You make you way to the Vonnarc stables which are to the east of the main house. Therein are several riding geckos, similar to the ones that were pulling Gadak's wagon. Conveniently, the sleazy merchant is here, tending to his animals. You explain your need for mounts and he calls over the stablehand who quickly procures four of the beasts.
The geckos are all fairly large and can easily bear your weight and being, well, lizards have a strange manner to them. Elaborate harnesses are set up but thankfully it appears that visiting nobility aren't expected to do up their own harnesses and the stablehand helps Yasraena strap in which gives the rest of you enough headway to figure out how it all works. The harnesses are clearly there so you don't fall to a horrible death if you slip from the saddle.
It's now just a case of riding your... lizards out into a strange drow city. They seem sort of like horses?
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Jokril looks at the geckos, and the elaborate harnesses.
"Yeeeaaahhh.... I think I'll just jump down the pit. You guys can ride these things and try to control them. Though, actually..."
Jokril walks up to some of the stabled(?) geckos, placing his hands on his jaw as if adjusting it. He then starts making an assortment of odd clicks, chirps, and other odd vocalizations.
*Ehh-Uhhh. Ehh-Uhh. Ikikikikik?*
Zov watches with the weirdest look as Jokril makes the sounds of the gecko. He just slowly walks up to the geckos and uses his skills with Fetch back in Riddleport to try and soothe them and make them more agreeable.
Yasraena approaches her gecko with confidence, making a few soothing noises.
Varelle is noticeably uncomfortable around the mounts. "I have never gotten along well with creatures that don't speak..."
Your search for the missing driders turned up something larger than you had anticipated. After you found the duergar bar and interrogated the owner, you uncovered an underground railroad within Zirnakaynin. Driders had set up a small community a distance from the city, using a network of connections and their inherent magic (particularly invisibility spells) to vanish from the workplace. Being intelligent and capable themselves, the driders had engineered an earworm to sabotage the hated irnakurse - surface elves who had been subjected to fleshwarping and turned into horrific abominations. This weaponized the drow's cruelest creation against them.
You brought back the heads of previously-slain driders as proof you had uncovered a simple plot within the house and routed it, which was good enough to please the psychopathic Second Daughter. The missions you were sent on varied from that point. Resolving an issue of violent love affair with a common that resulted in a few dead prostitutes, and finding a source of drugs for the younger nobility.
However, this all came crashing down when you were summoned before the First Daughter Alicavniss. Perhaps the most powerful wizard in this part of the world, she saw through your disguises but had let your lie persist, fascinated with your own motivations and having no love for House Azinrae.
She gave you the information you sought after one assassination of a gang lord - the cult leader Allevrah was targeting Kyonin itself. She gave you a way back to the surface, the location of an elf-gate she had kept as her own secret. But for reasons she did not reveal, she undid your disguises with a word.
Revealed as hated surfacers, you fled Zirnakaynin at high speed with half a drow army at your back to reach the portal, only to battle the First Son of the family and a spectacular spidery construct - a retriver. There, you jumped through the portal to warn the elves and finally escaped the Darklands.
The truth is a powerful weapon—too powerful to be left in the hands of strangers. While the drow, led by their new military mastermind Allevrah, perfect their meteor magic, the question arises: How did they come by such devastating magic in the frst place? The truth lies in the halls of elven power, guarded by the Winter Council, a secret society so ancient that they are considered all but a myth. And what the Winter Council is prepared to sacrifce in order to retain this secrecy is a scandal that the elven nation may not be prepared to accept.
Your arrival to Kyonin does not go as planned. You arrive to drawn bows and are brought to the Queen of Kyonin, Telandia Edasseril. As she considers the information you provided, you are assaulted by the very organization you fought beside - the Shin'Rakorath. Crying 'Death to all who doubt the Winter Council' they fail to defeat you. For your protection, you are sent to the 'paradise chambers' which they claim are for visiting dignitaries. Instead it is the most gilded of cages.
