Arrival in Port Battleborn becomes difficult to celebrate when the group sees a group of people taking a beating from the elements while they stare off over the sea with heavy crates in their arms. Juno waves down a local to ask what’s going on, but the man seems unbothered by the people standing around. “They’re undergoing a rite of passage,” is what the party is told, but they still seem concerned. Slender asks how long they need to stay the way they are, and the man shrugs and tells them typically around two-weeks. Jadeth tries to catch one of the people off guard to knock them off the dock and into the water, but she gets knocked back instead. She dusts herself off before stating her desire to go somewhere else– away from the people on their trial.
Mole separates from the group to find a crowmaster to send a report back to the Republic. At the marketplace, Juno and Slender search for places to pawn off their stolen goods. Matanza and Jadeth browse around the various stalls. Juno tries to find someone that can make her a weapon from the mithril ore she got from Mount Mithrin, but the blacksmith in the market lets her know that there’s only one person in Port Battleborn that knows how to craft with mithril properly. She tells Juno that the man’s retired, and currently owns the bar in town, Greystone Inn. After getting everyone back together, Jadeth laments that they were at sea during Yuletide. She offers everyone a gift to celebrate the holiday.
Slender receives a wooden crown to commemorate becoming king of the kobolds. It’s made of uncommon oak wood and fitted with garnets to allow use of his druidic magic. Mole receives a warm bearskin cloak that they can curl up on to nap and to keep them warm in cold climates. Matanza received a trident to give a ranged option for them. It also has the power to command sealife. Juno receives a wolf shaped brooch that will help hide the runes on Bahamut’s Wing to help her blend in better.
Jadeth admits that the gifts were a bit silly and begins rambling to let Juno know she could just go pawn the brooch off instead. Juno stops her by putting a hand on her shoulder and telling Jadeth that the gifts are perfect. Jadeth pulls her hood forward in embarrassment and falls to the back of the line as the party makes their way to the Greystone Inn.
At the inn, Juno, Jadeth, and Slender go up to the bar to get some top shelf drinks. Juno and Slender both get a single drink, and Jadeth lines up a row of shots. Matanza and Juno watch her in disbelief as she slurs to ask for another drink. Juno tries to cut her off, but Jadeth doesn’t want to hear it since it’s been weeks since they’ve been in a real city with a bar. The barkeep pours Jadeth a drink that’s half-booze and half-water and gives Juno a wink before handing it to the already inebriated tiefling.
Matanza comes up to the bar to order a platter of seafood, and Jadeth comes over to them to chat. They are taking notes on the behavior of their companions now that they are in a social situation. Jadeth pulls the weighted die from her pocket and rolls it a few times in front of Matanza to exclaim that it was how she was planning to hustle them. Matanza gives her a look and makes a low, exasperated, chirp. Jadeth puts the die away and says, “You called me a slut over that, remember? Remember? I’m totally over it though.” She was in fact not over it.
Juno grabs Jadeth and drags her over to another chair at her table where she’s playing dice. Juno wins the first round with ease, and the bearded man she’s playing with is impressed and asks if she wants to go double or nothing. Juno agrees, and upon rolling her first die, Jadeth slips her weighted one in Juno’s pocket. Juno fakes a yawn to pull it out and rolls to hit the perfect number– unfortunately, the challenger rolls perfectly as well, and Juno busts on the save.
Defeated from her gambling, Juno passes Jadeth’s babysitting over to Slender and tries to ask the bartender about the mithril blacksmith. Slender brings Jadeth over to the piano bench and begins to play a song absentmindedly. Jadeth gets excited, since her father had her take piano lessons when she was young, and joins in. To everyone’s surprise, the two of them play a nice duet and earn applause (and that sweet sweet coin) from their audience.
Over at the bar, the bartender tells Juno that her father was the last person to clear Alandreas’ trial. She also mentions that he hasn’t been taking any requests for many years now unless they’re for the army. Jadeth overhears that from across the room and calls out that Lil’ Mole is in the army. The bartender lets Jadeth know that he only makes them for the Port Battleborn army. Jadeth gets heated and says that the Republic’s army is far superior to any of the Caldran armies– which gets the attention of the tavern owner.
