Session 6: Faerie Furieux

The party, along with the three men from Joff, quickly made their way through the forest to arrive at the kobold lair, the entrance to which is a small cave cut into the rocky face of a hill. The kobold clan, or what is left of it, is all standing outside the cave entrance, arranged to fight.

However, as the party walks into the clearing in front of the cave, their priest steps forward and drops to one knee in front of Kava, who was in front of the party. He addresses her in flattering Draconic and asks if they found a small orb after their battle. She says yes, and he proposes a deal - if they will return the orb, the kobolds will never attack the town of Joff again. He swears on the blood and breath of Tubaloth that they will keep their oath.

A short but heated discussion ensues among the party and the humans to decide what to do. They are not sure if they can trust the kobolds, but Jaden tells them that an oath sworn on the blood and breath of a dragon is basically the most serious oath a kobold can take, and it is pretty unlikely that they will break it. Rougi is loath to just hand over treasure with no immediate gain, but the Dragonborns have grown a soft spot for the kobolds, and urge the party to take the deal. Kriv even tries to snatch the orb away and give it back to them, but she is not stealthy enough.

In the end, Bard agrees that there will be some monetary reward for the party when they return to town, so they return to the orb to the kobolds. The priest, good as his word, leads his clan back into their cave (though two kobolds do wait to guard the entrance until the party leaves). The party and the humans return to Joff to a hero's welcome and a grand feat. The party sleeps that night (free of charge of course) in the inn, enjoying a well-deserved rest for their adventures.

The next morning, the party awakens to a town that is still paying them honors but have lives and a harvest to return to. The party goes to the mayor (Jaden reluctantly giving up a bath for this) to collect their reward. The mayor is friendly and political, but also a no-nonsense type; he doesn't bring up their reward, but when Rougi asks about it, he readily gives them the gold and sends them on their way.

The party, refreshed and emboldened, travels towards Summercrest for two more days, reaching it around noon on the third. Once there, they waste no time searching for Erevan. He is not hard to locate; it is well-known where his mansion is, but the people of the town seem wary of him, calling him odd, and that he doesn't fit in. The party themselves are a little unsure of what to expect; they don't know if this visit is going to be yet another stepping stone in finding Vondal's enemies, or if Erevan himself will be one of the people they need to capture. They decide to proceed with caution and wait till night to approach the house.

That evening, long after darkness has fallen, they sneak up to the house. It is build on the edge of a cliff; the back of the house sits at the brink of a precipice that falls over a hundred feet down into a river. The party decides to divide and conquer; Kava, Kriv, and Jaden sneak off to various corners of the house to keep a lookout and do some snooping while Rougi approaches the main door, hoping that as an Eladrin and a rogue he would be able to build some rapport with Erevan.

He knocked on the door and a male gnome opened it. He looks suspicious of Rougi and acts impatient with his presence there, so Rougi mentions that he would be interested in meeting a friend of Qualion's. At this, the gnome invites him in. He is shown into a large room with high ceilings and tall windows overlooking the cliff and the river below. The gnome says "his master" is a little busy at the moment, but will be with him shortly. The gnome then leaves Rougi alone in the room.

Rougi searches around the room, a little suspicious of traps or whatnot, but can find nothing. There are some large bookshelves on the wall, and he looks through them and decides to pocket a few of the books on them. Then, impatient for something to happen, he overturns one of them with a loud crash.

Suddenly, a ball of fire crashes into him, and the floor around him disintegrates into ash. He finds himself falling, 50 feet down into a cavern below the room. Due to his catstep boots, he is mostly unhurt by the fall. Due to his low-light vision he can still see a little bit of what's around him, but it isn't encouraging; he's in a small, damp cave and while there is a tunnel leading out, who knows if he'll be able to get back to the surface.

Outside, the rest of the party is oblivious to all of this. However, Kava and Kriv have grown restless, and so they decide to go up to the front door themselves. They knock, and no one answers. They knock again, and the gnome returns. He is irritable and dismissive, but Kriv quickly spins a story about how they thought this was an inn, and her religious diplomacy soothes his nerves. He invites them in, and says he will go find his master. He leaves them in the foyer and walks out. Kava, apparently only half-aware of what's going on, starts playing with the pseudodragons.

Jaden, a few minutes later, also becomes a bit restless. She hasn't been to able to glean anything from her scouting around the one side of the house, so she decides to sneak back to the front. However, once she gets there and sees that the Dragonborns are gone, she becomes a bit worried. She sneaks up to peer in one of the windows, and sees a deserted corridor. She tries to sneak in through the window, but in the process of breaking it she makes a lot of noise, and she quickly gives up, hightailing it into the trees around the house. The gnome rushes to the window to see what happened, and catches a glimpse of her running into the trees, but loses her after that. After a few seconds, he leaves the window, apparently in a hurry to be somewhere else.

