- Quintus, Rowena, Rauno, Trevor, Kelkzar, Black Flying Creature
AC 36 T 8 FF 36 CMD 39
Buoyed by the power of the haste spell, Quintus advances and calls on Sarenrae's power to heal the party.
You all remember from your first adventure that the hallway inside is 20' wide and look like this dragon should fit into it. It is pearched about stop swipe at anyone trying to enter.
Rowena uses her bardiche to aid Kelkzar's next strike.
+2 to Kelkzar's next hit.
Trevor curses as his strikes miss and miss, then realizes the dragon uses some kind of magic to protect itself!
Feeling the burn of the dragon's bite, he asks for Her grace.
Feeling his skin heal rapidly, he finds courage in his faith and keeps hacking at the black reptilian madness.
The dragon roars in pain as Trevor connects on a pair of blows.
Kelkzar and Rauno to go!
The blurry outline the dragon had disappears after Rauno casts his spell.
Kelkzar lets the rage loose and a red film seems to color his eyes as he feels a surge of strength flood into his muscles. He stabs three times in quick succession at the dragon, bleeding from the horrible wounds that the monster has inflicted. The first two attacks stab through the dragon's bony plates, but the third, glances harmlessly off the scales.
The dragon coming close to taking out one of the pesky fighters against her in one bite, knows she has to inflict as much damage as possible across the board before taking too many more hits. She bites down on Kelkzar confident she can take him out before using her other attacks on Trevor.
38 Physical Damage and 10 Acid
*Hit*
*Hit*
*Hit*
*Hit*
- Quintus, Rowena, Rauno, Trevor, Kelkzar, Black Flying Creature
AC 36 T 8 FF 36 CMD 39
Aghast at the power of the dragon, Quintus again calls on his patron to heal the party.
As Quintus' healing helps keep Kelkzar afloat, Rowena realizes that something drastic needs to happen now. She drops her bardiche and leaps into the air. Once level with the dragon, she attempts a Ki throw (spending hero point for +8 luck bonus).
She spends two Ki points, and with a feat of super-human strength, dexterity, and skill, flips the dragon over her shoulder and down onto the ground below (squares K4-M6).
The tripped dragon provokes AoOs from everybody except Rauno, due to Greater Trip. It also provokes from Rowena for Vicious Stomp.
Bleh. Maybe falling damage?? :)
Trevor gets plummeted like some gnomish pinata, but blood instead of candy is what sprinkles out of him.
Still he stands. Defiant, though his mind reels from the pain.
Knowing that death is looming, Trevor opts for a perilous gambit. Instead of asking Her to heal him, he narrows his eyes and asks: "Inheritor, bleed this evil from the world!"
Feeling Her grace wash over him like calmness, Trevor relaxes his grip on his fauchard, loosening his muscle, before sending the weapon in a deadly arc, over, and over again, knowing very well that the drake has to fall now, or he will fall next.
As the dragon draws back a claw from the punishment given to Trevor, Rowena drops her pole arm and leaps into the air, wrapping herself around the lizard's arm. The dragon pauses a moment, trying to shake the annoyance loose, and failing that, lowers it's head to bite the woman in two. Rowena releases her grip at the last second, leaping up further to grab a horn, twisting the dragon's head down and to the side. With the dragon's neck overextended over the edge of the cliff, Rowena allowed herself to drop to the ledge above the Cairn entrance, beneath the dragon itself, and heaves against it's underbelly. With one mighty push, using the dragon's own bulk against it, she hurls both of them off the edge, and while the lithe young woman is able to flip herself over and land on her feet, the huge dragon doesn't have the room or time to maneuver, and lands flat on it's back on the ground below.
The dragon's bite nearly fells Kelkzar, but somehow the half-orc maintains his footing. As Rowena drops it onto the ground, Kelkzar seizes the opening and springs back to get more room, then savagely attacks again with his longspear, knowing that if the creature isn't finished soon, he will be.
Quintus slashes at the dragon as it falls, but his blade turns on its obdurate scales.
Rowena, how are you tripping without reach?
That's why I used a move action first to jump 10 feet into the air first (her Acrobatics check should be enough to jump up 11 feet). I fully expect to eat an AoO for the movement, unless she can also attempt an Acrobatics check to avoid those.
Quintus heals the group .
As Rowena leaps into the air she gets bitten.
39 Physical + 4 Acid
She successfully slams the dragon into the ground (No Damage with DR).
Rauno activates his foretell ability.
With the foretell ability aiding his attacks, Trevor manages to land a more lethal version of an attack (Crit confirms!). His spells also penetrates the dragon's resistance to magic, impacting him fully! (Good thing too since you had already added it in and you needed an 18 on the roll!)
(Your CL says 5 on your sheet, but I believe it is CL 7 now)
Combining for great team work the dragon is put down . It seems for a moment it will rise again, but falls under sheer amount of wounds you delivered. Battered, burned, but not beaten you win the day!
Combat over
Rowena limps to the side on her ruined leg and collapses to the ground.
