Celestiah has rested and casts her spell again to stop the heart from decaying once more. The heart and all of the pieces are stored in the tower where Celestiah stays.

Felric uses the “Track the Star Shadow” tablet on the key to find out where it goes. He flies through an astral world, feeling a mane of lion magic around him. He speeds through the city and sees steps descending down toward the sewer. There is a door. This must be where we need to go.

Felric tells Gordon what he saw, and Gordon looks at the key itself.

We decide to go. Celestiah comes with us, even though she’s exhausted from casting her spells. We first stop at Hogs Dogs to get a sausage. The person behind the counter is different, a deep elf. We order, and Felric asks who he is. He introduces himself as Tallasin Glynhorn, the owner of the Hogs Dogs. Felric asks about the name, and Tallasin says that after he opened his sausage stand, a boy had ordered a hot dog but couldn’t pronounce it properly. Tallasin thought it was funny, so he kept the name for his store.

There are orks at the back doing karaoke. It is awful. Tallasin directs us to a table at the back of the room. He says that the last time we came into the town (which was when we had split up and one part of the group went through the sewer), we had led a pack of hell hounds into the city.

Tallasin says that he “took care” of a couple of them, but the alpha dog is still in the sewer. He asks that we clean up our mess and accompany him down there to kill the alpha dog.

We agree, saying that we had a reason to go to the sewer anyway. Kargrath just eats a huge plate of dogs and says nothing. We will give some time for Celestiah to rest.

On the way out, Celestiah asks how Tallasin is skilled in combat — the elf responds that he is a ranged fighter.

We study and find that hell hounds are infernal, and they hunt by scent. Cold iron or star-iron burns them, but fire does not. Their lair is usually on “thin spots” where the boundary between our reality and the infernal realm wears thin.

Gordon remembers that “wounded hounds drag themselves to water to heal.”

In the morning, before we leave, we check on Marlowe. He is expected to wake up in 2 days. The healers are working on him continually.

We head to the Hogs Dogs and meet Tallasin. He takes us to the basement with all of his supplies. He slides open a hidden door and we see a staircase behind it. Gordon notices that there are subtle drag marks with blood, and they lead toward the meat slurry where he makes the hogs dogs sausages. So, most likely Kargrath had been eating hell hound meat.

We descend into the sewer. Once down there, Celestiah takes out her spyglass and searches around. She sees a mound of glowing feces. She makes an orb of light and spawns Luna, the etheric cat, and we move forward.

Felric uses his divination tablet again to find the owner of the excrement. He speeds forward into a nearby chamber which goes up, and I see floorboards above. In the room, which is carved out, is a huge, pregnant hell-hound about ready to give birth. She notices him right has he disappears.

As we progress, we get to a part of the sewer where it’s so narrow that we have to go single file. We let the ork continue to lead. We ready our weapons as we get near to the chamber.

We hear the mewling of puppies. Felric hears that there are 3. We advance inside.

Luna darts inside and lets out a supernova blast. There are yelps as the hell-hound pups are incinerated. Without missing a beat, the sow moves her head and breathes a gout of flame toward us. The brunt of it hits Kargrath and he takes a bunch of damage. Felric is also hurt.

Gordon jumps on top of Felric to put out the fire. Luna opens her mouth and fires a pure beam of sunlight into the hell-hound. Tallasin shoots an arrow into her jaw. Kargath takes another huge swipe at her with his fire hammer. Finally, Lupin phases through it, slashes her with his cane sword, and rematerializes on the other side. He has cleaved her completely in twain.

Tallasin lets us know that we can use the door in his basement to get access to the sewers anytime we need.

+20 XP, +25 for Celestiah