Session 32 - Cracking Some Eggs (recap)

In this session, our party weathered their hardest fight yet, cracked some dragon eggs, and barely escaped the cave with their lives…

Previously

• Aegar called out “Fucking shit” as a humanoid came into view from the direction of the alcove and rope ladder.
• The cultist Zoyana stepped up to Pliny, but missed his attack.
• Aegar bashed the cultist into the wall (5 hp), dropping him, told his partners to “go after the cleric!”, and then ran up to the cultists and swung wildly.
• The cleric from the shadows stepped forward, and Aegar felt an immense urge put upon him to drop his warhammer. An urge he calmly ignored.
• Followed by the blossoming of a ball of fire, centered at the point between Aegar and Pliny and Zoyana. All three felt an immense burning heat. Both Pliny and Zoyana fell, as Aegar’s scales smoldered from the fire.
• The session ended with Pliny and Zoyana lying on the ground, Aegar haggered and facing two cultists, and Fang just out of range of the fireball, 18 seconds into its Mirror Image…

The Eggs…

• As the dust settled and the thunder stopped, Aegar saw Jos the wizard in red robes turn to the cleric: “You lazy fuck.” He pointed to Aegar, “that one’s half dead, and” he nodded toward the stairs, “the other two are down. Do you need an invitation?” He shook his head and turned. “Finish them and get back to work.”
• In a flurry, Fang lunged for Zoyana, fumbled her Potion of Greater Healing from her belt, and poured it down her throat. Zoyana popped up and conjured four separate swarms of rats to attack the cleric and the wizard. Aegar cast Aid, healing his friends and causing Pliny to gasp and cough as he awoke.
• The rats largely occupied the wizard, cleric, and one of the cultists for the next few moments.
• Pliny and Zoyana went for the dragon eggs.
  • Zoyana Thorn Whipped the blue dragon egg, drawing it closer and ultimately cracking it in half.
  • Pliny expertly jumped down to Thunderwave the black dragon eggs, but pulled up short at the last minute, noticing a Black Pudding in the cauldron with the dragon eggs. A moment later, he stepped closer and a thunderous boom filled the cavern, sending the eggs and pudding flying and damaging all three.
  • Fang joined Pliny, and then conjured a humanoid figure of Dancing Lights and sent it scurrying along the back wall to distract the pudding and allow Pliny to escape. Pliny was briefly delayed by the locked gate at the bottom of the stairs, but then scurried up the cliff wall to the landing with Zoyana.
• Aegar dispatched both cultists near him with vicious blows, then marched toward the red wizard. In response, the red wizard sent a Ray of Frost his way, then bamf’d out toward the chute and rope ladder that he’d used to enter.
• The pudding came inexorably rushing at the party, and Aegar called to “Run!”. Pliny charmed nearly all the remaining foes (excepting the red wizard) with a Hypnotic Pattern and the party attempted their escape.
• The party leap-frogged each other, with Aegar taking the rear. Just as he tried to retreat out the tunnel to the kobolds den, the black pudding caught him with a nasty blow. But he escaped.

On the Run

• The party raced through the twisting cave towards the entrance, trying to maintain stealth while feeling the tension of the need for haste.
  • At one point, Zoyana stopped and cast Cure Wounds on Aegar, bringing back some of his health and stamina.
• Just as the entrance came into view, while the party was still cloaked in the cave’s darkness, Frulam Mondath burst through the door to the cultists’ barracks, her polarm ablaze in magical light. She was followed closely by Jos the wizard and a pair of cultists. From the shadows, the party could see Frulam consulting with the four guards who were stationed at the entrance.

A rest

• As they considered rushing the cultists and going out in a blaze of glory, the party realized that instead of taking head-on all of the cave’s forces at once while battered and spent, they could retreat and possibly hide long enough to regroup and make a plan
• They retreated back down the cavern and into the meat locker where Zoyana had previously seen fresh and rotten meat being kept. Aegar, barreling into the room, did not notice the barbed curtain that spiked and poisoned him as he pushed through (Zoyana was a spider on her previous visit, and failed to notice the barbs from the floor below the curtain).
• With Fang stationed invisibly in the room outside and Pliny pleasantly humming on the inside, the party quietly patched up their wounds and prepared for a last and final push for the entrance.
• All was mostly quiet, except for one patrol of four cultists spotted by Fang, but they luckily turned left instead of right in their hunt for the party.

Excape

• After an hour or so of hiding, the party chanced their escape. They exited the meat locker, ran past the bats and mushrooms, and found the cave entrance eerily unguarded.
• The session ended with the party at the doorstep, no cultists in sight, ready to complete their escape…

_

Loot

NPCs Interacted With

• Male cleric of Tiamat
• Azbara Jos the wizard
• Frulam Mondath
• bunch of cultists (some dead, some alive)
• A very affectionate black pudding

Locations Visited

• Raider’s camp

Experience Per Character