The cheerful halfling looks far less cheerful as she notices the tension rising between her companions, and even less so when she sees Zephyroscoughing violently after flipping the mattress. Raszielis quick to pull the burly man out of the cloud of spores, but it's clear the warrior is still affected by the tiny motes that now drift lazily downward until they settle on the floor.
"Oh no… that doesn't look good,"Lyramurmurs as she steps up beside him. She pats Zephyrosgently on the back, saying "Heal-heal, nice and quick. Lady Luck will do the trick" as though she were a mother caring for her ill son (just... one a bit bigger than she is). As she does so, a tiny spark dances at her fingertips: a clear sign that her playful goddess is working her magic. "Feel better now?" she asks softly.
Stepping back to give the veteran some room, the cleric says, "A warning! that was my last higher-level spell for the day. I'm going to need a rest before I can do that again. So... let's not get sick. Or poisoned. Or blinded. Or deafened… or paralyzed!" She says the last part with a light grin, trying to make a joke of it even though everyone knows Axeholm is full of dangers.
She glances around the gloomy chamber. "What time is it, anyway? It already feels like we've been down here for ages. Though… maybe it's only been half an hour," she sighs, sounding genuinely disappointed.
Taking a look at the mold spores you recognize them as pretty standard yellow mold. A dangerous mold when inhaled or ingested. While it can be deadly, it's not contagious.
Rasziel,
You pick up the leatherbound book and move it to the corner of the room away from everyone. The book opens easily enough and nothing happens as you do. Moving the book closer to you, you see elvish writing on the pages. It seems the book has been preserved quite well under the bed.
Azazel stealthily moves up the chimney and strikes the stirge before it even knows the little accountant is there. The last stirge dies as the sting impales it causing the engorged body to burst, sending blood all over the nest, and running down the chimney.
Lyra,
Your divine magic immediately works on the bear of a man and Tymora's healing magic removes the poison from Zephyros' body.
You suspect it's late afternoon, just before evening.
Everyone,
As Rasziel recruits the help from the group in reading the book, it becomes clear this is Vyldara Moonglow's journal that recounts her journey to Axeholm and her time getting to know Lord Kithran and their unlikely romance between Moon Elf Ambassador and Dwarven Paladin of Bahamut. Her story is summarized below:
Long before the fall of Axeholm, when the fortress still rang with the song of hammers and the laughter of dwarves, there came a moon elf envoy named Vyldara Moonglow from the elven enclave of Evereska. Graceful and wise, she bore words of peace and trade from her kin, seeking to strengthen ties between elves and dwarves during an age when orcish warbands plagued the North.
Vyldara was unlike any who had walked the halls of Axeholm before—her presence a strange but welcome light among the dour dwarves. Many said her voice could charm the stone itself. She sang often in the Great Hall, her songs mingling with the ringing of the forges, and even the stoic King Durgeddin Stonefury was said to pause his work to listen. During this time, a Paladin of Bahamut named Lord Kithran grew to love Vyldara and she loved him back.
Yet, when the plague came, mercy and song could not prevail. As dwarves fell to the sickness one by one, Vyldara tended the dying, her healing magic spent in vain. The dwarves, fearing the contagion might spread beyond the mountain, made their grim decision: they sealed Axeholm. Lord Kithran himself using his divine magic to seal the gate and prevent anyone from leaving, both in this life, or the next.
Vydara pleaded with them to open the gates, to let her return to warn the nearby settlements—but the dwarves would not risk the living world. They barred her in, along with the sick and the dead. In the final days, Vyldara sang to the dying dwarves in the Hall of Kings, her voice trembling with grief as she watched her friends fade. Her last song—an elegy for those she loved—ended with her own death, her body lying among the fallen.
Below are the final excerpts from her journal:
1st of Uktar, Year of the Shattered Forge
The dwarves have closed the gates. The plague spreads faster than even my healing can soothe. Every cough echoes like a hammer strike in these halls — once alive with laughter, now filled with dread. I came to Axeholm in the name of peace, bearing Evereska’s promise of unity. I did not know I would become its final witness.
Lord Kithran still stands tall before his kin, though I see the fear behind his eyes. He believes the sickness is a curse — that Bahamut tests their faith. I tell him no god would be so cruel. He does not answer.
5th of Uktar
The first to accuse me was Thrain Embermantle. He said the plague came with my arrival — that the moon elves brought their “star-borne sickness” to punish the dwarves for digging too deep. Others joined his cry. Fear turns stout hearts to iron and suspicion. They gathered outside my chamber, shouting. Kithran faced them, hammer in hand, his voice shaking the hall.
