📘 Session 18 – The Haunted Forge of Sondar

🪐 Campaign Arc

• Campaign: Spelljammer
• Session: 18 – The Haunted Forge of Sondar
• Dungeon Master: James / Jamie / Sicareus
• Setting: Underdark travel route, swampy cavern near a black dragon, and the ruined dwarven kingdom of Sondar

🧭 Overview

After surviving the roadside lich battle, the party rested, leveled to 8, and resumed the push deeper into the Underdark under the pressure of both Primus’ mandate and the Illithid task tied to a rumored crown. Early progress was cautious rather than heroic: Rigg and High Jinks scouted a distant light, discovered three fire elementals, and wisely chose not to add “burned to death in a cave” to the party résumé. Along the way, Valen used downtime to transcribe Misty Step and later Shield into his spellbook.

Travel grew stranger as the ground turned damp and the party stumbled into the territory of a black dragon. They backed off without a fight and continued until the mountain fortress of Sondar came into view: a dead dwarven kingdom carved into stone, its great gates torn from their hinges and its streets littered with the old remains of dwarves and Illithids alike. Inside, a cold forge and a lantern-lit echo of the past revealed ghostly dwarven smiths trapped in a repeating scene. What first looked like a haunting or time-loop became something more dangerous when Dino disturbed the forge’s tools, causing the figures to twist into nightmare shapes. The session ended on initiative.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Party Members

📍 Key Locations

• Underdark Camp: A rough resting point where the party recovered, leveled up, and reorganized after the lich fight.
• Firelit Cavern Route: A stretch of tunnel where distant light revealed three fire elementals patrolling ahead.
• Black Dragon Swamp: A damp, dangerous cavern area occupied by a black dragon the party wisely chose not to provoke.
• Sondar: A ruined dwarven kingdom carved into a mountain, long fallen to Illithids and now eerily silent.
• The Forge of Sondar: A cold smithy where a magical lantern revealed looping dwarven echoes and a deadly shift into shadowy horror.

📑 Session Highlights

• The party completed a long rest after the lich fight and leveled up to 8.
• Valen used downtime to transcribe Misty Step into his spellbook, then later added Shield.
• Laydrick spotted a distant light; Rigg and High Jinks scouted ahead and identified three fire elementals.
• The group avoided the fire elementals rather than engaging them.
• Travel led the party into a damp cavern area occupied by a black dragon; they withdrew without fighting.
• The party reached Sondar, a ruined dwarven mountain kingdom whose gates had been torn down long ago.
• Inside the city, they found streets strewn with the old remains of dwarves and Illithids.
• A rhythmic hammer-on-anvil sound led them to a cold forge filled with ghostly dwarf-shapes visible only in lantern light.
• Investigation revealed the figures were trapped in a repeating scene: forging, reacting to a disturbance outside, grabbing weapons, and vanishing before the loop began again.
• Detect Magic revealed magic on the lantern and the anvil.
• Dino manipulated the scene from range, and when the hammer was violently displaced, the figures transformed into nightmarish shadow-creatures.
• Initiative was rolled just as the session ended.

🎭 Key Scenes

1. “Three Lights in the Dark” — Rigg & High Jinks

Far ahead in the black of the Underdark, three distant lights drifted like torches. Rigg and High Jinks slipped forward under cover of darkness and discovered the truth: not wanderers, not campfires, but three fire elementals moving through the caverns. For once, the party chose good sense over violence and went around.

2. “Get Out” — Dino & the Black Dragon

The floor turned wet, the air turned foul, and the next problem announced itself without subtlety: a black dragon in the swamp. The encounter lasted only moments, but that was enough. A warning, an apology, and a careful retreat kept the party alive. Sometimes heroism is knowing when to stop walking forward like an idiot.

3. “The Broken Gates of Sondar” — Laydrick & Rook

When Sondar finally emerged from the darkness, it did not look like a kingdom waiting to be reclaimed. Its great metal doors had been knocked from their hinges and left on the ground, and beyond them lay silence, bones, and the distant outline of a keep. Rook called it safe enough. The ruin itself disagreed.

4. “Lantern Light” — Dino & High Jinks

Inside the cold forge, the dead did not linger freely; they only existed inside the glow of a single lantern. High Jinks traced the loop in the scene while Dino pushed closer, prying at the edges of the mystery with magecraft and curiosity. The moment the forge’s rhythm was broken, the dwarven echoes stopped being echoes and became a threat.

🧵 Ongoing Threads & Plot Hooks

• Primus’ mandate still hangs over the party: they are expected to keep moving and further the task.
• The Illithid letter objective continues: the party is still pursuing one of the artifact-retrieval leads, now focused on Sondar.
• The Crown of Sondar: local legend suggests the queen went mad shortly before the Illithid fall, and the party suspects a crown may be tied to that event.
• Why Sondar resisted settlement: Rook believes the Illithids could not remain here for long, possibly because the place is haunted.
• The black dragon remains nearby: an immediate danger left alive and unchallenged on the route behind them.
• The forge’s lantern, anvil, and hammer are all significant: the party has not yet learned whether they are relics, anchors for the haunting, or something worse.
• The dead of Sondar are not resting quietly: the ghostly forge-loop suggests the city may preserve moments of its fall in magical fragments.

💰 Loot & Discoveries

🧨 Cliffhanger

• The party stands inside or around the forge in the ruins of Sondar.
• The lantern still reveals the scene; outside its light, the figures vanish.
• After the hammer was displaced, the ghostly dwarves twisted into nightmarish shadow-creatures.
• Initiative was rolled.
• Next session opens with combat in the haunted forge.