Shock and Awe

Vorsand, Tarlanor, 5th July 1655

Skuffruss spoke more with his visitors, his words showing clearly that he knew a great deal about each of them as he skirted the edges of secrets without actually betraying any. Eloy and Gorfang were quick to agree to the proposal, each having quite clear ideas about what he would ask as a reward from the Lord of Dragons should they succeed. Lynien was unsure for a while, but once more the idea of loot drew her in. Méabh also seemed unsure, and Skufruss once more repeated his offer for her to remain at the Tower and train instead. This seemed to make her mind up, and she indicated she was in.

"Why don't you do it?" she asked, "are you afraid?" Skufruss smiled, unembarrassed. "If he had sucessfully repaired the Lifebreaker - the second crystal pyramid - yes, I would have been afraid. He would have had a weapon against which I could not have defended. Now, he is no threat, and I will get to him sooner or later. He cannot harm me, but he will harry you until he gets you unless you strike first. I am willing to help, to our mutual advantage."

Méabh looked at him. "Tell us more about him," she asked. Skufruss smiled. "The ultimate treasure. Information; knowledge; lore. Of course. Thykon is Kin, as you know, but he is unique in one respect; he is the only Kin to be dragon on his mother's side. By the time he was conceived, my late unlamented father was no longer merely a dragon, but his mother was a black dragon named Nightscale. As a result, he has two natural forms, human and draconic, and a great affinity for acid. His prediliction for collecting magical, spiritual and significant weapons you know of."

Map of the area - click it for larger image!

"He is currently occupying the ancient orc fortress of Gadûhvrás," continued Skufruss. "I don't know for sure what he's doing there; my best agents are otherwise engaged." Méabh nodded to herself, and explained that she'd attempted to scry the Blood Snake and seen mountains in the background. With her newly-mastered spells of Teleportation, she felt fairly confident she could drop an assault team directly onto the balcony she'd seen - assuming that the balcony was in Gadûhvrás. Skufruss offered access to the Teleport Circle he still had hidden in what had been his palace in Karennal, now part of the vast temple of Kord at the heart of the Kordasa. This would have meant sneaking out of the temple, then crossing the Tainted Forest and climbing up into the Erean Mountains to the orc city, and wasn't a popular option.

Some wanted to go immediately, but others wanted to take up Skufruss' offer of material assistance, and so it was agreed they'd wait a day before making the leap.

Vorsand, Tarlanor, 6th July 1655

DM Note: TP without Error doesn't misfire, but if the mental picture's not clear, nothing happens. Meabh threw an 01 on percentiles for this...

The next day, rested, resupplied and some furnished with new equipment, the companions gathered. Bog, Shamlakh and Eloy were persuaded into a Bag of Holding to get the payload weight down to where Méabh could move it all with one spell, and she cast her Teleport without Error spell. Everything shimmered and then changed.

Gadûhvrás, Erean Mountains, 6th July 1655

The first thing they noticed was that it was cold. From the lower reaches of the Versate Pass they had instantaneously moved nearly two hundred miles into the mountains and several thousand feet up. They were standing on a stone balcony carved out of the living rock of the mountain. The stone was worn, and the stone ballustrade around the edge had several gaps in it, telling of considerable age.

In front of them was a stunning view over the peaks of the Erean Mountains. Behind were three black archways into the rock. With Eloy, Bog and Shamlakh retrieved from the Bag of Holding, the party set off cautiously into the darkness. The rough-hewn passage twisted and wound its way into the mountain, with gaping dark openings left and right in large numbers. Eloy had Bereloth out, and was stunned when he realized that - not only was the sword indicating to him the presence of hidden doors, but that it was showing dozens. Hidden doors, holes and crevices lined the passage, leading off in all directions.

The group halted to digest this information. Eloy and Lynien cast around for tracks, and discovered plenty, all fairly recent, and going back and forth along the passage they were in. With that confirmation, they disregarded the secret doors as well as the plain ones and headed straight down the main corridor.

After around half an hour, a glimmer of light became visible ahead, gradually revealing an arched opening. Lynien and Eloy both went invisible, and Méabh prepared Finger of Death. Then the party crept forwards and through the arch.

