April 30th, 2017

Out Of The Frying Pan. . .

The adventurers of the day from left to right:

Nick playing Merrick the Falling/Fallen Human Fighter

Evan playing Ike the Lute-Strumming Human Bard

Chris playing Deckard the Stealthy Survivor Human Ex-Fighter Thief

Sarai playing Desorna the Dreamer Elven Pole-Axe-Maiden Fighter

Hunter playing Strix the Shining Elven Magic-User

Zack playing LaVeya the Acid-Touched Human Druid

The party began inside the palace of the Sultan Daarfin where they were searching for the bottle of the efreet who journeyed with them in the form of a red-skinned halfling slave. Once the incurious slaves from the previous adventure had departed, the adventurers continued onward.

The party came to a door in the left wall of the hallway where the slaves had emerged from. A quick consult with the staff of pathfinding directed them through this door, so the party carefully opened it. Beyond was another hallway extending into the distance with a four way intersection faintly visible in the light of the small oil lamps suspended from hooks in the walls every so often. At the intersection the staff directed them to the left. A quick look down this passage revealed a set of large and ornate double doors at the end of the hall about forty feet away. The party went down the hall to the doors, but when the human fighter started to turn the handle a faint click was heard.

Cautioning everyone to stand still and be careful, Deckard began to examine the area, looking for traps. He discovered that there was a pit trap under their feet and if Merrick finished turning the handle they would all be plunged into some sort of deadly pit trap. While the rest of the party scampered back off of the pit and Merrick held veeeeery still with the handle in his hand, Deckard tried to find a way to disarm or otherwise jam the trap so that the party could continue forward. After some work was done, Deckard said that the trap was temporarily jammed shut and the party could continue on, but quickly. Merrick opened the door to find pitch blackness inside, which he found alarming. He entered the darkness anyway, and the rest of the party followed, with LaVeya shapeshifting into snake form to reduce the chances of triggering the trap. The efreet told the party that if they'd just walk forward for a bit the darkness would end as it was only just inside the door. They did so, LaVeya still slithering in snake form, and they soon passed out of the darkness to the dim light of the throne room. A dias was on the far side of the room with a carved solid stone pedestal on it and the seat of the throne on top of that. LaVeya noticed some things flitting around the upper reaches of the throne room and changed back to human form to tell the party to be ready.

There were two large, 10 feet wide by 25 feet tall, stained glass windows in the far wall, one on each side of the throne. There were two doors in each of the back corners of the throne room, one in the back wall and one in the side wall. The adventurers seemed to remember that the courtiers who left to return the plate armor to its place left through the right hand door that was in the back wall. The door was locked but not trapped and Deckard deftly picked the lock revealing a winding staircase leading downwards. A consult with the staff said that the path was behind them to the left, towards the throne. The adventurers searched the throne but found nothing, so LaVeya used her ghostly lantern spell to increase their chances of finding a hidden compartment. In the light of the ghostly lantern the compartment on the back of the stone base of the throne was easier to find, and Deckard easily wrenched it open revealing a chest that barely fit inside the compartment.

The chest was carefully hauled out and examined. It was not trapped but had three locks on it. Unfortunately Deckard failed in his attempt to pick the first two locks, so after some frustration the efreet muttered “Morons” and used a spell to melt the two locks so that Merrick could break them open.

Inside the chest was a large bag which Deckard opened and gazed into. On the top of the other coins, gems and items was a ceramic bottle, very similar to one they had seen before. The bottle was removed and the other item of interest in the bag was a globe, about six inches in diameter.

