Session 97: An unexpected dungeon (December 11, 2025)
Last session, our heroes arrived at the final stage of any stealth mission: escaping the blazing inferno they created and leaving only death in their wake. Eden and Mort teleported back into the flagship in search of Maho and Bartolomeo, while Heph invisibly watched the chaos on deck and dodged catapulted debris from the shore. The wood spars beneath Maho and Admiral Patricia Drowingdeath collapsed in the heat of the flames, sprawling them both in the burning rubble below.
With help from Mort Sleet Storming enough of the fire away to grant an escape route and Bartolomeo bravely and selflessly diving down into the conflagration to attack the Admiral, Maho continued the fight. Wielding the axe that once belonged to a man who promised the Admiral a worthy non-drowning death, Maho fulfilled his promise with a decisive decapitation. She then revived the unconscious and burning Bartolomeo with a potion, saving his life against everyone’s best effort, and musseled her way back to Ivalgo with Eden and Mort in toe. Seeing a Skywrite over the city, Heph invisibly made his way back as well.
Safe on shore, the party debriefed. The invasion seemed to have turned more into a siege, and with the help of a rested Mort and arriving Bloody Mary on the morrow, the invading fleet would likely be turned away. Eden accepted some praise of her performance from Bartolomeo before remembering how many people she killed, Maho listed off the names of her daggers which seemed to line up with some fey nobility, and Heph began to realize that maybe Maho had some axe-induced bloodthirst. Bartolomeo charmed Constable Haxa, who the party suggested should give him an accommodation.
Pulling Mort away from the large red creature he summoned to light his cigarettes, the party headed to Joerg. Maho said after this was all over, she’d use all the money she made to enroll in school. Overjoyed, Joerg gave her an armful of books about various natural topics around the Haden Desert and Cryptop. Heph, out of earshot of the others, told Joerg about the axe.
On the way back to Potion Pitstop, Maho and Eden had a conversation about having to leave their respective homelands and their relationships with their parents, education, and money. While Maho struggled to make a life for herself and Joerg in Eken, Eden lived a much more well-apportioned life, as far away from her parents as they could send her. Although Eden thought the only person who could help her was Sentin, Maho asserted that Heph was the smartest person she knows.
The party approached Potion Pitstop, seeing silhouettes in the window. Not burglars this time, but two gnomes locked in tense argument.
- Heph stands outside the house a little unsure of whether or not to
go in
- Eden steps up and encourages him, casting Enhance Ability, and avoiding a surge of Wild Magic, although it seems close
- Heph heads off into Potion Pitstop, and as he does so Eden turns to Maho and notes that Heph seems to be having parent issues, and Maho notes she didn’t think so before now
- Getting upstairs Heph hears part of the argument his parents are having, and it seems mostly to be Amble chewing Spraus out for all of the bad things he was doing
- Heph goes up to their door and knocks, hearing more of the conversation as he does so, and the conversation abruptly stops
- Once the yelling stops, Heph calls out that he is leaving and wanted to say bye, and is glad his dad is back, and into the awkward silence Heph notes that they really should get a lock for the front door
- Heph realizes the sudden quiet is a practiced effort to avoid continuing an argument in Heph’s presence
- Amble opens the door and Heph notices Spraus in the background not making eye contact, and she seems to break down in Heph’s presence and start crying a bit
- She asks about Maho and Eden and Heph says they are fine, and Amble says to invite them in, and Heph sends Maho a message
- Heph asks his parents to come out, and Amble comes out followed by Spraus a bit behind, and Spraus pauses by Heph and hugs him and they have a brief chat
- Amble accepts a sandwich from Maho, who explains it’s from Joerg who is technically her neighbor now
- Maho notes the preschool incident was out of her control, which causes the group to realize that Morty has managed to disappear on us
- As Amble eats more sandwiches, Spraus asks what Eden’s deal is, and Heph jumps in to help explain a bit of her story
