The Black Dragon!

The Fifth Session of the Saturday Night Savages DragonLance Campaign….

Picking up where we left off last week, the group wandered out of the building they were in and down a “street” (the city had sunk underground during the Cataclysm – the buildings on this street toppled together to form sort of a hall). The kinder insisted on searching EVERY building along the street, and when they got to the square at the end of the street they found a torrent of water gushing through it and on the other side another building with great steel doors.

Some decided to checkout where the water went and discovered it opened into a great cavern. The Kender (Roscoe Thorngage), however, had to check out the steel doors…

He somehow waded across the river without trouble – with a rope tied to him (just in case). He tied off the rope andLorena (“The Light Source”) crossed as well. The made their way in only to discover spectra minions waiting for someone to deliver their taxes – not having the taxes they minions attacked.

Now I’m not entirely sure how anyone was supposed to deal with these – the spectral minions could not be harmed by any normal weapons… and I don’t think any of the original members of the party had magical weapons… Perhaps Raistlin was meant to deal with these… So I let Lorena try to cast “Slumber” on them. A couple of them fell asleep as did the Kender.

Laurana continued to try and make the other minions sleep – so she could retrieve the sleeping Kender and retire. She just couldn’t get them all to sleep and the remaining ones attacked. Now on their own this wasn’t much of a problem because I’d given them a d6 fighting….

Curly decided something was amiss so he decided to cross the water and see if he could help out. Making it, he took a swing at one of the minions – SWISH – right through it making a loud klanging noise as it solidly hit the stone floor. Everyone woke up.

Curly then decided there was no use fighting them and beat a hasty retreat heading for the water… We’ll get back to him in a moment… This unfortunately left Laurana facing four spectral minion guards again. She tried “Slumber” again – it only worked on the Kender… So four spectral minions ganged up no her and had her down, slowly dying, in a round…

Back to Curly: Curly slipped trying to cross the torrent and was washed over the falls plummeting to his death 150m below… (Here’s how that worked” failed Agility check – slipped and let go of rope, failed strength test to just wade across on his own, failed second strength test, bennied it, failed again, last ditch agility test a -2 to grab slipper vine as he was thrown over the precipice – I think he might have even failed and bennied THAT and succeeded on the second attempt – but only because Magnus, who was standing there looking down aided him adding a +1… when I told Rick he was saved but lost his axe, he insisted that Curly would not have let go of the axe under any circumstances… I told him he would have needed a raise to grab the vine – which he had not done – so Rick said he went over the falls…. I mentioned that it was ~150m drop, right…? So I had to look up falling damage… 2d6+5 per 10m…. I decided to add a bit of chance in there and made it 2d6+d6 per 10m – my maths weren’t working at that time of night – trying to convert form feet in game book to tabletop inches… anyway I rolled 14d6 instead of 17 as I probably should have. the first mittful of dice I chucked came up all ones and twos and we, for a brief moment, thought curly might survive the drop… the second mittful of dice was less forgiving and curly took 30-some damage causing 6 wounds… no bennies left… Exit Crullen “Curly” Balckstone…)

Back up at the top everyone else was realizing the situation was becoming dire. The rest of the group bludgeoned their way across the torrent and, in an attempt to prevent a TPK I said that as soon as Goldmoon entered with the staff the Spectral Minions backed off (this staff keeps getting better and better – Oh, and I miust have been glowing, because the only light sources, up until now had been Laurana’s magic staff, which would have been snuffed out when she was, and Curly’s lantern – which just went over the falls…)


The end of the first encounter – water and rocks seem to be more deadly than any other adversary in this quest so far…

They dragged Laurana and the sleeping Kender out of there and patched them up as best they could – Norfindel working his near magical first aid and the staff helping out too…. They managed to heal three of Laurana’s six wounds.

After that they attempted to talk to some Gully Dwarves that had just climbed up the vines hanging down the inside of the great cavern. The group climbed down the vines – but luckily had tied off Laurana and Goldmoon – who were both seriously injured at this point (Goldmoon still having two wounds from hertumble down the sewer pipe last game, and Laurana now having three wounds from her encounter with the Spectral Minions…)

Crreping around they came to the Grand Plaza and spotted the Dragon giving it’s (not-so-spectral) minions to begin some sort of search, before retiring to her den.

Making their way across the less deep, less fast moving water they followed into the subterranean courtyard. Presented with a hall and a pair of massive double doors they chose the hall – because how could a dragon possibly open doors? They followed the hall and wandered down a few passageways and encountered some more Draconians:

Beating down the Draconians

After the encounter with the Draconians they decided to head back to the double doors – because the last hall they entered was clearly too small for a Dragon to have fit through…. And couldn’t possibly lead to a sneaky backdoor entrance to the Dragon’s Lair or anything…).

Throwing the doors open they strode down the great hall – stepping on pressure plates, sounding alarms… The dragon popped it’s head through the doors and the far end and filled the passage with acidic spray…. The players wondered if the staff might cast barrier? I decided it could to avoid a TPK before I finished the first module… So the mighty staff of Mishakel saved them from certain death (considering half of them had no bennies left at all…).

The continued striding to the end of the hall and entered the dragon’s lair:

Entering the Dragon’s Lair

Henry FitzArnulf charged in and Norfindel let fly with the arrows…

They battled the dragon for a few rounds

Eventually goldmooon was able to stagger up to the beastie and smashed the Blue Crystal Staff on it and they both disappeared in a brilliant explosion of blue-ish white light… then the cavern started to crumble and cave in…. and that’s where we left it as it was after midnight.

Next Week: Escape from Xak Tsaroth! (and Who Will Rick Play Now!?)