The Albatross Company must face Iymrith within the deadly confines of the dragon’s own lair, deep beneath the sands of the Anauroch Desert, and recover the Korolnor Scepter which is the key to restoring King Hekaton to the throne and stopping the onslaught of the giants across the lands.
Player Characters: Adrik, Casaba, Gregory, Kane, Sister Mary
1.
The Albatross Company descended into the cavernous depths beneath the ruined amphitheater in the Anauroch Desert, leaving Augrek Brighthelm to stand guard on the surface.
All around them was darkness, and their eyes could not find the ends of the immense chamber in which they stood. The shadows were occasionally pierced by sunlight reflecting off an immense decorative pillar or a thin sandfall trickling down from the ceiling.
It seemed to Gregory that these pillars were indeed originally of dwarven construction, just as the storm giants had said. But much about the place had been changed and altered by new inhabitants. The dwarven designs were covered with etchings of serpentine runes and foul pictograms. Gregory did not like what he saw, for it was the stuff of nightmares.
The grotesque graffiti was made all the more disturbing by the strange chanting that issued from one end of the chamber. By the sound of these echoes, the heroes guessed that a further chamber lied in that direction, but whether the voices were those of friends or foes they could not guess. Perhaps it might even be a trap prepared by the blue dragon Iymrith. Whatever it might be, they were not ready to seek out their enemy just yet. The heroes decided to explore the dungeon first to get a better understanding of the dragon’s lair.
They soon realized that the chamber was not endless. All around them the walls of the vast hall were honeycombed with innumerable passages. They took one smaller passage, hoping it would lead them by secret ways toward their enemy in a direction she may not anticipate. But it was too much to hope for. Iymrith saw and heard all that transpired within her lair. Her cold voice echoed all around them like a dread wind howling through an endless tunnel.
“You mortals have come a long way to seek out your graves in the sand.”
Kane, who was leading the party through the dark tunnel, saw the sand
trickling down from the ceiling just before it collapsed. He had just enough time to shout a warning and leap forward. Casaba and Gregory leaped after him and narrowly avoided being buried beneath the sand. Though they had survived the sandfall, they were separated from Adrik and Sister Mary who were on the other side of the wall of sand and debris.
“We must find another way through!” Adrik exclaimed.
2.
For Kane, Casaba and Gregory, the chanting that they had heard grew louder until the murmur had become audible speech in a language they did not know. At last, they came to the end of the passage which opened into another great hall. In this chamber, there was a large hideous statue of a snake that had been brought into this dungeon, standing before a bottomless pit in the earth. It was attended by a group of yuan-ti who looked like priests or mystics bearing torches. They were the source of the chanting, which appeared to be some sort of ritual.
Some of the yuan-ti had the heads of snakes, or twin serpents where their arms ought to have been. With them, there were those who appeared to be human, but the glint of the torchlight showed serpentine eyes and thin forked tongues flashing between their lips, revealing them to be yuan-ti purebloods – those who had not yet undergone the full transformation into an abomination of nature.
Abruptly, one of the purebloods leaped into the gaping pit. How deep it was, one could only guess, but no sound issues from it to signal its depth.
Whatever dark god the yuan-ti served must have been pleased by the sacrifice. For a terrible voice began to whisper in the minds of all those who were present. Gregory and Casaba did not understand these dark utterings, nor did they wish to comprehend them. However, Kane recognized a few word that resembled the foul language of the devils. And what little he understood, Kane did not like to hear. For the whispers were spoken in the language of the demons of the Abyss, the eternal rivals of the devils of the Nine Hells.
“Ruin… Thunder… Death…”
It came into Kane and Casaba’s mind to approach the yuan-ti and discover the purpose of their ritual. Gregory was not happy to see these monsters defiling the dwarven ruins, but without Adrik and Sister Mary, he and his companions were sorely outnumbered. His journey had taught him that caution was often the better part of valor.
Much to their surprise, the heroes learned that the yuan-ti were servants of Iymrith but had no love for her. The wyrm had brought them to her lair against their will to perform a ritual that would grant them the power to divine the future and predict her ultimate fate. They had just completed the ritual and received a cryptic message from their dark deity, Dendar the Night Serpent, the Devourer of Nightmares.
In that moment, the voice of the wyrm rang out from the shadows, commanding the yuan-ti to reveal what they had learned.
In truth, the prophecy predicted Iymrith’s own demise at the hands of noble adventurers. Being emboldened by the presence of the adventurers who they guessed were the ones foretold of in the omen, the yuan-ti translated the words of Dendar, the Eater of the World, singing a dark verse in words that all could hear and comprehend.
Wrack and ruin, flash and thunder,
Let them claim the dragon’s plunder;
Death is close! Her doom has come!
To blade and spell she will succumb.
3.
The dragon Iymrith was enraged. All around the heroes, currents of electricity flowed from wall to wall, striking them with bolts of lightning. Parts of the ceiling began to collapse around them, threatening to bury the adventurers and yuan-ti alive. Through the darkness, the heroes faintly heard the faraway shouts of Augrek Brighthelm echoing through the halls.
“A storm is brewing out here! It looks like a big one!”
Iymrith’s power extended to the very land and even unto the skies above the desert. She was a mighty dragon indeed, and terrible to behold in her wrath.
“Behold, I am Iymrith, the Doom of the Desert! Do you mortals not yet comprehend my power?”
“The only doom you will find here is your own!” shouted Adrik and Sister Mary. They had found another passage leading to the yuan-ti chamber and now stood side by side with their companions.
Emerging from the stone wall of the chamber, the ancient dragon Iymrith appeared before them in all her fearsome majesty. And so began the battle between the Albatross Company and the blue dragon Iymrith, which would become the matter of song and legend.
