The party continues its descent through Crackjaw, pushing deeper into the goblin city suspended above the Underdark. After cutting through several patrols of goblin guards, they follow a rope bridge running alongside a massive stone pillar and arrive at a grim cluster of jail cells.
The prison level is guarded by bugbears and a strange psychic goblin, who is using its mind to pull a large elevator up from the lowest level of the city.
The fight quickly becomes a brutal test of positioning. The party is forced to storm across the rope bridge while bugbears scramble along the cliff walls and hurl javelins from above. The terrain is as dangerous as the enemies: narrow footing, long drops, and no easy way to retreat. Still, the party presses forward, dispatching the guards and breaking into the jail block.
Inside one of the cells, they find a bugbear holding a Sapest soldier hostage with a sword at his throat. The prisoner is the unpetrified commander of the failed Sapest deployment, the only man from that force who has not been turned to stone.
The bugbear attempts to negotiate.
Unfortunately for him, this party does not negotiate.
Nys and Alyviel both open fire, but their shots miss, turning the standoff into chaos. Fern fey steps into the cell and tries to grapple the bugbear, only for the attempt to go catastrophically wrong. The hostage is freed, but Fern ends up in the bugbear’s grip instead.
Behzad rushes in, grabs Fern, and wrestles him out of the bugbear’s grasp. That gives Alyviel the opening she needs. She charges into the cell with her moonblade drawn and, overtaken by bloodlust, stabs the bugbear again and again until there is no blood left in his body.
With the immediate danger ended, the party finally speaks with the rescued commander. His name is Hugo Monsterblade, the lone survivor of the Azmarian militia sent to clear out the Golden Rat Syndicate. His unit walked directly into the basilisk trap above Crackjaw and was turned to stone. Hugo alone was spared, not out of mercy, but because the goblins needed leverage.
Hugo reveals that the Syndicate intends to blackmail his son, Malcolm, the Captain of Wolford and protector of the world’s largest diamond mine. The flow of diamonds from Wolford has stopped, causing the price of resurrection magic to rise to unprecedented levels. The goblins plan to exploit the crisis by forcing Malcolm to drain the city’s reserves in exchange for his father’s life.
In the second cell, Fable finds Ned Snakeskin, an agent of the College of Ioun, the powerful wizards’ guild. But once she realizes he is not the Prophet, she immediately slams the door in his face and walks away, leaving Ned to make his own case for usefulness.
Hugo and Ned arm themselves with the fallen bugbears’ weapons and join the party’s assault. With new allies in tow and the prison level cleared, the group boards the elevator and begins its descent into the lowest level of Crackjaw.
Below them waits the heart of the Syndicate’s operation and, perhaps, the Prophet himself.