2025/11/21: The Gnomish Mines

Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Malakai, Nimbus, Everett, Othar
  Apparently the gnomes enslaved in the mines got turned into evil spriggans by the crystals, so now if they're left to their own devices they eat people, so they're being kept in the mines by Heroditus and co. and forced to keep mining until the crystals run out and they can be turned back? It's very morally grey.
  The party distributed loot. Othar enlisted Kelsey to remove one of his teeth and replace it with the *gemmed fang*, despite Nimbus's eager volunteering to punch it out.
  ("It wouldn't be the first time I've had a parent or a sibling knock a tooth out.")
  While complaining about the way several of the other adventurers semi-jokingly clamored over the extracted tooth being loot, he slotted in the gold, gemmed tooth. It attached and resized neatly.
  Seneca went home, retiring out of embarrassment after some of the things she had to do in the ritual.
  Captain Heroditus volunteered to join the party in her stead. He was able to summon his holy halberd. Big, nice reach weapon.
  The gnomish village of Blingendenburberry is an ancient gnomish habitation that was blessed by their god, Garl Glittergold. Their mine was blessed with eternal fortune, among other blessings. The crystals that are growing there now are the result of a curse laid by the dark lord. There's a limit to the crystals, and they're slowly working through them.
  The *Totenkreuz* was built as essentially a giant redemption engine for the crystals. It uses the evil crystals for power, converting the evil energy to good to power the ship.
  Consecrating the cave didn't do anything, breaking all the crystals didn't do anything. Other methods were tried, but nothing has borne fruit so far.
  The party headed for the mine to investigate. The flight took 4 hours and a bit. It was getting towards evening when they arrived.
  Heroditus said the place looked different from what he remembered. A lot of land movement, with roads looking like they'd been repeatedly collapsed, redrawn, and moved. According to Vrex, this area was used as an invasion route by the magma dwarves, and there had also been a lot of bandits, goblins, orcs, etc. A lot of the local peasantry has fled.
  The party searched for the mine from the air. They had some of the landmarks, but that was only enough to get them within a few miles of the mine. Malakai, Othar, Kelsey (on dragonback) and Knight went into their various flight forms and spread out to spot.
  During the search, the *Ragnarok* encountered a few sensor pings, but nothing got close. Pings to both the northwest and southeast. There was the sense that they were patrolling.
  Malakai encountered a small army of a couple hundred undead making its way across the mountains. Low-level stuff, but in numbers. Headed to the northwest. The undead were having some trouble navigating; there were lots of little nooks and crannies, various goat paths, but very broken and difficult terrain overall.
  Knight encountered almost... glitches. The mountains seemed to be actively messing with them. They'd look one direction and see a mountain, and then turn around and see the same mountain. It was extremely disorienting.
  Othar encountered what looked like a strange caravan. Spiky, warg-sized dogs pulling carts. Othar buzzed them in shadow dragon form, and got a few crossbow bolts flying past him in return. The caravan was manned by a bunch of dwarf-sized humanoids in cloaks, armed with crossbows. They seemed oddly quiet. The carts were cages full of people.
  Othar called Malakai to report the situation and ask for clearance on how destructive he could be. He was told not to kill the slaves. He flew back in and used *darkfire storm* to kill everyone around the carts. Or at least, he intended to. By the time he got back, it looked like someone had already shot them; there was a giant pillar of flame hitting one of the carts. To avoid getting blamed for the innocents getting killed, he went to cut the spell, and while he was doing that he realized that earth elementals had started attacking the caravan guards. The caravan wasn't being attacked *on* the road, it was getting attacked *by* the road.
  After getting smashed into the ground, Othar went back to the original plan and blasted everything outside the carts with fire. There were strange bloops and bleeps from the woods, and the invisible attackers vanished. Othar made a dramatic declaration ("Behold the power of Othar the Elder, you have been saved by my power", etc.), aided by an explosive cantrip, took the dog that bowed to him, told the rest to wait for his friends, and flew off.
  The party arrived. There were eight captives. Most were dwarves or humans, pretty much all men of military age.
  (The dogs were all big, tough, naturally armored, and extremely ugly. Like dwarven mine dogs. Five had survived.)
  The captives said they thought they were being taken to be traded off to someone or something, possibly as dinner. They wanted to get back safely to the northeast, back to "the Alliance".
  The party loaded the freed humans and dwarves onto the ship and kept searching for the mine.
  (The freed people are from the "Duradain Alliance".)
  Vrex was set to tracking, and he found a flat-rimmed hat with teeth around the rim. The teeth were trophies, and they varied from dragon to human.
  Tiring of the search, Knight quietly checked the *Compass of Dream's* and pointed the party to the mine. The direction led to the next valley, which was thick with brambles with berries. The plants detected as evil. Nimbus punched some. The berries were filled with human blood. Further searching located a human skull buried nearby. These were basically evil vampire plants. And it was likely that the captives were being fed to the plants, and the gnomes were eating the berries.
  \[insert whole thing with searching for the entrance, going over the top of the ridge, Knight ignoring the weird semi-illusion and seeing the road, the rest of the group seeing just more mountain range, a whole bunch of debate over how to get everybody else through, eventually putting people in Knight's inventory and having him ferry them, Othar's fire punching a hole in Knight, Othar negating his own magic to be ferried safely after Knight was healed, and the group continuing. Also Heroditus working things out.]
  Interconnected gnome statues blocking the entrance to the mine. These were the best of the gnome civilization that remained. Killgleam managed to *stone-to-flesh* two of them. They said the party was "a couple hundred years too late" in uncursing the place. They'd been in the wall for a couple years.
  Very aggressive and sweary gate guards. Lots of shin-kicking.
  "I have seen dedicated prison populations who were far kinder and more humane."