Eastspire
Berdyn manages to open the bank vault. Time is spent going through the 100 lockboxes in the vault. So much time.
Learn some undercommon while they do this. Fera-Fera means going out whoring, but also high risk gambling, and also a high risk battle.
We find some magic items in the vault. One item is an ornate set of bone dice. When Codex identifies it, he is compelled to roll it.
He has to pick a person for each number, from 2 to 12. It has to be my four friends, but the other numbers have to be people. Codex fills the numbers with enemies, save one, Uhurak at 12. He rolls a 9. 9 – is Pyyrhos Alegan. And Codex knows that he just casted Power Word Kill on Pyyrhos, he is most likely dead.
Horrified, Codex doesn’t tell his party. He is reeling from the implications. Bale is third in line to the throne. And he just orphaned Bale’s Niece. And utterly screwed up whatever plans the Vecna conspiracy had.
We fight the creature in the auditorium. It turns out to be one of the Lost, and it is quickly killed by Bale, Berdyn and Simon. The gate to the Shadowfell is 80 feet away, across a lake of completely black water. Maud polymorphs Codex into a bird to get across.
Another Lost passes through the Shadowfell gate. Codex realizes that this is the SAME Lost, as outsiders they are not permanently killed when murdered on the Material World.
Codex writes “same” with his beak, and then flies across the water. If the Lost is killed again, it will come through the gate again.
Codex gets across and then is transformed to no longer be a bird. He closes the gate with stoneshape. But then he is trapped on the island. Codex takes this opportunity to confess what he did. He recounts almost all the names (Leaving out Uhurak) and then tells them which one he rolled. Pyyrhos Alegan may now be dead. Bale, now second in line to the throne, walks away and proceeds to get drunk.
Later on, he confesses to Berdyn that the last name was Uhurak. Uhurak is a murderer, though we are allied to her. Codex is left to his horrifying guilt.
We wander the rest of the city on the other side of the auditorium. We find the encampment of the humans that used to squat in the ruins.
We find some old records that report extreme changes in climate in the years before the world ended, several harvests growing out of season, animals having young out of season, and weather highly out of character for the season. Something was rapidly changing.
Outside Eastspire
We leave the city and into the outdoors. We enter into a windy permafrost cold. The sun beats down but provides no heat. Down the way is a ruined town, and further up the mountain, Berdyn briefly sees the flash of white scale, the Dragon! It moves out of sight.
Lair of the White Wyrm
We begin to climb the mountain. We reach the entrance to a cave. The cave entrance is surrounded in ice, and a deep freeze emanates from the cave. Floor is hard packed ice.
In the first set of chambers we are attacked by a pair of young remorhaz. They seem to be watchdogs of the dragon. They burrow and attack with their terrible bite and massive heat. We defeat them but they really mess us up.
Further down we find a T-junction. Down one way is a steep icy slope, at the bottom are a pair of tigers. The dragon’s larder, he likes the taste of Apex predators. Further into that cavern Berdyn can hear bears growling. More food for the dragon.
We go the other direction, down a shorter slope into a room filled with fragile icicles on the roof. A loud noise or intense heat will bring the roof down. There’s a marble fountain in the room, flowing cold clear water and draining it into the ground before it freezes.
It is guarded by pair of crystalline oozes. They are vulnerable to fire, but using fire is incredibly dangerous. What to do? We defeat them, but they engulf Codex in ice. He has to break himself out.
As we move carefully through the chamber, we hear voices in Giant. These voices belong to a pack of hungry winter wolves. They howl and parts of ceiling come crashing down. They tear into us, and we fight desperately to survive.
We defeat most of them, and drive the last back to it’s den, where it is joined by a pair of young winter wolves, still the size of a man. One of the pups tries to kill the wounded adult, but the adult kills it. The other pup joins the adult. They attack us.
We defeat them, and then take a short rest to recover.
We find the dragon’s midden, a sphere of annihilation under a grate. Codex stares into it’s cold black oblivion and is tempted to command it. He resists that temptation. He’s killed enough people today.
We find a room where the white dragon examines his treasures. There are hundreds of gems buried in the ice, and all the gems have continual light cast on them. It creates a variety of colors that act as a kaleidoscope. Bale starts chipping out a bunch of gems.
We find the dragon’s larder, behind a large dragon sized door. The larder is meticulously prepared, all frozen, and some of it is over 500 years old. There’s spices and fine wines as well as prepared roasts, all frozen.
Further in we are attacked by a huge pack of guard drakes. They are white drakes, and were created in a ritual gifted by Tiamat to her loyal Chromatics. It involves putting a dragon scale and fresh meat into a stew, which makes an egg. The egg hatches within an hour and the first person that feeds the drake gains it’s unyielding loyalty.
It is a tough fight. But we prevail. We are badly injured though, and take a short rest.
We head down a hallway with numerous ice sculptures, and past a room filled with riches. The riches filled room has what initially looks like the dragon sleeping on top, but it turns out to be a mechanical thing that looks like a dragon. It is all trapped and alarmed, so we stay away, for now.
We get to the end of the hall, and into a huge cavern. And the dragon awaits us.
The fight is vicious and short. The dragon flies from platform to platform, sending chill breath and knocking down stalagmites from the ceiling onto us. But Maud uses some very effective lightning bolt, and Simon climbs to one of the platforms and strikes it with his paladin smite. Maud strikes the killing blow with her wand of magic missiles.
Frostfang is Dead!
We butcher Frostfang and sever it’s head, in preparation for presenting to the druids.
We manage to get into the dragon family’s main chambers, a very trapped door. Within, there is a massive map of the world, and a recorded, 2000 year history from a dragon’s perspective. Three separate writers, and then a fourth, post freeze.
The first words of the fourth:
“Family is gone, family is only that survived the purge, hope some made it through the gate before they died.”
Last words of the third – “All the chromatic dragons called together by Tiamat to the citadel. They are to serve her, though they know not what it means.”
There are four walls 80 feet high, and there is draconic written on it from the very top to almost the bottom.
Spend time clearing out the rest of the cave. There is an area where several saber tooth tigers and several large cave polar bears live, and we coax them out. The bears are very large, as are the tigers. We are aware that the mother dragon brought them in as a source of food, husbanding them.
One bear cub is left behind, still enormous – the size of a donkey, but still a cub. Maud attempts to befriend it – and she does! It seems to bond with Maud, Berdyn and Bale.
We find out that the statues of ice are not statues, they are creatures turned into hard ice sculptures. The ice won’t melt, and the spell transforming them might be dispelled. So a Fire Giant King, a human slave, a human noble, a donkey and a nymph statue can be turned back.
We decide to sleep on that fact and figure out what to do next morning.