C1 E1 in brief

Vox Machina arrives in the dwarven underground city of Kraghammer on a commission from the arcanist Allura: find Lady Kima, a halfling paladin who vanished into the mountain chasing a vision of evil breeding beneath it. With their healer Pike strangely absent and distracted, the party works the Iron Hearth tavern for leads — buying rounds, charming the Greyspine-hating brewer Balgus out of a king’s wine to use as a door-gift, and confirming Kima passed through weeks ago before disappearing into the mines. A night of recon establishes the Greyspine manor as too well-guarded to breach; diplomacy wins out. By morning they talk their way to Nostoc Greyspine, the cold mine-baron, who confirms Kima broke arrest and went blade-drawn into his caverns, and grants them passage to retrieve her — all while flatly denying anything is wrong below. The lie dies on his lips: alarm bells ring, and a wave of goblins, ogres, and a stitched-together naga abomination floods up out of the quarry. Vox Machina answers in force — Percy fires his vengeance-born rifle Bad News for the first time, Vex and Vax tear through the monsters, Keyleth nearly dies to the naga’s venom and flees the fight as an eagle, and Scanlan, after two years of playing support, finally lands a killing blow, unmaking the creature suture by suture. In the silence after, the dwarves lower their weapons in awe, and the only thing Scanlan wants is for someone to tell Pike. The guards confirm what Nostoc would not: this stitched horror is exactly what’s been crawling out of the dark. The road into the mines, and toward Kima, is open — and whatever is making these things is still down there. Unresolved: Pike’s unexplained sense she’s been here before, and the warded arcane House Thunderbrand that turned Tiberius away.