Session 13: A Dragon Appears¶
Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2022 @ 9:00 PM CT
Audio: MP3 (3h2m)
Synopsis¶
The game began with a battle.
Before the juvenile blue dragon could attack, Pasha cast a spell on it, blinding the creature. Gadot and Wolf both missed their first shots. Sah-Sauj cast Shield on Pasha, Wolf, and themselves, preparing for damage. The dragon opened its maw and blasted Pasha with pure blue lightning, but he shrugged most of it off, being resistant to that type of damage. Tiran pulled out his gun and critically shot the dragon with a powerful shot. Meanwhile, Pasha made his way to Agorius, who lay unconscious by the side of the road. His eyes were closed, but Pasha couldn't quite make out what was wrong with him. However, when he touched Agorius, his skin didn't quite feel the way it should have.
Gadot missed another one of his short-bow shots, but Wolf was able to hit the dragon with a crossbow bolt. The creature looked surprised at the amount of resistance it received, especially when Sah-Sauj cast Bane on it right afterwards. It seemed frustrated, and when Sah-Sauj taunted it out loud, it attacked them, but missed both of his attacks. Pasha and Gadot both miss their attacks, but Wolf once more was able to connect his shot, sending a fountain of blood gushing from the creature's neck. Sah-Sauj attempted to stab it with their spear, but missed, and cowered behind their shield.
The dragon shook off its blindness and noticed that it had barely made a dent. Sensing its immediate demise, it took one final look at Agorius and Pasha, sprung up into the air, dodged your attacks, and flew away, raining blood over the entire area.
After the battle, Pasha said that Agorius knows where to go. Pasha said that the dragon told Agorius to finish up his business here and head East. Wolf cast a spell to track dragons, ensuring that it wouldn't make a surprise return. Gadot picked up some of the dragon's blood in order to be able to track it at a later point. You decided to load Agorius onto the wagon and head back to the Ironstone Forge to talk to Sophia.
When you arrived, you took the construct out of the wagon and moved it into a forge building. Here, you didn't see Sophia and the furnace wasn't burning, but smoke rose from the chimney of the main house. You took the still unconscious Agorius there, and when you entered, Sophia appears from her father's old office. She mentioned that Agorius slept in the cafeteria building where he had set up his mattress.
Pasha and Sah-Sauj took him there and laid him down on his mattress on the floor of the building. You waited around for him to wake up and noticed his stash of personal effects. Sah-Sauj opened his bag, which contained a component pouch used for spells, a chunk of obsidian, a golden necklace with the initials H&I inscribed on it, a blue cloak, and a golden dagger.
Pasha silently motioned to Sah-Sauj to put the stuff back in the bag after seeing it. They tied him up, and Pasha felt the stangeness of Agorius' skin again. Sah-Sauj took a close look at Agorius' hands and noticed two things: a very strong active magical aura and that he was using a spell to disguise himself. Pasha told Sah-Sauj to run and get the others.
When Sah-Sauj left the room, Agorius' eyes opened and he looked directly at Pasha. He said "I didn't mean for this to happen just yet," then dropped his disguise spell, and revealed himself to be Phidippus. Pasha attempted to cast Hold Person, but Phidippus easily shrugged it off. He looked confident, and seemed to be struggling with something behind his back. He told Pasha that he's different and special in more ways than he knew. He also told him that he was supposed to be the sacrifice that night one year ago.
Pasha decided to drag him out of the cafeteria and outside towards the others while he was still tied up. When he opened the door while holding Phidippus, the wizard broke his restraints, looked over his shoulder, smiled, went invisible, and a moment later, Pasha no longer sensed him in his hands. Pasha immediately used his breath weapon, but didn't seem to hit anything.
Inside, the others heard the sonic boom and ran outside towards Pasha who explained what happened and showed everyone Phidippus's bag. Everyone searched for Phidippus, but he appeared gone. Tiran confronted his mother about Agorius, but she said that she didn't notice anything off about his behavior. He just seemed happy to help her out in constructing the clocks which they've been sending all over the world.
Sah-Sauj used a spell to detect magic, but didn't notice anything magical outside. However, inside the forge building, they noticed a strong magical aura around the box part of the clock. Sah-Sauj asked Sophia about the obsidian they found in Phidippus' bag and Sophia told them that the stone is common in the bodies of survivors who came in contact with Amalchi.
Tiran decided to open the box on the clock in order to take a look at what was inside. However, all he managed to do was bang a couple of dents into it. Thankfully, Sophia was available to open it up fairly easily, knowing the ins and outs of the thing she built herself. Inside of it you saw a metal spiderweb-like construction converging at an obsidian stone, glowing blue and vibrating at a high frequency. Sophia immediately noticed that this wasn't what the crystal normally looks like when they put the clocks together; it's supposed to be white, like a quartz stone.
Tiran pulled the stone out and felt it vibrating in his hand, and it hurt quite a bit. But it felt familiar, similar to how the energy felt inside of the blue void that you were trapped in.
Pasha asked for the stone, and the moment he touched it, had a sensation of being elsewhere, flying through the sky above a cloud covered jungle. Without being in control, he slowly descended through the jungle canopy until he found himself flying above the jungle floor and eventually following a path through this seemingly ancient jungle. Eventually, he came across a cliff bisecting the jungle, following the path along it. Until he came across Amalchi, standing on the cliff edge who told him he wasn't supposed to be there and tossed him off the cliff. Once he pierced the fog below, he found himself flying again.
Everyone else simply saw Pasha stand in the middle of the room, slack-jawed, wide-eyed, and unresponsive. Tiran grabbed the stone from Pasha's hand and immediately got hurt again, but Pasha seemed to be back, at least. Pasha relayed the dream to everyone and Gadot told him that he had a similar dream recently. Gadot, hoping to retrigger the dream, grabbed the stone from Tiran, but to him, the stone just hurt.
Pasha concluded that Phidippus must still have some answers to his questions and believed him to still be around the forge somewhere. However, everybody was quite messed up from the battle and from touching the stone, and you all decided to rest for a while.
Tiran wanted to work on the construct a bit. He looked inside, and found some disconnected connectors. He plugged them in and pushed the button again. This time, the construct said "missing system disk, please insert the disk labeled operating system."
Thinking he must have missed it on the island, Tiran decided to head back and look for it there tonight. Or maybe to ask Mike and Hurq if they noticed any strange disks laying around. Sah-Sauj wrapped the stone from the clock in the lab coat they had found and put it in Borlok's bag of holding.
And that's where we left off.