The World of Quol

(September 23) The party decides to escape the duergar city rather than risk pilfering the powerful magical amulet from Gralkhar Fellgren, the Gray King. The paladin Vaelin can now summon a steed, so after extensive discussion and debate, touching on such topics as anaerobic decay and what happens when you turn a bag of holding inside out, his horse Jericho II is butchered and its meat stuffed into a bag of holding. The adventurers rope themselves together using Dara's climbing kit and venture out on the drow's secret escape route along the outside of the mighty spire. Treacherous hand- and footholds cause Ward to slip, but the precautionary rope keeps her safe, and the group continues upward to the tunnels used by drow spies and strike forces to infiltrate Darjheim Cavern. The house captain Nyrul O'rd has given them detailed instructions on how to return to the surface using a side branch of the tunnel system. They meet up with the dwarf scouts they had sent on ahead t...

(September 9) Using Sunrise's climbing skills and Dara's climbing kit, the party easily scales the innermost wall of the Gray King's Keep and regroup in the "street" on the other side. Before they can make another move, a phalanx of duergar stone guards phase out of invisibility 40 feet away. Their commander, who has burn scars on the left side of her face and head, sealing off her left eye and leaving that half of her scalp bare, identifies herself as Janth Flintskin. She calls out to the party, "Halt. The Gray King offers a truce and a parlay. Come with us and you will come to no harm." When Ward asks if they can keep their weapons, Janth scoffs, "The Grey King doesn't fear your weapons," and the party keeps them. Janth and her phalanx march beside the party along one of the streets that radiates outward from the Keep's central square. In the center of the square rises the Keep itself: a mighty stone column, formed from the union ...

Session 6: "Hungry Hungry Hippos" (August 5) Having defeated the cult of Graz'zt, the party decides that their next move should be tracing the oblex boxes to their source: Darjheim Caverns, an Underdark realm ruled by the Gray King -- a duergar warlord named Gralkhar Fellgren. The party sets out upriver in a chartered riverboat toward the uppermost city on the Simrijj River, a trading port named Adwerro. Adwerro serves as the shipping point for goods entering or leaving the mighty dwarvish citadel-city of Kwolgarrash, high in the foothills of the Rangrum Mountains, at the very eastern edge of the Rajgani Empire. Kwolgarrash is an ancient dwarven realm that is something between a committed ally and autonomous subject of the Rajgani Empire, ruled by the High Artificer Torgga Trollanvil. From Kwolgarrash, the party hopes to enter the mountains and find the way to Darjheim, the entrance to which is somewhere in the remote heights of the Rangrum range. The party's boat...