Chapter 17 Into the Squirrels Den 26/01/25

Silverclaw lead the party, along with Ironfang, down the Bowshot Run towards the Stormhorn Mountains. After a short distance travelling uphill they came to a glade in the trees with a circle of mushrooms within it.
 
Silverclaw demanded the Peace Pin owned by Lucky. Unwilling to hand it over without anything back from the werewolf there was some debate, and Silverclaw walking away to summon the rest of the Lunar Concord, before the halfling begrudgingly handed over the powerful magic item.
 
Silverclaw uses the Pin to create a gate. The mushrooms grow huge and turn from a dull brown to red with white spots as the huge werewolf steps into the circle and vanishes, Lucky follows quickly, not wanting to lose sight of his magic item. The others all follow, and find themselves in a large, stone walled hall with a ceiling made from the roots of the trees above. Many squirrels skitter thru the roots and one drops down to stand before the giant Loup Garou. He introduces himself as Argento and demands that the party leaves Beoshan's tomb thrusting forward his tiny silver spear to make his point.
 
As Silverclaw argues with Argento a huge number of squirrels come down to back him up. The werewolf refuses and the squirrels jump to attack him, trying, and succeeding, to grapple him.
 
Realising that this fight could be ended if Silverclaw is defeated, Colmir wildshapes into a giant constrictor snake and wraps his body around him before squeezing him and adding a bite. Lucky uses a Suggestion spell for Silverclaw to be peaceful, but the nature of the werewolf causes it to fail.
 
More squirrels join the attack trying to grapple with Lucky and Shadow. Solus flys into the air to avoid them. Lucky tries not to engage in combat, but is finally forced to use a sleep spell to knock out the majority of the squirrels but a pair of them have climbed into huge suits of armour which then animate into huge ‘Mechs’ and rushed forward to attack.
 
Shadow uses his Misty Escape ability to vanish from the grasp of 4 squirrels still awake. Lucky nimbly climbs up the Squirrel Mech and attempts to open it up to pull the driver out. This fails as Colmir continues to squeeze on Silverclaw who is still caught up in his grasp. Solus flys over and joins Shadow, who is investigating the sarcophagus at the far end of the chamber.
 
Having failed to find a way to into the Mech armour, Lucky hit it with the Necestel Ruse power of his sword, Thornsbane, the giant construct was stunned into immobility even as it tried to shake him off. He proceeded to try and jump onto the Giant snake/ Colmir's back and slide down him altho this didn't go quite as smoothly as the halfling would have liked and he tumbled to the ground.
 
Having found nothing of interest and hearing some shouts for assistance Solus and Shadow helped in attacking both Silverclaw and the Constructs but only when the werewolf was finally killed did the squirrels begin to listen to Colmir and Lucky's calls for peace. Lucky gathers all the remaining squirrels around him, telling them he will tell them a story and promptly knocks them all out again with another Sleep spell before taking all their weapons and asking Shadow to put them in the bag of holding.
 
Solus meanwhile investigates a mysterious gemstone fireplace and realises that it is the power source for the Squirrel Mechs. Removing a certain crystal nullifies the power of the constructs.
 
Looking at the sarcophagus again. Lucky asks Ironfang to carefully remove the lid. The overzealous werewolf throws off the stone lid with his massive strength and unceremoniously lifts out the bones of the corpse which the sarcophagus held. Solus feels the wrath of his god, Helm, as he fails to stop this desecration and he loses access to his spells.
 
As the party decides to take a short rest they see that the doorway out of the room holds a keyhole in the shape of an oak leaf. The same shape and size as Lucky's reclaimed Peace Pin.