November 21

Still in the temple trapped underground, the party began searching for the remaining three stones. They found where the students were keeping a rage drake as a pet and some evil glowing lights before heading over to where they remembered a green fellow guarding a door. The green fellow required them to lop off his head if they wanted to get past him. He offered them a special sword, and he defended himself with another. The fight was short, and the green fellow offered encouragement to Signy as she cut off his head. He then stepped aside, picked up his head, put it back on, and let them pass. Inside they found a bitterly cold room with three human sized frost giants and a blue gem. There was some confusion over who was big or who was small, but the party killed them anyway.

Then they rudely surprised Alec, the Sun Brother, and took his red rose as well.

With three stones, they headed to the priests' quarters. In the dark hallways in the back, they found Claven. He was a priest in his potion lab, and by his side was some sort of demon cat named Kindin. Claven was part skeleton and part normal. The walls and ceiling were marked as if he had been counting. More or less, this is what he had to say...



Claven then said he has been secretly worshiping the Earthmother from over in the Moonshaes. Eron was kind enough to tell him that she too was dead, and Claven was startled but quickly offered prayers to Tymora.

With all four stones, they headed to the sanctuary. Dorgham seemed pleased with their success, but when he turned into a dracolich it became obvious that he was not going to let them open the door in the floor. He seemed sad about it, but he just could not let them go. Fortunately, the party made him even more dead than he was before.

They opened the door and descended down a dark and damp stairway. Eventually they found a stone bowl with glowing blue water in it. They took it to the surface above and dumped it onto the sand.

The water immediately sizzleed and steamed when it hits the sand. Vapors rose up, but at the same time the spot of wet sand is growing, well beyond how much water there was. Clouds formed above. At first they were white puffy clouds, but then the clouds turned black and began spinning slowly. The circle of clouds expanded, eventually covering to the horizon. Then the rain started. It was a hard and stinging rain that was loud when it hits armor. It wasn't long before the two robe-clad members of the party looked particularly ridiculous. That's when the lightning started. It wasn't not a distant rumble, it actually seemed centered around the party. Yenrab was directly hit by lightning and lifted up in the air about 50 feet. He was then hit several times in rapid succession from lightning all around that also hit the ground near the rest of the party. It was over in about a minute. The lightning stopped as Yenrab dropped to the ground, but the rain continued. The desert may not be around much longer.

With their mission completed, the party journeyed via magic to Candlekeep to meet again with Restis and Lankyforpot. They stopped to train and acquire some new spells before setting out again on a new mission. The priests had learned that out in Cormyr near Castle Kilgrave, some people are looking for the remains of the second incarnation of the goddess of magic. He doesn't know who they are, and he has had to piece together a lot of information, but he thinks they are stuck on some sort of puzzle. He believes the key to the puzzle is in Waterdeep, which is why they won't find it so far away. When the third incarnation was deified by Ao on the top of Mount Waterdeep in 1358 (it is currently 1385), a man named Bergen Montague had a vision. He was said to have painted on a shield. Little else was known except he lived somewhere on Net street.

Zargofoop missed him home, and though he wished them well, he was not willing to journey on with the party. He instead had Eron deliver him to his home on Lanton. Then the rest of the party teleported to Waterdeep. The bought and sold some items and Eron spent some time with his parents. It did not take them long to find old Gerty on Net street. She'd lived there a long time. She remembered Torence and Caroline Montague moved into the apartment in 812 shortly after they were married in 1325.



The party set off for Waterdeep. They passed through the towns of Red Larch, Triboar, and Yartar without much incident. In the city of Everlund, most of the way there, they decided to buy horses. Then they came to Silverymoon.

Silverymoon is a city unlike any other. It is the merging of all that is best of elves, humans, and dwarves. Trees and caves make up as much of the city as the human's buildings, and they all flow together. The Knights in Silver defended the gate in the massive walls, but they were two elves and a dwarf. They hesitated to allow in the half drow, but eventually relented. The party got rooms at the Golden Oak and then set off for the Star Court. There they found the officer of records, Bernard Thatch. Bernard was clearly a better person than the members of the party. He was clear to point out all of their flaws. They didn't like Bernard much despite how he let them know if their faults. Bernard would find any record, if it existed, and have it ready the next day. Then the party had a good time with the merry people of Silverymoon for the night, and in the morning they learned from Bernard that Fridmund and his wife stopped for a only a short time. They moved to Hilltop in 1360.

A four day journey brought them to the walled town of Hilltop backing up to the Nether mountains.
The map of Hilltop I forgot to print out.

They found that many of the people here were armed, and some were practicing fighting as if they were part of a militia. There were also quite a few more livestock in the central field than one might expect. They found their way to the main building in the center of town. It served as council chambers, courthouse, watch headquarters, and the inn. The inn was called Perky Peaks, and it was run by a one-armed man named Ford Nillen.

