Expedition 18: Dagger Hunting

*Or "Let's Leave Lahont with the Dragon"*

### Summary

We go back to Blackwater Swamp to find the second of a set of daggers, but find a bronze dragon named Auldrox under the swamp. The party leaves Lahont with Auldrox to exchange stories for the dagger, and the rest fight a shambling mound on the way out.

### Detailed Writeup

The adventurers headed to blackwater swamp to attempt to recover the second magical dagger in the pair known as “The Daggers of the Second Day”. With Steelstaff as captain, they make it to the swamp and attempted to find the troll’s den.

They found the den of the troll left alive by the last expedition only to find it asleep. Tolyr asked the party “should we ambush the troll” awakening it. After a flurry of attacks from the party, the troll retreated into the swamp. The party then made space in the boat for Marzipan to cast water walk and continued on, using Marzipan’s casting of the locate object spell to canvas as much as the swamp as possible. After one sector of the swamp yielded no results, the party realized that their thumping through the woods attracted another troll, one reminiscent of the mountain lion and the strange mage in that it appeared to be outside of the regular flow of time.

The troll charged Lahont and with a flash of claws left him bleeding out in the boat. The party attempted to attack the troll but it continued hiding below the water. As the party fought the time troll, the normal troll they encountered earlier came storming out of the trees towards them. Tolyr attempted to finish the troll under the water with acid arrow, but it narrowly dodged and avoided falling that turn. As Brightstaff and Marzipan drew the attention of the normal troll, Lahont rushd towards the resurrecting and regenerating troll to splash his acid on it. Finally destroyed, the time troll floated to the surface and the remainder of the party was able to fell the troll with Tolyr’s flaming sphere.

The next quadrant of the swamp yielded more promising results, but the dagger pinged 900 feet underground. However, Lahont and Tolyr worked together to find an underwater shaft that they believed led to a cave system with air pockets. Brighstaff attempted to swim down but got caught on some reeds and began drowning. Tolyr saved him with a scroll of levitation and the gtoup sent Brighstaff back down with a shortsword for the reeds. Brighstaff was able to swim down and find his way through the silty water, but when he came up for air he did so too quickly and developed a nasty case of the bends (2 levels of exhaustion). The party above then noticed a large mound of rotting earth beginning to lurch towards them and at Tolyr’s urging dove down after Brightstaff to escape. The group swam down and found the cave opening easily enough, with a few members of the party also picking up a less severe case of the bends on the way.

Now ‘safely’ in the tunnel, the party had two paths before them. They elected to investigate the upwards slanting one first, presuming that the light coming from it might lead to another exit. They were met only with a room of glowing bugs and slightly gelatinous, glowing water, which Tolyr took a sample of. The party then made their way into the downward sloping tunnel for a time until they ran across a 15 foot wide pit with a silver statue on the other side. On its chest plate were inscribed lines of alternating languages: Stonetongue, and one the groups didn’t recognize (but now have a reasonable suspicion is draconic). Brightstaff attempted to jump the pit but was blown back by a gust of wind into it. Tolyr cast feather fall on him, and after throwing down a rope, displayed an immense amount of strength to pull his friend back up safely. Stymied in the physical realm, Lahont attempted to write down the other language so that Tolyr could cast comprehend languages and touch the surface that the words were written on. Some sloppy translation on Lahont’s part later the group deciphered the majority of a riddle, but while Tolyr and Marzipan worked on solving it, Brighstaff and Lahont begin working on ways to allow the monk to safely jump the pit again. Curious about the pit, Tolyr tossed a pebble down and sent Annie after it. The pebble landed, by his estimation, some 250 feet down. However, as Annie, a glowing dart in her beak, descended she observed much more passageway under where the pebble had landed. As Annie paused to investigate, a creature that revealed itself to be an ooze took a swipe at her, but thankfully missed, alerting the party to the presence of gelatinous cubes in the pit, potentially part of a stack that went **all the way down**. With this chilling realization, the party redoubled their efforts both to solve the riddle and make Brighstaff’s jump as safe as possible. The spells burning hands and daylight were cast, meant to represent the sun and fire, but to no avail. Brighstaff threw his body at the statue anew but was also blown back. In the daylight created by the spell, Lahont squints to make out two words scratched out at the bottom of the statue and was able to glean a single letter from both. Realizing that the final line calls for a combination of copper and tin, Brightstaff triumphantly shouted the word “Bronze” in common, to no effect. Lahont then proclaimed the word in Stonetongue, and stepped into the chasm. He was then carried across on a gust of wind and the party quickly followed, intoning the same word as they did so.

