Campaign journal
by RPGPunditThe session began with Alen and Corwyn in Darokin city, and with Corwyn becoming increasingly insecure about his chances of convincing anyone in Ylaruam of joining the Darokini cause.
Finally he speaks with the Darokin Diplomatic Corps and asks them to send someone else, as he feels that he would be stuck, based on the weirdness of Ylari philosophy/religion.
They agree, and tell him not to worry, they'll send a guy named Lawrence instead.
Meanwhile Alendalan has been hanging out at the Alfheim embassy, and after a night of frolicking he wakes up besides a comely elven lass. "Want to get married?" He asks her.
"Um, ok!" she replies.
So Alendalan is getting married. Mostly its a tactic to get into an Alfheim clan (in this case, the Grunalf clan) and thus have access to the higher-level spells for elves from the Alfheim gazetteer. either that, or its just another excuse for a three-day party. I'm not sure which.
In either case, Alen teleports over his buddies Duroc, Galafilo and Sir Firearm (who were all still hanging out in Sateeka), and they have a very big very elven three-day wedding. Now, Alfheim elves are basically hippies, and pansexual ones at that, with a very fast and loose sense of ethics. The Dwarf in particular is nervous, and manages to come prepared, buying something called "Smiley's Amazing ****-Bum-Cover" at a discount store for 39gp 9sp. It ends up not working, but the Dwarf manages to intimidate his way out of the party with his honour intact.
Three days later the party is at an end. The bride and groom do it one more time, mostly because they weren't totally sure they had actually done it until then; and they want the wedding to be official. After that, they shrug, "well, see ya later?" "Yea ok bye", and go their separate ways.
Meanwhile, Corwyn has cast Commune, and is informed that the Master of Hule will be attacking within a week, but not less than in two days. This means they must hurry, and since they won't be going to Ylaruam after all, they decide to head to Shireton to observe the Halfling meeting of the High Sheriffs.
They teleport over there, and Corwyn's teleport malfunctions (it seems to happen with him more often than most), and he ends up under the city, underwater, and facing a pair of giant crocodiles. He travels back up to the surface, but when Galafilo and Alendalan hear of this, they decide that they want to go down there and capture the things. They travel there, and Alendalan polymorphs the two huge crocodiles into frogs, and then stores them in a wicker cage.
After that, the gang speaks at the meeting of the Sheriffs. Some of the sheriffs wish to join the fight with the master, but others feel the halflings have nothing to gain and everything to lose. The ambassadors of Darokin, Karameikos and Alfheim are all there, and they all speak out, pleading for halfling aid. The elf ambassador trades spells with Alendalan.
In the end, the halflings vote to send food and supplies to the Darokinian war effort, but aside from a unit of snipers they will not send troops. They will, however, allow Karameikos to ship troops through the shires as necessary to aid Darokin.
Having done all they can, the frustrated heroes decide they're going to go after a gigantic red dragon they knew was living in the Black Eagle barony. They set out to fly over there.
Along the way they run into a gaggle of cockatrices, which are no challenge to them, nor are the crab spiders they find in the cockatrice cave.
They keep making their way across the Blight Swamp, and end up in the Black Eagle Barony.
The night they arrive they are camped out near the seaside, when they run into a certain Lord Dastardly of the Barony, and his men, who are at first neutral toward the PCs. But Alen and Galafilo's goading soon leads Lord Dastardly to draw arms against these adventurer scoundrels in the name of the baron!
Dastardly fights much better than what the PCs are used to in an opponent. He drops Galafilo, his captain injures Alendalan, and Dastardly appears to have a seriously bad-ass magic sword.
But his error is in levitating to try to get away, when Sir Firearm can also levitate. Firearm finishes him off. The PCs find a +3 shield, some +2 arrows, a potion of climbing, and the sword of Dastardly. Firearm detects that the sword is an entropic artifact. The PCs are willing to cross a lot of moral lines it seems, but not the line into entropy.
They're unwilling to risk Alen casting Analyse on it either, for fear that it might take over his mind. Alen wants to but the rest of the party outvotes him. They can't just leave the sword there either, so instead they very carefully wrap it up and take it with them, planning to hand it over to some cleric who could take care of it.
The next day they get to the outskirts of the great Red Dragon's cave. The gang found their way there thanks to Corwyn's "find the path", and before reaching the dragon's lair, they cast Bless, Haste, Find Traps, and Invisibility 10'. Corwyn also has cast Survival on all the party, and has cast Travel on himself.
Thus prepared, the group phases under the ground and begin to approach the dragon's mountain. at about 100' out, Corwyn Finds a magical trap barrier sphere blocking their way. They phase back up to the surface, and after confirming that the trap is indeed a sphere that totally surrounds the cave, they debate what to do. Finally they decide that Alendalan will send his wizard-eye to cross the barrier and see if that does anything. When the wizard eye reaches the inside of the cave, Alendalan sees that the dragon has just finished casting mirror image and haste and then goes invisible.
The party members activate or guzzle down their various items of seeing invisible. Only Duroc is unable to see the dragon, and they decide that its best that he sit this fight out, so they phase him into the ground and leave him there. Duroc is highly worried about the prospect that they all might be killed, and he would be stuck in solid rock waiting out his last few hours until Survival ran out, but he agrees that he would be dead meat against this dragon, so into the dirt he goes.
Meanwhile, the dragon has grown tired of looking around, so it flies back into the cave, still invisible, still alert.
The party moves into the cave, still invisible as well, but not before Alen does a number of false alerts through the magic warning trap with his wizard eye, to confuse and unnerve the dragon.
They sneak up, and charge to the attack. Galafilo tries first, but misses the creature. Alen casts polymorph, but the dragon saves. Then Corwyn casts speak with monsters, insuring that the dragon won't be able to attack anyone who doesn't directly attack him. He offers the dragon his life in exchange for servitude to Sir Firearm (who is, I remind you, an Avenger).
The dragon expresses great doubt that the party will be able to defeat him. So Sir Firearm attacks it a few times and wipes out all his mirror images. Then he and Galafilo hit it for some serious damage. they offer the dragon a second chance to surrender. The dragon decides to breathe fire on Galafilo. Galafilo saves and has halfling resistance to breath weapons, but still takes a huge amount of damage (enough to have dropped him, if not for the fact that he'd taken a potion of Fortitude, which temporarily ups his hp).
Once the dragon sees that his breath isn't able to drop the halfling in one blow, he immediately surrenders. He has a grudging admiration for the adventurers, the first to beat him in a long time. They in turn have an admiration for the tactical sense of the great Dragon (who's name, they find out, is the very original Smog).
The dragon lets them take his treasure, and agrees to precisely 24 hours of servitude for the Avenger. The 24 hours will begin when they choose, but it will not be a minute more. Planning to send him against the Master of Hule when the time is right, the PCs agree and head off on their way.
That day, Galafilo receives a notice on his scroll of communication, from his family. The Master's forces have started to attack the hills past Akorros. The last part of the Darokin-Hule war has begun.
It is Vatermont 16, 1006
The PCs are now:
Corwyn, cleric of Asterius, lv. 27
Sir Firearm, Avenger of Vanya, lv. 19
Alendalan, Elf lord-wizard lv. 10
Galafilo, Halfling Sheriff Lv. 8
Duroc, Dwarf lv. 7