Ep 1109: That went from bad to ...

When last we left our heroes Magnus, Leovan, and Tsedek were out in the open along the shore of this cave lake and damaged, Elle was at the opening to the tunnel very damaged, and Itanis was further down the tunnel undamaged. The dragon and his rider are underwater and slightly damaged. Minsc was a one time character for a guest player and has poofed away.

So we start this episode with Leovan throwing up his healing zone at the entrance to the cave then proceeds to run down the tunnel. Tsedek also chooses to high tail it down the tunnel at this point. Magnus, ever intrepid Magnus, decides to run and then Misty Step onto the underwater dragon, and sticks the landing because of Itanis having previously cast Spider Climb on him. Itanis and Elle both chose to hold their actions until "the dragon is within sight".

The dragon elects to use a lair action to cast wall of brambles along the shore and then flew up out of the water and came flying directly at the tunnel. Which of course freaked Elle out. Itanis' held action went first and he cast Wall of Force which is basically an impenetrable clear wall. But he cast it in essentially a 10' cube with a 5' opening. Now, a huge dragon takes up a 15' cube worth of space, so this dragon is crammed in there like an over-sized cat in a shoe box. The rider is also jammed up in there as well, smashed between a wall and a dragon. Since Magnus was on the dragon when it came up out of the water, he was expelled out and winds up on top of the cube of force. Elle, freaking out at this dragon flying at her, uses her last major spell slot to cast Fireball inside the cube of force. Did 50hp of damage to the rider and 25hp of damage to the dragon. The dragon then retaliates and bites Elle, knocking her back out again, but when the dragon poked his head out of his little cube to do this, Magnus played wack-a-mole on the dragon's head, further enraging the dragon.

We continue on this epic battle with Magnus throwing some healing at Elle, bringing her conscious again and holding his action until the dragon pokes his head back out. Leovan fires some arrows into the dragon doing some great damage, and both Tsedek and Itanis also do some damage to the dragon. Elle throws a firebolt but completely misses the dragon which is rather disappointing given he's not exactly mobile right now.

And then things got sketchy because the dragon poked his head back out and breathed his breath weapon of poisonous gas on us. Leovan and Itanis are damaged and Elle goes down, again. Yes, fourth time this fight. Magnus of course plays whack-a-mole with the green dragon's head. The dragon is quite enraged at this point.

Then Leovan shoots a couple more arrows into the cube ... and kills the dragon.

Magnus walks into the cube and intimidates the dragon rider into surrendering, successfully. This proved to be useful. Magnus then hauled the dragon rider over to the group while Tsedek cast Charm Person on the dragon rider. They then did this good-cop/bad-cop on the dragon rider to pull information out of him. Turns out the dragon rider is a Wood Elf, not only is he an elf, he's one of the King's sons. Also, and ironically, the good-cop of this scenario is Tsedek. So you have this over 6' tall horned and tailed devil looking humanoid being the dragon rider's friend while the party Paladin stands there glowering and being the bad-cop. After these two got all of the information out of the dragon rider they took him away from the party and killed him. We're going to give the body to the elf guards to return to the King for closure.

While they're doing this Elle kinda slumps down a wall and sits flat on her buttocks, pulls out her flask of dwarven whiskey, and contemplates her life and where it is going.