- Heph gives Spraus the golden ring knocker from the Riddle Door in Dalin, for Spraus to use as a gift of some sort, and with a nat 20 persuasion roll, it seems like it might help Spraus a bit
- Maho is having a chat with Amble off to the side,
asking her if there is any news about what is going to happen with the
preschool
- Amble notes that the school wasn’t open but everyone had been hired and stuff, and suggests maybe Joerg should host the school in his yard
- They briefly discuss that maybe Joerg could be the lunch person
- As the conversations wrap up, Heph starts to say his goodbyes
- Amble tells us she wants us all to stay safe and she’s sad to see us go
- Eden thanks Amble, and Amble tells Eden and Maho they are welcome any time
- We head out of there, and as we walk out we hear Amble and Spraus start to have a conversation about Spraus helping Heph with all the killing
- Spraus seems to relax a bit as he explains how he managed to catch Heph at the right moment and help him through a tough time
- As she leaves, Maho notices the ring seems to be helping bolster Spraus, the Fey Bullshit that is meant to ask riddles is helping Spraus solve his own
- As we head outside, Morty walks out of an alley and asks
how everything has gone
- He asks everyone how much money we have, and Heph is unsure what it’s for and tells him only 100gp, and he gives 100gp to Eden to help her out
- He doesn’t think 100gp is a lot of money, but he doesn’t know since he usually uses the “five-fingered discount”
- Maho asks what that is, and he steals a dagger from her to demonstrate, which seems to go over her head until Heph points it out
- On an advantage double nat 1 - 1 is 0 Maho doesn’t notice anything interesting about the dagger
- Maho notes that she has tons of money, and Morty pieces together that Heph is lying about how much gold he has, and pulls out a large bag of money and gives it to Eden
- It becomes clear that the money is stolen from Ivalgo’s coffers, and Maho notices some yelling coming from down the street yelling at Mort to come back
- Morty is rushing us to go, and as everyone gathers around
he teleports us to Bad Zamdorf, Gurt managing to sneak up
and join us at the last second
- We appear in a condemned abandoned building at the outskirts of Bad Zamdorf
- Morty says “Okay, cool. I’m going to go back tomorrow and be a war hero and they’ll forget all about the money I stole”
- We notice Gurt, freshly transforming back from a bear and covered in blood, and asks where to go to find Sentin
- Eden points away from the city and Heph starts to tell
him where to go, but he bolts off immediately upon hearing Eden’s
directions
- A persuasion contest where both got nat 20s, but Eden’s total was higher
- Heph notes that this is a “really nice place” and Morty says it used to be a lot nicer
- Maho looks around and thinks it must be a rat factory, but on another nat 20, Heph notices a faded sign saying Mona’s, and it seems to have been a restaurant
- Eden asks if he knows Mona, and Morty responds once upon a time
- Eden tries to open the door but it hits the boards, and she notes that it must be locked
- Maho asks if we can use it as a hideout, given that it’s not in use anymore
- A single tear falls down Mort’s eyes as he says “it would mean so much to me for this place to have life again”, and he says we can use it
- Maho tries her mysterious key but the key doesn’t do anything, so she smashes through the boards
- Heph repairs the door and casts Arcane Lock, making the door passable by just about anyone he knows and likes, including Bloody Mary, but excluding the governor of Ivalgo since Heph really dislikes him
- There is a thread of magic linking the door to a coin that Morty had given to Eden, and Heph digs it out and casts Identify on it
- Maho finds a dartboard and starts playing darts, and
Eden searches her bag looking for more magic coins, but doesn’t
find any
- Heph figures out the coin, when combined with Arcane Lock, allows casting Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, and as Heph inserts the coin into the lock nothing immediately happens
- Eden recognizes the spell from school as “Mort...something”
- Heph gets Maho to come out and closes and opens the door, and we head into our mansion, the first room of which is the first floor of Elias’ house, and beyond the backdoor is the restaurant, and the entire place is staffed by near-transparent imps wearing oven mitts as loincloths
