C2 E6 in brief

The group wakes in Alfield and Molly confesses again — the swords weren’t from a line of priests, they were from a line of sacrifices. He stole them and ran. Caleb catches the deflection and lets it go.

Watchmaster Bryce hires them as mercenaries — 30 gold per ear, 25 per living survivor returned. An archivist names the gnolls’ god: Yeenoghu, a demon lord of the Abyss. Beau connects the gnolls’ hunger to the nergaliid pattern from Trostenwald. They shop at the Broad Barn, argue about barbecue traps, and head northeast tracking 18 gnolls and three carts of stolen corpses through tall grass and rolling hills.

At the abandoned Rill’s Mouth Mine, they ambush three hyenas with one coordinated strike and find the entrance hidden under a woven grass net. Drunk Nott scouts ahead — dodges a log trap, casts Shocking Grasp at point-blank range, and earns her name through the bottom of a flask.

Deeper inside, they find the altar chamber: flayed skin pinned to walls with painted smiles, a stone altar with candles, and a humanoid priest wearing hollowed gnoll flesh, placing hearts for the pack to devour. “The hunger will be fed: ours and hers.” The pack lord from Alfield watches from below.

The altar fight opens with three gnolls killed in the surprise round and a thousand ball bearings scattered across the floor. Nott whispers the last laughing gnoll to death. In the aftermath, Beau asks the question: who is “hers”? Then a woman screams from deeper in the mine — “No! My baby!” — and the group charges into the dark.

Unresolved: survivors in the deeper mine, the gnoll priest and pack lord still alive below, who “hers” is, the connection between Yeenoghu and the hunger driving everything, and Khary Payton joining next week.