Episode 10: Negotiations and Exploration

Another bit of entertainment for everyone! This party is a relatively new team consisting of basically a bunch of fighting types in many varieties:

Melchizedor, the dwarven Cleric of Heironious

Talon, the Aarakocra (bird-man who can fly) Fighter

Unit 2408, the Warforged (humanoid living construct) Barbarian

Luthis, the Kenku (raven-man who can not fly) Blood Hunter

Evangeline, the Tiefling Paladin of Tyr

One bit of clarity from the last story ... the one who was asking the dragon if we could just scurry on through was Talon, not Luthis. My bad, I keep getting them backwards. Talon is bold and curious. Luthis is a bit more reserved, and we're still figuring out communication with him as Kenku do not have a language of their own.

So Talon asked the chained white dragon if we could just scurry on through (to where, I do not know, as there are no other doors just probable portals). The white dragon asks if we are minions of Halester the Mad Mage. Talon, being a bit more bold than perhaps his bird bones can handle is just inside the door, while Evangeline is right outside the door and the rest of the party is further back.

Talon responds to the dragon's query with "No, we're chasing down the two that just came through here" as Evangeline says "Absolutely not I only serve Tyr". Whether or not the dragon heard her is another story. At this point Evangeline is also like Talon we need to get out of here. He actually stepped back out of the doorway and we closed the door.

As we're standing outside of the chamber with the white dragon discussing what to do, we hear the dragon "I know you're out there, how rude." So Evangeline steps back in to talk to the dragon.

After a little bit of back and forth between Evangeline and the dragon she states "If you will let us through to the portals on the other side, we will find a way to release you from your captivity. We are not strong enough to do so now though."

The dragon though counters with "Fight me so I can see your strength and then I will consider your proposal." Evangeline decided at that point there was no point in negotiating with an evil dragon, so she turned around and left.

We return to our exploration of this first level of the dungeon, all the way back to one of the intersections we had been to previously to take a different route. This route took us to a large room with columns made of bone, and there were scattered bones about the floor. This put us on alert, so we were not surprised when two creatures flew down to attack us. They did not last long.

After the fight Evangeline decides to smack one of the bone columns with her hammer for good measure, just in case there were undead lurking about, but nothing happened other than some bone chips flew off.

So we continue back to another intersection, read the sign that said "certain death this way" ... and then went the direction the sign was pointing. Luthis, however, threw his hands up in the air and refused to keep going down this path. So Evangeline strode ahead and took the scout position. He did follow behind but he was clearly unhappy at this.

Going down this hall for a little ways we find a few dead goblins and a small rough hewn tunnel. Melchizedor goes first through the tunnel, figuring he'd fit better, and gets all the way through to a room on the other side. The rest of the party then follows, though there's a lot of ducking and crawling going on.

The room on the other side of the tunnel has two doors and the remnants of a statue, and not much else of interest. Piecing together the statue and doing some deep thinking, we realize that this statue is a statue of a medusa. Well that'd definitely qualify as certain death.

Going through one of the doors we find a hallway that goes north-south, and there's light to the south. Evangeline is like let's go towards the light, so we did. Luthis is still refusing to scout ahead. He does indicate that perhaps we should go slowly, so we do slow down and proceed somewhat cautiously.

Getting to the light we find another tunnel with evenly spaced, lit, candles. Others notice there's no dust or debris anywhere, Evangeline pinches out one of the candles. It automatically relit itself. "Damn wizards" she mutters.

Investigating this area takes an interesting turn when Evangeline, still in the lead, basically walks face-first straight into a gelatinous cube. She takes a lot of acid damage. Unit 2408 reaches in and yanks her out of the cube and the combat was on. Everyone is hitting the thing well, then it moved forward once again engulfing Evangeline, but Unit 2408 gave it a final death-blow.

She takes a moment to heal herself some before we return to scouting. Following the tunnels about we don't find much else of interest till we come to a dead end with another one of the stone arches like what we saw in the dragon room. And this time we're close enough to see like a hologram of a wizard pointing a wand at us.

Talon pulls out his wand of secrets, activates it, and it points straight at the stone arch ... which then activates with a swirl of purple energy that resolves into a shimmer. It shuts off a minute later. More cautious poking at the arch and the next time it's activated Evangeline strides through. The rest of the party follows suit.

Here we find ourselves in a cavern or natural cave formation as opposed to the worked hallways of the previous area. Nothing seems terribly interesting until we wander through a tunnel to another cave and we find an area with shelves cut into the stone. There's dwarven writing on things and dead dwarves on the shelves.

And that's where this session ended. Actually this was two sessions, I got a little behind. More later!