They found themselves on a balcony, similar to the one they'd arrived at though not so weathered. It was lit from below, as if it overlooked a lighted lower level. Carefully approaching the ballustrade, the companions looked over the edge and this is what they saw.

A bowl-shaped chamber, two hundred feet across, floored in broken stone and rubble and with archways exiting it at the far sides. Between the passageways was a rough-hewn hole, angling down at forty-five degrees. Sweeping curved stairways led down from the balcony to the lower level. The hole at the far side was alive with labouring figures, hacking and shovelling at the rocks under the eyes of twenty or so lizardman guards. None of the party spared them a second glance, however, because standing in the right-hand archway was the figure they were hoping to see.

DM Note: Méabh's Finger of Death has a horrifyingly high saving throw DC but Thykon's save was a critical. Pity that was the best he could do!

Bloodred plate armour encased a tall and well-built humanoid form. A dark red cloak hung behind him, and the hilt of a massive greatsword protruded over his right shoulder. He could be no other than Thykon the Blood Snake, and the companions scented blood. Eloy nocked an arrow, Lynien prepared herself to take the left-hand stairs, and Gorfang mounted Shamlakh and poised to head for the right-hand staircase. Then Méabh stood up and cast Finger of Death straight at the Blood Snake.

The occupants of the cavern were taken utterly by surprise. The unexpected strike wracked the Kin with agony but failed to kill him outright. Stumbling backwards, he flailed for balance as the party exploded into action. Lynien streaked invisibly down the stairs furthest away from him, and Gorfang and Shamlakh pounded down the right-hand stairs. Eloy rose up and smoothly loosed three arrows from Varlan, smiling as they struck home. His face fell a bit, however, when he noticed the ice blast from the arrows wasn't penetrating the kin's armour. He dropped the bow, drew his sword, and began to run down the stairs after Gorfang.

Gorfang and Shamlakh reached the bottom of the stairs and thundered through the arc of unsuspecting lizardman guards, bowling one over across the rocks, and bore down on Thykon. The terrible bronze khopesh of Aklimah slashed down, dinting Thykon's breastplate and splashing blood in a darker red stain across the crimson armour. A second later, Méabh's Orb of Force smashed into the Kin's chest, melting a hole through his armour and knocking him another couple of steps backwards. Gorfang followed up with another terrible blow, the Veldrin Sk'aal lancing precisely into the hole Méabh had created. Thykon coughed a gout of arterial blood over the black blade and died on his feet. The orc took no chances; his backhand crushed the unresisting Thykon's helmet and skull for good measure. As the body toppled sideways, Gorfang narrowed his red eyes. Was it his imagination, or was Thykon's skin darkening... and his body swelling...? As Eloy and Lynien reached the bottom of the stairs at either side and started hacking down lizardmen, Shamlakh turned and curveted away from the dead Kin - just in time.

The corpse was swelling, changing, shifting form; expanding. The once-magnificent red armour bulged, distorted and split; a ruined vambrace buzzed past Gorfang's ear with a noise like an angry hornet. A wall of black scaled flesh reared above him, bearing rapidly down on him as it did so. In all directions, Thykon's form expanded, unfolded and spread, until the corpse of a mighty black dragon lay curled against the cavern wall.

Gorfang hacked at the neck until what was left of the head was detached. Then he swivelled and bellowed at the lizardmen, "Lay down your weapons!" and to the slaves, "Take the weapons, and secure them!" There was a brief misunderstanding, but after only three guards had been beaten to death the rest were taken prisoner and restrained. Meanwhile, Eloy was running Bereloth over the massive body to check for magical equipment, and Lynien was extracting teeth from the ruined head.

Méabh had descended the stairs by this time, and walked casually up to the severed head. For an instant, she laid one dark hand on the bloody skull - and she and the head vanished!

Vorsand, Tarlanor, 6th July 1655

The orderly business of Skufruss' court was severely disrupted by the unexpected appearance in the middle of the hall of a young aasimar sorceress and a bloody, smashed black dragon head the size of a large table. Only Skufruss himself kept his composure, looking down on the scene with a raised eyebrow. Méabh pointed up at him from where she stood next to the grisly trophy. "You owe me a favour," she commented, and vanished again, leaving Skufruss and his court staring down at the head where it rested in a rapidly expanding pool of carpet-destroying blood.

