NDG on Nefarious Do-Gooders

Session 14: A Crowning Moment

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0600

The mountain did not welcome them, yet it did not deny them either. Its stone bones opened to admit them into a hidden world where roots drank from unseen light and a forest breathed beneath the earth. In that strange hollow, where no sun shone and yet everything lived, the cabin waited—quiet, patient, as though it had always known they would arrive.

Within, warmth gathered around the hearth. Herbs hung drying in careful bundles, their scents mingling with the richer aroma of meat and earth. The gnome woman moved with an ease that suggested ownership not just of the space, but of something deeper—of the unseen currents that shaped it. She welcomed them without surprise, as though their journey had been expected long before they themselves understood it.

The pot simmered.

Ingredients they had risked life and limb to gather disappeared beneath her practiced hands, reduced to fragments, to essence. The bubbling thickened, transformed. Steam curled upward in lazy spirals, carrying with it the promise of something more than simple sustenance.

When she beckoned Maledurk forward, the great dragonborn leaned in without hesitation, drawn by curiosity as much as by the scent. The surface of the stew shifted and turned, swallowing and revealing its contents in a slow, hypnotic dance.

“Tell me what you see.”

He searched the depths, expecting revelation—some grand unveiling of fate or hidden truth. His thoughts sharpened, focusing on what mattered most to him: his companions, their struggles, the ever-present threat that loomed just beyond understanding. He spoke what he imagined, what he hoped.

And yet, there was nothing there but stew.

The gnome’s laughter broke the tension like a snapped thread. The illusion collapsed, leaving behind only the simple truth: a meal, nothing more. What they had hunted across wilderness and ruin had become, in the end, her dinner.

Yet the jest did not erase the weight of what followed.

As they ate, the gnome’s demeanor shifted—subtle at first, but unmistakable. Her eyes lingered too long. Her thoughts stretched toward something beyond the room. When the crown was revealed, the atmosphere tightened, as though the forest itself held its breath.

It was an ugly thing. Twisted. Thorned. Wrong.

She studied it with a seriousness that stripped away any remaining pretense. When she brought it to the fire, holding it within the flames as though heat could coax truth from it, the air thickened with unseen pressure. Smoke rose—not gray and drifting, but black and purposeful, shaping itself into something more.

A battlefield emerged in that darkness.

Thorn recognized it at once. Not as memory alone, but as a reflection—an echo given form. The clash of armies, the dead rising to meet the living, the terrible inevitability of it all. But this time, he stood outside it. A witness, rather than a participant.

The vision collapsed as quickly as it had formed.

Her conclusion came with a quiet gravity that pressed against them all. The crown was not merely cursed—it was deliberate. Crafted. A vessel of will. It did not simply corrupt; it sought. It waited.

It hunted.

The realization settled heavily: this was not an artifact to be discarded, nor a problem to be solved by distance. It was a thread tied to something far greater, something that extended beyond their understanding of the world itself.

And then—without warning—everything shifted.

The gnome’s focus fractured. Her words faltered. Her hand moved with sudden, unnatural certainty.

The crown settled upon her head.

She fell.

The stillness that followed was not peace, but anticipation. They moved quickly, recalling the desperation of the last time such a thing had occurred. Magic was summoned, channeled, cast—

—and vanished into something unseen.

The failure was immediate and wrong. The spell had not dissipated. It had been taken.

Realization came too late to matter.

She rose.

Her posture was not her own. Her presence had deepened, as though something vast had poured itself into a vessel far too small to contain it. When she spoke, the voice that emerged was not the one that had welcomed them, nor the one that had laughed beside the hearth.

It was older. Heavier. Certain.

“She would be here.”

The words lingered, heavy with implication, before she moved—swift, decisive—and leapt through the window into the forest beyond.

Silence followed her departure, but it was not empty. It thrummed with unanswered questions, with the echo of something vast shifting just out of sight.

And in that silence, a final, unsettling thought took root.

Perhaps the crown had never been meant for them at all.

Perhaps they had merely been the path.

Session Notes

Session 13: Soup's On!

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0600

The cavern burned with a strange stillness.

High above, Maledurk stood on the ceiling. Boots planted against stone, gravity bent wrong by Elora’s spell, the ember fungus pulsing in his grip like a dull coal. Red light played across his scales. Below him – though “below” had stopped meaning anything – his companions watched in silence, their world turned upside down.

For a moment, nothing but the hum of magic.

Then he ran.

He pushed off from the ceiling’s edge and threw himself into open air. The instant he crossed the boundary of Elora’s spell, real gravity took hold. He fell. The cavern rushed up to meet him in a blur of stone and firelight, and at the last moment instinct kicked in. His body twisted, wings snapping wide, catching just enough air to break the fall. He hit the ground hard but upright, the impact booming through the chamber.

The fungus still burned in his hand.

A breath later, gravity settled back where it belonged, as if nothing had happened.

They had what they came for.

The High Forest welcomed them differently this time. Where once it had been watchful, even hostile, it parted for them like an old ally. The river carried their folding boat with almost deliberate ease, the current gentle, the wind always at their backs. For three days they traveled through a green tunnel of leaves and shadow, sunlight filtering through in fractured beams, painting the water gold. No predators came. Nothing stirred.

Not peace, exactly. More like the forest had decided to let them pass.

By the time the mountains rose ahead of them, jagged gray teeth against the sky, the forest had already pulled back behind them, as if unwilling to follow. The river narrowed, grew rough, and finally dumped them on shore.

From there, they climbed.

Elora found something that was less a path than a suggestion. A subtle shaping of stone and earth that hinted at passage, enough to guide them upward and spare them the worst of the mountain.

Night came. They made camp under open sky, Thorn weaving a dome of unseen protection around them. Inside it, the world felt distant. Muted. Safe enough to sleep. Safe enough to dream.

But not unnoticed.

Elora saw it first. A shape circling high above, cutting silent arcs through the dark. Thorn followed her gaze as the creature descended.

A raven. Large, but not impossibly so, spiraling down with steady wingbeats until it landed on a stone outcropping above the camp.

It watched them. Not like a predator watches prey, or a scavenger watches the dying. It watched like it understood.

When Thorn stepped beyond the dome, the raven’s head snapped toward him with unnerving precision. He approached with cautious calm and offered words of greeting into the night.

The raven listened. Then it spoke.

“Get your rest,” came the voice, human and clear and entirely wrong in the beak of a bird. “You’ll need all your energy in the morning. Follow my friend Jacob when you wake.”

It said nothing more, but it didn’t leave.

At dawn, Jacob took to the air.

He led them without hesitation, away from Elora’s path and across the bare mountain slopes. No trail here, just rock and incline, but the raven never faltered. When they fell behind, he waited. When they caught up, he flew again.

An hour. Then another.

Then he vanished around a bend. When they followed, they found only stone and a dark opening carved into the mountainside.

The cave swallowed the light.

The deeper they went, the less things made sense. At first it seemed natural enough, another mountain tunnel cut by time and water. But the walls were too even. The path too consistent. No tool marks, no sign of labor, and yet it wasn’t untouched either.

Elora felt it before she could name it. The tunnel had been shaped by will, not by hand. She was sure of that much.

And probably hidden, too. She remembered the entrance, how easily they’d passed through. If there had been an illusion there, it hadn’t been meant to stop them. It had been meant to hide everything from anyone who wasn’t invited.

They pressed on.

The firelight came first. A flickering glow around a bend in the tunnel, the soft crackle of burning wood. It should have been comforting.

There was no smoke. No scent. Only the look of flame.

When they stepped into the chamber beyond, the world changed.

Trees rose around them. Tall, pale aspens stretching toward a ceiling that couldn’t possibly sustain them. Leaves whispering in a breeze with no source. Soft soil underfoot that had no business existing inside a mountain.

At the center of it all, a cabin. Simple and solid and real. The fire burning before it was not.

Jacob watched from the branches.

The door opened before they could knock.

The gnome woman who stepped out regarded them with a knowing look, her eyes sharp with recognition before anyone could introduce themselves. “Well,” she said, more like she’d been expecting guests than meeting strangers in a hidden mountain hollow. “I heard you’d be coming.”

Inside, the cabin overflowed with life. Shelves crammed with herbs, preserved foods, strange concoctions, things that defied identification. Nothing organized. Nothing orderly. And yet none of it felt accidental.

She went to work immediately. The ingredients they’d gathered, each one hard-won, each a piece of their journey, were taken without ceremony. She sliced the blood gourd open with practiced ease. The ember fungus followed, hissing faintly as it hit the water.

