Sessions 111 - 113 - I Still Think It Was Old Man Gerald

 

5th, 12th, 16th October 2026

In-game timeline: Start of session: 1490 Mirtul 26. End of session: 1490 Mirtul 28

Our "Heroes" are planning to detour from their primary task of finding the Eye of Kronos, to help Jaxii regain her Mojo at the Dragon Shrine. Given that the only hint they have as to Kronos' whereabouts is a vague "west", and the groups' deductive skills are at a low, this detour may help them *all* regain their Mojo.

Or maybe not.

Arriving at Lower Slaughter, one of the villages at the base of the mountain range that is home to the Dragon Shrine, they come upon a village in uproar. Some children have gone missing, and the villagers blame a nearby family of wyverns who until now have only stolen a few cattle and sheep but who seem to be encroaching more and more to the outskirts of the village. A mob is planning to take on these wyverns and rescue the missing children.

Our group of "Heroes" realise the futility, and likely certain death, that this action may lead to and so they vaguely dissuade the villagers to stand down, promising they will take care of the deed and rescue the children.

They visit Old Man Gerald who they immediately brand as A Dodgy Character and the likely abductor of the children, but decide that further investigation is unwarranted and that the wyverns need to be dealt with. They are nothing if not focussed, this group. Even Jaxii, who is struggling with her new-found promotion to a Queen of the dragonborn tribes, due to her prior poor interactions with dragon-kin, is sharpening her greatsword to deal with more dragon-kin. Hmmm.

They wander to the base of the mountains and look up. It's getting slightly dark, and a little chilly, so they decide to rest for the night before attempting a slightly challenging climb to face some wyverns. Erecting their impenetrable-and-vastly-overpowered hut, they settle down to an apparently well-earned sleep.

Only Karoshi remains awake enough to hear the clamouring sound from outside.

It seems their persuasion of the villagers only went so far, and their seeming inaction for the remainder of the day failed to stop the mob reforming and the villagers coming to serve their own form of justice to the wyverns.

Luckily Iwee persuades the majority of the group to back off. However, the first five villagers up the mountain are still climbing towards the ledge containing the wyvern lair. The little gnome seems to be back on form after her rest, however, and quick as a flash she casts Hypnotic Pattern on the climbing farmers, managing to stop a few of them in their tracks. 

Karoshi does slow down the remaining one by Commanding him to come down, though that only lasts long enough for him to descend a little before he stops and wonders why he was climbing down. He pauses, unsure as to why his friends have stopped moving, and starts to shake them out of their trance.

Derrick uses his (stolen) boots of leaping to jump up the mountain quickly, arriving as Dorran, the apparent leader of the mob, is shaking one of his friends to snap him out of his trance and then heading back up the mountain. Derrick reaches the person as he emerges from his trance and punches him in the face, causing him to fall to the ground, unconscious. So only Dorran is continuing up.

Whilst the rest of the party explain to the villagers why it is A Bad Idea to take on the wyverns, Derrick picks a fight with Dorran and easily knocks him out. Derrick then slowly brings Dorran and the other unconscious guy down the mountain.

Conversation with the other villagers is not going well. Even Karoshi is getting frustrated with them, but they are determined to help their children, and our "Heroes" are seemingly not prepared to head straight up the mountain. In fact, one of them appears carrying apparently two dead villagers over his shoulder which he dumps onto the ground. So some more of the villagers head up the mountain, though some do remain at the bottom, somewhat scared.

Iwee persuades the party to head immediately up the mountain after the villagers. Unfortunately the delays enable the villagers to reach the wyvern lair first and they disappear over the lip of a ledge. The sounds of fighting, screaming and monstrous squawking emerge from a cave at the back.

Using Pacino, they find out that the villagers had gone into the lair, injured a young wyvern and paid for their violence by quickly being killed by the adult wyverns in the lair. 

As they all arrive on the ledge, two wyverns emerge and angrily fly above them. Derrick takes some damage when they attack him, but he shows a surprising amount of restraint in not retaliating immediately, though he does make one of them frightened of him. The rest of the group go into defensive mode, surrounding themselves in Karoshi's darkness spell and turning invisible for good measure.

With all of the group being unseen, the wyverns fly away from the ledge and descend towards the villagers below. Iwee and Jaxii head into the cave and see the bodies of the villagers who previously went in there, along with another adult wyvern who is protecting two young wyverns, one of whom is very hurt from pitchfork-type wounds.

