Slightly Incorrect Dragon

Week 4 (Tuesday 29th March): Slightly Incorrect Dragon
GM: Phil

Players:
 * Solene/ Christy
 * Constanzia/Quentin
 * Remy/Ian
 * Schmoopy/ Robbie
 * Rubrum Flax/ Beth

Report from Solene
We travelled to Bellefontaine. On the way Schmoopy, Remy and Constanzia recovered Emery from halfling imprisonment in exchange for his help in taking down whoever hired him to steal the Vitae Draconis from the Great Library. Rubrum Flax and I went on ahead to contact a cypher expert as the copy of the Vitae Draconis we possessed was written in code.

The contact was able to decipher the code in time for the meeting which was to be held at the Green Cockatrice the next day. While the book was decoded, it was still in a language none of us recognized. We planned for Emery and Schmoopy to meet the buyer and sell him the copy of the book, then we would follow the buyer in case he was working for someone. For safety we made a few key changes to the diagrams in the book. Our contact also informed us that the buyer (judging by the coat of arms we described to them) was in fact Fenor the aide to Sinder an old noble elf that lived on the outskirts of town. (Who’s family records seemed to be lost).

We attended the meeting with detailed plans for following the buyer back to their boss, the plan did hit somewhat of a snag when the buyer and two guards showed up not via the ground, but via dragonets that flew down into the courtyard outside the tavern. The meeting inside went off without a hitch as the buyer took the book and proceeded to head back to his mount. Fortunately, we were able to scare off the dragonets before he reached them, but he then began casting a portal. Constanzia provided an excellent distraction so the team was able to sneak into the portal before the wizard, then Constanzia and Rubrum followed him in.

The group confronted Fenor and he told the guards to kill us while he strode off through the chaotic gardens towards his master. After dealing with the guards, the party arrived to see the noble elf, in the midst of casting a ritual, the garden was full of dragonets and he seemed to be drawing power from them, he looked at one of the diagrams in our book before returning to his ritual, speaking three words, we killed his lieutenant and fought the guards that streamed out of the elves house, we injured him but we were not in time to stop him speaking the last word that ripped his eleven body apart and freed his dragon body from its imprisonment. Sinder was nearly two stories tall, he rose up on powerful wings and headed towards Bellefontaine where he strafed the city with fire before flying off somewhere to mend his injuries. We used his place of power to gather his essence so that we may find him once again and hopefully make dragons extinct for good this time. Because of our changes to the diagram, we hope that the slightly incorrect spell will create some weakness that we can use against him.

Report from Constanzia (Quentin):
This month I was tasked to join an undercover investigation, a join taskforce of Keepers and Sentinels. The assignment was to bring a book to the person who hired thieves last month to steal it, pretending to be their hirelings, and then follow this person back to whoever they are working for.

Of course, it all went terribly wrong.

Firstly, it was decided we would need to have one of the two would-be thieves released to make it easier for our halfling Sentinel infiltration specialist to pose as the other of the two thieves for this meeting. Unfortunately, the wizard's release wasn't arranged in advance, so Remy, Schmoopy, and myself had to do some fast talking to secure an agreement to commute his sentence to a term of community service working for the Citadel rather than six years in prison.

We then met up with Solene and Rubrum, who had asked a specialist they knew (possibly Solene's mother, though I am not certain) to help with translating the book. Apparently this book is called the "The Life of Dragons"*, and was some sort of tome of spells, including highly illegal necromancy rituals. Unfortunately a complete translation was impossible, but before we made the hand-off, Solene and Rubrum made some changes to certain diagrams in the book to prevent them from working correctly should our mission somehow go awry.

Which, of course, it did.

The first problem came when the person we were to hand the book to--who turned out to be an elven lord, Fenor of House Wolfen--arrived with guards on a trio of flying dragonets, which would make following him extremely difficult.

While Schmoopy and the wizard thief were handing the book over, something spooked the dragonets, causing them to flee, causing quite a lot of destruction in the process. I suspect Solene had a hand in this, given her magical abilities, but again, I am not certain.

Fenor then used some sort of portal spell instead, but I managed to distract him for long enough for my colleagues to sneak through the portal ahead of him, and then follow him through myself. He ordered his guards to kill me and Rubrum, and left the area. We were forced to kill the guards in battle, with help from Schmoopy. We then followed Fenor back to his master--Lord Sindar of House Robella, a very ancient elven house, famed for breeding dragonets.

By the time we caught up, they were already performing a ritual of some sort using the book.

I ordered them to stand down and advised them that they were under arrest for trafficking stolen goods and attempted murder, but by that point this was merely a formality--we knew we would have to fight them.

I managed to kill Fenor while the others held off more guards and tried to prevent Sindar from completing his ritual, but we were a little too slow.

From there, everything went terribly wrong.

The ritual Sindar was performing turned out to be one to release him from an elven form--he was originally a dragon, and as we watched, he returned to his draconic form.

For reasons unknown to us, he allowed us to live. Perhaps it amused him to do so. Whatever the case, a later search of his house revealed much incriminating evidence, but when we returned to Bellefontaine we found it had been attacked by the dragon and was partially in flames.

The one good thing that came out of all of this is that we believe he would have been able to perform the ritual without the book; he only wanted it for confirmation that he was right. By making changes to the book, Solene may just have caused the ritual to go badly enough that his draconic form has a weakness.

I highly recommend sending a team of experienced Vanguard or Sentinel warriors after this dragon immediately, as it seems immensely powerful.

[*Translation note: Given the code and the unfamiliar language, I think it may be important to clarify if the book is called Vita Draconum, the life of dragons, or Dracones Vitae, the dragons of life.]