The troupe had departed the underground city of Thulmur after refreshing their supplies at Ravenna’s cached enclave, making their way across the ancient ruins toward one of the great chimneys that pierced the earth and led to the surface above. Their Duergar guides, Wilda and Rekha, had fulfilled the letter of their agreement by leading the group to the enclave, but flatly refused to venture any further toward the surface, loading their sacks with treasure from the enclave and vanishing into the dark with little ceremony. Before disappearing, they at least provided directions to the chimney, leaving the party of ten – Magnus, Ravenna, Rekha Mar-Khabazza, the hunters Kima and Lokni, Corporal Furlbrow, Sentinel Selarin, Savinia Loresong, Arlaina Darkmoon, and Naisha – to make the ascent on their own.
September 22, 7762
The chimney itself was a breathtaking feat of ancient engineering: a massive rectangle nearly a hundred feet across, with a broad spiraling ramp winding up its inner wall, rising roughly twenty feet with every full circuit. A low stone railing ran along the inner edge, more a suggestion of safety than a guarantee of it, and the darkness above and below swallowed the light of their lanterns almost immediately. Magnus and Rekha Mar-Khabazza took the lead, scouting ahead while the rest of the group followed a full circuit behind, close enough to respond but far enough to avoid being caught in the same trap. As they ascended, the air grew warmer and staler, and the silence of the deep earth pressed in around them. Then, faintly at first and then unmistakably, came the sound of bone scraping against stone – a sound Magnus recognized from the streets near the Duergar enclave, where animated skeletons had been known to gather.
The scouts pressed on cautiously until, rounding one of the sharp corners of the squared passage, they spotted movement in the gloom ahead – nine skeletal figures swaying and shuffling aimlessly on a higher stretch of the ramp across the open void of the chimney. Ravenna and Furlbrow were called forward to assess the situation, and the decision was made quickly: strike first, strike hard. Ravenna gathered her power and hurled a roaring ball of fire across the open air, and the darkness of the chimney erupted in orange and red as the fireball detonated among the clustered undead. Several skeletons were immediately engulfed in flame, one staggering so violently in its panic that it tumbled over the low railing and plummeted silently into the abyss below, its burning bones disappearing into the dark without a sound.
In the chaos of the surprise assault, Magnus raised his masterwork black powder rifle – a weapon he had never before fired in true combat – and pulled the trigger. The result was catastrophic. The barrel exploded near the pan, sending a burst of heat and shrapnel tearing into Magnus’s hands and face, setting his heavy outer furs ablaze and hurling him backward onto the stone ramp. His mithril chain armor absorbed the worst of the impact, but the padding beneath was charred to ruin, and Magnus lay stunned and burning on the ground, temporarily out of the fight. Rekha Mar-Khabazza smothered the flames with his cloak while the archers – Kima, Lokni, and Naisha – stepped forward and loosed a volley of arrows into the burning mass of undead across the void.
The skeletons, mindless but relentless, began their advance. They clambered over rubble and streamed out of a side chamber, pressing toward the party’s position with the grim inevitability of the dead. Furlbrow and Selarin planted themselves at the front of the line, shields raised, bracing for the onslaught, while Arlaina conjured bolt after bolt of freezing ice that shattered ribs, crushed skulls, and blew limbs apart in sprays of ancient bone. Ravenna unleashed a second devastating fireball into the advancing mass, incinerating one skeleton so thoroughly that it simply ceased to exist, and sending another stumbling over the edge as a living torch. Rekha Mar-Khabazza took to the air, hovering over the void on the far side of the railing to flank the undead as they pressed in, driving his rapier through spines and shattering the animating force within them one by one.
The battle turned brutal when a skeleton reached Sentinel Selarin and tore into his thigh with savage force, ripping muscle and leaving him stunned and bleeding on the ramp. Savinia, invisible and moving unseen through the chaos, knelt beside him and poured her healing power into his wounds, keeping him alive while the fight raged around them. She had already slipped behind Magnus earlier in the battle, placing a cool hand on the back of his head and clearing his grogginess in an instant, allowing him to rise from the ground and rejoin the fight. Magnus, now on his feet, fast-drew his claymore while delivering a sweeping martial throw that sent one skeleton sailing silently over the edge of the abyss. Ravenna finished the last of the undead with a thunderous bolt of earthen force that blew it apart where it stood. The chimney fell silent, filled only with the stench of burning bone and the slow curl of black smoke rising from the skeletal remains.
The party took shelter in a partially ruined guard room off the ramp, barricading themselves behind a heavy stone table and resting through the long hours needed to recover their strength. Savinia worked tirelessly through the rest, using rare medicinal herbs alongside her healing magic to mend Selarin’s torn ligaments and treat Magnus’s burns, while Ravenna and Arlaina recovered their spent power. When they finally pressed on, the ascent continued without further incident – until the ramp ended abruptly at a flat ceiling of fused Duergar stone, the passage sealed shut as if the builders had simply decided the surface was no longer worth reaching. Ravenna set to work immediately, peeling back layer after layer of solid granite by transmuting it into fine dust with her magic, while the rest of the party shoveled the choking powder over the edge of the ramp to make room for more. It was grinding, gritty, days-long work.
September 24, 7762
The air grew steadily colder as they dug, and eventually a hole broke through to the surface and a rush of cold air came screaming down – felt on every inch of exposed skin, yet moving nothing around them, not a strand of hair nor a mote of dust.
Ravenna flew up through the opening to scout, and what she found above took her breath away. The party had emerged into the ruins of an ancient keep sitting at the heart of a vast volcanic caldera – the Upheaval itself. The barrier mountains rose thirty thousand feet overhead in a jagged ring, turning the sky into a narrow column of stars and the ever-present streaks of the asteroid field that had once been a moon. The air reeked of sulfur and brimstone, and the landscape was a cracked, desolate expanse of cooled lava, utterly alien and utterly silent save for the howling wind that pressed against their skin without moving a single thing. Tall, impossibly slender tornadoes drifted lazily across the crater floor and up the slopes, and across the broken ground below, dozens of wisps of purplish, sparkling energy zigzagged through the dark, trailing long streamers of translucent light behind them like the ghosts of something that had never been alive. The party had reached the center of chaos, and whatever waited for them in the depths of the Upheaval, it was watching.