Into the dragons lair (Forg. realms)

[Dwarfi]

SESSION 18:  "There and back again!" Or "Im alive!"

The 3 survivors of the last great battle gather around the corpses of our 2 dead friends and see that the "eye of Tyr" Stone is glowing in a red light. Our wizzard is very careful but finally touches it. In his head he hears a voice asking who he is. It our wizz is now talking to the God Tyr.
They make a bidding and are able to talk to the dead Cleric Lyvia. As she is willed to come back to llive, Tyr offers a special ressurection, but with a hook.

Lyvia gets ressurected without any money or Lv loss as long as the group pays a total of 15k EXP. Everyone can give however much he likes to help.
The druid dwarf sees it as his personal duty to give a good share of 3k. Lyvia, at first wants to pay everything but her friend stick to her and share it equally.
#At this point my players have been a little unsure about this offer. Starting to calculate that a true ressurection in a temple might be cheaper... but when would they reach the next temple ? As they didnt know they just revived her immediately. Which was a really good deal as they still gained a little bit EXP from the elven fight.

Now for Elster, the dead rogue. His soul was found in the outer maelstrom of souls and they were at least able to talk to him. Lyvia made a great offering to bring him back: She took upon her a divine mission, to return the eye of Tyr to the great temple in Cormyr, to take the unholy sword of the 1st king and return and restore it as well. The last part is to help Cormyr retain its old beauty, pretty much by not cheating on the treasure. For every day he doesnt work towards this goals he gets a divine penalty, so he shouldnt go too far off the road.
Everyone was happy to see their friends alive and healthy again so that they can finally continue their journey.

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Meanwhile our wizzard noticed, that the staff he found in the treasure has changed. 2 of the crytals at the top have changed color. One is hot and glows red, the other is cold and blue.
As he didnt have any more elemental spells prepared he couldnt check his theory if this was related to the fireball and ice fog he stood in recently. (Although the dwarf could have helped with the earth spells)
After some chatting, the druid gave the idea with his question "How did you get in here" to return to the small riverside where they entered the plane. They searched the side and the draconic aura of the big dragon head shaped rock formation again. The moment our wizzard touched the "eye" of the dragon he immediately dissapears. The others hurry right after him and find themselfs 5ft deep in water and in the darkness of Grodd. The dwarf is scared of water and panics, his elementals carries him out.
Since our cleric has a floating sphere of light above his head they can see in the darkness, but beeing the only light in the black city doesnt help to stay stealthy.
Therefore our group stands right in front of the great palace, where an alarm is rang and first soldier run out. Our wizzard doesnt hesistate and shoots a maximized fireball right into the door. A good chunk of the door and wall is destroyed in the blast and our group starts to run into the smaller streets in search for an entrance to the sewers. (The lack an airwalk spell)

Leaving the buring palace behind, our group manages to leave the city (reducing the light sphere) and reaches the outer caves. There they find an ancient rune portal which seems to be actually working, a little reserach gives nothes about the shadow plane... where they dont want to go right now. Especially because our mage doesnt know any planar travel spells.

So the way through the caves continues and they come across a black, oily, stinking lake. As the barbarian throws a rock in, the rock slowy dissolves, as well as the 2nd thrown rock. The barbarian uses his gloves of acid resistance to test it some more, which results in the silk shoes of the mage getting some holes.
Then the black water starts to rise from the lake, our group prepares for a battle until the big bubble pops and splatters the acid all over the place. Now a big black pudding appears. For the first time our barbarian retreats, although he has lots of acid resist right now. He just doesnt want to risk his flaming hammer. And so the caster are up to the job and kill the beast with fireballs, rays and flame strikes. Nobody gets hurt.
# This would have been an option for our mage to fill another crystal on his staff. But they took some glass phioles and filled them with the acid.

