July 18, 2021
19th Kordrak
The Queen’s Mountains, Nachtgeistmark
Vira’s scouting party finally led the rest of the Torchbearers home.
Vira described her plans for the future: a brutal guerilla war to put friction on the Ironhand’s operations and tease apart fault lines in his coalition. But, most immediately, she planned to seize the former lair of their dragon ally Thezzarak, now blind and ensconced in Kothar’s stronghold far to the east.
The exterior of the lair had a wide entrance hall flanked by two crevices several fathoms above. The Torchbearers found trails of blood leading into the cave. Some distance inside, the trail terminated in a pile of butchered animal bones.
The main cave gallery was studded on either side by man-sized tunnel entrances. Taking the first opening on the left, they proceeded. They found signs of traps that might once have been deadly, but now were either visible or nonfunctional from lack of maintenance.
Keeping a left hand on the wall brought them to a spiraling ramp that debouched into a chamber that looked out through one of the crevasses above the main entrance.
In the center of the room was a deck chair with a nest of blankets upon it. Approaching, they heard snoring from within. Hilda plunged her hand into the nest and came up with a besotted kobold, a nearly full bottle of wine rolling from the chair. He jerked awake for a moment before unskillfully playing dead.
Cornered and realizing his ruse was a complete failure, the kobold, Voolmap, began to plead for his life. The Torchbearers asked that he take them to his leader.
On the way, Voolmap chattered nervously, revealing that the kobolds had fractured into two feuding kingdoms: his glorious leader, the Left-Eye King, versus their wicked despot, the Right-Eye King, etc.
The kobolds guarding the king’s audience chamber were easily bribed, and Gunter became increasingly enthusiastic as greater bribes quickly brought them to the king’s attention. Before negotiations really began, the king had already realized that the Torchbearers were more willing or able to part with the silver required to buy his people’s loyalty than he was; so he quickly ordered them, and Voolmap, executed as spies.
Gunter scattered more coins among the crowd, while Hilda began shouting that Vira was Thezzarak’s chosen regent (not true in any sense other than her intent to appropriate his resources for a cause he shared) and, more effectively, that she would pay the kobolds fair wages. This prompted a five-minute revolution, at the end of which Hilda surreptitiously euthanized the crucified king.
Voolmap told them of a secret passage to the innermost chambers of the rival king. The Torchbearers hoped that a decapitation strike might lead the other clan to reunite with this one, both under Vira’s banner.
The Torchbearers took the secret passage, which proved to be disused because it was full of giant spiders. The party fought hard to clear a path, and used magic to heal afterward.
The passage eventually debouched into the private quarters of the Right-Eye King, who was taking his ease bathing in a warm cauldron with a pair of attractive females.
The Torchbearers found an angle on the king, and Hilda struck him with a magic missile. He rose from his bath and challenged the Torchbearers to a one-on-one duel of sorcerous puissance. Gunter put him down with an arrow, and one of his concubines drowned him in the bath while the other showed them to his treasure room.
After some cursory negotiations, the Right-Eye and Left-Eye clans were reunited.
The Torchbearers drew a war council regarding the main hoard. Neither tribe had been in that chamber in months, because some kind of stinking beast from the underworld had begin brooding on the hoard.
The Torchbearers marched ahead. The hoard cavern was shrouded in a darkness that turned out to be two massive swarms of biting flies. Enduring this first attack, they volleyed at the creature in the center, killing it before it could rise and engage them.
They cleared out the flies with a gunpowder incendiary and examined the corpse. It was some sort of sluglike beast with an external, helmet-like skull of shell or bone.
But beneath its bed of slime, the hoard glittered in silver and gold.
