What Happened Last Session
The Ambush That Wasn’t
Astrid’s arrow struck first, a clean shot to the Void Hag’s shoulder from the raised platform. The ancient entity—blackened form drinking in the torchlight, reality itself rippling around her clawed fingers—hesitated for only a heartbeat. Then she opened a shimmering portal, and the deep mines of Dvergheim filled with nightmares.
Two void spiders and six byakhee poured through—gaunt winged horrors mixing vulture, insect, and rotting corpse features. The party’s tactical advantage evaporated in seconds. What should have been a decisive strike from high ground became a desperate fight for survival as Crixbin’s Light spell flickered and died, plunging portions of the chamber into darkness.
When Trolls Refuse to Die
The green troll entered combat with terrifying efficiency, and the party learned just how literal the Void Hag’s “gift” of regeneration truly was. When Carmin severed the creature’s head, it didn’t fall—it sprouted crab-like legs and continued fighting as an independent entity. The void spiders added their own nightmare, poison bites demanding Constitution saves while the party tried to process that they were fighting a headless troll, a mobile troll head, and a swarm of flying abominations simultaneously.
Dolitan delivered the session’s most crucial moment with a perfectly executed Fascinate spell. All six byakhee dropped from the air, transfixed and grounded, their hostility suspended. For precious rounds, the flying swarm became statues, giving the party breathing room they desperately needed. But the cost was mounting—Bargon dropped to 0 HP, Crixbin lost a Mass Cure spell in a failed casting, and the void spiders kept advancing.
The Sulfur and the Sacrifice
Hagen fled south during the chaos and found yellow-gray powder with a burnt almond smell in a dead-end passage. While hiding in shadows, the Void Hag teleported directly beside him. Her life-draining claws struck once—6 damage and 4 points of Constitution simply… drained away. Hagen collapsed.
The retreat became catastrophic. Astrid fell attempting to escape past the troll, taking Bargon down with her. Carmin managed a rare successful medicine check to stabilize Astrid while Bargon failed a death save, teetering on the edge. The party funneled desperately into the northern tunnels, shield walls barely holding against the tide.
When Hagen’s lantern fell from his dying hands, it ignited the sulfur powder he’d collected. The explosion devastated the southern chamber—18 damage in a thunderous blast that killed all six fascinated byakhee, destroyed the mini-troll, and severely wounded the green troll enough to send it fleeing. Against impossible odds, Bargon rolled a natural 20 on his death save and clawed his way back from oblivion.
The Price of Victory
Hagen is gone, his body charred and buried beneath rubble that also claimed his Axe of Nine Eyes. His accidental sacrifice—collecting sulfur without understanding its significance, dying in exactly the right place with exactly the right materials—turned certain annihilation into costly survival. The Void Hag retreated with one remaining void spider, wounded but very much alive.
The party eliminated the remaining byakhee in coordinated strikes, but the victory tastes of ash and urgency. Astrid and Bargon lie unconscious but stabilized. Forty-five minutes of light remain. Two unconscious allies need carrying. And somewhere in the darkness, the ancient entity the party came to investigate now knows they exist and has tasted their strength.
Looking Ahead
The party learned critical truths in the worst possible way: the divine severance eight days ago (“The gods went quiet. The wards weakened.”) allowed the trolls to excavate their “Mother” from centuries of imprisonment. The Void Hag refers to trolls as her “children,” and the green troll’s title—“Firstborn”—suggests she created or corrupted them in an age before the current gods existed. What else was sealed in that vault remains unknown; the unsealed chamber itself went unexplored.
King Snorgin Thrain Ironheart awaits their report in Dvergheim, unaware that the “deep troll crisis” has become something far worse. The party must escape these tunnels carrying their wounded, report an unsealing that may doom the dwarven kingdom, and reckon with the loss of one of their own. Hagen’s sulfur explosion bought them survival, but the Void Hag escaped to consolidate power, heal her wounds, and plan her next move. The wards that held her for hundreds of years are broken. The gods remain silent. And the party now knows exactly how outmatched they are.
The greatest victories are often purchased with losses that make you question whether you won at all.