Session 13: Fire in Wyrmheart Mine
Session date: 2026-07-28 Campaign: Tip of the Diceberg Status: Canon summary with review flags
Previously on…
At Old Tin Top’s, Jacques LaFleur survived his Isolde disguise, returned the golden idol, and revealed that the whole party now suffers the death curse. He offered two routes south: Shadowfang Keep, where his captured companion is held, or Wyrmheart Mine, where a young red dragon waits below an abandoned dwarven excavation. The party left aboard an Aldani-built steamboat with Summer Mooneyham and a shrinking clock.
Summary
The river fork split the expedition. Jacques and Summer continued left by steamboat toward the Aldani Basin and Shadowfang Keep. Bodius, Isilrod, Bonzo, Faf, Moghammer, and Clarky disembarked and followed Jacques’s map toward Wyrmheart Mine.
The steamboat had already yielded one strange inheritance. Bonzo found a giant claw made by the old Aldani engineers, one of five such claws, and claimed it as a weapon. Jacques warned that returning to an Aldani village while bearing it would trigger a ritual to decide whether Bonzo was its true owner. The exact rules are buried in Bonzo’s digital inventory, but the claw proved brutally effective against everything Bonzo pinched with it.
The overland approach took about a day and then an all-night push. The stream they followed dwindled to nothing, the jungle soil turned dry and stony, and the party gained a level of exhaustion from marching through darkness. Faf’s dwarven instincts recognized old mining country. He recalled a stronghold whose name sounded like Hrakhamar, supplied long ago by iron from Wyrmheart Mine, but the name remains unconfirmed.
At the mountain base, the party found a sulfurous, claw-gouged entrance flanked by two ruined buildings. Bonzo scouted two sleeping kobolds in crow form; they woke and fled into the mine. The party raided an old tool shed for lanterns, grease, pickaxes, wheels, and brake parts, repaired a rusted mine cart, and discovered that the office’s ledgers had rotted beyond use.
Inside, the mine opened into a vast cylindrical chasm descending hundreds of feet around a central stone column. Rails spiraled downward through multiple levels. The repaired cart carried the party to a lone kobold sentry, who rang an alarm before Bodius erased it with Eldritch Blast. Another kobold escaped deeper into the mine.
The party doubled back into an upper side chamber and triggered a swinging-claw trap outside a kobold nest. Seven kobolds defended roughly thirty large eggs. Bonzo’s claws, Bodius’s blast, Faf’s Debt Collector, Moghammer’s bite, and Isilrod’s Sacred Flame ended the fight quickly. The party took one kobold egg and assorted weapons, leaving the rest of the nest behind.
The next chamber was colder and far worse. Dwarven skeletons lay piled among a charred workshop and forge. Isilrod’s Detect Evil and Good revealed six specters hiding through the ruin. Their life-draining strikes temporarily cut into Isilrod, Faf, and Bonzo’s maximum health, while the party’s tactics became gloriously self-defeating: Bodius cast Mirror Image as a decoy, then Faf charged into the same room and marked the specters so they would attack him instead. All six specters were destroyed.
Among the dwarven dead, the party recovered a Giant Slayer Hand Crossbow for Isilrod, a suit of mithral half plate whose recipient remains unclear, and an orange potion. Someone drank the potion immediately, discovered it granted one hour of fire resistance, and then watched the effect expire during the party’s uninterrupted eight-hour long rest.
Rested and no longer exhausted, the group went deeper. Faf and Moghammer took the stairs while the others rode the cart. Fire traps cut off the stairs behind them; a spear barricade stopped the cart group before a fortified lower chamber. Twelve kobolds and four kobold inventors waited with slings, alchemist’s fire, treasure chests, and explosive red barrels.
The inventors set Faf and Bonzo on fire, forcing the party to spend actions extinguishing themselves while small attacks accumulated. Isilrod then dropped a perfectly measured Stinking Cloud over most of the defenders. The “fart bubble” denied wave after wave of kobold actions and turned the battle. Bonzo landed near the explosive barrels, lit them with Druidcraft, rolled a natural 1 trying to escape, spent Heroic Inspiration, and barely cleared enough of the blast to survive. The explosion killed several kobolds and dealt Bonzo 11 damage. The party finished the survivors.
The session ended in the lower chamber immediately after the victory. The visible chests, boxes, and defeated inventors remain unlooted. The party discussed resting again, but neither the looting nor that second rest happened before the recording stopped. The red dragon is still somewhere deeper in Wyrmheart Mine.
Outcomes
- The player party split from Jacques LaFleur and Summer Mooneyham; Jacques and Summer continued toward Shadowfang Keep.
- The party entered Wyrmheart Mine and alerted its kobold occupants.
- One sentry, seven nest defenders, six specters, and the fortified lower kobold force were defeated.
- Isilrod received a Giant Slayer Hand Crossbow.
- The party recovered mithral half plate, but its current owner is unclear.
- Bonzo carries one of five ancient Aldani engineer claws and one kobold egg.
- One workshop long rest removed the party’s exhaustion and temporary specter damage.
- Lower-level treasure and the post-battle rest remain unresolved.
- The young red dragon was not encountered.
Open Threads
- Confirm the red dragon’s name, rendered as Siegfried or Seafred.
- Confirm the Hrakhamar and possible Kobold Mountains spellings.
- Identify the owner of the mithral half plate.
- Recover the exact title and Heroic Inspiration rules for Bonzo’s Aldani claw.
- Loot the fortified chamber and decide whether it is safe to rest.
- Continue downward toward the dragon while the death-curse clock advances.
- Jacques and Summer are pursuing the Shadowfang rescue without the player party.
Transcript: Full session transcript
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