Location: Outside the lair of Vorugal the Frigid Doom, and Gelidon the Nightmare in Ivory, Draconia/Ravinia
Date: 24 Thunsheer 840 PD (calendar of Exandria)
Occasion: The incipient party are outside the lair of Vorugal the Frigid Doom.
Party Members:
- Bob the Therapist – changeling warlock with a couch for a familiar
- Flora Zosna – loxodon paladin (player not present)
- Jeremiah Callows – human cleric (player not present)
- Stubby – half-elf artificer
- Tāmerai – gnome bard
- Tunk – bugbear monk
The Lair
As Stubby hugs her new special friend, a big tree, several of the group notice that her dragon-alert lantern is glowing — less than it should for a dragon’s presence, but more than it did in the presence of the dragonborn Emror. They refocus and head inside warily to investigate. A smell hits the group as they enter, not necessarily a bad one: old books, or paper. They follow the smell past a branch-off tunnel that smells of water. Tunk, making a little side-trip, confirms that that cavern contains a pool, a lake that has formed with the flowing of a river into and back out of it. The water is fresh enough for drinking, probably. There are footprints here and there of dragons and humanoids, but also lots of dust, indicating that it has been some time since anyone was here. There is, however, a light spell cast on specific rocks, making the pool actually a pretty lovely place to visit, if one did not fear a dragon’s imminent return. The water is very clear. Clear enough, in fact, to see scattered bones at the very bottom. It looks like they’ve been underwater long enough to be picked clean by nature, and even longer — to lose their hold on one another, and be scattered with the water’s gentle current.
Surprisingly quickly, they enter what looks to be the dragon’s lair. The more bookish individuals lead the way, following the lines of deliciousness to their personal Happy Place, a library. Or not. Not a library, just another cavern. But this one does have a frozen stack of books in it, and some scattered papers. There’s also a big chest full of shiny things right in view, and beyond that, another pile of more shiny things (slightly less shiny, but no less enticing), and also an anchor and a good chunk of a ship’s mast and part of what is probably the same ship’s bow, just here and there.
Tāmerai casts Detect Magic and wanders around to see what pops. The chest glows with Enchantment, and it gives her a very strong, bad feeling. She warns the others to avoid the honey pot. Bob is drawn to the frozen stack of books, and tries melting them for a while before realizing it would probably take him days to wear away the frost left by a white dragon; instead, he pushes the stack over, breaking it off, and moves it onto his couch-familiar to melt and read later. One, though, he does try to flip through. It’s a captain’s log, and judging by both the dates written and the state of the pages, it appears to be over a thousand years old.
Tāmerai, meanwhile, also senses Abjuration magics on the three large, softly-glowing dragon eggs encased in ice, and Enchantment behind them, emanating from five large rectangular stones set in the wall: black, red, green, blue, and purple. The black, red, and green are cloudy and cracked, like cataracts, but the blue one is still bright and clear, and the purple is only a little cracked, and has the word DRACONIA scratched into its surface. She attempts to get closer, but something gives her a little jolt of electric shock. Not enough to truly hurt, but enough to alert her that she is not welcome to get any closer to the stones or the eggs. (If she had paid attention, she would have seen Tunk also receiving such a shock, and it would not have surprised her so much.)
Other party members also attempt to approach, but only Stubby is able. Wondering why, Tāmerai attempts to cast Identify as a ritual, but at the last step, realizes she is missing the key component to the spell, a sizeable pearl. She huffs and gets up, frustrated, to walk around. As if it was foreordained, she nearly trips and falls over a purse a little bit away from the dragon’s main hoard (which looks a bit small, but then, it’s probably been a while since people knew where to come for Vorugal’s hoard, so it’s definitely been picked over several times already), and finds within it a bracelet with, among other things, a pearl as its feature. She does not skip back to her abandoned ritual, but she does walk with alacrity to pick up the components to try again in a bit.
Jeremiah casts Bless on Flora, allowing her to withstand the shock and come closer to the wall crystals. She brings it out of the wall towards the others. Tāmerai now completes her Identify spell, touching the purple stone. The spell gives her a great deal of information about it. It is definitely one of the threshold crests, of a different make than the other four, which are apparently communication stones. The spell’s result gives Tāmerai a greater understanding of the calculations Emror made in his book: he did understand correctly, and if destroyed, these stones could indeed send the group back to where they were (though not necessarily when they were — time seems very odd here!).
