Quest 5.2: Towards the Rift
Visiting an old friend
The party strikes out in the direction of the Rift, heading toward our old stomping ground of Gorun’s Well. While Malcador stays outside and powerhoses Jeremy down to keep him cool (“I am not waterboarding the elk!”), we pay our pal Ingrid a visit at the Iron Woman. Ingrid says she hasn’t seen the King or heard of anything out of the ordinary since we left, but suggests we might have better luck if we were to head to the watchtower closer to the Rift.
Since it’s a day’s ride away, we contract a man called Ashby (Tove: “Ashbae!”) to guide us to the watchtower. However, several party members have a bit of a tiff over their respective haggling styles (“I don’t think we should not pay this man for his services, I think we should intimidate him with religion!”). We wind up haggling him down to 8gp for the day’s trip, and set off.
Into the desert
Quillius spins Ashby a lie that we are going to the Rift to find good sand for glass. Ashby enthuses about glass, and wishes he could afford some. Tove takes pity on him and gives him an extra 2gp to buy himself some glass when he gets back.
But alas, it is not to be. Ashby fails a crucial Perception check and is swallowed up by dust-diggers churning up through the sand. He is Glitterdusted by Quillius in the pit, before being chewed up on the next turn (Finn: “Ashbye!”). To make up for it, Quillius then sets the digger on fire with a red-hot blistering analysis of its deepest, darkest fears; Gallais Webs it into a sticky mess and Octavia runs her lance through it.
Not a moment later, the other dust-digger explodes out of the sand under Quillius, Gallais, and JB. Although JB and Gazza manage to crawl out, Quillius is grabbed, and no amount of Grease can get the digger’s tentacles off him (Jenny: “Greased halfling! / Ooh, greased halfling!”).
Gallais disrupts Octavia’s rescue charge by turning the digger cute (for an ostensible penalty to hit dice and most stats), but does too good a job and prevents us from damaging it long enough that Quillius is swallowed (and takes 12 damage from vore). He very emphatically does not enjoy it.
After un-cute-ing the digger, Octavia explodes it as well and we keep going.
The Rift watch
The guards in the watchtower tell us that the cavern containing the Rift has disappeared, and is now surrounded by a group of human-looking footprints that appear irregularly.
As we investigate the rock face where the Rift cavern mouth used to be, a behir appears, hiding ineffectually behind some rocks. Quillius sweet-talks it into showing us where the cavern is concealed; although Malcador sees the boulder in the way, the rest of us don’t.
An Infernal Dragon screeching overhead frightens us into shoving the boulder aside and going farther into the cavern. Inside, we see a Rift of pure black splayed across the far wall, surrounded by a dozen+ surly humanoids including bearded devils, harpies, and hellfire knights.
Escape!
Rather than push our luck, we backtrack out of the cavern and try to high-tail it out of there before the Infernal Dragon gets us. Gallais summons the perfect number of horses for our horseless companions, but it isn’t long before the dragon pulls up alongside us and demands we account for ourselves.
Gallais talks the dragon into giving us work guarding the Rift. Malcador opens his mouth to say something and Gallais shoves Mage Hand into it, which Quillius finds unappealing (Laras: “So the oral fisting doesn’t do it either, then”).