The journey continues through caves and brings them into a canal like place, they come across some tents and meet some really dull ogre slaves. It appears they are in the middle of grodd again.
In the center of the canal is a way from the 2nd plane of grodd to the highest 3rd plane, where the palace is. The canal is deeper than the planes and is guarded by a tower, right in the middle of the way. Our group closes in, but gets shot by a catapult (yes they can see the glowing light bulb above your head). Because of that the light is shut off and they get shot again (yes goblins can see in the darkness). The light gets turned on again and the barbarian charges the tower. On a natural 20 he doesnt even notice the door and start slashing the goblins inside. He does the terminator and walks through every door and kills every goblin, while the alarm horn is blown on the top. As he reaches the top, the last remaining goblin shoots himself away into the darkness, by using the catapult. ^^

Not long after this, first groups of soldier appear at the stairs of the canal, but get easily shot down by the catapult and arrows. Ogre slaves with tower shields give some cover and enable  a small group of soldier to reach the tower. Oc ourse they get slain singlehandedly by the barbarian. He carries the corpses to the top and shoots the parts with the catapult at the enemys.
The dwarf and cleric are shocked by so much barbarism. but it works and the soldiers retreas. The goblins start to close the entrances with some heavy steal like walls.
The players start to prepare for a longer stay, until they hear a gushing sound closing in. A small wave of water starts to fill the  ground of the canal. Then another wave and another.
Slowly the water rises as they find themselfs in one of the defensive mechanics of Grodd a floodable canal to stop invaders before they reach the last plane. And our group picked the one and only tower that would be affected by this, sadly the tower isnt high enough to be a safe place to stay and our group rallys out.

END OF SESSION #18

I really wonder where this is going. Our group is pretty worn out and whithout an airwalk spell, the goblin armies are a much bigger threat then before.
But for now the water is the bigger problem. I expect them to go for the walls at the entrance and burst them down somehow.
This session was a lot of fun as most of it was played without any miniatures or set ups. Most of it had to be improvised and gave lots of role play options.
I will try to keep this up if possible.

The staff of the wizzard has 5 crystals. The have to be exposed to the 5 elements: fire, water/ice, air, earth and another one. The last one can be filled with anything else. Acid, divine, thunder...
when all 5 are filled the staff awakes and starts talking, as it is a living item with a soul. It was used to bansih the dragon and the elves into this prison. It can use teleport and planar travel spells and would be able to get the players out of there and back to Cormyr.

[Dwarfi]

SESSION #19: Back to Faerun and Cormyr!

This was a long session, so I will try to summon it up a little faster:

The group startedt in the canal, fighting their way through the ogres and their big steel walls. Thanks to divine power, right. might and the elemental it wasnt much of a deal. Neither were the ogres, the 2 goblin raid troups or the towers. One of the tower was simply torn down. After this, the group made its way north, into a plaza and arrived at the lake.... AGAIN!  Now they really made a complete circle. In front of the palast, they face a big part of the Grodd army, ready to fight for their city. But the group decided otherwise and ran into a merchant district, trying to travel west, nort or into the sewers.
On a market place in front of a barrack and 2 goblin troups, they actually find a dwell, leading down into the the system. The dwarf eats some arrow shots, while the cleric guards with a circled wall of good. They now run south again, until they come across a small pipe with an iron lattice. Looking through it, they can see the canal again.
Thats not where they wanted to go and so the journey continues west, parralel to the canal, leading into some kind of  staircase. Choosing to go down, finally leads into the western caves and to another hidden portal room.

At this point I had 4 possible planes prepared, but I let the mage roll a dice to see which one it was. 1-5 would be Faerun and he actually made it.
Now they have to study it for a while until they find out the "key" to open the portal.
Parts of the material plane are needed: Metal (easy, a dagger) water and fire (easy done too) the last is earth from Faerun... luckily the earth druid actually has some in his bag. ^^ And after the magical summoning is done, they are able to finally open the portal... although they dont know where it exactly leads to.

Finally, they are back to Faerun, standing in some kind of ancient ruin of a tower of some kind. They are on a hillside and can see a farm a little away. The poeple talk in some southern accent, but are friendly. It appears that they are somewhere in AMN and around 200 miles away from Cormyr. The farmer tells them the way to the next city, where they talk with a man at the toll office to find out more about the way to Cormyr. It appears that there is some kind of problem with the great north road. It goes through a forest, which is rather big and "broken" like the office guy said.
All merchant caravans have to take a big detour because of the forest and for a reward of 100GP/head the group tries to solve the problem.

