Castle Assault Part II

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.

Castle Attack, Part I

When we last left our heroes, we had convinced Snapjaw that we were willing help him and his tribe throw off the oppression of the cultists. However, Snapjaw was only able to convince half of his compatriots that we were capable of the feat. They proposed a test of strength: there was a "plant that shambles" plaguing them, so we had to go and kill it.

After short rest, the lizardfolk led us to the lair of the shambling mound in an old ruin. Thok decided to light a fire in front of its lair, mostly for the sake of showmanship. The creature emerged from its lair, only to promptly find itself the target of offensive spells, arrows, and hammer smashes. In our first turn we managed to deliver 58 points of damage! It's good to be fifth level. Ultimately, we were victorious without taking a single point of damage.

Snapjaw and his tribe spread the word about our heroics while we settled in for a long rest. After we woke up, we point on tiger-striped headbands and had tiger-stripe face paint put on to mark us as allies of the lizardfolk tribes, then made our way to lizardfolk camp deeper in the Mere to discuss the plan.

The lizardfolk let us know about the grounds around castle Naerytar, including the location of bullywug huts, the location of lizardfolk huts, and a pen for "trained" giant lizards we were told to avoid. They explained that the barbican was guarded by bullywugs and giant frogs, and that they kept a drum on the second floor to sound the alarm. We also learned that about half of the lizardfolk at the castle would actively help us, while the rest would stay out of our way and keep silent if questioned. Once we worked out a plan to attack the barbican, we canoed through the swamp to the castle.

D.J. tried another interesting option, splitting up 15 lizardfolk NPCs up between us (only Alek, Censura, Sandi and Thok were present) and controlled directly in battle. Time will tell how this works out. In the initial attack, it added lots of extra participants, but they ended up serving mostly as a distraction.

Censura successfully bluffed his way past the initial bullywug guards, so we had a surprise round to take out the 10 bullywugs and 2 giant frogs on the ground floor and 9 bullywugs on the second floor and silence the signal drum. It turns out fireball is useful for dropping masses of enemies. Censura dropped most of the ground floor guards in one turn. In the meantime, Alek managed to silence the drum, and then Thok was able to destroy it outright. Once the remaining enemies on the ground floor were taken care of by the lizardfolk and Sandi, Censura came upstairs and used another fireball to clear them.

Ultimately, only Thok took damage in that second battle, and that was mostly due to incredibly lucky rolls on the DM's part.

We regrouped in the barbican and planned our next course of action: allowing the lizardfolk to subdue the bullywugs while we tried to gain the help of a member of the Cult more friendly to the lizardfolk. We opted to allow the bullywug and lizardfolk conflict to occur "of screen" to save time.

We'll delve further into the castle, which is truly the largest and most complex dungeon this adventure has offered so far.

Some Mechanics Revisited

There were a couple of rules discussions we had that I think bear some comment.

Following the battle with the ettercaps and their spiders, D.J. noted that the ettercaps seemed a bit weak, particularly for CR 2 monsters. We did manage to handle them with little damage. But I did a little breakdown myself.

In this edition, custom-built monsters and NPCs are compared to a table to determine their CR. The table, found on page 274 of the DMG, ranks a monster's total to-hit bonus, AC, HP, average damage per turn, and save DCs to determine CR, and the CR then determines the NPC/monster's proficiency bonus. Taking a look at the ettercap's stats, their attack bonus is a bit high for a CR 2 monster, but their save DCs and HP are low. However, their over-all damage per round and AC are spot on. So are they over-powered, under-powered, or spot-on?

Honestly, it is a tough call. Challenge, particularly when trying to compare it to character levels. Even with the structure and restrictions on character options provided by Adventurer's League, a well-built and well-played group of characters can over-come even tremendous challenges, and that capability only grows as the characters level. I think some features are low-balled (such as pack tactics), but I think the over-all effect of some features (again, pack tactics) become easier to minimize as characters grow in level.

