Dorn's Deep

When the companions are ready, they gather together in front of Arundel's cottage, and Ras enacts his spell of wind walking. The heroes take on cloudlike forms and race the winds even further to the north and east toward Dorn's Deep.

Ras casts Wind Walk with his 6th level slot.

The hours pass as quickly as the peaks below, until at last they come to one mountain that towers above the rest. Reòthadh surely recognizes the location as the entrance to Dorn's Deep, and guides the party towards the mouth of a large cave leading into the bowels of the mountain.

As the group draws closer, Ug feels the surfacing of memories that - to him - are of not so long ago. They are underlined by feelings of trepidation, however, for Ug did not leave the dwarven stronghold under the best of conditions. Not to mention the fact that his mother is supposedly being held captive here. And beyond it all, he has this strange feeling that while he was gone something must have gone terribly wrong in this place he once called home.

As the companions land in front of the cave mouth and retake their normal forms, they can't help but think about Belhifet and his schemes. The Heartstone Gem has led them here, and so here it must be that Poquelin - the archfiend Belhifet - has set up to be his base of operations. Whatever the dwarven citadel once was, what will it have become now?

Looking at the mountain entrance, the Reòthadh notes the worn signs that once a great people dwelt here.

There are toppled statues on either side of the cave. One is of a dwarf. The other might have once been an elf, but most of the features have been broken away. There are deep gouges in its side, and Reòthadh makes out the Dwarvish rune for 'betrayers' written over and over again.There are steps cut into the mountain that lead downward into the cave. Where once the stairway was grand and clean-cut, now it is worn, broken, and home to vegetation. Indeed, large mushrooms and other fungi associated with deep caves now run rampant across the stone - something that the dwarves would never have allowed in the time of Reòthadh.

The companions move forward, wary as they pass between enormous mushrooms dimly painted with colorful fungus.

Until the mushrooms and fungus ahead begin to move. What once looked like mushroom trunks become legs, and the wide domes above become twisted, hunched torsos. Two enormous figures rise above the party and turn to look at them with hideous, malformed faces.

Of the horrors the party has witnessed up until this point, these two giants are by far the ugliest - supernaturally so, for these creatures are formorians, fey monstrosities guilty of such greed and cruelty that they were cursed with awful disfigurements and banished to this plane to eke out whatever miserable existence they can. The gazes they bring to bear against the party are full of menace and eager for violence.

What's more, some of the larger mounds of glowing lichen around the party begin to writhe. In moments they form bloated bodies and armlike limbs, and begin to shamble towards the companions.

Round 1 Player Phase!