October 4, 2026
31st Thelkhastix (Late Spring)
Gatehouse on the Old King’s Road (Varn Lodihr)
The Cavedwellers passed down from the barbican and out through the ticket window. Beyond the raised portcullis lay a pile of dwarf bones, over a yard high. Bracing for combat, they began clearing a pass through the middle of the heap.
Sure enough, dwarf skeletons arose, attacking with their rusted iron phalanges. The party had come prepared with hammers, and beat the skeletons down.
Passing through the gate, they stepped onto the bridge beyond. It protruded a dozen yards and ended with an iron latch system that suggested a drawbridge on the other side. On each flank, a thin tower rose.
At random, the party chose the right-hand tower and climbed it. At the top, they found a cylindrical iron bell with a great hammer. Across the way, they saw that the other tower had a huge straight horn running down its back.
Samuel had heard these horns many times as signals to batten a city against intruders. Reasoning that the gong might be the opposite signal, they struck it.
From the city beyond, the screech of metal was heard. Flashes of something like light played over the rooftops, illuminating nothing but somehow striking silhouettes of its shadows. And a high, ululating call sounded from somewhere deep in the streets.
Then, with a deep metal groaning, the drawbridge began to lower.
The Cavedwellers filed to the bottom of the tower and stepped across the drawbridge.
They reached an entry plaza in time to hear the tramp of approaching boots, and hid in an adjoining building. A platoon of something like dwarves marched into the plaza. They wore plate armor of beaten and polished scrap metal, and their helmets reached down to their upper lips with no eyeholes; save for the leader, who wore a skullcap and a separate bandage or blindfold about his eyes and ears.
The party decided to remain hidden, but Oskraks crept to the window and prepared to take in the scene.
The leader bent to the ground and swung his head from side to side. After a moment, he stiffened with the unmistakable posture of a hound catching a scent, threw his head back, and howled out a harsher, more staccato version of the ululation that was heard earlier.
The first call responded, and Sam gauged that its unearthly glissando came from a throat that sang with no jaw.
The ground began to shake, and soon the clash of huge metal appendages could be heard approaching them.
Oskraks risked a look out the window.
The dwarves were all monstrously evil. Beyond them stood a sight he had never seen before. Six or more fathoms tall it stood, on three jointed, insectile legs. The main part of its body was a pulpy, bulging sac of gray material with a sheen, made of some kind of living metal. The plated head and thorax, if such they were, protruded from beneath like an eel from an inverted den. Many thin instruments bristled from its shoulders, as well as two asymmetrical crablike claws. Its head bore no visible sensory apparatus, but had two large, independently rotating metal crescents attached by axles where the ears should be.
It gave a hollow, buzzing cry. Its featureless front chestplate split open to reveal a shining black stone. Then light blazed, and the stone proved to be a hemispherical lens. Cold, actinic light poured through, and the spotlight swept across the party’s hiding place. Oskraks hit the deck, lightly but impossibly wounded by a severe sunburn.
Keeping low, they crept along the building and through several more structures that adjoined the wall. Looking back, they saw the dwarves rushing into the original building and beginning to swarm through behind them. Screams arose as the searchers blundered into a booby trap Samuel had rigged with an aqua fortis grenade.
The Cavedwellers decided to double back and leave rather than be driven deeper into the city. The giant, which Annais dubbed the “walking eye,” was now standing in place, stretched to its fullest height and playing its spotlight through widening sweeps in a loose search pattern.
They ducked across the street and began making their way back toward the gate. The buildings on this side of the street were empty. Sam grabbed several pieces of silverware as evidence that they had reached the trading post, while Annais made off with mugs for each resident of the Cave.
When they made the entrance plaza, the dwarves had moved on in their search, but the walking eye still stood at attention. Even as it remained in place, they felt the ground begin to shake with the footsteps of other equally large… things. They decided they needed to risk a diversion, and Sam slung a grenado to the far limit of its range, away from the gate.
The walking eye snapped around. Rather than turning its body, it pulled its torso into the center and thrust it forward between the next pair of legs, and then, with another hollow horn-blast, thundered after the grenado’s report.
The Cavedwellers ran. But some watcher more quiet than the snarling dwarves must have spotted them, because the drawbridge began to raise.
