THE HEART OF NIGHFANG SPIRE

DECEMBER 14, 2002 – FEBRUARY 8, 2003

After Rana Mor we part ways with the cowardly Devin Nightsoul and meet a fighter looking to mount an expedition to the temple. Gwynn agrees to change his plan and come with us to Forgotten Realms.

The voyage to Evermeet, home of the elves and our patron, Queen Amlaruil takes over two months. She orders us to the town of Drylake in the unclaimed territory between the Sword Coast and Cormyr. An evil radiating from Nightfang Spire threatens to ruin the diplomatic ties she has made with the humans there. We are sad to leave the truly breathtaking Leuthilspar.

Another couple weeks of sailing takes us to the Moonshae Islands, Varden’s home. There he leaves his tiger, Meo, and collects his magic items and his other mountain lion, Reinhold. Varden and Taliesan advance their animal companions and we sail to the mainland, travel overland to Drylake, check in with the magistrate there, and enter the valley that guards Nightfang Spire.

We assault the tower through the top and fight our way through its denizens like the moon calf, vampire spawn, wights, spectres and gorillions. There are also three foul flesh golems, one called “Stitches,” a dragon-headed, ogre-armed, stitched up bag of fun, with bad breath. Really bad breath! Its fire breath weapon and reach make it especially hard to fight.

We uncover a dozen necromantic labs before we come across a warded vrock devil named Reynaud. In return for our freeing it from its imprisonment, it tells us about our "host," the vampire Gulthias.

She escaped from the Sunless Citadel and returned to Nightfang Spire with the heart of the dragon Ashardalon. Gulthias is insane and she wants to resurrect the ancient dragon from the dead. Her plan is to use an undead army to commit so many atrocities that the chaos will somehow attract Ashardalon's attention. Also, the heart has been integrated in some way into Nightfang, but we can destroy it if we find a four-part key hidden in the catacombs below. Gwynn has the solid steel balls (with brain to match) to shake hands with the demon before it leaves.

At the end of that session, we finally met Gulthias, who threatens us, shrugs off our attacks, and reverts to mist form to escape.

We decide to go for the catacombs and encounter a huge elder fire elemental, who almost kills some of us and temporarily splits us up. We find two tunnels down into the depths of the Spire but camp over night before making the climb.

That night someone invisible sneaks into our room.