Corrin returned to the party, guided through the mere by friendly lizardfolk. We filled him in on what had transpired since he fled the rats in the tunnel and continued with our adventure.
Before we split off from our lizardfolk allies, Snapjaw pulled me aside and told me, in broken common to look under the black dragon head in the chapel for a treasure. He mentioned that he had crafted it himself. After the hint, Censura used darkness to cover our entry into the castle.
We found ourselves in the chapel Snapjaw mentioned. Not unsurprisingly, it was dedicated to Tiamat. Also, as it was made by proud lizardfolk, all five dragon heads resembled lizardfolk. Following Snapjaws advice, I searched the black dragon head, finding a hidden compartment in the mouth. I found an object wrapped in black cloth. After carefully unrolling it from the cloth, I found a curved dagger with scale and serpent designs and a green glisten on the blade. Without an identify spell, we had to base our knowledge of it off the description: a dagger of venom. Ultimately, we decided that only Censura had a use for the weapon, so it was given to him.
Flush with loot, we continued on, encountering four dragonclaws: two were hiding in a rubbish heap and the other two were hidden behind a door. They managed to beat our initiative and flank us. Dragonclaws, as I've mentioned before, are nasty little glass cannons, with pack tactics to get advantage on attack rolls, multiattack to get two attacks in a turn, and a feature called fanatic advantage, which gives them bonus damage to one attack in the turn. They dropped me in one turn and managed to bring Thok pretty close. Of course, there's the glass part of that cannon equation. We dropped three of those dragonclaws in the next turn, and Censura used one of his newer spells: crown of madness. It did help that Sandi managed to roll two critical hits in a row.
This is a complicated variant of charm person. For the duration, the victim has an iron crown on their head. They're charmed by the caster, and on their turn must attack a target of the caster's choice before moving. Its a nice, flavorful variant of the classic charm person. Spells like this fill the Warlock list, just as spells like Sandi's hail of thorns fill the Ranger and Paladin lists.
Ultimately, the remaining dragonclaw surrendered to us before the charm effect wore off. We managed to learn that the next floor contained a library and to disarm and put the cultist in manacles before the charm wore off. He also mentioned the names of the kitchen staff: the cook, a dwarf named Tharm Tharmzid, Daisy, and Mrs. Pattinow. We ended up leaving the cultist bound and buried under the corpses of his allies in the rubbish room. Not too bad for a party with two lawful good characters, I say.
We went to the second floor and found a library. We emerged into a storage room filled with books of folktales and other minor works. In the main library we encountered a dragonwing, the bigger badder cousin of dragonclaws, and some cultist minions. Corrin and Thok managed to drop three of those four cultists in one round. The dragonwing attacked me, but thanks to cover from a bookcase, even with advantage, the dragonwing's attacks still failed to hit me.
The last encounter of the evening was with Mrs. Pattinow. We found a kicthen storage room off the library (actually, DJ misread the map, but the encounter was fun anyway). She lamented the ingredients for the food: bloodberries, crickets, and centipedes. She also mentioned Daisy, who apparently was hoping to get an education. Censura actually donated some gold to the kitchen staff before we prepared to move onto the third floor of the castle wing.
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