In the previous session the group started to explore an ancient Ziggurat, looking for a golden seal. They had overcome a colored light puzzle and battled some monsters and now entered a new room.

This room contained a strange structure made out of copper plates connected by ropes to form a sort of pyramid. The uppermost part had a white crystal set in the middle of a small copper plate. The middle copper plate had 8 x 8 levers, which basically produced one hole out of 64 possible in that plate. The lowest plate had a strange map, which Eldion identified with a history check as being a very old world map before the shift of some continents. Below that plate was an opening to insert some flat object, 75 cm wide and 150 cm long, but only half a centimeter thick. There was no obvious immediate use for this structure, so the group moved on.

The next room was nearly empty, except for a similar symbol of 7 concentric circles as they had found previously at the entrance of the pyramid, this time with the 4th circle marked. With the notes from the dead archaeologists they were able to identify this as relating to the planet of water. So Aria poured some water on the symbol, which appeared to magically switch something, but the effect only lasted until the water had run off. But by placing his water skin on the symbol the switch was activated for longer. [DM's note: What the players didn't know was that this deactivated a rather deadly flood trap, which made the rest of the dungeon much easier.] The room after this contained a fire trap, which was deactivated by putting a torch on the concentric circles symbol relating to the plane of fire.

Avoiding a number of unexplored rooms the players arrived at the final destination, where they found a number of corpses. This time not only archaeology students, but also the three tiefling mages that had been sent by Caius Bergeron, the sponsor of the expedition, to recover the golden seal. That golden seal was at the other end of the room, having visibly been moved from the wall, where it had sealed a strange opening. Closer examination revealed that opening to lead to some strange portal leading to a void between planes. The tieflings had apparently tried to protect themselves from whatever was behind the portal by drawing pentagrams on the floor, but somebody had disturbed the pentagram and the protection hadn't worked. From traces of the ensuing fight the group could conclude that this was the source of the strange alien monsters they had encountered earlier.

On the corpse of one of the tieflings they found notes describing their mission in more detail. They had been sent to recover the golden seal, which had the shape of a door, 150 x 75 x 0.5 cm. The tiefling had noted that the seal was needed to teleport a "colossus" to the prime material plane, and that the seal was to be delivered to a tunned near Mayor Macbannin's manor on Cauldron Hill in Flint. From that the group could conclude that the construction they knew was going on in the parallel Shadowfell plane under Cauldron Hill was in fact a colossus, and that there was a plan to attack the city with it by bringing the colossus out to the prime material plane.

But before doing that, 4 of the 6 players wanted to try out the strange structure with the world map, having noticed that the golden seal was exactly the shape of the object missing from it. Two players didn't want to do that, and left the ziggurat as a precaution. The others put a light on top of the top copper plate, which was increased by the white crystal. With the levers they had the choice of 64 different locations on the world map. Thinking that it might summon some monsters at that location, they chose a location in Danor, before putting the golden seal in. However the seal powered a teleport and the 4 found themselves in the middle of a field in Danor, from where it took them a week to travel back to Flint. The other 2 players, in front of the ziggurat, had to deal with the Voice of Rot, an immense Titan that had been awoken by the use of such powerful magic. Fortunately they had thought in the previous session to bring an offering for the Voice of Rot, a boatload of rotting animal carcasses, and were able to send him back to sleep. They then took the golden seal and traveled back to Flint, where they were joined some days later by their teleported friends.

At the RHC in Flint the audit had discovered irregularities of the head of the local branch, Lady Inspectress Margaret Saxby, and she had fled. The group wanted to send an army to the location of the colossus, but were told to scout that location first, as their story appeared somewhat implausible. So they went to the tunnel's location, and found that the tunnel was very short and led to nowhere. However a good perception roll was able to see that halfway down the tunnel the walls, floor, and ceiling were lined with rusty iron. Having used iron circles to teleport between the Shadowfell and the prime material plane before, they used the amulets they had for this from the raid of the mayor's manor to enter the Shadowfell.

That way they came to the inside of the Shadowfell version of Cauldron Hill, which was hollow. A huge colossus was being constructed inside. The tunnel led to a structure high up, over a bridge to a dome which appeared to contain an elevator and some control mechanisms. However inside the dome the group was met by the three main villains of the campaign: Lady Saxby, Caius Bergeron, and the head of the thieves guild, Lorcan Kell, with some of his goons.

A big fight ensued, with the group being level 6 and the enemies level 10, so the characters sustained some serious damage. However they managed to take out Caius and the goons relatively quickly. Meanwhile Lady Saxby had moved towards the entrance of the dome, attacking the spellcasters at the back of the group. Now she was attacked there by Merian, who used a power to teleport here over the side of the bridge. Catastrophically failing here saving throw against that, Lady Saxby fell to her death a thousand meters below. That really turned the tide, as Lady Saxby was the hardest enemy in the encounter. Lorcan Kell didn't stand a chance all alone and was quickly dispatched.

The group had killed the villains and exposed the conspiracy to attack the city with the colossus. Now they could get reinforcements in, arrest the technicians below and neutralize the threat. They were celebrated as heroes of the city and we ended the campaign with this triumph.

In our next session we will create characters for a new campaign, using the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition rules which were just released in French.