# Umbral Gaze 4: The Candlehead

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.

*what do they say?*

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***

The party has reached the base of the cake pile. There is something like a path, and Almuth does detect traps on it. He finds some, but 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 somwhere else. a keep is surrounded by farms of blue grain and redcap slave masters grave dead-eyed humans in the fields. Lousisa sees her form among them. It looks lik "______". She spits on a redcap,k the one with her body, and is thrown from the mountaintop by ab apparition of her curser. Clementine casts "pass without trace", so most of the party is quite sneaky. 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 red dragon, Themberchaud, appears with the full intention of eating everyone and that on which they stand. We fly up into the air to escape, Clementine a pterosaur and louisa doing her usual fly thing. We waited a bit too long, and the dragon is basically upon us. Almuth prays to Eldath, Divine Intervention (nat 20) 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. "Thumberchaud has finally respected my wishes about... his health?". 



[^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 surrounding area.