(Following a number of prior events... from Ten little Towns to Return to Karkolohk)
To set the stage, read quest: Siege of Caer Konig. Additionally, on the way to Caer Konig aboard the snow-ship, a stowaway is discovered: Doop.
Introductions
A patrol of Knights of the Black Sword intercepts your approaching group - led, as it turns out, by none other than Deana Auldrice, the dwarf rescued from Sunblight Stronghold along with h'Rothgar, Vellynne Harpell, Pekoe Quint, and the Goliath Kapanuk Talltree Thuunkhalaga. You recall Deana left with Vellynne to warn and prepare Caer Dineval for the chardalyn dragon’s attack.
Cheery greetings are exchanged and welcome offered, followed by Deana providing a sort of orientation as she escorts yourselves and Vellynne to the leader’s tent. The Shield Dwarves split off to meet with their own clanfolk in town.
She gestures to fortifications and siege engine groups naming the attacking forces - led by the Knights of the Black Sword, her own order out of Caer Dineval, backed by the Clan Battlehammer shield dwarves of the valley, a war party of a few dozen Reghed tribesmen from the Elk Clan, and a small group of tacticians - mostly to aid in supplies and observe - from the Free Towns.
“We had nearly taken down a tower wall and all this might have been over - but that tremor has really turned things for the worst. It’s probably best that Hethyl, our leader, fill you in.”
“Why the attack? I think it all started with the vision sent to several of us within the order of knights, myself included, by our Lord Patron. Was there ever really any chance Xardorok Sunblight would just turn quiet? No, he just turned to a new means of power and destruction - the Adversary himself, Lord of the Nine Hells, who he had believed he served as the Duergar Goddess Deep Duerra, but it had always been that dark lord from the beginning.”
She gestures at the tower, “you see the color yes? The dwarves call that material bloodstone - and it’s only part stone. They made this damned tower from stones and the blood and corpses of creatures, fallen in battle or harvested in the underdark. Each stone has entombed within it a body and blood red veins of - something - the residents of the town, goblins, cave bears, yeti, dwarves, even duergar themselves. It’s unnatural in the worst way - and all carrying out a sinister plot for the Adversary.”
“What about the Chardalyn Syndicate ? So far - they have made no move whatsoever. We know they are watching closely, but no Targos, no Bremen, no Muzgardt, not even any Zhentarim have taken any action to aid either side in this battle. So far.”
"Who are the Knights of the Black Sword? We are all survivors of this Everlasting Winter and its deadly grip. When all seemed to be lost, our Lord Patron reached out to many of us and we offered to serve him for his sparing our life. Others have joined to stand against the Frostmaiden who has brought this chilling darkness upon Icewind Dale and has frozen time and space itself - there is no dawn, there is no spring. The Knights of the Black Sword are dedicated to the escape from the cold Prison of Ice."
She shrugs. “We’re here…” she speaks with guards at the entry to a large fortification, and you all enter, with her introducing each of you to Hethyl Ark'orran, leader of the Knights of the Black Sword - a hardened-looking woman with a stern expression.
Standing to her left and right are two horned Tieflings (the devil-blooded race of Alyks Askaria) - a male with a red coloration, introduced as Kadroth, the other, an albino female, introduced as Avarice of the Arcane Brotherhood, but notably, she wears the Black Sword amulet of the order. If Avarice knows of the party or the wizards Alyks and Dex, she shows no indications.
Hethyl pauses in her addressing the command to greet the newcomers, noting the Lord Patron had foretold of three waves of aid to come - one of which being the heroes "sailing upon the snows". (The others being "risen from the grave" - the arrival of the necromancers, and "from the sky", yet to come.) Hethyl is no-nonsense with formalities and quickly brings the group up to speed.
The Tower of the Adversary
The tower rose with unnatural speed from the ruins of the caer of Caer Konig. The blood-red stones are only partially mined, their perfect shaping from the binding to the dead. The Battlehammer dwarves assure this is not solely the work of Duergar, but a sinister pact between the Sunblights and what the Lord Patron has revealed to be a coven of hags. The tower had three vile properties but (coinciding with the death of Vickie Mousecracker) has been reduced to two (it no longer seems able to heal itself like a troll regenerates).
- ANTIMAGIC: The first property is it projects a field where spells are ineffective, this has prevented Avarice's devastating attacks from carving down the walls, as well as other magical means of opening or climbing.
