The elevator descends into the lowest level of Crackjaw, carrying the party, Hugo Monsterblade, and Ned Snakeskin into the heart of the goblin city. Below, the suspended settlement opens into a dense cluster of homes surrounded by a makeshift barracks and a reinforced bastion built atop a wooden overhang.
This is not just a criminal hideout. It is a community.
The party moves carefully through the civilian quarter, slipping past goblin families and workers before reaching the barracks. There, they overhear the goblin boss from the surface and the psychic goblin pleading with Big Ears, the hobgoblin leader of the Golden Rat Syndicate.
The goblin leaders beg Big Ears to draw his sword, rally the warriors, and kill the intruders before they can reach the Prophet. But Big Ears refuses. He believes the Prophet’s warning was most likely true: that the adventurers are not the true danger, but the signal that the real slaughter is about to begin. If he marches out to meet them, he suspects he will only leave his people exposed when the Lord’s Alliance arrive to systematically wipe Crackjaw out.
Instead, Big Ears orders his people to reinforce the barracks, protect the civilians, and prepare for a last stand.
Using surprising stealth, the party avoids the barracks entirely and makes for the reinforced building where the Prophet is being held. Nys and Fable climb onto the roof and rappel down through a hole, finding the Prophet alive and unharmed.
For Fable, the reunion is emotional. The Prophet, her guild leader and one of the few surviving pieces of her old life, is safe. For one brief moment, the rescue succeeds.
Then Fable smacks the shit out of him.
She tears into him for leaving, for getting captured, and for being so careless while actively hunted by the Lords’ Alliance, the same power that already burned their guildhall and murdered their companions. Fern returns the Prophet’s glowing orb, restoring his focus just as the real disaster begins.
Above Crackjaw, the Magearms Division arrives.
Fireballs rain down from the surface into the suspended city. Buildings collapse. Bridges snap. Homes burn. Entire sections of Crackjaw begin to fall into the Underdark.
The Prophet’s warning was true.
As the city erupts into chaos, Fable persuades the goblin leaders to work with the party, at least for the moment. Big Ears disappears into the collapsing city, trying to save whoever he can before Crackjaw is lost completely.
The party flees through the destruction, grabbing what loot they can as they run. Fable claims a Ring of Protection, and Ned recovers his wand. With civilians and goblins surging around them, the party escapes back toward the surface alongside a desperate horde of survivors.
But the Crown is waiting.
At the entrance above, they come face to face with Cecile Addison, lieutenant of the Magearms Division, who has come with one purpose: kill the Prophet.
Cecile unleashes a massive incendiary cloud, but Ned counters the spell before it can consume the fleeing survivors. Nys fires a knockout arrow and drops Cecile unconscious. Fern immediately steals her bag. But the danger is not over. Crown sharpshooters begin firing on the Prophet, and Fable throws herself into the line of fire, taking the hits meant for him.
With enemies closing in and Crackjaw collapsing behind them, the party forms a protective ring around the Prophet. He raises his recovered orb and, at the last possible moment, teleports them all away.