The efreet pointed at the bottle and said “Break it.” The party entered into a discussion which the ended with the efreeti bottle being shattered. Some further discussion continued about what to do next, with Merrick being all for robbing the Sultan's treasure chamber and emptying everything in it. The efreet cut this short by saying “Look, those things have gone to warn the Sultan. They'll be here soon. You have limited choices. You can follow your greed and pay the price, or you can escape.” Merrick demanded that the efreet teleport them to safety and grew upset when the efreet smiled and said “That wasn't part of the deal.” Merrick was ready to argue, but Desorna pointed out that the efreet had never said more than “Maybe.” to the getting them out safely option. A deal was struck though. The efreet agreed to deliver them to safety in exchange for the globe they had found. The party wanted to know what it was, but all the efreet would tell them was that it was the price of their escape. Sounds of onrushing feet could be heard from outside, so the party agreed. As Merrick asked LaVeya to use another charge to find the most direct path out, the efreet said “Save it” and asked Merrick for the head of his previously shattered war hammer. The efreet pitched it through one of the stained glass windows and then knocked more of the broken glass out of the way so the party could teeter on the narrow ledge outside so the efreet could cast his teleport spell. The doors burst open as he started and guards came rushing in. In a panic, Strix cast a fireball but didn't successfully target it at the guards, instead hitting the back of the throne nearby. The explosion covered their escape, though it also scorched the party and reduced the bard to -2 hit points. This caused some of the party to teeter and start to fall as the teleport flashed them to relative safety. The majority of the party landed fairly smoothly standing on the ground before collapsing into a scorched heap in the bard's case. Desorna however was not so lucky as she felt herself falling. She was terrified because her first thought was that she was falling the seventy feet from the small ledge to the upraised forest of 5 foot high iron spikes surrounding the palace below. And then she was in a tree and bouncing very painfully off of tree limbs before her unconscious form tumbled to the ground near the rest of her friends. With her arrival the efreet considered his bargain kept, and he vanished.

The party realized that the efreet had returned them to the place where he had originally found them, a day or so out of Twinlake Vale. After some consideration the party decided to slowly limp their way to Twinlake so the bard could recover and hopefully get back in the action with the others soon. Luckily the first day out they ran into a tinker who some of them had traveled with before. Wit a ride to town the journey passed much more quickly, and the party could spend some time and cash in town while the bard rested up.

Several of the party went to the Curio Shop. While Deckard told the stories of their adventures to the Council of Eleven member and Strix discussed the costs of adding two more spells, identify and alter self, to her spellbook, Merrick wandered around looking for interesting things. He found one and after fiddling with it for a moment decided that he no longer loved the magical brass ring of strength on his finger as much as he though, so he pulled it off and tossed it away, then went to try to explain to the shopkeeper how he had somehow broken the carved rod he had been looking at.

The shopkeeper was MUCH less than pleased that Merrick had found and accidentally used the rod of cancellation that had demagicked his ring of delusion. Merrickwas now in SERIOUS debt to the Curio Shop owner, and the mage also pricked Merrick's arm and took some of his blood so that he could track him and occasionally send “reminders” to him to pay his debt.

Meanwhile, Desorna had decided that she wanted some plate armor to give her maximum protection in combat. After some haggling she paid over 675 gold for the chance to own her own custom plate armor. After a week spent in fittings and preparation, the rest of the party was ready to go and Ike the bard was back to normal.

The party decided that they needed to find money since Merrick owed a ton and they all wanted more money anyway. The DM advanced the ideas of returning to the Hidden Citadel or the Castle in the Sky, but the party ignored his apparently too subtle hints and voted to return to the M'kemba Palace in the Cursed Valley. And thus they headed back to Rimwatch and then to the Valley.

As they headed south from the town to the Rim, they ran into Earl who was returning from a scouting mission in the area. Earl warned them that the inhabitants in the Valley had become much more active, both on the ground and in the air with Ashbeak making more patrols than before. In spite of these hints, the party continued onward.

Descending into the Valley the party used another charge off of the staff to start their trip to the palace. At one point they heard the sound of wings flapping overhead, but nothing came of it so they continued on. When they reached the large pond they found Ashbeak perched on his island in the center glaring at them. Desorna decided to try to casually use her cloak to hide her drake scale armor, but Ashbeak called her out on it anyway. He asked if they were heading to the palace again, and upon their affirmative answer he said that he would fly and let them know to expect the adventurers. This made the party vaguely uncomfortable, but who argues with a drake?