At the end of the drawbridge, they jumped to the other side. All made it but Oskraks, who caught a dangling piece of chain. The others lifted the chain as he climbed, and they reached the shelter of the towers before a walking eye (the same one, they prayed) lanced its deadly light through the narrowing gap above the drawbridge.
They made their way out of the gatehouse, passing through the building and out via the ticket booth so as not to disturb the skeletons, and returned north along the Old King’s Road.
They reported to Calloway that the way was shut, offering the silverware and Oskrak’s sunburn as evidence.
Calloway readied the camp to move, telling the soldiers to leave all that could be spared to reduce the number of carts they would need to portage over the mountains. She also warned them not to be deceived by the beginning of summer and leave their warm clothes, as many of them would not be familiar with so harsh a winter as gripped the mountaintops.
Sam returned to the entrance to Varn Lodihr and pocketed a stone that represented the southern extremity of Old Dastrux.
32nd Thelkhastix
The army began to climb into the foothills of Varn Lodihr. A road looped up in broad switchbacks, narrower than the Old King’s Road but still in a state of repair.
At night, the Cavedwellers heard signs of a struggle from a few tents away. Arriving on the scene, they found a few of the dwarf-things from the ruined trading post knocking sleeping soldiers over the head and stuffing them into sacks.
After dispatching the dwarves, the party checked the perimeter. All the sentries were alert and reported that nothing had passed. Inside the camp, they found that a boulder had been slid aside to reveal a crevasse into the heart of the mountain. They poured burning oil down the crevasse before wedging the boulder back into place and posting a guard on it.
1st Crelmak
First day of Summer
Calloway assigned the party to the forward screen as scouts and trailblazers. They found an old shrine carved into a knot in an oak tree, and they made offerings to the weather gods.
As they travelled, Annais and Sam talked about Messara, Annais related how her family were musicians of some fame, with her uncle working at the court of King Baudrain.
They discussed whether they should influence Calloway to recruit Archbishop Oscine or depose him. Annais reiterated her support for Oscine, as he was the only one working to oppose the buccaneers that threatened her family home in a coastal city. The Riverwatch does not operate in Messara, for both political and geographical reasons.
They talked about how the army would be protected by Messara’s Special Relationship with the crown. Sam worried that the army would loot the countryside after months on short commons.
At the end of each day, the army began sweeping the camp for movable stones or hidden trapdoors.
2nd Crelmak
A passage was found in the camp, and suitably blocked.
3rd Crelmak
The Cavedwellers chatted with Harrom about Varn Lodihr. He told them that the hills were probably riddled with holes such as the dwarf-things had used, and he spoke of the grandeur of Varn Lodihr. Its mineral resources had reduced to a trickle long ago, and it had since built its wealth on craftsmanship. Harrom had only a vague idea of what they would find above the snowline, as that was the domain of the glacier dwarves.
4th Crelmak
They began to smell a wetland ahead, and climbed a hill. They spotted a broad moor, slightly unwholesome in its stagnation. Expecting the moor to be haunted, they waited until nightfall to poke around.
What actually attacked them was a pair of merrow, water-breathing ogrekin giants. Lured by their javelins, Annais fell into their trap and was caught in a great retarius’ net. The merrow tried to make off with this single meal for the two of them, but the others caught them and killed the one carrying Annais.
5th Crelmak
A little after daybreak, they made it back to the camp. Calloway nodded at their description of the moor, saying that the water level was normal for this time of year, though she had hoped it would be lower. She seemed to be in a good mood, and reported that the foraging parties were having success.
After a rest, the party returned to the lead. They found the tracks of a hadrosaurus; Annais begged the others to promise that if they found a dinosaur, they would hunt it and serve it at the Sunsdays feast.
6th Crelmak
They spotted large birds against the mountains.
7th Crelmak
They had a break in wading through the bog, as a stone hill rose from the water. They made their way along the shore until they came to the scar of a landslide. At the bottom, they could see regular stone blocks. These proved to be sarcophagi, and they fought more dwarf skeletons, including one in warrior’s garb who appeared to have been interred in state.
Sure enough, partway up the landslide, part of the wall to a tomb complex had fallen away…