Then, Joseph had done some math. The next upgrade in armor for Thok is full plate. Based on the crafting rules, Thok would need to accumulate 300 downtime days in order to craft that. Based on Adventurer's League rules, Thok would need to complete 30 "episodes" of adventuring to accumulate that. Again, D.J. commented on this as possible design problem.

My take is actually more of a design flaw in the structured nature of Adventurer's League rather than game mechanics. In a home game, a DM can grant the party however many downtime days he wants. Adventurer's League provides a more strict approach. This is exacerbated by the "Season" structure of Encounters play. Further, even assuming we decided to play the full Tyranny of Dragons, Thok will have enough money to buy a suit of armor out-right rather than craft it for a discount before we finished Rise of Tiamat. This one is a little easier to fix: provide more opportunities to earn downtime days in structured play. Ultimately, though, it may not matter, at least for our game.

My game design experience is "arm chair," but I have made attempts to organize structured play. I can attest that few things will survive contact with players, ultimately. Good game design and good structured play events work to minimize imbalances rather than prevent them. And to be honest, my experience with previous editions of D&D show that this edition is by far and away is the best at minimizing it.

I'll return with our further adventurers. I have another announcement: started a new blog for my fictions: Tales of Trismegistus. Check it out!

Rats, Frogs, and Lizards

I'd like to take a moment to honor the memory of Leonerd Nimoy, who passed on February 27, 2015. Whether he was Mr. Spock or not, he was a great actor and a good man whose work touched various and sundry nerds, freaks and geeks. He will be missed.

Censura leveled up to 5th at the beginning of a session. In addition to learning a new Warlock spell (the classic fireball), he also learned darkness as a tiefling trait. He would get a chance to use his new spell later in the session.

We started off with a fight against a pair of rat swarms. Despite having only four players (myself, Paul, Joseph, and Nathan) we managed to dispatch them without taking any damage. Quite a reversal from a rat swarm battle in the first session that nearly resulted in a total party kill. Still, the swarms demonstrated the ability to move freely through occupied spaces, a benefit for them in the tight quarters of the 5-foot wide tunnel we were battling in.

Jamna showed up after the fight, commenting on Corrin running back to the strong room, afraid of the rats (the in-game excuse for Corrin's absence since his player was not present). It gave us a chance to mend some bridges before proceeding.

A few skill rolls gave us a little background on our location. Castle Naerytar, which we had learned about before, lies about 15 miles to the north. The ruin had once been used an observatory before being overtaken by the Mere of Dead Men. More importantly, Sandi let us know that a black dragon called Voharaghamanthor ruled the swamp. It was rumored to fast, faster even that a black dragon should be.

We spotted orange trail markers outside the entrance of the cave. After noting that the trail headed north, we camped a little off the trail to recover. We were unable to complete a long rest, however, as we heard guttural arguing on the trail. It was argument between creatures speaking draconic, and creatures speaking in croaking, frog-like language. Sandi let us know that the draconic voice sounded like its companions had abandoned it and it was being over-whelmed. So, doing our adventurer thing, we investigated.

We found that a group of bullywugs, humanoid frogs, had tied up and were torturing a lizardfolk (which is exactly what it sounds like; a humanoid lizard) by dumping him head first into a pool of water.. We  saw baskets and crates scattered on the trail, so we assumed the bullywugs had ambushed the lizardfolk, and decided to help the survivor.

There were 8 of the things altogether. The fight wasn't terribly challenging. Although the muddy swamp made every space on the map difficult terrain, and while bullywugs can jump good, it still made maneuvering in the battle challenging.

Both Censura and Alek had opportunities to use new third level spells: Censura used fireball twice to take out clusters of bullwugs. Alek used spirit guardians to kill bullywugs approaching the front lines. Thok also used his new feat to leap around the battlefield to minimize the effect of the mud. It lead to some questions on using Strength (athletics) to jump. Ultimately, the bullywugs were no match for us. While easy battles can get dull, every once in a while they help remind the players that yes, their characters are in fact bad-asses.

