Cold Iron II: Raevar's Folly

Life, Death

Raevar's Folly is discovered to contain a Duergar compound designed to harness the souls of living beings to manufacture automated soldiers for a war long since ended. Having recieved no communication from the surface for roughly 1000 years, the site fell into disrepair, eventually going into stasis until disturbed by Raevar and his mining team. Once awakened, the site roars to life and sends several automatons to capture all living beings within the compound, taking them to a holding cell next to the soul-extraction contraption contained below. Fighting through dozens of clockwork soldiers, the party makes their way to a chasm which seemed to descend infinitely. Posing as a Duergar engineer, Manzana tricks the site intelligence into allowing the party access to the holding cell containing the prisoners. Running for their lives, the party makes a daring escape as the site's failsafe protocols are triggered, activating hundreds if not thousands of dormant clockwork soldiers stored in cells along the walls of the bottomless pit. The prisoners are brought safely to the surface along with a handful of miners just as the blasting charges placed by Brunk detonate, causing the entire compound to collapse into the never ending blackness of the central shaft. Just as the heroes emerge, the clockwork monstrosity containing the essence of the Duergar intelligence bursts forth from the rock, lunging at the newly-rescued prisoners. In a flurry of fire, acid, arrows, wind, and seismic energy, the colossus is knocked off balance, still barreling toward the children. In a brief moment of self-sacrifice, Ian tackles the targets out of the way as the mechanical claw closes around his thigh. With the ground collapsing due to magical tremors and a mighty gust of mystic wind blowing the monster into the depths, Ian is silently dragged into the inky black depths of the pit. While making camp for the night, a solitary Keerla is approached by a motley group of adventurers, claiming to be searching for Ian. After learning of his death, they depart back into the woods, their priestess muttering something about her divination spell having failed.