My name is Shu and this is the story of my most honourable grandfather.
The underground room lit up like a furnace as Sosho’s sorcerous fire engulfed the lesser slaad. Despite the force of his assault, the demon seemed frustratingly indifferent to the flames. Nroc ventured within range of the slaad’s hooked claws and was nearly disembowelled for his trouble! The wounded bard backed away, clutching his belly lest his guts come spilling out into the unholy pentagram. Arston moved up to fill the breach and weathered a flurry of blows against his gleaming armour. Wang and Nim were faring little better with Fullbelly, who had produced an evil looking greatsword when he dropped his illusory guise. Things were looking grim for my most honourable grandfather and he may never have reached White Plume Mountain at all, were it not for Arston Flax. Channelling his righteous fury, Arston divinely smout (smited / smit?) Emptybelly, casting the demon’s blackened soul back down whatever foul crevice it first crawled from. Seeing his apprentice had been slain, the cowardly Fullbelly abandoned his ritual and fled the battle.
The wisdom of Nim: “Not every chest is a mimic and not every mimic is a chest.”
For his part in stopping the Gall Bladder Gutter, Sosho was given great honour by the ruling council of Waterdeep. The merchant lord Strens Versi fulfilled his promise and presented Sosho and his friends with a plethora of magical potions from his personal stock. Although they did not know it at the time, the party would need every fluid ounce within those precious bottles in the ordeal to come. Having demonstrated their aptitude and resourcefulness in the pursuit of Fullbelly, Strens Versi offered Sosho and his companions another contract. Three powerful artifacts had been stolen from the city and a cryptic ransom note had been magically delivered, inviting the council to try and recover the relics from beneath White Plume Mountain. The ruling lords had already dispatched three groups to recover the artifacts, none had returned. Now, Strens Versi offered my most honourable grandfather the opportunity to add his name to the growing list of casualties. I like to imagine it was a sense of duty to his friends that motivated Sosho to accept that doomed quest.
Sosho and his friends travelled overland to the village of Breckon. I have never visited this place, but my grandfather described the people there as innumerate, dishonourable rogues. The scoundrel Wang must have felt at home in the company of such poor rascals. The heroes departed for the mountain the morning after their arrival. I have heard the entrance described as “the wizard’s maw”, from which billow clouds of scalding steam like the breath of a great, stone devil. Brave Arston Flax ventured into the cave and discovered the burning fumes rose from a deep fissure in the floor. The paladin searched the area and found a metal trapdoor. With much exertion, he and Wang managed to force the rusty portal open, revealing a steep, spiral stair descending into the fiery heart of the mountain.
To light their way down the treacherous stair, Nim cast a cantrip that caused the gold piece in his palm to glow brightly. I fondly remember seeing the wizened gnome perform this trick to entertain my siblings and I when we were young. The spiral steps descended 100ft and ended in a partially flooded tunnel deep below the ground. Ahead, the tunnel branched into three dark passages. Guarding this intersection was a strange creature with the muscular body of a hunting cat and the face of a woman, partially hidden behind a curtain of wet, stringy hair. The guardian beast advised Sosho and his friends that in order to pass safely, they must answer her riddle. Two of the previous groups had managed to do so and continued on to meet their ends elsewhere in the dungeon, while the third party had answered incorrectly and had been consumed by the sphinx.