The party began winding down an even steeper passageway until they found a chamber filled with treasure, and atop the treasure, a Bronze Dragon. Since no one there spoke Draconinc, Lahont began engaging Auldrox, the Bronze Dragon, in a conversation in Stonetongue. Lahont expresed his mission to claim the dagger and as was to be expected, the dragon did not want to part with its loot. However, after Lahont offered his own bow and Brighstaff went so far as to offer his titular staff, Auldrox decides he would demand a different price. He asked Lahont to stay for three days (which he amended to six when he remembered that mortals need to sleep) and tell him every story that Lahont knows about the East and beyond. Resolved to get the dagger, Lahont sent his friends home with one of the dragon’s breath-scales to defend them from any enemies they could meet in the swamp.

If you ask Tolyr what happened next he will tell you:

“We departed the young bronze dragon Auldox’s lair, leaving Lahont behind to tell him many stories in exchange for the twin of the dagger we had recovered from the trolls. We accepted the gift of a charge of his breath weapon (a poor choice, in retrospect), and proceeded (with some mild trouble) to swim out of the cave’s opening. We found our boat missing as we broke the surface, the shambling mound that had been chasing us had decided to make a meal of it. After a brief discussion we decided to attack it (another poor choice I should have dissuaded us from...). Marzipan used the white stone spell focus to summon a mighty spiritual spatula, which cleaved off large parts of the plant. ***Brightstaff the Exhausted*** swam forward and used the lightning from the dragon scale, reenergizing the creature almost as much as the spatula had hurt it. I cast mirror image, hoping to finally get good use of the spell, only to realize the creature sensed me in other ways (theoretically it should come in use at SOME point). After flurries of blows, multiple high damaging attacks from Marzipan’s magic, and Brightstaff going unconscious. I finished the creature off, freezing it from the inside out. The boat was half consumed, and we decided to leave it. Marzipan cast water walk and we decided to proceed inland to try and return via Arha’s pass. As we walked, some pale creatures watched us from under the water, but did not attack. They seemed different to ghouls, were they lizardfolk or troglodytes perhaps? We kept our distance.

We were nearly to the pass when Marzipan spotted two medium flying creatures approaching us. Unable to run due to exhaustion we prepared ourselves for defense. Two wyrmling black dragons approached and doused acid on the party, and would have instantly knocked me unconscious were it not for the remnants of my arcane ward. I spent my last power healing brightstaff after he went unconscious, and Marzipan used spirit guardians to try and keep them at bay. After we slew one, the other one seemed to begin to fly away, and not wanting to leave resources behind I decided to try and stuff the ~100 pound body into my bag after the troll (my 4th major mistake that day), only to have the remaining wyrmling ambush us out of the night. We fought it back again and it finally retreated, and we were lucky to escape with our lives. Upon reaching Lin’dsey’s to drop off the troll, we found the wyrmling body mostly dissolved from its own acid. I know not if this was a form of punishment from Ithria for endangering the lives of myself and those around me just for material gain, or if this is a natural occurrence as the acid glands of the creature break apart after death, but I hold it as a lesson on caution and retreating while you can, regardless.”

If you ask Lahont however, he will say:

“After Tolyr, Marzipan, and Brightstaff left, Auldrox and I spoke for six days on end. I told him many stories: I told him of how we came to be in his lair, of the islands Dyr-rock and Fer-rock outside of the swamp, of the Inkwell Mountains and the strange creatures that inhabit them, of the nestle where I live currently, of my home before I came to the east, and of the Great Library of Windhome and all of the knowledge it contained. He told me stories as well. We spoke of his family, his siblings, the reason why he must stay below the ground, and of the order of Drakkengard whose duty is to their draconic patron.

After we finished our time together, he conferred upon me the other Dagger of the Second Day and one of his scales; mementos of our time spent together and both powerful magical objects. I swam out of his cave and began heading back to the Nestle. Along the way a pit of quicksand threatened to thwart my progress, but I was able to escape. The more daunting test however was hiding from the gargantuan Roc that passed quite close to me as I skirted along the Inkwell Mountains. It appeared to be carrying a gazebo below it draped in black cloth that contained a group of pale, humanoid figures that steamed in the sunlight. I do not know what they are, but I shudder to think what they would have done had they seen me. After that, I made it safely home.

((Note: This is much much more clear than how Lahont would have told it [Persuasion roll of 1 (2-1=1)], so for all everyone’s character knows, Lahont hallucinated this whole thing and found the dagger in a ditch.))