After the fight, we freed the lizardfolk. With lizard serving as a translator, we spoke with it, learning that its name was Snapjaw. We learned that his tribe had been hired to the Cult of the Dragon by Voharaghamanthor, but the Cult saw fit to use them only as porters. We learned that Rezmir had been seen at the castle, but her lieutenant there was Dralmora Borngray. Apparently Voharaghamanthor only tolerated the Cult and the lizardfolk were chafing under their rule. Using our performance in the battle as proof of our qualifications, we offered to help Snapjaw and his people with that. Snapjaw agreed, and we began discussing a plan to slip into the castle with next supply of lizardfolk treasure porters.

That's where we'll pick up next time.

A Little Bit of Intrigue

Before we get into the game itself, my friend Joseph and I finally bothered to give the Adventure's League Players Guide a proper read. We discovered that 4th level character can spend downtime days to "catch up" to level 5. So Joseph and Sean opted to spend 20 downtime days to train Thok and Corrin up to level 5. Nathan decided not to take the same option with Censura.

So most of the party is now level 5. What does that mean? First, fifth level marks the start of the "Second Tier" of play. In a more practical sense, our proficiency bonus has gone from +2 to +3. Dedicated warrior classes, such as Sandi, Thok, and (now) Corrin gain a second attack. Dedicated spell casters, such as Alek gain access to third level spells. If I were an arcane caster, that would mean the classic offensive spells lightning bolt and fireball. For Alek, that means spirit guardians, a handy AOE that slows foes near me and deals damage if they move into or start their turn there. I also have access to revivify. It costs 300gp, but it can raise someone if they've been dead less than a minute. I don't have the money for it now, so its not prepared. But I intend to prepare it once I have the money set aside. The last practical effect of fifth level? It's the cap for changing your character in Adventure's League. So Corrin is now set in stone.

We arrived in Waterdeep after two months on the road, and we earned our salaries and a bonus. Plus, I got a bonus for chatting up Edhelri and helping her sell her goods. We tracked down rumor regarding a half-black dragon that had set off from Waterdeep a tenday ago for a road construction site in the Mere of Dead Men to the north. The fact that rumors like this still act as adventure hooks and clues is making the absence of the Streetwise skill (remember, Intelligence (investigate) is more of a Search check, now) noticeable. I don't know if this means the designers were assuming the players would adapt the Gumshoe model, where if a clue is needed the advance the plot, the PCs just find it, no rolling or using resources. However, part of class-based systems like D&D is that each character has a niche, so rolling the skill helps make that player feel their character is being useful. As a general rule, though, I tend to follow the Gumshoe model in my own games, though.

In addition to that rumor, we learned a bit of background information. Apparently the geothermal activity in Neverwinter became critical, a volcano erupted and destroyed the city. It is being rebuilt, and the High Road, which use to run past the Mere of Dead Men now runs through the ever-expanding swamp. So there is constant road work to help supplies reach Neverwinter for the rebuilding project. Naturally, it seems like constant streams of supply caravans are good cover for the treasure the Cult if smuggling.

Being the table's resident Realmslore expert (though I am neither from Canada nor have a beard as magnificent as Ed Greenwood's), I decided that we would spend our free time at the Yawning Portal Inn and wish fellow adventurers luck on their way into Undermountain. There we were contacted by a man named Carlon Amofel, who had the word "Oathbreaker" scarred onto his forehead. He offered us a letter from Leosin, the half-elf monk who sent us north in the first place, with a payment: a 1200gp ruby, and a new mission: track the Cult's smuggling to the Carnath Roadhouse north of Waterdeep in the Mere of Dead Men. Carlon had even secured positions for us as caravan guards on the next caravan out.