- DARKNESS: The second property is the projection of a hellish darkness blinding nearly all - and coordinated with attacks by the fungus-zombies and flying fiends that seem unhampered by this blindness. Vellynne alone had been able to see within, a trick of her magical eye.
The fiends and the stones and the coven are all parts of the Adversary's reaching into our world, seeking what our Lord Patron describes as the "Divine Spark of the Frostmaiden". Driven from her home by the other Gods of Fury - Talos, Umberlee, and Malar - Auril was weakened, and this Rime of the Frostmaiden is her breaking so many of the laws we understand - to make herself a new divine realm upon this world. But incomplete, she is vulnerable, and she is too arrogant and too simple to even sense this threat. Already her powers have been diminished in the deaths of her Children of Auril at the hands of the Chardalyn Syndicate, and the devastation upon her worshippers by the Sunblight chardalyn dragon - ending even the sacrifices made to her out of fear. The tower and that storm above it is meant to draw her wrath and trap her for the Adversary to consume - but our Lord Patron had us intervene so that she would pause and instead watch.
Now we must end this threat, for the Adversary has already consumed one deity and become fearsome - we cannot chance what we might become on taking another!
The Coven
We are thankful for your great deed in defeating the witch-hag in the goblin fortress Karkolohk! This has enraged the surviving pair, however. Our Lord Patron named these hags "Blood, Flesh, and Bone" - for the means by which each has become powerful. The one you defeated, hosted within the ravenous vampire spawn Yik'ta was the Blood Hag Vickie Mousecracker, whose reach into the frozen far through the ravenous has revived old legends of the vampire Tekili-li. But the other two remain, no doubt within other monstrosities we must face.
The Flesh Hag, that Vellynne revealed to be Karen Veinwhistler is likely tied to these fungus-zombies, that turn our own fallen back upon us with no end in sight. The vile sores and floating spores must be carefully avoided - and the dead burned with haste if we do not want to fight them once more.
The last, the Bone Hag, has taunted us with her face appearing in the tower wall itself, just as we have seen Xardorok do the same - she is called Olga Grimcradle, and the complexion of your friend Dex turned pale on hearing her voice. There is long history there, it would seem, as this witch was one whose claws have been sunk into that wizard from birth, so he shared with great concern. She would seem to be tied to the tower itself - the stones formed of blood, flesh, and bone, with ores and the metals of weapons and armor running throughout its impenetrable walls.
Missing Friends
The closest the attackers have come to getting inside ended in the disappearance of Dex and Vellynne. The necromancers came to us with a clever plan. Dex had an ability to place a sort of spy upon the enemy's minions, that it would carry back within the tower. Then, guided by this sight within the tower, he and Vellynne would attempt to teleport through the antimagic zone. We had tried forms of magical divination, but the antimagic would snuff these out like candleflame. But this trick known to Dex came not from spellcast magics, it was something ancient - and it did indeed work. Dex spoke of seeing the place, and then he and Vellynne performed the teleportation by way of an enchanted item - vanishing. We presume they remain in the tower - but have had no contact since their disappearance. (See: Machines of the Adversary)
The Battle
The tower mostly stands still and immune to attack - but perhaps when sensing vulnerability, a passage opens and attackers advance. Sometimes these are the Ravenous, blood-raged and hungry to devour, true to their name. Sometimes it is within a reaching shadow of the infernal darkness, with the zombies and flying fiends. Often these attacks follow sabotage by unseen agents - turning our fortifications and traps against us, ruining supplies, slaying key scouts or snipers, and then disappearing. The dwarves have found no remaining tunnels to a considerable depth - so there must be a hidden outpost somewhere, from which the Duergar strike with their ability to become Invisible. No goblins have been seen, when asked. If they are here, they must be within the tower itself - probably as laborers.
Tales of Adventure
From the perspectives of different split-off groups as the situation unfolded at Caer Dineval. Overall, the battles were concluded with the defeat of Xardorok, soon after followed by the death of the Bone Hag Olga. At this point, the magics holding the structure began to fail, leading to a hasty retreat by the various heroic parties as stones melted into a great hill of corrupted souls and bodies. The site has become shunned as cursed. Anyone approaching the mass feels a clutch of cold that penetrates to the core, differing from Auril's cold in that no furs or warmth can hold off its chill. Necromancers temped to harvest the bodies for their own find the place ravenously consumes their magics before anything can take effect. Rumors arise of a crack in the world-barriers, opening to a dark realm - perhaps the Shadowfell.
