The Lost City of Chael Rekshaar
[WARNING: This column contains spoilers for the D&D adventure “Deep Horizon.”]
The demon-god Laogzed the Devourer was destroyed, but the Devourer's death-curse lingered. Duran Fortnite, who had struck the final blow against the vile creature, had lost his divine link to Altius Highfather. Even the weakest magics once available to the cleric were beyond his reach.
But hope remained. The planetar Gaeriele had bestowed upon Duran a holy quest, which once completed would restore his divine powers. All the cleric and his fellow heroes of Blackmere had to do was recover the Three Thuribles of Justice, holy relics of the Altian faith lost for the better part of a thousand years, from the legendary city of Chael Rekshaar.
Of course, first they had to find the lost city itself, as no living being was known to have visited it for millennia.
Thankfully, the heroes had plenty of resources to tap for information. Alarion and Duran combed through church records for any mentions of the fabled metropolis. Eandrynn consulted with elven sages, while Thorgrimm spoke with dwarven lorekeepers. Adarrial Smythe drew upon his network of contacts and his own powers of bardic knowledge. And the loremaster Stannis Alensin worked with his mentor, the sage Granius, and the rest of his fellow Scrollkeepers to search out any scrap of information that might prove useful.
After weeks of long research, the heroes pieced together a basic understanding of the city. According to legend, Chael Rekshaar was a magical place, founded by a group of pale elves who had retreated from the surface world after the War of Blood. There, the elves continued their corrupt practices, consorting with foul creatures of the Underdark, demons of the Abyss, and worse. The city became a center for evil power to congregate, spreading corruption far and wide. Some tales hinted that the pale elves even corrupted their very bodies, consorting with fiendish spiderlike beings sent by their dark goddess, Lolth.
Then, all mention of the city disappeared from record, as if it had been wiped off the face of the earth overnight. There was no record of exodus--the city simply seemed to cease to exist.
That is, except for a solitary reference in a set of journals recovered from Nightfang Spire by the heroes months earlier. In these journals, the vampire-sorcerer Gulthias, himself a pale elf from those same ancient days, wrote:
No sooner do I solve one problem than another arises. My South Catacomb is infested with subterranean beasts. Though they pose no threat to my plans—they seem content to remain in their dank caves—I do detest their warmth and life. When the time comes, they shall prove suitable converts to the cause. I suppose I must appreciate the irony that what was once the path of retreat for my long-dead fellows now serves as a path to the surface. If I have the time, perhaps I should visit Chael Rekshaar to seek out additional allies.
The road to Chael Rekshaar was revealed! Though the heroes could only guess how long they would have to delve into the Underdark, they now had a starting point. Equipping themselves for a long journey, the heroes of Blackmere set out in full force. After all, they could not sit idly by while their comrade was in need.
Nearly four weeks later, with the sun but a memory, the adventurers arrived at the vast cavern holding the lost city of Chael Rekshaar. But where was the city? The floor of the cavern, a hundred feet below the tunnel entrance, was bare stone!
Closer inspection revealed the floor to be cracked and fissured. Thorgrimm's stonecunning confirmed the rock to be hardened lava. Could this explain the city's mysterious disappearance from history? A sudden geological catastrophe might well be the cause of Chael Rekshaar's downfall. But if that were true, how on earth could the heroes locate the missing thuribles beneath untold millions of tons of solid rock?
Poking up through the floor here and there were spires--no doubt the tops of tall towers that had survived the flood of magma, only to be buried almost to their very peaks. Realizing that they would need a base from which to explore the cavern, the heroes approached one of these towers, only to find it already occupied...by a curious illithid, no less!
Parleying with the alien creature, the heroes learned that an excavation of the city was already underway. The mind flayer told them of a trio of beholders who led a group of ogres and trolls and a collection of slaves, who together were hard at work unearthing the main temple of Chael Rekshaar, near the cavern's center. The illithid believed that the creatures sought items of great power, perhaps even the very thuribles the heroes came for.
With this new information in hand, the heroes made a series of assaults on the work site over the next several days. Each time, they penetrated deeper into the beholders' defenses, falling back to their base of operations. Eventually, the beholders took the offensive, sending patrols of highly trained ogre and troll warriors to track down the heroes. But the determination of the heroes could not be quenched, and eventually all three beholders were defeated and the temple's defenders routed.
Finally, the heroes descended into the watery depths of the temple. Apparently fed by some underground stream, the entire lower level of the complex was flooded. Worse yet, the area was controlled by an enormous aboleth and several ogre-sized skum servants. Together, the heroes proved victorious once again, destroying the horrible aboleth and its servants. Hidden away in the creature's lair, the heroes found an adamantine incense burner bearing the symbol of an eye in a cloud: the Thurible of Divining!
After returning the relic to the Church of Blackmere, the heroes returned to Chael Rekshaar via teleportation magic to finish their exploration. To their surprise, they found that the illithid had taken control of the remaining slaves, using them to sate his hunger. Disgusted, the heroes slew the mind flayer and freed the remaining humanoid captives before exploring the rest of the temple. The only denizens left proved to be a group of salamanders and a fire elemental operating a makeshift forge.
The elemental told the heroes that he had been sent here by a powerful being named Helkitrik, who had traded the services of the elemental and salamanders in exchange for a powerful magic item that the beholders had uncovered in their work. The elemental also hinted that Helkitrik himself was somehow responsible for the rediscovery of Chael Rekshaar, insisting that mere months earlier, the entire area had been a lake of molten rock.
The elemental's words triggered a thought: If someone or something had recently been tampering with geological forces in the region, could that also be responsible for the quakes and eruptions north of Helmsport? Perhaps those events weren't omens, as many citizens feared, but the result of unnatural tampering with the earth itself! Coupled with the circumstantial evidence that Helkitrik might now be in possession of one of the thuribles, the heroes knew that they had to follow that lead.
But another clue presented itself as well. Beran, the group's tracker, discovered a faint trail that led away from the excavation toward the cavern wall. These were the tracks of ogres or trolls, but of a large spiderlike creature. Clearly, the beholders' forces weren't the only denizens of the lost city. If the aboleth had held one thurible, and Helkitrik another, could the third have been spirited away by these creatures? And could these spiderlike beings be connected to the former masters of Chael Rekshaar?
Time could not be wasted. Helkitrik's meddling might result in even greater disruption of the geological stability of the region, but a thurible in the hands of the descendants of the corrupted pale elves might be even more dangerous. There was only one way to handle both tasks simultaneously.
They would have to split the party.
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