Cleared: One Lodge of Dragon Cultists

We began by searching through the out-buildings. We found a parchment message discarded in the kennels. It was from Rezmir to Talis, letting her know that we were dead (reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated), and she should burn the Duffington's hunting lodge after the next load of treasure comes through. We found nothing of interest in the stable, other than that it stank of wyverns.

We moved onto the next room in the lodge: a dormitory housing three of Madam Duffington's servants. They were Arlenga the head maid, the head butler Gastyn, and the chief hunter Argreth Woodwise. They were all chained up in a line to good old-fashioned iron balls. They warned us about cultists in the kitchen preparing supper.

So we went into the kitchen expecting a fight, and even managed to surprise the cultists and their dragonclaw leader. We managed to drop the dragonclaw and two of the four cultists in a couple of rounds. The last two surrendered. We took them prisoner, and through some interrogation, learned that the remainder of the cultists were upstairs, but that there were some people in the basement. One of the kitchen cultists had the keys for the shackles securing the servants, so we had them switch places before we went down to the basement.

There we found three more prisoners: a beaten dwarf with a beard that had been shorn and burned, a badly whipped young human woman, and a human man in priestly garments. The dwarf was Craggnor, an ally of Varram, a dwarf cultist vying with Talis for position. The woman was Mirasella, a woman who had been kidnapped from a caravan and that Talis had been trying to torture into joining the cult. The priest was Brother Caemon, a visiting priest of Amauntor, a god of legal matters and commerce that had been visiting the Duffingtons when the Cultists attacked. Talis had been trying to convince him to provide legal help for the cult. In addition to the obvious direct harm inflicted on Craggnor and Mirasella, there were plates of food just out of reach of the prisoners.

We had some discussion with Craggnor about offing Talis to help his boss get a leg up with the cult. He let slip that the treasure would be bound for a village called Parnast, where wyvern riders took it up to a place called Skyreach Castle. We failed to convince him to aid us in getting to Parnast, but we decided to be the better people and let him have the food, which he ate with gusto. We freed Mirasella and Brother Caemon, stashed them with the other civilians, and put the two captured cultists in the basement with Craggnor.

We finished exploring the first floor of the lodge: finding a pantry, a pair of bedrooms, and a sitting room filled with trophies of exotic monsters: a griffon, a gorgon (large bull-like monsters), and a giant eagle in addition to more mundane animals such as mountain goats, and even a giant white 10-point stag. The only item of interest we uncovered were two potions of healing hidden in the griffin head.

We moved on to the second floor. We found an armory open to the roof. It contained some rusty spears and a cabinet containing some mundane bows, crossbows, and ammunition. Sandi replenished his arrows. We then found a barracks with a cultist guard passed out on the floor amid several empty wine bottles. He was drunk enough that we were able to gag and restrain him and drag him down to the basement for another round of interrogation. He managed to recover from his hangover rather quickly, refused to answer questions, and challenged Thok to one-on-one combat. Thok, of course, happily agreed. The battle between Thok and Werric the Wizened was short, and Thok was able to recover from the few hits that he took in the fight.

We continued exploring the upper floor, running into Talis, a cultist dressed in white armor. She had a pair of her guards, NPC types called Veterans identical in capabilities to Werric attack us from behind. This was an intense fight. Talis used a rather nasty fifth level spell: insect plague. It creates a damaging area of effect that also slows movement and obscures the terrain. However, like many duration spells in fifth edition, requires concentration. Unfortunately, despite constant attacks we managed to level against her, we failed to break her concentration before dropping her. Censura also an area of effect spell, hunger of hadar. It creates an area of cold darkness, also doing damage. Unfortunately, a lucky hit against Censura managed to drop his concentration, so it was not quite as effective at slowing down the veterans flanking us. I managed to deliver the killing blow in Talis with inflict wounds. However, the insects ate our squire, Egan.

With Talis down, focus fire from Thok, Censura, and Sandi dropped the two veterans. We've cleared the lodge of villains, and the DM has told us to expect to level-up at the next session.

The management of resources we've been adapting makes earlier encounters in the adventure day relatively easy, with plenty of high level spells and potent features being used to quickly end battles. Later battles often see us relying on lower-level features, and often competing against foes with plenty of higher-level features they are more than willing to unleash.