Gadûhvrás, Erean Mountains, 6th July 1655

Méabh returned to the scene mere moments after vanishing, without the head of Thykon. Gorfang looked up from where he was butchering his way completely though the corpse to reach the greatsword trapped underneath it. "The proof's delivered," she told him. He nodded, reached down, and ripped the bloodied weapon free. Chucking it onto the (fairly small) pile of loot from the body, he climbed out and joined the others in deciding who was to have what.

In the end, Méabh took the Mantle of Spell Resistance, Gorfang the greatsword Morgron, Lynien a Ring of Climbing and Eloy a Ring of Swimming. There was also a large quantity of wet broken glass that showed Thykon had had potions, but that none had survived.

A distant memory had been tickling the minds of several of the companions; a memory of an old legend about dragons and their blood. Drinking the blood of a freshly-slain dragon granted gifts, or so they recalled. Eloy had never heard of this, and Méabh tried to convince him that it was poisonous; but his assassin's skils allowed him to disprove this, and he gathered with the others to collect a handfull of the blood. Lynien fastidiously unpacked a beautiful jeweled goblet (probably loot from another dragon's hoard!) for her share. Even Bog and Shamlakh came forward to take a portion.

For a moment after swallowing the hot, vital fluid, each drinker felt no difference. Then, gradually, a sensation of expansion occurred behind their eyes; a spreading of understanding; a realization that all language, all writing, is rooted in a single primal principle of communication. Their eyes met; each had experienced the same. They were now what the Gith called ta'nara - able to understand and use any language, anywhere, however structured, once exposed to it. A great gift, and maybe most of all for the warg Shamlakh. Though still an animal, his breadth of experience would now increase enormously.

Although fairly sure the potency of the gift of tongues would not last, Lynien and Méabh produced several containers and bottled some quantity of the blood. Eloy had an idea that the heart also had properties, and he carved it out and took a couple of bites, then passed the rest to Bog to cook.

Gorfang had spotted faces among the slaves that struck a chord; orcs, held slaves in their ancestral home. Finding the warrior with the most honourable-looking scars, he put him in charge and set him to imprisoning the guards in the slave-pens and equicpping the slaves with the captured weapons. Shufghoth aceeded readily, seeing Gorfang as an orc of high status relative to himself.

The slave-turned-captain had no idea, though, why he and his fellow slaves had been excavating. The best he could do was point Gorfang at the leader of the lizardman guards, a monster called Ragash. He was nervous at being brought to the blood-drenched orc warrior, and readily answered his questions.

No, he'd not known Thykon was a dragon disguised. As far as he knew, he and the slaves were there to dig for mithril. No, they'd found none yet. Slave quarters were this way, guard that, The Master's that way. Gorfang gestured at the workings. "All right, then," he said, "keep digging till you find some." Ragash brightened; under new management, he could cope with that. "Slaves!" he bellowed. Gorfang leaped right in on top of that. "No!" he barked. "Not the slaves. You lot. Get spades and dig. Shufghoth? You and your fellows guard them while we look around. Go down another 100' and then give up." He and his friends then set out to explore, convinced that great treasures awaited in the kin-dragon's hoard.

Two hours later, the frustrated companions were gathered in what had obviously been Thykon's room, and equally obviously a temporary bivouac. The inhabited area they had found was limited to the mine workings, the slave and guard quarters and the balcony. A passage led to an outside gate (where the prisoners took rubble for dumping) and that was it. Some papers in Thykon's room showed he had explored a little more, and had marked out certain rooms as 'throne hall', 'barracks', 'armoury', and so on. Disgusted, they were about to leave, when it occurred to Eloy to check for secret doors once more. He found one.

It led to a short corridor, and beyond that a small square room, lit from within by what was on the floor. A glowing pentagram, familiar to them all in style - similar to the ones in the Pyramid of Anshenkehra, yet visibly different.