As they continued on some of the party began to get the uncomfortable feeling that they were being stalked. Ike noticed extra shadows now and then along the side of the path they traveled, but they could never be sure if it was a large or small number of shadows. When they reached the ancient orchard the shadows stayed behind and the party continued on toward the palace.

The high walls only had a couple of people on them peeking over to watch the approach of the group. As the party entered the central courtyard a robed yuan ti with the head of a serpent and the body of a human came out to meet them. He asked if they would be touching the statue in the center of the fountain that was still filled with black water. Merrick used his ring of water walking and walked on the water instead of through it. The rest of the party did the same one at a time. They were then led into a different door before that led them to a pentagonal throne room with two thrones and a much larger copy of the 15' tall dragon statue on the fountain outside behind the thrones. Another Yuan ti in ornate robes and an ornate staff met the group and took them through a door behind the statue. They went down the hall beyond and into another smallish room with benches along the walls where the door wasn't. The yuan ti asked them each a question and discussed their answers briefly before standing and directing them to leave through the door they entered by. They did so, but found things were different now.

A long cave passageway stretched into the distance here, and after walking the length of it they came into a huge cavern where they were met by a small and aged yuan ti. It led them through the cavern close to the far wall before shouting for the Great One to awaken. The party then realized that the far stone wall that they saw wasn't actually stone, but instead was an immense black dragon so ancient that its scales had faded to greys. It was over a hundred and fifty feet long and seemed to be fast asleep, in spite of the yuan ti's shout for it to awaken. Deciding that killing a midget yuan ti was easier than trying to kill a gigantic dragon, the party attacked the yuan ti. The first few attacks did minimal damage, but as the attacks started to hit and hurt, the yuan ti grasped an amulet around its neck, spoke a few words, and teleported away. Now all alone except for the sleeping dragon, the party decided foolishness would be a wise plan.

In spite of the dragon sleeping right there, Merrick the Money-Needy decided to try to scale the 40 cliff behind the dragon to the large opening above. It took several tries and several falls before Merrick stripped off his armor to increase his chances and finally made it to the top. Turning back to the opening he started to haul up the bag he had put his armor into and tied to the end of the rope. While he was intent on this task, he didn't notice the thing that came up behind him and pushed him off of the ledge. SPLAT! Merrick stood back up and opened the bag to take his armor out while the others took notice of the tall humanoid figure on the ledge above. Merrick noticed the rope was being drawn up, so he grabbed it and was pulled up with it. At the top he found a twelve foot tall human figure covered with scars and stitches who plucked Merrick off of the rope and tried to drop him to the floor below again. Merrick resisted but ended up falling anyway, miraculously managing to catch onto some cracks in the wall and momentarily halt his descent. He did end up falling the rest of the way to a smaller splat. Furious, he quickly began pulling on his armor while Deckard fired arrows at the flesh golem, hitting it twice before it retreated back down the large passage.

