Session 63

The party proceeds up the stairs of the Ruins of Keogan, entering the dark archway leading into an empty room with nothing but some dilapidated pillars and bass relief carvings on the wall depicting the union of the Dwarven and Goliath peoples, leading to a doorway that led down into a glowing workshop, where they encountered two groups of skeletons, who they quickly dispatched.

Investigating the workshop, they find another bass relief carving depicting the Goliath people creating an artifact of immense power, which the carving seemed to depict frightening the Dwarves. Exploring further, they found a glowing runic circle in the center of the room beneath a large anvil. They also found a table with a number of ingots of dark metal ingots, reminiscent of Shadesteel, but distinctly different. After combing through the room, Dain casts Detect Magic, attempting to discern the function of the anvil. However, he spots an oddly shaped item giving off a strong aura of Evocation magic underneath the ancient coals in the forge. Digging through them with the tongs, Dain discovers, and then identifies, the Fists of Meteoric Impact, which he gifts to Grim. The party then proceeds through one of the doors in the room, discovering a library…

The party searches the shelves of the library, finding decrepit books that looked like they would disintegrate if you picked them up. Dain searches the shelves, eventually noticing a book with an interesting title. He uses Mage Hand to carefully place the book down on one of the tables in the room and carefully flips through it, discovering it to be an ancient analog to the book "Elemental Enchantments: Forging Fury" that Aurelia told him to search for. However, due to the delicate nature of the book, it would be too risky to bring it along, and he did not have enough paper to copy the contents, so he left it there.

Investigating the next room, the party finds a Drab rifling through the drawers of a desk in a room obviously once used as a sort of alchemy lab. They take it down swiftly and are perplexed to see a planter bed full of living plants within, containing several types of herbs, mushrooms, and other plant life. Dain determines that the plants are being kept alive by enchanted Dwarven runes along the edges of the planter bed, but leaves the plants be. Searching the desk the Drab was going through, they find an ancient formula for a potion of unknown purpose, and copy it so as not to destroy the original. They also take a ladle full of black sludge from a nearby cauldron and fill a flask from the desk with it.

The party proceeds through another door in the workshop, finding a hallway with another two doors. Meanwhile, Eskall decides to go off on his own and explore the fourth door, but is disappointed to find only a dusty kitchen full of cobwebs. The party notices yet another bass relief carving in this hallway depicting the Goliaths using the artifact to destroy the region they believe is now the Blasted Lands and fighting the Dwarves. They decide to take the first door.

Summer proceeds into the hallway, noticing a dark figure at the end of the hallway proceeding through a doorway. She decides to check for traps, immediately noticing a raised section of the floorway ahead and grooves in the wall. She jumps over and, not noticing a trip wire ahead, triggers it, causing poison darts to shoot towards the party. However, the party all manage to skillfully dodge this deadly trap. Proceeding forward, they notice grooves in the next section of flooring, but don't see any kind of trigger mechanism. Icarus moves forward with his wings out, intending to use them to hover if he were to fall. However, this backfired, as the floor quickly fell out from underneath him, and as he spread his wings to hover, the wall to his left pivoted forward, knocking him down into a pit below where he was met with a pool of acid. The party above scrambled to find a way to get him out, hearing the acid hissing below, eating away at him. However, by the time they reached the end of the hall, looking for some way to reset the trap, Icarus had already noticed and pressed the button in the pit itself which caused a perforated grate to rise up out of the trap and push the rotating walls back into place.

Summer notices that a torch sconce at the end of the hallway is attached to a gear, and can clearly be rotated either way. However, also noticing some holes in the ceiling, she wisely decides to leave it alone. Instead, the party notices a final bass relief carving on the wall depicting the Dwarves battling the Goliaths and recovering the artifact, which decimated their number, before one last living Dwarf managed to seal away the artifact. The runic door ahead depicted four Dwarves with arms outstretched, each arm bearing a glowing Dwarven rune, with a locking mechanism in the center of the door. The Dwarven runes, Dain determined, meant: Union, Creation, Betrayal, and Binding. He quickly determined that these runes, if pressed in the order corresponding to the order in which they encountered the bass relief carvings depicting the concepts described by these runes, would open the door. The door then opened, revealing the Pale Rider inside, using his void energy to assault a barrier containing what appeared to be an evil looking book.

The party moved into the room and were attacked by a group of skeletons, but they were quickly able to dispatch them. However, the Pale Rider bought himself enough time to destroy the barrier, and then turned to face the party. He nearly brought down several of the party single-handedly with his deadly blade, but in the end, Dain's radiant branded hammer managed to surpass the Pale Rider's void defenses and crush his bones into a pile.

Inspecting the rider's sword, Dain identified it as an Enervating Blade, which he, against his better judgment, decided to hand over to Eskall. He then set to work identifying the book, which turned out to be an artifact known as the Chronicle of the Dead… he recoiled in horror realizing what it was capable of and immediately decided it needed to be destroyed.