]] from [[Reese]] and carried it to [[Lyrielle Storm]] — whom the heroes had finally understood to be no woman at all, but a blue dragon, who could not let dragon-slayers keep a dragon-slaying blade. She closed her hand around it and bid her assassins break them slowly. Beneath the [[Fool's Fortune]] lay [[Beregond]]'s lair, the [[Halls of Calamity]]. [[Rat|Rat Chumbucket]] turned out to be [[Lynne]]'s *Uncle Rat*, [[Bussy]]'s old crewmate. [[Asha]] showed [[Garaele]] what was coming — [[Garth]] stalked, [[Kasdeya Firesong]] bleeding, a green dragon mask in [[Petra]]'s mother's hands — and told her what [[Tymora]] had not: she was the goddess's Chosen, [[Beregond]] was [[Beshaba]]'s, and the contest endangered everyone she loved. [[Beregond]] killed [[Gumdrop]] with a calculated [[Misfortune's Grasp]]. [[Garaele]] brought her back. [[Cinder]] returned late and bit [[Asha]]'s spectral head off her shoulders. [[Wade]]'s [[Eldritch Blast]] took [[Beregond]]'s head while [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] burned the room with fireball. The ritual to sever [[Beshaba]] from the city took two attempts and a [[Harpers|Harper]] pin wagered on the gambling table. The cursed well cracked and drained, and the disaster carvings rearranged themselves into [[Tymora]]'s blessings. In the cells below, the heroes found [[Ged]] imprisoned — the [[Harpers|Harper]] who had cast the teleport. The mishap had been no accident. --- ## Arc 11: The Crimson Siege *Sessions 69–74 — [[Yartar]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Sieges I Watched From a Safe Distance* > When the Crimson Bastard arrived beneath Yartar and offered the city the dignity of kneeling, a small archer answered on its behalf with two words I shall not reprint in a volume sold to children. What followed was three waves of fire giants, a goblin who fired a god, and a rogue who leapt off a wall to put an arrow through a warlord's skull. The giants came to burn a city and left having gifted it a name. I have never been so glad to have booked an early carriage. > — *V.G.* Fresh from a visit by [[Lyrielle Storm]], [[Decima Iscitarn]] and [[Ravenna]] held each other in the [[Viper's Nest]] and vowed to take everything the heroes loved, piece by piece — and, when the moment came, to kill [[Lyrielle Storm|Storm]] herself. They had already begun. [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] had killed [[Renaer Neverember]] and [[Aldwin Rousset]] — [[Reese]]'s father, who died shielding [[Kasdeya Firesong]] — with the [[Soulmonger]]'s curse, so no resurrection would take. [[Wade]]'s brother [[Garth]] was missing. Cornered when [[Klauth]] demanded who had detonated the abyssal bomb, [[Eldraki]] panicked and named [[Gex]]; the dragon believed him. [[Lyrielle Storm]] — the blue dragon who had rebuilt [[Dagult Neverember]]'s [[Neverwinter]] from ash and seated him on its throne — came to him to set their mutual enemies against one another. [[Petra]] crossed paths with [[Lucian Margaster]] and the [[Never Guard]] at the [[Waterbaron's Hall]] — sent under the banner of defending [[Yartar]], but truly there at [[Dagult Neverember]]'s word to murder the heroes once the giants had worn them down. The sight of [[Lucian Margaster|Lucian]] stirred up [[Nathaly Kormallis]]'s memories of his cruelty, and [[Petra]] heard her voice whisper *Petra, I'm so cold.* [[Naskadi]] herself came to [[Petra]] in a dream — frost giant goddess, daughter of [[Thrym]], imprisoned in the [[Ring of Winter]] by [[Surtur]] for betraying giantkind. [[Petra]] had claimed a piece of her soul. [[Zaltimar]] the Crimson Bastard reached [[Yartar]]'s walls. He gave the city a choice: kneel, or burn. [[Lynne]] hesitated. [[Petra]] said *get fucked* and the assault began. The drow witch [[Narcellia Varam'myr]] — bound thirty years inside a Headband of Intellect after she failed to destroy [[Goldenfields]], loosed only when the giant who wore it died, and now riding the stolen body of [[Zaltimar]]'s lover [[Magnora]] — opened with [[Earthquake]]. [[Eldraki]]'s arrow broke her concentration. [[Petra]]'s arrow killed [[Gorzak Redmaw]] — a hobgoblin warlord and [[Maglubiyet]]'s Chosen, himself a [[Soulmonger]] — and his death spilled his hoard into her, hundreds of souls screaming at once. [[Petra]] understood then what she was: one node in a vast necrotic network. [[Maglubiyet]] reached for [[Gumdrop]] in the middle of the fight and demanded she kill [[Reese]]. *[[Reese]] is tribe,* she told him. *You not tribe.