In short
Inside Zaldara’s Lair the party meets Elias and watches his companion Nyx die in a freak fall. They then:
- discover Quill can do magic, unreliably;
- fall into a teleport trap;
- beat three skeletons and two specters;
- crack open the chest holding the lich’s phylactery.
Zaldara Kordris appears and kills them all with one bolt of lightning. They wake up resurrected by Syndra Silvane, who admits she lied. Being resurrected now means they are under the Death Curse, and the trail leads to Acererak in Chult.
Elias, Nyx and a puddle
Up a ladder and through a rotten trapdoor, the party come out into a dark room that is mostly cave, with one built stone wall and a wooden ceiling 20 feet up. About 30 feet away a halfling with a lute stands frozen, watching a fight he isn’t in. This is Elias (“call me Eli”). He casts Faerie Fire so everyone can see.
His companion Nyx, a tabaxi, is fighting giant crabs. As Kintergas charges, Nyx slips in a puddle and cracks her skull. Kintergas turns the crab to red mist. Lay on Hands comes too late: Nyx is dead.
Elias had known her for about three minutes. He goes through her things and shares them out:
| Item | Went to |
|---|---|
| 10 gp | Kale |
| Leather armour (very much the “fantasy heroine” cut) | Kale |
| Thieves’ tools | Gimbal |
| Burglar’s pack | Quill |
The burglar’s pack holds 1,000 ball bearings, a knitted bag with 5 balls of yarn, a bell, 5 candles, a crowbar, a tinderbox, a hooded lantern with 2 flasks of oil, and 50 ft of rope. Nyx also carried 2 daggers, a rapier, and a shortbow with 20 arrows. Quill flips one of the daggers, cuts himself, then catches it neatly anyway.
Elias explains that he and Nyx arrived “yesterday”, met at a bar, and were sent by Syndra “to fetch some sort of book”. They came in through a hole far too small for the rest of the party.
The door, the grate and Quill’s magic
The only way on is a huge iron-banded door with a keyhole and torchlight flickering underneath.
- Gimbal tries to pick the lock (no proficiency, rolled at disadvantage). A magically reinforced grate slams down from the ceiling over the door.
- Quill wonders aloud if he’s a wizard, says “Open!” and rolls a natural 20. A distant knock sounds and the door opens, but not the grate. (Quill learns Knock.)
- Later he makes the grate appear to vanish (Minor Illusion). Through it they see a round tower room with spiral stairs going up and down.
- He tries to turn Elias into a “beautiful maiden”. His breast pocket vibrates and a small voice says “Glimpse help, Glimpse help.” Elias looks like a maiden to everyone except himself.
- Kintergas and Kale each find a spot on opposite walls where something has been hidden by magic. Quill says “Reveal!” and casts Grease instead, knocking them both flat. The illusions drop, and Kintergas walks face-first into the very solid grate.
- When the pocket-voice speaks, Quill feels something should be in his breast pocket. Nothing is.
Kale’s Arcana (18) picks out abjuration magic: a hidden door, with a tendril of magic leading back to a cairn of rocks by the ladder. Under the rocks, in a puddle, is a button. Pressing it makes a plain wooden door appear in the wall.
The gem room trap
Behind the door is a small dome studded with fist-sized gems of every colour, lit by a single torch fixed in the middle. It looks like a lifetime’s fortune.
- Kale pries at one gem and vanishes.
- Quill experiments with the torch. It won’t go out, it goes dark when carried over the threshold, and it relights when brought back.
- Elias grabs the same gem on purpose. He vanishes and lands on Kale’s shoulders.
They are in a 7 × 7 ft magical cell in a jail. Across the hall are a chained human skeleton picked clean and the months-dead corpse of a tiefling in ruined leather armour. A previous prisoner kept a tally of days scratched into a bottle.
To lure the others down, Elias and Kale put on the performance of their lives about how great it is down here. “The book we’re looking for is in here!” Kintergas believes them. Quill (Insight 20) does not: “They’re lying.” Then Kale fires Eldritch Blast at the bars, and it ricochets around the cell for 7 damage to each of them. Elias calms things down with a Song of Rest about five beings working together.
Skeletons
Upstairs, the others shout insults through the grate (“Your mother’s an ogre!”, “Your father smelt of elderberries!”) and clang on the bars. Three skeletons come running down the spiral stairs, and the grate lifts.
- Quill’s nervous disposition gives him advantage on initiative and makes him immune to being frightened.
- His Magic Missile hits all three skeletons (2, 3 and 4 damage). Time slows down around him and he gets a second action, which becomes Comprehend Languages.
- He overhears the skeletons’ battle plan (one feints, two rush Kintergas) and passes it on.
- Kintergas blocks one skeleton with his shield and smashes another. When the feinting one dodges past towards Gimbal, he flattens it with an opportunity attack.