Ford said that Fridmund was not around at the moment, but his son, Hinrik, was an apprentice blacksmith down the road. Hinrik told the party that a group of white dragons had been in the area, coming out every night to pick up livestock or people. This had been going on for about a month. Fridmund was the mayor of Hilltop, but he had lead 10 men up into the mountains. They wanted to find where the dragons were coming from. The best bet would have been to be able to cause a cave in, trapping the dragons inside. He had even considered negotiating with the dragons. Fridmund just needed to do something. But, that was about 15 days ago, and no one had returned. Hinrik was very worried, but they couldn't risk leaving the town undefended by sending more men up into the mountains. The party expressed interest in killing some dragons, so Hinrik said that Tyrone Kennard may be the man for them to talk to, and he could be found in the inn later.

The scene at the inn involved a man telling stories and singing to children before the older crowd came in later on. It turned out that the bard was Tyrone. He was very sweet to children, but he was a vulgar, unwashed, crazy fellow when not around the children. He was happy to help them kill a dragon, and he was glad there were people up to the task. He said some farmers had not come in. Grant Selton had stayed to take care of his cow, Girma, because she was about to have a calf. They were all lost a couple nights ago. Adan Holmes and his two boys, Loman and Tully, were still out here. It seemed as good a spot as any to wait for dragons. The cows looked like great bait.

The party and Tyrone met at 10pm and went out to the fields. Around 1am the dragons came. It was a mother with four young. Tyrone dual-wielded bastard swords like a complete nutjob. He was good at causing damage, but not great at avoiding it. "It's a love-hate thing. I hate dragons, but I LOVE killing them!" The dragons were killed, and the party decided not to follow the dark one's suggestion that they run immediately into the mountains to find the hoard he believes exists as if it's common knowledge that single mothers are rolling in money. Instead, they agreed to go back into Hilltop and plan and expedition for the following day. Tyrone was happy to be their guide. He has the makings of a fine NPC.


Whew. I hope I got everything.

Well no, there was only ONE stone we were searching for. The others were guarded by strange folks with divine geas going on.



I was seriously curious as to whether he was the same "unalive" state as the others. Strangely, I didn't really feel up to checking!



As nice as it was that we didn't have to REALLY kill him, we did, in the end, kill everything in here, and mostly it was for the greater good, but these folks were all innocent.

Even the DRACOLICH was innocent here.

Very good dungeon.


Mass Element Resist, you're so cool!



He scolded Eron for scoring with the cursed chicks. I guess you get opinionated when you sit around for 2,823,435 days.



Who we also killed, I'll point out.

Claven was part skeleton and part normal. The walls and ceiling were marked as if he had been counting. More or less, this is what he had to say...



I didn't know if it was right, but he seemed to have abandoned something like a paradise (or at least a better existence) for truth and all that implies- in his case, a horrid curse. So I figured he should hear that too.



I'm not even sure if that was possible. It was a undead dragon form of a necromantically preserved cleric. That's a lot of undeath pointers.



Other options include:
1- Drink the water
2- Let the water evaporate
3- Pee in the bowl
4- Take the water and teleport it over the ocean, then dump it there. Alternately, a different desert.

(4) I selected as being the most likely to anger Zem. But sadly, Eron wouldn't do something like that, because the land being restored to the way it was before would help way more people than we do in a normal day.



I'm pretty sure we pull that off more often than just in a massive rainstorm!





I still think I should have cast some spells. Like, fly. Oh, don't worry about her! You couldn't stop her anyway, she's a floaty-drow, of a breed that comes and goes with the changing winds. Truly, who can grasp the air?

Also, we have horses again! However, we still lack hover horses.



I'd like to point out to the cleric that bestow curse can be a custom curse. You could, for instance, curse him to always stutter when in conversation. Or be impotent. Or have to read sitting upside down. All of these and more! Basically, as long as the curse is weaker or the same level as the ones in the book (all of which are brutal as hell), have fun!


We are pretty ungrateful!



Very nice sir.



Probably planning to attack Silverymoon. You can't trust those militias! The violet tend towards a loose organizational system.



The violent tend towards vile acts, including bestiality.



The violent tend towards integrated building philosophies.



I had missed that in name, that's pretty good. I ran a game once years ago where the inn names were pretty normal, except for one country. EVERY inn in this country had a name like The Nun Fucker or The Shit Licking Horse Dick. The name didn't have to make ANY sense, as long as it was foul as hell. I greatly enjoyed making that list.



At which point the party decided that even though I have a +20 in weaponsmithing, I must be bad at it. I think that's about as good as the rogue is at hiding, so I'd say it's pretty good.