The gruff dwarf is insulted and challenges Jadeth to an arm wrestle. She smugly flicks her tail at seeing the size of her opponent and accepts. He defeats her so quickly that he smashes her arm through the table. Slender and Mole watch that with huge eyes and both try to challenge the dwarf as well. He holds out both arms and takes them both down easily as well. Matanza, who had been taking notes on this strange custom, peeps and comes over to try it as well.
Most of the other party is still unaware of Matanza’s strength and looks away to avoid watching the dwarf destroy the little bird. However, Matanza is a force to be reckoned with. They are able to make an amazing comeback against the dwarf, and the dwarf claps them hard on the back and lets them know he likes their fighting spirit. He tells Matanza that they should take the challenge at the crater temple before heading back into the kitchen.
The rest of the party is excited to tell them that the crater is where Argos said they could find the tear of a god. Matanza is hesitant to take the challenge alone, but the barkeeper says it may be manageable with their friends to back them up. They all head to bed to rest and prepare for the challenge ahead. Right before Slender goes upstairs, he overhears the bartender excited from how much money she just made from the travelers– mentioning that it will help pay for her college.
Juno jumps into the bed in Jadeth’s room, which surprises Jadeth since Juno had slept on the floor previously. Juno says it’s big enough to share, but Jadeth turns red under her mask and requests that they don’t. Juno’s clearly hurt, but she relinquishes the bed to Jadeth and slouches into the corner of the room.
Slender stays awake and runs into Lil’ Mole when he’s snooping around overnight. He asks Mole if they’ve seen the tip jar, which makes Mole suspicious. They follow Slender to the tavernkeep’s room where he knocks on the door. It wakes the dwarf, who’s grumpy that it’s the middle of the night. He asks what could be so important for them to wake him at that hour of the night, but Slender hands him a little coin purse of gold to help pay for his daughter’s college since Slender was never able to properly attend. Still frustrated that they couldn’t wait until the morning, the dwarf gruffly thanks them and tells them that they should get to bed. Mole gives Slender a noogie on the way back to their rooms.
In the morning, the group sets off towards the temple next to the crater. Jadeth and Juno both head off to scout the periment of the fortress as Mantanza rapidly takes field notes about the location. The temple looks to be the last standing building in what would have once been a large ancient city. There is only the overgrown footprint of any buildings that would have once littered the landscape, and a large river runs through the center of the scene like it was cut out of the earth with the giant swing of a sword. The crater is across the river from the party.
Jadeth calls out that she found a big hole in the temple wall, and Juno casts detect thoughts to see if there are any thinking creatures inside. She experiences the vivid thoughts of Matanza around the history of the Sternulans, Jadeth’s simple thoughts of: “wow, that’s a big hole in the wall!”, and Slender’s concern of the celestial and druidic magic he can detect. They walk inside and light a torch, revealing three massive 30-foot tall statues.
The two statues on the sides of the room point towards the one in the middle with one hand and hold scrolls with druidic writing in their other. The statue in the middle is a tall woman clad in armor with a clean split running from her top right shoulder through her chest and into her abdomen. She holds a sword pointed downward towards a shattered altar. On top of the altar there is a small box with a hole just big enough for a hand to fit inside at the front, and for a sword to fit through a slit in the top.
Slender reads the druidic inscription on the scrolls of the two statues. He translates: “Here lies the final resting place of Alandreas, mother of the hearty, bringer of light, and patron deity of those overcoming hardships. To pass her test, and gain entry to her resting place, steel yourself and grab hold of the unknown.” The group warily looks at the box on the altar of the middle statue.
Jadeth pats Matanza and gestures towards the box to let them know it’s all them. They make a nervous peep and approach the box, cautiously looking between it and the sword. Slender offers to give it a chance first and sticks his hand inside. He misty-steps away as soon as the sword comes down, offering the trial back over to Matanza. Matanza plunges their hand into the box to grab the handle and gets sliced by the sword. They pull back mostly unharmed, and the sound of stones grinding gets the group’s attention. They go around the corner to find a stairway down.
The stairs down lead into a crypt and the smell of decay and rot fill the air immediately. The sound of the undead waking as they are awoken from the sound of the door opening echo down the halls. Jadeth spots a single zombie and calls it out to Juno. Juno fires her crossbow to lodge an arrow in its head, and it slowly turns around to groan at the group. Jadeth attempts to rush up closer to dispatch it, but triggers a trap.
