Session Fifty

The fiftieth session of the Adventures of the Dragon Crag was on the 6th June 2023.

## Party Members Present

* Brandr Sigurdson
* Snorri Morgrimson
* Relnwe Adiath
* Professor Meino Osterhaus
* Aleksi Lehtonen

## Synopsis

### Bafort Bound

#### Scaling Cliffs

Our aim was to make for Bafort. First, we had to make it out of the Rivet. We hatched a plan to scale the big cliffs to the west and so Brandr went to the quartermaster to aquire some rope. We planned to shoot the rope up the cliff with the hrukidron like a large grappling hook so we took two dwarf engineers with us just incase. We headed out of the dwarf army camp and towards the Wellspring. Snorri fired the hrukidron at a precise angle, securing the rope to the top of the cliff. Rel went up first to make sure that it was secure and the rest of the party followed her.

#### Heavy Winds

At the top of the cliff, the wind was very strong and it blasted the sand around us. It all semmed very unnatural. Here, the sand seemed to want to drag us down so we had to keep moving and keep our footsteps light. This was harder for some than for others. The Professor summoned his shadowsteed and lightly trotted over the dunes. As such everyone but the Professor felt unnatrually fatigued, like a weight pulling us down. The sand eventually gave way to scrubland and the further we got from the Rivet, the terrain seemed to get better and better; greener and greener. After a small time, we came to a small rise and beyond it we could see a plain stretching north to south. It was green and dotted with forests. In the distance we could see some pastureland and a small road with a few buildings. Far to the west, we could see the hazy blue outline of the Dragonback Mountains.

### Bafort Bonanza

#### Arriving in Town

We headed down the hill towards the village and we found a small trail. Rel quickly spotted old beastman hoof prints. Around the village were many grazing animals. Aswe approached, we saw that there was a large group of people in front of the tree. They were gathered around some children playing blindman's buff with the effigy of a halfling. A woman stepped up to greet us and introduced herself as Emilia. She said she was the biggest farmer in the village, although she didn't seem that big. We told her that we had come to help with the beastman problem and she introduced us to Old Felix, the village wiseman and Heinrich, the innkeeper. Together, the three of them kept the peace of the village. They said they were Stirlanders. We surmised that they were victims of Scrub Feathertoes. We asked if there were any strange ruins around and they said there are to the north, but that they don't go there. One Adler recently went there looking for something and he was being punished for it.

#### He's a Witch!

We headed to the inn with Heinrich which alsoturned out to be an hourglass shop. The Professor was sad that they didn't have any wine, but the rest of us ordered a beer. Heinrich only had warm ale as he kept it in the oven. We started a conversation about the hourglasses which soon turned to a small argument, at which point the Professor tried to put Heinrich to sleep. Heinrich noticed, feeling a strange energy coarsing through him and ran out of the building screaming about a witch. The Professor tries another spell to silence him which also fails. Heinrich made it out of the door and Rel ran after him. Outside, a mob began to gather.

#### Adler

In the pub, a young man came out of a side door wondering what the kerfuffle was about. He introduces himself as Adler. He seemed excited to meet outsiders and explained that he wanted to escape the town with his love, Brenda, but that it was very hard to leave. He was trying to find a way out which was why he had been up north near the ruins. Snorri and Brandr ask him to take them somewhere quiet, preferably away from the mob. Brandr left some coins for the hourglasses he took and the dwarfs left with Adler out the back of the bulding.

#### A Mob forms

Meanwhile Outside, the Professor had tried to cast mindhole on Heinrich which effectively turned him into a zombie in front of the already flustered crowd. Rel pretended to be doctor and woke up Heinrich while the Professor ran back into the inn. The mob realised that Heinrich had forgotten everything and got even more angry. Rel took this time to take her leave. We finally gathered the party together with Adler who took us to his stash where we met Brenda. He kept supplies here for his escape attempt. The Professor then came up with a cunning plan to divert the mob that we could hear gathering steam. He took on the appearance of Adler and ran towards the mob, shouting that we had gone of in a certain direction. The mob, thankfully, was led astray and the Professor rejoined us. Adler and Brenda then led us to the ruins.

### Elven Ruins

#### Initial Explorations

We stopped a little way off from the ruins and left Adler and Brenda with Aleksi while the rest of us went onwards. Adler warned us that we might hear a screeching bird. The ruins were clearly of elvish providence. We took a cursory look aorund. Ahead of us was a largish building that was largely intact. In front of it was a courtyard with pillars and broken metal tables. It was littered with blood, fur, and the scattered remains of slates with writing on. Rel recognised the glyph of Yenlui and she thought the ruins were the remains of some ancient ranging settlement.

#### Archmage Puzzle

We headed into the building and pass by rooms with bits of broken elven pottery and other such objects. The building was set into a hillside and as such it extended some way underground. We came to a dimly lit room, in which there were six statues in a semi circle. All were holding a strange staff. Before the statues was a plinth with six items on it. There was also a tablet with clues. The statues were archmages and we had to link the items to the correct archmage and also link their staffs to the correct lore of magic. As we puzzled out the puzzle, we heard the cawing of a strange bird echoing through the ruins. As we finished the puzzle, the room lit up and a passage appeared in the floor.

#### The Magic Book

We headed down the revealed passage and the tunnel was lit up with stones that glowed without heat or sound. There was lots of eltharin writing on the wall talking about the good deeds of Archmages and the history of this place. These ranger stations were built for the maintainers of the waystone network. We came to a small room in which there was a small pedestal made out of which stone. On it was a book with the symbol of Saphery on it. Rel went to try and open the book but it would not budge. The Professor sensed magic and saw a blinding light. He saw all the colours of magic swirling around the book, but mostly white and gold. It was painfully beautiful. He tried to cast a spell on the book, but got thrown backwards. Brandr the picked up the book and the professor, in some sort of frenzy, tried to make him stop. They got into a fight and Brandr's rune of spell breaking went off. The Professor managed to cast a spell on Brandr to make him look like he was dead, angering Snorri, who expertly aimed a grazing shot at his face. Amid the fighting, Rel saw that the book had opened and she read it. It was about making waystones and held a complex set of instructions and rituals around laylines and obelisks. It gave all the instructions we needed to fix the waystone at the Wellspring of Power using the crystals from the Flatland Peaks. As Rel tried to calm down the bickering group, we all heard a stomping sound coming from above.

#### Pheonix Feather

We all calmed down and proceeded further into the ruins. The tunnel we took came to a well preserved, grand-looking room. There was a glass box that contained a brightly coloured red feather and a replica of a waystone. The magic waystone book said that an ingredient in the ritual was 'a feather of our blest allies'. Knowing elves, it was probably a pheonix feather. This point in the book allso says 'flow in motion', which we took to be blood. As we took the feather from the glass box, the door behind us shut. The only way out now was towards the awful screetching and stomping sound.

#### The Knight and the Hippogriff

We headed towards the creature, preparign for a fight and came out into fading daylight. We found ourselves on a balcony and we heard some wing beats and a bellowing voice. It cried 'Beast! Foul beast! In the name of the Lady you shall die." To our complete suprise, it was a Brettonian knight riding a hippogriff. However, he looked strange - his eyes behind his visor were a deathly bright yellow. It charged out of the sky and in a moment we found ourselves in combat with it.