- A wet imp butler comes down the stairs
- There is a “pool room”, which is full of pool tables
- Eden finds a bar, and gets a glass of alcoholic carrot juice
- Eden has never had alcohol but handles it pretty well, the smoothness and familiarity of the carrot juice helps it go down
- A mysterious door appears with chains and yellow amulets, and nobody knows why it is there, although Maho tries the mysterious key
- Looking around for Salty, a new door appears, with an outdoor forest in a small room, with a tree in the center, which turns out to be Ana
- She doesn’t know anything about that door, but suggest we go in
- Eden knocks on the door, but there is no response
- Heph’s curiosity starts to get the better of him, and he walks over to the door and starts trying to pull on the lever, and the chains all rattle
- Heph pulls out Sentin’s head scratcher and starts heating the chains and working them with his smith’s tool, and manages to break them away from their mounting, and the padlock drops to the ground as the tension releases, and ethereal ghostly whispers chorus in the hallway in fade, and the yellow talismans sizzle and burn away
- Eden is sitting in the corner, having ordered the servants to bring her a table and a vegetarian sandwich
- Maho asks Heph if it’s a safehouse, and Heph
responds that it’s supposed to be safe, and with a shrug he opens the door to
the room
- The dagger Maho had gotten back from Morty starts to glow red hot on her person as the door opens
- A shadowy black mist drifts out of the room, and the glowing dagger shoots towards the door, narrowly missing Heph, and peering into the room, there is an iron stairwell heading down into darkness, and we hear the clang of the dagger ricocheting down into it
- Maho says that it wasn’t her, and Heph suggests she go in first, and Heph and Eden follow
- As we head down the stairs, the air becomes colder, and we start to hear the sound of waves lapping against the sides of walls that are starting to come into form
- The place is dark and Eden tries to call the servants to bring a candle, but they don’t come, and it seems like we have left the mansion
- We arrive at a wet stone floor at the bottom, like the condensation of a mist on a cool stone surface, and we hear the lapping waves outside and smell the salty sea air
- Heph is very familiar with the scent of the Shivered Sea, and can tell this is a different sea, but one that he has encountered before, and he thinks it is the Gleaming Sea from the Nor’Southern Isles
- We are in some sort of dungeon space, the hallway leads deeper into the darkness and is full of what seems to be cells
- Maho pulls out a torch and Eden lights it up with prestidigitation and then makes the fire bigger, and as the flames spring to life, adding light to this place for the first time in ages, and we can see into some of the cells
- The cells have bars made of iron, impassable to spirits and fey, and are filled with a variety of withered creatures, one small humanoid creatures chained to the walls with a beard three times the length of its body, one cell with a stick bug like insect glowing slightly, and one cell on the right at the end of the hall we can’t quite see into, with Maho’s dagger sitting right outside it
- Eden notes that her fey senses are tingling and that we shouldn’t stick around, and Maho starts to head down to her dagger at the end of the hall
- As Maho heads down the hallway, there are whispers about the
tyrant’s greataxe that bounce back and forth across the hallway from the
creatures
- Maho approaches the end of the hallway, and in the cell, sees a figure cloaked in black with their head down, their face fully obscured
- Maho takes note of the creature and reaches down for her dagger, and as she does so, the other 5 daggers fly out of her bag, floating in the air briefly, and then all swiftly fly at Maho, who manages to dodge 3 of them but is impaled by 2
- The dagger on the ground, Sir Stab, erupts in a sudden pillar of flame, and when the flame clears, standing in the place of the dagger is a tall resplendent individual, dressed in dark black and purple plate armor that is weirdly silent, with a mist of hair behind
- He swings the blade and slices through the iron bars on the cage, which fall to the ground, and the hooded figure stands up and slowly walks out of the cell