Other things joined the pot. Things they hadn’t gathered. Things that had already been waiting.

The brew simmered and thickened into something that didn’t look like any of its ingredients.

All the while, the woman watched them. Listened. Asked.

Their story came out in fragments. Battles, places walked, moments of confusion and wonder. She took it all in, her expression shifting with each new piece.

“You’ve been touched,” she said at last, stirring with absent focus. “Something beyond this world.”

The words hung there.

Then she turned to Maledurk.

“Come closer.”

The fire crackled softly, giving no heat.

“Look into the pot.”

He stepped forward. The surface of the brew shimmered, thick and dark, alive with motion.

And as he leaned in, everything went quiet.

Session Notes

Session 12: Got It!

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0700

The world twisted as it always did when the unseen hand seized them.

There was no wind, no sound—only that nauseating elongation of flesh and thought, as though their souls were pulled thin as spun sugar and reeled through some unseen loom. Then the strain released, and they found themselves standing upon stone that felt older than memory.

Heat struck them first.

Not the gentle warmth of a hearth, nor even the humid breath of Chult’s jungles, but a dry, unrelenting furnace that pressed against skin and lungs alike. Before them stretched a vast cavern—no, a subterranean wasteland. Rivers of living flame coursed through fissures in the rock, molten light winding in serpentine arcs across a blackened expanse. The glow painted everything in a feverish amber. Yet there was no smoke. No choking haze. The air was clear enough to breathe, if uncomfortably hot.

Maledurk drew in a deep breath and grinned, brass scales catching the firelight. “Feels like home,” he muttered, flexing his clawed hands.

To the others, it felt like standing inside a kiln.

The cavern floor was uneven, pocked with shallow craters of various sizes—some small as cooking bowls, others large enough to swallow a cottage. The stone bore scars like meteor impacts, though how such marks could form in a sealed cavern none could guess. This place was not governed by the rules of Waterdeep, nor even of the Underdark. It obeyed some alien geometry.

Elora narrowed her eyes, wiping sweat from her brow. “We seek the ember fungus,” she said quietly. “If it thrives anywhere, it would be here.”

They moved cautiously among the craters. At first glance they appeared empty, but closer inspection revealed thin films of life—subtle growths clinging to the bottoms of the pits like pale moss. Then, in one of the larger depressions to the north, they saw it.

Mushrooms.

A dense bed of them, layered thickly across the pit’s floor, their caps and stalks woven together in a tangled carpet of strange shapes and muted hues. And among them—like coals buried in ash—glowed several crimson forms. They pulsed faintly, as though a hidden heart beat within each one.

Thorn knelt at the rim of the crater. Eight feet down, perhaps a little more. Enough that climbing inside would mean trampling the fragile growth. He extended a hand and whispered arcane syllables; a translucent mage hand coalesced in the heated air and drifted downward.

The spectral fingers brushed one of the duller mushrooms. A faint puff of spores rose into the air, shimmering briefly in the cavern’s glow.

Elora stiffened. “Careful.”

Thorn adjusted his grip, directing the hand toward one of the glowing caps. It resisted slightly when tugged, as though rooted firmly in the soil beneath, but with a firm pull it came free.

The moment it separated from the bed, flame blossomed around it—an abrupt flare, bright and hungry. The mage hand held it aloft as the fire danced and guttered. Within seconds, the blaze consumed itself, leaving behind a charred lump like a fragment of coal.

Thorn frowned. “That cannot be what we were meant to retrieve.”

If the ember fungus was to be delivered alive, this would not suffice.

They debated in hushed tones. Digging seemed dangerous; the bed was too dense to extract a specimen without disturbing the others. Spores hung in the air already. There was no telling what deeper agitation might summon.

Maledurk cracked his knuckles.

“You worry too much,” he said. “I’ll grab one.”

They tied a rope around his waist, though none truly trusted the arrangement. Thorn and Elora braced themselves at the crater’s edge. Tempest hovered nearby, eyes bright with barely suppressed amusement.

Maledurk leaned forward, lowering himself headfirst into the pit. For a heartbeat, he hung there, suspended over the glowing bed.

Then the rope slipped.

The world lurched. Maledurk dropped like a stone.

He had just enough time to curse before instinct took over. He lunged, massive hand closing around one of the glowing mushrooms. Soil tore free with it as he fell.

His head struck the fungal carpet with a muffled thud.

Spores erupted around him in a pale cloud, engulfing his snout and eyes. He inhaled sharply—then snarled as his body convulsed, not in pain but in sudden reversal.

The world flipped.

Gravity released him from the pit and flung him upward.

He shot from the crater like a bolt loosed from a siege engine, still clutching the ember fungus, soil and all. The cavern ceiling rushed toward him, jagged stone looming in terrifying clarity.

For a fleeting, panicked instant, he considered whether dragons bounced.

Then the fall slowed.

Five feet from the ceiling, his ascent softened into a drift. Featherlight, he floated upward until he came to rest upon the cavern roof, sprawled against the stone like some absurd mural of dragonkind.

He blinked.

Below him—far below—his companions stared upward.

Elora’s face was tight with concentration, magic still shimmering faintly around her. Thorn wore an infuriatingly satisfied expression. Tempest’s laughter echoed off the cavern walls, bright as chimes in a storm.

Maledurk looked down at them, then at the glowing fungus still smoldering in his grasp.

“I’ve got it,” he called.

And there he remained—sixty feet above the cavern floor, lying upon the ceiling in a world where gravity itself had turned traitor—while rivers of fire flowed on in indifferent silence.

Session Notes

Session 11: Gardening, the Hard Way

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0700

The plains stretched outward in every direction, a wide and unsettling openness beneath a washed-out sky. After the violence and fire of the previous days, the stillness here felt wrong—too quiet, too patient, as though the land itself were waiting. Somewhere within this emptiness lay the next piece of their grim errand: the blood gourd, fruit of the bone thicket. None of them liked the name, and less still the way the ground ahead seemed to darken and twist as they drew nearer.

At first the thickets appeared as little more than low, tangled hedges scattered across the grass. But as the party closed the distance, the truth revealed itself in sharp, cruel detail. These were not gentle shrubs. They were snarled masses of thorn and spine, rising from churned earth like grasping hands. Bones jutted through them—rib fragments, splintered limbs, pale curves half-swallowed by the growth. This place was no mere field. It was a graveyard, and the plants had claimed it as their own.

At the heart of several thickets glimmered something red and vivid, a startling splash of color amid bone-white and dull green. Elora studied the nearest of these growths with a druid’s eye, her instincts whispering warnings even as curiosity pulled her closer. The plant lived—of that she was certain—but it lived in a way that felt twisted, sustained by death rather than sun. Thorn noticed something else as well: faint paths in the dirt, subtle trails worn between thickets, as if something had moved again and again from one to the next. Whatever tended this place did not walk in straight lines, nor did it leave footprints.

Caution prevailed. Rather than plunge into the largest thicket, they approached one of the medium growths, circling it warily. Thorn tested it first, probing with a fallen branch guided by unseen force. The thorns resisted but did not strike. When the branch finally tapped the crimson fruit nestled deep within, the entire plant shuddered, scattering loose spines to the ground. More troubling still, nearby thickets quivered in sympathy, as though sharing the same pulse.

Steel answered doubt. Thorn began carefully cutting his way toward the gourd, severing branches with deliberate precision. The first true strike against the plant drew blood not from it, but from Elora. One of the neighboring thickets tore itself free from the earth and slammed into her with shocking speed, driving thorns into flesh and hurling her to the ground. The attack ended as abruptly as it began, the plant falling still once more, but the message was clear: the thickets were awake, and they defended one another.

Undeterred, Thorn pressed on, slicing through one of the thick, sinewy connections binding the gourd to its host. The reaction was violent. A storm of thorns burst outward, rattling the air like shrapnel. Maledurk and Elora threw themselves clear, but Thorn was not fast enough. Barbs tore into him, and a creeping numbness seized his legs, rooting him in place as if the land itself had claimed him.

Realizing brute force alone would cost them dearly, Thorn turned to guile and magic. An invisible barrier sprang into being—a wall without substance, yet stronger than stone—curving protectively around them while leaving just enough space for Maledurk to reach through with his blade. Again and again the dragonborn struck, cutting through the remaining bonds while smaller thickets hurled themselves uselessly against the unseen wall, their fury spent against unyielding force.

At last, only a single connection remained. Tempest, grinning despite the danger, slid her frying pan beneath the gourd with careful aim, ready to catch it. Maledurk’s final swing severed the last living tether. The blood gourd dropped free, landing with a dull, wet thump against iron.

