- 1800 XP
- 100-ish platinum coins
- Magic flask (Fathom)
So there we were, standing in front of this blue dragon that had just erupted out from the ground in front of us. Yikes! Things could get real bloody real fast. Before anyone else could do anything, Fathom ran up to where Abran and I were. She curtseyed to the dragon and offered it greetings. It looked…puzzled. Then Gooseneck followed her lead, running up, bowing to it, and speaking to it in Draconic. It stands up out of the rubble, and I see a large wound on its side that’s in the process of healing. It answers Gooseneck in Draconic, and seems to have relaxed a bit. Pujol and CornCob join us, being careful to be non-threatening. Though, I’m honestly not sure what a dragon would find threatening about us. Pujol stands to the side, hopefully out of the breathing area should the dragon decide he doesn’t like us.
CornCob offers to heal the dragon’s wound. The dragon and Gooseneck talk some more, and Gooseneck says it’s OK for CornCob to approach, the dragon has said it won’t bite. CornCob approaches to get a better look at the wound, and asks the dragon what happened. The dragon says it got into a fight, but is vague on the details. CornCob thinks the wound is mostly healed, but it has healed messy, and the scarring might limit the dragon’s mobility some. He casts healing, and the magic cleans up the scarring some. The dragon says it helps.
The dragon is apparently looking for warmer lands to stay. He asks why we are in the ruins. CornCob says we are adventurers, and Gooseneck mentions the cow. The dragon admits he ate the cow (well, half). Fathom asks the dragon if he plans to stick around or move on, and the dragon asks why he should move on. Fathom answers that the local townsfolk might have…concerns. The dragon says that he stopped here to look for an item that he thinks is under the town. CornCob offers our help, and the dragon says there’s a door he can’t get through to get into the tunnels below the ruins. If we help him, he would want the item he’s looking for and any gems we find, but we could keep anything else. He pulls a rod out from under one of his scales, and shows where there’s an egg-shaped gem missing from the end. CornCob doesn’t think the dragon is being deceitful, but he does think maybe the dragon isn’t telling us everything. He definitely wanted us to do this for him, which seems a little odd.
Pujol thinks this kind of dragon usually lives in a desert and likes to feel superior. Fathom thinks it can summon lightning and see in total darkness. She also thinks it hasn’t been here long – the ambient magic that would collect around it isn’t here.
Fathom thinks the rod is a stellar map, and the onyx might show interesting pathways through the map.
The dragon reveals a door leading down into the ruins that he has uncovered. CornCob asks the dragon to describe the onyx in more detail; it’s cut into the shape of an 8-point star. The dragon says he hasn’t seen the gem, but a sorcerer told him about it.
The door is locked and magically trapped. It’s also a very large lock, which will make it difficult to pick. We ask the dragon if there’s anything he can do about the trap, and he breathes lightning at it. It heats up, there’s an explosion around it, and voila! The trap is gone. CornCob tries to break the lock with his masonry tools, no dice. Abran tries to pick it and gets it, but breaks his picks in the process. It’s clear that the lock was designed to be locked from the outside, not the inside. That’s not a great sign.
We head down the steps into the tunnels. It’s dark, so I move to the back of the group with my lantern. Abran casts a spell to let me see in the dark. Yay! Gooseneck still can’t see in the dark, so he carries my lantern. At the bottom of the stairs, we see a door to our left and a door in front of us where the hallway turns to the right.
We go to the door on the left. It’s a wooden door with metal hinges, not as heavy-duty as the door into the tunnels. We don’t see many footprints in the dust on the floor. There are some alcoves in the ceiling above us. The door at the end of the hallway looks like it has started to rot, but the door to the left has not. I hear something like a faint thump behind the left door.
Corncob takes a closer look at the door ahead of us. He looks through the hold in the bottom. The metal band has rusted away, and the wood on the bottom has been chewed or rotted away from where the band was.
