Tyranny of Dragons - Session 12

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.

Oil lamps bathe this chamber in dim light. On the north side of the chamber is a lowered area that is heavily shadowed. The ledge drops about ten feet and there's a wooden staircase at the right edge with a stout cage of iron bars surrounding it to the height of the floor you're standing on. A key hangs on a peg set into the stone wall at the top of the steps. On the southwest wall stands a rack, which appears to hold some weapons. Next to the rack, huddled and bound on the floor, is a humanoid figure.

With Duckie reporting back, the group decided to move into the chamber. Looking down below the ledge with darkvision, the party except Lou, was able to see some black, lizard shaped creatures down below. They were similar to the ambush drakes the party encountered from Greenest, but stockier and black.

Making their way cautiously over to the prisoner, Lou woke up the wood-elf female. After some tense getting-to-know-you, the group found this was Alexa, a druid trying to investigate the Cult of the Dragon too (and our newest player! Spotlight coming soon). Aldophus, in his ever confused state, asked his new friend, "Do you know why we're here?" for which he received DM inspiration (and laughs around the table).

Alexa was able to tell the group that the cult calls the drakes Guard Drakes and that these particular ones were almost matured. Typically, the kobolds in the cave liked to feed the drakes live meat, but would settle for the occasional carcass from the meat locker in the other cave. But most of that meat was set aside for the dragons that would be hatching soon deeper in the cave.

With Alexa's help getting the lay of the land a bit better, the group scouted down some stairs near where she was tied up. Avoiding a trapped step at the top of those stairs, they found, as Alexa had indicated, that the kobold's barracks was at the bottom of the stairs. They saw over 20 kobolds hunkered together in a filthy mess.

Flickering oil lamps produce dim illumination into this once natural, but enlarged and crudely smoothed cavern. Thin mattresses of straw covered with badly cured furs form small beds that are haphazardly positioned around the chamber. Rats and small lizards scurry through the food scraps and moldy wine skins littering the floor.

The kobolds in the room were different than most they had seen from Greenest: they were also black. In addition, there were several kobolds with wings wearing crude robes. Regrouping again to come up with a battle plan, the party decided to funnel the group up the stairs and take them on in a single line. Duckie, using her minor illusion spell to imitate the voice of one of the human cultists they had bound in the cave earlier, shouted to the kobolds to come up and help with some loose Drakes.

Coming up slowly, the party surprised the kobolds with an incredibly strong Aganazzar's Scorcher spell from Lou. Then came the slow slog of a cautious battle for the players. They didn't really get hurt (like much at all), but the fight did take a while. Five more winged kobolds surprised them from the rear, but they were able to fend off the assault with ease.

During the battle, Lou also discovered some new abilities about Merle: While the caster is sitting in the chair, Merle can cast the spells stored in it once (until cast into it again) at the end of the caster's turn. The regular abilities continue to occur after the casting. So he's got that going for him... which is nice.

The party rolled all of the kobold bodies into the drake pit, which settled the drakes down quite nicely (they had been howling and growling). That business done, the group headed down to investigate the kobold barracks, finding four primitive, but artistic dragon figurines among many cruder ones. One each of bone, soapstone, wood, and ivory that had a unique, if savage, artistic flair.

Deciding to continue down the staircase to find out where these dragon eggs are, the group entered into a large cavern.

After descending a long stairway, you emerge into a large cavern where six humanoids look up and meet your gaze. Five of them are large, heavily muscled humans of unfamiliar origin, wearing hide armor with greataxes, greatswords, or greatclubs strapped to their backs. The sixth, rising from a sitting position, is a blue, scaly creature with a large white horn protruding from his forehead. His golden splint mail with purple accents rattles and creaks as he stands, drawing his greatsword from his purple scabbard. The familiar half-dragon locks onto Adolphus and, smiling, exclaims, "You survived! I don't know whether to be disappointed or pleased. It's a mix of both, I think. Did you come for a rematch, weakling?"

After some posturing back and forth, the group decided to not participate in single-combat and take the whole group at once. This fight ended up being much closer than the last. Fighting on much more even ground, with several tough baddies to deal with, several members of the party fell unconscious. However, they managed to focus down Langdedrosa before he could restore his lighting breath weapon (really important) and left the less hard-hitting barbarians for last. They were attacking recklessly the entire fight, which helped dish out the damage, but also led them to go through their massive amounts of hit points much quicker than they otherwise would have. That turned out to be good though, since the group hadn't rested after their long fight with the kobolds and had depleted their abilities.

And we ended the session right after the combat, before the group was able to really explore the room. So we'll pick up there next time!

DM Notes:

This was a great session. Lots of stuff happened, the group flowed a bit better, especially toward the end. Things to improve, were definitely figuring out ways to make the initial combat faster (even though it was intended by the players to be cautious and slow). It may have made more sense for the kobolds to not want to draw attacks of opportunity, but would have definitely allowed for more opportunities for killing them if they had just tried to run by people. Or they could have been smarter and foiled the plan to funnel them up. In any case, that was one of the only major things I wished was different, so not bad. Looking forward to next time!