The change was immediate. The thicket they had wounded collapsed inward, branches falling limp, bones clattering to the ground like discarded relics. Nearby growths followed suit, their unnatural animation snuffed out as though a heart had stopped beating. Only the largest thicket remained active, hammering itself against the invisible wall in a last, impotent rage.

They did not linger. With the gourd secured, Thorn prepared their escape—but his triumph turned sour when Maledurk tried to lift him and found resistance where there should have been none. Roots had wormed their way from Thorn’s feet into the soil, anchoring him fast. The earth itself refused to let him go.

Time pressed close. With the barrier fading and the great thicket still thrashing, Elora acted. Ice shattered the ground around Thorn’s legs, and Maledurk’s strength did the rest, tearing him free in a spray of dirt and severed roots. Pain followed, sharp and lingering, but there was no space for complaint. Thorn’s magic carried them away in a blink, the plains vanishing beneath them as the world folded and released.

They reappeared at the edge of the glade, safe at last. Thorn sagged with exhaustion, roots still protruding from his feet until Elora’s healing magic restored sensation and freedom of movement. The blood gourd lay secured, its crimson surface gleaming dully—a prize won at real cost.

They had survived the bone thicket, but the encounter left its mark. The plains had tested not just their strength, but their trust in one another and their willingness to adapt. One task remained, one final ingredient still beyond their grasp. For now, though, they breathed, bloodied but unbroken, knowing that the land itself had tried—and failed—to claim them.

Session Notes

Session 10: Honey in the Fire

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0700

The forest greeted them with a sound before it revealed itself with sight: a low, persistent buzzing that seemed to vibrate in the bones as much as in the air. It was not the gentle hum of meadow bees or the idle drone of summer insects, but something heavier, thicker—an omen that set every nerve on edge. When the trees finally parted into a clearing, the source became clear: a massive carcass lay sprawled in the open, its shape half-lost beneath decay, and around it drifted shapes far too large to be dismissed as mere insects. The bees were monstrous, each the size of a hunting cat, their wings beating slow and deliberate as they ferried themselves to and from the corpse.

Elora felt the wrongness of it immediately. Nature spoke to her in absences as much as presences, and here it whispered unease. Still, she moved forward without hesitation, her form flowing into that of a great bear, fur rippling where elven skin had been. Smoke curled into the air as the party lit a small fire nearby, hoping the haze might calm the creatures. At first, it worked. The bees paid the bear little mind, continuing their grim labor. But when the others emerged from hiding, the air shifted. Wings beat harder. Heads turned. The clearing seemed to inhale.

The swarm came alive.

Maledurk did not wait to see if hesitation would spare them. He stepped forward, chest swelling as he drew in breath that burned even before it left his lungs. Fire poured from him in a roaring cone, washing over the advancing bees. The flames blackened wings and scorched chitin, yet still the creatures flew, stubborn and furious. Their resilience drew a sharp laugh from Tempest, who answered fire with fire, hurling an explosive blaze that blossomed around them. The world flashed white-hot for an instant. When the smoke thinned, the bees still hovered, wounded but unbroken—and worse, the carcass itself had begun to smolder.

Elora charged, massive jaws snapping shut on one of the beasts. Her teeth crushed into its body, and it sagged in the air, wings beating unevenly. But the victory was fleeting. Another bee struck back, its stinger piercing deep. Pain flared, sharp and immediate, followed by something colder, spreading through her veins. Poison. She felt it in the sluggish heaviness creeping into her limbs, the way the world tilted slightly off its axis.

Lightning split the air before the swarm could regroup. Thorn raised a hand, calm and precise even as chaos raged around him, and the spell leapt from bee to bee in a crackling chain. One by one they fell, smoking husks hitting the ground in rapid succession. For a heartbeat, the clearing was quiet again—until the buzzing swelled, louder than before.

More bees were crawling from within the carcass.

Elora, fighting through nausea and the creeping weakness of the venom, understood before anyone else what they were truly facing. This was no feeding ground. It was a hive. Worse, it was vast—burrowing into the earth beneath the corpse, alive with movement. They were not fighting guards so much as disturbing a city.

Maledurk pushed forward again, forcing fire deep into the opening, his flames illuminating a nightmarish interior of honeycomb slick with a dark, brown honey. Bees writhed and burned within, but even as they died, others fled outward, abandoning the doomed nest. Tempest answered with something more corrosive: a sphere of acid that burst across the hive’s mouth, dissolving bodies and eating into the structure itself. The forest filled with the stench of burning flesh and bitter chemicals, and still there was movement inside—slower now, but not gone.

Elora knew they did not have time. The poison gnawed at her strength, each breath heavier than the last. She felt, rather than saw, the shift in the hive’s behavior: the warning tremor of a colony on the brink of evacuation, the imminent flight of a queen. If that happened, the danger would multiply tenfold.

She did the only thing that mattered.

Ignoring the heat and the smoke, she reached into the burning carcass with a massive paw, claws scraping against bone and comb alike. Pain licked at her fur, but she found what she sought—a thick mass of honeycomb, heavy and dripping with dark, viscous honey. She wrenched it free and staggered back, the poison finally demanding its due. The world swayed. Each step felt like wading through deep water.

Thorn was there in an instant, steady hands transferring the prize into waiting containers. The others closed in around Elora, urgency sharp in every movement. The buzzing was rising again, swelling toward a furious crescendo. There would be no victory here—only escape.

Magic folded space like cloth, and in a blink they were gone.

The glen welcomed them with familiar calm, the air cool and green, a stark contrast to the inferno they had fled. Elora collapsed to one knee, the bear’s shape melting away as she returned to herself, skin pale and slick with sweat. The poison still coursed through her, relentless, until she summoned the last of her focus and drew on restorative magic, purging the venom from her blood. The relief was immediate, though exhaustion lingered like a shadow.

They laid the honey beside their other gathered relics, the dark sweetness glistening in the light. Another piece of the puzzle secured, bought at the cost of fire, pain, and near disaster. Weariness settled over the group, heavy but earned, and they allowed themselves the mercy of rest, letting wounds knit and strength return.

When they set out again, the world changed once more.

The teleportation left them beneath a wide, open sky, the land rolling gently in all directions beneath low grass that whispered in the wind. At first, it seemed peaceful—almost empty. But emptiness, Elora knew, could be a warning. As they walked, the signs became clearer. Fewer birds. No burrows. The subtle, creeping sense that life was withdrawing ahead of them.

In the distance, what they had taken for shrubs resolved into something far more unsettling. Thorny growths jutted from the earth, their branches interwoven with pale bones that gleamed dully in the sun. They stood in loose clusters, like grotesque gardens grown from death itself. And at the heart of some of them, half-hidden behind thorns and skeletal branches, pulsed a vivid red—gourd-shaped, visceral, almost like a heart still beating within a ribcage.

The land here felt dead, not barren but spent, as though it had given everything it could and been repaid only with decay. Elora felt the weight of it settle into her chest, a warning carried on the wind. Whatever awaited them among those bone-thickets would not be claimed easily.

And yet, with the honey secured and the path ahead laid bare, there was no turning back. They moved forward, toward the thorned shapes and their blood-red fruit, into a place where even the land itself seemed to recoil from what had taken root there.

Session Notes

Session 09: Salts and Stings

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0700

The storm waited for them like a living thing.

It rose from the flat badlands in a towering wall of darkness, a churning mass of black grit that scraped the horizon raw. At first glance it resembled a sandstorm, but the longer they watched, the more wrong it felt. It did not flow with the wind. It lurched. It staggered. It advanced in uneven pulses, as though something vast and patient were walking just beneath its surface.

Thorn took to the air to study it, skimming closer while the others held their ground. From above, the truth became clearer—and far more unsettling. The particles within the storm moved in defiance of nature, streaking past one another in conflicting currents, converging and separating without reason. It was not merely weather. It was will. When Thorn passed overhead, part of the storm rippled, subtly, as if it had noticed him.

They needed black salt from within that roiling mass, and there would be no waiting for it to pass. Nothing remained in its wake but scoured earth, stripped clean as bone. If they wanted the salt, they would have to take it from the heart of the thing itself.

Plans formed quickly, then fell apart just as fast. Walls of magic would not hold what could not be trusted to behave like wind. Clever tools and delicate spells seemed laughably insufficient. In the end, the solution was brutally simple.

Maledurk stepped forward.

A rope was tied around him—more for comfort than confidence—and he grinned as though walking into oblivion were merely another test of endurance. The others watched, tense and silent, as he approached the storm’s shifting edge. There was no warning gust, no rising howl. One moment he stood before them, the next the blackness swallowed him whole.