“She is blameless! She tended your children when you hid from them!” He said...
The mob scattered then, but I saw hatred in their eyes. And sorrow in his.
7th of Uktar
Kithran came to me tonight. His hands trembled — not from sickness, but from choice. He said the dwarves had begged him to seal the fortress entirely. To contain the plague. To let none leave alive, or in death. I told him the living still mattered — that the world must be warned. He said only, “If the world knows, they will curse our memory.”
We wept together beneath the forges’ dying light. He kissed my brow and said, “I will not let them harm you, Vyldara.” I wish I had stopped him.
9th of Uktar
The night burned red.
I woke to screams — dwarves crying out in terror, not pain. Kithran had gone to them with his warhammer wreathed in fire. I saw him through the smoke, striking down his own kin as they begged him to stop. Each blow cracked the stones of the hall; each word he spoke was a prayer and a curse in one, “Bahamut, forgive me. I do this to spare them. I do this for her.”
He slew them all. The sick. The well. The fearful. The forges went cold. The hammers fell silent. When he came to me, his armor was black with ash and tears. He fell to his knees, his eyes hollow. “It’s done,” he whispered. “You are safe now.” But there was no safety left.
10th of Uktar
I can still smell the smoke. The air tastes of iron. The halls echo with silence. Kithran sits upon the throne, unmoving. His hammer rests across his knees. He does not pray. He does not sleep. He only stares.
I tried to speak to him — to tell him we could still make this right, but he turned to me with eyes like dying coals. “The gods have turned their faces from us. All that’s left is atonement.” He took my hand. His gauntlet was still warm from the forge. He said, “If I could burn the plague from this place, I would. Even if it burned me too.”
12th of Uktar
I write this with my last strength... The sickness took me after all. Perhaps the dwarves were right. Perhaps I did bring the plague. But not by malice — by love. Love that held me here when I should have fled. Love that damned the one who swore to protect me.
Kithran sits before the gates now, unmoving, as if waiting for judgment that will never come. I will go to him soon. I will sing him one last song before the dark takes me.
The last page of the journal is stained black — the ink running into the fibers like tears. Written faintly across the bottom, in a trembling hand:
“Stone and star, my love remains… Forgive him. He did not fall, he followed love..."
Meirahad been about to reply to Alisande'squestion when the journal was being inspected, and the tale begun to be discussed. She came over to look at the elvish words in the book. Soon other thoughts are forgotten. In a soft voice, she translates the passages into Common. She stays quiet, her focus shifted to the words of the book. As she completes the end of the tale, she sighs. "I suppose we knew the ending but it's still sad to hear the story told."
After a bit of a pause, she looks to see if anyone else is doing anything, then suggests, "Now perhaps we should all start heading down the hall to take a look at these other rooms?"
"Is that the ending? I confess, the labyrinthine intricacies of theology are not really my specialty, but the fate of Lord Kithran strikes me as rather... ominous. Before she dissolved into whatever peace your rendition of her song afforded her, the ghost of the elven ambassador alluded to it too - the dereliction of her beloved's duty. Are there not consequences for forsaking sacred oaths sworn before the gods in the stories?" Alisande muses, peering over Meira's shoulder as she completes her reading of the relevant passages of the journal. "I fear while the chapter of Lady Vyldara is closed, we have yet to so much as turn the page on the tale of Lord Kithran Emberforge."
Ozymandias shivers at his mistress' foreboding words, his big amber eyes gleaming in the dark.
She nods in agreement, before taking to her broom once more, gliding in the direction of the room she left several minutes earlier. "Let us move on."
"It is a bit jumbled,"Meiramuses after Alisande'scomments. "I perhaps glossed through it thinking in poetic terms. Sitting unmoving... only stares... I took for death. Surely Kithran succumbed to the plague as well?" She starts to follow along to the next room, hoping the rest will follow. "Given the undeath of the others though, I'd expect we'll run into him in some form. I doubt he will be happy we have broken into the place that he surrendered so much to seal off."
The previously scouted room by Alisande appears to be a guest room fit for royalty. However, most of the contents of this room has decayed with age and covered with dust and cobwebs. A stone bed-frame and moldy mattress still rest here. Nothing of note stands out to you as you explore this room.
Moving to the third room on this corridor, the group finds the remnants of a bathhouse. A stone-carved tub is filled with gnawed on bones.
Zephyros continues to cough as he struggles to expel the nasty mold spores from his lungs. However, gives Lyra a grateful nod of appreciation when her healing magic does the job. "Much better, thank you. Please forgive me for being the cause of expending your valuable powers." As Lyra wonders at the time of day, the battle hardened veteran thinks for a moment. "I suspect it's a bit past mid-day."