While Merrick was trying to scale the cliff Ike and LaVeya had not been idle and had been trying to awaken the ancient, humongous black dragon. The DM can neither explain nor comprehend this, but they were determined in spite of Desorna's attempts to talk them out of doing so. They were momentarily distracted by the adventure with the flesh golem but soon returned to their original task, with Ike actually perching on the dragon's snout and playing his lute as loud as possible. LaVeya decided that her shapeshifting ability would be perfect for exploring the upper reaches of the cave where Merrick had been trying to climb to. Changing into a crow and flying up to the opening LaVeya flew high along the ceiling over the head of the watchful flesh golem and above the iron golem further in. Beyond where the iron golem stood was a large cave filled with loot. LaVeya tried to land and pick up a coin with her beak, but doing so drew attention to her as she fumbled the coins. Now that the iron golem saw her, the druid launched herself into the air to fly out, but there were boulders nearby for the golem to use, and he pegged her with one dropping her hit points below half. She fluttered back down to the others and returned to her human form to tell the others what she had seen. At this point a gong could be heard being rung and the dragon began to stir. Much of the party began to run for the passageway and the door with Merrick and LaVeya lagging behind and Ike bringing up the rear. Merrick and LaVeya reached the hallway opening and turned to watch for Ike as the dragon raised its head and breathed acid after the unfortunate bard. The resulting damage reduced the bard and all his items to nothing more than an oily smear and the splash damage knocked out Merrick and critically wounded LaVeya. Acting quickly LaVeya grabbed the collapsing fighter and dragged him down the hall behind her. The dragon did not seem to notice their departure but instead let them leave. The party managed to summon the elevator room and left on it. LaVeya healed the human fighter to where he could stumble on his own, though not quickly, and the party started to plan their escape. Luckily the palace grounds were still relatively empty, so Strix used her alter self spell to resemble the yuan ti in the ornate robes and then she led the two fighters out of the gate while Deckard stealthed his way out and LaVeya turned into a bird and flew out. With the two fighters apparently being escorted by one of their leaders the snake and lizard men in the towers did not rain death down on them. Once they were out of sight they moved as fast as they could at Merrick's slow pace to try to escape the Cursed Valley and reach safety.

They made it to the Rim before they were spotted by the drake Ashbeak who flew at them. LaVeya hid in bird form among the brush along the top of the Rim and Deckard successfully stealthed again. Strix just tried to tumble back down the slope they had just come up leaving Desorna as the only active character (as Nick had to leave before then) to face the drake.

Ashbeak landed by Desorna and lit into her with a tirade of “What have you done you fools?” Desorna could do little more than sob and apologize. The end result of the conversation was that the party had twenty eight days to raise all the treasures they could to try to appease the Great Dragon with so she would return to sleeping instead of ravaging the lands as the yuan ti wanted. With no other options other than apocalypse, the elven fighter agreed on the party's behalf to meet the drake at the treeline south of Rimwatch in 28 days with all the treasure they could raise. Ashbeak departed and the party ran for Rimwatch at Merrick's best stumbling speed.

Once the party reached Rimwatch and Merrick was put to bed for his many days rest so he could be useful again, the party tried to decide what to do next. Earl was in town, so they turned to the ranger for advice. Though astounded by the party's foolishness, Earl suggested that the best thing to do was to go see Avonlea the Archdruid and see what might be done from there. After resting for the night, the party departed the next day.

After a three day trip the party made it to the Archdruid's hidden valley where she got to hear their tale and was equally astounded at the situation that they found themselves in. Since the Great Dragon could likely scourge the entire area, she volunteered to donate some treasures toward convincing the Great Dragon to return to sleep. She told the party that they would be deeply within the druids' debt for this, then she suggested they rest for the night, then she would send them through a fae portal to Bogdan, the witch member of the Council of Eleven. 24 days remain.

The party stepped through the fairy circle (leading to a moment of deja vu for Desorna) and found themselves in Bogdan's glade. He berated them for a good while before saying that the Council of Eleven were going to contribute what they can and that the party was going to owe the Council many services for a long time in return. Again having no other recourse, the party agrees and Bogdan grumpily tells them to rest for the night before he sends them to the tower of a Council member that lives near Ruinheath. This is important since the party has decided that their best chance to get treasure is to return to the Proving Grounds at the Castle in the Sky near Ruinheath. 23 days remain.

The party is transported to the tower of the other council member the next morning. He tells them that Bogdan is going to try to get the now-recovered Merrick to Ruinheath today so he can return to the Castle with them. He loans the party his old wand of treasure finding as they will need it to locate treasure quickly. After doing what he can to offer advice and suggestions, he sends them to Ruinheath to wait for Merrick. 22 days remain and it is two days before the portal to the castle opens.

And there we stopped for the night.

Experience per character:

Merrick: 833

Ike: 0
Deckard: 833

Desorna: 833

Strix: 833

LaVeya: 833