Spikes shoot up from the floor, forcing her to jump off the wall to avoid getting sliced. She calls out a warning as more and more undead begin to flood into the room. The paladins rush around the trap to come to her aid as the skeletons and zombies clamber down from the higher levels. Matanza punches a hole clean through the chest of one of the zombies, but it continues coming at them. Juno ducks around the corner to fire an arrow into its head, but it still doesn’t die. Only when Mole uses a full smite does it burn into a crisp.
Seeing all the zombies pouring down from the floor above, Jadeth looks at Matanza and asks if they want to go up. Matanza asks: “por qué” which Jadeth mishears as, “okay!” So she brings them through a dimensional door to the top of the catacombs. They peep at her angrily for lifting them up, but then they turn to find that they’re both surrounded.
Juno tries to disarm one of the traps as Slender looks for a good vantage point to cast spells from the lower level. Another husk zombie stumbles down from the ceiling next to Juno, and Mole runs over to shield bash it. Slender gets a good view of Jadeth and Matanza before casting faerie fire to light up the undead closest to them. Jadeth looks over the shoulder of the one to warn the group that she can see a pile that the corpses are still rising from. Jadeth jumps down to engage with the husk fighting Juno, and Matanza dodges a spike trap to walk into a teleportation trap that sends them and one of the husk zombies back to the foot of the stairs. Mole is occupied with more of the husk zombies, so they yell to Slender to take care of the corpse pile.
Slender runs past the fighting and misty steps over to the pile of bodies. He lights a fire in his palm and casts it out to the pile, igniting it and some nearby husk zombies. Mole and Juno are quick to come to Slender’s aid as he books it away from the flaming undead. They finish off the remaining corpses, and just like that, they are alone in the room at the end of the catacombs.
There is an elevated circular platform in the back of the room with a giant casket in the middle that’s surrounded by four stone guardian statues. There are stairs towards the back of the platform leading to another level above as well. The statue on the casket resembled the one of the woman upstairs. However, instead of being dressed in brilliant armor, she rests on a bed of flowers in a beautiful dress and a stream of tears running down from her face. At the foot of the casket lies a plaque written in celestial. Juno and Slenderbard translate it silently, and Jadeth reads it aloud: “here lies Alandreas. You who have passed her gauntlet may now pay tribute to her greatness, or speak these words and take her test to rise as her champion – ‘Awaken ever vigilant guardian and test my worth.’” As soon as the words are said, two of the guardian stone statues slowly come to life.
One approaches Matanza and Mole, and the other comes at Slender, Juno, and Jadeth. The one coming at the larger group spins its hammer and shield to do a tornado (beyblade) attack at the three of them. Juno and Slender dive out of the way and Jadeth takes the full brunt of the attack. Slender retreats past the paladins to duck behind cover and heal himself. Meanwhile Jadeth casts an armor spell and healing light on herself to continue taking hits to protect Juno.
Matanza repeatedly slams their gauntlets into the stone statue while Mole tries and fails to locate any weak points. Slender peeks his head out to hit their statue with faerie fire. Mole hits their statue with a less than successful smite, and it also decides to spin attack to knock them around. Slender realizes that the paladins are in danger and plays his lute to cast a healing spell.
Juno runs forward to help Jadeth, yelling for the statue to “stay away from her tiefling!” Upon seeing the damage being dealt to its brethren, their statue adjusts its target over to the paladins just as they finish off the first. With everyone focusing a full force attack on the second statue, they are able to defeat it without sustaining too much more injury.
They head up the stairs to find a chest said to contain one of the items Argos is having them fetch – Alandreas’ tear. However, Matanza opens it to find that it’s empty. Instead, there’s a note left in its place that reads: “Haha! So you’ve actually made it this far? Congratulations! You are now an honorary member of Port Battleborn’s order of knights, and have been granted full citizenship in our lands! Come to town and seek us out in the keep! Use the phrase ‘pink bananas and orange blueberries’ to let us know you’ve cleared the trial of our ancestors.”
Juno notes that she had seen some knights walking around with strange looking swords, and notes that it may have something to do with Alandreas’ tear. As ex-royalty in the Caldran empire, Jadeth huffs that she doesn’t care to be knighted, but rather would have rather just gotten the item they needed for Argos. Looking forward to what new features their titles will have, the group heads back to Port Battleborn.