DLVSBS01E015 - "Titan Hunt" Report

The party tracked the band of hobgoblins through the dense forest, hopefully towards the hidden path Drezdu spoke of. After several hours of trailing, the party was attacked by fish-like creatures with webbed feet and hands, and transparent skin. After a fierce battle - where the elves of Kiranost were aided by an unknown party - they sought shelter between the bones of a long dead behemoth serpent. During the night, the elves could hear several creatures roaming nearby. However, before the camp was discovered, the creatures were led away by a very loud and disturbing scream.

In the morning, the search for the hobgoblin resumed, with the party losing track of them momentarily - before finding it again thanks again to some unknown party. After a few hours, the party encountered the hobgoblin party: they were fleeing through the forest from weird elemental creatures that could be described as tentacle-wielding floating eyes surrounded by mists. While the party got busy with the creatures, the hobgoblins disappeared into the forest. The party marched towards where the hobgoblins came from.

The Silvanesti came into a cave that was partially submerged in water. Ashryn, Elyadan and Sara heard whispers in their minds. Among the whispers, a voice offered some kind of vague arrangement to work together, which the three of them promptly refused - leaving them with disturbing whispers in their minds. Swimming through it, the whole party was this time offered a similarly vague arrangement, and again promptly refused. This time, the refusal was met with a violent manifestation of water elemental creatures.

Minutes after defeating the last of the elemental creatures, an eerie light shone within the cavern, coalescing into the ghostly form of an elegantly armoured person. When addressed, the ghost told a story of how him and others sailed to the island with the intent of preserving something of their people that were the victim of some unspecified disaster, and that they found the place they were looking for in ruins, and the temple of Habbakuk was defiled by a monstrous agent of @Levantine that was killed by his party, and killed them in return.

The apparition also said that the Blackloot Lighthouse is a prison for a powerful demon named Kalvakus and its host of demons, and that one of its servants - another demon, a Wastrilith - had managed to partially escape the prison and was the force whispering to the party. He then proposed that the wastrilith had very likely contacted the titan ogre, and that it was guiding the ogre towards the temple where he - the ghost - could not follow. The ghost offered directions to the party, revealed that he was trying to help the Silvanesti in the forest during the encounter with the fish-creatures, and then disappeared after the party thanked him for his assistance. The elves of Kiranosti swam deeper into the cave, following the ghost's directions until they emerged again into the surface.

Following the apparition's directions, the party arrived to the ruins of an old castle. Cracked walls and broken buildings told the elves that some kind of great disaster struck and razed its structures. As they went inside the ruined courtyard and started looking for the descent into the temple, they were approached by an elven woman that called herself Garderel. After a few minutes of conversation the woman affirmed being a True Tana'ri, and that she was also imprisoned in the island. After Elyadan proved the creature before them was nothing more than an illusion or some kind of projection, Garderel's veneer of friendliness was vanished, and the she tried to twist Sara's anger to force the her to attack Phaendar, but the girl resisted. Pleasantries all but forgotten, she called on the fish-creatures of the island to come for the Silvanesti, that scrambled through the ruins in search of the temple's passage.

In their frantic search, the elves of Kiranosti were led by the armoured person's ghostly apparition to find a set of double and heavy doors on the ground with the symbol of Habbakuk that opened into a set of descending stairs. They managed to close the doors behind them as the fish creatures closed in on them - but not before some of them reached the stairs the party was going down. A battle was about to begin.