The rope went slack.

When they hauled it back, its end was frayed and burned away, as if gnawed by countless invisible teeth.

Inside the storm, Maledurk found chaos. Darkness crushed in on him, grit and salt blasting his scales from every direction. The pain was immediate and vicious—thousands of tiny cuts searing as the salt worked its way into them, stinging like fire. The storm battered him, trying to tear him from his footing, but he planted himself and refused to fall.

With no clear sense of direction and no way to see, instinct took over. He unleashed his fire, roaring defiance into the dark. Flame carved a pocket of light and heat, and for a brief, precious moment the storm recoiled. The salt thinned, retreating from the fire’s wake, leaving behind a hollow where the air was almost calm.

He realized then that the storm could be pushed back, if only temporarily.

Carefully, deliberately, Maledurk advanced, blasting fire again and again to carve a path through the living darkness. Each breath bought him a little more space, a little more clarity. Salt clung to his armor, his scales, his very skin—black and fine as powdered ash. He tasted it on his tongue, sharp and unmistakable. Salt. Powerful, unnatural salt.

At last, light broke through ahead of him. He surged forward, one final burst of flame tearing open the edge of the storm, and stumbled free into the sun.

The others barely had time to cheer before realizing the problem: the salt would not stay put. Brushing it from Maledurk’s scales sent it billowing into the air, dispersing like smoke. It refused to be gathered easily, as if it resented being taken.

Necessity bred inspiration.

They shrank Maledurk down and sealed him inside a sturdy pot, turning him—briefly and ignominiously—into a living salt shaker. The pot rattled and clanged as he endured the indignity, but when they finally opened it, success glittered at the bottom: a dark measure of black salt, enough to satisfy whatever strange bargain demanded it.

They returned to the grove and laid the salt beside the other offerings. Whatever force guided them seemed content, for the forest welcomed their rest, and they slept deeply, wounds mended and strength restored.

Morning brought a new task.

They were sent into a forest that felt sick at its roots. The trees stood twisted and joyless, their leaves dull, the air heavy with decay. Beneath it all lingered another scent—rich, savory, unsettlingly appetizing. Bone marrow honey, they realized. Whatever produced it was close.

Buzzing guided them to a clearing dominated by the carcass of a colossal beast, long dead and half-consumed. Around it swarmed creatures that looked like bees only in the loosest sense: each the size of a cat, their bodies thick and heavy, their heads skull-like and alien. They crawled in and out of the carcass, vanishing into its hollowed ribs and returning again, tireless and focused.

Smoke seemed the safest approach. They lit a fire near the clearing, coaxing thick, choking plumes into the air. The bees slowed, their movements growing sluggish, dulled by the haze. It worked—at least a little.

Elora, wearing the shape of a bear, lumbered into the clearing with careful, deliberate calm. The bees noticed her but did not attack. They hovered, curious, uncertain. Encouraged, the others followed her lead.

That was the mistake.

The moment the group emerged together, the tone shifted. The bees’ buzzing deepened into an angry roar, and the swarm surged as one, abandoning the carcass in a furious wave. They ignored the bear and descended on Maledurk instead, stingers gleaming, intent unmistakable.

The clearing filled with wings and wrath.

And there, in the sudden chaos, the moment hung—frozen on the brink of violence—leaving the fate of bone marrow honey, and perhaps much more, to be decided in the storm of beating wings.

Session Notes

Session 08: Occupational Hazards of Wizardry

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0700

The crypt lay silent once more, its ancient stones still warm with the echo of violence. Dust drifted slowly through the air where the lich had stood moments before, its body reduced to nothing but fragments and ash. The crown lay upon the floor, innocuous at first glance—dull metal, unadorned save for its cruel symmetry—yet it radiated a gravity that none of them could ignore.

Thorn was the first to step toward it.

The moment the crown touched his brow, the world broke open.

He fell, not as a body collapsing but as a mind plunging into depths it had never known. Darkness swallowed him, then fractured into visions that came without mercy or warning. He stood upon a vast battlefield, the ground choked with bodies, the air ringing with the clash of steel and the hollow groans of the dead. An army of undead moved at his command, and with that command came a terrible, intoxicating certainty: life was an enemy to be extinguished. The feeling was not alien—it was intimate, as though it had always waited for him, dormant.

The vision shattered and reformed. Now he was in a stone laboratory thick with smoke and acrid scents, surrounded by vials, cauldrons, and half-decayed tomes. His hands—no, the lich’s hands—moved with obsessive precision. Something was missing. One final component, one essential truth, hovered just out of reach. The ritual for immortality lay incomplete, its failure both infuriating and confusing, for he could not even remember what success was meant to look like.

Then the throne room: vaulted stone, banners hanging in solemn ranks, courtiers frozen in fear. He sat upon a throne, crowned, regal—and monstrous. When he rose and crossed the chamber to a mirror, the truth revealed itself in stark relief. His reflection was no longer alive. His skin had faded to ash-gray, his eyes sunken, his features stripped of warmth and color, as though life itself had been leeched away, leaving only will behind. The crown rested easily upon his head, inseparable, sovereign.

Around Thorn’s fallen body, the others reacted with alarm. Elora knelt beside him, her instincts screaming that this was no simple faint. Magic clung to him like a second skin, cold and invasive. Lesser efforts to restore him slid off harmlessly, accomplishing nothing. Only when Elora drew upon deeper, purer power did the spell take hold. With a sharp clatter, the crown fell free, and Thorn gasped as consciousness rushed back into him.

He woke on the stone floor, heart hammering, the visions still burning behind his eyes. He remembered everything.

When he spoke, he told them of the battlefield in the valley beyond the glacier—how the ice had once lain farther back, how centuries must have passed. He told them of the ritual for immortality, written in deep, alien runes he had somehow understood in the vision but could no longer read. He told them of the crown’s promise, the way it had magnified his power and whispered that next time would be different—that next time he could master it instead of being mastered.

Even as he spoke, his gaze betrayed him. Again and again, his eyes drifted to the crown on the floor, his attention pulled like iron filings toward a lodestone. The others noticed. Concern passed silently between them.

Maledurk was the first to voice it. There was something wrong with the crown—something hungry. It was not merely dangerous; it was persuasive. Elora tested it carefully, lifting it without placing it upon her head. In her hands it felt like nothing more than cold metal. Magic lingered within it, yes, but it slept, revealing nothing of its true nature unless worn. That made it more troubling, not less.

In the end, they chose caution over fear. The crown was wrapped and stowed away, watched carefully, its presence acknowledged but not indulged. Thorn agreed—at least aloud—to be observed, to be questioned if his behavior changed. Whether the agreement eased the crown’s pull on him was another matter entirely.

With the lich destroyed and its moss harvested, there was nothing more to be found in the crypt. They climbed back into the cold air and turned their thoughts to the wider task still before them. One ingredient down. Four yet to be claimed.

They returned to the glade, where the ancient tree awaited them. As Elora stepped beneath its boughs, she felt a momentary resistance, as though the forest itself hesitated before allowing her passage. It passed as quickly as it came, leaving behind only unease. Neither the lich moss nor the hidden crown revealed themselves, and the tree accepted their report without suspicion, offering guidance toward the next trial: black salt, born of a devastating storm that scoured the land clean, leaving nothing behind unless seized from the tempest itself.

The world shifted again.

They emerged into a barren desert, scrub and stone stretching to every horizon. Far to the east, a dark wall stained the sky—a storm unlike any other, low and massive, devouring the landscape as it advanced. Even at a distance, it radiated menace.

They watched it for a long while, gauging its speed, its path. Time enough to plan, perhaps—but not to delay. Tempest took to the air, flying out to meet it, her figure shrinking against the enormity of the approaching wall. As she drew nearer, sound struck her first: a deafening roar like a thousand storms layered atop one another, the ground itself trembling beneath the assault. The storm was not rain, not sand, but something worse—fine black grains hurled in every direction at once, chaotic and violent, obscuring everything within.

The wind battered her mercilessly, tugging and twisting, threatening to pull her into the heart of it. From her vantage, she could see no pattern, no eye, no safe passage—only raw, destructive force rolling inexorably onward.

When she turned back, the message was clear. This storm would not be reasoned with. It would have to be endured, outwitted, or defied.

As the dark wall crept closer, the party gathered once more, minds racing with half-formed plans and dangerous possibilities. Stone walls, magic hands, daring approaches—all lay on the table. The storm was coming, and with it, the next test of their resolve.

