Background: The party still faces being wanted by an entire kingdom, as well as two lycanthrope party members and a demon stalking the party sorcerer. They headed south and then to the west, down the long and poorly maintained King's Highway. After receiving a desperate plea via a sending from Scarlet Roze, the party left the highway and headed south along the coast to the Tiefling stronghold of Buthhazel.

Beginning: The party has been tasked with finding the sisters of Scarlet Roze, a retired member of the party. The party arrives to do this during the "Firefestival", a celebration that occurs during the Waning Harvest season, whether or not the Dragon's Tear comet passes low over the Firestorm Peak for which the festival was inspired by. This year however, the comet appeared and the gates Firestorm Peak did open, and two of the many sisters of Scarlet Roze went scouting on behalf of Buthhazel. What happened to SHE and HER are unknown, but it doesn't take any deep analysis to know where the two have ended up.

Underway: The party first stocked up on a huge amount of festival food and headed for the mountain forest towards the peak. Nearing a point for a rest, the party encountered six giant scorpions that were taken out with minor damage (random Encounter). Victor then used his newly acquired Daern's Instant Fortress after backing down the mountain a bit to find a clearing. After a long rest, the party went back up to the mountain during the day only to find the gates to the peak entrance impassable. They retreated back into the woods, only to return at night and find the fogged, yet see-through metal gates wide open.

The Outer Complex: Four of the group cautiously went inside the open gates and into the complex. The sorcerer magicked up on the grey dwarf constructed wall, while the barbs stepped on some practically invisible caltrops. All hell broke loose after that, and I actually got some good rolls, but the party had better and made a big mess of the ambushers. They proceeded through the mess, but were unable to access the duergar guard posts, so they took the long walk down the trapped corridor that lead to many more traps. The party found a nice hidden stash from a dead bard, but then blundered through many traps. To their credit, they managed to avoid two of the more nastier ones (purple worm acid / giant skeletons), but later, a Crypt Thing ported the group into a pit containing four wraiths, which turned from a battle into a life or death run-n-gun event. In this module, the author offers the option for a faction of the grey dwarves that are sick of the current boss, to back the players if a named duergar priest finds the party formidable enough to kill the current boss. I used a point system for this, and though the party had achieved getting the backing of the rebel dwarves, they then got a bit too curious about a shiny object in a scorpion den and two party casters were eviscerated. They party recovered, but the help offer from the rebel dwarves went from backing them in a fight with the boss to getting the party safely to the mining colony bazaar and the rebellious guards hanging back while the big baddie and his goons fight the party. Upon entering the bazaar, the rebels took a walk and the party was confronted by the boss and his minions, and thanks my garbage rolls and two back to back natural 20's by the minotaur barbarian... my hopes of downing and/or capturing the party for extended play in the outer complex were killed off. The party picked up some sweet magic items including a battle axe that can flat-out heal the wielder on command!

The Twisted Caverns: With the blessing of the duergar mining colony leader, the group was lead to the last gages of protection from the insanity of the Twisted Caverns. They moved ahead cautiously and almost immediately ran into three gibbering mouthers... and my shitty rolls which quickly lead to no gibbering mouthers. After some more dungeon crawling, Victor found a very tall carver where he could command his Daern's Instant Fortress. Unfortunately, this attracted unwanted attention. Many denizens of the caverns were attracted to the fortress and all were repelled with the party suffering varying degrees of damage, but the attention later drew in multiple gibbering mouthers whose confusion attacks had the range fights pump arrows and bolts into the poor paladin. To make matters worse, the fighting drew in a much larger opponent - a troll amalgam whose power and height made the creature a living seige engine. The party did overcome the beast, but the tower was damaged by 20% and the group was a mess. It was at this point that Victor the sorcerer told me he had to depart from the campaign, so I used the "form corruption" mechanic in the module to have Vic succumb to mutations and become a gibbering mouther inside the fortress, and be as big a pain in the ass as he was prior to his death. I gave the party a one time 22 intelligence check to remember the fortress password and all failed. So, Victor's most precious magic item became his tomb. 

The Inner Sanctum: After losing the player who portrayed Suroh (RL schedule changes), his character died attempting to pull one of Scarlet Roze's missing sisters from the horror of a conjured Living Wall. I did not tell the party that we had lost Suroh as a player, and because I only stated he was out this session, the party debated heavily on what to do after seeing Suroh yanked into the wall by Scalet's former sister. They were using kid gloves against the living wall until half of Suroh emerged from the wall, screaming for help while firing arrows at the party as the wall attempted to dispatch them. So the group went full HAM and destroyed the wall as I told them the truth about Suroh which they already suspected. Suroh's now de-powered wolf survived and was adopted by Willhelmina, but the vast majority of Suroh's gear did not. They salvaged what they could and quickly moved on.
This session unfortunately took place without the Pally or Minotaur Barbarian, so their characters became the rear guard to deal with emboldened gibberlings and gibbering mouthers out on the hunt now that the deep spawn mini-boss is dead. The active team took a short break and then arrived in a room with a large pool of blue goo with a small path to cross it without contact. Above them, small black and white globules slowly roamed the ceiling and seemed to be creating the goo.
World Gate Omega: After searching out the vacant complex, four of the party members (both barbs, ranged fighter and wizard) approached this gate that was locking something in, instead of keeping the players out.

The Vast Gate: TBA.

Postmortem: TBA.

Cartilage: TBA.

Keywords: Aberrations, Humanoids, Undead.