Cast of Characters:

• Kyffin Chiselfist, a male dwarven paladin of Fortubo
• Dook, a male ogre barbarian who thinks he’s a paladin
• Anthe Ettonice, a female elven monk
• Thora Kaeda, a female air genasi druid
• Zenryl Shadowbow, a female elven rogue

After a long rest, the group resumes delving deeper into the Sunless Citadel. Having found the remains and signet ring of the ranger Karakas, their quest to retrieve the rest of his adventuring group isn’t off to a promising start, but so it goes.

Venturing back to the south, the group finds a side passage that leads back into the portion of the ruins occupied by a tribe of goblins. Right away, the group walks into a goblin ambush, complete with concealed archers and a floor full of caltrops. They battle through several more groups of goblin defenders before finding one of their goals: a ransacked trophy room which contains Calcryx, the white dragon wyrmling the goblins had stolen from the local kobold tribe during a raid.

Unfortunately, Calcryx is in no mood to come along peacefully, and the presence of his former handler, the kobold Mep, doesn’t seem to help the situation. (DM note: having agreed to tag along as a “guide,” Mep is riding out this adventure—and many yet to come—strapped to the back of Dook, C-3PO-style). The group tries to tame the beast, but it’s clear Calcryx is in no mood. A tussle ensues and the group manages to finally render the wyrmling unconscious, bind it securely, and drag it back to the kobold chieftain, Yusdrayl.

As agreed, she gives the group a choice of items from her small treasure horde. The group chooses the mysterious key gripped in the mouth of Yusdrayl’s dragon throne, a key she tells the group opens a “dragon door” back near the entrance to the Citadel. With a bit of further negotiation, the group also barters for some other magic items from her stash, including several spell scrolls, some healing potions, and a Quaal’s feather token, which can magically spawn the growth of a huge tree.

Yusdrayl also says the group is free to keep Mep. The group is fine with this, and Mep is eager for more adventure than he’s found in the Citadel, so they agree to continue traveling together.

Heading back to the beginning of the complex, the group finds a hidden door they’d missed before and get a handful of skeletons and a couple of magic arrows for their trouble. Continuing down a path they had not yet explored, they find the aforementioned “dragon door”: a magically locked portal in the form of a fierce, silvery dragon. Yusdrayl’s key works and the group passes through into a strange new room.

As the module itself describes it, “Three alcoves are on the north wall, and one is on the south wall. Each alcove contains a dust-covered stone pedestal with a fist-sized crystalline globe resting on it. The globes in the northern alcoves are cracked and dark, but the globe in the southern alcove glows with a soft blue light. Faint tinkling notes issue from it.”

Investigating the globes, several of the party find themselves enchanted by the music and forced to run back to the beginning of the dungeon. Those not affected solve the problem by beating the hell out of the globes until the magic stops. Crude but effective.

Continuing onward, the group negotiates several more layers of traps and an encounter with a pesky quasit before reaching the end of this branch of the Citadel: a strange mausoleum, lit by torches burning with greenish continual flame spells.

From the module:

“Violet marble tiles cover the floor and walls, though all are cracked or broken, revealing rough-hewn stone beneath. Sconces are attached to the walls at each corner. One holds a torch that burns with greenish fire. A marble sarcophagus, easily nine feet long, lies in the room’s center. The coffin is carved with dragon imagery, and the head of the sarcophagus resembles a dragon’s head. Rusting iron clasps firmly lock down the lid.”

Carved on the wall nearby, a message in Draconic: “A dragonpriest entombed alive for transgressions of the Law still retains the honor of his position.”

Curiosity getting the better of him, Dook rips the lid off the sarcophagus and finds a troll: “…dressed in rotted finery, but its jewelry and rings adorned with tiny silver dragons still sparkle. The creature’s body is shrunken and elongated, and its flesh is a rubbery, putrid green. Its black hair is long, thick, and ropy. Its beady black eyes flash open, and it snarls.”

A fierce battle follows, with the creature putting up a worthy fight but soon falling beneath the group’s blades, spells, and Dook’s signature weapon: the uprooted trunk of a small tree. With Kyffin pleased to have helped strike down such an evil creature, the group is nevertheless perplexed at the creature’s backstory. The carvings suggest it was once one of the elven dragonpriests who used the Citadel to honor an ancient high dragon named Thesmothete in centuries past. How, then, did it become a troll, and why was it “entombed alive?” The answers, if they are to be found, must wait for another day.

Searching the chamber, they find a selection of gold, more spell scrolls, and a torch of continual flame that Dook physically rips out of the wall.

Retracing their steps back through the kobold tribe’s territory and into the goblin section, the group eventually finds a makeshift prison containing several kobold prisoners destined for either slavery or the cookpot, as well as one more memorable figure: a gnome cleric of Fharlangn named Erky Timbers. With this, the group checks another item off their to-do list for the dungeon; Kyffin’s friend Dem Nackle, a female gnome priest of Pelor, had asked for Kyffin’s help in locating Erky after he went missing inside the temple. Erky proves endlessly chatty, grateful for the rescue, and eager to tag along with the group as they continue into the dungeon in search of the other missing adventurers.

The addition of Erky proves to be fortuitous timing, as the group soon reaches the heart of the kobold colony and their very first “boss fight.” From the module:

“A circular shaft pierces the floor of this forty-foot-diameter domed chamber. Dim violet light shines out of the shaft, revealing sickly white and gray vines that coat the walls of the shaft. The light is supplemented by four lit wall torches set equidistant around the periphery of the chamber. A crudely fashioned stone throne sits against the curve of the northwestern wall. A large iron chest serves as the throne’s footstool. A sapling grows in a wide stone pot next to the throne.”

Waiting for them inside are:

• Durnn, the hobgoblin chief of the local goblin tribe
• Grenl, the tribe’s shaman
• Several hobgoblin guards
• A twig blight—the first the group has seen, a twisted plant creature spawned by the experiments of the rogue druid Belak the Outcast in the lower levels of the dungeon.

Dook initially tries an unexpected approach: simply walking into the room and asking if any of them need any of the “elf pudding” they’d found in a storeroom elsewhere in the dungeon. Durnn and the others are thrown for a loop at the sheer illogic of an ogre selling elf pudding door-to-door, but the distraction doesn’t last long, and battle soon commences.

For most of the group, it’s a rousing encounter, with spells, blades, and arrows flying. For Durnn, however, a natural 1 and a failed DEX save lead to an ignominious end as he trips and tumbles to his death down the shaft in the middle of the room. It’s best that the fall does him in; he never would have survived the embarrassment.

Once the dust settles, the goblin tribe’s leadership is routed, the group allows the “civilians” to leave in peace, and they manage to account for another of the missing adventurers: Durnn’s body was wearing splint armor and a signet ring belonging to Talgen Hucrele. With him presumed dead, only his sister Sharwyn and the paladin Sir Braford remain to be found. And it’s not looking good…

The group sets up camp to rest, with nowhere to go but down.