Ironheart listens as Meira reads Vyldara's tale. Sadness creeping into his features as the warrior empathizes over love lost. "Yes, let's continue this purge. I share your concerns regarding Lord Kithran. However, I don't profess to know the ways of the gods. Hopefully this paladin finally found some rest."
As the group explores the bathhouse, Zephyros uses the butt of his trident to move the bones around to inspect the tub closer.
"What a positively ghastly way to meet one's end." Alisande murmurs, the scene coalescing in her mind's eye. "Terrified dwarves gathered in the bath-house, beset by the reanimated dead who were once their neighbours, consumed alive, their very bones gnawed upon, right down to the marrow."
She sighs deeply, and shakes off the grim thoughts as her tressym familiar comforts her, nestling against her shoulders like a living shawl.
"Judging by the decor, this quarter of Axeholm appears to have been the preserve of the comfortable and the affluent. Curious then, that we have yet to happen upon their riches. Ozymandias spotted footprints earlier - it might have been ghouls... but I wonder if we really are the first to have walked these halls. Perhaps someone has had the run of the place before us."
The tall noblewoman joins Zephyros in studying the area for anything out of the ordinary. If nothing noteworthy is discovered, she leaves the bath-house and returns to the main corridor, where there appeared to be a door leading north.
Meirafollows, also pausing as Zephyrostakes a closer look at the tub filled with bones. "It is rather grim," she agrees. If nothing is found, she too will move along to where there was a door to the north.
"Oh no… that doesn't look good," Lyra murmurs as she steps up beside him. She pats Zephyros gently on the back, saying "Heal-heal, nice and quick. Lady Luck will do the trick" as though she were a mother caring for her ill son (just... one a bit bigger than she is). As she does so, a tiny spark dances at her fingertips: a clear sign that her playful goddess is working her magic. "Feel better now?" she asks softly.
Stepping back to give the veteran some room, the cleric says, "A warning! that was my last higher-level spell for the day. I'm going to need a rest before I can do that again. So... let's not get sick. Or poisoned. Or blinded. Or deafened… or paralyzed!" She says the last part with a light grin, trying to make a joke of it even though everyone knows Axeholm is full of dangers.
She glances around the gloomy chamber. "What time is it, anyway? It already feels like we've been down here for ages. Though… maybe it's only been half an hour," she sighs, sounding genuinely disappointed.
Peindre l'amour, peindre la vie, pleurer en couleur ♫
Auriel | Shenua | Arren | Lyra
Alisande,
Taking a look at the mold spores you recognize them as pretty standard yellow mold. A dangerous mold when inhaled or ingested. While it can be deadly, it's not contagious.
Rasziel,
You pick up the leatherbound book and move it to the corner of the room away from everyone. The book opens easily enough and nothing happens as you do. Moving the book closer to you, you see elvish writing on the pages. It seems the book has been preserved quite well under the bed.
Azazel stealthily moves up the chimney and strikes the stirge before it even knows the little accountant is there. The last stirge dies as the sting impales it causing the engorged body to burst, sending blood all over the nest, and running down the chimney.
Lyra,
Your divine magic immediately works on the bear of a man and Tymora's healing magic removes the poison from Zephyros' body.
You suspect it's late afternoon, just before evening.
Everyone,
As Rasziel recruits the help from the group in reading the book, it becomes clear this is Vyldara Moonglow's journal that recounts her journey to Axeholm and her time getting to know Lord Kithran and their unlikely romance between Moon Elf Ambassador and Dwarven Paladin of Bahamut. Her story is summarized below:
Long before the fall of Axeholm, when the fortress still rang with the song of hammers and the laughter of dwarves, there came a moon elf envoy named Vyldara Moonglow from the elven enclave of Evereska. Graceful and wise, she bore words of peace and trade from her kin, seeking to strengthen ties between elves and dwarves during an age when orcish warbands plagued the North.
Vyldara was unlike any who had walked the halls of Axeholm before—her presence a strange but welcome light among the dour dwarves. Many said her voice could charm the stone itself. She sang often in the Great Hall, her songs mingling with the ringing of the forges, and even the stoic King Durgeddin Stonefury was said to pause his work to listen. During this time, a Paladin of Bahamut named Lord Kithran grew to love Vyldara and she loved him back.
Yet, when the plague came, mercy and song could not prevail. As dwarves fell to the sickness one by one, Vyldara tended the dying, her healing magic spent in vain. The dwarves, fearing the contagion might spread beyond the mountain, made their grim decision: they sealed Axeholm. Lord Kithran himself using his divine magic to seal the gate and prevent anyone from leaving, both in this life, or the next.
