Standing before Krynn's Vanguard was a massive, two-headed beast. The Demogorgon. The Prince of Demons and the head of The Abyssal Concord. A battle started, and raged.
The chamber is in ruins. The ancient dwarven stone of Thorbardin lies broken and blackened beneath your feet, slick with abyssal ichor. The rift howls—unstable, pulsing, expanding in jagged breaths like a living wound torn through reality. The stench of burnt metal, blood, and corruption hangs thick in the air.
And yet, the Demogorgon still stands.
Though battered and wounded, its twin heads roar in opposing fury—one in wrath, the other in wild, hysterical laughter. The ambient light around you dims as if the world itself is holding its breath.
Then, with monstrous speed, one of its suckered tentacles lashes out, coiling around your legs, arms, torsos—each of you, caught in an instant.
“You do not escape me so easily...”
“Not when your purpose has only just begun...”
Without warning, the Demogorgon hurls you with the force of an erupting volcano, one by one, into the roiling, churning mouth of the Abyssal rift.
You feel your stomach lurch and your senses scream as the world falls away in a storm of void-black flame and shrieking winds. Gravity unravels. Your body burns and freezes in the same breath. The echo of your own scream is torn apart by the sound of ten thousand whispering voices in a hundred dead languages.
As you tumble into the rift, your final glimpse of the material world is of the Demogorgon leaping after you, its twin maws bellowing in ecstasy as it follows you into the abyss it calls home.
A thunderclap rings out.
The portal slams shut behind him with a sound like a god's heartbeat ceasing.
Darkness swallows everything.
And then,
you fall.
You hit the ground like thunder.
It isn't stone that breaks your fall—it's something softer, squelching, yet unnervingly solid. You lie on a field of blackened flesh, veins pulsing faintly beneath your weight like some buried giant's skin. The air is thick, damp, reeking of sulfur, rot, and coppery blood. The sky—if it can be called that—is a swirling maelstrom of violet clouds, torn by jagged streaks of crimson lightning. There is no sun, no stars—just the ever-churning hate of a plane that lives.
The ground pulses beneath you once more.
You rise, slowly, disoriented—your breath shallow, your hearts pounding (and for a second, you swear you hear more heartbeats than you have bodies). Around you, the landscape stretches in impossible directions. Trees made of bone and tendon claw upward from mounds of meat-like stone. Geysers of shrieking gas erupt in the distance, expelling warped silhouettes into the sky that melt before hitting the ground. Far off, titanic shapes crawl across the horizon—colossal limbs with no bodies, dragging themselves endlessly, leaving trenches of screaming soil behind.
There is no horizon—only a curve in space that bends into itself, as though the plane refuses to let you understand its shape.
Behind you, the rift is gone.
There is no way back.
Only a distant chiming sound remains, like glass being struck underwater—faint and beautiful, but maddening in repetition. It seems to call to you. It seems to know you.
And above all else, one truth is clear:
You are in the Abyss.
And it knows you’re here.
In the distance, the party noticed a spire. It was only somewhat distinguishable from the 'trees' that dotted the landscape. It was leaning slightly to one side, and the surface of it appeared to be moving.
Traveling to this tower, the party didn't encounter another living being, just the soft, yet solid surface of blackened flesh that seemed to move on its own.
Reaching the spire, the surface was covered in mouths that were constantly whispering names, the speed at which they moved, the softness of the speech, and the different languages made any attempt to hear a name fully come to no avail. Entering through the door, there was a spiral staircase made of ash, and the walls were again covered in the mouths. Traveling up the staircase for 45 minutes, it suddenly came to an end.
Arcadius flew up, only to have his vision fade, and continuing to fly up, reached the staircase again, and appeared in front of his friends.
Many other attempts to navigate the spire were made until eventually, after letting the mouths bite them and carry them forward, they tried to exit the tower, only to be let into a library.
The bookshelves were filled with books and seemed to stretch endlessly into the ceiling, tables were covered in loose pages, scattered notes, books open to all different pages, and in the middle, was a robed figure flipping through a book hurriedly.
After the party made their presence known, the figure, revealed to be a night hag, offred a deal. Information, in exchange for a payment. Orla offered to pay, and the hag took 100 years off her life, making her frail, withered appearance look more like someone in their 40s.
As promised, the hag explained that she was the Demogorgon's record keeper and that she wasn't exactly doing this job voluntarily. She also told the group about The Abyssal Concord of Utter Chaos and their heirarchy. It was explained that the best possible way to escape The Abyss was to destroy the Abyssal Council of Thirteen. She also explained that while the Abyssal Council of Thirteen was still active, the Demogorgon had done a lot of the work of dismantling the council for them. Only six members remained, as the Demogorgon had a habit of loosing it's temper and killing one of it's subordinates when it failed to complete it's mission. The most recent addition to these dead subordinates was Baphomet, the Horned King. It had failed to kill the party. A mission it was supposed to succeed in. As a result, Takhisis was able to enter The Abyss. However, any mention of Takhisis and what she was planning was dismissed as if it was some sort of boogeyman story by the hag. Like it was some sort of myth.
Exiting the library, the party found themselves in a valley, outside a gate that looked like the entrance to Thorbardin. THey tried to enter but it turned out to be a red herring of sorts. Traveling north, the group happened upon a ghosttown called Paclluks. They assumed that this was somehow connected to Skullcap, as Paclluks is Skullcap backwards. However, there was nothing for them here. They continued forward, reaching a river that contained pitch black water, stepping stones helped them across and Orla just walked across it. This only led to a dock where there was a vast body of water reaching out to the horizon ahead of them. This water was also pitch black.
Debating where to go from here, the party decided to take a short break. Will they be able to survive The Abyss? How will they get back to Krynn? Or are they to stay here forever? And what is Takhisis doing in The Abyss? So many questions...so little time.