Session date: July 22, 2026
Ilssrah Embermead
Picked up mid-fight in the forge chamber, with Ilssrah already deep into an evil-aligned divine aura and a wall of spiky blade fragments shielding her — fitting for a follower of Droskar. She had backup: a gashadokuro looming over the whole room with a starvation aura, and a group of colorful iron golems the table nicknamed the “iron wardens.”
Cain enlarged himself for the fight and tore through the wardens and Ilssrah both, knocking her prone at one point with a slam and catching her again as she tried to stand. His battle-hardened resilience shrugged off nearly everything the enemies threw at him, and his ring of fire resistance made Ilssrah’s flaming weapon irrelevant. Peoux ground the gashadokuro down with precision shots, immobilizing and enfeebling it along the way. Tinker got knocked unconscious and dying by one of the iron wardens, stabilized with a hero point, and got back into the fight. Martin took a brutal hit that broke his shield, but kept healing the party through it with Battle Medicine and his healer’s gloves.
Ilssrah Embermead was defeated. Peeling back her armor revealed a Scarlet Triad uniform underneath — she’d been the liaison coordinating the Triad’s collaboration with the duergar and the other followers of Droskar, and the reason they were operating out of a temple housing Veshumirix. Arms dealing and regional destabilization, in the same vein as the Cinderclaws.
Loot: a flaming spiked chain called Fleshroaster, a returning light hammer, and a fine adamantine breastplate. The iron golems had nothing on them — their shields turned out to be built into their arms.
The Guiding Chisel
Searching the forge room afterward, Peoux found a wrapped item on Ilssrah’s work desk: a magical chisel bearing the holy symbol of Findeladlara, the elven goddess of art and architecture. A follow-up check identified it as a key to Alseta’s Ring — specifically, a portal key to something called the Duskgate.
The chisel is a powerful crafting tool in its own right: embed it in the ground, imagine a building, and after ten minutes an entire structure appears out of nothing, any shape, filling a huge area. The table immediately started brainstorming uses — instant scaffolding, sealing off a stairwell in a pinch, pre-building a fortified position to fight from, or rebuilding parts of the party’s own base.
Lore note: the chisel was originally a Duskgate portal key, but as Alseta’s Ring faded from elven memory it became known only for its crafting abilities. Elven emissaries later gave it to the dwarves of Saggorak as a gesture of friendship.
Between Fights
The party spent time healing up, repairing Martin’s shield, and scouting ahead. A long stairwell descended further into the depths. Before pushing on, they buffed up with protective spells — though enough of that duration burned covering the final stretch that they went into the next fight running low on time. At the bottom, a set of heavy iron doors stood warm to the touch, glowing faintly orange-red at the seams — clearly built to hold back lava rather than crafted for decoration.
The Dragon’s Undead Guard
Four dragonscarred dead were waiting the moment the doors opened, weapons already drawn — undead warriors wielding greatswords scorched by dragon fire, radiating an aura that could shake even the steadiest nerves. Martin opened the fight by rattling one of them badly with a demoralizing shout. The party quickly worked out that cold hurt these things and fire didn’t touch them at all — Tinker switched his weapon over to cold damage mid-fight to take advantage. Tinker landed a massive opening hit, and Cain cut a swath through multiple targets at once, hopping between them with his scythe. Martin held a protective aura of light around the group that weakened the undead further whenever they stood in it.
By the time the session ended, two of the four were badly hurt but the fight was still going, and the party paused to fully heal up before picking it back up next time.
Next Session
Tentatively August 5th.