Before we left, we learned that several of the travelers from our past caravan were raising money to raise the slain mother and son. We each contributed some money towards the cost of raising the murdered pair, and it was hinted that even if the mother could not be raised, her son, Egan, might prove a valuable NPC if brought back from the dead.

We left with a caravan owned by Ardred Briferhew, and had several small adventures over the Tenday journey to the roadhouse. Also traveling with us were the Cultists themselves, Azbara Jos, the suspected Red Wizard, and Jamna Gleamsilver, the murderous and mischievous gnome. We glossed over these; the group had decided they were tired of random encounters and wanted to move the story along. The only detail was a short conversation between Jamna and Alek where I tried, and failed, to convince her to help raise the murdered family, letting her know they were witnesses who could help her. On day seven, we reached the Mere of Dead Men, a cold weather bayou.

We reached the Karnath Roadhouse, a two story inn around a courtyard. The owner, a half-orc named Bog Luck, did not keep locks on all the doors, claiming that they froze in the cold weather. Instead, he offered us the use of a strong room for our valuables. Like the paranoid people most adventurers are, we opted to keep our valuables with us.

After an uneventful night, Sandi was approached by one of the cultists in the morning. They were still sore about the guards Jamna had murdered and still considered Sandi guilty, and demanded trial by combat. Without any way out, Sandi agreed and chose Thok as his second for the duel. The challenging cultist was a Veteran, and she was joined by a Dragonclaw.

The fight wasn't long, and it demonstrated some of the higher level abilities available to those two characters and how they really make characters more effective. The Dragonclaw, which you may remember as the NPC types guarding the entrance to dragon hatchery, wield two scimitars, have pack tactics, multiattack, and an ability that adds extra dice of damage on attacks that have advantage. In short, they are rocket-tag combat personified.

Thok first used goading strike, one of his favored Battlemaster features, to take away the Dragonclaw's advantage when it first attacked Sandi. Despite this, the first hit was a critical, but it only dealt 11 damage. Even though Sandi had to take a turn to disengage, Thok used another feature from Battlemaster, commander' strike to grant Sandi an extra attack during Thok's turn. Between Thok's and Sandi's attacks, both the not terribly hard to hit Dragonclaw and the tougher to hit Veteran soon fell. Thok was opting to keep the Veteran, who initiated the challenge, alive and dishonored. The (nominally) neutral good Sandi, however, gave in to the cultists egging and murdered the unconscious NPC.

After the duel, Azbara Jos showed up and told the cultists to clear out and get back to work. At that point, several members of the party noticed that Bog Luck had a sword scabbard similar to ones we had seen in the treasure troves at the dragon hatchery back near Greenest. I opted to watch the work crews, and noticed that as they unloaded, Bog Luck would mark certain crates with a red dragon's head and store them in his strong room.

Later that afternoon, Jamna Gleamsilver approached Arranis, whose player, Ethan, had missed the past couple of sessions. She offered the drow the same deal she had offered us: information and assistance. She wanted to meet him in the stables. Arannis consulted with the rest of the party, and we agreed. But first, we had to chase out the stable boys.

We ended up dealing with the youngest stable boy, called Wump, who apparently wanted to join our adventures. We grudgingly agreed, and he chased the other stable boys out. We rewarded Wump with a dagger with the advice that "the pointy end goes in the other guy," and "try not let the other guy put his pointy things into you."

Jamna let us know that she had been into Bog Luck's strong room and found a trap door hidden under a crate. She discovered that during the night, reptilian creatures would emerge from the trap door and remove the marked crates. She let us know that crates were removed during the night, and suggested we investigate the trap door around midnight.

As we were resting, Thok decided to sample some of the "healing" potions Corrin had bought from the old hag. Thok took damage from the first one and belched. So he asked for another. He took even more damage and belched and farted. Corrin decided that it was probably not a good idea to keep those potions.

