Back From the Holidays

I took a long break over the holidays. We played an extra long session since the store was open late for New Years Eve gaming.

Sean's wife, Stephanie, joined us for this session, bringing in a dwarf barbarian named Boa. One the proficiencies she ended up taking was brewers' supplies. So we had fun with alcohol that night. Otherwise, I changed up my prepared spells after our long rest. I dropped command, since Censura was already making good use of it, and enhance attribute, since I didn't seem to be getting much mileage out of it. I added hold person and lesser restoration.

There was one last passage to explore, so we traveled down it. Piercers, monsterized stalactites, dropped down on us. Not too concerned about them, Corrin pressed on and narrowly avoided being ambushed by an ambush drake. Then some kobolds popped up out of hiding. Then, Frulam and her remaining cultists came in from behind.

This was a tough fight.

Fortunately, Censura proved why area of effect spells are awesome, using burning hands to drop three of the four kobolds, but not before they glued some of us in place with glue bombs and dropped some fire bombs in our midst. I was stuck for most of the fight in the glue-my dice were betraying me throughout most of the night.

Mondath later further pinned me with her own hold person, and again, my dice betrayed me. Fortunately, hold person requires concentration, and she later switched to another concentration spell.

In the end, the combination of melee pressure from Thok and Boa, clever play by Corrin and Censura, and Sandi doing what he does best (shooting things), we cleared everyone but Mondath (and those pesky piercers) quickly. However, this time she managed to pull off her nasty spell: the one that slowed everyone within fifteen feet of her. It also does damage, a fair bit, to creatures that start their turn in the area. This particular spell is spirit guardians, and is a 3rd level cleric spell, and I can't wait to get it (provided we reach that level before the season changes over in March).

By the time I managed to break free of the glue, the party was down to myself and Censura, and Mondath had put a command on Censura keeping him out of the fight for the round. Finally, the dice turned around, I scored a critical hit on Mondath with guiding bolt, dropping her. We mopped up the piercers and got everyone stabilized or conscious.

That last cave ended up being the dragon hatchery we were looking for. We killed some black dragon eggs, but took the blue dragon egg to use as blackmail against the blue dragon we had fought earlier.

Actually, D.J. left out one of the more interesting facets of this encounter: a roper down among the eggs. The creature was actually meant to be dealt with via role-playing in the published adventure. The assumed solution was offering it the meat in the larder.

About this time we took a break. The people of the Isle got pizza for people playing there New Years Eve. Did I mention those guys are AWESOME! Also, D.J. allowed Joseph to level up Thok, since we were playing a long session and completed an episode.

We returned to town, and Governor Nighthill let us know that Leosin had moved on to Elturel. We received horses, purchased supplies, including a cart to haul our ill-gotten egg, and set out. My character also managed to use one of his skills: Intelligence (history), to learn about Naerytar. Apparently it might be a castle further north that might even fly.

We met some robbers on the road, but we managed to quickly kill or disperse them. After the rather intense first combat, this was a nice change of pace. We stopped over in Berdusk and Scornubel and purchased additional supplies. I even managed to upgrade my armor to splint mail. Corrin finally got poison that he had been looking for.

We finally reached Elturel and made contact with Leosin Erlanthar's contact, Othar Frume. He and his paladin allies of the Order of the Gauntlet challenged us to an impromptu contest of storytelling, athletics, or drinking. D.J. ran it a bit like skill challenge. We went around the table and took turns trying to drink others under the table, telling tales of heroics, and performing athletic feats. Ultimately, we weren't able to impress the audience for extra experience, but we're ready to start the next leg of our journey.