Recap 3 - to slay a wee dragon

Our adventurers looked up from having slain a gibbering mouther, and decided they definitely had not had enough, and needed to kill a bunch of shit right away. So that’s what they proceeded to do.

Also they kill a dragon thing. It's not this one, but in other news I did acquire this broken miniature, so I've got that going for me. 

After looking through the druidic meditation huts in this stalactite-riddled room, Sylvan found the journal of a druid-in-training. The journal detailed the initiate’s growing worry over the increasingly strange behavior of his teacher, and that teacher’s inexplicable fury about what he called the “hubris of the cities of Boggrove and Sleekfront over their arrogant display of such artefacts of great power,” overheard in snippets of whispered conversation with the camp’s co-inhabitants, a sect of catholic worshippers of Bahomet the just. They also found some other weird stuff that may or may not be relevant to the story at some point, and mention of a powerful artefact that would be stowed away so that this weirdo teacher couldn’t use it.

Setting off through a rough wooden door and up a few tree-trunk-plank-stairs, the group found themselves facing a magic circle in the ground, which seemed to be controlling an underground river by causing its flow to essentially disappear. Despite knowing it was magical, Ryn didn’t think to use an arcana check to figure out if he knew what the circle was or how it functioned, so the group settled on the ever-popular “let’s just pick a random part of this puzzle and mess with it” strategy, and picked up a cup set within the circle. And by, jove, it worked ! if by worked, you mean it opened up a trapdoor. A trapdoor that they had already found, and that the warriors were investigating. It worked so well that the warriors were swept behind the trapdoor and some skeletons found themselves finally free, and in a 3-on-3 battle with the squishier members of the party! Realizing his imminent peril, Ryn opted again for screwing with the cup, and lo, the door spun around again, dealing Gandrakk his first damage of the entire campaign as it smacked him Scooby-doo style in the booty. A skeleton was dealt with in a really satisfying, clattery way by Glüur’s brass knuckles, and Gandarkk’s warhammer, and some shillelagh action from Sylvan.  To the left was a rope bridge leading across a vast chasm towards a wooden structure built into the wall. The group chose instead to go right, through some tall stone arches, following the path of a dried riverbed

Coasai led the way into an adjoining crypt, where he used his sneaky-skills to find a non-trapped path that everyone in the group stuck to along the left wall. This very workable option might seem more paranoid in retrospect, since it is not 100% clear that anyone actually found any traps in this room. I mean, obviously there would be, right? But you don’t know for sure. Regardless, members of the party debated about what they should do in this room filled with the bodies of ancient warriors, and about what the best course of action when dealing with an altar to Bahomet that has been inverted and a tome bearing the words of bahomet’s great acolyte king-james with its apocalypse section re-written to show that the destruction is the salvation, rather than a prelude to it. Gandrakk decided that the desecrated altar and the fairly obvious ‘hidden’ door behind it would look better if it was set right. He just couldn’t remember what right was, but that’s ok, because his thing is really more about smashing. However, his words of great wisdom, “if we’re going to get into a fight with something on the other side of this door, lets do it out of honor rather than stupidity” seemed to strike a chord with Ryn, who thereupon re-set the altar, opening a hidden door to a grim library/study/torture area.

In the study, a note by the corpse of a ritually mutilated dwarf detailed how the poor adventurer was ‘interrogated’ into revealing that there was a stone of great power above Barkhold’s forge center area. Gandrakk knew of the stone in question, being as Barkhold was the dwarven mountainous city where he was raised, but he didn’t really ever think much of it or know that it had magical properties beyond looking super cool over the forge where he honed his smithing prowess. Also located in this room was a ledger detailing payment to the Bloody Bastard mercenary company for continuing their vaguely defined “martial and informational services,” and with payments coming in from the Bastards for “provisions” of an equally shadily undefined quality. They also found a key, which conveniently opened a locked door into a hallway that led to a guard tower’s upper level, which they could see onto from a one-way pane of glass in a hidden door.

