Ravvek, cursing in Elvish, draws a bead, waiting for the flying Kobold to enter the lit area again...
Ravvek sets his bow down frustrated that he cannot see the flying bomber draws his Rapier and crosses the camp to the only kobold left on the ground. Plunging the Rapier into its face abruptly killing it.
Beware, we have a flyer dropping some kind of nasty satchel. Can anyone light him up?
Sasha looks over as Raiden coughs and awakens and adds a little hmph. He then stares directly at the flying creature with serious eyes and shouts in draconic....
Sashah says a quick prayer and touches Uriah.
Uriah comes to and groans.
Awwwwhhhh. Owwwwwwww. he slowly stands and draws his Rapier woozily
Away with you! Before I give you a taste of Cold Steel!
Anton calmly walks back to his tent and pulls out his bow and a quiver of arrows, and then moves to the campfire. He holds the back of an arrow in the flame until the fletching catches fire. He carefully nocks the arrow and fires it toward the sound of the flapping wings.
The arrow fires wide on where you thought the creature to be but the small amount of light reflects off of the creatures black scales briefly.
Raiden stands woozily up and sees the reflection of the monk's lit arrow on the little flying menace. He takes out one of his blacksmithing hammers and tosses it at the thing.
Raiden cheers out loud, hoping that knocks the thing to the ground where they can better end it.
(Also the player cheers for having rolled so well...just sayin')
Nice shot, Raiden!
Zayless focuses his energies on Raiden. His eyes glow and he reaches out toward the fighter.
The dragonborn takes cover by the rocks.
Thrum kron gorrim OOOFF!
The creature begins to respond to Sashah's demand when it is cut short by a hammer to it's gut. Angry and imbarrassed it tries to drop a rock on the old man for distracting it. Seemingly undaunted by Sashah's defensive magic the creature accurately drops a large stone onto the wisened half elf.
Ha! Nightscale will melt your bones! The Tooth is ours! You leave now! The creature continues in common. He then turns to fly away.
Panting "...oh hell no. Son of a b$#~# thinks he can just flap away after all that?! Suck this, flapper!" chucking a rope with a steel grappling hook up at the monster in an attempt to bring it down...
Bonus action to move hunter's mark.
Sashah, looking angry beneath his wide brim hat, drops his symbol amulet out of his hand as he raises both hands toward the sky. He quickly traces sigils into the air in front of him, they remain visible for mere moments glowing in the air. With his other hand his thumb is tucked and four fingers extended toward the flying creature. A small dart of light shoots out of each finger and simultaneously hit the flying creature.
Anton launches another arrow.
Uriah points with his Rapier Oh! The Tooth is yours? Just the one of them eh? Seems you need an apothecary!
Myastan, Raiden, and Uriah
Zayless draws and fires his crossbow at the fleeing enemy.
Raiden shouts a thanks to Zayless for that much appreciated healing energy. He looks at all the well-aimed magic and weapons being sent after the flying rat and being unable to see it further, scans the immediate area to see if there are any more kobolds to be sliced up. Ready an action to attack anything that comes within range that ain't with the group.
As the creature flies away your team assaults the airspace with missile weapons. Sashah’s Magic projectiles blow into the back of the creature causing it to yelp with nervous pain while the two bowmen just barely miss the mark. You literally think you hear the creature start to cry as Uriah insults it and to add injury to insult Myastan hones in on the sound of the creatures sobs and drives a bolt into the base of its neck. You all hear the sound of a body crashing through tree limbs and finally hitting the ground.
Your adrenaline begins to drop and the night seems to return to the chilled wind and cold icey rain drops. What would you like to do?
Anton looks in the direction the kobold ran. "The one that escaped could return with reinforcements. We would be wise to move our camp and light no fire. Come the morning, we at least have a direction."
He wipes the blood off his sword. "The urd mentioned 'Nightscale,' does that name mean anything to any of you?"
With your previous knowledge checks, they were high enough that Anton, Uriah, Sashah have heard the name referring to dragon known to hunt these lands.
Scram immediately bolts towards the downed dragonkin, eager to finish it off if necessary.
Raiden takes off after Scram to also make sure it's dead. He will then agree with Anton, that we should ditch this camp and move on.
Rav leans back against a tree and takes a deep breath, Anton is right. We'd best relocate, and perhaps we can find a place with some cover so that I can make a blind. Provided that no one snores, we should be okay.
The paladin walks by Uriah and briefly puts a hand on the bard, nodding quietly as Uriah feels warmth flow through his body.
Then, Ravvek does the same to Anton.
Let us move. Be careful, it is dark and we dare not light a torch.
Sashah grumbles, but begins packing up his part of the camp.
Anton packs his gear and puts his boots and tunic back on. "If memory serves, Nightscale is a dragon. These kobolds very nearly had us... their master will be far more dangerous."
As he stands, he looks at his companions. "There would be no shame if any of you wants to turn back."
Ravvek smiles, Thank you for your concern, my friend. I think the risk will be worth the reward. Besides, the kobolds cause no end of trouble to the people that hunt and wood near here. Best clear them out.