Vydara pleaded with them to open the gates, to let her return to warn the nearby settlements—but the dwarves would not risk the living world. They barred her in, along with the sick and the dead. In the final days, Vyldara sang to the dying dwarves in the Hall of Kings, her voice trembling with grief as she watched her friends fade. Her last song—an elegy for those she loved—ended with her own death, her body lying among the fallen.
Below are the final excerpts from her journal:
1st of Uktar, Year of the Shattered Forge
The dwarves have closed the gates. The plague spreads faster than even my healing can soothe. Every cough echoes like a hammer strike in these halls — once alive with laughter, now filled with dread. I came to Axeholm in the name of peace, bearing Evereska’s promise of unity. I did not know I would become its final witness.
Lord Kithran still stands tall before his kin, though I see the fear behind his eyes. He believes the sickness is a curse — that Bahamut tests their faith. I tell him no god would be so cruel. He does not answer.
5th of Uktar
The first to accuse me was Thrain Embermantle. He said the plague came with my arrival — that the moon elves brought their “star-borne sickness” to punish the dwarves for digging too deep. Others joined his cry. Fear turns stout hearts to iron and suspicion. They gathered outside my chamber, shouting. Kithran faced them, hammer in hand, his voice shaking the hall.
“She is blameless! She tended your children when you hid from them!” He said...
The mob scattered then, but I saw hatred in their eyes. And sorrow in his.
7th of Uktar
Kithran came to me tonight. His hands trembled — not from sickness, but from choice. He said the dwarves had begged him to seal the fortress entirely. To contain the plague. To let none leave alive, or in death. I told him the living still mattered — that the world must be warned. He said only, “If the world knows, they will curse our memory.”
We wept together beneath the forges’ dying light. He kissed my brow and said, “I will not let them harm you, Vyldara.” I wish I had stopped him.
9th of Uktar
The night burned red.
I woke to screams — dwarves crying out in terror, not pain. Kithran had gone to them with his warhammer wreathed in fire. I saw him through the smoke, striking down his own kin as they begged him to stop. Each blow cracked the stones of the hall; each word he spoke was a prayer and a curse in one, “Bahamut, forgive me. I do this to spare them. I do this for her.”
He slew them all. The sick. The well. The fearful. The forges went cold. The hammers fell silent. When he came to me, his armor was black with ash and tears. He fell to his knees, his eyes hollow. “It’s done,” he whispered. “You are safe now.” But there was no safety left.
10th of Uktar
I can still smell the smoke. The air tastes of iron. The halls echo with silence. Kithran sits upon the throne, unmoving. His hammer rests across his knees. He does not pray. He does not sleep. He only stares.
I tried to speak to him — to tell him we could still make this right, but he turned to me with eyes like dying coals. “The gods have turned their faces from us. All that’s left is atonement.” He took my hand. His gauntlet was still warm from the forge. He said, “If I could burn the plague from this place, I would. Even if it burned me too.”
12th of Uktar
I write this with my last strength... The sickness took me after all. Perhaps the dwarves were right. Perhaps I did bring the plague. But not by malice — by love. Love that held me here when I should have fled. Love that damned the one who swore to protect me.
Kithran sits before the gates now, unmoving, as if waiting for judgment that will never come. I will go to him soon. I will sing him one last song before the dark takes me.
The last page of the journal is stained black — the ink running into the fibers like tears. Written faintly across the bottom, in a trembling hand:
“Stone and star, my love remains… Forgive him. He did not fall, he followed love..."
DM for Tyranny of Dragons and Phandelver and Below, two in-person campaigns that meet weekly on Friday and Saturday nights. DM for Dragons of Icespire Peak Pbp
Meira had been about to reply to Alisande's question when the journal was being inspected, and the tale begun to be discussed. She came over to look at the elvish words in the book. Soon other thoughts are forgotten. In a soft voice, she translates the passages into Common. She stays quiet, her focus shifted to the words of the book. As she completes the end of the tale, she sighs. "I suppose we knew the ending but it's still sad to hear the story told."
After a bit of a pause, she looks to see if anyone else is doing anything, then suggests, "Now perhaps we should all start heading down the hall to take a look at these other rooms?"
