Prepared with their plan, the party left the starry cavern by means of the lake.
There were some undead to deal with, but the party dealt with them by good use of combat and illusion magic. It turns out that ghasts can climb very well; ghouls not at all.
The shapechanger pretending to be Nundro agreed with the party's plans. The party would lead them to the forge room, and the last Rockseeker brother would be released.
The PCs, as demanded, went first. After them came two identical dwarves, both tied and guarded by a bugbear. Following them was the dark elf and his last remaining giant spider. The spider, unfortunately, had to be left behind, as it wouldn't fit in the small passage.
At the starry cavern, the dark elf was not happy to see the spectator.
He insisted that the characters deal with it. The characters insisted that wasn't in their deal. After some heated words, the dark elf (at the back of his group) ordered his troops to leave, under cover of magical darkness.
Combat happened.
There was some confusion in the darkness. It looked like the bugbears attempted to kill both bound dwarves, even though one of them had to be the shapechanger. Or was the shapechanger a bugbear?
A couple of party members headed into the darkness and out the other side, in an effort to stop the dark elf. Milo cast moonbeam, which took out at least one of the bugbears and maybe both of the dwarves. Jeremus used his massive speed to run away from the combat, towards the Forge of Enchantment. The spectator used a couple of eyestalk rays to good effect but was then stopped cold by the darkness. The spectator also followed Jeremus, worried about Jeremus saying something about destroying the forge.
One of the dwarves appeared to be down, so Gundigar ran back in an attempt to stabilise him, assuming it was Nundro. It was Nundro, but he had spent too long in the area of effect of the moonbeam. The last of the Rockseeker brothers was dead.
It appeared that the shapechanger had turned into a bugbear. It couldn't get out of range of Sheepstrangler and Oskar and was eventually taken down, after taking a massive amount of damage.
The dark elf again used his teleport spell to escape.
GM note: I've lost track of character names and classes, so I'll have to come back to this description.
After the combat, the characters talked to the spectator and let him go home. The poor, delusional monster disappeared back to his home plane.
Now, nothing was stopping the characters from exploring the Forge room.
Jeremus had placed his staff in the coals of the Forge and forgot about it. Now, he noticed the staff was glowing. A little experimentation showed that the item was now magical!
There was a flurry of activity as the characters all put weapons and armour in the glowing coals. After enchanting most of what they were carrying, the Forge was noticeably dimmer. A detect magic spell showed that the Forge probably only had months of life left.
Inside a locked and trapped area (remember to search for traps, guys!), the party found extremely valuable treasure. A magical mace and a suit of magical plate armour. Sheepstrangler's cries of pleasure were probably heard in Phandelin.
Note: the party also has some old books, one of which is ripped in half. The books appear to be histories, written by someone called Gaedynn. Inside the ripped book was a map.
2 ghasts, 2 ghoulls, 260
2 bugbears, one shapechanger, one dark elf, 310
Exploration - finding the purpose of the Forge, 200
TOTAL 5,121 XP.