The crowd is thinning out as the Goblin Market begins to shut down. Then Tikulti’s voice suddenly comes through the sending stone. “The orb is found and taken,” he whispers. “We are making our way back now.” The doppelganger tells them there is no sign of danger below ground.

The players spot a familiar face in the distance. Demise is here, in dark leather robes, watching them with a thin smile. Nearby, three gnolls dressed in scale armor cackle as they charge forward. Whispering, two small humanoid shadows flit from near Demise toward you.

Encounter 25: Hated Face
Claw doppelganger darkmage
3 Graywall gnoll mercenaries
2 filching wraiths

Alain and Rick pursue the doppelganger and kill her, finding that she is not the real demise. During the fight, the wraiths steal the ashen crown necklace from Gennal and deposits it with Tikulti in secret, without the players’ knowledge.

They hear scraping from behind the screen of their market stall, signaling the safe return of Yeraa and the other seekers. “Friends!” shouts Yeraa, her voice ragged.”We have returned.” The Word bearers emerge into the stall, clearly worse for the wear. They are stiff and ill at ease. The Dark Lantern agent, Tikulti, isn’t with them.

Although the seekers wear the seeming of life, the players see shredded flesh clinging to exposed bone. Oversized claws extend from their gnarled hands. The creature that looks like Yeraa is not as they remember her. Darkfire traces her twisted form. Noticing your piercing gaze, mocking laughter racks her and she attacks.

Encounter 26: Dark Betrayal
Yeraa, dreadclaw darkliege
5 goblin dreadclaw reavers

The group then uses the sending stone they still possess to contact Tikulti, now aware of his betrayal. He responds, “The endgame approaches, and you still have something I need. I’ll take what I have to my comrades in Sharn. I think you’ve met my ladyfriend and her Karrnathi pawns? Anyway, play along and chase me if you have the guts. It should be interesting, at least, since I’ll be able to talk to Kalaes first. I wonder which of us he’ll believe in the end? I suppose you’ll have to find me and force me to confess. That should be fun. Of course, you could just hand over the Crown pieces. We’ll contact you when you get to Sharn.”

The PCs return to the airship to get back to Sharn. They lift off into clear skies, quickly leaving the town of Graywall behind. They head east across the sprawling plains of the frontier toward the pass between the Graywall Mountains.

Defeated, the dragon retreats, though Gore tries to run off the deck to jump onto him to finish the job. He is stopped by his party members and their cries against it. They tell him how the Queen and the Dragon Riders have sent them on this quest. So killing a dragon would be a very bad decision. It could be come a Rider’s Dragon someday.

Upon their return to Sharn, the characters find they are not well-received. But the shopkeeps still take their business. They meet with Kaleas briefly to report and try to persuade him they are not against him and that Tikulti is the betrayer. Kaleas doesn’t seem to care either way. He just wants the crown. He says that whomever brings him the crown, he shall believe to be true.

Graywall passes below them, a sprawling mass of stone buildings and canvas workers’ shelters obscured by the smoke of wood fires and furnaces. The wall that surrounds the town shows signs of recent and ongoing construction. To the west rise new buildings; to the east are great quarries where stone is cut. Ahead,your destination is the foreign quarter, called the Calabas – or, as the locals refer to it, “the Kennel.”

Graywall has nothing resembling an airship dock, so Kordanaa moors above the House Orien enclave in the foreign quarter, where Delan has allies. Further, the Graywall Orien enclave can’t afford to turn away the Kech Volaar’s business.

Yeraa tells the PCs of the final missing component of the crown, and of the Wordbearers’ plans for retrieving it. “Dhakaani ruins are the deep foundations of Graywall, and it is there that our seers say Murkoorak’s orb lies. Rumor and legend place it beneath what has become the Calabas. Now, the circlet will show us the way.”

Emerald Claw agents have been spotted in the foreign quarter in recent days (though the PCs see no sign of them). Demise was here for a time, but she teleported to Sharn a day ago by way of the Orien enclave.

For the better part of a day, you walk the foreign quarter with Yeraa and her best seekers, as the circlet allows her to subtly sense distance and direction to the orb. In the end, they find themselves led to great public plaza. This is the Roar, named for the House Tharashk dragonne statue at its center.

Yeraa stops suddenly in a space between two tents. ”This is it,” she whispers, but when you look around, she taps her blade on the cobblestones. “Below. Two hundred feet or so. The orb is buried here.”

The PCs and the Kech Volaar must find some way to conceal an archeological dig they are about to undertake in the middle ofthe Roar. By night, the plaza becomes the Goblin Market, a great bazaar where monstrous races and humanoids rub shoulders and nearly everything has a price. The noise and chaos ofthe market gives the PCs and the Wordbearers the cover they need. The PCs use Yeraa’s idea and set up a market stall over the site ofthe dig.

By arriving early, the party lays claim to the spot Yeraa identified, quickly setting up the stall to obscure the dig site from all sides. The seekers already have the cobblestones pried up from the ground as other stalls begin tofill the space around them.

