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Picking up directly after the last session…

After defeating the Troglodytes at the Mine Entrance, the party follows the mine tunnel that seems to have had the most traffic. This quickly leads them to an area populated with a Barlgura Demon, some zombies, spider swarms, and a pair of Carrion Crawlers.

During the prolonged fight, the party learns that veins of glowing rock throughout the mine seem to provoke a kind of blind rage in people who stand too close. This, along with the discovery of numerous dwarven skeletons, leads the party to conclude that the original Ironfell Dwarves went mad and killed each other.

Again following the mine in the most-travelled direction, the party finds themselves in a large cavern with a Guardian Naga and two insect-like demons, waiting just on the other side of a magma-filled rift. As the Naga begins shouting commands, it becomes clear that she is the leader. In fact, during her boastful taunts, she refers to herself as the “Queen of Coins” and implies that she is the true “Queen Shephatiah”.

Joining the demons, a type of fire elemental known as a “Firelasher” emerged from the rift to harrass the party. About the same time, Erasmus followed Ibiza's lead and leapt across the rift to confront the monsters directly. However, after a bit of unluck, the demon he confronted managed to push him into the chasm. Zim and Damazi quckly moved to the edge of the rift to help, but could find no sign of him. With the chaos of battle all around them, the party had no choice but to ignore their lost companion and focus on the fight.

When the “Queen” was finally killed, the one remaining demon dove into the chasm and disappeared – confirming what Zim had deduced earlier: The rift was some form of gate.

After the fight, the party found the following items of interest:

• A “Primordial Ring” (Level 14) on the Naga's tail Imbo
• An Ironfell signet ring (hidden behind the Queen's “Bed of Skulls”)
• One art object worth 1,500 gp
• Magic Item: Common Level 9 - Iron Armbands of Power, Level 6 uncommon Ibiza
• Magic Item: Uncommon Level 10
• Magic Item: Uncommon Level 10

In addition to the valuable loot, the Naga had a small stash of papers that contain maps of the mine and surrounding desert, as well as some correspondence from someone known as “The Page”. Each document is signed with a sigil of a five-pointed star in a circle.

Of the maps, the most interesting is one that points to a nearby place called simple “The Forge”. Of the correspondence, the bulk seems to be an accounting of platinum ingots being delivered to “The Page” – though elsewhere in the documents there are references to “The Court of Coins” and “The Four Courts” (who seem to be the beneficiaries of the delivered platinum). Throughout the documents, there are people mentioned – but only by their titles: Page, Knight, Queen, and King.

This adventure comes from Dungeon Magazine issue #159 (pages 56-93).

To make this encounter more level-appropriate, I added a second Bloodweb Spider Swarm and a second Chillborn Zombie. This change, combined with the party's reduced power reserves resulted in an interesting and challenging encounter. However, the layout of the mines here prevented the monsters from really ganging up on the PCs.

To make this more level-appropriate, I changed the two Lesser Mezzodemons (Soldier/7) into Mezzodemons (Soldier/11). However, their restriction on Trident attacks while they have an enemy “skewered” limited their effectiveness later in the fight. Still… With the party's powers nearly exhausted after a long string of encounters, this seemed to present a real challenge.

Erasmus's disappearance was a planned event that involved no dice rolling. However, in game terms it was simply a Bull Rush, a failed saving throw, bad rolls on the falling damage and fire damage, and finally that ever-useful “DM's discretion” to allow the gate to activate by itself.

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