21 Eleint, 1493
❧He Can Fly!?
Dawn
So, there we were, ready to go, with an actual plan. We trudged through the cavern, past the stairs, and into the mess hall. Would you believe it, another group of those frogs were there, just like yesterday, sorting through treasure. This time, someone noticed they were all basically naked, with only their bitty bits covered. They paid us no mind, so we scurried on through, past the big hall room and the chapel, and up the stairs to the library. And that’s where things took a turn.
The red Dragonborn was there, with his four little buddy cultists. He started yelling at me as soon as I walked in, like he owned the place or something. Well, he wasn’t my commanding officer, so I wasn’t about to take that from him!
“You do not have the ability to be in here!” he snarled at me, spittle flying all over.
“Obviously I do, ’cause here I am!” I shot back, not about to back down. He didn’t like that one bit. By the way, did you know some Dragonborn can fly? I sure didn’t.
“You dare threaten me?” he roared, lifting off the ground. Then, the little bugger literally breathed fire at us! And as if that wasn’t enough, even his scimitar caught fire! We took turns hacking away at him for a bit, when he did the most surprising thing I ever did see. He turned that flaming scimitar on himself, stabbing himself and exploding all over the room. Talk about a dramatic exit. On the plus side, he took out himself and all his little buddies. On the downside, it hurt, and there were papers on fire all around the room, so we had to play firefighter and stomp out the flames. We were all a bit singed, but Demdoo worked his magic and prayed our pains away. Handy little gnome, that one. We grabbed the scimitars from the four dead cultists, but the rest of their gear was ruined, and nothing but dust remained of the Dragonborn.
Then, we stumbled upon one of the best treasures ever. Hundreds, or maybe dozens, or however many books, scrolls, and parchments! To the right buyer, this collection is basically priceless. We stuffed every last paper into the portable hole, except for a scroll about teleportation magic that Demdoo and Kalama read over. In total, we had 20 books, 50 scrolls, and a whole bunch of parchments. Is a group of parchments called a gaggle? I remember someone saying that about geese once.
In that teleportation scroll, we found a little note that Rezmir had the password for the teleportation circle downstairs. So, I guess we gotta find that guy now. Once we were sure we hadn’t missed anything, we took the stairs up to the next level.
❧It wasn’t me!
It’s another chapel room, or it was once. Someone turned it into a living quarters with some tables, a few uncomfortable looking, but pretty, chairs. A pair of onyx dragon statues were flanking the top of the stairs. We found a few reports and inventories showing how much treasure has passed through here. I wish it woulda said where it all went, but it just said, “The Hoard”, but that could be important later so we grabbed every one of them we saw.
A little sitting room was off to one side with some comfortable padded furniture and a door next to that was closed. T-Bone looked it over and said there were no traps. Demdoo and I went into the room and started snooping. To one side we saw a pile of gold coins and gems! When we counted it later, there were a full 1,000gp worth! Sitting on top of the coins was a little black dragon statuette with ruby eyes and diamond teeth. Kalama checked it over to make sure it wouldn’t kill us if we picked it up. Looking at it closer, she realized it was made out of actual black dragon scales making it worth like 4,800gp! We stuffed that in the bag of holding too.
Demdoo and I strode up to the wardrobes next. I leaned way to the side and opened the left one with my sword. Nothing happened. Even worse, there was nothing but oversized women’s clothing in there, the whole thing was rather anti-climatic. I did look through some of the stuff to see if there were holes cut out, like if someone had to stick their tail through it. I dunno, I guess maybe I thought there was a female dragonborn lady friend of that jerk downstairs.
Well, anyway, I might’ve jinxed us because Demdoo opened the next wardrobe and everything went to hell. The whole dang floor filled up with this crazy exploding acid stuff. That hurt even worse than the exploding dragonborn! We weren’t the only ones affected though, nearly everything in all 3 rooms was ruined. The dragon statues at the top of the stairs were melted of all things! We took a minute to catch our breath and Demdoo noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the wardrobe, apparently blocked from the acid by someone’s leather vest. It was like the gods took pity on us and literally gave us a piece of paper that had the words “Teleportation Circle Password” followed by the word “Draezir”. We just needed a silver platter and we’d be in a tavern tale!
While we were resting, Demdoo and I made a rushed, but quiet, agreement not to admit we set off the acid trap. After T-Bone mentioned it could’ve been on a timer, I even wandered over to the melted statues and started going on about how we probably triggered something when we went past these things and since we didn’t tell them the password in time, it set off the trap, or something.
There was one last room so T-Bone checked the door for traps and found none. When we opened the door, it was an empty room with a giant mural covering one wall. It was a chromatic dragon head and clearly a shrine to Tiamat. I dunno what came over me, but that just made me so frustrated and annoyed that I whipped out my handaxe and destroyed that mural. I hacked away at it until it was unrecognizable. In retrospect, that might not have been too smart because when we left that room, we all heard a feminine voice laughing in our heads. In the same area where we communicate through the headband gems.
We all froze and tried not to panic. Thinking back to where we got the headband, we remembered it came from those cultists we snuck up on after Greenest. I started grumbling about how dumb we were to use something from a cultist, when I remembered that it was actually from the treasure they were carrying, it wasn’t theirs. So, now we didn’t know for sure if the headband was safe or not! We reset it and stuffed it in the bag of holding.
❧A Travelling We Will Go!
With no time to spare, we marched all the way back down the stairs, through the castle, trudged through the cavern and found ourselves in the teleportation circle room. Kalama got to work activating the thing and before we knew it, we were no longer underground but in a cold wilderness area surrounded by mossy standing stones. They were old and withered with bits of white paint here or there in the grooves. There was a path leading towards a big house and more standing stones. The upper level of the house was plaster and wood while the lower level was fieldstone. All of the shutters were closed, the foilage was overgrown and only 1 of the 3 chimneys had smoke coming from it. A squirrel chittered once and fell silent. Is that ominous? A couple of outbuildings near the house looked like a stable and kennels, so it was probably a hunting lodge. I got nervous not being in constant communication with everyone and declared that I was putting the headband back on and anyone could have a gem if they wanted one. Everyone except for Demdoo took one.
Starting down the path towards the house, Kalama noticed Draconic lettering on the stones. There were 3 portal areas with these stones, including the one we just used. That one said “Unquiet Swamp of Mournful Croaking”, another one said “Snowy Lands” and the last one said “Lands of the Red Sun”. As we walked down the path, we came upon 2 trolls and 3 drakes. Kalama and I both began trying to bluff them, explaining that we were there on official business and needed to see Rezmir. Maybe we frustrated them because finally one of them just declared, “Talis figure this out” and we agreed wholeheartedly.
They lead us into the lodge and left us in the entrance area/cloak room. Mostly just benches and pegs, the only thing of interest was a small drake statue was in one corner. There were also hidden arrow slits on one wall which could probably let someone kill intruders. Do they call that a murder hole or something? I forget.