The paradise chambers are a spectacular illusory prison, creating a virtual world that is indistinguishable form the real one. Within, you find a half-elf named Quilindra who had been driven to despair and near-madness from her difficulty determining illusion from real. She cclaims to be a political prisoner and gives you the reason for your strange welcome - the Winter Council. A shadow government has existed for millennia in Kyonin and appears to be moving against you and trying to cover up the fact Allevrah and the drow army are coming for Kyonin.
However, the Winter Council as in a difficult location - in an area of Kyonin overrun by demons! The only way to it was indirect, by following Quilindra's directions through a series of portals. You arrive to find the place surrounded by demons, who claim that you may be allowed entry if you kill the Council for them. Choosing to attack, it is revealed that Quilindra was a succubus, sent to slay the council for her own masters. You defeat the demons because you do that sort of thing.
Within the keep, you find the councilors in variosu states of misery and despondence. One by one you convince them all of the true threat of Allevrah, and there learn the truth of Allevrah.
Allevrah was once an elf, who grew obsessed with the destruction of the drow. Her methods became so severe she eventually turned from Nethys to the worship of Abraxas. All of the council but one were horrified at her plans, and in her fury she slew the leader of the council before vanishing.
How an elf can become a drow is then answered. One by one, you convince the council of her threat and to put aside their own politics and complaints. All but one. The councilor Hialin had been growing slowly mad and came to agree with Allevrah's plan to wipe out the surface with a falling star. He yanks free a vital protection in the temple - the Maleficus Spike, and lets the demons in.
This act of final evil triggers a transformation and Hialin changes before your eyes, his hair turning white and his skin dark as an act of pure rage and evil changes an elf to a drow. This is the same process that created Allevrah.
You manage to defeat Hialin and restore the Maleficus Spike, and the interference of the Council is over, if at great cost.
You return to Kyonin to the Queen who is profuse with apologies, explaining the cold war she had been against the Winter Council for decades. She shows you what they have learned - notes from Thorn's End detail the process the ancient aboleths used to call down asteroids to strike the world. This process requires magic runes called earthfall glyphs, which are complicated and difficult to create.
Allevrah has apparently not gone directly to Kyonin, but instead directly below the elven capital, to the Land of Black Blood in the lowest level of the Darklands - Orv. There, Allevrah is creating the earth glyphs required to end the world. Using the notes of a Pathfinder who once reached this area, you journey down.
Your journey back into the Darklands is long and harrowing, but you have grown in power so great at this point that few oppose your might. Finally, you reach the Land of Black Blood - a massive cavern whose walls ooze with a black, viscuous fluid that is repellant to all living things. Strange, chittering monstrosities live here in the depths of the world.
You arrive at a shrine, expecting to find a potentially friendly genie. Instead you find a drow illusionist who was sent to distract you, whom you defeat. The genie has been encased in crystal beyond your help, but explains that the earth glyphs Allevrah has been preparing are hidden around the land, which must be destroyed before a 'master glyph' and Allevrah herself are defeated.
You travel to the weeping cliffs, the crystal plaza, the rotstone hollows, the bloodforge, and the fetid palace, defeating the guardians placed by Allevrah and deactivate each glyph. Finally, you come to the final battle.
You defeat powerful minion after powerful minion as you reach Allevrah. There she is surrounded by powerful demons and priestesses of Abraxas, and there you battle. As you defeat her minions, the master glyph weakens. Thaddeus' keen mind determines a puzzle to deactivating the glyph in the midst of the combat, and there you finally overcome the powerful priestess. The glyph is shut down, and with it, the Second Darkness is averted. You have saved the world.
The fractured political landscape in Kyonin is slow to heal, but heal it does as a new Winter Council comes to pass and the Shin'Rakorath are given a new leadership and purpose. The knowledge of the dark fate that can befall the most evil of elves is kept secret, and you are free to return to home. The Savored Sting craves worship, and her powerful follower Variel and his companion Lash have many options of leadership and intrigue before them. Mutt has a priestess with dark eyes waiting for him back in Riddleport. Fiona has risen to be one of the most powerful voices in the world, yet has not sung for her people in years. Thaddeus has knowledge to seek and Old Horn has seen enough of this nonsense.