Role: Char’s rescue crew, and the others the cult took
Location: The Silver Mine
First met: Session 1: The Last Chain
The miners of Neefox wear coloured helmets: red for crew leaders like Ashton, yellow or blue for the rest. Picture signs round the lift shaft show what happens to a dwarf without one. When the mine went quiet, Char led a rescue crew in after the trapped shift, and they did not come out either. Somewhere between ten and fifteen were inside.
At every table the party found three of the rescue crew dead by an ore cart crushed under a boulder in the first tunnel: one killed by falling stone, one badly burned, and one smothered under a slide of earth. The crew leader in the red helmet carried the bronze cog that works the lift. The rest were alive, chained on the ritual peninsula in the caldera, utterly spent by the heat. At each table the salamanders threw two of them into the lava before the party could stop them. The survivors had to be carried out, and none of them could walk unaided.
Not all of the cult’s captives were miners. The missing-person notices in the harbour named fishermen and farmers from the small farms inland, and one party found a fisherman and a farmer on the chain.
At each table
- Session 1 (Table 1): By the cart: Belton, a dwarf with a candle on his helmet; Chauncey, a human with an eyepatch; and an elf with slightly torn ears. A red-helmeted crew leader lay dead on the jammed lift with the cog in his pocket. Goodheart offered to preserve the bodies for last rites at the church of Bleredd. The party asked after Dan the dwarf, a drinking companion from the bar; Ashton thought he was in the mine, but nobody established what became of him. Eight survivors were carried out.
- Session 2 (Table 2): By the cart: a red-helmeted tiefling with black dragon tattoos across his chest, who carried the cog, and two goliaths who seemed to have died in each other’s arms. The party hauled all three out through the rubble to Ashton.
- Session 3 (Table 3): By the cart: one with a silver medallion, one with an ornate lamp beside him, and one with a candle glued to a helmet scrawled with badass and born to smash rocks. Bobby took their keepsakes for their families, and Zarek marked each with a small glowing skull.
- Session 4 (Table 4): By the cart: a red-bearded dwarf in a red helmet, burned all over, with the cog in the bib of his overalls; a human in a yellow helmet; and an elf without a mark on him. On the chain were a fisherman and a farmer as well as miners.