That night, I used the silence spell to cover our entry into the strong room. We two of the characters in your party where clunky metal armor, it helps to make no noise. We made it in without incident, and Jamna showed us the crate. Beneath was a short shaft that led to a tunnel lined with unlit torched and with reptilian tracks in the ground. We also saw small rodents around.

Jamna offered to watch our backs as we investigated. I commented that she shouldn't strain herself. In retrospect, it was probably not a good idea to make her mad, but even with a possible Zhentarim member as an ally, they're still not terribly trustworthy. As she closed the trap door behind us, we saw the rodents gathering into swarms. While I wasn't there, a rat swarm nearly caused a TPK for the team at first level. So, when we return, we'll see how a higher level party fairs against a swarm.

As I close out, I'm planning to do some expanding on this blog. I'm hoping I can find the time to play and maybe review other RPGs, and maybe even other tabletop games. My preference will be for indie games, especially games from companies based out of Arizona. I'm also planning on featuring some of my fiction.

Spiders and Flies

Some changes had been made. As of last session, Lakeo was a high elf, and he chose to take a feat at 4th level: Lucky, which allows him to spend "Luck Points" to get re-rolls. There was some discussion on how it interacted Advantage and Disadvantage. The ultimate conclusion was that it would resolve afterwards. We also found out that instead of being a neutral Assassin archetype rogue, he was now lawful good monk of the Open Palm tradition. He also retrained one of his feats, taking a Mobility in place of Dual Wielding. According to Adventurer's League rules, they'll have until level 5 to finalize these changes. As Sandi and Alek just reached 5th, those two won't be far behind.

Our first encounters were dealing with the two dead guards. Jamna Gleamsilver approached Lakeo and gave him a little "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more." She offered a little tit-for-tat, but Lakeo wasn't interested.

Of course, us well armed and capable adventurers were on the suspect list of murderers. Sandi got singled out. Apparently the guards were killed with a short sword, so the cultists demanded to examine the weapon and compare it to the wounds. As we were led to scene, Sandi spotted Jamna hiding her own short sword. An argument ensued as to whether the wounds were inflicted with Sandi's weapon or the hidden weapon. Ultimately, the suspected Thayan took charge and told everyone to back down so we could get the caravan moving again.

Then, on day 53, Jamna interrupted us while we were eating, pulling an object out of Sandi's porridge. She claimed that the cultists had put it in there, and that after being ingested it would expand, revealing hooks and spikes that would tear the eater's insides apart. Alek spotted one lie; Jamna had planted it herself to claim she had saved one of our lives. Despite some hard bargaining, she remained silent about who she worked for. Alek made some guesses, and Zhentarim seemed to be the correct one. Ultimately, I let her know that the wagons were filled with treasure meant for the dragon queen and bound for Castle Naerytar.

On day 57, there was a ruckus at the back of the caravan. We investigated, and found that their guards were dead or injured and poisoned. Spiders and spider-like humanoids had attacked and stolen the horses and fled into the nearby woods. We tracked them do a pit and fought two ettercaps and six wolf spiders. Corrin used his newly minted monk abilities to move around the battlefield and gain extra attacks by spending ki points. This time I was able to use protection from poison on Thok, making sure the spider poison didn't take him out while he was tanking. Sandi also managed to finish the fight with a bang, rolling a critical and scoring 36 damage against an already injured ettercap, bringing it to -22 hit points.

Ultimately, Thok and Lakeo were able to get jobs as guards on those rear wagons, and managed to earn a little money from the journey. We got to Waterdeep.

We had one last round "Get to Know You," for an extra 500 experience. It was rather tense; the group needed to score three of six successes on Charisma rolls. The first three were failures, but Alek, Thok, and Censura came through in a clinch.

Sandi and Alek had reached level 5 from the experience for that session.

The Journey Continues

We had last left our heroes on day 28 of a 60 day journey. We reached the next way point on our journey: the town near the ruins of Dragonspear Castle on 29 with no further incidents. It was a cold and rainy night, and all the inns in Dragonspear were full. I did some information gathering (in this case, a straight Charisma check), and learned that the Way Inn, further up the road would have vacancies.