* She named herself [[Tymora]]'s Chosen instead. The blade she had taken from [[Gorzak Redmaw|Gorzak]], [[Redfang]] — the [[Bloodsword]]'s cursed sister — became [[Shinyfang]] in her hand. [[Naskadi]] reached for [[Petra]] at the same moment with the Ring's power, and [[Petra]] refused her. [[Tymora]] answered with rain that put the city's fires out. [[Zaltimar]] and [[Narcellia Varam'myr|Narcellia]] teleported onto the walls personally. [[Gumdrop]] crit. [[Eldraki]] crit. [[Petra]] launched herself off the battlements and put an arrow between [[Zaltimar]]'s eyes. His soul joined the others she carried. [[Lucian Margaster|Lucian]] and [[Ianaro Albreck|Ianaro]] reached the walls a moment later, bloodied and too late — the victory had robbed their assassination of its opening, and they drew back. [[Angel Lock]] named them aloud — *the [[Cinderborn]]*. Fighting beside [[Petra]] on the wall she had looked at her and said she had her mother's eyes; afterward she told [[Petra]] to tell her parents what she was before someone else did. In a dream, [[Reese]] gave [[Serissa]] the truths he had gathered — that the noblewoman [[Lyrielle Storm]] was [[Iymrith]], the ancient blue dragon, and that her own sisters [[Mirran]] and [[Nym]], hungry to raise [[Ostoria]] again, might be the rot in her mother's court — and the two grieved their dead parents together before [[Reese]] poured out his bottle and swore off it. [[Garaele]] confronted [[Petra]] about the [[Ring of Winter]] and would not accept *I dropped it*; [[Petra]] refused to give it up but promised she would not use it, and asked for help destroying it. Their scrying found [[Garth]] in an ice cell at [[Svardborg]], where his cellmate — a manic [[Brynjar Rimeheart]] — raved [[Eldraki]]'s coming as the Red Dragon at the freezing, miserable prisoner. As they watched, [[Aldric Vorn]] entered the cell and whispered in [[Garth]]'s ear. --- ## Arc 12: The Falling Sky *Sessions 75–77 — [[Stormwatch Spire]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to Fortresses That No Longer Exist* > The trouble with a flying castle is that it has so very far to fall. I am told the Cinderborn entered Stormwatch Spire invisible, in a sack, by way of a hole in a rug — freed a frost giant, robbed a warlord of a king's crown off his own brow, and then, with the help of a goddess and a truly indecent run of dice, simply switched the thing off. One does not lay siege to a castle held by the Cinderborn. One waits beneath it with an umbrella. > — *V.G.* A cold open returned to a crib of bone in the [[Sewn Sisters]]' nursery — infant [[Petra]], and [[Acererak]] naming her the first of a *web* of soulmongers he meant to grow, the means to take everything her father loved, repayment for what that hero-thief had stolen from his [[Tomb of Horrors]]. He was running the same play elsewhere: in the healed [[Feywild]] kingdom of [[Aralu]] he wore a prince's face and came to the broken air-prophet [[Aerisi Kalinoth]] — now only *Dara*, her memory of the monster she had been wiped clean by a hero half-sister's mercy and hidden away in [[Aralu]] — and promised to give her back her wings. Meanwhile [[Lynne]] dreamed of her mother [[Aribeth de Tylmarande]]'s death at [[Isarr Kronenstrom]]'s hands, and what the hags did with the body afterward. [[Klauth]] gifted [[Eldraki]] the [[Crimson Terror]] — an airship built from the bones of the dragon [[Scorrath]] — with a letter that mixed paternal pride and death threats. [[Scorrath]]'s ghost told [[Petra]] that Captain [[Ash]] was [[Klauth]]'s spy, sent to confirm whether [[Eldraki]] had been lying about the abyssal bomb. [[Stormwatch Spire]] was where [[Haayon]] the Punisher held [[Harshnag]]. The infiltration ran on invisibility, Mass Suggestion on [[Savras Belabranta]]'s patrol, and a portable hole carrying captives out of cages — among them [[Petra]]'s own childhood friends from [[Waterdeep]], [[Victoria Belabranta]] and [[Xalvador Hawkwinter]], who had come to pull [[Savras Belabranta|Savras]] from the cult and been caged themselves. [[Petra]] said *brother* to [[Harshnag]] in Giant — the frost giant who had taught her the tongue years before, and who was family to her if not in blood. The fortress began to rise. [[Wade]]'s [[Hypnotic Pattern]] froze the cloud giants; [[Petra]] vaulted across the battlefield and tore the [[Stormcrown]] — the Storm King [[Hekaton]]'s own stolen regalia — from [[Haayon]]'s brow. A flashback opened [[Petra]]'s departure from [[Waterdeep]]: her father catching her after a score and telling her, without anger, that he had known for months. Tired of being [[Waterdeep]]'s first daughter — of minding her siblings while her parents played politics — and stung by his reminder that [[Nathaly Kormallis|Nathaly]] had died because of her, she left a note that night and walked away from her family. A second flashback showed the night [[Aldric Vorn]]'s ritual tore [[Virovirens]] out