So-Ko, Snickerly and the Fae Wild

1489
Year of the Warrior Princess
Nightal 18

Our group is still taking things easy in Cormyr's capital city of Suzai, and they had just said goodbye to Diovanni and Brolgar who left for Waterdeep and their home a fews days prior. Riddick is off on one of his "training" missions which usually finds him coming in as Lathander's orb is rising in the East with a fresh bruise or two and a bulge on his backpack. The rest of our heroes are at their favorite inn, the Naken Siren. A strange man cloaked and hooded approaches. He gives them an option to gain favor of a powerful ally and wealth to go along. He drops his card and disappears in front of them! They decide to at least take the time to hear his offer and follow directions to his hotel room from the card he left. When they get to the room, there are a couple of locals there at the front door making sure that no trouble is caused. The group is shown in, and go into a dark room where the hooded man is sitting at a long table flanked by two foreign looking warriors. He produces a small chest, opens it and turns it to the party; inside are hundreds of identical gems, and he tosses one to Hannibal to keep. It is an astral diamond! The masked man then offers the rest of the chest to the party and also promises favors from the Spider Queen if they bring him Riddick! Hannibal is furious and tosses the table aside! The masked man said the offer is still valid as Leif looks interested for a short while. Everyone leaves the room quickly after the hooded man teleports out with his two guards.
After a few more days the party decides it is time to leave and with much pomp and circumstance they are escorted to the city boundaries by the Purple Dragon Knights. A few easy days of travel pass by and then some odd and disturbing scenes are come across by the group. Most are attacks of merchants and a few attacks look like regular citizens are killed for no reason. About this time the King's wizard Wriser-maa-todus sends Jax a sending asking him to be on the lookout of off Fae incursions, and that other parties friendly to the King are on the look out as well.
The next day they come across a couple of Satyrs attacking a farmer and his two daughters. The party acts to stop the attack, but the Satyrs flee and the group chases them. After a good 10 minutes of flat out sprinting through the woods, they come to a meadow to see the Satyr's flee though a portal to the Faewild! Before they can get to examining the portal, they find at the opposite edge of the lea an oddly dressed Gnome surrounded by some man-sized golems. The Gnome tries and finally success in communicating with the group. He names himself Snickerly Rubble, and states he is here to retrieve some property of his master. The only thing you see is an old statue that must have been here many, many years. As Snickerly recites a complex ritual, the statue comes to life! The statue seems to be some kind of run away slave, but a powerful one at that. Snickerly opens a portal to an odd world called Ebberon, and has some type of control box that is forcing the creature (it names itself Solomon Kong), to go through the portal. The party tries to intercede but Snickerly takes that as a hostile action and attacks! His men-golems attack as well, and it looks like he can control Solomon using his box. A tough fight ensues seeing Snickerly at the end push a button that creates a bright and intense beam from Solomon's chest that slices off the left side of Riddick's face! Solomon smashes the control box and Snickerly escapes jumping through the portal.
Solomon introduces himself and asks to join the group as he is now awaken from a long sleep and appears to be free of his master, at least for now.
Jax manages to reopen the portal to the Faewild, and the party goes though wanting to find the source of these strange incursions. Upon landing in the Faewild, Leif is momentarily stricken with an intense pain which subsides. He feels this pain may be related to the source of his night terrors which have been getting worse. Are the Fae and his terrors related?
The party marches on and comes to an area with several buildings. After some odd combats and doing some searches, they come to an old map room with a large map of this compound. They notice that this area was once a large graveyard with many, many cairns. Most of these cairns have been dug up and used to make those weird buildings. Another odd thing is that some of the Fae that they fought seemed crazed and upon death remained animated enough to fight for a short time after!
Is this placed cursed? Is there some power behind the crazed Fae and the curse of undeath? What have they gotten themselves into?
The last encounter of the day is a doozie. A shapeshifter pretends to be an enslaved Eladrin and attacks the group. She is aided by two beetle swarms and manages to kill Leif, and severely wound most of the others before she is put down! Her treasure is an enchanted ring of wishes! Jax and Riddick decide to burn off all the power of the ring to try and bring back Leif from the underworld.... It works! A long rest is taken by the group, and is well deserved.

EXP: 2140

Going top side

1489
Year of the Warrior Princess
Uktar 11

You and the Drow have begun a hectic race to the surface. Carrying the Justicar slows you down, but with his help you manage to take several lesser traveled paths to go ever closer to the world you know and love. The party stumbles across a couple of moderately wounded Harpers, Lt. Starshot and Sgt. Means. They assess you of the current situation: Smaller crack squads of Drow have been sighted and either they wipe out the Harper forces or if faced with superior numbers, they vanish before much damage can be dealt to them. Now rising to the surface is a very large invading army of Drow as well. They seem to be headed to what the Harpers call the "Last Stand", an old magical outpost of Myth Drannor that the Harpers along with Cormyr staff as an underground outpost. They deem that the Drow cannot take this, since there are magical portals that they could use to move across Faerun. The outpost itself is several miles underground and is near enough that the party could get there in a day or two. The Harpers assist you with your wounded but they can only do so much for the Justicar. After several hours of travel they give you final directions to the Last Stand, and wish you well.
The party does make it to the ancient outpost almost at the same time the Drow invading army does. They take a back way scouted out by Riddick (into a kitchen area), and come across some Purple Dragon Knights! These knights are at first hostile (seeing Riddick sneaking around), but cooler heads prevail after Hannibal presents himself and the group. Hannibal strikes a worthy leader to the Knights, especially showing off in the Coat of Arn that he gained several months ago.
The groups fights hither and dither on their way to the last functioning portal. This portal leads to a topside area in Cormyr, and they are told the King of Cormyr, Foril, has taken the field with his primary army in case the Drow breach the surface. Our party has to hold the portal until the final combat so that everyone else can escape the Drow! A great fight ensues at the portal (some magical repair is needed to the device during the fight that Jax completes) and the captain of the Purple Knights orders the group through while he detonates the portal from the other side killing himself and many Drow.
The party, blinded by the noon day sun are congratulated and questioned by the King and his staff. After several hours they are offered a good deal of hospitality and are deemed heroes by the ruler of Cormyr.

POST Adventure: Many days pass as the party recovers from their adventure in the Underdark. For everyone but Riddick, it takes days to recover your normal sight, and some times your eyes hurt when you are outside in the daylight for too long. However being deemed heroes is a good thing. There is plenty of time for Jax to craft magical items, and for long lost correspondence to your loved ones back in Waterdeep. Leif finds that his night terrors have returned now that he is back on the surface; Brolgar and Diovanni find messages sent to them from their highly placed family members in Waterdeep, calling them home sooner than the rest of you would like to leave. They decide to head home early, taking on work with a merchant caravan headed for the Sword Coast. Before they leave however, the party is gifted with several magic items, one of which is a three part item called the beacon of the guardian. All three parts act in a similar manner, if one is broken, the other two will home in on it giving the owners a very good idea of distance and direction that the broken unit lies. To break a piece is a minor action if the item is located where you can get to it easily, say around the neck or tied to you belt. A six word phase can be recorded when the item is broken. A broken piece can be repaired and used again at cost of 1,000 gold. Brolgar and Diovanni are given one of the pieces your group retains control of the other two to be given to whomever you wish.

EXP: 1356 + 250 for story completion