- Gimbal slips through the grate and burns the last one to ash with Sacred Flame.
Loot: 3 standard longswords (Kintergas).
The cells
Downstairs is a hallway with four cells and a ring of four keys on a hook. The bars have no keyholes. A button under a loose rock makes a keyhole panel appear on each cell, and Elias uses Mage Hand to bring the keys in and let himself and Kale out.
| Cell | What was inside |
|---|---|
| Tiefling corpse | A gold holy symbol of Asmodeus on a silver chain. Kintergas took it. |
| Human skeleton | A swarm of insects (2 damage), then an old pouch with 22 gp, 86 sp and 123 cp (Kintergas). |
| Fourth cell | Empty: manacles and bloodstains. |
Kintergas asks to see Elias’s notebook. Elias writes his opinion of everyone in it. Kintergas tears out the page and drops it. Elias calmly rewrites it from the pen impressions.
The vault and the phylactery
On the middle landing is another locked door. Elias first plays a “Heroism” ballad of old mages, hoping to jog Quill’s memory. It reminds Quill only of a deeply boring history lecture. Then Gimbal picks the lock with a 16.
Inside is a spotless polished-marble chamber, clearly cleaned often. Two floor-to-ceiling pillars crackle with lightning. Between them, bolted to the floor, sits an iron-bound chest about the size of a travel suitcase.
- Kintergas checks for traps the way he learnt in the Waterdeep Watch. He finds none.
- Quill reaches out and an encrypted spell scroll appears in his breast pocket. → Quill’s Encrypted Scroll
- He tries Knock on the chest, with Bardic Inspiration and Guidance. The first attempt conjures a floating porcelain tea set (chamomile). The second wraps him in a lavender-scented soap bubble. He seems to be out of spell slots.
- Quill lays a longsword by one pillar and drops another across it, and both swords light up. Elias uses Mage Hand to bridge the swords to the chest and on to the second pillar. The result is a massive short circuit: both pillars collapse and the swords melt.
Fight: 2 specters come out of the dust.
- Quill hits one with Firebolt (another new spell). A 17th pair of tweezers, silver this time, appears in his pocket.
- Kale adds Firebolt and Hex. Gimbal adds Healing Word and Sacred Flame.
- The specters drain Kintergas, then Quill (down, death save 19), then Elias (down).
- Kintergas lands a natural 20 and destroys one. Kale’s Firebolt finishes the other.
- Kintergas stabilises Elias, who writes “Favourite” next to his name. Kale gets Quill back on his feet.
After a short rest, Gimbal can’t pick the chest’s maze-like lock and Kintergas fails to intimidate it. In the end Kintergas and Kale crowbar it open together.
Inside, on red velvet, is a cup, radiating heavy necrotic magic: the phylactery. Quill bags it, cushion and all.
The light dims. A gaunt, skeletal apparition with glowing tendrils appears in the doorway: Zaldara Kordris.
“Put that down.” — “No.”
Lightning arcs from her hand for 38 damage to everyone. The whole party goes down.
Resurrected
They wake up in a canvas Harper field hospital, surrounded by the dying. Syndra Silvane looks a century older than before. She tells them:
- They died. She revived them.
- About two weeks ago the Death Curse began. Everyone on the Sword Coast who has ever been resurrected is wasting away, as if their soul is being pulled out. They have weeks left.
- Syndra was herself resurrected about 40 years ago after a disastrous Harper campaign. She can feel the curse too, so she and the party now share the same clock.
- She lied. The real goal was to question Zaldara about the curse’s architect, the archlich Acererak, an old acquaintance of hers.
- The party never got the phylactery out. But when Zaldara left the battlefield to deal with them, the Harpers broke into her study and stole a book naming Acererak’s last known location: the peninsula of Chult, far to the south.
- In other words, the party were a very effective distraction.
She promises honesty from now on and gives them a new quest: find Acererak and stop him. The only major settlement in Chult is Port Nyanzaru. The jungle is overrun by undead, and Syndra hasn’t been there in decades.
She opens a teleportation circle, and the world spins to black. (Waking in the hospital counts as a long rest.)
Loot & items
- Nyx’s gear (table above) · 3 longswords (2 later melted) · Asmodeus Holy Symbol · skeleton’s pouch (22 gp, 86 sp, 123 cp) · Quill’s Encrypted Scroll · Quill’s 17th tweezers
- Lost in death: Zaldara’s Phylactery (presumably reclaimed)
People met
Elias Bramblefoot · Nyx (died) · Zaldara Kordris · Syndra Silvane again · named: Acererak
Bestiary
Giant crabs · Skeletons ×3 · Specters ×2
Threads opened
- The Death Curse: weeks to live.
- Whose tiefling corpse, and why an Asmodeus Holy Symbol?
- The scroll that came to Quill “in a time of need and confusion”.
- Glimpse speaks.