Olpha Muzgardt
Info
Princess of the Muzgardt Clan
Mature Duergar Woman
Wise,Crafty,Patient
| § | Interactions |
|---|---|
| 36 | #ADuergarPlot There was a chance that Muzgardt aligned duergar resided on the forge level, and it would be better to have their help sooner than later. Fern donned the hat of disguise, masking herself as a duergar soldier. Putting on her best gray dwarf impersonation, she went to pry around the barracks. There were at least a dozen of them, several duergar playing cards with many more in their quarters. After a confused duergar began to prod a bit at her presence, she made an excuse to leave. Snooping around the forge watch towers nearest to them, she was able to suss out that one of the three at each post was Olpha's plant. Returning to Olpha's chambers, the old dwarf princess and her right hand Ulkin said they were running out of time; the soldiers in the command level were about to dine and a shift may head below. |
| 36 | #battle #ADuergarPlot Picking themselves up, our heroes pushed back as three duergar hammerer units made their way from the far side of the forge. Olpha polymorphed a duergar into a chicken atop one guard tower, inspiring her comrades up top to fight back. The front lines of the quaggoths began to fall under the pressure on the main floor. Alit by Tetro's shooting star, a bloodied Xardorok's eye stumbled as Crank shoved a sussur branch into his eye. It shattered, as eye puss trickled down, and he began to cackle. Enlarging himself in an agonizing shout, chardalyn growths rapidly spurted from his flesh. Xardorok, subject to the sussur branch's influence, had little control over what happened next. Pillars of earth randomly erupted. Gadget and Ulkin were pinned to the ceiling, some 30 feet high, and Azgul dodged away from a tower of the black earth as he was shut out from the guard tower. The numbers soon turned on Sunblight, however, and he died in rapture, as Azgul's spectral servant severed the last chords binding his soul to his flesh. |
| 35 | #ADuergarPlot It seems that Xardorok Sunblight had left Olpha Muzgardt in the dining room, storming off in a religious fervor, maddeningly focused on his chardalyn dragon. Olpha saw little salvation in Sunblight's eyes, commenting that appears a possessed man. With soldiers due to dine in the bloodied mess hall in a few hours, Olpha and her guard Ulkin encouraged the party to continue, as they themselves began to instruct the kitchen staff to hide the bodies. Time of the essence, the party told T-Rex and Sensei to hang back while they moved towards the forge level. |
| 35 | #ADuergarPlot The chardalyn smoke was taking its toll on the party, Oona and Fern felt paranoid from chardalyn corruption. To prevent further setbacks, the party decided to imbibe Muzgardt's quieting angel brew, leaving Oona retching from the noxious ingredients. |
| 35 | #ADuergarPlot Walkways leading to the forge were now visible from a long hallway. Several paths went to guard towers, and another went to a guest chamber, where Tetro received both a poison dart to the neck and took a yeti rug to wear as a cloak. It appeared the guest chamber had been in use by Olpha, given the mushroom ale casks present. |
| 35 | #battle #ADuergarPlot Stealthing by patrols and staying away from the forge level's barracks, the party fought past two more hammerers before barricading themselves in Sunblight's treasure room. Outside they hear chatter from duergar patrols, one of which greets the Muzgardt princess. As Fern fuddled with the complicated vault locks, Gadget recalled the passphrases they found in Xardorok's chambers. And so the party looted the fortress. |
| 34 | #battle #ADuergarPlot The trapdoor led to an alcove behind Xardorok's Black Ice throne within Sunblight Fortress, sitting in a long, desolate great hall. Black dust and soot covered the upper walls as smoke hung below the tall ceilings. A set of high windows set in the brutal architecture hinted at two scenes outside the hall: the cavernous expanse of the Underdark to the west and the red bellows of a forge on the east. Two duergar entered from the west doorways at the rear staircases, leading to a scuffle that was eventually settled as a misunderstanding. These two were Olpha Muzgardt's men. They retold how a manic Xardorok had taken made preparations for Olpha to dine on the central Command Level of the fortress. The throne room was on an isolated side of the lowest level, the Forge Level, though direct access to the forge would require breaching a fortified portcullis from the outer yard. Instead, the duergar named Bruvo warily suggested they hurry to the elevators. He was worried because some of Xardorok's newer recruits were only a room away: quaggoths, low intelligence, hyper-violent humanoids from the Underdark which Xardorok was able to subjugate. The heroes took his advice, heading to the lift. |
