Tyranny of Dragons - Vengeance and Death

With apologies for the cell phone pic.

When last we left our band of plucky heroes, they had captured the leader of the attack on Greenest, the mad cleric Frulam Mondath.  A quick scan of his office revealed a significant intelligence coup; the group had discovered marching order to head west to the coast and then north to Waterdeep, as well as detailed numbers of troops and supplies.

Risking discovery, the team pulled in their rear-guard, the archer Grim, and paused for a short rest.  Knowing that they would only get one shot at disrupting the plans of the Cult of the Dragon here in their base of operations, they elected to penetrate still deeper into the cavern despite being short on healing and spells.

Gilgamesh, the death mage, descended the rope ladder leading down into the pit trap within Mondath's lair to scout ahead.  The rest of the team fully bound up Frulam and stuffed him in his own trunk.  Down a short passage, Gilgamesh observed the great half-blue dragon (or is that blue half-dragon?) Cyanwrath at prayer within a large chapel to Tiamat.  Henry St. John, the dwarf, would have taken on 'that big blue bastard' by himself, but the rest of the team never considered leaving without dispatching Big blue.

Somehow they managed to sneak the whole party into the chapel and ambush the terrible dragon warrior, and his two aides standing off to the side.  The fight was fierce and terrible, but never in doubt.  Although he fought well, Cyanwrath fell to the combined might of the party - the coup de grace delivered by Henry's twin hammerblows.  Vengeance at last...okay, it had only been a week game time, but it felt like months.  Henry's satisfaction would be as short lived as Henry himself.

A small trapped chest held loot, but Grim solved that problem by using a pilfered key.  What might have been a fatal acid trap was safely bypassed.

dun Dun DUN...foreshadowing!

Still not smart enough to quit while the quitting was good, the party descended yet another flight of stairs to a large cavern with two large depressions separated by a rocky ridge.  The smaller of the holes looked empty, and the larger held two ambush drakes among a group of stalactites and three dragon eggs.  Grim made short work of the drakes from above, leaving an open shot at the dragon eggs.

Wasting no time Henry and Karren the half-dragon paladin descended into the egg hatchery, springing a kobold ambush.  Two blighters hurled casks of tarry glue while the other two hurled molokobold cocktails: whooosh!  The glue didn't stop the two heroes for long, though.  The two strongest party members yanked themselves free. While the rest of the party made short work of the kobolds, Henry advanced on the nearest dragon egg.

"Who want's a black dragon omelette," the dwarf asked.  A bad choice of last words.

More like passive aggressive perception amirite? 

Splattering the dragon egg awoke a massive roper guardian who immediately grabbed the unsuspecting dwarf and reeled him into a massive set of chompers.  What the party had thought was another stalactite was in fact a ravenous beast trained to eat anyone who touched the eggs.  The party fought valiantly, Grim in particular dealing massive amounts of damage.  Alas, to no avail.

Not shown, massive puddle
of tar-glue blocking the stairs.

Although they were able to stay out of reach of the towering monster, they just couldn't get to Henry in time.  Aramis dove into the pit, trying to distract the beast, get close enough to Henry to lay down some healing magic, anything.  But the cleric's heroism just couldn't overcome a series of really, really poor consitution checks by the dwarf (two critical failures, ouch).

Cue sad trombone

Saddened by the loss of their plucky friend, the party at last decided that they had delved too deep.  Ain't that always the way?  They gathered up their friends remains, their captive cleric, and returned to Greenest to turn over the intel to the proper authorities.







And now you know why the header of this blog looks the way it does this week.