Seeking Nightfang Spire

With the final loose end from the Ossington debacle finally tied up—at least for the present—the heroes of Helmsport returned to the mystery of the dragon cult, and the ancient temple (or tomb) known as Nightfang Spire. Despite two near-encounters with representatives of the dragon cult—one at a Scarlet Sails slave processing station, the other while on the trail of a now-dead paladin—the heroes still knew very little of the organization.

An investigation of the Sunless Citadel—a former base of operations for the Cult of Ashardalon, an arm of the dragon cult—turned up no new leads, but did uncover the fact that others had visited the Citadel in recent months: visitors in lacquered scale armor and bearing ornate scimitars…just like the dragon cultists spotted before. The heroes lamented the disappearance of Seth McCullin, their resident dragon expert, along with a tome recovered from the Citadel entitled Draco Mystere (“Mysteries of the Dragon”). According to sages consulted in Helmsport, this book likely contained much useful information about the dragon cult.

The characters had only one lead: the letter recovered from the lair of the half-demon medusa, Vithis, which noted that her sister, Kalivilya, was infiltrating the dragon cult based in Beloyannis, a large city to the south of Helmsport.

Thus, on the morning of January 20th, 1000 Blackmere Reckoning, our heroes (and a wyrmling dragon) stepped off a ship in Beloyannis. Thanks to their contacts among sages and loremasters, Adarrial and Stannis were able to make the acquaintance of a local historian named Sotiris, himself a former adventurer of some small repute. The gregarious sage was happy to help the characters, pointing out a few places to begin their search for cultists. The dragon cult enjoyed some grassroots support in Beloyannis, teaching of personal empowerment and dedication to a greater cause. No one suspected the cult’s allegiance to the powers of evil.

Thanks to his powers of disguise and deception, Adarrial was able easily to convince Xenophon, a cult recruiter, that he was interested in joining. To further gain his confidence, Adarrial shared the captured letter with the recruiter, who promised to deliver it to Skotatis, the cult’s leader in Beloyannis. With only a bit more work, the characters learned the location of the cult’s main temple, as well as vague information about the cult’s headquarters, a place called Nightfang Spire, supposedly guarded by a white dragon.

After assembling a powerful fighting force that included Alarion, Duran, Thomas, Stannis, Thorgrimm, and Jarvis, Adarrial led the heroes to the hidden temple. Once inside, the heroes wasted no time in taking the battle to their foes. As expected, the seemingly unified cult quickly split into two factions, one fighting alongside cult leader Skotatis, the other—primarily composed of pureblood yuan-ti infiltrators—taking up the cause of Kalivilya. The characters fought many tough opponents, including draconian humanoids and even a draconic vampire-spawn, but ultimately prevailed.

As luck would have it, Skotatis also possessed a copy of Draco Mystere. Between Stannis’s perusal of the tome and Adarrial’s information gathering in Beloyannis, the heroes soon pieced together both the exact location of Nightfang Spire as well as its current ruler.

Neither piece of information was to their liking, however. Not only was Nightfang Spire clearly within the boundaries of the forest kingdom of Brithonen—making any journey to it a potential act of war—but worse yet, the lord of that tower was none other than the vampire sorcerer Gulthias, returned to unlife. Staked to the earth centuries earlier in the bowels of the Sunless Citadel, the vampire Gulthias’s unholy corpse gave rise to the vile plant known as the Gulthias Tree, which until recently was protected and studied by the evil druid Belak. Recently, that is, until Belak was slain and the tree burned to the ground by a group of young heroes from Great Rock.

With the knowledge that they were responsible for the return of Gulthias to the world, and that the blood spilled by the cult’s evil activities was on their hands, the heroes’ resolve became even stronger. They would travel to Nightfang Spire, regardless of where it stood. They would find the vampire Gulthias and destroy him again, but this time for good.

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Next: Into Nightfang Spire