# Umbral Gaze 4: Candle-head

Portal network to Neverwinter.

Do some shopping and get some rest. Clementine buys a gilded acorns; Gottlob buys a diamond worth 300 gp.

The next morning, at Tasha's behest, the Wintershield Watchmen[^ww] brief our heroes about the Cake Pile. The dwarves who explain call it Brog Burgest, "cake pile", because to call the travesty a mountain would be an insult to mountains.

*what do they say?*

{.thematic}
***

A warm, sweet breeze like the scent from a bakers oven tousles the party's hair and delights their nostrils. Their boots squelch in inches of buttercream frosting as, rocking back on their heels, they crane their necks upward to regard the point at which cliffs and gulleys of cake meet azure sky. Our heroes have reached the base of the cake pile, Brog Burgest, and consider now the optimal path to the top, where it can only be assumed their quarry lurks.

There is something like a path, and Almuth does detect traps on it. He finds some, but (Clementine casts "pass without trace", so most of the party is quite sneaky, and we walk up anyway and are not struck. Louisa flies all the way up to the top, stumbling upon an otherworldly scenes that seems to bleed into reality from somewhere else. a keep is surrounded by farms of blue grain and redcap slave masters grave dead-eyed humans in the fields. Louisa sees her form among them. It looks like "______". She spits on a redcap, the one with her body, and is thrown from the mountaintop by an apparition of her curser. Alm. and Got. dance with 4 frosting thralls after she lands, totally unharmed, and gottlob is very graceful, for some reason. Almuth too eventually gets free. The rest of the party snuck past.

Carrying on, we get the the top level. Torches burn in purple and orange atop statues of snarling dragons. There's a beholder there, but it doesn't notice us immediately. Checking it's alignment, (LN) Alm. walks forward and talks to it. It gives its name in the course of insisting that we leave immediately unless we wish to be devoured. He doesn't want us to be eaten, because humans give his friend indigestion. Shit. A fat red dragon, Themberchaud, appears with the full intention of eating everyone along with the cake on which they stand. Almuth prays to Eldath, divine intervention[^divine] and boom, dragon no longer eats humans. on a diet. The dragon asks Cogyth to leave us alone, says he no longer eats humans so there's no sense in killing us. We fly up into the air to escape the cake surface, which the dragon still wants to eat. Clementine is a pterosaur and louisa doing her usual fly thing. The two have a happy reunion. "Themberchaud has finally respected my wishes about... his health?". 

{% What happened in part 2? %}

At end of 1, cheshira, freed from her contract to the beholder, raced down the mountain to claim the victims she had trapped in cogyth's name for her own pleasures. As she does so, we intercept and louisa asks her what her problem is. She climbs on a roof and causes a plane shift (or something). The hag summons two eye drakes (did she smoosh them together from a dragon and a beholder? maybe? ask.)

{% be sure to mention that tasha said in sending that she's not going to help us much for a little bit. she's busy. She also mentioned an air elemental sent by the cyclone with warm regards; laeral has thereby discovered our ruse and holds the elemental captive--- she wants to talk %}

[^ww]: The [Wintershield Watchmen](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Wintershield_watchmen) is a local volunteer militia that polices the city of Neverwinter and sees to its interests in the surrounds.

[^divine]: A natural 20 at the most opportune time

{% ---------------------------------- %}

Fresh on the heels of their victory over ____, the party take a portal to Neverwinter and the City of Skilled Hands, where the next beholder waits and which offers plenty a nook and corner store from which our heroes may obtain much-needed supplies. Come dawn, members of the Wintershield Watchmen[^ww]--- at Tasha's behest--- brief our heroes on their quarry, and the burly dwarves who explain leave the party with an impression of otherworldly absurdity.

The beholder's lair is known to the denizens of Neverwinter as Brog Burgest, "cake pile", for to call the dulcet travesty a "mountain" would be an insult to mountains, but "pile" fails to capture the scale of the topography. Brog Burgest's peak vanishes upward among clouds.

{.thematic}

The party departs with haste, though the journey to the mountain is not long, and soon a warm, sweet breeze like the scent from a bakers oven tousles the party's hair and delights their nostrils. Their boots squelch in inches of buttercream frosting as, rocking back on their heels, they crane their necks upward to regard the meeting of caky cliffs and gulleys with azure sky. At the base of Brog Burgest, out heroes consider aloud what is their optimal path to the top, where it can only be assumed that a postprandially-obsessed beholder lurks by some gargantuan oven.