The desert wind carried the first bitter taste of black salt as the horizon darkened, and the moment of choice drew near.

Session Notes

Session 07: One Down, Four to Go

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0700

The corridors of the lich’s tomb seemed to inhale and exhale around them, the stone breathing an ancient chill that clung to the travelers’ skin. The air held a taut quiet, stretched thin after the trials already endured, as if the tomb itself were listening. When at last the sealed library door yielded to their keys, the group stepped through with a shared and wordless understanding: whatever lingered beyond this next threshold would not welcome them.

They entered the crypt.

Two steps lifted the platform at the chamber’s center, where a sarcophagus lay carved in cold stone. Thorn’s sharp gaze skimmed the walls first, tracing the neat, deliberate lines of inscriptions that bore none of the frenzied scrawl of a tormented soul. Instead, the words flowed with the unsettling precision of something ancient and alien, marked in the curling, angular script of Deep Speech. The language itself felt like a presence in the room, coiled and waiting. Elora could not read it, but she felt its purpose like a pressure against her temples. These were no mere memorial etchings. They were wards. Prayers. Anchors.

Maledurk, simple in desire and steadfast in courage, moved toward the sarcophagus before hesitation could claim him. The elvish script along its lid proclaimed the tomb of Knogbrüth the Lich—felled long ago by Svensson the Bold. Even so, Maledurk eyed it with suspicion. A lich’s death was rarely the end.

Stone grated. His powerful arms strained. The lid lurched, slipped, and crashed to the floor in a thunderous boom that rang like a war-gong through the crypt. The stone shattered; the silence shattered with it.

Within the sarcophagus lay the skeletal remains of the lich—a rotted crown upon its skull, a strange moss blooming pale across bare bone. The sight tugged at something instinctive and fearful in each of them, though none spoke it aloud.

Thorn reached with mageborn delicacy to lift the crown from the skull, meaning to clear the way for the moss they sought. The moment metal separated from bone, the tomb erupted with a scream.

It tore the air. It tore into them. Three of them staggered, stunned by the sound that felt carved from the abyss itself.

The corpse sat upright.

Eyesockets glowed with a hateful, residual spark of life. Its limbs cracked as it moved, sinew long dead and yet somehow compelled to motion. The scream died—but the malice behind it did not.

Tempest, ever unpredictable, struck first. Her fist cracked against ancient bone—not elegant, perhaps, but effective enough to break the scream’s hold upon her companions. The lich’s head snapped toward her in silent fury. Its dead fingers brushed her arm, sending icy numbness crawling along her veins. She resisted the creeping paralysis by sheer force of will.

That defiance earned its wrath.

It raised a single finger—a gesture almost gentle—and from it burst a beam of death. Malladurk felt the world tear around him, heat and cold and oblivion fused into one blinding instant. The spell sought to unmake him, to turn his body to dust. It failed by the narrowest margin only because the dragonborn refused to let his own existence be unstitched.

But he understood then: this was no weakened remnant. This was a thing that had once ruled death itself.

Elora moved before fear could root her. She drew the primal might of draconic transformation into her limbs, her skin shimmering with draconic power as she ascended into the air. With a roar all her own, she unleashed a torrent of flame that bathed the lich in burning light. Bone charred. Fleshless ribs glowed red.

Thorn summoned a blade of pure arcane force, sending it singing through the smoky air. Its edge carved into ancient bone with magical precision.

Then Malladurk, battered but unbroken, did the only thing his battered instincts could conjure: he leapt bodily upon the lich, tackling it to the ground in a collision that cracked stone and bone alike. With one massive hand, he reached for the moss on its skull, fighting to scrape free even a single handful.

Though he could not grasp it yet, his assault held the lich down long enough for Tempest’s next wave of chaos.

Wild magic churned within her like a storm begging to be released. She shaped it this time—not into a beam or burst, but into an inferno. Firestorm blossomed around the lich in twisting spirals of white-gold flame. The chamber roared. Vines ignited. The heat shook dust from the ceiling as the conflagration swallowed the undead creature whole.

When the flames died, nothing remained of the lich’s body but a scorched skull resting amid soot and ash—and the stubborn, unburned moss still clinging to it.

Tempest vanished in the spell’s wake—hurtled for a heartbeat into the silent astral void—before reappearing breathless among her companions. Only a moment had passed, but something in her eyes suggested she’d glimpsed the vast, indifferent tapestry of realms far beyond their own.

A faint rattling drew their attention. The crown—the one Thorn had removed—shook violently upon the stone floor, as though something within were clawing to be released. The group shared a look weighted with dread. A phylactery? A trap? A relic of power? Any answer seemed plausible—and all dangerous.

Elora gathered the moss with careful hands. The mission could not falter here.

They debated the crown’s fate, weighing caution against the promise of arcane knowledge. Ultimately, Thorn stepped forward. The pull of curiosity—and perhaps something deeper—drew him to the artifact. He lifted it, feeling the hum of ancient magic thrum through his palms.

He placed the crown upon his head.

It shrank, adjusting to him with an almost affectionate precision. Shadows crept along his features, dimming the light in his eyes. It was still Thorn who stood before them—yet something unseen now stood with him, coiled like a thought not his own.

The crypt seemed to exhale again.

And the others wondered, with an unease none dared voice, whether they had emerged from this tomb with what they came for—or whether the tomb had claimed something from them in turn.

Session Notes

Session 06: Darts!

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0700

The hidden passages beneath the keep were beginning to feel less like corridors and more like the throat of some ancient beast—narrow, dark, and thick with the sense of being watched. The party pressed onward, their boots whispering over cold stone, the scent of stew and long-burned fires fading behind them as they re-entered the chamber where their descent had first begun. One path remained unexplored: the right-hand passage, yawning wide and unwelcoming, yet undeniably the only way forward.

They stepped through.

The room beyond was vast yet stark, its emptiness unsettling. Smooth walls encircled them, each surface speckled with pale points—dots of paint mimicking constellations, though none among them matched any sky the companions knew. The illusions of familiarity dissolved beneath closer scrutiny. To Thorn’s sharp mind the patterns refused to resolve into meaning, and Tempest—still half-giggling from the aftershocks of her own wild magic—found only randomness. But Elora’s gaze, ever piercing, noted what the others had missed: among the false stars, some shone darker. Hollow.

She stepped closer. Not stars—holes.

As she shared the discovery, Maledurk lumbered forward with the earnest curiosity of someone who had never once questioned the wisdom of sticking body parts into unknown objects. Before anyone could stop him, he pushed a clawed finger into one of the dark pinpricks.

A flash of pain. A sting. A hiss of breath.

Then the poison hit.

His vision wavered, a cold sickness washing through him. But Elora was quick—her magic flowed like warm sunlight over him, dispelling the toxin before it could take root. Maledurk groaned, more embarrassed than harmed, and growled out a warning no one needed anymore: “Don’t stick your fingers in the walls.”

The party edged forward, but caution dissolved the moment they reached the far door. Maledurk, driven more by duty than good sense, tested the threshold with one heavy step—and the stone slab beneath his foot sank with a grinding click.

The walls answered.

A hail of darts screamed from every darkened hole. The air filled with the whisper of death. Elora ducked; Tempest shrieked and flung herself sideways; Maledurk hit the floor with the reflexes of someone who’d spent too long dodging much larger things. But Thorn, caught mid-turn and too slow, staggered as two darts sank into his arm.

The poison worked fast. His breath hitched, skin paling as the toxin threaded its way through his blood. Yet again Elora was there, steady and sure. She drew the darts free, placing her hand on his shoulder, and warmth spread through him like dawn returning after a long night. The fog lifted from his mind; clarity returned. He nodded his thanks, shaken but resolute.

Beyond the trap-ridden corridor, a new chamber awaited—a library, this one preserved by time rather than ravaged by it. Shelves sagged beneath ancient tomes. Dust motes floated like drifting embers in the still air. The scent of old parchment hung thick, evocative and eerie all at once.

Thorn and Elora broke off at once to investigate, their shared reverence for knowledge guiding their steps. Most of the books were too fragile to touch, their bindings brittle, their pages ghost-thin. Yet Thorn’s searching hand found one volume whose leather cover remained strong beneath his fingers. He opened it, breath catching.

A spellbook.

Even without reading deeply he could feel its weight—the power etched into its pages. Secrets waited here. New strength, new understanding. He closed it gently, as though afraid it might crumble after all, and tucked it close against his heart.

But curiosity had to yield to purpose. A single locked door remained, carved cleanly into the wall at the library’s far end. Maledurk strode forward again, though this time everyone watched the floor as much as the door, wary of treacherous stone plates.