We traveled out to the Way Inn, and found the tap room empty except for a lord and three dilettantes. According to the Innkeeper and Barkeeper, these four had booked out all the rooms and the stables for the night. We tried, unsuccessfully, to bargain with them for rooms for the travelers and stable space for the horses. When bargains and intimidation failed, we tried a little violence. The first round revealed that they were wielding poisoned weapons, which added a little extra damage, but nothing unmanageable.

The second round, however, they revealed that they had much more potent poisons on their weapons, and more than enough hit points to soak up a round of focused attacks. We ended up having to retreat. While Thok, Alek, and Corrin opted for peaceful retreat, Sandi and Lokeo took pot shots before running. Ultimately, the whole thing cost us 900 gold to get Censura's and Corrin's unconscious forms out of there. Sandi and Lokeo have, of course, committed the sin of angering the healer and the tank.

Ultimately, two horses died in the freezing rain without proper shelter that night, while the "dilettantes" with poisoned weapons jibed at us. They were actually 4 assassins, CR 8 NPCs. This turned out to be an unwinnable scenario, something I dislike in the extreme (probably because I feel I get enough of that in my real life without the need for it in the games I use to entertain myself), so I kind of had a sour taste in my mouth the rest of the night.

We started the fourth Tenday of travel with another round of DJ's Getting to Know You mini-game. This time, rather than roll, we would pick one of our background details: Personality Traits, Ideal, Bond, or Flaw, and use that to describe our interaction with one of the NPCs. Sean and Reese had yet to fill these in for Corrin and Lokeo, so the rest of us interacted with the NPCs while they worked out those details. We learned that Tyjit fights with a pair of daggers and hates bullies. We were unable to learn more about Oyn when Sandi tried to turn him against his new arguing partner, Censura. Thok shared a story about otyugh's (like non-aquatic versions of dianogas (the tentacle monster from the trash compactor in Star Wars)) with Leda Widris, one of the guards on the second wagons, who proved to be honest and courageous.  Orvustia Esseren, another guard on the second wagon, was raised on a farm, too, and that this was her first adventure. I ended up talking to Edhelri, praising her leadership and while using Alek's ideal: responsibility and following reasonable authority. Rather than learning anything new, she offered me a side quest: find a buyer for her wood in Waterdeep, and I would get a 10% commission on the sale.

Otherwise, the 4th Tenday passed uneventfully. We reached the next settlement on the road, Daggerford, on Day 50. We made a 5th Getting to Know You roll. This one was done as a group Charisma check to learn more about the 7'5" Sulesdeg the Pole. While we did not manage to get him talking, he made an observation for us about a newcomer.

There were two newcomers that joined the caravan at Daggerford, actually. The first was a man dressed in woolen clothes and a hat. Sulesdeg said he spotted tattoos under the man's clothes and mentioned the wizards of Thay. This alleged red wizard was welcomed among the cultists immediately. Thay is ruled by a lich, an undead spellcaster, named Szass Tam, and if they're working with the Cult of the Dragon, that is Bad News.

The other traveler was a gnome woman named Jamna Gleamsilver. She was inquisitive, especially about the cultist wagons. I opted to share information about our suspicions, including the incident with the spilled treasure and the murdered family. I let her know about the corpses and suggested speak with dead, if she could make it available.

The final event involved two of the cultist guards apparently recognizing Lokeo. Lokeo used a spell called friends, which grants him advantage on a Charisma check, but the target becomes hostile towards him at some future time. While Lokeo also used it on his Getting to Know You roll, overall I would say it isn't a very good utility spell for an Eldritch Knight. Detect magic is definitely a better choice. Lokeo won't have to worry about those guards turning, hostile, however. Those two guards were found murdered the next morning.

More mysteries on our journey. Hopefully next time we'll make it to Waterdeep, the City of Splendors.