Chapter 5 - Into Darkness

Overall Summary
In this rather long arc of the story, our heroes Chamunda, Relentless, Tally, Medericus, and Kitrick (along with Amaroq, a cleric sent to help support the team) take a number of quests from the Metalhearts board to get done all together. In this arc, their mission was to gather materials for Helmi and to help the wood elves of Ai'orn with a drow uprising that was thinning their numbers.

The heroes met faerie dragons on their travels before meeting the wood elves, who were desperate for help with the drow as their people were being killed in large numbers. The New Dawn was told the drow hideout was within the caverns, though the entrance was secret as the wood elves couldn't make it past the drow warriors to find it. The New Dawn made their way through glittering caverns where they fought and sneaked past sentient jellies, geode sharks, and giant scorpions to gather magnetic rock for a machine Helmi wanted to create with Relentless's help.

Eventually they discovered the drow hideout, which ended up being an old abandoned temple dedicated to Lolth. At first, the team thought to fight their way inside, but then they ended up convincing the guards that they were there to negotiate. Priestess Saptyrr, after performing a ritual to forcefully transform a drow woman into a drider, told them that they were to gather intel on the wood elves and come back within a week with enough information to destroy them. She sent Hounjra Hun'arn, an elite male warrior, with them to ensure they did as they were told.

The New Dawn talked with Hounjra alone and found out that most of the male drow were kept as slaves and severely mistreated. With this information, the New Dawn spoke with the wood elves and created a treaty between the repressed drow and the wood elves to defeat the violent sect of Lolth worshippers and topple the matriarchy, ending the fighting and allowing those male drow to go free.

The team makes their way back to the temple underground early, rallying the male drow but realizing that the matriarch knew what was happening when a flood of spiders were led underground by a drider. They took the slaves upstairs and split into two teams, killing Priestess Nenka along the way. Kitrick did some reconnaissance and discovered the top two floors, though he ended up getting lost.

Eventually, the New Dawn finds him, readying themselves to make a full-scale attack on the matriarch and her guard. They prepare an explosive weapon and head in, in what becomes a huge and messy battle. Quaggoth, elite warriors, mages, and a behir were among the enemies faced by the New Dawn in this final battle.