The Journal of Heelie Faes

We arrived in Dougan’s Hole by morning, and were greeted by an unusual sight.

All ten speakers were gathered. It seems they were waiting for us.

The Aasimar paladin and the Dragonborn fighter were already there. I later learned the Dragonborn’s name is CawCawk. Perhaps that is why adventurers here do not tend to advertise their names.

They informed us of Xardorok Sunblight and his fortress, Sunblight, built into the Spine of the World not far from where we stood. A duergar warlord with ambitions to establish the first duergar stronghold on the surface. It seems Auril’s everlasting winter has been a gift to him. Duergar do not fare well in sunlight, and the sun has been hidden long enough that he has grown bold.

They wanted us to stop him. They were rather insistent about it for people asking a favour.

I took the opportunity, while the party prepared, to break away.

Edvar and Hilda were both home, as I had hoped.

I have spent a long time on the road since leaving Dougan’s Hole. Standing in that doorway again, I was reminded of what it felt like to have somewhere to return to. It was my sanctuary for a long time. I did not realise how much I had missed it until I was standing in it again.

I told them about Xardorok Sunblight and his fortress nearby, and that it was too dangerous to stay. I gave them the enchanted fishing hook I had gotten, explained what it does and how to use it, and enough gold to see them to Bryn Shander comfortably, at least for now.

They were understandably not keen on leaving, but agreed in the end.

I gave them both a hug before I left.

As I was on the way back to the party, two figures caught my eye. A red dragonborn and a silver dragonborn. I have spent enough time adventuring now to recognise the difference between a commoner and someone dangerous. These two were the latter. I could feel the magic on them from where I stood, on their persons and their equipment both.

They had already noticed me. They introduced themselves as Thurnul and Kiana, sent by the Adventurers League to retrieve the Tortle wizard.

They informed me that the retrieval was successful. The Tortle wizard is alive, but has since left Icewind Dale.

It made me think of my old party members. I cannot believe I had forgotten. In Arborea, death among adventurers was rarely permanent. A fallen party member would wake at the nearest sanctuary, battered but whole.

I explained to them what was happening with Sunblight and my plan to secure more allies before we moved on the fortress. The wyrmlings in the Cave of the Berserkers. Two young dragons with ambitions befitting their kind.

They told me they were not able to assist with the fortress directly. But they could help with the wyrmlings. Kiana opened a portal connecting Dougan’s Hole to the Cave of the Berserkers. I stepped through.

The wyrmlings were where we had left them. I offered them the kobolds and their goat as attendants, the return of their hoard, and the promise of considerably more from Sunblight’s stores once we were done with it.

Gelym and Tyzar, as I now knew them, agreed.

Thurnul and Kiana were gone shortly after, disappearing into another portal.

When I rejoined the party, there was someone new.

One of the speakers introduced them as a fellow adventurer who would be joining us for the battle ahead. I had not seen this species before. An Air Genasi paladin, as I later came to understand. They gave a full account of themselves, their oath, their history, everything one might say in an introduction. Everything except their name .

Kylma stayed behind in Dougan’s Hole.

The fortress had two possible entries. The direct entrance, flanked by arrow slits, and the top, some two hundred and twenty feet up. We chose the top.

CawCawk produced a gray cloth bag he called his bag of tricks. From it sprung a giant elk, a badger, and a giant rat. He activated his wings and flew up carrying the elk, which carried the rat, which carried the badger. Corren granted flight to the shield guardian and was carried up by it. The two paladins were carried by the wyrmlings. I waited below.

Two guards were at the top. CawCawk dropped the elk onto them. One managed to get clear, but what had been the other was now just an impression in the stone. The rat and the badger did not survive the landing either, though the elk did. The remaining guards were handled by the paladins and Corren.

Both wyrmlings came back for me.

Gelym spotted an invisible duergar in hiding. It was swiftly dealt with, and Zglarrd was fed.

We took the elevator down.

The level below was quieter than expected. The party split to explore.

The Aasimar paladin entered what turned out to be a training room, and four suits of armour animated the moment they stepped inside. They stepped back out immediately and whatever was powering the armour ceased with them.

The Air Genasi paladin heard something coming from one of the quarters. I went in and looked under the bed. A duergar, shrunk to the size of a small animal, doing his best to disappear into the floor.

I told him to grow or we would kill him. He grew. He announced himself as Durth Sunblight, Xardorok’s eldest son and heir, and had a great deal to say about his own importance and very little of any practical use.

I put him to work as a test subject instead.

Exposed Durth to chardalyn directly. Observed no visible effect within the time available. Autopsy revealed nothing. It is a disease of the mind, and duergar minds may simply process chardalyn differently from humans.

Revived Durth and embedded a chunk of chardalyn into the body. The subject was in considerable pain, likely from the foreign object itself rather than any corruption. I waited, but no madness followed. Osbert’s notes stated that the effect, while temporary at first, should be at least immediate. It was not.

Conclusion: the results are inconclusive. Duergar may process chardalyn differently from humans, but the sample size is too small and the exposure too brief to draw a firm conclusion. A subject with longer and more intimate contact with chardalyn would be more useful.

