Session 07: Pier Pressure

Low, muffled drums reverberated across the fungal-lit shallows of the Darklake as the four fugitives—Elora, Maledurk, Thorn, and Tempest—stood bound to slime-slick posts on Sloobludop’s rotting pier. All around them the fish-folk were chanting, their bulbous eyes glittering with fanatic zeal: “Leemooggoogoon… Leemooggoogoon…”

The cords snapped. Whether by druidic sleight, dragonborn fury, or unseen sorcery, their bonds fell away, and in the same breath the village erupted into civil war—green-skinned devotees of the Sea Mother clashing with crimson-painted cultists of the Deep Father. Nets became garrotes, spears flashed, barnacle-encrusted idols toppled into the murk. The adventurers had no time to parse allies from enemies; survival demanded action.

From the end of the pier, Elora surged into ursine form, black fur bristling as she dove toward shore. Maledurk unfurled his tarnished brass wings and beat skyward, Thorn danced along the air in a bladesong’s whirling grace, and Tempest, half-lost in delight at the havoc, began to mutter combustible possibilities.

Then the water broke.

Far beyond the warring huts, a mountainous silhouette heaved upward—a twin-headed colossus, its eyes like molten pits, its tentacled arm lashing the shallows. Each drumming chant of “Leemooggoogoon” melted into a mewl of terror as the being strode forward. The air thickened with the stench of pitch and ruin; the lake itself seemed to recoil.

The companions’ souls reeled. Elora’s keen ears rang until sound itself deserted her; the druid heard only the ragged thunder of her own heart. Maledurk’s sight drowned in crimson visions—he hovered blind above the dark water, seeing only nightmare tableaux of his own demise. Yet courage held.

With a roar that would have shaken the stars—had she heard it—Elora hurled an icy tempest upon the demon’s crowns. Shards of hail shattered against abyssal hide with scarcely a welt. Thorn, face pale but will unbroken, reached out with invisible force, striving to shove the titan back into the depths. The spell met a will older than mortal memory and guttered like a candle.

Tempest cackled, thrusting chaotic energy at the brute, hoping to twist it into a harmless guppy. The magic splashed against an ancient psyche and fizzled in mockery. Wild sorcery ricocheted; sudden confusion rippled behind her like heat-haze, ensnaring hapless kuo-toa instead of the intended horror. Undeterred, she sprinted along the dock, fingertips blazing—timbers smoked, but the lake-soaked wood refused to flare.

Blind Maledurk dove. Rage forged claws of spectral brass; three times he slashed into scaly flesh, and on the third strike he drew ichor that hissed upon the breeze. One of the demon’s heads turned—a languid, almost curious motion—then the tentacle whipped. Bone crunched. The dragonborn spun across the air, half his life shorn away, and felt a cold siphon in his marrow as though the creature drank his very years.

Still the demonic prince advanced. Every stride tore pilings like reeds. Chanting zealots were plucked up and flung into distant blackness—offerings spurned by the object of their worship. To stand before the thing was to drown in certainty of death.

Lightning cracked from cloudless cavern air—Elora, now herself again, summoned storm in her desperation. Thunderbolts hammered the twin skulls; smoke curled, but the beast did not slow. Around them panicked kuo-toa scattered: half fled shrieking into the dark, half knelt rapturous even as ruin loomed above.

Thorn’s firebolts streaked out like meteors, Maledurk’s sunsword blazed through blindness, Tempest’s arcane flames licked the quay—yet each assault felt as futile as arrows against a tempest. When the demon prince waded ashore, thirty feet of abyssal might towering over shattered huts, the companions knew at last that valor alone would spell only martyrdom.

Retreat was no cowardice; it was strategy. Guiding a stumbling, newly-sighted Maledurk, they sprinted south along the shoreline until the thunder of collapsing docks faded. There waited Hemeth, the gray-skinned duergar prisoner they had freed in the mêlée. Awe and horror mingled on his bearded face, yet hope sparked when they spoke of allies.

“A week’s sail,” he rasped, gesturing to the endless stretch of black water, “brings us to Gracklstugh. The Stone Giants’ Forge—city of my folk. If any in the Dark Below can muster steel against that—thing—it is the Deep-King’s legions.” Unspoken hung the doubt of whether those secretive dwarves would heed the warning, but it was a course.

Thorn unfolded the enchanted skiff from Elora’s satchel; wood and sail bloomed at a whisper, and they pushed off. Behind them, Sloobludop burned in silent silhouette beneath the cavern roof, the demon prince stomping through sparks like a child through guttering coals.

Days blurred into a hush of lapping waves and alien stalactite constellations. Elora’s hearing returned with the whispers of subterranean wind; Maledurk’s sight cleared to twilight gloom. Each night they spoke in low tones—of duty, of fear, of the road unwound before them. The vision of the demon’s fire-lit throne in the Nine Hells haunted Maledurk’s dreams, while Tempest sketched ludicrous strategies on the boat’s planks and Thorn sifted lore of ancient banishments.

At length, a distant glow the color of a furnace dawned upon the horizon. It became a blazing skyline: tier upon tier of forge-lit arches carved straight into a titanic cavern wall. Rivers of sparks cascaded down iron-sheathed chutes, and a gateway the size of a castle portcullis yawned over the water, flanked by statues of adamantine hammerers.

“The Great Forges of Themberchaud,” Hemeth murmured, reverence threading his voice. “Welcome to Gracklstugh.”

Hope did not banish dread, but it tempered it, as steel is tempered in flame. Behind them roared a demon king; before them loomed a city that thrived on fire and iron. Between the two, the companions steeled their hearts, for the next chapter of their underdark odyssey had begun.