They killed the guards, who were skeletons, who were people before that. Arrows from Coasai, Glüur brass knuckles, blasts of flame from Sylvan, rapier-stabs from coasai, you get the idea. They then decided to see what they could see off into the distance by flinging a fireball. They saw an empty hallway, and a long, really, really, long, descending path towards a raised platform surrounded by torches, hung with flags bearing the silver-skull on a black background insignia they’d seen at the entrance.

Then, they killed even more skeletons! The second round of skeleton bashing was a bit more cinematic, as they did so after opening a trapdoor in the guard tower’s center, and which Gandrakk wasted no time in descending by jumping downward and absolutely destroying a skeleton. The party, now blocked from getting down, shot some spells and arrows down into the lower level of the tower – in particular, a flaming blast from Sylvan comically schorched the face-bones of on skeleton after seeming to make him look totally awesome for about ½ a second. Glüur then slid halfway down the ladder, flung himself around to it’s other side, did a backflip, and bashed the looney-toons-burnt skeleton to bits.

After deciding that this room might be a great place to chill for a minute, the group went back up to the tower’s top to check out a hunch about the wall on the other side of the tower’s top. If one side had a trap door, how about the other? And indeed, it did! But, again, no one could figure out what it’s deal was aside from that there was a door-sized section of the wall that was clearly magical. Gandrakk confidently pressed his hand to the wall in what, in a really unlikely turn of events, just so happened to be the right spot on the door, and the wall parted, revealing a rosebush being struck by a thin shaft of natural light. Coasai determined that it wasn’t a trap, so much as a totally sweet little cavey-thingy. Words of a prayer from his druidic training worked their way into Sylvan’s mind, and he muttered them aloud at the sight of the light hitting the rosebush just so, and the vines of the roses retracted to reveal a mahogany quarterstaff covered in low-relief carvings of rose vines growing through skulls and bones, a sign from his natural deity that he must have been anointed to carry it and defend this place. It seemed definitely magical to Ryn, who said so even though it was fucking obvious to everyone.

They then went back and took a little nappy-poo, and when they woke up they felt a lot better. Sylvan, in particular, felt extra druid-ish and more confident in his knowledge of nature and religion than ever before, and everyone seemed to have dreamed up new ways of mashing bad guys into smaller bits than usual. When they felt well enough to move on, Ryn heard the sound of the loudest, lowest horn he’d ever encountered, and he looked around and everyone was acting normal until they saw a flash of iridescent green light, as if from an eldritch lighthouse, bathe the long passage in a sinister glow. For a moment, they saw the silhouette and the growing shadow of a menacing form in the green light, which promptly went out and left them in darkness again.

Their next move was to run to the bottom floor of the guardhouse and kill some skeletons. It was getting routine, until Sylvan’s new quarterstaff got its first taste of undead, um, well, not blood, exactly, but something clever that would be an analogy for its blood, except it didn’t really have blood anymore because it was a reanimated, bloodless, soulless undead monster, but you get the idea. He swung his new weapon, single-handed, toward a skeleton’s face, not aiding his swing using his magic and intending to see what it could do on its own. He swang that sucker so good though, that the magic of the staff itself came alive, not wanting to miss an opportunity to show how it could really shine, and the shillelagh spell coursed through it, and the vines carved into its surface took on color and sprung to life, reaching out and grabbing onto the skeletons bones. As he followed through with his swing the vines wrenched the skeleton’s body apart, tossing ribs and femurs and vertebra in all directions away from its shattered skull. It, was awesome. [Hey for the record that’s a quarterstaff +1 to hit and damage, and it stacks w/your spellcasting ability bonus for the purposes of the shillelagh spell, and it gets an extra 1d4 damage vs undead-you can come up with a name for it if you’d like.]

