A Manticore Named Mortzengersturm

Last night saw another session in our 5e Land of Azurth game. The players: the sorcerer Kairon (Eric), the dwarf cleric Dagmar (Andrea), the elven ranger Shae (Gina), the bard Cully (Jim), the fighter Erkose (Bob), and Waylon the frox thief (Tug).

Interested in the strange device they found last adventure, the gang ultimately decided to take an illusionary image of it to the Clockwork Princess Viola to help them identify it. There's only so much she can tell without seeing the real thing, but she's able to tell them its a laterna magica of some sort. Finding no other option for discovering its nature, curiosity overcomes caution, and they take the item back to her. Using her devices she determines it is a projector to another plane. It was made using ancient, "wild magic" from the item before the creation of Azurth. It needs a "film" (an image on a piece of glass) to project, and it is currently damaged. Its lens has a small fracture.

There is a way to fix the lens: more wild magic. This that can get from the jewel in possession of the manticore lord of Geegaw Mountain, Mortzengersturm. Mortzengersturm is a wizard exiled by the Princess for his dabblings in wild magic that created many a combined monstrosity like owlbears, ant-lions, and hippogriffs. He dwells now on the Prismatic Peak of Geegaw where his experiments continue. The Princess suggests even the light from his crystal will be enough and loans them a magic hand mirror to capture it.

There's the matter of transport. The Princess also agrees to lend them a swan boat, like these, They find them in a grotto in one of the castle's sublevels. They have to fight a slimy covered creature to get them:

Them they sail the boat down the channel out of the grotto, down a waterfall, then into the sky. After half a days travel (through rain), they stop for a rest, and in the setting sun they can see the rainbow light refracted through the crystalline mountain that is their destination.

Arriving on the flat top of the moutain (like an angled, triangular prism set on one end), they pass through a garden with beds of sunflowers, each with a giant human eye at their center, and arrive at an angular castle guarded by hipogriffs. Through the jewels on the hipogriffs' barding, they are able to converse with Mortzengersturm, who bids them enter.

In a grand audience chamber, a goblin with a trump announces the entrance of a manticore with a monocle and a cigarette holder. Mortzengersturm!