The Toothless Wonder arises

Father Daragar’s body twitches and climbs to its feet, bones snapping and body stretching to his new form of a giant werewolf. He then stares at Rusty as if that was supposed to be impressive. Loser.

Combat! Rusty wins initiative, followed by Father Daragar. Coming in third is Louie, but he is upstairs so will not be able to take part, initially. Bringing up the rear is Raymond. Rusty starts things rolling by shooting Father Daragar with 2 blasts of a lightning launcher. Father Daragar responds by leaping across the room into melee with Rusty and trying to bite him, before realizing he has no teeth. So he claws him, instead. Louie starts running downstairs, but as he passes Haladriel, Haladriel gives him 3 Superior Healing Potions and a green, murky potion marked “Give to amphibians”. Louie gets about half way to the fight. Raymond then bites Father Daragar, but fails to hold the grapple.

Before round 2 can start, Father Daragar looks at the blood he has spilled, and pulls out some of his own hair, shakes it in the air, and drops it into the blood. I don’t know what he was hoping for, but he should up his proficiency in Religion if he wants it to work.

Rusty looks at him, then says “Fuck it - and you”, drinks a healing potion, and hits Father Daragar twice with his Mace. Father Daragar howls at Raymond, making him frightened. Thankfully this is special frightened, which does not require its sufferer to run away. They just have disadvantage on attacks. So Raymond stays exactly where he is, and continues to do what he would have done anyway. Father Daragar then takes 2 swipes at Rusty but misses both times. Then he tries to run away like the coward he is, but Raymond hits the opportunity attack and this time the grapple sticks. You’re going nowhere, Cthweenie! Louie runs the rest of the way to the fight, but has no actions left, so just drinks a potion. Raymond chomps down on Father Daragar, but continues to fail to save vs being frightened.

Once again on the changeover of the turns, Father Daragar pulls out some hair and goes to drop it in the blood, but Rusty says “Not today, asshole” and blocks him.

Rusty, on his turn, drinks a potion he gets off Louie, and hits Father Daragar two more times. Father Daragar uses a Legendary Action to claw Raymond, and drops him. Then, for his action, he claws Louie once, and Rusty once. Louie hits Father Daragar, then feeds Raymond a healing potion. Raymond gets up, no longer frightened after his nap. He grabs the green potion off Louie and drinks it - but nothing happens. Then he bites Father Daragar.

Father Daragar tries again to throw down some hair, and Rusty blocks him again. Rusty hits Father Daragar for a critical, which is cool, but the special effect was to get advantage on the next attack, and even with advantage, Rusty misses his next swing. Father Daragar uses a Legendary Action to hit Rusty, then runs away, heading for the townsfolk for some hot hostage on werewolf action. Louie holds his action. Raymond grabs Louie and runs after Father Daragar, overtaking him in the corridor and blocking the passage. Louie uses his held action to hit Father Daragar.

Father Daragar figures that Rusty isn’t here to hair-block him, so pulls out some more hair and waves it in the air. Louie, proving he was paying attention, blocks him from dropping it in the blood. The toothless wonder is getting a bit irate, at this point.

Rusty races up the passage and rounds the corner right next to Father Daragar, but he’s used his action just to get here and has to stop. Father Daragar howls at Raymond again - Raymond fails to save vs fear again - but his flight or freeze response is set firmly on freeze, and Raymond remains in place, blocking the passageway. Father Daragar then hits Rusty, dropping him. Louie responds by hitting Father Daragar, then feeding Rusty a potion. Raymond has a go at biting Father Daragar, but misses.

Father Daragar pulls out some more hair, and finally manages to drop it in some of his blood - and makes his Religion check! It’s all coming up Cthweenie! All the blood splashed around the temple flows together and forms into 6 - wolves? Dire wolves? Something lupine, anyway. The wolves all have a go at the characters - 2 bites on each person. They all miss.

Rusty glances at the wolves, then looks back to Father Daragar, points at himself, and then at the Father. Then he clubs him square in his toothless mouth hard enough to make brain leak out his ears. As Father Daragar falls again, so do his blood wolves.

The party levels up.

Cleaning up this town

There is a party upstairs. Rusty makes sure that Eryn is OK, and is gently reintroduced to the townsfolk.

