MEK-OP Game Night: Savage Reaches Wrap-Up

November 4, Caudex Annales 70 AUP

The climactic defense at the Roaring Banks left gnollish power permanently broken in the Savage Reaches, and left little opposition along the river valley. With poor treasure to claim from the nomadic gnolls, attention turned to the forsaken swamplands to the west. Saurian forces marching against Fort Diffident had been neatly rebuffed two weeks earlier, but the pale dragon commanding them had retired from the battlefield with a haste beyond the possibility of a pursuit. Locating the dragon's lair seemed a lucrative alternative to mopping up fleeing slaver caravans, and so the leadership of the Briarwood Irregulars turned westward at the mountain spur, following the footpaths into the murk and fester of Pallid's Abode. 

The saurian tribes were primitive and dispersed into tiny hovels throughout the swamp, offering little opposition and indeed, little evidence of any recent habitation. The trail itself branched into a sinking complex of broken temple structures being flooded by water and overgrown with razor-thorned vines. Double-lidded eyeslits peered out from the water, then extinguished themselves to leave only ripples as the cavalry companies rode past.

The mouth of the great cave discovered outside the complex was worn smooth by passage, and a team of officers and heroes was already alert to dangers below. The passage sloped down into a chamber of muddy waters, where three saurian elders had elected to make a final stand. Two of the lizardkin were dispatched with fire and sword, and the third fled deeper into the tunnels. Swift pursuit brought the explorers into a throne room full of caged prisoners, waiting to be served as meals to the cave's draconic master. Pushing onward with growing apprehension, the warparty discovered a deep underground pool of acrid waters, churning and bubbling. And then the waters parted and the head and sinuous neck of a young dragon erupted into a furious gout of acid. Even those leaping aside in the nick of time were horribly choked and staggered by the rolling fume-clouds that blossomed around the splashing torrent.

Burning Hands: Need a light?

Both knights of the Irregulars, Thorgood and Wilson, fell in battle to the claws and fangs that followed up this noxious barrage, but not until after the dragon had been dazzled by a burst of light that left him stumbling and swinging wildly. As the surviving saurian burst from another nearby pool to employ shamanic arts to heal his master, scholar and magister Arthur Firebrand moved to catch them both in a fan of crackling flames. With the shaman scorched beyond life and driven into the caustic waters of the dragon pool, all focus returned to containing the dragon's fury. Thorley took a final stand beside the gruff Father Otis, notching arrows as the dragon closed in on them.

Surprise! Dagger KO!

In the end, the wyrm met an ignoble death. Firebrand, his magical arts exhausted, flew at the dragon's right flank with an unsheathed dagger and plunged it into the beast's scarred breast through a rift left by the enchanted sword of Sir Charles. The dragon stumbled in blind agony, and then at last lay quietly on the floor in a pool of fuming gore.

Amazingly, neither warrior was permanently injured after falling in battle to the strokes of the dragon-claws, knocked senseless by the impact but otherwise protected from laceration by sturdy mail, artful parrying, and Sir Humphrey's Ring of Protection.

With magical arts, the dragon horde was quickly identified among the acid-washed bones of hundreds of unfortunate captives. Great treasures drawn from the smaller pool where the lizard-priest had been concealed included (after return to civilization and careful identification): a Ring of Spell Storing with 5 spells, ample compensation for a wizard's valor, as well as a Shield +1. There were additionally strewn about the room a pair of scrolls, one (perhaps not coincidentally) with the fourth-level arcane spell spell storing, and the other with the lesser spell hypnotic pattern. In other corners, bones concealed a second set of Leather Armor +2, a Potion of Clairvoyance, a Potion of Invulerability, and a mildly cursed (but potentially also useful) Philter of Love. The floor was littered with offerings to the dragon from his saurian devotees amounting to the weight of nine thousands of gold pieces, and several rare gems: a flawless facet-cut diamond, a ceremonial jade belt, a wrought silver diadem, and a glamoured moonstone with patterns that swam beneath its surface.

In all, the wealth amounted to over 20,000 gp of monetary treasure, but with the further value of the spells beyond simple enumeration. Thorley Acquisitions now had access to one of the few techniques known of creating items that could store magical energy in any common jewel or ornamental band -- a talent prized beyond nearly all others by the great arcane loremasters of the world!

Notes: Prior to this encounter, I would have rated the battle at roughly even odds, but now it's clear that it required a lot of good luck to go as well as it did. Not only did all three PCs make a successful saving throw against the (basically lethal) dragon breath, but the dragon failed a saving throw against glitterdust. Otherwise it would have been unlikely that the party could have survived long enough to grind it down over multiple rounds. After seeing how lethal the breath attack could be, I didn't use it again during the battle, ostensibly on the grounds that dragons that are attacking by smell (instead of by sight) prefer to claw and bite. Another two breath attacks would have finished the battle quickly and sorrowfully.

Acid? Yeah, whatever. We're all good! (By Howard Lyon)

After the battle, the two rolls on the Mortal Wounds table were totally optimal. That is, both fighters rolled a 20 on 1d20 (for survival), followed by a 6 on 1d6 (for severity of wounds), which let them both get off with nothing except some flavor text about a near-death experience! Not so much as a scar to brag about later. The odds of doing this are essentially 1 in 20*6*20*6, or 1 in 14,400!! This is, to put it mildly, not the standard outcome of being ripped apart by a 30-foot-long acid-spouting dragon in his own lair.

Finally, I'd like to salute playtester (and walking Warhammer 40k encyclopedia) Jeremy Walley, who had to move back to Arizona last week. We all miss you already.