Rabbit Sebrica, Sorcerer || Skarai, Monk || Lokilia Vaelphin, Druid || Britari / Halila Talgeta / Jesa Gumovi || Neital Rhessil, Wizard || Iromae Quinaea, Cleric
Meira Dheran, Rogue || Qirynna Thadri, Wizard || Crisaryn Melkial, Sorcerer || Bronnryn Hethgar, Cleric
"Is that the ending? I confess, the labyrinthine intricacies of theology are not really my specialty, but the fate of Lord Kithran strikes me as rather... ominous. Before she dissolved into whatever peace your rendition of her song afforded her, the ghost of the elven ambassador alluded to it too - the dereliction of her beloved's duty. Are there not consequences for forsaking sacred oaths sworn before the gods in the stories?" Alisande muses, peering over Meira's shoulder as she completes her reading of the relevant passages of the journal. "I fear while the chapter of Lady Vyldara is closed, we have yet to so much as turn the page on the tale of Lord Kithran Emberforge."
Ozymandias shivers at his mistress' foreboding words, his big amber eyes gleaming in the dark.
She nods in agreement, before taking to her broom once more, gliding in the direction of the room she left several minutes earlier. "Let us move on."
"It is a bit jumbled," Meira muses after Alisande's comments. "I perhaps glossed through it thinking in poetic terms. Sitting unmoving... only stares... I took for death. Surely Kithran succumbed to the plague as well?" She starts to follow along to the next room, hoping the rest will follow. "Given the undeath of the others though, I'd expect we'll run into him in some form. I doubt he will be happy we have broken into the place that he surrendered so much to seal off."
Rabbit Sebrica, Sorcerer || Skarai, Monk || Lokilia Vaelphin, Druid || Britari / Halila Talgeta / Jesa Gumovi || Neital Rhessil, Wizard || Iromae Quinaea, Cleric
Meira Dheran, Rogue || Qirynna Thadri, Wizard || Crisaryn Melkial, Sorcerer || Bronnryn Hethgar, Cleric
Everyone,
The previously scouted room by Alisande appears to be a guest room fit for royalty. However, most of the contents of this room has decayed with age and covered with dust and cobwebs. A stone bed-frame and moldy mattress still rest here. Nothing of note stands out to you as you explore this room.
Moving to the third room on this corridor, the group finds the remnants of a bathhouse. A stone-carved tub is filled with gnawed on bones.
DM for Tyranny of Dragons and Phandelver and Below, two in-person campaigns that meet weekly on Friday and Saturday nights. DM for Dragons of Icespire Peak Pbp
(OOC: Constitution save: Nat 1)
Zephyros continues to cough as he struggles to expel the nasty mold spores from his lungs. However, gives Lyra a grateful nod of appreciation when her healing magic does the job. "Much better, thank you. Please forgive me for being the cause of expending your valuable powers." As Lyra wonders at the time of day, the battle hardened veteran thinks for a moment. "I suspect it's a bit past mid-day."
Ironheart listens as Meira reads Vyldara's tale. Sadness creeping into his features as the warrior empathizes over love lost. "Yes, let's continue this purge. I share your concerns regarding Lord Kithran. However, I don't profess to know the ways of the gods. Hopefully this paladin finally found some rest."
As the group explores the bathhouse, Zephyros uses the butt of his trident to move the bones around to inspect the tub closer.
Perception: 14
Investigation: 20
"What a positively ghastly way to meet one's end." Alisande murmurs, the scene coalescing in her mind's eye. "Terrified dwarves gathered in the bath-house, beset by the reanimated dead who were once their neighbours, consumed alive, their very bones gnawed upon, right down to the marrow."
She sighs deeply, and shakes off the grim thoughts as her tressym familiar comforts her, nestling against her shoulders like a living shawl.
"Judging by the decor, this quarter of Axeholm appears to have been the preserve of the comfortable and the affluent. Curious then, that we have yet to happen upon their riches. Ozymandias spotted footprints earlier - it might have been ghouls... but I wonder if we really are the first to have walked these halls. Perhaps someone has had the run of the place before us."
The tall noblewoman joins Zephyros in studying the area for anything out of the ordinary. If nothing noteworthy is discovered, she leaves the bath-house and returns to the main corridor, where there appeared to be a door leading north.
Perception: 12
Meira follows, also pausing as Zephyros takes a closer look at the tub filled with bones. "It is rather grim," she agrees. If nothing is found, she too will move along to where there was a door to the north.
Rabbit Sebrica, Sorcerer || Skarai, Monk || Lokilia Vaelphin, Druid || Britari / Halila Talgeta / Jesa Gumovi || Neital Rhessil, Wizard || Iromae Quinaea, Cleric
Meira Dheran, Rogue || Qirynna Thadri, Wizard || Crisaryn Melkial, Sorcerer || Bronnryn Hethgar, Cleric