Story Hour: Part 3



Valek, Eladrin spymaster



Again with the tardiness! I'm just messing up left and right here. Still, here we continue where we left off: The players just defeated a rogue mage bent on power and domination. The players found a clue to their next goal; a map with a small pyramid symbol on it with the annotation "more power, pyramid of shadows." So the players left Thunderspire Mountain.

Shortly after they left on their way down they realized they were being stalked. Quickly they gathered and formed a plan; but it didn't really matter as the person stalking them jumped from the trees: an eladrin who introduced himself as Valek. He said he had been waiting for the players but couldn't afford to wait any longer. He urged them to trust him, but he couldn't talk now, as he was being pursued by assailants. If they trusted him and let him use a teleportation ritual to go somewhere safe, he would tell them everything.

Valek began casting the ritual and the players had to defend him while dragonborn troops marched on their position. Within 30 seconds they were all teleported away to a secret underground bunker: a gold dragon's lair that had been repurposed to a headquarters. There they met 2 other people: Jiergan, a golden-scaled dragonborn with a temper, and Jael, an eccentric and absent-minded deva (demi-angel). They learned that these three people, along with a handful of other operatives, made up an organization named the Order of Vigilance. They had been watching the characters since their victory over Kalarel, the necromancer they stopped back in Winterhaven.

They brought the players there because while they were underground the world had gone to hell. Dragons, long thought extinct, darkened the skies and conquered most of the free world. Red dragons easily took over the human lands of Alden, blue dragons seized the free cities of Nentir, green dragons and their drow allies corrupted thet elven nobles and took power from them, white dragons bombarded the eladrin's floating cities and forced them to evacuate, and black dragons beseiged the dwarven holds in the Silver Mountains. It was a perfectly coordinated attack, all happening simultaneously.

The players were forced to decided where to give aid. They didn't have any elves or eladrin in their group, but they did have a dwarf, and he made a strong case for defending the dwarves; they could hold out the longest and were likeliest to prove allies when helping elsewhere. The players then learned about Travel Stones: ancient teleportation circles that dotted the land, all connected. Unfortunately there wasn't one in the dwarven lands, so they were forced to take a boat. So they sailed to the Dwarven Kingdoms, and fought their way through the backside of the sieging kobolds and goblins, innadvertantly aiding the dwarves on the other side.

From there they were able to make their way to the dwarven capitol, and through some trickery they stole there way into the high council chambers. At that point the players were treated as criminals until the dwarf revealed that he was the last remaining dwarf in the Stonewall Clan, and thus, a clan lord. This forced the council to listen to him, and accept their help. The players found out that dragon's forces had somehow gotten into the mountain and were attacking outlying settlements. The players agreed to track the creatures.

Their efforts led them to a very old and abandoned citidel, Ered Luin. Here they found traces of kobolds, so they searched the area. They found the kobolds, and killed them. Most importantly though, they found a list of names, with some of them crossed off. With some history checks the characters remembered that these were the names of old heroes from times past, all famous for slaying evil. They didn't know what to make of it at this point, but the characters thought it would come in handy later.

Also in this citadel they found the tomb of an old dwarf, Durin Toughbeard, guarded by mechanical constructs. Now, Durin Toughbeard was one of the names on the list, so they were obligated to explore the tomb, but they didn't want to trigger the autonomous constructs that were simply patrolling the area, so they sent two people back to Belegost (the capitol) to get someone who could deal with them, and brought back two engineers from the Coppereye clan, who were able to shut off the warforged constructs, allowing the players access to the tomb.

The dwarf character decided to try and grab the dead dwarf's shield, and as he did, he had a vision. First he saw the mountains they were in, then he looked across the sea, and zoomed in on a single island made of mountains, then the vision descended into a crevasse between the mountains and faded to black. It became evident to the players that the dragons must be looking for something connected to the heroes on the list. And they were getting close to finding it.

The black dragon!

The players then cleared out the rest of the citadel, finding a treasure trove filled with rust monsteres, and a hidden ladder that descended into a mechanical fotress; old metal pipes lined the walls and metal plates covered the floor. Here they fought some trolls and more kobolds, and realized that there was a black substance contained in some of the containers that was highly flamible: Moradin's Blood, the engineers called it (it was essentially oil). Further into this complex the players discovered the lair of a black dragon, sitting on top of a travel stone: that's how they got into the mountain.

The fight with the dragon was long and tense, with several close calls, but the players slew their first real dragon, and relished in it. Their return to Belegost was triumphant, but that will wait until next week! Until then, keeping rolling them 20s, and happy gaming!