| 34 | #battle #ADuergarPlot Entering the dining hall, Fern locked eyes with Olpha Muzgardt and one of her companions. They were dining with several other duergar. The companion, Ulkin, took note and Fern noted him slowly wrapping his fingers about his war hammer. He started making some loud, pointed statements, asking each of the Sunblight-aligned duergar in the room how their meals were, identifying the enemy for the party. A member of the kitchen staff walked out, dropping a tray with a clatter, upon which Ulkin swung at the dwarf across the table. The party rushed in and took care of the rest. |
| 33 | #ADuergarPlot The party took off into the mines bordering Thizrun, tailing Olpha Muzgardt as planned. Waiting for her convoy to pass by a checkpoint, the party then befuddled the guards using Gadget's stinking rock trick and some minor illusions. Chardalyn dust permeated the air of the mines as the rumbling of machinery twisted around in the dimly lit caverns. The party snuck by several working duergar miners, soldiers, and foremen, as well as bypassing a duergar who appeared to be in a dazed prayer at an alter. |
| 32 | #UnderdarkExpedition The duergar mining town had Sunblight soldiers positioned as guards. Past them, the party saw a series of dingy shacks and grimed shanty houses leading to a busy market square. The guards were deceived by the party's tale of being adventuring merchants with fungus for sale. Used to exerting their power, the older guard pressed them for a bribe. With a deft slight of handle, Crank took a fake cut of Sensei, and handed the duergar a tongue of madness. The guard began rambling, one thought after the next. He not only granted the party passage, but revealed that Sunblight merely controlled the town, that other duergar had to be kept in line, and that a duergar princess from the Muzgardt clan was staying at the other end of the markets, awaiting an invitation to dine and be courted by Xardorok himself. She was known to come from a line of merchant brewers in the distant cavern city of Gracklstugh. |
| 32 | #UnderdarkExpedition The party managed to rest while staking out the Muzgardt tent. They counted five guards and, as the curtained door fluttered, a duergar woman inside. The guards wore different regalia than the Sunblight. Chancing a meeting, Fern and Oona went to the tent, asserting to her guard that they had an appointment to discuss fungus trade with the brewer princess. While the guard let them in, the duergar princess - who turned out to be nearly 300 years old - saw through them quickly, wondering why the tiefling was poorly attempting to hide her tail. She conjured tea leaves and asked them to sit. Discussion led to understanding: Olpha Muzgardt saw Xardorok Sunblight as a threat. Hovering near the women was a toy chardalyn dragon made in Xardorok's forge, which pulsed with the magic of a red dragon's heart. It was a gift of courtship she said. But she saw through Xardorok. He fervently attested to his connection to Deep Duerra, though chardalyn deranged his every thought. Not only was he a foolish warmonger, he was a threat to the Underdark. Xardorok was bent on conquering the Northdark in its entirety and all the lands that lie above. |
| 32 | #UnderdarkExpedition Xardorok Sunblight had been married three times, according to Olpha, siring nine children. He killed his first wife, Thizrun. His second wife, Yrraska, was killed in a tunnel collapse along with two of their daughters. His third wife, Marral, was killed during a raid against a mind flayer enclave, along with another daughter and three sons. Xardorok killed his eldest son, Ulthoon, son of Thizrun, for plotting to overthrow him. His surviving offspring number three, Durth, Nildar, and Morin. Xardorok wears a crown of chardalyn with nine spires representing his children, six of which he had since broken off. Now he wished to wed Olpha, seizing the Muzgardt Clan's merchant enterprises and mushroom ale factories. |
| 32 | #UnderdarkExpedition The candid Olpha Muzgardt's expression turned serious. After this discussion, it was clear the party's goals aligned with her own. They would help her depose Sunblight, she threatened, as her guards poised themselves behind our heroes. In return, she would reveal to them a hidden entrance into the fortress into its throne room, which they could take advantage of while she was dining the warlock himself. She vowed to have no interest in the surface folk following the coup, attesting to care only for the preservation of her clan. |
| 32 | #UnderdarkExpedition Speaking of mushroom ale, Olpha Muzgardt provided the party tinctures that would delay the onset of chardalyn corruption. The duergar were naturally resilient to poisons, including the malignant influence of the black ice, though it certainly affected them over time. This brew, she said, may help the party. Or, maybe it wouldn't, if their constitutions failed to handle it. |
| 32 | Quieting Angel Brew ~ Olpha Muzgardt market ~ party |