The key slid into place smoothly—too smoothly, as though it had always been meant for this lock. With a turn, the tumblers clicked open, and the door swung inward.

The room beyond felt older than the rest. The air held a chill undisturbed by centuries. Shelves lingered here as well, though fewer, their contents sparse. But all eyes were drawn to the raised dais at the center, where a sarcophagus of pale stone rested like the heart of a forgotten ritual.

Its surface was covered in tiny carved runes—lines of text etched by deliberate, careful hands. Secrets slept in that stone box. Warnings. Histories. Perhaps the next piece in the strange puzzle of who or what had stolen the party’s lives out from under them and hurled them across planes and places.

The companions exchanged glances—some wary, some excited, some exhausted by the endless mysteries unfolding in these underground halls.

But whatever answers lay sealed within that sarcophagus would have to wait.

For now, the chill in the chamber deepened, and the silence pressed heavier against their chests, as though the tomb itself held its breath.

The story paused on the edge of revelation.

Session Notes

Session 05: Broccoli Soup

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0600

The cold weight of the glacier faded behind them as the adventurers descended into the heart of the tomb. The air here was unnaturally warm, heavy with the stale scent of stillness—like something long dead yet unwilling to rot. Ahead, the flicker of torchlight glinted off slick stone, revealing a broad chamber whose floor was pocked with shallow puddles that did not ripple. When a droplet of melting ice touched one and did not spread, Elora’s keen eyes caught the illusion—an enchantment masking a pit filled with spikes. The group stepped cautiously around it, wary now of every shadow and reflection.

Beyond the trap lay a dim hall, its northern wall adorned with three figures slumped in chains. At first glance, they might have been prisoners. But when Thorn and Elora drew near, the illusion faltered—their flesh rippled like water, and from each hollow shell crawled the shambling forms of the dead. The air filled with the reek of decay and the hollow groans of the risen.

Thorn’s wards flared to life, but the undead struck first—rotting fists pummeling against enchanted armor and flesh alike. Necrotic energy seeped into their wounds, blackening the skin in spreading blooms of pain. Thorn staggered back, barely holding his ground, while Maledurk roared his battle-fury into being, his scaled form half-shadowed by the monstrous spirit that lent him strength. His tail lashed out like a living whip, cracking bone and flinging fragments of the undead aside.

Tempest raised her hand, fourfold in an instant—her chaotic magic splitting her image into identical selves, all laughing and radiant with fire. A wave of flame swept the room, casting dancing reflections in the still puddles. When the smoke cleared, the zombies still stood, scorched but relentless. Elora whispered a word to the earth, and vines burst through the cracks of the stone floor, coiling around two of the creatures and holding them fast. The third broke free and turned its hate toward Maledurk, who met it with a radiant strike from his sunblade. The weapon’s golden light cut through the necrotic darkness like a sunrise breaking a storm—burning away the last vestiges of unlife.

The remaining undead followed swiftly, carved down by Thorn’s conjured sword of pure will and Elora’s glacial sorcery. When the final corpse fell, it stayed down. The illusions along the wall dissolved like smoke, revealing only bare stone where the false prisoners had hung.

Thorn leaned heavily on his blade, his breath ragged. Elora placed a hand upon his shoulder, summoning nature’s quiet mercy to knit his wounds. The healing light filled the chill air with the scent of wildflowers—a brief, impossible reminder of the living world above.

A door stood to the south. Beyond it lay a chamber wholly unlike the rest: a strange, homely place, as if a kitchen had been hidden in the bones of the tomb. Twin cauldrons bubbled over steady flames, and a wide wooden counter held knives, jars, and herbs. Great wooden spoons hung on the walls—each taller than a man’s arm. Steam curled lazily through the air, carrying the savory scent of meat and broth. For a moment, it almost seemed inviting.

Elora’s sharp eyes caught the gleam of garlic in a jar. Maledurk grinned at the discovery—until Thorn, ever suspicious, murmured, “Everything here could be an illusion.” The words cast a chill even the fires could not warm.

Curiosity, however, was stronger than fear. Maledurk approached one of the cauldrons and peered into its simmering depths. The soup looked ordinary—chunks of meat, carrots, even the dreaded broccoli. But as he watched the broth swirl, something flashed at the bottom—a gleam like sunlight off gold.

Tempted by mystery and emboldened by draconic pride, he reached in. The boiling liquid licked his arm with searing heat, yet he did not flinch. His companions shouted warnings, but the dragonborn’s resolve held firm. When at last he withdrew his hand, he found it dry—untouched by any moisture—and in his palm rested a simple key of cool metal. Not even warm.

The second cauldron was thicker, more like stew than soup, and offered no reflection to chase. Thorn, ever the pragmatist, used his blade to tip it over. It spilled nothing; instead, the stew remained suspended in the air, still bubbling merrily, as though gravity were a suggestion. Thorn prodded it with the tip of his weapon until something clinked. Fishing it out, he revealed a second key, identical but for the pattern of its teeth.

Elora sensed enchantment thick in the air. The cauldrons themselves pulsed faintly with illusion magic, while the great spoons shimmered with conjuration—items bound together in purpose. “They were meant to be used,” she said softly. “Together.”

Tempest, ever impulsive, seized a spoon and stirred the first cauldron. The soup obeyed her movement, sloshing up against the sides. When she lifted the spoon, it came up heavy with broth—real and steaming. She offered it, grinning, to Maledurk. “You first.”

He hesitated only long enough to make sure it wasn’t spinach. Then he took a sip. The taste was unexpectedly rich—savory and deep—but the touch of broccoli nearly undid him. He grimaced, swallowed, and waited. His companions watched, tense.

And then, before their eyes, the blackened rot where the zombies had struck him began to fade. The corruption lifted like mist at dawn, leaving unscarred scales beneath. The soup had healed him.

Maledurk blinked at his arm, then looked at the spoon with new respect. “I’ll be damned,” he said, voice low. “The broccoli was the cure.”

A shared laugh broke the tension, echoing through the tomb’s strange warmth. The two keys gleamed in the flickering firelight, mysteries waiting to be unlocked. Beyond the quiet bubbling of impossible cauldrons, a new silence stretched through the corridor ahead—heavy, patient, and expectant.

Whatever lay deeper in the tomb, it was watching.

Session Notes

Session 04: Illusions

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0600

The wind bit cold across the high valley, cutting down from peaks that vanished into cloud and shadow. Ice ruled this place—an ancient glacier lay ahead like a frozen god, pale and immense, its cracked surface glowing faintly blue in the waning light. The air was still, but wrong: too dry, too silent, too lifeless.

Elora was the first to feel it—a deep unease that set the hair on her arms rising beneath her cloak. The few shrubs that clung to the scree were brittle, gray, and yet impossibly still alive, refusing the natural death that should have claimed them. It was wrong in a way that only druids could feel in their bones. “These should be dead,” she murmured, kneeling beside a twisted bush. “But they cling on, unnaturally.”

Thorn crouched beside her, his eyes narrowing. The air around him shimmered faintly as he murmured the old elven words of power. “A lich’s touch, perhaps,” he said softly. “Death without release. A mockery of nature’s cycle.”

Behind them, Maledurk snorted, a puff of steam curling from his nostrils. “Undead trees. Zom-trees.” He grinned, proud of himself. “Sounds like a band name.”

Tempest burst into laughter, sparks of blue energy crackling from her fingertips as she tried—and failed—to stifle the noise. The laughter, too, felt out of place here. Even sound seemed reluctant to linger long in this valley of ice and dust.

Ahead, the glacier loomed closer, and the fissure at its base gaped like the mouth of some buried god. The heroes advanced single file, their boots crunching on frost-hardened soil. The ice swallowed them quickly—light dimmed, color drained, and soon the world was painted only in shades of deep cerulean and shadow.

The tunnel stretched on, unnervingly smooth, as if the two glaciers had pressed together for centuries and then, in some act of divine spite, split apart. Light filtered through the ice above in thin, ghostly beams. No sound but their breath. Then—dripping. A slow, patient drip that echoed impossibly loud against the stone floor beneath the ice.

They followed it, the sound leading them deeper until the fissure turned, revealing an opening that breathed warmth and the faint scent of mold. It was as though the mountain exhaled.

Maledurk went first, his broad shoulders squeezing through. Warm, humid air washed over him, heavy and moist, reeking faintly of rot and the memory of jungles long past. Beneath the glacier’s belly, a stone staircase spiraled downward, its steps slick with patches of ice where water froze mid-drip. Below, the faint glow of torchless light pulsed—a tomb breathing softly in the dark.