4.
From the dragon’s gaping maws, there came forth a storm of thunder and lightning that blasted her enemies. Several of the heroes and the yuan-ti fell in the fearsome blast, and some fled in terror in the face of the dragon’s fury. Yet the survivors of the initial onslaught held the dragon at bay and restored those who had fallen with their potions of healing.
The Albatross Company, bolstered and inspired to courage by Casaba’s music, fought back with a furious reprisal. Kane smote her with his fiendish fists, and Gregory, transformed by Adrik’s wondrous song into the shape of a gargantuan ape, wrestled with the ancient wyrm. Then at last, seeing her chance when Iymrith had been weakened, Sister Mary released the force of the tempest upon her and dealt the final fatal blow to the ancient dragon.
“This… cannot… be… I am… Iymrith…”
The immense, broken body of the wyrm crumpled to the ground. The ancient blue dragon, whose plots and schemes had brought so much woe unto the world, was no more.
The Yuan-ti, being free of their bonds, quietly slithered away and vanished into the shadows.
But victory was not yet at hand. With her final breath, Iymrith let out a sinister laugh and taunted the heroes before the darkness claimed her.
“The fools who seek to plunder my treasure… will find only death…”
Upon the death of the dragon, the ceiling of her lair began to collapse. Once more, Augrek shouted at the heroes from above ground. Her voice was full of urgency and terror.
“Hurry, my friends! The ruins are crumbling and the entrance is closing! There is not much time!”
5.
The heroes rushed headlong into the darkness, hoping against hope that they might stumble upon Iymrith’s hidden treasure and find the Korolnor Scepter which held the power of the Wyrmskull Throne.
In the darkness, they saw the glint of an immense mound of gold and jewelry. Adrik’s eyes grew wide when he saw that there were ancient relics from the lost civilization of Netheril among the hoard. Six grand sarcophaguses of Netherese priests and rulers were among the countless treasures, each emanating with a magical aura. One by one, the heroes lifted the lids from each sarchophagus, revealing magical relics from the golden age of Netheril. But the Korolnor Scepter was nowhere to be seen until finally there were only two sarcophaguses remaining. In one, the scepter was held within! But in the other, there was a foul stench of death and decay, and a grim hand wrapped in ancient linens and glittering with gem encrusted jewelry reached out from the confines of the tomb.
It was a mummy lord, preserved from the lost age of Netheril! And all around the heroes, the gold and gems rose up and formed a terrible whirlwind of sharp coins and precious stones.
Iymrith had not made an idle threat when she said plunderers of her hoard would find only death. The heroes were under attack from the very treasure that they had sought!
Thus did the Albatross Company wage the final battle for their very survival, against a dreadful whirlwind of coin golds and the curse of the Netherese mummy lord. Summoning the last ounce of their strength, the heroes fought back the terrors of the dungeon. Adrik, summoning the last of his magical power, transformed himself into a gargantuan prehistoric reptile and transported his companions to safety.
As the walls of sand and debris fell upon them, the heroes found the last chamber where the ceiling had opened and sunlight streamed in from the surface. But the heroes saw to their dismay that the exit was above a vast pit filled with a swarming mass of purple wormlings. As the sand filled in the pit, the wormlings began crawling out towards the heroes.
“How cute! I want one!” Kane shouted gleefully as he threw himself upon the writhing mass of wormlings. The hideous creatures swarmed all over him and nearly drained him of the last of his blood. He would have been utterly consumed had his companions not wrenched him free from the pit of monsters.
Yet being spent and utterly exhausted, they too would have been doomed, if not for Augrek Brighthelm. The young dwarf cast a rope down from the surface, allowing the heroes to climb to safety. Just as the last of them scrambled to the surface, the opening closed as the sandfall filled in the subterranean caverns. All around them, the ruins of the amphitheater crumbled and fell into the sand. Soon, all that remained of the once grand amphitheater were the forbidding dunes of the Anauroch Desert.
6.
In the distance, the heroes saw King Hekaton fighting desperately against his treacherous daughters and their minions. Swiftly, they rushed to his aide and stood by his side, presenting him with the Korolnor Scepter. At the sight of the scepter in the hands of the storm giant king, the storm giant guardians serving Mirran and Nym laid down their arms, kneeling before their one true king. The princesses, left with no one by their side, were forced to surrender.
And so King Hekaton returned to Maelstrom with the Albatross Company by his side. Together, they had defeated the ancient blue dragon Iymrith and avenged the house of Hekaton for the crimes perpetrated against it. Princess Serissa was freed from the Wyrmskull Throne, and King Hekaton sat once more upon his throne. Summoning his giant lords before him, he commanded a halt to their depredations upon the small folk. Duke Zalto was forced to free King Bruenor Battlehammer, who returned to his people. Though he did not have the glory in battle that he had sought, Bruenor had nonetheless challenged a mighty giant lord and survived his ordeal in the prisons of Ironslag with honor.
Their long quest now completed, the heroes of the company each went their separate ways. Some returned to their homelands to continue on their paths as heroes of the land. Some retired to the taverns and mead halls to sing of their exploits to crowded rooms filled with listeners. Some repented for their misdeeds upon the road and set out on new journeys of redemption and atonement. As word of their deeds spread throughout the realm, they were each remembered across the Sword Coast as having once been a member of that legendary party known as the Albatross Company.
The End
Adventure Name
Storm King’s Thunder
Chapter 12. Doom of the Desert
Session #13
Rewards
4 Achievement Points
4 Treasure Points
10 Downtime Days
1 Renown
Level-Up Gold
Level gained: 2nd-4th – 75 gp
Level gained: 5th-10th – 150 gp