session XXIX & XXX - the flaming colossus

With the assumption that Imix's appearance is imminent, the party decides to go on the offensive in order to fight him on their own terms. 

They use the passphrase collected from Vanifer's quarter to activate the platform in the shaft which moves downwards. As the platform starts its descent, they hear fires being extinguished from above and the forge room gets filled with water vapor. 

The natural walls of the shaft eventually widen near its base. Heat and light radiate from a bubbling lake of lava that covers most of the floor. A passage made of stones jutting out of the magma leads to a cavern opening where a man stands, questioning the party's purpose in being here. 

Tico readily jumps on the first stone attempting to get in range for a magical mind read. As soon as he does, the cultist activates a lever which causes the passage to submerge. Luckily, Trash leaps forward and, with his flying boots, manage to hold on to his sorcerous friend. 

It takes little time for the cultists to start attacking, quickly realising the party is no ally. With Elthas and Kella leaping around walls and teleporting mid-air, Halvarth riding its mighty flying steed and Trash bringing Tico in firing range. 

While the party rests, Elthas scouts forward on a causeway that narrowly hugs a wall, surrounding another basin of hissing and roiling magma. Finding no obvious exists to this chamber, he takes a moment to investigate as a Roper made of molten lava springs out of the pools, his tendrils flailing about as he latches on to the elf and pulls him in. 

Thrashing about, he narrowly avoids being eaten by the monster, planting his feed on either side of its gaping mouth as his skin starts to bubble under the deadly heat of the lava. After what appears like an eternity, he finally manages to wriggle free from the Roper's grasp and rejoins the party.

Investigating a safer area, the party finds a secret door that opens on a steep passage leading up to a convex floor. Scouting ahead, Trash finds a room filled poisonous gas, surrounded by scores of humanoid skull, most of them scorched and charred, stuffed into the niches in the wall. Many of them burn with flames of varying colors, casting the entire chamber in a bizarre light. The half orc spots a lever on the eastern wall that, once activated, temporarily opens a vent in the center of the ceiling from which natural air currents draw the fumes out of the chamber. After jamming the lever into place, the rest of the party follows through. 

An alcove in the north wall hosts a narrow shaft leading down from which intense heat and light radiates. Making its way down, Trash recognizes the source of the heat as a persistent Wall of Flames spell that he manages to dispel. Behind it, an heteroclite group of prisoners look weary. He convinces them of his good intentions and invites them to follow him back up where the rest of the party is impatiently waiting.    

As soon as the prisonners enter the room, before any meaningful questions could be asked, four of the skulls animate and launch fireballs at the group. Three of their prisonners drop dead almost instantly, completely charred and the fourth one is badly injured. 

Luckily our heroes manage to save the last one who presents herself as Teresiel, a druid who was convinced by Elizar to join the cult through the wicker giant ritual. She says having wanting to leave as soon as she realised how evil this place was but was thrown in this makeshift prison before she could make an escape. 

The party convinces her to join as the adventurers push forwards towards what Elthas identified as a portal to another plane. Another encounter with the roper leaves its burning marks on Kella, Trash and Elthas once more, before they come face to face with more cultist accompanying a flaming myrmidon. 

Leaving a trail of dead bodies behind them, the party finally enters a titanic cavern filled with a lake of gently undulating magma. The rough, uneven causeway they walk on, leads out into the middle, to a point where two crooked pillars jut up on either side of a great altar on which they see Imix, the Elemental Prince of Fire. Just beyond him, a gargantuan stone colossus rises from the lava to its waist, its head thrown back as if in agony. Tears of lava stream down its face and lava wells from its gaping mouth. Above the colossus's head hovers a great orb of fire and light - a miniature sun with motes of fire swirling around it.

Their nemesis appears rather calm and collected. He invites the adventurers to come close as they pass a young red dragon lazily resting on a rock island. Imix offers a truce, even goes as far as a partnership in opposition to the water cultists. Through a scrying spell, he shows water cultists bringing a devastation orb towards an intact village where thousands of lives could be lost, further strenghtening is watery brother. 

The party is having none of it and Kella swings for the stars. Imix seems more annoyed than suprised and turns himself into a roaring fiery whirlwind. Pretentious and angry, he pulls chunks of his own body spawning fire elementals on the battlefield. 

Halvarth traps the dragon in a wall of force while Tico banishes elementals as they spawn. Kella and Trash fight the prince valiantly but get swallowed in its enormous body and feel their skin burning away as time passes. Elthas lets loose volleys of arrows at every enemy in sight. Imix's new protégé, Bastien soon goes down, followed by the dragon. Imix, loosing patience, teleports towards the casters hidden away in the alcove. 

It is only when Trash pulls out Tinderstrike that Imix seems to lose all reason and beelines for it. Enraged and out of himself, a litteral fire storm engulfs Halvarth as the prince rushes by, knocking out the Eladrin Bard who falls down into the lava, slowly sinking as his life force is being burned away.

"GIVE THAT TO ME!" - he the elemental yells. "I Will be the one to spawn the elder and I will make your tortured soul watch as he devours this plane!"

After a long, hard fought battle, Elthas finally manages to land the final blow while wielding Tinderstrike. Imix bursts away in a violent explosion of heat and fire as Elthas feels immense power being sucked and held into the dagger.

Kella rushes forward, plunges her arm into the molten rocks to pull Halvarth's inert body to safety. As she does, she notices a naked Vanifer, kneeling with her head down, breathing slowly. The dwarf, devastated by the death of her friend and angry at all this nonsense, instinctively gets a hold of Orcsplitter and violently lodges it in the tiefling's exposed back.

While Trash hurries up to Halvarth's remains to perform the revification ritual, Elthas prevents Kella from doing more damage and makes sure Vanifer does not succumb to her wounds. With no lost love for the former leader of the Eternal Flames Cult, the horizon walker wants to question her. 

They drag her unconscious body out of danger and manage to wake her up. Thanks to Tico's magic, she is truthful and cooperative throughout the interrogation. The adventurers learn that she had no love for Imix. She qualifies him as an habitual lyer and manipulator, scheming and plotting always to his own benefit and despite the consequences for any others, even his own allies. Having been used and abused her entire life by the rich and powerful and being on the run with a price on her head, she eagerly accepted when a short stubby figure offered her power and riches, bringing her to this place and granting her Tinderstrike. Having had a change of heart at the realisation that Imix would be her downfall, under the counsel of Nalaskur, she tried bargaining with the heroes but they wouldn't hear her. 

The conversation leads to the underdark denizens and, although she does not know all the details, she knows they are protecting an ancient artifact in what they call the Fane of The Eye and every cult was instructed to provide ressources to them. 

Bargaining for her freedom, Vanifer promises useful information were our heroes to accompany her to the surface and let her leave in peace. Exiting Tyar Besil at the Scarlet Moon Hall's lower level, she reveals that all cults are competing against one another. Although some alliances have formed and others tolerated, fundamentally the princes have devised a way into the material plane through their respective weapons where one of them will come out victorious in summoning some elder entity to this plane. The cults are harvesting souls from the surrounding villages and population as a means to strengthen the bonds for their respective avatars to the material plane. Whenever the wielder of an elemental weapon dies, it turns their body into a vassal for its prince. 

Satisfied with her testimony, Halvarth grants her a handful of gold coins and they all watch her walk off into the sunset, knowing full well, to her own accord, that Vanifer will always be out for herself, incapable of trusting or caring for any other being.