2025-09-25 Stairway to Shadow

On our quest to find a way to break into the Bog hag's domain, we enjoyed a day in Tír na nÓg, before meeting again with Oghma's bard and, with his help, found a door into the Infinite Staircase (we also learned that the tear we recovered is not famous).

In the palace of the Censer of Dreams, we met the cosmic djinni Nafas.

Your tale, your song, was magnificent. Its power conveyed your conviction in the face of danger, your compassion for the suffering of others, and yet still held a sense of wonder. I could hear many voices, many hearts, in its composition. It moved me. Truly.

Do you want to know a secret?

You have all confronted great evil. Now you choose to do so again, a different evil but no less perilous. This you know. But you do not walk alone. Many follow your tale. Great powers and idle spectators, deepest evil and highest good. There is a state of grace about you. There are champions of virtue who want you to feel the wonder and majesty of the multiverse; to know that life is not just a struggle to resist a relentless tide of evil. The powers of good can and do strike first, and uphold those who carry the banner of life into battle.

Nafas asked us to investigate an anomaly on the staircase. The Iron Shadow, a corruption from the Shadowfell that destroys doors as it consumes all the life and creativity from the world it opens into, seems to have met a door it could not consume. Another adventuring party entered the world a few years back at Nafas' request, but failed to return. However, their last sending mentioned the Bog Hag, thus it's possible we might find something within to further our quest.

The world behind the door was grey and lifeless. Shadowy figures wandered listlessly, but a mysterious current drew us into a small town. and towards a home where a shadow dragon awaited us. The dragon named itself the lord of this world, but provided little more in the way of information. When we threatened it with violence, a wall of shadow separated us. Iain and Xandar faced the dragon alone at a crossroads and defeated it in a somewhat protracted but not terribly taxing battle.