The forest is the strangest thing they ever saw. The trees and leaves are yellow and pink, some blue with green spots. It smells like vanilla, banana and starberrys. Soon after this we have a wizzard licking on some bark, that tastes like choclate and a dwarf chewing on some achorn leaves. ^^ Our cleric is not amused about this unnatural and ungodly disaster of chaos.
Meanwhile our wizzard and Rogue make plans about the worlds first choclate tree business.

They come across a giant purple bear, who gets flustered and jumps away like a bunny. They follow him and are attacked by two choclate trees (modified Ropers) who try to eat them.
Following the trail the find a lemon fountain and a squirrel. The squirrel looks very strange but it dissappears into the woods after they spotted it.
The rogue/ranger leads the way and is suddenly thrown into the crown of a tree as he enters a zone of reversed gravity. The other are able to pull him out with a rope.

On a glade they hear a strange voice voming from a little sunllit hill. As our mage can see invisibility, they finally meet Chary, the invisible pink unicorn and obviously the source of all of this.
The wizzard casts fariy fire and Charly becomes visible. Talking about his forest and how beautiful it is. Saying something about their cidneys and "Snuffel".
Our cleric is already in rage and is pretty agressive against the unicorn.
Rogue and druid dont join the fight and so the wizzard shoots a fire ray and the cleric goes to close combat alone. Charly is shocked and sad as he gets wounded ... until he touches the cleric with his horn, who instantly turns into a bunny.
Cleric: "WHAT WAS THAT? POLYMORPH? USUALLY I GET A SAVE!!! Me: "Usually"? - Uhm, ... choclate bleeding monster trees and a pink unicorns....? ^^
The others are shocked and fascinated at the same time. Finally they make a deal with Charly. The druid just wants to touch the uniconr one, Charly agrees, as long as they bring him the bell of "Snuffel", the champion of the forest. The grumpy Cleric is returned to normal and they go for the bell.

In front of a really big cave, with some chewed bones laying around they come across a little white bunny, wearing a small bell around his neck. They try to somehow lure it to them until the bunny charges the cleric. Hitting with  +19 for a bite attack and dealing 2d6+7 dmg. Causing bleeding wounds and following up with two claw attacks, which miss, thanks to the high armor of the cleric. The bunny gets some hard hits but only gets more enraged. It jumps from one character to the next, hitting everyone in one round. fire rays are used, arrows shot, a lot of bleeding chaine lightning... until the beast is finally caught by a grapple of the elemental and shortly after beheaded and buried as a worthy opponent.
The bell is returned and and the are allowed to touch Charly and leave the forest.

They find some kind of demonic bug stuck to the unicorn and remove+ kill it. A Lv7 scroll of restoration and a remove disease turn Charly into a beautiful white Unicorn and heal him from insanity.
The forest does the same and so the idea of the choclate factory is gone. T__T

After this most entertaining adventure, the way to Cormyr is free again. Actually Charly is willed to help them. After the group went back to the toll office for the reward, some sleep and food, they return to Charly on the next morning and are teleported to the southern border of Cormyr. With a divination spell they find the way and decide upon the remaining way.
they rent a carriage, travel by boat to the capital and from there over the east road to Arabel, where they finally met with Lady Vaylan.
She is more then happy to finally see them all back, alive and healthy. The treasure is split and the Lady decides that the historical important parts are to be returne to the royal family.
On the next morning the group and Lady Kestrel will head to Suzail and the regent.

END of Session #19

This went way smoother then I thought. I expected them to raid the goblin palace (in that case the goblin would shoot a demonic urn at them, as some kind of last stance attempt). but that didnt happen. The staff of the mage would have been another escape route, but he is either to busy or lazy to test spells on it and so it is still inactive.

My planning for the next session is a little thin, they will get rewarded, I guess they want to buy new things and maybe take a break for a game or so.
One of my players has another book he want to play. I will see what I can do about that.
In the meanwhile there will be some mini adventures, like a job for the thieves guild, which are actually connected to the cult of the dragon. (They found the body of Nalavara and want to revive her)