Xardorok Sunblight

Info

Duergar Lord
Adult Duergar Man
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§	Interactions
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	#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	#ADuergarPlot The automated elevator led from the Forge to Command to Ice Gate Levels. The party rode the west elevator upwards to the Command Level and was told the east elevator on the other side of the fortress would be their best access to the forge. Bruvo, asked about the chardalyn dragon, says the launch date is in two days, prompting the party to send warning to Captain Imdra Arlaggath via their sending stone. Pointing to an empty office that Fern wandered toward, Bruvo notes that the duergar guard captain had been taken to be "interrogated" for treachery. Was she one of Olpha's? No, Bruvo replied. She was set up by them. Olpha's supporters have multiplied in the castle with most at the forge level, but their loyalty is conditional, he says. More interested in survival than Sunblight, they would likely support the heroes if they deemed their mission's success probable. Otherwise... they may as well be enemies.
34	#ADuergarPlot Avoiding patrols from on the Command Level and steering clear of the barracks, the party stealthed into Xardorok Sunblight's war room. A model of Ten Towns was mapped out with a miniature chardalyn dragon was present on the war table. Operated by a lever, it demonstrated the programmed flight path of the construct, as it swept counterclockwise over the towns. Gadget pored over a table of runes to try and reset the dragon's programming. With Fern assisting in arcane decoding, and the rest keeping watch, they managed to swap a couple towns in the order, locking in: Caer Dineval - Bremen - Easthaven - Dougan's Hole - Caer Konig - Termalaine - Lonelywood - Good Mead - Targos - Bryn Shander.
34	#ADuergarPlot Xardorok Sunblight was not in his war room, nor was he in his bed chamber. Fern gingerly cracked open a hefty iron padlock on a chest. While Azgul was unable to detect any magical trap, something was amiss about its base, which bobbed up and down while they lifted out an extremely expensive platinum and star sapphire hookah. It spooked them out enough to leave along, and they shouted at T-Rex when he poked around the gem-encrusted dwarven smoking jacket, causing the chest's base to rattle further.
34	#ADuergarPlot #TheSignal Opening Xardorok's closet, Tetro discovered a shrine. A chardalyn idol of the duergar demigoddess Deep Duera was central, surrounded by six skulls. The tortle druid quickly identified them by their anomalies. These were mindflayer. Recalling the ancient illithid skull he removed the psionic crystal from in the Termalaine mines, Tetro focused on the crystal. He was able to hear the distress call he heard earlier... that ping and warbled plea for help. And suddenly, a more proximal feeling penetrated his head: pain. There was someone, or something, within this fortress anguishing. Tetro felt as if his brain was literally being cut in half. As quickly as the sensation came, it ended. Tetro was unharmed.
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 inn had seen better days. Its duergar owner, Girt, did not receive the guests with open arms. He didn't care for the travelers. He didn't care for the Sunblight. He wanted to be left alone. When pressed about Sunblight, he admitted that the duergar warlord was mad, worshiping Deep Duerra, the duergar demigoddess known as the Axe of Conquest. Deep Duerra, though, had disappeared a hundred years ago. On top of that, once a nameless hovel, the very village they were in was annexed by Sunblight after the discovery of chardalyn ore. It was renamed Thizrun, the name of Xardorok's first wife who he executed. Xardorok's fortress was built up on the opposite side of the mines. Girt demanded 300 gp for the party to stay the night, since he was risking his neck. Girt, too stubborn to be swayed, convinced the party to acquiesce.
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.
31	#UnderdarkExpedition Mev Flintknapper told the party they're crazy to head towards Sunblight Fortress, but, as they stood on one face of a chasm spanned by a lone bridge spanning a river of lava, he did warn them to take heed of awakening any stirges. Stirges, they recalled, are rat sized flying bloodsuckers, and the far cavern walls seemed to be pocked with their nesting holes. Across this bridge was the duergar mining colony where Sloopidoop, Aruk Thundercaller, and Sensei landed when teleporting away from Sunblight's prisons. There, the party was told, was a Duergar princess from the Muzgardt clan. Xardorok Sunblight had summoned the woman to court her, but the rumor in the mining colony, which sounded like a somewhat open city for Underdark trade despite the presence of the Sunblight clan, was that the princess was of an independent mind.
