Momentous Events

My friends and I are back in Waterdeep, after an extended time away, and there appear to be momentous events afoot. On the last leg of our trip, we were witnesses to a momentous battle. It only lasted a few moments, but all of the effects have still not been felt!

As I previously mentioned, we were flying back from Longsaddle to Waterdeep. There were several strange folk on the airship with us, as you might expect on such a vessel. The captain and crew were all wizards or sorcerers, as was our new friend Ember. The other passenger aboard appeared to be some type of wizened, human, ex-adventurer, though he was very vague when questioned about himself and his history. His name was Rynwaryth, and he traveled with us for a day and a half before we found out the truth about who he was!

He spent most of the trip staring over the railing into the distance toward the northern sword coast, apparently thinking of his home near Luskan. When we were two-thirds of the distance back to Waterdeep, Rynwaryth was looking northward toward the Neverwinter forest, he yelled to the captain, "Ageaeth is coming!" He began to look very anxious, and his hands began to grip the railing so hard that he was apparently crushing the wood to splinters.

Once the captain acknowledged his warning, he turned back to watch back over the railing for a moment. After a moment, it became clear what he was yelling about. He had been able to see something that the rest of us on the ship could not initially see. Soon the warning was shouted by the person in the crows nest, "Six approaching from aft!" Almost before the rest of us could react, they were upon us. A large red dragon and five small ones attacked the ship. The large one focused her first attack on the sails of the ship, killing the man in the crows nest and burning all of the sail and large sections of the masts.

As the sails were attacked, Rynwaryth jumped from the ship and transformed into a very large silver dragon and he and the large red attacked each other. The two of them battled off to the starboard side of the airship while the five smaller ones attacked us and the crew of the ship. We were able to battle the five wyrmlings off while the two larger dragons were battling each other.

As we were just about done fighting with the smaller wyrms, we heard the death rattle of Rynwaryth. He had been killed by the red, who dropped him and then turned to attack us. She became invisible and apparently headed back for the ship to defend those of her young who are left. Out of the clouds came an absolutely colossal silver dragon that breathed on the red and froze her and the air around her. She was killed instantly.

The remaining silver gathered up its fallen comrade and flew back into the clouds.

The Day an Airship Came to Town

We were sitting in the Gilded Horseshoe, an inn in the town of Longsaddle. We're just traveling through the town on our way back to Waterdeep when an airship landed in the town square! We were preparing to sit and eat dinner with our new friend Gowyk Cardasz, a herder and tradesman from nearby, and to discuss recent events. We've only been in Longsaddle for a few hours, though our plans were to stay in town for a few days so I would have time to cast a few spells and clear up a few loose ends.

We heard a commotion and headed to the town square to check it out, when we saw this huge airship decending from the sky. A self-important looking wizard, going by the name of Pengarth, the captain of the airship and a Mage of the First Order, greets a man by the name of Ardanac Harpell. He is a character, let me tell you! Gorax and I have had an encounter with him, earlier in the day and he seems to be the most quixotic human that I have ever met. He is confrontational one moment and is handing out items from the Harpell family shop for free, the next!

In any case, we're in the town square and a young lady appears from the airship. A young lady, Ember Dietifeci, got off the airship and said hello. It turns out that she is an wizardess, an adventurer, and a free spirit traveling to Waterdeep aboard this ship. She is a Mage of the Third Order of Halarahh, the first that I have met from that order. She may, indeed, be the first person I have met from Halruua, at all. The tales that I have heard make it sound like that country is ordinarily very secluded. She is very interested in seeing the world outside of her country, however, and wants us to show her around in Waterdeep. Who knows, maybe she'll join our merry band!

We'll be traveling back to Waterdeep with her and her companions, so we'll see what transpires!

Longsaddle

The rest of the party and I are in Longsaddle, a cow town which appears to be run by the Harpell family. So far, the city is mildly interesting, but Ardanac Harpell seems to be a bit touchy. My fellow traveler asked a question about the distant Red Wizards of Thay, only to be greeted by skepticism and intolerance. We were, initially, treated as criminals, just for having mentioned criminals. It was a very interesting exercise in guilt by association.

In the end, though, storytelling and being pleasant won the day. With a couple more questions about our journey and our mission we were given a number of items that I needed for spell components, and a wand for my friend.

Enough writing, I need to get back to the spell-casting and research that I need to do in order to identify this set of magic items.

Thornhammer Liberated

My friends and I have cleared the ruins of Thornhammer.  It is apparent that a powerful wizard or sorceror with the ability to animate dead was using this ruin as a storage facility for some of his treasure (magical and non-magical).  I will be doing some research when we return to civilization to attempt to figure out who might have been using it in this manner.  Some of the items that we recovered have been in the dungeon for a long time, so it is possible that these items were stored here ages ago.

We encountered a number of monsters, mostly evil, in our trip through the ruins:

• Abishai (2)
• Achaieraie (4)
• Adventurers (3)
  
• Deepspawn (1)
• Ettin (2)
• Mindflayer
• Manticore (2)
• Phase Spiders (3)
• Skeletal Red Dragon
• Skeletons (6) with magical longswords
  
• Spectre

We were lucky, with the red dragon, as we were able to attack it from a distance because it was trapped and couldn't reach us.

We found a number of items, that we will be bringing back to civilization with us.  I won't say any more about where we are, or our path, until we have stashed the loot in a safe place.

Quiet in the Dungeon

It is all quiet, waiting for everyone else to get ready...

First Joke

Two wood elves walk into a tree. . ..

They say, "ouch!" "ouch!"

Ruins

I write this down, while the rest of the group is eating their dinner. I am waiting for them to finish, I wish they would pick it up!

We traveled to these ancient dwarven ruins, this afternoon. Travel was hot and sweaty, the horses were getting rather odorous by the time we got there.

When we were nearly there, we found a ruined fountain that was still pouring water from somewhere. As we were about to take a drink to cool off, we noticed that there were signs of a bird and possibly those left by a humanoid body (a belt buckle). Upon a little investigation by the sorceror and myself, we realized that the fountain was pouring poisonous water that was apparently some type of neurotoxin that paralyzed it's drinker. Who knows what would have happened, after that!

So, we traveled into this dwarven ruin and found a number of monsters that we haven't previously fought. There were three phase spiders, two ettin, three achaieraie which were pretty tough going, a horrible mind flayer, a deep spawn, and three other adventurers, two of whom attacked us. All of these were dispatched, with differing amounts of difficulty.

My friends recovered a number of items, some of which may turn out to be magical, some of which may just be ancient "relics" and some which just appear to have strange chemical properties. We haven't yet identified all of what we found, and we still have more of the ruins to explore once everyone is done eating. That's it for now. I'm going to take a look around and see if anyone else needs healing while we are resting, and to see if I can hurry them up!

Bitten!

We were fending off some "not-quite rats" and wolves, today, when I was bitten! The filthy rat bit me through my boot and gave me some type of infection which my buddy cured after we were all done fighting.

The thing that irritated me the most about this was that it was all so unnecessary! The only reason that the rats lasted that long was that everyone was taking it too easy on them, and moving clumsily and slowly. I berated them all after we were finished, saying I thought that the group needed to pick it up for fights like this.