Trevor rushes to Rowena's aid, channeling Her grace through his hands to heal her wounds.
Only when she wakes and looks him in the eyes does he realize his hands could have been layed more... Wisely. He blushes violently and stammers helplessly.
Rowena, staring numbly through the pain at the dead dragon, is startled by a warm hand on her leg and another on her left boob. As the healing energy fills her, she makes eye contact with Trevor, glances at the offending hand, and comments (as the young man quickly whips his hand away), "I don't think I got bit there..."
She does let Trevor help her to her feet, however, and offers him a quick peck on the cheek. "Nice to know you still care, though. You sure are cute."
Taking in the dragon, she comments to both Trevor and Kelkzar, "That was some impressive work, you two. I sincerely hope I never end up on your bad sides."
Kelkzar sags exhausted after the fight, nearly out on his feet. He stands there breathing hard and bleeding until Quintus heals him with the wand. "Gods that was close. Damn thing nearly killed me. Thanks Quintus. You too Rowena. If you hadn't put that thing down in the dirt, I don't think we'd have finished it yet."
-Posted with Wayfinder
"Ahah- Hm- I wouldn't worry Ro, You'd have me on my back in no time! I mean- I was ref-" Trevor turns to face the dragon, and avoid Rowena's eyes: "What a monstrous beast. Such power... Hard to believe we managed to bring it down."
After a moment passed: "Folks at the village will be glad to know the beast's been vanquished. What should we do with its body?"
The black dragon had nothing magical on it, its deadly fury all natural. "Luckily" black dragons are known to lose their focus in battle or else it could have been a deadly encounter. Where it "fell", aka where Rowena planted it, it is out of the way of the entrance.
Once the adrenaline wears off and healing is done, Rauno remembers Hiska, the shaman leader of the lizardmen, talk of Ilthane the Black. The dragon also talked of slaughtering her children when she first attacked. (Though she blamed Allustan)
"Unless you plan to dig a fifty-foot hole, I say we leave it where it lies. Let's hope she was keeping Allustan inside the Cairn."
She starts in to the cave, then stops. "You know...don't dragons usually accumulate large piles of treasure? A dragon this powerful..."
Assault on civilisation...
"I hope Allustan is all right..." says Trevor as he enters the cave, while thinking of all that has happened since they came here not so long ago.
As you once again enter the Whispering Cairn you notice a difference. Where it was once overgrown at the entrance, and the floor treacherous causing you to walk slower as to not twist your ankle, the entryway is clean and smooth.
Kelkzar notices immediately the foot traffic he assumes must be Allustan. As you follow those footprints he moves past the first alcove where you fought the wolves and to the second alcove that had a collapsed passageway to the east and a broken ancient apparatus to the west.
The western hall extends perhaps forty feet, ending at a small marble platform raised about six inches off the floor. A strange, shattered arcane apparatus rests upon this platform, its curved ovular frame giving the appearance of a noble's dressing mirror. Only a third of this frame remains. An unusual arcane glyph about the size of a man's head has been delicately carved into the base plate of the support platform.
The eastern passage continues for fifteen feet, a huge pile of collapsed rubble blocks the alcove from top to bottom, it looks like it would take weeks to tunnel through the densely packed debris.
That was what it looked like now, and although the apparatus appears unchanged other than a good cleaning an the floor being cleared out, the eastern passage is now clear.
The walls of this passageway are scarred and dented, indicating that this whole area has been, until recently, collapsed. At the end of the tunnel stands a glossy black surface with a raised sphere in the center, like the boss in the center of a shield. The glossy black surface resembles a heavily lacquered door.
Allustan's footprints lead in that direction to the back surface at the end of the hall. Rauno detects magic coming from the surface, and it is obvious to you all that it is not solid as an occasional ripple moves through the black surface. Rauno has read about such things before and knows it is a portal and that one only needs to walk through it to reach the other side....wherever that may be.
Trevor looks at the passage and asks: "This was all blocked! How can someone clear it so fast!?"
And later: "Isn't there a way to know where we'll end up?"
Upon learning its a portal, Rowena suggests they pause while she goes and gets a tree branch. She asks Rauno to write a note explaining that it's them coming through.
Are there any signs that the dragon has been in here? Once the note has been tossed through, Rowena experiments with the stick, putting it in a bit and pulling it back.
Quintus casts a healing spell on Kelkzar.
"Thank you Quintus. Almost as good as new. I think your thought on scouting is a good one Rauno."
Rauno conjures a pair of lantern archons and they approach the portal. Right before they go through, a creature inside the portal itself reaches out and slash one of the archons.
You are not sure exactly what it is, but Rauno and Quintus easily identify it as some sort of unusual undead creature. But what it is impossible to tell. It is actually inside the portal, not on this side or the other.
- Rauno, Kelkzar, Rowena, Portal Undead, Quintus, Trevor
AC 28 T 14 FF 24 CMD 32
"How are we supposed to hit it?" asks Trevor, surprised by the result.