The party hangs around Crawford for a while, fixing up loose ends. With the nearby saltwater lake and our recently developed salt refining skills, we gather enough salt to resurrect Eryn’s dad, George. After waiting out the Cauldron’s cooldown period, we also resurrect Xaylith the Drow. Rusty strip-mines Sir Thames manor for as much silver as he can find - he gets enough to treat 5 weapons. Sir Thames body is too long dead to be revived, and Oswald’s body is too damaged. Nobody even considers resurrecting the Cthweenie. Louie casts his first Moonbeam on Father Daragar’s corpse, and lycanthrope angels made of moonlight shred it to ashes and carry the ashes away.

Henrietta gives us a letter, from “Sybil”. You’re not fooling anyone, Henrietta! It says “Well done adventurers. I’m so pleased that the town isn’t a relic of history. As a reward, I have revealed the Misty Forests. You should find the Mithral you seek there. Love and kisses, Toodleoo! Sybil.” Sure enough, on the map is now The Misty Forests, a full days travel to the west.

On the way, we find Miz being attacked by bandits. All but one of them are dead, and the last one is running away when we arrive. Rusty coat-hangers the bandit and gives him a very stern talking to. He then sends him on his way with the command to stop being a naughty boy. We chat to Miz, and mention that if he is ever feeling lost or alone, to wander up to Mordentshire and meet with Uncle Ricky. We then part ways.

The Misty Forest

Upon our arrival at Karswell Forest (recently re-branded by the Sybil’s an Idiot Foundation), we find the spires of a ruined Elven city, the forest reclaiming it. We see movement in our peripheral vision, but there’s nothing there when we look. Then our vision of the world spins, and we see a vision of the past. There is a festival. An elven woman walks to a podium, and speaks of a hopeful future of unity with the dwarves. A dwarf steps forward and speaks of the bright future elves and dwarves have working the mine that they have built.

Back in reality (maybe?) we hear an argument. We stealthily creep toward the noise. It appears to have come from a building that has a municipal air - perhaps a council building? We see another vision. The council of elven leaders are discussing reports of unrest in the forest, twisted beasts stalking the shadows. They mention that there have also been reports from the dwarves of curses haunting the mine. A human approaches - he wears a monocle. Evil bad person! He speaks: “We have an accord. Your talk of problems is merely an attempt to deny me what is mine. Give me my Mithral!” On the wall of the council chamber is a banner - elves on the left, dwarves on the right, and in the centre, joining them with held hands, stands a figure with a monocle. At the bottom of the banner are embroidered the words “Elven - W.G. - Dwarven”.

Back in reality (maybe?), we search the council chambers for records of the mine. We find a book, mystically locked, with some script on the cover that we suspect is Elvish or Dwarvish. Unfortunately, nobody speaks either language. Rusty recognizes the enchantment on the book as an Arcane Lock (he can cast those), and knows that Arcane Locks can be temporarily disabled by the Knock spell. Unfortunately, he can’t cast that. He also knows that Arcane Lock can be opened by mundane means - it just adds 10 to the DC. So, with Minion assisting, and Guidance, he manages to roll high enough that he unlocks the book. Inside is a schematic of the city, showing the way to the mine. At the bottom of the schematic is a note (apparently written in Common, for some reason) saying “We are currently in the midst of figuring out how to move the Adamantine Forge to smelt the Mithril.”

The Mines of Moria Madness

We reach the location of the mine, and it has a ledge zig-zagging back and forth across a cliff face, descending 3000 feet or something ridiculous like that. Louie and Rusty immediately fail their Survival checks and fall off. Rusty grabs Louie and times the casting of Feather Fall so they land gently. Raymond looks down on them piteously, then resumes walking down, and falls off himself, splatting hard. He then pops back up, on full hit points and with some bonuses. So that’s what that murky green potion did! That lasted, like, 12 days!

At the bottom of the pit is an opening with a sign, written in Dwarvish. We can’t read it, but it has skulls on it, so it’s probably just a “Welcome to our Mine” sign or something. We proceed to enter. Louie starts throwing rocks in front of us, but he can only see by the light of his sword, so he can’t see where they land. Rusty can, but he’s not telling.

We hear whispers of madness drifting through the darkness. We find a tiled space, with a door at the far end. Both the tiles and the door have writing on them, we think probably Dwarvish, but what the hell do we know?

Please wait while we address technical issues

We then stop for an hour, play time, to figure it out. By the time we do, Zoe has forgotten where we are and why we’re here. But we do!

We now resume normal programming

We make it across the room unharmed, and the door opens. Ghostly sounds emit from the room beyond. The floor is covered with the debris of ages, and 5 obviously undead dwarven miners turn to face us.

They are going down (in the mines!)