Session 83 - How To Train Your Dragon
24th November 2023
In-game timeline: Start of session: 1490DR Ches 16. End of session: 1490DR Ches 17
The group decides to camp above the chasm. Iwee casts her Tiny Hut for them to, hopefully, safely rest within, and Jaxii puts her Immovable Rod in the door handle to stop that being easily opened whilst they rest.
The group rests for 8 hours. Jaxii and Iwee are no longer exhausted - not from the rest, which was not particularly restful in the current situation, but from using the potion of vitality and a Lesser Restoration spell.
When they awake, and the hut disappears, Jaxii implicitly, without stating it, collects her Immovable Rod from the door. They then make their way down the ladder.
Using Lionel the rope to aid them, they all manage to get to the bottom of the ladder, though the descent down a slippery ladder is not easy and a couple of them are close to slipping and falling.
The base of the ladder is in a natural cave system, with a fast-flowing river flowing through it. The waterfall from above falls into a pool that flows into this river. The entire place is in darkness, and the group need to light a torch for Derrick and Jaxii to see where they are walking. Jaxii spots some large, lizard-like footprints in the areas of soft earth. This concerns them a little.
The ledge they are on ends in an ancient stone bridge that crosses the river to another ledge, and then further on to another stone bridge that leads back over the same river a little further downstream. They cross the first bridge without problems, but the second, which looks a lot more dilapidated and broken, causes them problems. As Karoshi walks across, closely followed by the others, the remains of the bridge collapse and they all start to fall into the river below. Luckily they all manage to grab hold of the remaining edges of the bridge and pull themselves out. Karoshi and Iwee are on one side of the bridge, and Jaxii and Derrick are on the other. Derrick leaps across with his (stolen?) boots, and Jaxii impresses them all with a pole-vault across using one of her javelins.
Together again, they find themselves on the edge of a large, dark lake. The ledge they are on foes for about 100 feet before ending at a cliff, though there are some rocks in the lake that could be used as a means of getting to another ledge further round. Unfortunately these rocks are quite far apart so would need some level of athleticism, or a PLAN, to get across.
Derrick sends Pacino over the lake to see what is around the corner. At this point a large, black, reptilian head rises out of the water of the lake beneath the owl. The dragon's mouth opens and a jet of acid spews towards Pacino as the owl disappears in a cloud of acid.
Our "heroes" are in shock.
They know there is at least one dragon in the lake. How to get past it? Lots of discussions ensue. So many discussions, in fact, that the dragon is able to get towards the edge of the lake, near to where the group are standing, and raise its head up enough to shoot a line of acid towards the group. They all take significant damage as the head drops silently back into the dark waters.
Our "heroes" retreat a little to be further back from the water's edge to discuss their next steps…