When last we left our adventurers, they had returned to Greenest after destroying three dragon eggs, befriending Thraxx, and slaying Frulam Mondath. After a restful night, the group left the keep, saying farewell to Governor Nighthill, who informed them that Leosin had procured horses and ponies for their journey to Elturel.

Sorry for the delay, things have been a bit busy lately. I have this and one more session to write up and then we'll be caught up... When we last left our adventurers, they had just encountered a wood elf druid by the name of Alexa of Waterville. With her help, the party slaughtered a big group of black kobolds and had a hard fought battle with Langdedrosa and his barbarians. After the battle, the group decided to rest and look around the room.

After returning from a fun-filled holiday, the group returned to Cult of the Dragon's cave. Moving in the last unexplored direction from the cavern where the bats swarmed the party, Duckie moved out to explore the next chamber.

Credit for this one-shot goes to u/inuvash255 for their comment in r/DnD. Thanks!

After quite the surprise encounter with some violet fungus, the group healed with a couple potions and spells, opting not to linger for a short rest, and proceeded deeper into the cave. The ceiling, dotted with stalactites, began to rise gradually to a height of 20 feet above their heads as they advanced from the west into the room. At the same time as the ceiling rose, the cavern opened up and darkened. Using their darkvision (well, everyone except Lou), the group saw several dead bats on the floor of this area. Glancing up, they found that the ceiling was absolutely carpeted with bats.

Continuing the adventure in Episode 3, we find our adventurers taking a short rest in the inner sanctum of the ancient Eldathyn cave. They took lunch from their rations and headed toward the raider camp once they were sated. They moved "stealthily and perceptively," noticing several groups of deer, prairie hens, and other groups of game as they approached. Once they reached the horseshoe shaped plateau, they found that there were several tracks fanning out in all directions, as Nessim had related to them. However, they did also see that the heavier traffic, wagons and more burdened pack animals, had been moving mostly westward. The party also saw a single plume of white-gray smoke rising from within the camp.

And we're back to your regularly scheduled programming with Episode 3 of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Apologies for the long hiatus, work picked up for me and we had two more sessions of The Ashen Gates that we'll try to get you a blog post of as soon as we can. But we're back and I've got Episode 3 totally ready to run so we should be rolling through it pretty regularly barring holiday interruptions.

Sorry for the delay everyone, but we're back with the session 7 synopsis. We left the group last time after they had just rescued Leosin and were escaping down the plateau. They heard the sounds of alarms and horns being blown from inside the raider's camp and decided that rather than try to hide in one of the many concealed caves in the plateau, they would make a run for it instead.

After setting their kobold prisoner free and continuing along the path, the party entered a narrow ravine between two of the plateaus. Gwen and Adolphus spotted some faces peering down from above in the rocks at the same moment that boulders began falling down on the group. After a long battle with the cultists, the party managed to capture the leader and one of the acolyte spell casters. They were very difficult to interrogate as they were extremely dedicated to the Cult of the Dragon.

After a week off, we're back with more Tyranny of Dragons! The heroes have repelled much of the raider's devastation from Greenest, but they still managed to get away with much of the wealth of the town. After a quick reminder to the players, we picked up the next morning:

We last left off at the beginning of the dramatic fight with the huge blue dragon that has been attacking Greenest all night, while surveying the town from the top of the keep.

When we last left off, the characters had just found a hoard of potentially magic items in the Old Tunnel leading out of the keep in Greenest. Deciding not to identify them right away, and proceeding to save the mill, the party went to exit the tunnel. The lock was badly corroded and even with the key, took some doing to open. But they did manage to get it open quietly.

And we had our second session! And we're about to have another one tonight! I'm almost falling behind posting these. I'll probably continue to throw in some random DM thoughts as it comes up, but will try to stick to plot where possible. We'll pick up where we left off with the characters just arriving into the keep of Greenest and being ushered inside the tower itself.

We did it. We finally had our first session. I'm still figuring out how I want to voice these blog posts. Should it be a third-party account of the fantastical events or should I try to bring some of my DM perspective into them? I'll try the latter this time and we can see where it goes. Maybe I'll stick to one, or maybe not. So without further ado, here's the session 1 recap.

And another! Here's Moki, the tiefling sorcerer and her items and traits:

We've got another spotlight for you all! Introducing Gwen Stonemaester! As a reward for her background, she's got the following items:

Hello again, dear readers. We have our next character spotlight. As summer vacations begin to wind down, I have faith that we'll actually get a first session in here one of these days. In the meantime, I'd like to introduce you to Ilda Stoneshoulder. As a reward for writing a background, Ilda will receive the following:

We have our next character spotlight for Luther "Lou" Greenbottle, the lightfoot halfling wizard! This one is a little different, written in a day-in-the-life style. And as a reward for the (rather lengthy) background, Lou will have the following traits and items:

Hello readers! Finally we have our first character spotlight! I'd like to introduce you to Thamior Windwillow. As a reward for the background, Thamior will gain the following trait and item:

Hello again! This week we've got another NPC spotlight for you. This is the last NPC the characters know before the start of the campaign, and he's really only known to Thamior. Here's Leosin!

Today I’m introducing a new kind of post: the NPC spotlight. I’ll try to post these as the group encounters various NPCs of note. Since we haven’t really started with a first session, these first few will be on NPCs the characters know well before the campaign officially begins. So without further ado, Ontharr Frume!

Hi, DM here. We had our first session of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign this week! It’s always fun to kick off a new campaign. The party is looking like 7 players, two of whom are new to TRPGs, with the rest having our last campaign (custom made) under their belts. Also, I’m super pumped because we have four female players and three male players (yeah!), so with me in the picture we’re gender neutral, which is super exciting. This is the third game that I’ve DM’d so we’re all still fairly new, but it’s half the fun to figure everything out and have a good time doing it.