Iwee casts a healing spell at high level on the young wyvern, restoring a lot of its lost health which stops the adult from attacking them. Iwee is also able to see some old crossbow bolt wounds on the young wyvern. Hmmm.

The party decide to back out, just as the other two wyverns return. The adult in the cave persuades the arriving ones not to attack these people who had helped save their child, which enables the group to escape, though not before they find out, using basic draconic language, that the human children are not in the cave and any death or disappearance of the children was not due to them.

Descending the mountain to find the villagers, they find a scene of destruction - the wyverns killed some more of the villagers before flying off back to their lair. Our "Heroes" take the side of the wyverns and explain that they were just protecting their young, and that they did not kill or take the children. The party then try to pin the mystery of the lost children on Old Man Gerald, for no reason other than that they don't like him. They later revisit the poor old man, where Derrick gives him a full-on interrogation and breaks his rocking chair. The old man refuses to talk to them any longer.

That night and the following morning, the group finally does a bit of investigation - somewhat late in the day, some may say. They discover that the children were quite a bunch of scallywags, and they had stolen a boat, not for the first time, but this time the boat had not been returned. Spending the day looking along the river, close to where the shoe and crossbow were found, they discover the remains of a smashed up boat and, close to some dangerous rapids, the rest of the destroyed boat and the bodies of two of the children, who had drowned - they had no scratches or bites from a wyvern, nor any evidence of abduction by an innocent old man. 

Mystery somewhat solved, the party decide to split up, with Karoshi waiting for the rest of them in the villages, helping the villagers bury their dead, whilst the rest of them head to the Dragon Shrine, about a day's walk away. The villagers mount a search and later find the body of the third missing child, a little further downstream, again drowned.

An easy trek up the mountain for Jaxii, Iwee and Derrick leads to a beautiful and peaceful ruin which is the Dragon's Grace Shrine. It appears to be tended by a single female, a lady called Aileon, who beckons them welcome. 

Sensing that it is to this lady that Jaxii needs to demonstrate her worth, the Dragonborn, with the valued support of Iwee and the astonishing support of Derrick, pleads her case. Aileon then transforms, revealing herself to be an Ancient Gold Dragon. She congratulates Jaxii, explaining that her spirit, and the strong backing of her friends, have won her the blessing of the Dragon Shrine, although it is noted that perhaps the problem between the villagers of Slaughter and the wyverns could have been solved without the deaths of ten of the villagers?

After a short rest at the shrine, the three "Heroes" start to return back to Karoshi at the village, with Jaxii now feeling inspired, blessed and worthy, and her Queen's Crown and the magical Taran-Veil greatsword both feeling comfortable in her hands. Aileon once more appears before Jaxii, and explains to her:

"The Wild Magic of the earth chooses its champions This is not some chance selection of people who happen to be standing in the right place at the right time. There are five. Always five."

"There have been many Heroes in the world. Some defeat monsters, some save kingdoms, some change the course of history. Their names are remembered in songs and books, and their deeds become stories that grow larger with every generation. The Chosen are rarely among them."

"Their purpose is different. They are given a task, and when it is done the Chosen are expected to disappear back into the world from which you came. This is how it has been for those who came before you. Names forgotten, deeds concealed. Because there are things in this world that are safer when nobody knows where they are or who has protected them."

"When one of the five dies, those who remain share their powers. Their strength becomes the strength of the others; their portion of the burden becomes part of the burden carried by the survivors."

"To me, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the ambitions of men and the schemes of gods are rather smaller things. I have watched great civilisations flourish and vanish beneath forests that did not exist when they were founded. I have seen heroes become legends and legends become forgotten names. The world continues."

"But that does not mean your task is meaningless. It means only that you should understand its scale. You are not being asked to become one of the great heroes whose names fill the histories of your peoples. You are being asked to do something much quieter, and perhaps much more important: to fulfil the duty for which you were chosen, and then to leave the world safe enough for others to live their ordinary lives."

"You may find that the task is difficult. I suspect it will be. The Wild Magic does not choose people because their path will be easy, nor does it promise that all five will survive to the end. It merely honours the pact made with the Kovacs, and the original Five - those wearing blue - long ago."

"Go, Jaxii. Do what the Wild Magic has chosen you to do. The world will continue whether you succeed or fail, as it always has. But there are people within that world for whom your success will mean everything."

"Try not to disappoint it."

Our "Heroes", the "Chosen", return to Lower Slaughter and decide upon their next steps…