Abran listens at the left door, but doesn’t hear anything. He checks for traps on the door, and doesn’t find any. The door opens towards us, so we back away from it and Pujol uses his Mage Hand spell to open it. I see a glistening sheen behind the door, moving toward us. I shout to close the door, and Pujol does. CornCob spikes the door shut, which will hopefully slow the jelly down and give us time to prepare. We pour out some extra flammable oil on the floor in front of the door and back up down the hallway. Pujol suggests leading the cube outside for the dragon to deal with, but we decide that’s probably not a great idea. CornCob and Gooseneck stand ready to throw torches at the oil.
It bursts through the door seconds later. We all shoot at it, except for CornCob and Goose neck who use their torches. Once it’s on fire, Fathom makes the flames surge up. It’s not long at all before the thing collapses into a pile of goo.
Disappointingly, it left nothing behind but bits of dead rodents. Even the room it was in was empty.
Pujol moves up to the corner and peeks ahead. There’s another door around a couple of turns in the hallway.
We investigate the room at the end of the hallway. There are acid stains on the floor around the door and down the hallway. The room itself is very small, with a grate in the ceiling. Looks like it might have been a ventilation shaft or something.
We move down the hallway to the next door. It’s locked, so I unlock it and we go in and look around. Mostly it’s just broken junk in there, but CornCob knocks over a jug and 5 onyx carved into the shape of 8 pointed stars. They might be able to fit into the rod. Fathom detects magic, and they are not magical. She checks the rest of the junk in here, and see a glow at the bottom of a barrel. She finds a flask in there, and grabs it.
We head to the next door, and it’s fancy. It’s got a copper face with a spot for a key in the front. The door itself isn’t magical, but Fathom sees a glow from the floor in the next room. She thinks a run has been cast on the floor in there.
The key hole has slots in the shape of the onyxes. We do our best to match the subtle differences in the shapes of the stones to the slots, then Pujol uses his mage hand to place them. Strangely, nobody wants to stick their hand in the door’s mouth. We have to tweak it a little bit from our initial layout, but the door unlocks, and Pujol has his Mage Hand open it.
Looking into the next room, we see carved panels with humanoid figures. Pujol, Abran, and Gooseneck jump over the rune to get into the room. The stone figures are…large. Abran takes a closer look at the figures. They’re stone, and they’re big. Fathom doesn’t see another rune on the door on the other side of the room, but does see runes on the figures.
Abran checks the other door, and it isn’t locked, so he opens it. It goes into a small hallway that opens in to a large room. There’s a pedestal in the center of the large room. On the pedestal is a golden claw holding up an egg-sized, 8-pointed onyx.
Fathom looks around for magic, and sees that the pedestal is in the middle of a rune. It’s the same rune as what’s on the floor in the statue room. Also, the onyx itself is magical. Pujol goes back and spikes the mouth door open.
Pujol investigates the pedestal, thinks the claw is mechanical and will drop into the pedestal if disturbed.
Everyone but Pujol and Gooseneck goes back through the guardian room, outside the mouth door. CornCob casts blessing on them, and Fathom casts Protection. Pujol makes the two of them invisible. Pujol has his mage hand hold the claw, while his Unseen Servant grabs the onyx. The unseen servant gives the onyx to Gooseneck, and then we run for it.
The unseen servant does trigger the trap. The claw tries to retract, but the mage hand delays it just long enough. The mouth door starts to close, but Abran and CornCob hold it open while Gooseneck runs, carrying Pujol and the gem. Both stone guardians have activated, but we just run away. We book it out of the tunnels, and then close the door behind us.
The dragon shows up, and has no trouble seeing the currently invisible members of the party. Gooseneck offers the dragon the onyx. He seems pleased, and says that he’s going to move on now, but will contact us later if he wants anything else. He gives a small stone to Pujol, and tells him he can use it to contact the dragon. The dragon asks about any other treasure in the tunnels, and we tell him about the gems that opened the door, but that we had to leave them and there was nothing else. He gives Pujol a bag full of coins and flies off.
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