Then they decided to form the reverse flying V stealth maneuver through a dense weave of stalagmites, leading with the characters most likely to succeed on a stealth check, attempting to sneak up on that form they had seen up ahead.  The plan was a good one, but their foe out-stealthed them, and stabbed the ever-living-shit out of Ryn, who was bravely leading the party from the most rearward position. When they turned around, they saw that their enemy was Kestrel, from the fair! Last year’s champion looked to have recently suffered a really nasty transformation, looking incredibly gaunt, and with a left eyeball replaced by a green ball of flame. He still carried his characteristically neon-pink-and-purple longsword, though, and started swinging it bigtime at the party, knocking Ryn out of commish for the rest of this encounter. Glüur didn’t like that one little bit, and he promptly chopped Kestrel’s arm off, revealing to the group that a person can do a called shot, if they take their attack at disadvantage. Screeching out in pain, necro-Kestrel formerly of the order of the jade falcon called out “Master, Intruders!” No ‘master’ appeared in sight, but the flash of light from his flaming green eye seemed to transmit the message. The limb-removing would have destroyed a mere mortal being, but this bad boy was suffused with necrotic energy, which fueled him to draw a knife with his remaining hand, and stab it directly into Sylvan, leaving it in, and then choking him with a life-draining magical attack. Coasai picked up the dropped sword, prying it from the cold dead hand of the fighter, and rammed it through his unbeating heart, dropping him before he could use any nasty magic on the spellcasting, lower-armor classed members of the group. Despite not having a way to tap into the sword’s magic, Coasai seemed to have developed an affinity for the blade, which he would use as his primary weapon for the rest of the day. A day that would be shorter for some than others.

Making their way towards the torchlight up ahead, it was decided that perhaps they could use stealth to their advantage, taking on the guise of the acolytes whose robes they had stolen. Gandraak offered to play the role of a “more suitable sacrifice,” and the party huffed and puffed and carried him in. As the party rounded the corner into this large cave, they saw two tiers of wooden mezzanine surrounding a massive stalagmite and a stalactite facing one another in the center of the room. The stalagmite had been ground down into a rough altar, and ropes had been wound around the stalactite above. As the party approached a set of guards, dragonborn in tow, they explained that the master had need of their new sacrifice. If any of these guards would have lived, they would be kicking themselves for not noticing 1) that there were definitely not any elves in their organization and 2) that one of these dudes was a giant half-orc barbarian who clearly didn’t fit in his robes, but, at the time, in the light of the ritual, and with a dead-lookin dragon-thingy carried between them, it seemed reasonable. As it was, the henchemen looked at each other, looked at the party, shrugged, said, “sounds legit,” and allowed them to pass on.

As they rounded a corner of the mezzanine and ascended towards the ritual altar, the plan started to break down. Sylvan realized that the ropes were holding a murdered treant, mystical guardian of the forest and definitely not a trademarked ent from the lotr franchise, and his mind lost grip of the ‘alternate sacrifice’ plan. As he took a final step up onto the ground-down altar, he saw a dark cult fanatic carving the last of three wicked-looking symbols into the hide of a rotten dragon’s corpse. The beast was clearly dead, but as everyone looked on and the final symbol was completed, the horn that had been a psychic resonance for Ryn sounded loudly in everyone’s ears. “IT” was clearly “ON” at this point. As blood from the murdered treant flowed down the stalactite, over a white crystal, and onto the mouth and face of the dragon, the monster’s eyes flashed with a green light just like that seen in necro-Kestrels, light glowed in many colors out of its ritual wounds, and it broke the rope bonds holding it in place for this dark rite.

Sylvan’s rage at seeing the forest-protector profaned overcame his commitment to strategy, and he unleashed a powerful moonbeam of radiant magical light onto the platform. The treant, the dragon, and the fanatic were bathed in white moonlight, and it seared the evil creatures something serious. The dragon’s scales scorched and cracked along its left flank, and the fanatic reeled in intense pain. They recoiled, and the fanatic turned his attention, and his dark magic, on the invading presence. He popped a magical barrier around himself, and closed the distance over to inflict necrotic wounds against this hippie elven intruder. While Sylvan had been the subject of just such an attack moments ago, this one struck him with greater force, and he fell to his knees under the greater power wielded by this evil sorceror. The dragon, in pain and returned abruptly to consciousness, lashed out with its breath, catching its resurrector, sylvan, and Glüur in a cone of freezing ice. Overcome with magical pain, Sylvan dropped out of consciousness.