As the group reach a conclusion that the purple stone is what they’re looking for, Stubby removes it from the wall, and Flora holds it in her strong arms. As they approach it, however, it starts to hum. Stubby hums back at it, and suddenly the group hear, “Knock it off!” “I didn’t do it!” and a friendly, bantering argument from individuals they can suddenly see within the crystal. These are two individuals in the armor and uniform of city guards of Emon.
Eventually, the group catch their attention, and they demand to know who the group are. Stubby introduces herself, but they turn up their noses, wondering what sort of a name Stubby is. She gives her real name, The Honorable Victorial Viqul Elaina Vessar deRolo, and is met with immediate disbelief — but also immediate recognition. “You mean to tell us you’re the kids that went missing? No way!” They bring out Archivist Hinds, a tiny and wizened gnome in the dark blue robes of a member of the Tal’Dorei Council, who agrees it’s possible, but she cannot verify it. “There is one who can, but she is asleep.”
The group point out that if they wait until the morning, the dragon might come back, and they’d really like to get help before that happens. Archivist Hinds disappears for several minutes, returning with an elderly half-elf. Dark hair, but going very grey. Self-assured as only the deluded or the extremely competent can be, and beautiful in the way of one who will probably never not be beautiful. The figure grouses about being awakened, then looks into the crystal and immediately focuses on Stubby. “Darling?” asks Lady Vexahlia Vessar deRolo: Stubby’s mother.
The unfolding conversation leads to the knowledge that the group “disappeared” from Whitestone eighty years gone, and were assumed eaten or otherwise dead. “But you should know, Darling,” Vexahlia tells Stubby, “that your father never stopped looking for you.” As Stubby quietly deals with the implication that he has died, Vex goes on to say, “This is not the first time I’ve seen or heard of dangerous magics going awry. There have been rumors from Issylra that they are also toying with these magics, that some of the Draconian survivors are working with them.” She also explains that the communication stones were protected with Abjuration shielding so that only a member of Vox Machina could approach. Stubby, as the descendant of two of the members of Vox Machina, was apparently VM enough.
Vex is not primarily a magic user, but suggests that destroying all four crests should shunt the group — and Ravinia itself — right back to where they all started off. Not necessarily back to when they all started, though. This leaves the group with disturbing questions:
- Did they move through time? If so, how are they able to speak across time through the communication stone?
- Did the ‘momentary flash’ last 80 years, rather than being instantaneous as the group thought?
- How can the group get back to where they belong, when they are so inexperienced and unable to access the powerful magics that could teleport them back home?
Vex also suggests putting it somewhere safe. The group have nothing, but Tāmerai casts Detect Magic, and they all shuffle around in the dragon’s hoard (which turns out to be mostly not ‘hoard’ but just parts of previous and future, people-shaped draconic snacks. Bodies. They’re just bodies. They do, however, find an empty bag which glows with Conjuration magic to Tāmerai. Excitedly she grabs a handful of rocks from the ground and tosses them inside, and almost squeals when they disappear. She quickly up-ends the bag, turning it out, and not only the rocks but several sets of dirty laundry appear, and also some loose coins, eating utensils, a few gems, some objets d’art, and a few other things tumble out. Quickly she beckons Flora over. Flora puts the communication crest and the threshold crest both into the bag. Tāmerai scoops everything else back up into it as well (discreetly cleaning each piece of filthy laundry with Prestidigitation first), and looks proudly at the group. “Is there anything else you would not like to carry?” she offers.
After about 45 minutes of conversation, the crystal flickers and goes silent. Tāmerai’s Identify spell had informed her that it would, but she reassures the group that they should be able to use it again tomorrow, for about the same amount of time.
They spend about half an hour killing two of the dragon eggs through Bob’s use of Witch Bolt and Tunk’s casting of Foot In The Ass (wherever the ass is on an egg, Tunk definitely found it). The third they keep in the Bag of Holding, hoping it will die and then they can trade it for something, or harvest magical components from it.
[And then the players started turning into pumpkins, so we ended the session.]
Take your meds.
Hydrate.
Don’t forget to love each other.
Is it Game Day yet?
Loot:
Coins
Loose (worthless) jewelry
Dragon egg (‘cooked’ inert)
Dragon egg shards