So the party traveled through a portal to Dark Sun, one that took much longer and was a more difficult crossing than normal. They arrived in a cold dark corridor with only two routes to go. A little investigation (and temporarily barred door) lead them to find one dead end, then back track out. They encountered a few native creatures that had made their way into the dungeon, but mostly a bunch of skeletons and ghosts that were haunting the dungeon.
They also learned that it wasn’t a dungeon at all, but the castle Astridax, that had been buried in it’s entirety millennia earlier to keep a great evil from spreading across the land. I don’t think they figured everything out, but I’m not sure what they missed, so for simplicity’s sake I’m going to reveal everything… it’s not like it matters at this point. I give you, a short history of the Kingdom of Astridax.
Astridax was also the name of the Castle and the race that inhabited the region, back when Dark Sun was still fertile. The Astridax were a race of blue, parthenogenic humanoids. Aline was a great sorcerer who dipped into necromancy (via an Artifact called the Artificer of Dreams) when her lover Meera was killed and unable to be resurrected. Aline went insane and began to kill and raise the rest of the populace. Sileara, Meera’s sister and also a great magician realized the horror this would eventually cause and since she was not able to defeat Aline, she instead buried the entire castle hundreds of feet underground where the evil could not spread.
The party fought their way through the dungeon facing horrors such as skeletons that kept reanimating, ghosts, and native creatures that had gotten trapped inside the dungeon with little to eat. Eventually they pieced together enough of the puzzle and found the Artificer of Dreams, but not before fighting Meera’s Revenant. This was a rather fun “boss fight” as Meera was not entirely pleased with having been raised. She started the fight by apologizing and made saves every turn to keep from attacking the party… there was of course plenty of other stuff to keep the party busy. Eventually they destroyed everything else but the power of the Artifact would keep bringing Meera back, so their only option was to enter the machine and kill Aline from within it.