Ryn didn’t waste any time wondering what spell to cast, as “Shatter” was newly available and seemed entirely appropriate to the situation. With an incantation and a clap of his hands, a blast of magical force resonated through the ritual chamber, knocking the fanatic’s life straight out of his body, causing the dragon to shudder, and loosing the massive stalactite from the ceiling of the cave. As it fell, the stone bludgeoned the dragon hard, crushing away what remained of its left-side-scales. The dragon schreeched, and a low horn seemed to sound in the distance. Emboldened by this, the Glüur and Gandraak wasted no time in turning the volume of their axe and hammer up to 11, bashing away at the dragon while it was struggling to stand from under the massive rock. As they struck, first one, and then another of the ritual carvings on its side flashed with magical light, then were snuffed out, a pair of horns followed.

The henchmen, shocked at the incredible carnage recently unleashed, pretty much riddled Ryn with enough arrows to make him look like a human pincushion, and he was taken down and out of the fight, for now. Coasai decided that someone needed to work on these peons, and got to task practicing with his longsword, cutting one down right away. The dragon, enraged and terrified, with the magic that bound it to this plane tenuously flickering and its master dead on the ground, inhaled a great chunk of Glüur life force before flying up and out of the sight of the adventurers. Ryn and Sylvan struggled to keep their blood inside their bodies, as the Gandraak smashed through a cultist on his way up the stairs, and Glüur took the stairs up as well. Cosai remained locked in battle with a cultist, trading blows with neither succumbing, while henchman marksmanship academy showed its worth again, as all of the arrows fired this turn totally missed their destinations.

The Dragon, having totally lost the ability to discern friend from foe, began attacking the cultists nearest itself, killing one and terrifying another, as Gandraak ran down the platform towards it. As the dragon recognized its attacker from moments ago, it fled, seeing easier targets across the expanse and flying towards the cultists on the other side of the mezzanine. There, it received the attentions of Gluur, who ran towards it at full speed. Coasai managed to stab his cultist foe to death, but was quickly engaged by another, while the last remaining cultist on the lower level fled the scene, not willing to risk sticking around any longer.

The dragon’s frantic attacks destroyed another cultist, and this guy’s buddy decided it was time to go. Without a moment’s hesitation, the cultist chose a 30-foot drop rather than certain death by dragon, and despite hitting the ground pretty hard, managed to haul ass out of the cave at a pretty decent speed. Coasai disengaged from his foe long enough to pour a healing potion down Ryn’s throat, saving him from certain death, and Sylvan shook himself groggily out of unconsciousness. With a clearly softened enemy below and a mad barbarian above, the dragon decided to descend to finish off his prey from earlier, but his frenzied attacks were easily parried by Sylvan’s staff. Glüur, not one to hesitate in the face of danger, leapt from the mezzanine and swung his axe down into his draconic foe, managing to hit it hard, but not hard enough to take it down. He drank a draught of delicious boozy Fey Whisper Select, grinned a fangy grin a mile wide, and got a better grip on his axe. Gandraak, in an attempt not to be outdone in feats of bravery, also leapt down to swing at the beast, but despite landing on his feet was unable to strike enough of a blow to wound his enemy. Ryn and Sylvan’s attacks also missed their marks, as the manic and unpredictable movements of the dragon kept it from harm, for the moment. After ducking an arrow fired at him from behind, Coasai turned and finished the last cultist, jamming his new longsword through the cultist’s leather armor and out the back of his robes. With a mighty swing at the base of the dragon’s neck, Glüur decapitated the fell beast, and in a green flash, necromantic energy spewed from the dragon’s wounds, lingering for a moment like smoke around the final rune lit along his side, before extinguishing entirely.

Everyone high-fived each other, despite being super tired and sore from the near-death-experience. Glüur took the grisly trophy of a second dragon’s rotting head, and both Gandraak and Sylvan scavenged pieces of flesh and scale from the beast. Ryn cut the great magical looking stone loose from the fallen stalactite, and quickly stashed it away. Coasai and Glüur, convinced of the presence of more loot in a place like this, managed to find a chest filled with gold coins, gems, and a wondorous cloak with eye-like patterns covering it. They then retreated to the room with the rosebush and skylight to take a rest before ensuring that the cave was clear of all enemies.

Will they kill absolutely everything in here? Probably, but we’ll have to wait till next time to find out.