The Knights of the Black Sword
When the tower's darkness launched a counterattack on the battlefield, a team of Knights of the Black Sword moved ahead with a great net to counter the advantages of the darkness, only to be torn apart by a variety of the fungal zombies triggered to explode. Hethyl Ark'orran, who led the charge, is among the casualties. Almost immediately the knights split into two factions - one supporting the smooth-talking red tiefling Kadroth, who offers a simple isolation with little duty to the patron - while the other drawn to the outsider white tiefling Avarice, who seems to more carry the support of the patron, but with it more difficult hardship and obligation toward the patron's wishes.
Once the anti-magic is dropped with the Flesh Hag's demise, Avarice's attacks on the defenders ramp to an ear-splitting fury, destructive energies employed by a master of the craft, bending explosions around her allies to turn enemies to ash. The ravenous gnolls take the worst of it all, attempting a retreat to their chasm in the Spine of the World, only to be savaged by the Reghed Elk Tribesmen and goliaths on the backs of snow griffons.
In the quieting of the siege, the conflict between the tieflings becomes loud and angered, Avarice's voice - magically enhanced echoes over a silent battlefield, "Kadroth! The last time your petulance crossed my will, I told you I would Disintegrate you! Now, you have precisely one minute to vanish from my sight and attention lest you learn more clearly the substance of an archwizard's threat." Avarice's gargoyle henchmen loom by her side now at all times, and follow the retreat of Kadroth and his followers, ensuring they also have no expectations to return to Caer Dineval either. Her own return to the keep by the frozen lake, but she takes the opportunity to converse with Alyks before departing, impressed by the Shield Guardian and inquiring regarding the interests of Zelenn the White sending the group to Icewind Dale.
The Goblins: Doop Troop
Duplicitous Jape, earned "the Fearless" added to his name, though it might more accurately be "the Foolhardy", after using a magical totem stolen from the curse-spitter Manafek to swap bodies with a Reghed barbarian berserker, marooning the confused and terrified warrior atop the gigantic bear Umka inside the two-foot body of a goblin adolescent, able to do little more than hang on. Meanwhile, in the powerful body of the tribesman, Doop slipped through a gap in the distracted defenders as the group led by h'Rothgar took on the fungal zombies, descending down an illusion-hidden stairwell. A crew of shield dwarves and Elk warriors, impressed with his courage and apparent certainty, followed him into the depths and darkness, finding plenty of foes to battle in the wake of this unwavering leader.
As it turns out, the goblins from Karkolohk were not being used as troops, but instead as servants - moving food and drink for the unpicky Ravenous, white-furred Quaggoth, and emotionally detached Duergar, carting ammunition and freshly dead bodies for the fungal behemoth to turn to zombies, and carrying messages between parts of the tower. The overwhelming strength of the sadistic quaggoth and the mind-controlling powers of the Duergar forced the goblin clan's obedience. Once Doop's troops took down the Duergar Mind Masters, mainly by surprise and merciless swiftness, the young goblin was able to convince his clanmates to turn - and a hundred goblins unleashed chaos on the tower.
While goblins are no match for gnoll, quaggoth or duergar in a fair battle, the hallmark of goblin tactics is a diverse repertoire of sneaky improvisation. Sabotage, fires, and confusion spread as the supply lines provided by the goblins fell apart. The chaos below included abandoning operation of two enchanted doors warding two portals below the tower, leading to what was effectively an opening of flood gates, out of which poured uncountable slithering, hopping, crawling critters from some other planes. From one side these all displayed a bluish coloration, while on the other the creatures glowed slightly with a neon yellow. The annihilation of the entire region was spared only by two chance events to follow - surely, a blessing of the goddess of luck Tymora, no doubt smiling upon the boldness of the goblin child. May Lady Luck receive deserved blessings in her Midsummer holy day!
The Heroes
As the Sewer-side Squad tries to determine a plan of attack, far far above a formation emerges from the clouds - a flying castle can be seen, but is it friend or foe?
(Additional/continuation: Siege of Caer Konig and Machines of the Adversary)