The battle continued!
Sandi spotted the door to Rezmir's chamber opening, and heard a voice speak a few words in draconic: "Fang...claws...go check!" followed by "Smell smoke...heard noise...check for intruders." He spotted a guard drake approaching. Sandi took a shot, causing the drake to alert the speaker, Resmir, who ordered it to get the other cultists. They spent their first couple of turns trying to open one of the giant-sized doors. This proved difficult for the two dog-like dragons lacking an upright posture and oppose-able thumbs.
We heard another voice coming from the chamber, this one claiming to be Lord Duffington. He called out for help before being slapped and told to quiet down. Afterwards, Rezmir emerged and engaged us with her black dragon mask donned and carrying a black-bladed greatsword that she addressed as "Hazirawn" before engaging us.
Rezmir's mask gave her a monstrous feature new to this edition: legendary actions. Legendary creatures, which is to say, creatures with access to legendary actions, fill a niche similar to solos from 4e. The legendary actions let them take extra actions, usually attacks, but sometimes other options, at the end of other creature's turns. They also gain access to a feature called Legendary Resistance, which allows them to declare a failed saving throw to be successful. She only managed to use one during the engagement, reducing the damage from a spirit guardians hit.
Not long after Rezmir appeared, a female stone giant, Hulda, appeared. She asked why we were fighting the drakes. Censura managed to bluff her into believing that the drakes were diseased and needed to be put down before spreading the plague. Hulda offered to help in return for magic items. On my turn I offered my wand of winter and Rezmir's sword as payment. It turns out Hulda's husband Wigluf always wanted a wand and she always wanted Rezmir's sword. She agreed that she and her husband would attack anything attacking us.
This was fortunate. Just about them a drake managed to open the door enough to slip out. The stone giants intercepted it in the courtyard and put it down.
In the meantime, we focused fire on Rezmir. Thok managed to keep her attacks focused on him using maneuvers like goading attack and his protection fighting style. I kept her in range of spirit guardians and managed to make my Constitution save whenever an attack managed to hit me. Sandi, of course, used his bow. And Censura blasted away. We managed to drop Rezmir and the other guard drake.
Before the battle truly ended-the other drake was still being intercepted by the giants-I peaked into Rezmir's chamber and spotted Lord Duffington. I went in to help him, only to be attacked by a rug of smothering right inside the door. This particular cursed item is actually statted out as a creature in the Monster Manual along with animated armor and flying swords. They are fairly low level, though, so it ended up being more of a speed bump than a challenge. I still asked Lord Duffington why he failed to warn me about it. He said he just had not seen it attack before.
Afterwards, we had a short conversation with Hulda and Wigluf as we gathered the items to give them from Rezmir's corpse. Censura was the first to pick up the greatsword Hazirawn. It started talking to him telepathically. It did not seem to mind being given to the stone giants. Thok kept the black dragon mask. Wigluf and Hilda offered to let us rest in their chamber and set to making stew while we finished looting Rezmir's chamber and the Red Wizards' chamber. Rezmir had a chest in her chamber, but like the one in Castle Naerytar, it was trapped. First, there was a needle trap that hit Thok hard enough to knock him unconscious. It also had magic teleportation effect on it that whisked away the valuables within.
Fortunately, the Red Wizards and their chamber had more than enough to make up for it: several scrolls and a staff of fire. We also found letters from Rath Modar to Severin, the leader of the Cult of the Dragon. We also found letters from other Red Wizards back in Thay. We learned about the alliance between the Red Wizards and the cult. We also learned that not all of the Red Wizards were happy with the alliance and its goals. Last, we found a tome of devil lore, including various rituals to summon devils. It contained a description of a powerful ritual to summon Tiamat, the Queen of Evil Dragon herself, from the Nine Hells. It required a lot of sacrifices, including a large amount of treasure. However, the book did not have any further details or specifics on how the ritual is performed.
Hulda and Wiglaf got us an audience with Blagothkus. We took a short rest and met with the cloud giant. Some excellent role-playing and good rolls from Thok and myself managed to earn us an alliance with the giants contingent on us defeating the white dragon. Blagothkus agreed to offer us save haven to take a long rest, and a chance to recover Kaskoo from the kitchens.
We were fortunate, discovering that Kaskoo was a winged kobold. I used him to deliver a message of our impending success for Leosin back in Parnast.
Next time we'll be entering the dragon's lair.
That will conclude our play of Tyranny of Dragons. The week after that we'll be started Elemental Evil. I'll be taking over DM duties so DJ can get a chance to create a PC and play. Any readers out there in Tucson are welcome to come join. The table will be open to new players and will need them.
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