We received the benefits of a long rest: full hit points, spell slots, and up to half our total hit dice restored. I made a blunder at this point: I forgot to drop a spell and prepare protection from energy. We'll come back to that later. The giants sketched out a map of the interior of the giant ice block holding up Skyreach Castle. They pointed out where the white dragon Glazhael kept his hoard, a large cavern on a ledge nearby, a network of smaller side passages, and a opening to the air the dragon could try to escape through. Although I had planned on giving Kaskoo a message to send to Leosin, it turns out the winged kobold stuck around; he wanted to help with our lair assault. He did have one bit of information: Glazhael would be celebrating his 101st birthday tomorrow. Sandi realized the significance of that: Glazhael was still a "young" dragon rather than an adult. In D&D, dragons' power levels are broken up by age categories. And from "young" to "adult" is a big upgrade.
So we had to make our attack that day. We planned an entrance into the large cavern over-looking the hoard, and planned to use the wall of fire spell in Censura's newly acquired staff of fire to block off a set of stair guarded by a pair of cultists. Sandi sneaked into the cavern and found the dragon resting on its bed of treasure and heard the guards nearby.. After he returned and before we could begin our assault, we heard other voices-kobolds. A party was taking birthday cake-ice cream cake specifically-to Glazhael to try, while another group was planning on decorating the cavern.
Kaskoo confronted the kobolds coming down the corridor we were skulking in, and convinced them to come back later. We moved into the cavern, but my clinking armor alerted the dragon. We spotted the dragon sampling his ice cream cake-apparently he eats like a pig.
The plan to wall off a portion of the cavern with wall of fire worked swimmingly. The dragonwings, tougher, meaner bigger brothers of the blender machines dragonclaws, had their stairs blocked. The wall is long enough that we decided to have it just follow the stair well. So they were forced to climb a steep wall into the cavern along with the kobolds. This delay turned out to be awesome.
I mentioned I forgot to prepare protection from energy. Glazhael opened by using his breath weapon, a cone of freezing air for white dragons. This bloodied me in one hit and nearly put Thok out of commission. I spent the rest of the battle healing Thok, and rolling very poorly on the healing. Fortunately, the dragon's breath weapon didn't recharge. Unlike 3.5 and earlier, where the DM rolls the duration until a dragon can use its breath weapon again, in 4 & 5, at the beginning of a monster's turn the DM rolls a d6 to determine of the breath weapon recharges. It buts back on book-keeping, and adds a nice little dramatic element. Especially when you make the recharge roll player facing, which Duane did. Fortunately for us, Glazhael never recharged his breath weapon. Thok also managed to taunt the dragon using Charisma (intimidate). So it focused its bite and claws on him. Between his high AC and my healing, he was able to survive.
While I focused on healing, Sandi focused on killing the dragon. Censura used fireballs to clear the kobolds before the could reach us, and also burn the dragon. Thok used a new maneuver: distracting strike which causes the next attack against the target to gain advantage. This made Sandi's job of hitting the dragon easier, but it didn't lead to any critical hits, which was the secondary goal.
At one point, the dragon tried to use an innate spell (an optional ability of dragons in this edition) to levitate Thok. Fortunately, Thok made his saving throw. So Thok kept smashing it with his hammer. At one point, taking advantage of the usefulness of scrolls in this edition, I used a scroll of fireball to injure the climbing dragonwings and hit Glazhael with more fire. I also repositioned so that in case the dragon's breath did recharge, he would have to move to catch both Thok and I in the cone.
In the end, trusty fireball brought down the dragon. The damage roll was low, and the dragon made its save, but it had lost just enough hit points that it was all it took. That last fireball also blooded the dragonwings. The big bad out of the way, we mopped the floor with the remaining enemies-including an urd that had been helping serve the cake to Glazhael and harrying Sandi with falling rocks.
Kaskoo, who had been circling around a side corridor to attack from the rear, never got a blow in. On the other hand, no attacks were made against him either.
The giants thanked us for our service and let us keep the treasure. We had them drop us off at Waterdeep. We made sure the bulk of it got returned to the original owners-minus a reasonable finders' fee of course. Leosin and Onthar Frume, our contacts from earlier in the adventure, mentioned that the Cult of the Dragon was still trying to summon Tiamat. With the black dragon mask in their possession to squirrel away or (preferably) destroy, we had earned a break, but danger still lurked out there. Sandi decided to return to the Duffington's lodge. But Censura, Thok, and I reasoned that we would need to continue the fight to stop the Cult from summoning the Queen of Evil Dragons to the Realms. It is hard to live in the world when its been destroyed, after all.
We decided not to continue with Rise of Tiamat, the concluding adventure in the Tyranny of Dragons line. Duane, the DM, has had some burn out from running encounters and Friday night 4e game. As I mentioned previously, I'll be taking over the DM chair for Princes of the Apocalypse, the adventure for the Elemental Evil line. If your in Tucson, AZ and free on Wednesdays, stop by next week for character creation.
I'll be continuing this blog, but now from the perspective of a DM. Any players wanting to earn extra inspiration are welcome to help keep notes on the sessions so I can focus on running the game.
Tomorrow I'll do a wrap up for this adventure.
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