Battleunder and the two lower branches
Below Battleon
Residents of Battleon began hearing strange noises under the town. Yara searched for their source and found a hidden passage into miles of tunnels. She introduced herself to the Hero as a Paladin who meant to become the strongest of her order, and she wanted to find out how far the tunnels went.
Yara had lost a ring her father gave her. The Hero recovered it from the undead, took away some of their weapons and armor, and faced the Bone Terror that Yara had been afraid to confront. Once the Hero had earned her trust, Yara told them why she had come down there. She was looking for a weapon with unusual magical properties. The Hero found the sword, and Yara let them keep it.
Four keys and a portal
Yara already knew the shortcuts into the second layer. She had found an enchanted chest whose contents depended on which key opened it. The Hero searched for pieces of the Key of Life, the Key of Dreams and the Key of Thought, then took on the search for the last key, the Key of the Void.
A portal at the end of the cavern led deeper underground. Warlic found a way to open it, and Yara sent the Hero to the portal to solve its rune puzzle.
The crystal caverns
Yara slipped through while the Hero was working out the portal. In the third layer she wanted to study how the undead and other crystalline creatures survived there. The Hero brought her bones and crystal cores, then captured the enormous crystalline jellyfish so she could learn its habits.
Yara also offered to trade spare Undead Essences and Cavern Celestites for the souls of the Bone Terror, Undead Champion and giant jellyfish. The crystal caverns opened onto two more regions. One passage was a whirlpool gate into an icy cavern. Another led down toward the lava.
The spirit under the ice
The whirlpool carried the Hero and Yara into the fourth layer. A friend had told Yara that an ancient water spirit was trapped there. She named her as Nymue, guardian of the Ice Calibreaker. Yara believed freeing her would help restore light to the caverns.
The Hero fought through the frozen undead and recovered a pickaxe. The Glacial Horror had blocked the way with columns of ice. The Hero broke them, defeated it, and shattered the ice over the lake that held Nymue. With the Ice Calibreaker recovered, Yara said they were a step closer to saving the caverns. She told the Hero to wait for her call before going deeper.
Fire beneath the town
Another passage from the crystal caverns led to the hottest tunnels under Battleon. Earthquakes were shaking the town, and fire dragons were circling above it. The sulfur fumes were already making Yara dizzy when she sent the Hero to look for the cause. The Hero questioned the Lava Guards and found a nest of dragon eggs.
The eggs were hatching. Aboveground, Twilly urged everyone to get indoors as the town shook. At the nest, the Hero realized the hatching was causing the earthquakes. They started asking a hatchling about moving it and its siblings, but a much larger dragon appeared.
The hatchlings’ mother
The mother dragon attacked to defend the nest, and the Hero knocked her out. Her hatchling was frightened and kept calling for her. Yara thought she could revive the mother and asked the Hero to gather Burnwort, Dragonsboon ore, and a little blood for the remedy.
The mother woke. The Hero apologized and explained what the hatching had done to Battleon. The mother saw that the Hero had spared her and her young. She decided it was time for the hatchlings to swim and said she would take them down the lava river to the Burning Man’s Volcano.
The river to Xan’s volcano
The mother and her hatchlings swam away in the lava. Farther down the river, beneath Xan’s volcano, a colony of magma dragons waited for an eruption called the Awakening.
Back in Battleon the dragons were gone. The mayor was still missing, but Yulgar had supervised repairs, and Twilly had given Yara a potion for the dizziness. Yara said she would bring better protection the next time she went underground.
The Oracle’s chest
A High Draconic Oracle told the Hero that they had earned a reward for facing the mother dragon. He directed them to a seven-sided chest that only the Hero could open. The Oracle could see possibilities in the Hero’s future, but he could not see inside the chest.
The Oracle also asked for help repairing a molten mirror and preparing a spell for divination. He said that parts of the future could still change. He pointed the Hero toward Mount DoomSkull for answers about their nature. In the version of the conversation offered after further progress, he greeted the Hero as the Dragon of Time and called them kin.
Metallika’s escape
Metallika had come to the caverns looking for material for a new kind of music. She fell on the way down and caught herself on a rock. The Hero gathered ingredients for a drink that would lift her out of the cavern.
Metallika tried the Bubbly Lifting Drink. She burped during the attempt and ended up asking the Hero to bring more ingredients so she could try again.