The barbarian turned back. “Feels like walking into the lich’s mouth,” he said, baring his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Let’s see if he bites.”

Down they went, slow and careful. The stairs ended at a gate of iron bars—ancient, rust-pocked, but sturdy still. Beyond lay a vast stone chamber, the air thick with the scent of age and damp. Water dripped from unseen cracks above, gathering in small, glimmering puddles on the flagstone floor.

Elora’s keen eyes caught something strange—a puddle that did not ripple when struck by falling water. “That one,” she said. “It’s not right.”

The others peered closer. Thorn murmured a spell and felt the faintest hum of magic—a false shimmer cloaking what appeared to be ordinary water. Elora extended her staff and pressed its tip into the puddle. It sank through effortlessly, vanishing as if swallowed by smoke. She drew it back dry.

Her brow furrowed. “It’s not water.”

Maledurk grinned. “Bet it’s treasure.”

Before anyone could stop him, he dropped to his knees and shoved his head through.

At once, all sound died.

He saw darkness first—then, slowly, the faint outlines below: a shaft, fifteen feet deep, lined with spikes like the jaws of a beast. Skeletons lay impaled upon them, silent as the grave. His heart hammered in his chest, though he could not even hear it. He pulled back with a gasp, shaking frost from his beard.

“A pit,” he said. “Spikes. Bodies. No sound down there. I could fall in and scream forever, and you’d never know.”

Thorn’s eyes flashed with understanding. “Silence magic. And illusion. A trap for the curious.”

Tempest leaned over, peering with one eye. “A puddle of death. Lovely.”

Cautious curiosity warred with pragmatism. Elora shifted, her form rippling and shrinking until a small monkey stood where she had been. She darted through the iron bars, rematerializing inside the chamber to raise the lever that lifted the portcullis. The gate groaned open, and the party advanced into the heart of the tomb.

The chamber stretched wide and low, stone walls sweating with age. The false puddle loomed ominous beside the entrance, and beyond it another archway beckoned—an invitation none of them trusted. The floor was cracked, uneven, veins of dark stone snaking toward shadowed corners. The air felt thicker now, as though time itself moved more slowly here.

Maledurk, ever bold, descended into the pit itself, bracing his arms and legs against the walls, lowering himself past the illusion into silence. The spikes were real. The skeletons, human. Scratched into the wall near one skeletal hand were crude words: I wish I hadn’t fallen down here.

He felt the weight of centuries pressing in on him. No tools. No ropes. No gear on the corpses. Just bones and despair. The silence down there wasn’t merely magical—it was absolute. Even his thoughts seemed dulled by it.

When he climbed back up, his breath was shaking. “It’s just death,” he said quietly. “A dead end.”

They moved on.

Beyond the illusory pit, a second chamber opened. The air grew warmer, thicker. Water pooled on the floor in dark puddles, and faintly, they heard something new—a slow, ragged sound, like breath.

Three figures hung upon the far wall.

At first they seemed statues, then prisoners, then—alive. Barely. Their chests rose and fell shallowly, skin pale as marble, eyes closed. The party froze, instincts warring between compassion and caution.

Elora felt the pull of life there—faint, unnatural, like the trees in the valley. Thorn sensed enchantment, the residues of binding and preservation spells woven deep. Maledurk’s hand drifted to the hilt of his axe. Tempest whispered, “Well, that’s… not foreboding at all.”

The glacier groaned above them, an ancient sound of weight and age, as though the mountain itself warned them to turn back.

None of them did.

Session Notes

Session 03: You'll Need This

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0600

The High Forest was alive in ways that defied mortal sense—its air thick with memory, its canopy a shifting green labyrinth of will and purpose. Thorn led the way beneath its ancient boughs, his elven stride sure, though even he felt the forest’s slow, sentient regard upon them. Behind him came Elora the Majestic, her eyes bright with wonder and wariness; Maledurk, all muscle and restless energy, ill at ease among roots and whispers; and Tempest, giggling at a dragonfly large enough to cast a shadow like a hawk’s.

They had come seeking answers—answers to the unseen hand that had toyed with their fates, pulling them from one world to the next like pawns on a cosmic board. Now, the trees themselves seemed to conspire in riddles, paths folding back upon themselves until they reached what appeared to be a dead end: a small glade hemmed in by living wood, no exit save the one behind.

Thorn frowned, feeling the weight of countless eyes from above. “We are being watched,” he murmured.

No one argued. The forest had already shown signs of intention—branches moving of their own accord, the path changing beneath their steps. But it was Thorn who broke the silence, looking upward with sudden resolve. “If they will not show themselves, perhaps they’ll listen.”

He climbed into the trees and, with elven grace and questionable judgment, began a strange ritual of words and movement. At first, he spoke to the air with solemn reverence. When the forest remained still, he grew theatrical—arms wide, shirt discarded in some symbolic gesture known only to himself, voice rising to implore the unseen guardians to grant passage. Maledurk groaned audibly. Tempest laughed until she hiccuped. Elora folded her arms, torn between admiration and embarrassment.

Then, faintly, came a voice: “No, no—keep going.”

The others froze, glancing about. The words came not from an elf, nor from the shadows, but from a chipmunk perched high upon a branch, tail twitching with mild amusement. Elora spotted it first and realized, to her disbelief, that its tiny mouth moved with each word.

“Okay,” the creature said after a pause, “that’s a bit much.”

Thorn, oblivious to the absurdity, doubled down—dancing now, calling out compliments to the majesty of the trees, the beauty of the forest, the perfection of its form. The chipmunk folded its paws, unimpressed but entertained. “All right,” it said finally. “That proves it—you belong in the forest. You’ve passed my eye test.”

Branches groaned, bending aside, and a path opened before them.

The company followed, Thorn preening under Maledurk’s incredulous glare. The new trail led them into a vast, circular glade suffused with sunlight. A great tree stood at its center, its trunk broader than a cottage, its crown a cathedral of leaves. Power hummed through the air like a distant song. Elora’s breath caught; she could feel the ancient magic pulsing through the ground beneath her boots.

When the tree spoke, its voice was the rustle of wind through eternity. “I am pleased you found your way here,” it said. “Welcome, travelers. I am Jareth.”

They knew the name. They had come seeking her counsel.

Jareth listened as they told their tale—their battles through strange planes, their escape from Barovia, their confrontation with gods and monsters. The tree’s face, rough-hewn in bark, seemed to shift with emotion as they spoke.

“You have drawn the gaze of powers not of this world,” Jareth said at last. “I sense magics that are not mortal, perhaps not even divine. Whoever or whatever toys with your fates does so with purpose.”

Thorn’s voice trembled with both awe and fury. “We’ve been hunted like quarry. Why? What did we awaken?”

Jareth’s branches swayed as if in thought. “Perhaps nothing you took, but something you did. You’ve meddled with death itself, with the undead, the divine, the profane. Such things leave echoes. And echoes call to the deep.”

Elora’s hand tightened on her staff. “Then let it come. We can prepare. We can trap it.”

A pause—a creaking of wood like the groan of an old door. “You might,” Jareth allowed. “But to bait such a force requires knowledge—and power equal to its own.”

When asked where that power might be found, Jareth hesitated. “There is a witch,” she said. “Nimue Ashcap, who dwells in the Star Mounts. She sees between worlds and may divine what stalks you. Yet her magic demands rare offerings. You must bring her these: black salt from a storm beyond the planes; bone marrow honey from the carrion bees; lich moss from the skull of a dead archmage; ember fungus that burns in the Nine Hells; and a blood gourd from the bone thicket.”

Even Thorn, so quick to jest, fell silent at the list.

“These are not errands for the faint of heart,” Jareth said softly. “But if you succeed, Nimue may pierce the veil that blinds us all.”

She gestured, and the chipmunk—Jerry, as it turned out—scurried forward, holding a tuning fork of shining metal. With a resonant strike, its tone filled the glade, vibrating in their bones, harmonizing with the very pulse of the forest.

“This is your key,” Jareth said. “It will return you here from other planes. My realm is shielded from all eyes but yours.”

Elora bowed low. “Then this shall be our refuge.”

Jareth’s vast form seemed to sigh with something like affection. “May it serve you well.”

With a whispering of light and a swirl of golden dust, the glade dissolved around them. The world twisted—stretched—and in the next heartbeat they stood in a frigid valley, before the glittering wall of a glacier split by a dark fissure. The air stung their lungs. Snow whispered across stone.

“Lich moss,” Thorn said grimly, pulling his cloak tighter. “She sends us grave-hunting.”

