NPCs: Shade and Alkanon
PCs: Serena Greymayre, Gruntrok, Sir Orim Windgrace, Thandral, Armand Darkini, Arya and Draven
After several hours of fruitless searching, it is decided that the demon has fled with Ruby’s skin. In trying to understand this horrible act, the only reason for taking the skin that anyone can conceive of is as some sort of a disguise. The only thing left to do is wait until morning when this can be discussed with the full party.
In the morning, after filling in those who hadn’t taken part in the previous nights events, it is decided that it would be safer for the party to wait for their high council meeting somewhere else. Lord Moray offers to arrange rooms for them all in Lankmar’s royal castle, the Rainbow Palace. The party readily accepts the offer, and they proceed to spend the next week in grand style. This gives them a much-needed chance to rest, recouped and replenish resources both physical and spiritual.
At the end of the week they are contacted not by the high council, but rather by lord Moray’s court wizard Slythe. Apparently he has been in contact with the librarian that Sir Windgrace had been directed to find by Bahamat’s church. Together, the two of them had come up with a plan for the destruction of the orb. Fearing capture and torture by the parties enemies, little is discussed of the plan’s details. Instead it is decided that we will only know the details of whatever little part is being worked on at the moment.
The first task for the eventual destruction of the orb is recovering the Anvil of Knox from a band of Derro. They are teleported to the deep dwarves home which turns out to be a small ruined Mountain dwarf stronghold. There is a brief and fairly unexciting exploration of that stronghold. They then realize that what they had thought was a cliff face is actually a wall protecting the strongholds mine.
Once past the wall, the party discovers a small field of tall grass and beyond that the entrance to the mine. The party is not surprised to see that two Derro guard the mine, but they are surprised to see four small black cones moving about in the field. These small cones turn out to be the pointed caps of several deep gnomes caring for the mine’s front yard, making them the dreaded Lawn Gnomes. The party decides on a frontal assault, and quickly dispatches the two Derro, but the Lawn Gnomes and their summoned earth elementals prove to be much tougher to deal with. After a long and drawn out battle, the gnomes and allies are eventually destroyed. The party then briefly retreats to regroup and lick their wounds.
