Hammer Time

Discovery, Exploration

Daryl, Danger, Indigo, and Mirian sneak into a secret forge in the dangerous and mysterious dwarven country of Kriegcastel.

The party enters the mountains of Kriegcastel and trek towards where they know The Forge to be. They discover a chimney sticking out of a mountain, and tie their ropes together to climb into it. They venture further into the fortress until they find themselves in a deep pit where Mirian identifies it to be a massive furnace.   Indigo finds the remains of an elf in the room. Someone he knows. The old witch doctor from Morko. In her notebook she writes about how the albino elf, Merielle, isn’t an elf. She’s something called a Drow, a dark elf.   Gears start turning, the giant fan begins to twirl, and they hear the clicking of a pilot light attempting to flicker the furnace to life. Indigo quickly freezes the pilot light to stop it. A large metal door opens up, and a lumbering Flesh Golem comes out to investigate. The party sneaks by it, traps it inside the furnace, and uses dwarvish instructions to light it up after the ice melts away, and burns the Flesh Golem alive.   They sneak further into the fortress, seeing all manner of technology unheard of in Bonner, knocking out one Dwarven fellow and throwing him down a garbage chute. They check the nearby library, kill some dwarves, and read a few books. Unfortunately, the noise from the encounter raises the alarms and dwarven reinforcements come in. The party has no choice but to fight the dwarves head-on.   They burst through and discover three canisters blowing gas into the room as well as four dwarves wearing gas masks. If they don’t stop the gas, they will be forced unconscious. Indigo conjures eight giant owls to help. They destroy the canister and fight off the dwarves. The party escapes into a nearby room where they quickly realize the room is a dead-end and they are trapped inside as two Flesh Golems are trying to break the door from the outside.   In a last-ditch effort, Indigo commands his owls to break through the door and distract the Flesh Golems long enough for the party to escape. They enter a massive cavern where a few dwarves have gathered on a platform around an anvil. One is about to grab a hammer with a long cord connected to the water mill powering the fortress, crackling with lightning.   Daryl quickly confronts the dwarf cleric, Koster Mayhew, who uses some magic to force Daryl to grab the hammer in his place. He the forge hammer kills whoever attempts to use it, but when Daryl does so, electricity courses through his veins and forces his hand closed around the handle. His dragon bond activates to protect him from the lightning. Koster Mayhew realizes he can turn Daryl into a tool for further forging.   The party has other plans, however, and attacks the group of dwarves. They fight the dwarves to a surrender, so Koster Mayhew pulls the pin on a small orb that brings earth around it to become an Earth Elemental. Daryl fights with the forging hammer and is able to reach deep into the orb, finding the magic at its core, and dispelling it. The Elemental falls apart, leaving the orb pulsing. Daryl uses the forging hammer to shatter it, releasing a wave that shatters the platform they stand on. The party leaps to safety and, turning their weapons once again on the dwarves, take their enemies hostage.   The party marches toward the border back into Bonner with their dwarven prisoners in tow. Koster Mayhew spends the trip asking about the dragon bond. Upon reaching the border, he makes a threat that taking them any further would be a potentially disastrous political situation that could lead to war. Koster makes it very clear he intends to track down and bond with the Ancient Red Dragon. He’s seen the party’s map marked with their locations. According to Braes and Cerulean, the Red Dragon, Sanguine, is more likely to take over the Dwarves than fight their battles. Danger wants to kill them, but Indigo is fiercely against that. Ultimately, they knock Koster out and escape on their horses.