Seeing as we did not have much time for further experimentation, I fed Zglarrd and the wyrmlings instead.

We found the dining hall after. A duergar woman sat at the head of the table, eating without any particular urgency. Long black hair streaked with white, fingernails like shards of iron. A mechanical pseudodragon rested beside her. Three attendants stood at the walls and said nothing.

Grandolpha Muzgardt.

She had no love for Xardorok, that much was clear within the first few sentences. She asked us to kill him, promising that once he was gone she would lead the remaining duergar back to the Underdark and trouble the surface no further.

The pseudodragon caught my attention. It is made from chardalyn but seems to move and interact like a living creature. I asked her if she knew how it worked. She declined, stating that this is not something she had often seen in her circle, and that Xardorok himself had built a war machine from the same material.

She offered to gather the remaining guards on the floor, clearing the way for us to explore freely. We accepted.

As we moved through the remaining rooms, Corren noted that duergar share dwarven blood and with it a known resistance to poison. It was worth considering in light of what I had just observed.

The war room held a stone table with a map of Ten-Towns drawn across its surface. At the centre stood a small chardalyn dragon figurine on an iron stand, its wings outstretched. A lever on the side of the table moved the figurine along a groove cut into the map, tracing a path from one settlement to the next. We pulled it and watched the figurine fly its preset course over Ten-Towns.

Xardorok’s quarters were exactly what I would have expected from a warlord. Above the bed, a bas relief of a giant scowling duergar, himself presumably. At the foot of the bed sat an iron trunk with a heavy padlock, which I opened. The contents were clothes and junk, but we emptied it regardless, revealing a false bottom and triggering a trap in the process. The room filled with poisonous gas, and beneath the false bottom was the real treasure, along with a set of codes. We took everything and left.

I can recall the heat emanating as we descended into the final level. We made our way through until we found a chamber with a chardalyn statuette on a shelf, and chained to the wall beside it, a mind flayer stripped of its tentacles. It was alive, if barely.

Xardorok was there. The moment he saw us, he went invisible and slipped through the double doors to the south. We gave chase.

Through the doors was the forge, vast and scorching, and ascending a shaft above it toward the open sky was the chardalyn dragon. We watched it go. The alarm had already been raised by the time we turned our attention back to the room, and combat began.

CawCawk went in first, his giant elk alongside him. The duergar cut the elk down quickly and tried to shove CawCawk into the forge. He held his ground.

The paladins pushed through after. The Aasimar paladin got one of the duergar into the lava. The Air Genasi paladin met the rest head on. Corren worked the guard towers from behind the shield guardian while I sent the wyrmlings ahead to breathe cold across the nearest two.

Xardorok revealed himself not long after, holding CawCawk in place and leaving him dangerously exposed. The paladins turned to break his concentration while Corren and I cleared what remained of the towers. When CawCawk was freed, he went for Xardorok. It was not a long fight after that.

While the rest of the party went to the vaults, I stayed with Xardorok. The wyrmlings lingered nearby, curious.

One of the surviving duergar, having surrendered, offered some information. Xardorok had grown increasingly paranoid in recent years, trusting no one, not his sons, not his closest advisors. He had sent his sons on dangerous missions, kept his allies at arm’s length, and rewarded those who spied on each other.

I opened his skull. There was nothing visible. No physical corruption, no darkening of tissue, no obvious tell.

Conclusion: chardalyn madness appears to operate through a poison vector, as evidenced by the weapons forged from it. Duergar resistance to poison, as Corren noted, may explain a reduced effect, but prolonged and constant exposure as seen in Xardorok suggests resistance alone cannot prevent the madness entirely. What is less clear is how the madness manifests between subjects. In humans, it produces feral, self-destructive behaviour. In Xardorok, if chardalyn is indeed the cause, it produced paranoia. Whether this difference is a function of duergar physiology or simply the individual, I cannot yet say.

The mind flayer was still alive when I returned to the chamber. It looked pitiful. I had Zglarrd and the wyrmlings see to it. A mercy, given the state it was in.

In the room adjoining the temple, a duergar priest dropped his disguise and revealed himself as a barbed devil. He destroyed himself before we could act, vanishing in a cloud of black smoke and leaving only a hat behind.

It seems three things have converged here. A paranoid warlord, a scheming devil and a crystal that poisons the mind. Whether the devil exploited what the chardalyn had already done, or simply found a man already prone to suspicion and made use of him, the result was the same. Xardorok trusted no one and was undone by it. That warrants investigation.

Gelym and Tyzar departed, having upheld their end of the arrangement.

We raided the treasure vaults quickly, using the codes from Xardorok’s trunk. Corren stayed behind to study what remained, believing the rest of us would be sufficient, and gave me the shield guardian’s amulet before we parted.

The shield guardian followed the rest of us out.

I am writing this from the caravan. The dragon is ahead of us somewhere. I find myself thinking of Edvar, Hilda and Osbert, and hoping they made it to Bryn Shander in time.

In case I do not survive the next fight, this journal serves as testament that I, Heelie Faes, walked this world, however briefly.