Elora stared into the crack in the ice, where a cold wind breathed secrets older than men. “Then let’s find what death has forgotten.”

And together, they stepped toward the darkness.

Session Notes

Session 02: Branching Out

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0600

The river whispered softly beneath their boat, its slow current winding through the plains east of Secomber, carrying with it the faint scent of pine and ancient earth. Days had passed since they left Waterdeep behind, the hum of civilization fading into the quiet murmur of wind and water. Before them loomed the High Forest—a wall of green so dense it seemed less a woodland and more a living boundary between worlds.

It did not ease them into its embrace. The forest began abruptly, as if the trees had decided where the wild should begin and made it so. Their trunks crowded the banks, their crowns locked together overhead, forming a canopy so thick it turned daylight to dim twilight. Even the river seemed to bow beneath it, narrowing into a shadowed corridor.

When the boat crossed the threshold, the air itself changed.

A calm, heavy peace pressed over them like a soft, warm blanket. Maledurk’s claws relaxed on the oars as his shoulders slumped. For a heartbeat, he imagined lying back, letting the boat drift, surrendering to the hush of the place. Then instinct screamed. He shook his head hard, gritting his teeth until the fog receded.

Something—someone—was trying to still their minds.

Elora felt it too, though differently. The sensation resonated deep within her blood, familiar in its rhythm and texture. She knew this spell. It was not cruel, nor was it kind—it was ancient elven magic, woven into the forest itself, meant to soothe intruders until they turned away. She touched the gunwale, murmuring a prayer of thanks to the trees for their restraint. “They are not trying to harm us,” she said softly, “only to make us forget why we came.”

Thorn, however, felt no need to resist. The forest welcomed him. Its song filled his bones like the echo of a childhood lullaby long forgotten. The scent of sap and moss, the whisper of needles brushing each other high above—this was home. Not the islands across the sea, but something older, deeper, bound to him by blood and memory.

Tempest giggled at a dragonfly the size of her hand.

They rowed on, the world narrowing around them. The forest seemed to pulse with quiet intent, its branches bending subtly toward them, its roots arching away from the water as though the river itself were sacred ground. When Elora offered to fly ahead, the others agreed, and she took the form of an eagle—broad-winged, sharp-eyed, gleaming gold in what little light pierced the canopy.

But the forest was not meant to be mapped.

Twice she flew into promising openings, paths that might have led westward. Twice she found herself turned about, emerging back where she began, the boat gliding placidly below. On her third flight, she noticed something stranger still: the same path that moments ago had led her right now bent left. When she followed, it simply folded her back to the river’s edge as though space itself were being rewritten.

She returned to the boat and resumed her elven form, pale and troubled. “The forest is alive,” she whispered. “It isn’t keeping us out. It’s… steering us.”

Thorn’s expression softened with understanding. “Then perhaps we are not lost at all,” he said. “Perhaps we are being shown where to go.”

So they stayed together and let the river guide them deeper. The trees leaned close now, their trunks thick as towers, their bark glistening with dew like cold sweat. The river forked—one branch running west, narrow but deep enough to bear their folding boat. Maledurk hesitated, his golden eyes scanning the darkness ahead. “That’s the direction she told us,” he said, “but I don’t like how it’s inviting us in.”

Still, they went.

The passage closed over them, a tunnel of wood and shadow. The air smelled rich and green, but beneath it pulsed something electric—magic thick enough to taste. The trees above had woven themselves together into a vaulted ceiling, but none grew toward the water below, as though the stream forbade it.

Elora’s eyes flared faintly as she called upon her druidic sight. For a moment, her vision filled with light. Every leaf, every pebble, every breath shimmered with magic. It was not an enchantment laid over the land—it was the land. The forest and its magic were the same thing. And Thorn… Thorn was not merely surrounded by it. He was part of it.

When they left the boat behind and stepped into one of the winding paths, the air grew warmer, almost expectant. Thorn took the lead, guided by instinct more than sight. The others followed close behind, wary but trusting. The path bent, turned, doubled back—until two trees shifted aside of their own accord, revealing a new trail that had not existed a moment before.

Maledurk’s hand tightened on his axe. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

“No,” Thorn murmured, awe in his voice. “It’s answering.”

They pressed onward. The forest seemed to breathe around them, reshaping itself in silence. Where Thorn thought of Jareth, the path turned gently west. Where his resolve faltered, the branches swayed overhead, whispering reassurance. The druid felt it too—a vast, wordless consciousness guiding their steps.

Tempest tripped over a root and burst into delighted laughter.

Then, abruptly, the laughter died.

Maledurk’s keen eyes caught movement—a shadow leaping from tree to tree above them, silent as mist. An elf, he thought, though it moved like no elf he’d ever seen. Its feet barely touched the branches; its gaze flicked down at them, calm and knowing, before vanishing into the green ahead.

He exhaled slowly. “We’re being watched.”

Thorn nodded. “Good,” he said. “That means we’re close.”

And so the forest swallowed them whole.

Session Notes

Session 01: On the Road Again

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0600

The chill of Waterdeep’s autumn had not yet taken hold, but unease clung to the companions like a damp fog. They had returned to the City of Splendors shaken by their most recent ordeal in the Underdark, uncertain whether what they endured had been real, dream, or some cruel manipulation. Their thoughts were troubled: who was pulling them across planes and shadows? And why?

Thorn’s sharp mind was the first to push for action. He would not allow unanswered questions to fester like rot. With Elora, Maledurk, and Tempest at his side, he pressed into the city’s libraries, tomes in hand, seeking whispers of ancient monsters, old curses, and truths that had been buried in ink and parchment. Yet the search was uneven—while Thorn and Tempest uncovered fragments of history and perilous knowledge, Elora and Maledurk found themselves defeated by dusty shelves, closing books with baffled frowns and little to show for their efforts.

It was Thorn’s persistence that led them back to Blackstaff Tower, that great spire of wizardry whose very stones hummed with restrained power. Vajra Safahr, the Blackstaff herself, remembered their deeds in Chult and listened as the companions laid bare the pattern of horrors that had plagued them: Asererak, Strahd, the Demogorgon. Vajra’s expression grew grave as she considered their tale. To her, the line was clear: they had drawn the attention of powers that should have remained distant. Whether curse, mark, or cruel fascination, they were now pieces upon a board few mortals dared play upon.

She spoke of liches whose grasp reached beyond death, of Strahd’s cursed domain existing apart from reality, and of the Demogorgon’s intrusion into the Underdark where it had no rightful place. Her warning was stark: you meddle with beings who are not bound to this world, and they are watching you now. Still, she pledged to keep watch and offered the libraries of her tower, urging them to search further.

The Emerald Enclave, too, offered its counsel. In the green hush of the City of the Dead, where gravestones rose like worn teeth from the grass, the companions once more communed with the disembodied voice of Jareth. Her tone carried the weight of ancient woods. She had sensed the lifting of the Death Curse when the companions triumphed in Chult, but also something left behind—a lingering scar upon the land, unnatural and unresolved. She bid them travel east to the High Forest, where in person she might pierce the mystery clinging to their souls. The summons was gentle, but urgent.

Their research revealed darker truths still. In forgotten ledgers and brittle scrolls, Thorn uncovered the name Vecna, a lich whispered of as eternal, a god to his cultists, a presence that may have predated even the sundering of the planes. Asererak, it seemed, had once been his disciple. The realization weighed heavy: the threads binding their fate were spun from powers older and more insidious than they had dared imagine.

Yet the Blackstaff offered them more than knowledge—she entrusted them with a wand of teleportation, an artifact of dangerous but extraordinary power. With it, they could carve through distance, leaping across the Sword Coast at will, though never without risk. The companions accepted it solemnly, understanding its value and peril alike.

The decision was made. They would not linger in Waterdeep. They would seek Jareth in the High Forest and unravel this tangle of curses, domains, and ancient enemies. Thorn attuned himself to the wand, his fingers trembling with the weight of possibility as he traced its dark wood. With the others gathered close, he spoke the command, and reality itself bent.

The world stretched thin, their bodies drawn like threads of light through an endless void. Time was both instant and eternal, a heartbeat and a lifetime. Then, with a snap like the release of a bowstring, they stood once more upon solid ground. Before them lay the familiar fork of a river they had traveled years before—grass rippling in the wind, the waters whispering against stone. They had arrived exactly where they had intended.

The air was quiet save for the rush of the river, but their hearts beat with anticipation. Ahead lay the High Forest, and within it, answers. Or perhaps only deeper mysteries.

Session Notes