Session 27

The Madness of Mantol-Derith
6 Eleint(afternoon) - 7 Eleint(morning)

Nero informs Ghazrim DuLoc that the party was sent by Davra Jassur to obtain his ring, which will show the party the way to Gravenhollow Library. DuLoc is reluctant to give up the ring, but apparently Davra Jassur’s name carries a lot of weight because he does ultimately hand it over. He tells the group that the stone on the face of the ring acts like a compass, always pointing at the shortest (but not necessarily safest) route to Gravenhollow. The party now has everything they came for and is ready to put the weirdness of Mantol-Derith behind them when DuLoc tells them that Gravenhollow is something like a sixty day journey from Mantol-Derith. It is, however, much closer to Gauntlgrym. DuLoc believes that the drow, who occupied Gauntlgrym not that long ago, might have copies of the teleportation circle there. Maybe if the Young Adventurers could investigate all the violence, get to the bottom of it, talk to the drow, they might be able to cut forty days off their travel…

Ralkor advises the party that he is very close to figuring out the Teleportation Circle spell, so they should be able to make use of the Gauntlgrym circle soon if they can discover it. The group decides to at least talk to the factions, see if they can quickly sort this nonsense out. DuLoc, for his part, claims complete ignorance. They were meeting with the drow to decide what to do about the outbreak of violence between the gnomes and dwarves but they didn’t know the cause. He suggests the gnomes may be more receptive to the party’s questions.

The party approaches the gnome enclave and speaks to Gabble Dripskillet, the svirfneblin chief negotiator. They ask what caused the conflict between the gnomes and the dwarves and she informs them that the dwarves started it. They attacked during the night and kidnapped Yantha Coaxrock, the gnomish leader of the Stoneheart Enclave who was visiting Mantol-Derith. When the gnomes attempted to rescue Yantha they were repelled by the dwarves and chased back to their enclave, which is when the Young Adventurers arrived. As far as Gabble knows the dwarves still have Yantha. The svirfneblin will be very grateful if Yantha is rescued.

The party then goes to the dwarf enclave. On the way Peebles tries to convince the party to attack Lorthuun, the Zhentarim beholder. He variously says that the beholder is evil, so they should kill it or that it probably has valuables they could take. The group becomes suspicious and throws Peebles in their magic closet. Under a zone of truth he states that Lorthuun killed his sister so he wants revenge. Unfortunately, this is another lie--the zone of truth doesn’t affect Peebles as the closet interior is actually far away.

At the duergar enclave the guards tell them to leave immediately. The Young Adventurers refuse and violence seems imminent when an invisible guard reveals himself and tells the other duergar guards to stand down, stating that he watched the fight outside the gnomish enclave and knows the party would easily kill them. One of the guards gets their chief negotiator, Ghuldur Flagonfist, to talk to the party.

Ghuldur admits they have Yantha but states that she stole a valuable gem from another duergar, Krimgol Muzgardt, and they won’t release her until she returns their property. After much wrangling he permits one of the party to go inside to talk to Yantha. I forget the order--probably Nespip first--but various party members go inside alone to talk to Yantha while Ghuldur waits outside to ensure their safety. Yantha is being held by Krimgol who is threatening to feed her to a Xorn if she doesn’t return the gem. Yantha is behaving oddly--she denies she is Yantha, she denies she ever had the gem, she claims at one point to be an elemental (which doesn’t seem to be true). At one point Sebastian enters and under a zone of truth Krimgol and Yantha both stick to their stories. Krimgol further reveals that he is a calassabrak--a duergar without clan or honour. He believes he could use the gem to buy his way back into duergar society and will not back off on recovering the gem. While this is going on Nero and Kaia take Peebles to the Zhentarim enclave and turn him over to them.

The Young Adventurers confer and decide that Yantha must be under some sort of enchantment. She seems to be lying non-stop but believes the things she says. The group decides to go to the drow enclave and see if they can discover anything more as nobody has any idea where the gem is now.

Outside the drow enclave the party meets a drow mage, Zilchyn Q’Leptin, who has a horribly scarred face. The drow states he is passing through and was hoping to buy some supplies before all the trouble started. The rest of the drow, he says, have withdrawn to their enclave and will not allow outsiders in. He offers to help them approach the guards.

During this conversation the party notices a furtive gnome spying on them from behind a nearby column. They grab the gnome and question him. He is, apparently, in the middle of a breakdown, hyperventilating and talking too fast to follow, but the party manages to piece together his story. The gnome is Flink Thunderbonk, an apprentice to Yantha Coaxrock. His mistress gave him the gem to hide and he decided to sell it and buy some spell components, which he knew was what she secretly wanted him to do. Before he could do that he was attacked by a gargoyle and the gem was stolen. He is now terrified to return to Yantha, apparently unaware that she has been captured by duergar. He is watching several gargoyle guards stationed at the drow enclave but he says none of them are the ones who stole the gem.

The Young Adventurers more-or-less figure out the story at this point--the gargoyle with the gem must be the one that earlier attacked the drow retreating from the Zhentarim enclave. The gem may have somehow caused the unexpected attack during the drow/Zhentarim meeting. In any case, the drow should now have the gem or it is still with the gargoyle’s corpse. The party tells Flink his mistress has been captured by the duergar and sends him home to the gnomish enclave.

They approach the drow guards, with Zilchyn’s help, and ask to speak with the drow chief negotiator, Sirak Mazelor. Sirak comes to the gates to speak with the party, but it immediately goes badly. She says that she knows that the party are agents of Corellon (the chief god of the elven pantheon), come to destabilize Mantol-Derith. She blames the current unrest on them. Both these statements cause a stir amongst her own forces (“they aren’t even elves” and “they weren’t even here when the fighting started” can be heard muttered). Her soldiers nonetheless back her up when the party refuses to leave and a fight breaks out.

The battle turns out to be fairly hectic--all the gargoyles join in and many quaggoth and drow soldiers emerge from the enclave to fight. Sirak herself, apparently a wizard of some sort, turns invisible but also joins in the attack. The Young Adventurers prove up to the challenge, however, killing most of the quaggoth and gargoyles along with a couple drow. When Sirak falls to one of Ralkors many fireballs the rest of the drow retreat to the enclave and slam the doors.

The party searches Sirak’s corpse and finds the famous gem--a magnificent black gem the size of a fist--in one of her pockets. They carefully place it in their closet without touching it, using Ralkor’s mage hand. They retreat to the Zhentarim enclave at which point they send Nero to bring the rest of their troops inside Mantol-Derith.

They speak to Lorthuun, who thanks them for turning over Peebles and reveals that the gnome had been lying; Peebles was actually an agent of a rival beholder, Xazax the Eyemonger. He wanted to kill Lorthuun in order to steal his eyestalks. Sebastian at this time realises that the zone of truth didn’t extend into the closet. Lorthuun futher tells the party that he can supply the pattern for the Gaunlgrym teleportation circle as it is known to the Zhentarim.

The group camps for the night inside Ralkor’s tiny hut. Ralkor then attempts to identify the gem, which requires him to touch the object. After doing the ritual he discovers that the gem grants him visions of the future which are certain to come to pass. He has a vision that the demon lords will return to the Abyss of their own initiative in ten days' time and relays this information to his companions. They seem weirdly horrified and insist he return the gem to the closet. Ralkor is confused why they’re worried about this obviously completely harmless gem but agrees to return it to the magic closet. Everybody else agrees that nobody should ever touch it again.

We leave off here, with Ralkor totally able to see the future, seriously guys why are you worried? Find out next time what the Young Adventurers plan to do after the demon lords voluntarily return to the Abyss in ten days.