Date: September 12, 2026
Attendance: Penn Kerwin, Gorr, Caitlyn, Professor Simley, Goodheart, Yochel Jarax
Governor Vane of Neefox sent for six adventurers. Neefox is a silver-mining colony on a volcanic island in the Lordship of the Isles, and his letters promised gold and said only that something was wrong with the mine. The six met on the ship that brought them in. When it docked they found galleons sitting idle, the smelters along the harbour cold, and the taverns full of miners drinking in the middle of a working day.
A fussy gnome with spectacles and a notepad took them up to the governor’s mansion. In the waiting room they heard the governor shouting at someone: You and your people had your chance. Now it’s time for the mercenaries to have their go. A red-skinned tiefling foreman in a red mining helmet stormed out past them. This was Ashton. The governor explained that a cave-in had shut the mine and that the rescue crew Ashton’s sister led in had not been heard from in three or four days. He cared more about getting the silver moving again than about the miners. To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Someone answered that people are not eggs. Professor Simley lobbied him for hermit-crab rights, and he said only sure. As they left he muttered that he would be writing for more adventurers in case these ones died horribly.
Ashton led them up the volcano with a string of mules. Her twin sister Char, who is blue where Ashton is red, had gathered a crew and gone into the mine as soon as the cave-in happened. About fifteen miners were inside. At the wrecked camp the party found a spiral symbol shaped like an eye, burned into a beam and scratched into an ore cart. Gorr grew to giant size and they cleared enough of the rubble to crawl through. Ashton stayed outside to set up a triage camp and then went to fetch help to clear the entrance properly.
Inside they found four dead miners: a dwarf named Belton, an eye-patched human named Chauncey, an elf, and a red-helmeted crew leader lying on a jammed lift. Penn hauled the lift back into line. A brass cog from the leader’s pocket turned out to be its missing crank, and they rode it up the shaft through a tremor and a fall of rock. Simley and Caitlyn each took a helmet from the dead, one far too big and one far too small.
The shaft opened into a glowing, broken cavern. Two bulettes burst out of its walls. The first died half-buried in its own escape hole. When Caitlyn’s thrown trident hit the second, it looked at her with something like recognition: it had been attacked with a trident before. Penn stabbed it through the heart, and the cavern floor gave way under them. Caitlyn flew and caught two of the falling.
They landed in a lava-lit caldera. In front of them was an ancient temple of volcanic glass and basalt that someone had been restoring, and around it lay dead Azer, fire dwarves, killed with tridents. A wounded Azer named Forge limped out to meet them. Simley understood his language by magic and drew the party’s story for him on a conjured slate. He told them the whole place was about to explode, and that they had to stop the ritual.
Drag marks and serpent trails led to a stone platform in the lava where the surviving miners, Char and two Azer were chained. Three salamanders guarded them, and every time one threw a miner into the lava the cavern shook. Two miners died this way before the party could close in. Simley slowed the salamanders, Gorr knocked one flat and stood over it, Yochel was caught in another’s coils, and Penn cut one down. Goodheart’s spectral hammer broke the skull of the last. It laughed and said It is too late. I give myself to Tharizdun, then burned to ash.
A colossal fire elemental rose out of the lava with broken dwarven chains on its limbs. While the others carried and hauled the eight surviving miners towards the blocked exit and Gorr cleared it, Simley and Goodheart joined hands with Forge at the temple altar. The elemental crushed the rock fingers around the lake and its fifty cheering salamanders fell into the lava. That broke another chain, leaving only one. The rest of the party ran back to join the circle. With their hair turned to flame they held the chant through quake and lava-burst until a tear opened beneath the lava. The elemental was dragged through it, shrinking to a single small flame, and the portal slammed shut.
At the surface Ashton had already cleared the entrance. She held her sister and told her she should have had faith in her. Forge gave the party a necklace of fireballs for their help, and the governor paid them.