Sessions #72 & 73: The Trap and the Escape (Parts I & II)

Session #72

The party went out to eat lunch at a local watering hole to celebrate their recent accomplishments. As they were eating, a letter was delivered to them. To their great surprise, it was from Edge! It was also co-signed by a man named Solos, whom Maak Tol recognized as the name of a half-orc warden he had had some dealings with in the past. The letter invited them to come to the Towering Wood in the Eldeen Reaches. Edge and Solos said they had arranged a meeting with Gorthol, an infamous, mighty green dragon.

Gorthol had long ruled the ‘Green Thumb’, a bulb-shaped tract on the far-northern end of the Towering Wood. Over the centuries she had extracted tribute from everyone as lowly as the farmers and foragers to people as mighty as the elves of Shae Loralyndar. She is a territory unto herself that even the druidic government of the Eldeen Reaches has rarely dared challenge. Part of the reason Gorthol has been so successful is that no one has ever seen her lair – she keeps it so well hidden some say it must be in the Feywild itself.

The party was thrilled by this, but also incredibly suspicious. The letter seemed off and they didn't feel confident that it had actually been written by Edge, nor was Maak Tol sure that it was genuinely from Solos. The party also found it quite the incredulous coincidence that these two would have come together out of the blue. But after a short debate they decided that they need to go: if Edge and/or Solos were in danger they weren't about to sit idly by, and the opportunity to get close to Gorthol was too good to pass up.

The party went to the local teleportation station and teleported (for free, because they're famous) to the city of Greenheart, the capital of the Eldeen Reaches. From there they traveled for two days into the Towering Wood, following directions given them in the letter. In the late afternoon of 7 Sypheros, they entered a clearing and there saw Edge and Solos! Their elation was quickly tempered by the realization that these were impostors. These were in fact rakshasas using their illusion magic to disguise themselves as their friends. The party was annoyed, but decided to play along until they could see where this was going to go.

"Edge" and "Solos" led them deeper into the wood. About an hour later they all entered a great field. At the far end of that field the dragon Gorthol lay in repose upon a slight hill. A flock of wyverns capered grimly around her, while a red devil kept watch at her flank. Gorthol herself was an intimidating sight to behold, but she gazed at the party with only bored indifference.

Gorthol explained that she was not interested in fighting dragonslayers, and would like to buy them off. The party hemed and hawed - they needed her bones of course, but had to keep their mission secret. They ended up saying that they just liked the glory of slaying dragons, so did she maybe have some rivals they could take out for her? She lazily mentioned one, and the party was debating what to do next. In their debating though, they decided to cast a cover illusion around them, hiding them from everyone's sight. This turned out to be a tactical error, as it made the devil think they were being double-crossed, and a battle erupted!

Session #73

The two rakshasas quickly dropped the pretense of being Edge or Solos, and they pounced on the party, along with the devil and several of the wyverns. Gorthol herself did not join the fray - Tselem cast a few spells at her that found their mark, but Gorthol just ignored them.

Maak Tol used his warden powers to give himself eagle's wings and moved lightly over the ground during the battle. The wyverns also used aerial attacks, which Azeri countered by summoning her cloud chariot. Taumir summoned a spectral wolf that stayed by his side and attacked with him! The party let loose with many stunning attacks. The devil in particular was hard-hit: he was knocked to the ground and could not get back up again, and the party rained blows on him until he was gone. Taumir's wolf got in some good hits, but then it was struck and dissipated.

It was not quick and easy battle, but the party did not yield before their foes. The wyverns in particular felt the power of the party's attacks and fell spectacularly. The rakshasas took longer to defeat, but soon the ground had been cleared, and only the party remained.

Now spent from the fight, the party turned nervously to Gorthol. But she simply stood up, made some bored, off-hand remark, and flew away.

Rewards

• 35,000 XP! Time to level up!

Session #38: The Noise and the Fury

The party kicked in the front door to find a whole band of villains waiting for them - a few humans, a few demon-looking creatures, a few lizard-like creatures. A wild, close-quarters battle erupted in the entryway to the fortress. Arrows, spells, and swords flew through the air!

In short order, the humans they were facing were revealed instead to be Rakshasa, vicious, tiger-like humanoids with a flair for illusions. The party members hired by Baron Murchasen were naturally reminded of the time they faced some of these creatures about six weeks prior, but they could not make any connections. Not that they were particularly inclined to - they were fighting for their lives!

One by one, the foes that stood against the party fell. The last few hung on for a while, refusing to die, as the party wearied of fighting them, but in time they too succumbed. The fortress had been won!

Rewards

• 10,000 XP each!
• 11,000 GP total.

Session #27: The Uncertainty of the Victors

When the dawn came, the party deliberated for quite a while, trying to decide what to do next. Many different goals were proposed, and at times different party members were quite opposite in what they wanted to see happen with this ritual. In the end, they decided they needed more information than they had now, so they decided to travel to Fairhaven. Tselem wanted to know if there were ways to reverse the ritual and make it so they could remove dragonmarks, and believed his old teachers at the University of Wynarn could help. Taumir was less focused on the ritual's political uses and more interested in learning more about what his people had been seeking, but felt that Tselem was on the right track. Azeri had grown quite tired of politics and dragonmarks, but was interested in the Wynarn library, so agreed to come along. Edge felt this whole adventure was ill-advised, but was not ready to abandon the group.

As the party made ready to travel to Fairhaven, they were suddenly attacked by four human-looking individuals. The fight was intense, and vicious, and the party was thrown off balance by the fact that their enemies seemed almost to be swiping at them with claws more than attacking them with weapons. As the strangers began to falter at the party's tenacious counter-attack, however, these villains began to reveal themselves as Rakshasa, shape-changing tiger-like creatures. The battle left the party drained, but when it was done, the party remained standing, and their enemies all lay dead.

Rewards

• 4,800 XP each.
• 10,300 GP total.