Fire Giant Stronghold
We head deeper into the cavern, crossing a river of lava via a rope bridge, a pair of salamanders keep clear of us.
We reach the Master’s chambers, he is guarded by a giant zombie and giant skeleton, and there is a massive portal leading to … Vecna. Behind Vecna is a distant citadel in a blasted landscape, another plane of existence.
As we enter, Micah arrives and holds back Vecna from moving past the Portal. “Hurry” he says.
Bale teleports to the Master and hits him, but the damage doesn’t stay. He is impervious to harm until his name is spoken. Codex strides forward and says “This ends now, Llewellyn Greenhallow.” And then suddenly, his immunity fades.
The fight intensifies. Codex faces off against the giant zombie, and the giant skeleton is turned by Simon. Bale is paralyzed by the master, but Codex dispels the effect. Maud attempts to disintegrate the Master, who evades the attack, and the Master attempts to disintegrate Maud in return, that she avoids.
Finally, after multiple hits, the Master teleports to Codex, attempting to take control of him with Crown of Madness, but fails. Then Simon arrives and strikes the killing blow.
This shatters the portal, Vecna’s scream of defeat echoing in our heads. We are victorious.
As we examine the Master’s room, we find hundreds of books, files and scrolls detailing the entire royal lineage of the humans of both kingdoms, the Dwarven clans, the Elven holdings, even Dragonborn enclaves. The Master has spent over 200 plus years using psychology and gathering secrets, as records go from before the freeze. Codex takes it all, but it will take years to absorb all the knowledge collected.
Micah tells us we did well, and bids farewell. We leave the Master’s chambers and find a passage leading deeper underground, Codex uses his arcane eye to follow the passage. We begin to backtrack and gather up any treasure we left behind in haste.
Codex sees with his arcane eye a Drow scout, and then further down a large group of Drow, led by a Drow woman with a crown and lavender eyes. She sees the arcane eye and then dispels it. The drow are coming, so we should leave soon.
We defeat a trio of Ropers on the way out, taking the universal solvent in their gullets and the platinum.
Then we load up the mindflayer chairs onto a cart and teleportation circle to Bale’s Summit. We unload the Master’s research and then identify several of the items. In that time, we get messages from Katla – it seems that Xenth’r got to the Tower, and Mouse wants to know what to do. We send a message to Mouse that Xenth’r is a friend, and we will see her soon. We also get a message from Michael, he tells us that a massive light has been seen where the Flame of Pelor was sitting, the place where Bahamut was resting. Something to investigate.
Bale also sends his father a message letting him know the Master is dead. Gilbert acknowledges.
We then teleport to Lasthaven, to our house. We take our cart and borrow a horse from Liondark trading to take us out to the Tower. At the tower we have a glorious reunion with Xenth’r, who is as unstable as ever. We get him a room in the Tower, but make sure he understands that Mouse is in charge. We think he understands. Mouse hates all of us, and hates us more when we store the mind flayer chairs in the Tower, for safe keeping.
We then head to the small orcish encampment. We speak to Laughingfang. He agrees to challenge the warchief of the larger orcish tribe, in exchange we have to look after the children.
The older woman Lazgar Steelsplitter, with her withered leg, wants to go with Laughingfang. But her leg forbids it. Codex offers to do something. He appeals to his Goddess, and Ioun agrees, intervening and healing her leg fully. Codex hands her an Ioun stone (Protection) and tells her to follow Ioun, for she has been chosen. She will go with Laughingfang.
The simple minded Xug, the elderly orcish woman Shazgob, and the two babies stay with us. We will look after them. We take them to Uhurak, who is living at Simon’s cabin. She agrees to look after him.
We head back to Lasthaven and rest at our house.