19/04/2022 - Dragon Death, Crashing Crystal, and a Kingly Convo

## **Dragon fight**

* We run upstairs.
* The dwarves we’d left behind are fighting some statues that came to life. The statues are trying to get out of the mud, presumably activated because of the dragon.
* Scribbulus and Rocky use badgers to help dig the statues out, whilst the others run towards the sounds of screaming from the city.
* The dragon has burnt part of the city, and is now trying to pull out the crystal in the central part of the volcano. It is out of range, so Blagden starts running up the highest building, whilst Lysandre starts flying up on Jeff.
* As they’re running up, Ves waits for Scribs, Rocky and the statues.
* The dragon temporarily dives down and starts attacking some mages who were firing at it.
* Blagden and Lysandre get up to the top and start firing at the dragon.
* The dragon gets annoyed and attacks Blagden, doing muchos damage.
* Blagden retaliates, and with a mighty strike causes the dragon to transform back into Leo. Unfortunately, the dragon was super high, and Leo starts falling. Thankfully Lysandre and Jeff are close enough to dash down and grab Leo before terminal velocity takes another victim.
* Sadly, the dragon had dislodged the crystal enough so that when the dragon disappeared, the crystal crashes to the floor, shattering into many many pieces.
* The city falls dark (as the crystal refracted natural light into the city). There are still many screams and fires.

## **The aftermath**

* Leo is very bruised and injured, but seems otherwise ok. He is still wearing the dragon amulet.
* We are about to remove the amulet, but Leo tells us to stop – he is control now.
* He managed to cast identify, he knows what it does now. He’s attuned and he has inherited some of the traits of the dragon, he has resistance to fire, can control some of the elements of fire, and can breath fire.
* We are suspicious of Leo, but we agree to let him keep wearing it for now.
* A guard approaches and asks if we saw where the dragon went. Ves and Blagden try to blag their way out of the conversation. The guard doesn’t seem to believe us. So, Lysandre casts modify memory, so he wholly believes we convincingly told him we didn’t see what happened to the dragon.
* We realise that we probably should probably keep our involvement in this secret until we talk to the king. We also realise that the mithril statues are on the way to the city, and the king wanted them kept a secret. So Lysandre hastes towards the statues whilst using mind link to speak with them.
* All Lysandre gets back is “protect, defend, serve” on repeat.

## **A chat with the king**

* The doors to the King’s keep open. And out stride the King, his main mage, and some massive automaton guards.
* We exchange some mild sass with the King. Rocky tries to explain what happened. The king is suspicious, so his mage advisor casts some sort of read mind spell on Rocky to get the truth. The advisor whispers to the King.
* The King apologies to us for his advisor’s behaviour, and invites us inside for a longer chat.
* We go inside. He offers us food and asks us to tell the truth about what happened.
* Ves gives him the run down.
* The King gives a brief history of the Mithril family…
* Some time ago, there was much rivalry between the dwarves, and many problematic dragons, including Imvaernho. One group of dwarves formed, one dwarf from each family, and took it upon themselves to kill Imvaernho. Each dwarf took part of the dragon. The mithrils took its soul – i.e., what we found! The item was probably corrupted over time, given how long it was unused and unchecked.
* Following that, each dwarf took the rights to an ore – so the Mithspirits took control of the mithril mines. Unfortunately, after that they were defeated by a different dragon, lost their home, became nomadic, slowly lost their power and influence, and eventually more or less totally disappeared from public view, with barely a handful of descendants left.
* Scribbs asks which dragon defeated the Mithspirits – the king doesn’t know, but will go through the books and materials we found below to see if it says.
* The King checks we’re still on track to meet him at the museum with the tablet in a few days’ time. We are.
* Ves asks if the King wants us to continue recovering books/statues from the dig site. He does.
* The king then gives us a chest of gold payment for completing the archaeological dig. We get 1000GP each.
* We go to bed.

## **Next day shenanigans**

* Next day. Ves goes to get the dwarfs started on packaging up the other books and digging up more statues.
* Blagden, Ves, and Scribbulus go to see the goblins whilst Rocky and Lysandre go for a morning coffee.
* The goblins are sad they missed the dragon fight – they don’t pay much attention.
* Blagden gives them the cakes. The King asks if he looks stronger. Blagden loses an arm wrestle on purpose to make him think he really is stronger.
* The king calls forward Jerry, his chief spy….
* He has many rats that spy for him. Jerry did see a strange individual sneaking around the city. They were elven, with a nice hat, green and valuable, orange feather, phoenix cape. There is also a symbol on the roof, that matched the symbol on the floor the night Leo and Lysandre got cursed.
* The King (whose name is Gilbon) and Blagden come to a new arrangement. Blagden needs to steal the hat worn by a high priest. In return, Jerry will gather more info from the phoenix cape elven figure and also look out for purple pirates.