The Kech Volaar are experts at excavation, digging swiftly through six feet of grave! and dirt to find a cracked slab of blood-red stone. With pry bars and rock hammers, the seekers force an opening, revealing a five-foot-wide shaft heading directly down. The light of a shrouded lantern shows a rough rock wall laden with handholds and footholds.

Yeraa’s plan is for the Wordbearers to descend while the PCs hide their activities. She points to the PCs’ sending stone. With such an easy means of staying in contact, she has no fear of being ambushed below without access to help. Although Yeraa needs the circlet to find the orb, she does not object to leaving the cord with the characters for safekeeping.

Beyond the passage leading north from the goblin caverns, a 20-foot drop leads to a damp cave.

The party stands on a plateau above the floor of a wide cavern, looking out over a dimly lit chamber to the east. A small flight of stairs leads down on the far side of the chamber. In the center of the area beyond the stairs, a straight-edged, octagonal pool gives off pale silver light. A large group of undead creatures, all oblivious to your presence, is revealed in this bright illumination. A creature lingering by the far edge of the pool appears to be the leader of this foul crew. It occasionally speaks and sways, the others watching it closely like a rapt and macabre congregation. A gleaming golden gem hangs around the lead creature’s neck.

Encounter 22: Moon Pool
deathgaunt madcaster
2 deathgaunt lashers
deathgaunt drover
2 deathgaunt spiners
5 deathgaunt hordelings (H)

The gem that the madcaster wears is Zaarani’s solitaire. A search of the pool turns up some gold, a polished amethyst, and a pair of fist-sized moonstones that are carved with intertwining patterns and glow slightly. The deathgaunts threw these valuables into the glowing pool as offerings.

The Kech Volaar appear at the other end of the room, beyond the moon pool. Yeraa and her seekers have had a harrowing journey through the caverns beneath Six Kings. Although they were able to obtain a component of the Ashen Crown (Lurtaan’s cord), the goblins were less than thorough in eliminating the foulspawn and the restless spirits that guarded it. As a result, retracing the PCs’ route is the safer way out.

The journey out of the mountain is uneventful. The PCs show Zaarani’s solitaire to Yeraa; her reverence for the item is clear. Once both groups are outside, Yeraa orders the remaining seekers to scout ahead while she talks to the party. Yeraa has something to say, but does not want to do so in front of her followers.

She has had a change in attitude. Once her followers are out of sight, Yeraa offers an apology for her earlier suspicion. She admits that the PCs have proved the truth of their convictions by demonstrating bravery in facing Six Kings and recovering Zaarani’s solitaire.

Yeraa makes a formal declaration of alliance with the PCs. The town of Graywall, where the last piece ofthe Crown is hidden, is the Wordbearers’ destination. Yeraa says the Kech Volaar would be honored to have the party travel at their side.

Undead approach as the PCs finish up discussions with Yeraa.

From ahead comes a skittering of loose rock. Yeraa looks up, then quickly draws her sword with a snarl. Shambling up the path before the party are five of the Kech Shaarat hobgoblins you fought earlier, their mutilated bodies risen as horrid zombies. In the forefront is the dead BIadebearer leader, a scimitar clutched tight in his bloody hands.

Encounter 23: Dead Enemies
Chib Naersaar, bladebearer zombie
4 hobgoblin zombies
2 goblin zombie archers
3 zombie rotters

The Emerald Claw is the obvious suspect for having raised the Kech Shaarat warriors as undead, but any search of the surrounding area shows no sign of the Claw’s presence.

Yeraa is anxious to discover why her scouts didn’t return, leading the party along a side trail running up and around a low peak. There, the PCs not only find the Kech Volaar well, but they make a surprising discovery.

A dilapidated airship floats moored to the cliff face by a tight web of ropes and lanyards. The name “Kordanaa” graces its prow in faded black letters. The crew is a mix of humans, goblins, and hobgoblins, including a half-elf at the helm with the Mark of Storm on his forearm.

Yeraa is relieved to see that no harm has come to the seekers, but Tikulti reports that they and the crew drove off a Claw attack just minutes before. Although no lives were lost, alchemist’s fire arrows damaged two of the airship’s struts. Yeraa tells the PCs that Kordanaa has come from Graywall to pick them up. Now, that trip is delayed.

Delan, a taciturn House Lyrandar exile, leads the friendly twelve-person airship crew of Kordanaa. The captain has worked for Yeraa and the Kech Volaar for about a year now. From the crew, the PCs learn that the lower decks contain the crew’s quarters and the barracks for the Kech Volaar seekers and the PCs, converted from old cargo space.

It takes a day for the ship’s crew to make repairs, during which time the party realizes that the Emerald Claw’s tactics weren’t designed to seize or destroy the ship, but to damage it. From that conclusion, the PCs deduce that the Claw’s purpose was not to prevent their journey to Graywall, but to delay it.

The party knows that Demise and her agents have not given up their search for the Crown.