Session 57: Dragon Slayers Slayer

 

PCs:

sir Korin Clubfoot, dwarf, F6

Dame Mia the elf, T5/MU4

sir Norbor the half-orc, F5

Darwin, T1

PARTY'S HENCHMEN:

Cleon, F4

Falhed, R1

Gravoldel, R1

Briu, T1

Rhadum, R2

Jared, C1

Gorovosok, T4

sir Jean-Pierre, P4

Duchan, I1

Reyneor, R1

Arron, C2

Blails, C1

Doha, MU1

Notheren, MU1

Pykus, F1

10 mounted lancemen

SESSION RECAP:

    The party had just managed to defeat an adult red dragon right outside their lair. They immediately begun cutting it to pieces in order for it to be easily moved back to Verbobonc so that they can claim the reward from the city.

    However, as they were chopping out its legs and head, an even bigger red dragon came out just a few yards away, in the area that their map said the lair was. He was shocked that the other red dragon was dead and demanded to know what happened. The party claimed that 4 silver dragons assaulted the red one and defeated. They were only following them hoping to enter their lair. The ancient red dragon angrily demanded the direction that the silver dragons fled to so that he could catch them. The group pointed to the south and the beast flew immediately. 

    As soon as he was gone, the party took whatever parts of the red dragon they had cut down and ran. They chose to hide in a small forest nearby, in case the red dragon comes back to look for them. Indeed, the ancient creature reappeared half an hour later, flying at top speed towards the north. The group believed that he had understood that they lied to him as he wouldn't be able to find any silver dragon so they decided to travel towards Verbobonc, but only during the night and to camp in areas where they can cover themselves, like forests or caves.

    The next day, they met a group of gnomes who wanted them gone, but as soon as they learned that the party killed a red dragon and another one was possibly after them, the short creatures left in fear. The next day, a group of eagles appeared and tried to eat their rations. The combined use of sleep spells and nets caught them and stopped them, although many of the group's rations were gone.

    The third day of their travel however, the first day that they decided to camp during the night and not during the day, the red dragon appeared in the sky, charging towards them. Mia, Cleon, Blails and a lanceman were guarding the camp at the time. The lanceman ran to awake everyone while the rest of the group was preparing to talk to the ancient dragon, hoping to calm him down and blame the silver dragons for whatever happened. Unfortunately, before they could have a chance to speak, the monster's disastrous breath burnt all of them to a crisp. 

    The rest of the group got on their horses, with Korin taking Norbor's dead body with him, and ran to different directions. Only Darwin remained, claiming that he was a slave to the party and that the group was responsible for the other red dragon's demise. The red dragon was starting to randomly hunting and devouring the party members. Once most of them had either being eaten or have fled and went out of sight, the beast went back to Darwin. The young thief explained that he was captured by the group and he didn't want to have anything to do with them. He brought forth every magic item that Mia and Cleon had and also every gem that they carried. Luckily, most of them were still in good condition despite the dragon's breath.

    The dragon let Darwin keep a few of the gems as a reward for his cooperation and demanded that he should come back there in a week and explain how the party knew where to find them. With that done, he left, having taken his revenge and Darwin started his lonely journey back to Verbobonc.

    In the meantime, after a few hours, Korin returned to the camp carefully with Norbor's body. He took with him Mia's, Cleon's and Blails' burnt corpses and using his pony and Norbor's warhorse he began travelling towards Verbobonc. During his journey he eventually spotted Darwin but he kept his distance because he wasn't sure how the new party member managed to be the sole survivor of the dragon attack.

    A few hours before they reached the city, Korin met the same gnomes that they have encountered before who told him that they shouldn't had attacked the dragons in the first place. Besides that, the journey for Darwin and Korin was uneventful.

   The dwarf eventually met the thief inside the city and Darwin explained what happened. Then, they decided to use their money to try and bring back to life their comrades. Norbor was once again back with a successful raise dead. Unfortunately, the condition of Mia, Cleon and Blails was making the use of such a spell pointless, since their bodies were damaged beyond repair. However, they found another solution. A high level magic user named Ularus was willing to cast reincarnation for 4000 gp and a favor that he needed from the party soon. The group agreed, Mia's spirit entered the body of an ogre and so the party gained another heavy hitting member!