of his own body and left the artificial mind [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] in the dying dragon's flesh — and the young [[Blackstaff]] apprentice [[Xalvador Hawkwinter]], the same friend [[Petra]] had just cut out of the spire's cells, who pulled [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] from the flames. Back at the spire, [[Tymora]] held the dice. [[Nelly Sell]]'s blessed coin called the [[Crimson Terror]] in. [[Haayon]]'s boomerang rolled a one and became [[Harshnag]]'s. [[Reese]] dropped the Punisher with two critical hits. [[Petra]] reached the [[Air Node]] and touched [[Aerisi Kalinoth]] through the [[Soulmonger]] network long enough to mock her as *Dara*. [[Garaele]] rolled a 35 to dispel the portal that held the fortress in the air. [[Stormwatch Spire]] fell out of the sky. --- ## Arc 13: The Devils You Know *Sessions 78–82 — [[Crimson Terror]] / [[Fort Ten-Torch]] / [[Bremen]]* > [!quote] from *Volo's Guide to the Relatives You Did Not Ask For* > A foundling thief learns, in the span of a single airship voyage, that her father once robbed a god of his wand, that an archlich has spent a generation stealing the children of heroes to settle the debt, and that the assassin hunting her is a soul-eaten orphan carrying the very same curse. The Cinderborn flew north on a dead dragon's bones and came away with three families' worth of old crimes. They offered the soul-eater a way out; she looked at the only mercy anyone had shown her in years and said no. I have closed warmer books. > — *V.G.* The [[Cinderborn]] regrouped on the [[Crimson Terror]] after [[Stormwatch Spire]]'s fall, and the secrets came out. [[Petra]] was [[Esvele Rosznar]] and [[Reg]]'s daughter — [[Petra|Petra Cassidy Rosznar]] — and [[Garaele]] had known all along. [[Aldric Vorn]] sent [[Viro|Viro Magnus]] an offer: the [[Ring of Winter]] for [[Garth]]'s life. [[Wade]] learned in the same breath that [[Petra]] had carried the Ring since [[Yartar]] and erupted — they were flying [[Storvald]]'s prize into his own territory. [[Garaele]] sealed the Ring in a Bag of Holding, and the party flew on. [[Remi Haventree]] reached [[Petra]] through Dream, furious that six years of silence had let [[Acererak]] build his network unopposed while the [[Heroes of Waterdeep]] chased [[Graz'zt]] across the planes. She told the older story: in the [[Oblivion War]], [[Petra]]'s father [[Reg]] had destroyed [[Orcus]] and carried off the [[Wand of Orcus]], hiding it past even his own memory — and [[Acererak]] had stolen the infant [[Petra]] to ransom it back, only to find a father who could not pay — [[Reg]] no longer remembered where the Wand was — and a band of heroes who cut her free of the [[Tomb of Horrors]] anyway. A [[Cult of the Dragon]] cell was raising five ancient dragons called the [[Dominion]]. [[Serissa]] was in secret contact with [[Remi Haventree|Remi]]. A street war between the [[Gilded Gallows]] and the [[Whispered Watch]] was eating [[Neverwinter]]. The [[Crimson Terror]] crossed [[Ten-Towns]] and found [[Fort Ten-Torch]] under siege. The [[Cinderborn]] dropped behind the breach. [[Eldraki]] fought on the walls beside a fierce red-haired woman with a spirit wolf — [[Dreyvarg Drazhan]], his sister, smuggled to safety the night [[Isarr Kronenstrom]] murdered their father and seized the [[Tribe of the Wolf]], while the dragon [[Klauth]] carried the infant [[Eldraki]] south. [[Cassandra Thann]] told [[Lynne]] what the [[Order of the Gauntlet]] had not: [[Aribeth de Tylmarande|Aribeth]] had fallen against [[Isarr Kronenstrom|Isarr]], been raised undead by the [[Sewn Sisters]] — a soulmonger now, but still herself — and come home seeking sanctuary, and [[Vareth Justicar]] had executed her as an abomination anyway. [[Garaele]] put it together — [[Acererak]] was running the same play on every child of the [[Heroes of Waterdeep]]. Far to the south, [[Iymrith]] — in the borrowed shape of the noblewoman [[Lyrielle Storm]] — visited [[Claugiyliamatar]] at [[Deeping Cave]] and gave Old Gnawbones a name for the killer of her daughter [[Venomfang]]: *[[Reese]] Rousset.* [[Decima Iscitarn]] offered a trade — [[Garth]] for a conversation. The [[Crimson Terror]] turned for [[Bremen]]. [[Petra]] met [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] alone in the Black-Bearded Brother and made the case for redemption. [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] declined. [[Garth]] came back. [[Sirac of Suzail]] did not — [[Decima Iscitarn|Decima]] had killed him and taken his soul into [[Acererak]]'s network, where no resurrection could reach it. [[Garaele]] sent a final message through the stone — *I'd been rooting for you. Not anymore.*