As they travel, Anaxie tells them of the wonders of the fabled city. There, it is said, that the city is peopled with creatures of crystal. They have discovered and energy source beyond the comprehension of even the greatest wizards. In fact, one of the greatest wizards of the land was said to have traveled there in order to learn of the city's secrets.
Years ago, Anaxie funded an expedition there but no one had ever returned.
Roadkill
The weeks of travel pass as each of the group spends their days in various personal quiet tasks. Eda spends her days in the wizard's usual scholarly endeavors of transcription. Fritz spends hours manipulating the puzzle box which he had found in among the belongings of Lady Mara's demon. The puzzle box slowly opening and elongating. As its form opens and changes Fritz is able to get a sense of its magic more and more. It seems to be some sort of conjuration magic. Perhaps some sort of teleportation magic.
Azula amuses herself by summoning her balor demon. Sending it out to scout ahead, making sure it is restrained from killing anything that does not present a threat. As the carts, they travel on, roll through the quiet wilderness, they find all sorts of woodland creatures impaled, eviscerated, dismembered and otherwise killed in a dozen different ways along the way. Azula calls her demon back and demands why all these harmless creatures have been killed. The demon points to each of its kills and tells her, "That one looked suspicious." "That one was going to pounce...well not one me, no. But it was going to pounce." "That little bunny rabbit looks harmless, but I think it was rabid.". And on and on.
After days of travelling through mostly flat plains, dotted with patches of light forest, the land changes. Now it is rough with massive boulders strewn about and a forest covering what seems to be steep foot hills as the Star Mounts loom over them only a couple days ahead.
The group has to leave the horses and carts behind as the forest trails become too thick, even for single riders. Untethering the horses and letting them go, the group pushes forward.
A Foul Forest
The land soon turns dark. The ground soft and mushy and the trees stunted and leafless. A constant thin fog fills the air. Messick runs ahead and is soon stuck in the soft ground. A slick oily dark ooze covers his legs up to his knees. Even when he is able to pull his legs out and return to the others the ooze remains on his legs. In fact it continues to travel up his body and he begins to hear the murmuring of voices within his head. He cannot understand the voices but they drive him to distraction.
All the others notice is Messick acting a little more unusual than he usually does. Fritz decides to use prestidigitation to remove the ooze off of him. The spell usually dissipates any foulness off of whatever it clings to. This time the ooze more retreats than dissipates. The ooze crawls back down Messick's legs and seeps back into the ground.
They find this very odd.
Ooze Tainted Beetles
Soon the silence of the foul woods is broken by the distant sound of cracking wood. Immediately after the air is filled with a faint buzzing sound which steadily grows. The sound grows until they finally notice a rainbow hued swarm flying through the air towards them. The swarm turns out to be a vast multitude of beetle like insects. As they fly, light reflecting off of their collective wings, produces a rainbow hue that flashes in the eyes of the group. Angel, Fritz's giant eagle companion, looses any thoughts other than to peacefully fly. She flies without a care in the world. At peace. Leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves.
The others battle while often becoming stunned by the mystical lights reflecting off the beetles carapaces and wings. But eventually they overcome leaving a carpet of blackened and charred insect bodies littered on the ground. They inspect a couple of the insects. They seem like regular beetles but they are covered in a sheen of the foul ooze that Messick encountered.
The ooze softening the ground makes the group nervous to traverse the area. Angel is sent to scout around and tells the group that the ooze seems to surround the entire mountainside. They decide to fly over the ooze-filled forest.
They come to rest at the base of the mountain and begin to climb. Soon they face a choice of entering a darkened cave or continue climbing up and over the mountain entirely. Debates rage. Entering a dark and forbidding unknown cave versus a hazardous high altitude mountain climb without equipment. They enter the cave.
Through Rather Than Over The Mountain
They travel through the winding tunnel inside the mountain. The tunnel seems to go on and on. After hours of travel they decide to rest. A few of them take their turns taking watch. During the groups rest, Angel notices an odd creature.
When the group awakens, Angel tells them that she saw a large rock-like creature passing through the walls of the tunnel. It closed up one section of the tunnel only to create a new tunnel with the simple passing of it's hands over the rock.
A few of the group rush forward to try to catch up whatever is creating tunnels, which it seems its doing to either capture the group or keep them from travelling through the mountain to the other side. Eventually Angel sees a large rock elemental creature forming new tunnels. Its arms moving in huge swaths, moving rock as easily as one might pass through water. Angel summons several mephits that surround the creature.
The mephit's attacks seem to do little damage to the massive creature as it is able to slam the creatures with its massive fists, instantly killing them.
As the others catch up and ready themselves for battle, Messick calls to the creature and asks why it's trying to keep them from travelling through the mountain. It tells them that it is protecting them from what's on the other side. Demons.The group decides to stand down from the fight as they converse with the elemental creature. It is a galeb durh, named Frostwind. It seems it has decided to stop people from travelling through the mountain after a wizard, Kwalish, has asked that it aid the wizard in stopping the ever growing cult which worships a demon from growing. Despite its efforts some make it to the demon but it has watched this group and decided that they don't deserve to die at the hands of the demon.
They convince Frostwind that they are here to stop the demon, as this seems just one more part of a larger demon incursion into this world. Frostwind decides to help them. He turns and begins to form the tunnel in front of him and soon they emerge on the other side of the mountain.
They look down into a massive caldera or crater. Its bottom so deep it is obscured by clouds. In the middle is a city sized structure made of rock, metal and crystal. Underneath the structure are massive roaring engines blasting fire seemingly keeping the structure aloft, hovering above the clouds.
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