Gad and Mala kept watch over the orc tower through the night. They learned that there were about two dozen orc warriors in the tower, and that they were receiving supplies from the south, which told them they were not leaving any time soon.
The next morning, with their supplies running low, the duo returned to Fort Davelmag. They arrived at the Fort in the evening, but just as they were reporting their findings to Captain Mossak over dinner, they heard a commotion outside: the manticore had flown past the Fort and dropped the body of one of the guards sent by Captain Mossak to Belton earlier that day to get help from the duke. It was missing the lower half of its body.
There were now only seven guards and nine caravan guards left in the fort, and no help would be arriving soon. To make things worse, the four orc mercenaries announced that they would continue with their plan to leave the next day with the remains of their employer, and take the message to Belton. On his part Captain Mossak was reluctant to evacuate the fort, reasoning that they would be safer behind its walls.
Fearing an attack by the orcs and the manticore, our heroes decided to venture once more to the cave of the manticore, hoping to kill it if it had returned to its lair. And so Arwin, Kargen, Mala, and Rokas (see PC profiles here) once more made the trek up Devil's Laugh Canyon, with Lennard, the fort's porter.
Returning to the cave that led to the salt lake, our heroes this time explored down another tunnel to find another magically cold cave with a shallow pit at the centre, and a firepit to its north, just like that which they found inside the cave complex to the north.
Further exploration led to a burial of another orc shaman in a nearby cave, along with similar grave goods and a necklace bearing a large gemstone, this time a white moonstone.
Mala sensed that the two stones were magical, and surmised that they were somehow connected to the caves with the pits. When our heroes brought the stones near the pit, the space within the pit turned pitch black, and objects placed within it vanished into the darkness, but could be retrieved.
After some experimentation, Kargen made the bold decision to leap into the pit... and found himself emerging in a similar pit in a similar magically cold cave. In the same cave was the frozen body of yet another orc shaman, who wore a necklace of yellow topaz. Kargen retrieved the stone and stepped back into the pit, and as transported back to the cave where his companions were waiting.
By further experimentation, our heroes were able to determine that the stones allowed travel between this cave, the cave to the north, and a third cave, and that they could determine which one the portal led to by their thoughts, and that the thoughts "tower" and "manticore" led to the third cave.
Despite the lateness of the hour, our heroes traveled once more to the third cave, and exited the single tunnel that led from it. a short distance from the cave they found a boulder in the middle of the tunnel, and when they approached it the boulder shifted and took the form of a giant humanoid. When they got closer, the rock form attacked them, and pursued them back to the magical cave.
Unable to get past the magical guardian, and by now hungry and exhausted, our heroes returned to the salt cave to plot their next move.
Prepping and Running the Game
This session saw little combat, but took the campaign forward by putting the PCs back on the "right track" and let them figure out how the teleport system worked. The original portal in the module took the more traditional form of a portal/door, but I chose to lean into symbolism of the sipapu (the pit) and make it a real magical portal.
The module did not give much information on how the portals worked, and I had to make things up as we went along, but I think the way they work now is practical for the purpose of a game.
The rock guardian in the tunnel leading out of the cave is too powerful for the PCs to defeat in a straight fight, so the players will have to figure out a way to defeat it or bypass it.
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