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Dunmari Frontier - Session 132

Defense of Aurbez: in which the heroes race to shield the Heartroot

Featuring: Delwath, Kenzo, Wellby, Seeker
In Taelgar: Aug 10, 1749 DR to Aug 12, 1749 DR
On Earth: Thursday Sep 25, 2025
Location: Aurbez Plateau

The Dunmar Fellowship seizes a huge snake make of chaos metal, plan the defense of the Heartroot, battle hobgoblin fliers over Vindristjarna, and teleport to confront the Empress of Chaos and protect the Heartroot from her corruption.

Session Info

Summary

  • The Dunmar Fellowship secures defenses at Three Wells for the Heartroot, coordinating rangers and militias while Delwath promises an ambush illusion and mass [[Animal Shapes.
  • [[Seeker]] creates a new simulacrum (Seeker 5) and, with Vindristjarna on station, the party intercepts levitating troop “worms” and silvery hawks at the escarpment, downing and capturing a worm.
  • The captured worm decoheres into Limbo chaos metal, which Identify reveals the Empress can control at close range but which becomes inert a few miles away.
  • At the Heartroot valley, the party shapes an ambush—Mirage Arcana raises an illusory lake and mountain while volunteers are transformed into hippos with lizardfolk riders.
  • Battle is joined as a phantasmal dragon routs casters, hippos charge from the “lake,” ash elementals counterattack, and the Empress streaks past the feint toward the Heartroot, prompting the party to Teleport to the grove to intercept.

Timeline

  • Aug 10, 1749 DR, evening: The party camps at Three Wells for the night, and plans defenses with Martin Strongbow via Dream.
  • Aug 11, 1749 DR: Seeker creates a new simulacrum, Seeker 5; Vindristjarna arrives.
  • Aug 11, 1749 DR, evening: Vindristjarna attacks hobgoblins as they ascend the escarpment to the Aurbez Plateau; the party captures a worm-snake made of chaos metal from Limbo. After the battle, the party teleports to the Heartroot valley camp and the first volunteers are transformed into hippos.
  • Aug 12, 1749 DR, pre-dawn: The party prepares for the hobgoblin attack in the pre-dawn light. The battle is joined as the sun begins to rise. Vindristjarna is lured out of position by a feint of flying hawks with mounted hobgoblins. The party realizes the Empress of Chaos is flying past and has no choice but to Teleport to the Heartroot to defend it.

Narrative

We begin the evening of August 10th, as the Dunmar Fellowship settles into another night at Three Wells, where political debate has been traded for the quiet murmur of a steady stream of refugees. After days of harassment with tsunamis, earthquakes, and a teleport strike, the party has destroyed at least a third of the hobgoblin army. Defensive plans are made to protect the Heartroot, with the rangers under the command of Martin Strongbow, and a large militia of Aurbeze arrayed along the only straightforward approach to the valley. Through a Dream, Delwath outlines the magical resources the party can provide Martin: an illusion to hide an ambush and the ability to transform hundreds of troops into dangerous animals.

The next morning, the pre-dawn light, Seeker rises to shape a simulacrum from ice and a ruby, Seeker 5. A few hours later, Vindristjarna arrived with the crew. By late afternoon, with Seeker 5 ready, the party flew for the cliffs as the sun set, aiming to intercept and harass the hobgoblin army once more. In moonless dark, Kenzo felt the Empress of Chaos twenty miles north; the skyship veered to intercept. A drift globe’s Daylight burst over the escarpment wall, revealing a long front of dull gray, levitating worms, each bearing twenty hobgoblins in paired ranks, stretching hundreds of yards; the first crested the rim as a dozen silvery metallic hawks angled toward Vindristjarna. The giant centipede was nowhere in sight. Faldrak launched ice bolts from the ice turret, while Wellby and Kenzo attacked the birds, and Delwath dropped an ice storm on an ascending segment, dislodging the riders and destroying the metallic worm, which dissolved under the cold. Seeker raised a Wall of Stone transmuted to ice, boxing another worm in place near the top.

Flaming arrow volleys hammered the ship as Kenzo flew out, cut down a hawk, and was swarmed. Delwath conjured a cloud of spectral birds to shred diving attackers and quickened eldritch blasts; Wellby’s lightning arced through a line of hawks; the turret finished another. With the boxed prize secured, Faldrak dropped Vindristjarna below the rim, slid beneath the ice prison, and Seeker released it—letting a twenty-foot worm crash to the deck as an ice shield vaulted up over the ship. Kenzo slipped back through the barrier. Archers broke into skirmish lines and withdrew; the remaining worms spread along the wall, out of the Daylight’s reach. Vindristjarna turned away with a thrashing specimen sealed aboard.

As they fled, the metallic worm creature decohered into hissing, mercury-like ooze and sagged across Vindristjarna’s deck. A sword cut drew a burst of vapor they dodged. Identify named it chaos metal from Limbo, a disruptor of permanence that slips through phases and can warp flesh; the Empress of Chaos held it in check. Distance drained that control: by two miles it lay inert yet perilous. With hours before the hobgoblins reached the Heartwood, Seeker teleported the company to the camp near the entrance to the Heartroot valley, where Seeker transformed the first set of volunteers into hippos, and the party grabbed what sleep they could before dawn.

At dawn the party finished their defensive plans: Mirage Arcana created an illusory lake and a mountain blocking the passage, while a second casting of Animal Shapes filled the ranks of the hippo army. The hippos, submerged underneath the lake with lizardfolk riders, waited in ambush for the hobgoblin army. Meanwhile, the party hung back on Vindristjarna, hoping to intercept the Empress of Chaos should she attempt to fly past the army to the Heartroot.

Soon, scouts reported the hobgoblins were close, burning trees to create ash-whirlwinds as they moved. As the hobgoblin ranks reached the lake, Seeker 5 loosed a towering phantasm of an incendiary dragon. Fear rippled through the hobgoblin lines as its sweeping cones raked spellcasters; then hippos thundered from the false water with lizardfolk riders, and arrows fell in sheets. Fireballs answered. Ash elementals tore into the ranger screen, and the hobgoblins, bloodied, re-formed and curved into the forest to drag the fight under cover as the initial furious clash faded, along with the dragon.

As the militia lines steadied and hobgoblin discipline reformed, three rider-birds fell to archers and six more swept low along the lake’s west shore, each bearing a hobgoblin—three with flaming crossbows, two robed casters, and a warlord leveling a greatsword. The party drove Vindristjarna to intercept. At three hundred feet the ship’s icicle turrets opened on the casters; shards lanced the nearer sorcerer, and Wellby’s shots marked both mages for the kill. The enemy’s return fire went wide as the hawks dashed closer. As the battle was engaged, the party fought fiercely, and birds and hobgoblins began to fall to their strikes, and Seeker 5’s Slow spell, while Seeker summoned a clay construct to fight.

In the middle of the fight, Wellby spotted the Empress of Chaos streaking above the far treeline, angling away from the feint and straight for the Heartroot at the center of the valley. With the Empress racing the horizon and the melee revealed as distraction, the party abandoned the fight on the decks of Vindristrjana, hoping their crew could finish off the wounded warlock and the slowed metallic birds, as Seeker 5 teleported them to the center of the valley, visible no more than 3/4 of a mile away. They vanished and reappeared in an open grove at the Heartwood, a root-walled amphitheater breathing the dense, bready sweetness of ripe fruit.

Our session ended as the Empress of Chaos closed through the sky, leaving the party only moments to prepare before combat.