With the echoes of the hounds dying away, the group decides that haste makes the most sense so they beat fleet feet across the courtyard and through a wooden door into the round tower that makes up a part of the curtain wall surrounding the hilltop. There they find signs of inhabitation – a lot of doors and a set of stairs leading down. They scurry down the stairs and into the basements of the tower, Immediately they encounter a huge ogre and a pair of souped-up undead that are moving boxes. The group attacks with the element of surprise.

Dalliance uses her Undeath to Death to quell the onrushing undead while Lubbitch, Reza, Bud and Barada battle with the ogre. The foe is fearsome and deals savage wounds to the attackers, but after a few tens of seconds the ogre is slain...

In the aftermath the group spends a few moments preparing, opening the tomb of the spirit of magic and descending the stairs. At the bottom is a plain room, a coffin and a swirling ball of red chaos. It is all eyes and mouths and grasping arms and swirling madness. It is also apparently immune to all magics. Luckily, Reza is carrying the long lance taken from the fallen bat-rat-toad rider. He stands well away from the creature and pokes it repeatedly until it vanishes. When the creature fades away, a shimmering radiance coalesces into a silvery form of a woman. She kisses each party member and delivers some information regarding the unraveling strands of magic and a likely target for the party to engage in their quest to free the dale.

The party rides quickly away from the area, returning ...

After some High Level discussions with the Lords of Waterdeep the group decides to undertake a mission of infiltration and resistance into the Dalelands, to combat the rising influence of the Zhentarim whom are now apparently allied with Drow. Journeying through the less traveled desert roads reduces the chances for encounters, but also means that the group hears almost no news of the happenings in the Dales. Ignorance is often better than bliss, for the group is unburdened by information and is thus free to do whatever seems best at the time.

Entering from the high desert, it is only a matter of days before the wanderers happen across a scene of destruction. A small village has been sacked by a pair od (competing/allied) mercenary groups...

After awakening in the ‘control room’, the party is afflicted by an insidious drain of abilities. Every hour spent within the mine leeches a point from the primary attribute of the character. A full day of rest is required to restore each point lost. However, Dalliance bends time to her will and causes each hour to pass as six. Within a trio of days the party is refreshed and ready to return to the control room.
There Barada discovers other traps are yet unleashed and the controls for said traps are here. The controls to raise and lower the elevator platforms are likewise found within, as well as ‘seeing tubes’ that allow the viewer to see the view from the ceiling in each monitored area...

Flush with cash, the group spends a brace of years to train Dalliance, instill Barada and Dalliance as the latest two members of the Lords of Waterdeep. Bud visits his hobbit community. Lubbitch and Thad of Thudheim spend time training, while Reza acts as Dalliance’s personal bodyguard while in Waterdeep.

Evil seems to be laying low, and eventually the group gets ready enough to go visit the beholder-guarded dwarven gem mine. Once found, it seems like it is long-abandoned. The party already knows it is stuffed chock-full of traps. Once the main mine doors are opened, it is one trap after another: explosives, spears, steel posts, pit traps, glyphs and the like. After a say or so, the group is three-quarters of the way around a main loop when an illusory wall is detected.
Beyond the wall, m...