Chapter 10 - The Gloom Mother

Descending further below the Abbey catacombs, the party enters a corridor pillared by ancient stone columns. The hall gradually opens up into a massive cavern lit by dozens of tall iron pyres. Here the adventurers discover the Abbey’s long entombed secret: a giant obsidian shell, the horrible carapace of some ancient, monstrous gastropod. The party realizes immediately that arcane and divine enchantments are nullified in the presence of the towering black helix, which fills the room with a cold, empty dread.

A deep chasm runs along the western edge of the cavern, and a waterfall cascades from the opposite wall, which extends up and out of sight above. Beside the artifact a makeshift bridge has been constructed. Hundreds of people, the commune cultists, have harnessed the shell with chains and are silently attempting to pull it on logs (with the help of two giant cave trolls) across the bridge to the ledge on the opposite side where a long corridor leads upwards out of the cavern.

On a ledge surveying the proceedings stands a tall illithid, or mindflayer (a powerful psionic race from the underdark known to the ancient knights as the "fleshe beardes"). Beside the illithid stands Aryanne, fleshly tendrils now protruding from her face – her illithidine transformation nearly complete. Beside Aryanne, writhing in apparent psychic agony, is Savra. It is clear to the party that this mindflayer is the mastermind behind the Abbey’s tragic unraveling; it has deceived the cultists and holds them in thrall to its dark purpose – possession of the powerful artifact.

Struck by the unusual, alluring emptiness of the otherworldly coil, the party stumbles into the cavern, alerting three kobold sentinels (and the two mindflayers who are overseeing work on the cavern floor). Cultists immediately swarm the party, grabbing Zantus and hauling him to the edge of the chasm. In a last-ditch attempt, Zantus breaks free from his captors, pushing his way back from the precarious ledge, but still more cultists emerge from the darkness to overwhelm the party again.

The loss of magic and divine effects leaves the party cursing the strange obsidian helix, and they quickly realize that their only hope for survival (and for the cultists) is to remove the artifact from play.

Igniting a jar of explosive miner’s gel, Arranis heaves it toward the bridge while the rest of the party fends off the cultist mob. The blast from the gel splinters the wooden beams supporting the bridge, which tips its cargo off into the deep chasm, flinging the cave trolls and dozens of cultists to the depths below.

The cold dread in the cavern quickly fades, and the party senses the return of arcane and divine enhancements. Pushing back from the mob, Kilgorin and Davlyn use their ranged powers to target the mindflayers. Davlyn’s arrow, a sure hit against the illithid mastermind, finds instead the neck of the unwitting Savra, who steps into harm’s at the last possible moment. Savra dies instantly, and the illithid kneels to remove Savra’s head before retreating through the long corridor behind.

Aryanne, sending more thralls against the party, is knocked backwards by Kilgorin’s fire magic, and she too retreats up the long corridor. The cultist throng immediately drops to the floor unconscious, released at long last (even if only temporarily) from their psychic enthrallment.