Rougi decides to try his luck with the tunnel leading out of the cave he is in. It narrows to a crawlspace pretty quick so he spends a good ten minutes crawling on his elbows till he reaches an opening into another larger cavern. Before crawling out, though, he peers out to see if there are any monster or enemies there. While he can't see anything, he hears a creature moving out there, and a large one at that. He eventually decides to head back to the first cavern and take his chances that the rest of his party will help him out.

Meanwhile, the gnome returns to Kava and Kriv. Looking a little harried, he leads them into the room with large windows, an overturned bookcase and the hole in the floor. Kriv is puzzled, but the gnome won't answer her questions directly, and soon rushes out, whispering a magic word as he passes through the door. Kriv looks around, trying to figure out what is going on. Kava continues to play with the pseudodragons.

Jaden, feeling a bit frustrated with her current predicament, decides to sneak around to the side of the house opposite of the one she was originally on, hoping to find some answers to what is going on around here. However, her search if fruitless, and she soon turns to try a front-side window again. However, as she rounds the corner of the house, the window behind her bursts open and the gnome comes tumbling out. (He wasn't nearly as nimble as he thought, and landed on his face actually.) Leaping up, he shouted a challenge to Jaden and attacked.

Down in the cavern, Rougi has returned to his original entry point, and starts yelling, hoping the party is close enough to hear him. Even though Kava and Kriv are standing right above him (and at one point, even trying to peer down into the darkness) they can't hear him. He tries jumping and reaching a low ledge so he can climb out, but his gear doesn't allow him to jump high enough.

Up in the room, Kava tires of the pseudodragons at least long enough to light upon the idea of throwing a sun rod down into the pit to see if there is anything down there. She pulls one out and tosses it down. It lands close to Rougi, and its brilliant light easily illuminates him.

In the same moment that they see him, Kriv hears a noise behind them, like a swish of cloth. She whirls around to see a tall, grim Eladrin wizard holding a tall staff, standing right behind her. Before she can react, he reaches forwards and pushes both of them over the edge! They tumble into the cavern, crashing to the ground near Rougi. The falls injure both of them pretty badly.

Rougi stares up at the figure now staring down into the cavern at them. "Tell me your names and I will tell you mine!" he shouts. They identify themselves, and Rougi tries to reason with him. Erevan responds with a curt answer and a slur about Rougi being a "despicable excuse for an Eladrin." He then drags some large object over the hole, plunging the group into darkness once more.

Out in front of the house, Jaden and the gnome fight a short, intense battle. Jaden tries to reason with him as well, but he repeatedly shouts that she and her friends are enemies of his master. Jaden is able to strike him down, but then binds him and brings him back to consciousness. She then proceeds to interrogate him. So fearsome is she that the gnome is soon cowering and blubbering on the ground, blurting out everything he knows. Unfortunately he doesn't know a lot that is useful; he serves his master, his master gave him orders, his master is awesome, he doesn't know what his master is up to, he just serves his master, and his master is awesome.

He does tell her about the dungeon under the house though, and how her party has been thrown into it. He says that no one can escape from it, that dangerous creatures live there, and that the the only way out is a door in the basement of the house. He tells her how to reach this door, but then won't say anything else. She punches him to get him talking again, but this only knocks him unconcious again.

Down in the dungeon, the party spends some healing surges and then heads back down the tunnel Rougi tried earlier. They emerge into another cave room; they figure the creature Rougi detected before is still here, but figure the only way they're going to get out of here is to confront it. They are not disappointed; as they stand up in the new room, they are attacked from above by two huge bats. Their battle with them is pretty quick though; soon both vermin lie in bloody heaps on the cave floor. None too worse for the wear, the party heads down another tunnel, moving deeper into the dungeon.

Jaden sneaks into the house through the window the gnome emerged from. She is none too sneaky or agile at it herself though, and as she gets up off the floor in the corridor, she turns to see Erevan standing there, staff in hand, his face deeply unamused. Jaden tries to convince him to listen to her, but he attacks instead. An intense magic battle follows, battering both opponents to their limits. Jaden begins to gain the upper hand though, and Erevan retreats by going invisible. Jaden is suspicious, but decides to make for the door the gnome told her about. She gets to it though, and finds that it has been magically locked and her powers are not enough to make it through.

At that moment, Erevan returns to resume their battle. Jaden fights back valiantly against his spells, and after one particularly fierce hit, he decides to exit the battle for good. Drawing a dimension door in front of him, he disappears once more.

Down in the cavern, the tunnel Rougi Kriv and Kava are following comes to an iron door. Rougi is able to pick the lock and they emerge into a cavern with an underground lake. They make their way around the edge of the lake to the exit tunnel, which is another crawlspace. Rougi goes first, then Kava, and finally Kriv.

Rewards

Jaden: 500 XP, 440 gp
Kriv: 300 XP, 245 gp
Kava: 300 XP, 245 gp
Rougi: 350 XP, 245 gp. Two of the books you palmed are histories of magic (worth only a few gp each), one is a ritual book with the rituals Water Walk, Silence, and Secret Page written in, and the rest of the pages blank