KILLS AND LOOT:

Kills:

12 eagles

Loot:

-

DECEASED PLAYER CHARACTERS:

Urikas the elf, F1/MU1, Readying 25, 576 CY, eaten by ghouls

Zyla the elf, C1, Readying 25, 576 CY, eaten by ghouls

Jack, F1, Readying 28, 576 CY, slain by the evil cleric named Lareth

Causticas the elf, F3/MU3, Goodmonth 14, 576 CY, burned alive by a red dragon

Yus, C1, Brewfest 6, 576 CY, Poisoned by a purple worm's sting

Trenaccatlo, F1, Ready'reat 27, 576 CY, devoured by a two-headed giant troll

Korin Clubfoot, F5, Flocktime 11, 577 CY, poisoned by giant centipedes / REVIVED

sir Norbor the half-orc, F5, Coldeven 7, 578 CY, poisoned by huge spiders / REVIVED

sir Norbor the half-orc, F5, Planting 8, 578 CY, poisoned by large spiders/ REVIVED

sir Norbor the half-orc, F5, Richfest 3, 578 CY, bitten by a red dragon/ REVIVED

Dame Mia the elf, T5/MU4, Richfest 5, 578 CY, burned alive by a red dragon/ REINCARNATED

THOUGHTS AFTER THE SESSION:

    A crazy session with the party running like hell for its life! It was the last session before we take a brief hiatus for summer vacations, so it was nice that we paused with a bang!

    I liked how the group handled the situation and the reference of the silver dragons was great! They remembered that the 4 silver dragons had mentioned some red ones when they encountered them months ago and it paid of, because as they realised, this ancient red dragon and the 4 silver ones aren't exactly best friends!

    They were really unlucky with the random encounters however. They had 3 of them and anytime one random encounter occured, I was rolling for a chance to be the ancient dragon that was hunting them, similar to the one of getting into a patrol near a city. In the last and unlucky one, there were only 2 in 20 since they had gained some distance but unfortunately for them, this was enough.

    When they split, I had the dragon randomly choosing a target and then randomly choosing the next direction. After three kills, I was giving him 40% to go back to Darwin and gain more information. However he was proven to be relentless and hunted them down almost to a man. Luckily for Korin he stopped right when he had bigger chances to be his next target!

    I also loved the reincaration idea. I don't know how having an ogre as a PC will play out but I guess we will find out soon! Also the party will soon learn what the favor of Ularus is and we must not forget that Darwin made a deal to meet the red dragon again and I doubt that he is going to honour it...

    During my preparation for the session I found out something that really amazed me! I knew there was a chance for the ancient red dragon to go after them and I wanted to calculate as RAW as possible how many miles he can travel per day. Searching in the DMG I saw that a flying mount can travel maximum 9 hours per day. Now 9 hours have 540 minutes. Also when we talk about travelling we use miles and when we have combat we use feet, with every inch on the map representing 10 ft. 1 mile has 5280 feet. That means that since the combat round is 1 minute and the travel round is one day, the ratio of 1 mile / 10 feet is almost the same as 9 hours / 1 minute, which means that in 10 ft maps for combat and 1 mile maps for travelling, the dragon moves almost the exact same inches! Crazy? Well, maybe it's not that important but I really liked that detail and made me think of old school wargamers using their rulers to check how many inches two cities are apart on a map to calculate their days of travel. It's nice that we do something similar here! It makes me also think that instead of a hexed map, I could use a normal map and just use a ruler to calculate distances and figure out how many days the journey would take. It would be more accurate since we won't treat the hexagon as a single point and the distance would be calculated with a better accuracy, which could lead to a day more or less of travelling.

    Interesting thoughts! And now I am waiting for August to pass to see how the party is gonna handle the loss of every henchmen they had, plus the fact that Mia is now an ogre! See you all then, have a nice summer!!!