Ep 1103: We find a traitor

Today's episode was more role-play than action/combat.

When last we left the adventurers they had just made it to the wood elf village that had been attacked by a dragon -- and survived somehow.

The village is set up as buildings up in trees with a series of walkways/bridges to get around and pulley style elevators to get up to that level. This actually helped add to the body count. See, Green dragons spew poisonous gas, so the dragon would swoop in gassing people as they were all trying to use the elevator to escape. Or they'd overload a bridge and it'd collapse plunging them to their deaths. And the villagers that did manage to make it to the ground were taken out by the cultists.

Since Leovan is a wood elf we thought we'd let him do the speaking for the party, since these are also wood elf. That did not go well. He's quite cranky about the destruction. So his diplomacy consisted of him growling out demands of who did this and where did they go, rather than finessing info out of them.

We did manage to get the wood elves to take us to their leader despite Leovan's help. Once we got to the leader's abode though, Magnus made the executive decision to clamp down on Leovan and keep him outside the abode and nominated Elle to go in first and start the conversation.

That actually worked well. Elle used her upbringing as a noble's daughter and fluent elvish to break the ice with the guy, got the niceties out of the way so to speak (and she can be charming when she wants), then asked to switch to common as Tsedek and Magnus can't speak elvish.

Then there was quite a lot of back and forth with the leader as we were suspicious. See, every other village the dragon/cultists had attacked so far had had all occupants killed off and the village stripped of all valuables. This one was mid "battle" -- and I mean complete wipeout of the villagers -- when the dragon/cultists just left.

So Tsedek "suggested" to the leader to tell us everything, and it worked. Turns out the leader, after watching his wife get eaten by the dragon, begged for his life at any cost. And the dragon agreed, only if the leader would feed the dragon information about villages.

Which then led to the problem of keeping Magnus from smiting the leader right then and there. See, vengeance Paladins do not take evil or evil acts kindly. Elle, being bolder than her physical stature can take decides to step in front of Magnus and tell him no. Thankfully he was able to restrain himself as Elle actually can't stop him -- he's literally twice her size (without armor).

But Tsedek was able to get the information about where the leader has been meeting the dragon, and the direction the dragon always flies in from, so next session we're going to go find it's lair. Helpfully (maybe?) he also stated the dragon's rider is always wet when they show up.

I think Leovan is still growling though, he's taking the destruction hard.