Expedition 50: Kazreme

### Roster

Arha, Bea, Calliope, Clarity, Nexrin, Tolyr and Cooler Tolyr, Valorie, Yezra (and Allighul)

### Success

Yes

*AKA "Kazrematch" AKA "Drakesdoom" AKA "Kazruin"*

### Summary

We kill Kazreme in the Felwood, and discover he was being helped by a fiend with Delphi's face.

### Detailed Writeup

Prologue: In Delphi’s shop, we can observe what is effectively a snowman. Delphi goes to the back of her shop and pulls out several things. She strikes matches, laying them along a wooden board. She places the emerald in the center of the space, carefully arranging it in the dust all around this ritual, and directs Silvert to shatter the emerald on her command. Silvert crashes through the board on the first try (natural one), but manages to smash the emerald on his second try. The snowman morphs into the image of Tolyr, and Tolyr experiences a very weird sensation of being in two bodies at once: waking up in a new body, and vaguely looking through the eyes of the second Tolyr (Henceforth, the Cooler Tolyr, CT for short).

We set out, climbing through the Shriekcliffs and approaching the Felwood. It is a strange wood, oddly dark, and the trees are huge, rivaling redwoods. These trees are not redwoods, however, they are regular trees, just 8 or 16 times their regular size. It is difficult to locate the tallest tree in the wood, as it is not much taller than the rest of the trees, but we are able to find it. On our way, we encounter an armored animal, which we recognize as a pangolin. We continue forward, pressing through the dense woodland. We can see approximately 40 feet, so anything beyond that will have half-cover (+2 AC).

Bea ritually casts speak with animals and asks them “Warrior of the Raven Tribe, have you seen any newcomers in the woods recently?” The ravens do not answer, not convinced with Bea—as she is a stranger too. Bea finds a fox and tries again. The fox answers “two clank clanks, one jittering.” The fox notes that the tall tree is “where the beast went.” We also talk about a large badger for a while. Then, Bea corners yet another animal, a large sparrow, and bribes it with bugs to go check out the tree, casting beastsense to see through his eyes. She sees Kazreme, coiled up the tree, about 40 ft in the air. With him is a cloaked creature, seemingly humanoid, in the midst of drawing some sort of pattern in the dirt.

We resolve to fight him before dusk, planning to send Tolyr in with Refract, to break the shield and cast prismatic wall while we kill his ally. We split up and approach from multiple directions. Tolyr flies in as a sparrow, and sees that the ally is a dark skinned human with a component pouch and a wand. Tolyr carries out the plan admirably, and while both the dragon and the ally attempt to cast counterspell, Tolyr destroys one and the other fails to dispell the effects. Tolyr casts the spell in such a way that no effects can go through it, including dragon breath.

Clarity, Arha, and Valorie cast heroism. The hooded figure starts a fiery ritual all around the tree. Nexrin chases after the ally, and sees that it is Delphi. He shoots her in the knee, and calls out to let us all know. Calliope yells “Don’t be stupid, that’s an illusion!”

Clarity dispels Delphi’s ritual spell as the fire starts to blaze around the tree. When Delphi turns to run, Arha takes an attack of opportunity, crits, and smites—discovering that this is a fiend. Kazreme, angry at being injured, chooses to exit through the 9 layers of prismatic wall, taking a total of 91 damage. Kazreme is also blinded (along with Delfiend), but chooses to use his dragon breath to the south, hitting several members of our party and reducing Arha to 1 HP.

Nexrin and Yezra team up and take down Delfiend. Unfortunately, something hit Arha and she went down. She is brought back up with aid from Yezra. Meanwhile, Calliope chugs an everglow potion and basically turns into an angel, sprouting wings roughly the size of Kazreme’s. Arha gets up, gives herself more health, and then also chugs an everglow potion. Valorie casts a level 7 dissonant whispers on Kazreme, and hands out bardic inspiration like candy.

Arha’s smites do max damage, so she does 88 damage. Kazreme does his best to escape using dimension door, even though he promised not to flee earlier in the battle, but his spells are countered by Tolyr and Clarity. He takes lots of bites and tail attacks and such, but the two angels and Nexrin are in their element, and Nexrin shoots him to incapacity, in an absolutely epic moment between him and Yezra.

When the everglow wears off, Calliope and Arha both make charisma saving throws. They both feel like they are falling, as their bodies light up the forest. They feel a tug to be transported to another land—Calliope in particular is able to see another world, with people and with birds—but she looks again, and they are not birds, but angels. Looking down, she sees a forge of circular stone blocks, a dwarven woman hammering away at a small fire.

The woman looks up, but Calliope hears a voice behind her, as her friends yank her back to the mortal plane, nearly escaping being sent to Mount Olympus.

They then make 3 constitution saving throws, to protect against losing spell slots when they channel, blindness, and something other ill effect. They fail none of these, jokingly asking, “Why shouldn’t we take these more often?”

The dragon will not cooperate with us (tell us where Drakesdoom is, or what the hell was up with Delphi), unless we promise to let him “die without infamy” (he uses the work ignominy, but I don’t think he meant that). We do not agree to do that, and instead Nexrin kills him completely. Nexrin and Bea work together to harvest the dragon and its organs, taking some vigor damage, starting with the heart, gaining a heart. Calliope harvests the scales, getting 4 units of dragonscale. Bea and nexrin get 14 dragon teeth. Clarity saws off a dragon claw for a souvenir. We collect one unit of dragon blood. We collect the liver, and then decide to go back as soon as possible.

Aftermath: We make it home safely, with Arha, Bea, Calliope, Clarity, CT, Tolyr, and Yezra going straight to Delphi’s to figure out what the hell just happened. We see that she has an injury on her leg, and a variety of hijinks happen all at once. First, Yezra tries to tackle her, and fails. Clarity very strongly comes to Delphi’s aid, telling her friends to stand down until they get more information. She asks to read Delphi’s mind, and Delphi agrees, but then she does not try to fail the save, and the spell ends. Tolyr casts curse on her, and she cuts the spell, but she later accepts the curse, giving her disadvantage on wisdom saves. Clarity, narrowing her eyes and furrowing her brow, tries again, casting detect thoughts. This time, she fails the save (unclear whether she chose to do so).

Clarity sees that she was not in league with Kazreme, or in the Felwood tonight. Her story about visiting the inkwells was correct, and she did in fact do astronomy and get attacked by a wild dog. She did, however, spend her time buying fiendish tendons to incorporate into a gift for Clarity, cursing the item and ensuring she could banish Clarity to a different plane if she ever became a threat. After Clarity discovers this, she tells the party that Delphi is innocent of aiding the dragon, but did something else pretty hurtful, but unrelated. Delphi ashamedly admits what she did to the members of the Ironwood Compact, who basically tell her she’s a dreadful friend, but mostly give up attacking her right that second. Clarity leaves shortly thereafter.

We also divide the loot, mostly! There is a lot of it to be resolved later.