While Scram and Rai make sure the kobolds are dead and relieve them of anything of value the rest of the group packs up camp. With Rav in the lead you move further from the right ad a bit until he finds a suitable spot to set up a blind and does so. Resetting the watch you are all able to rest through the night.
Zayless looks about, "It will take more than pretender kurs to shake our resolve. But relocating and concealing ourselves better makes sense."
With the morning light, you look through the recovered items. The kobolds carried a collective total of 8 gp in coins, a potion of healing, and a half-eaten mouse. The urd was wearing a silver stud earring set with a round piece of polished jet worth 25 gp and a satchel containing a journal belonging to a man named Tholm H’rek (TOLM huh-REK).
- Tholm was an adventurer from Neverwinter who believes he has discovered an entrance to Khundrukar.
- A simple, hand-drawn map bearing two recognizable features—Blasingdell and the Stone Tooth—is folded inside the journal. An “X” is drawn on the Stone Tooth’s eastern side near the words “Dark Mere” in the same handwriting as that of the journal. The marked location appears to be only a day’s travel east, while Blasingdell is two days away at best.
Zaytless eyes the book. He looks to Sashah, "We should study this for any details." He offers the wizard first crack.
Ravvek crouches in the dawning light as he begins starting the fire for their breakfast. He notices someone looking through the swag, What have you got there?
Scram slices at the dead mouse thoughtlessly on the ground "'Mere'? What kind of word is that, 'mere'? Like a pond? Dark pond? Gotta be ice up here, no?"
Rav shrugs, I guess? It's no Bremen's Run, but the muck is likely to be frigid. With this bit, and the tracks of our visitors last night, we should be able to locate their warren.
Zayless pours over the journal talking at length with anyone else who would listen.
The Journal Info and Map. The party is currently where the red square is.
Ill also put it in the campaign info.
Khundrukar (ka-hoon-droo-KAR1) is the final resting place of the Stonehammer Clan of shield dwarves, descendants of the ancient kingdom of Delzoun. It was built by the smith Durgeddin the Black after orcs from the Spine of the World drove his people south from their ancestral home to the Rauvin Mountains. When Durgeddin's folk finally settled the caves, their numbers had dwindled to less than thirty, with only a dozen or so fighting men.
Decades later, when another orc horde finally descended upon Khundrukar, its people were slaughtered and the citadel was left in ruin. Today, Khundrukar is but a distant memory to the dwarves of old Delzoun, a ghost story dwarf parents tell their children around their cooking fires. Even still, every century or so a band of adventurers sets out from Citadel Adbar, hoping to reclaim Durgeddin's treasures, dying within Khundrukar's haunted halls.
Sashah scratches his beard in thought. "Hrmm..To zhe 'X' zhen?"
Scram's lower chin is oscillating up and down furiously in a shiver from the cold but he manages to get out "Yeah, gotta be some treasure there I guess. Hold on, don't let that fire go out..." he grabs stout log and brightens up a micro hooded lantern, hugging it tight to his body as they go.
Anton never looks up from the the mountainscape he is inking on a sheet of parchment. ”Yes,” he says. “Let us see what evil lurks in this Khundrukar.”
He nods approvingly at his work, and then packs his inks and brushes in a wooden case, carefully rolling up the parchment and placing it in an ivory scroll tube.
The party pack up thier gear and head out following the map and the kobold tracks. The trail of the kobold is not hard to follow, blood smeared on the occasional trees, foot prints in the mud, the broken underbrush of a creature making haste through it. That haste now seems like it may have been a bad idea however. As you come over a small ravine made from snow run off over the years you find the crumpled body of the kobold from last night.
The rest of the journey to the X Mark becomes a slog and takes longer than expected due to an inconveniently-placed swamp, but you’ve eventually found some reprieve from the wet and bugs.
The Stone Tooth stands tall over you, and ahead you see a cleft in the stone wall—hidden behind thick undergrowth. In front of the undergrowth, the swollen and moldering body of what appears to be a human male lays in a heap beside the remains of its camp. A cloud of buzzing flies takes to the wing in response to your arrival. It is rather late at this point and the day has been taxing from traveling through the swamp.
Anton looks at the corpse. "I suspect that journal belonged to this poor fellow." He crouches and examines the body to see what killed him.
"He deserves a proper burial. Does anyone have a shovel?"
Uriah frowns at the sight of the kobold corpse That there chap woke me from a good and proper dream about a lovely elven...nevermind.
Uriah frowns again at the human corpse Another one. If its not dead it wants to kill you in your sleep. The North is insane.
"No less sane than countless other places... death and brutality can be found anywhere. All we can do is try to make it a little less so and find our own inner peace."
Anton says a quiet prayer to Ilmater and sets about gathering rocks to build a cairn.
"Na, I never carry a spade...we burn the dead where I'm from." he explains.
Ravvek pulls the shovel from under his pack, nodding at Anton and begins trying to break through the frozen ground.
Raiden can take a turn with the shovel but does not otherwise carry one either. Wonder if he found what he was looking for after all? Does he have any belongings we can check, maybe make a handwriting comparison to?