Bloody Hands

Argent wanted to check in with his hometown, so the group teleported in. On the way in Larkspur found a unicorn and chased it, then managed to ride it. The unicorn bestowed a blessing on Dane- a favor he gets to call in at some point. Evil-dragon-possessed Lux bought an herbalist shop with the intent of turning it into the beginning of a milk-based economic empire. After a bit more wandering, the group wound up at a hot springs.

Argent started chatting with one of the owners of the hot springs, trying to see if they remembered him. A little ways into the conversation, they dropped to the ground, foaming at the mouth. Panicked, Argent called the party for help and everyone rushed in. Eventually a stone emitting purple worm poison was found in her gut and removed. When the owner’s husband walked in on the scene the same thing happened to him. The party realized that the whole town had the same stone in their stomach.

Fearing to trigger the stones of more citizens the party slipped out of town and camped in the woods while they planned what to do next. Eventually they decided to sneakily investigate the fortress that Argent claimed Kashtanav, also known as Bloodscale, used to operate out of. Upon investigating the fort, Larkspur found a message written in blood on the front door, challenging Argent to come to the mines, alone, or else more would die. Starting with his childhood friend.

The party eventually agreed to let Argent go ahead while they followed a distance behind. When he entered the mine tunnel, the party got waylaid by essentially an evil dnd party. While Argent descended below and began to battle Kashtanavagain around a pool of lava, the party did battle above. Eventually the rest of the party defeated the evil!dnd party and chased after Argent. Argent was repeatedly polymorphing into a mammoth and stomping on Kashtanav, which was proving very effective, even though Kashanov had made a deal with some kind of entity called the Hunger. (See Entities.) Feeling himself on the verge of defeat, Kashtanav pulled out the master stone, which controlled the poison stones in the villages stomachs. To keep it away from him mammoth!Argent knocked it away and stomped it to destroy it.

Kashtanav started laughing.

The party soon found out why.

Destroying the stone had released the poison into the stomachs of the entire town. There were only six survivors: Hannah, a halfling woman, her child, a green dragonborn, Tate Ronald Tot, the owners' of the hotsprings, whose stones had already been removed, and a General Tuzumi, who hadn’t had a stone implanted. Larkspur raced around the town, collecting the stones so their poison wouldn’t seep into the environment, while Gira  summoned a water elemental to gather what poison had escaped.

The general the the older couple decided to stay in town; the couple to live out their days, the general to bury the town.

The halflings and the green dragonborn elected to return to Regaclith with the party as they teleported back.