30	#ADuergarPlot The duergar mining colony, as retold my Sloopi, was under Sunblight control, and yet it still received traffic from merchants and other denizens of the deep. That's how they met a deep gnome, Mev Flintknapper, who aided their escape. Importantly, there appears to have been a duergar princess in town, a woman from another clan who Xardorok Sunblight appears to have summoned in order to court. The rumor is that she is of an independent allegiance to that of the Sunblight clan. Whether or not she will prove to be useful to the party will remain to be seen.
29	#ADuergarPlot #UnderdarkExpedition Over several days, the Heroes of the Cairn took care to prepare for the forthcoming expedition, a journey into the Underdark to infiltrate Sunblight Fortress and apprehend the duergar warlord Xardorok Sunblight before his army marches on Ten Towns with chardalyn siege weaponry. Gadget used her time to research the capabilities of the duergar military, while others convened with members of the council. Fern found a local stylist to polish and primp her horns. Azgul wandered off, then returned after picking up several potions of healing. Tetro was overheard chatting to three kobolds in a trenchcoat about fungi of the Underdark.
21	#ADuergarPlot After the battle, the party investigated Nildar Sunblight's Duergar Outpost. It seemed that Nildar had been experimenting with myconid spores, infecting Dalefolk in the hopes of creating a small army. A letter to his father, Xardorok Sunblight, beseeched his father to listen, dissuading the father from his chardalyn obsession. Nildar believed that his spore servants could be the path to victory, not the behemoth his father was constructing. Nildar even expressed some worry at the pervasive effects of chardalyn. That being said, the duergar was no stranger to cruel methods of war, as noted by his duergar screamer's painful, psionic mech suit. Oona and company tossed their storage area, as well as Nildar's chambers, recovering 70 sp and the missing items from Caer Konig.
19	#BlackSwords Kadroth had gleefully urged the party to speak with their soothsayer, the old and heartlessHethyl Arkorran. Hethyl knew each party member by name. She had dreaded this day, as she knew it would be her last. She was to die, and her soul was bound for the Nine Hells. She did so only after prophesying carnage at Ten Towns at the hands of the Duergar and the party's role in mitigating it. "Try, try, try... amidst countless screams." With a deep-set hatred for Duergar, she envisioned Sunblight Fortress nestled in the mountains: one entrance by ground, yet exhausts open to the sky as well. The fortress hosted a forge powered by a red dragon's still-beating heart, and a great weapon was being forged from black ice for Xardorok Sunblight's paranoid campaign to raze and conquer Icewind Dale. Hethyl's near-blind eyes grew dim after the conversation. Her heart stopped, and she fell dead.
18	#ChardalynCaper #ADuergarPlot The two standing duergar were coerced into talking. The mind master that the party just killed was named Durth Sunblight. He was one of the remaining sons of Xardorok Sunblight, a duergar lord with a mountain fortress in the Spine of the World. The duergar race, known for having lived in the Underdark for centuries, were descendants of dwarves turned grim and having developed psionic abilities after eons of influence by mind flayer colonies. Xardorok's intent is to bring his people to the surface, raze Ten Towns, and establish a footprint for his own people to live in the dim twilight of Icewind Dale. He has dispatched two of his sons, Durth and Nildar Sunblight, to scout ahead. Durth is now dead, and Nilder is in charge of an outpost on the eastern face of Kelvin's Cairn. The stolen chardalyn from East Haven Town Hall was meant to be hauled back to Sunblight Fortress to be forged into siege weaponry. After confessing, the two duergar made a getaway, narrowly avoiding an axe to their necks as they turned invisible and bolted.