Guys, I think we should actually try to figure out, after we are done punching the dragons to death, what made them descend on a group of humanoids, who even the stupid white dragons should realize will eventually poke them with a lot of tiny sticks. Zem, are white dragons normally able to work together in your games, or is this unusual?




Was the plan that after eating the first three, the dragons would be full? I expect to find 5 frozen low level dudes, frozen in little individual wads with to tasty bushes and tubers. Hungry Dragon frozen food, you know.



No, I think they wanted to die to cones of frost.



Offer them a virgin each year, that's a popular one.



I think this is my favorite NPC thus far.


Later, I thought that I should have taunted her in draconic when her whelps died.


Yea everyone knows he should dual-wield spiked chains.



I liked the plan where he was gonna do it at like 2 hit points.

Generally, I'm liking letting the fighter, monk, and rogue get down to about half life in any encounter. Then, when I'm sitting there with the spell layout of a 4th level wizard after casting all my big spells, there doesn't have to be a DEBATE about resting, it's just like, ok, up the rope trick, Signy in the middle, and I could polymorph the monk to have breasts if that'll help you guys get to sleep.



Yea, he does, he's pretty hilarious.

Eron doesn't like him much, which is even better.



You always forget the etheric sky snakes.

I scratched my head a bit over that one too.


I tried to cover all the real possibities, but I was still nervous you would think of something I hadn't considered.


Given that smithing requires the use of a large hammer, it is an odd combination. I tended to assume you would know exactly how to it, but perhaps not able to actually do it. Much like Monday-morning quarterbacks.


White dragons are noticeably stupid. Though they would not generally come in groups, this was clearly a mother taking her young out to learn how to hunt. Up until your presence, they had not faced any significant resistance.


Not everyone can come up with clever plans like "Let's hire the guy who is an expert at killing wizards to kill our wizard."


I don't know if there are rules out there that would allow that to happen, but I can promise no rules out there will allow that to happen.


This is one of those times I wish I could draw. I have an image of him in my head but there's no way I could ever put it on paper.

Since my skills are probably inferior to H's analysis skills, I'll skip a full set of comments. I'd just like to say that I am also a huge fan of Tyrone. If I were closer to the Lawful Good end of the spectrum, I might like him less, but I'd still think he's a good NPC. As it is, Marchosias is very intrigued by him, and I think he'll be a nice asset to the darker side of the party.

If the next session is as good as this one was, I can't wait until we game again. Come on you pansies, reply in the Gaming Times thread and tell us what works and what doesn't.

Though this won't mean much to H, I'll remind the rest of you that Ian is actually a really nice guy.

That's always the most frustrating part, is when the players do something totally crazy with something that should seem obvious. Like, you give them a switch to pull, but instead they yank it out of the wall and use it as a walking stick, or a dildo, or something.



I have no idea where you get this. Many halflings and gnomes have a strength of 8, yet have no penalities to being a weaponsmith (that's their racial average). My strength was, at its lowest, 9, which is slightly below average (it currently sits at 11). The few modern swordsmiths who make swords in traditional methods aren't noted for being bears-of-man either, though I doubt there throughput is nearly as high as a stronger dude from back in the day. This is probably sillier than assuming that someone with an Int of 8 who takes ranks in spellcraft just flat out can't make rolls, or can't write, or something. Are you seriously telling me that my wizard who is trained as a swordsmith can't actually smith swords because his strength started as slightly below average?


No, I meant more the fact that there appears to be a whole BUNCH of white dragons in the same area at once- the ones we saw was plainly just as you said.


Eron is a proud C+ student at the School of Hard Knocks.


All the time man, all the time.

No, you could make weapons. I'm just having a little fun with you, so calm down. You have to admit that it's terribly amusing to go from not being able to loot the weapons on a body unless someone else will carry them to stating you're going to help the smith make some weapons.


There must have been some miscommunication. So far those were the only dragons harassing these people. I'm not saying there might not be other white dragons in the area, of course, but that was the family that was the problem. There are a few people of 4-10th level in the area, but five 10th level characters were still a major power boost for the non-dragon team. One thing that might make more sense is if you consider that at the time most of the stronger fighters went up into the mountains to find the dragons, the majority of the farmers were staying at their farms. That would have made setting a trap like you did much harder. There was actually only a 30% chance you would encounter the dragons at the location you picked on any given night.

Gotcha, gotcha.



Well the weight that Eron "can carry" is the weight he can carry and be *unencumbered*... that value is a LOT higher if he's willing to be like you or I with a backpack full of fifty pounds of shit on, but since people keep swinging swords at him, he doesn't want to be weighed down. That's a different concern.



Dude it was SO much cooler in my head, this was a festival of white dragons picking people away. Sadly, your correction fully explains everything, at the cost of like a JILLION white dragons.