Nyatharel smiles at Ixsas glowing eyes the way a grandmother my look at a child's sloppy first artwork. Simple in effect and lacking in skill. "Fine I will leave for this night, but if a decision is not made in my favor, then I will continue to feast on Toren's soul. Know that I can still find Toren no matter where he goes" says Nyatharel.
She blows out the flame in the brazier and she vanishes into thin air.
Sergelicks his lips, which feel spectacularly dry.
Then after a few moments he looks at Ixsas, ignoring the boys for now.
"Shall we assume she is still here, listening?"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM -(Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown *Red Dead Annihilation: ToA *Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
Sergelicks his lips, which feel spectacularly dry.
Then after a few moments he looks at Ixsas, ignoring the boys for now.
"Shall we assume she is still here, listening?"
"I...don't know," Ixsas admits. "But I believe that a night hag may consider us beneath her notice. But just in case, I'll maintain the spell that protected Toren from her touch as long as I can."
Ixsas says that it's good to know that he can interfere with her access to Toren, but he still doesn't know how to break that connection. If they do not give the night hag someone else to "feed" on, she will continue to haunt Toren's dreams, and Ixsas worries that the night hag will eventually kill him. Of course, having the night hag switch to another doesn't really solve the problem: it just moves the danger to a different person. They have until the next day to decide what to do about the night hag. "Until then," Ixsas finally says, standing back up, "at least Toren will get one night of undisturbed sleep!" He recommends that Bay try to get some sleep, and they can talk to him tomorrow. In the meantime, he reminds Serge that they need to check on Krackle and Zeds.
((OOC: to be clear, once Ixsas and Serge settle Bay back down, Ixsas is ready to leave their room and head back to their own room. When they leave the Mires' room, Ixsas would first look over the balcony into area 1 to see whether Zeds had made it out of door and back into area 1 yet. If so, he tries to get Zeds's attention to see whether Zeds signals to them in any way. If not, he'll just go back to the party's room.))
Krackle would have let Zeds know when the coast was clear, letting out a visible sigh of relief once his friend appeared next to him once more. "Did you find any treasure??" The kobold asks excited. "Serge ans Ixsas wondered off somewhere.." He adds before pointing in the direction they moved.
"Tunnel underneath main vault room. Professionally hid and all. Lizard people in it. I scrammed before they discovered me. I hope," Zeds reports, trying to keep it quiet and succinct. "Where's the others? They should be informed. Bog Luck must be involved, the way it is hidden. If he is in league with the cult and the lizards..." Zeds trails off with a bit of a shrug.
Once Ixsas and Serge get back to the party's room, Ixsas says, "I don't want to provoke the other guards, but I'm worried about Zeds. I expected that he'd be back out of the room by now, and he no longer has the benefit of my spell. I can wait in the room, but maybe you should go check whether Krackle has heard from Zeds yet? If we need to go rescue Zeds, Krackle can put people to sleep, so maybe he can take care of the guards without killing them."
"Bog Luck must be involved, the way it is hidden. If he is in league with the cult and the lizards..." Zeds repeats, this time for the whole group, after explaining the entire little mini-adventure in detail. "Obviously this is at least one way the cult is hiding their movement of stolen goods..."
"Bog Luck must be involved, the way it is hidden. If he is in league with the cult and the lizards..." Zeds repeats, this time for the whole group, after explaining the entire little mini-adventure in detail. "Obviously this is at least one way the cult is hiding their movement of stolen goods..."
Ixsas is excited about the substantial progress Zeds has made in tracking down the dragon cult since the party arrived at Carnath House. It's the first real lead they've had since he joined the caravan two weeks ago! Ixsas says, "We already knew that Bog Luck, at least, was doing with the cult, right? His scabbard hard their dragon mark, and he knew about them and their leaders and put you in touch with the head of their caravan. So that part isn't new."
Ixsas doesn't have the same sort of concrete evidence, but he shares his intuition with everyone. He says, "I don't think that the dragon cult's influence here is pervasive. I am confident that the cook and the guards to whom I have spoken here are just kapi kulu -- ah, what do you call them? Soldiers for hire? Just paid wages, not a pledged knight, like Serge. The Carnath House guards may be loyal to Bog Luck, but it's not because he's a leader in their cult. I doubt that any of them even know about the cult. They may not even know that Bog Luck is collaborating with smugglers. I'd guess that Bog Luck just pays them well as long as they do as they're told. They're just happy to collect their coins and are careful not to ask too many questions about any suspicious activity at Carnath House." Given his background, Ixsas clearly seems to think that it's odd that there are people who are just focused on earning a good wage instead of working toward some greater mission or purpose.
Ixsas isn't too concerned with Carnath House itself. He's more focused on finding out where the smuggled goods are going. Ixsas thinks for a moment and then says, "If we follow these lizard-men, we may find some base or temple of the dragon cult. But, Zeds, you said that these lizard-people are taking the stolen goods out of Carnath House as we speak?! Do we need to go follow them tonight, before their trail gets too old?" He stands up, ready to act on the thought. "Did you see where this underground tunnel comes out? Or do we need to go through the locked door and follow them through their tunnel." Ixsas is worried that they could lose their only lead if they wait until morning.
"I was going to stumble into some of the lizardfolk before I stumbled across the end of the tunnel, so I hightailed it out of there," Zeds explains. "So no. I do not know where it comes out. In fact I didn't specifically see them moving boxes (I don't think?) but there were crates I saw being moved into the locked room that weren't in there when I snuck in. Only logical the lizardfolk took and moved them..."
"How quickly we would need to follow to track them... depends? On how much of it is just tunnel, the type of area it connects to, how guarded it is and so on... I'm not exactly a naturist myself all trained at tracking but a bunch of lizards moving crates... How hard could it be?"
"How quickly we would need to follow to track them... depends? On how much of it is just tunnel, the type of area it connects to, how guarded it is and so on... I'm not exactly a naturist myself all trained at tracking but a bunch of lizards moving crates... How hard could it be?"
Ixsas says, "Well, that depends. If that tunnel leads to a subterranean temple underneath Carnath House, I guess there's no urgency. But if it's a tunnel that just lets them move the stollen goods out of Carnath House unseen, then they must be planning to take the crates somewhere else. So unless the cult has a hidden base somewhere very close, I guess that they must load the crates into wagons or something. In any case, if they drag a bunch of crates out of the storeroom, it'll be easier to track and follow them if we do that before the crates are loaded up and shipped off somewhere else."
Ixsas sighs heavily at the thought of delaying sleep and sneaking around more tonight. He says, "If we could capture one of the lizardfolk, I could ensure that they cannot lie to us, but we'd need a way to speak with them. Do lizardfolk speak Common? Or...if they're working with the dragon cult, maybe they speak draconic. I bet that the Mire brothers speak draconic since their family was involved with the cult."
Mentioning the Mire brothers reminds Ixsas of the other events of this evening. "Oh!", he says, "We didn't mention it earlier, but while we were waiting for you, Serge and I did go to check on Toren Mire. I was able to interfere with the night hag, and she appeared to us in the room." If Zeds or Krackle express any interest, Ixsas will fill them in on what he did and what the night hag said. He explains: "I'm not very good at negotiation, much less negotiation with an evil fey. The only way the hag said she would leave Toren Mire alone is if we can provide another willing victim whose soul she can feed on." He says that he got the hag to leave Toren alone tonight, but she'll be back tomorrow for her answer.
Serge leans against the wall, arms crossed, his brow furrowed in thought.
“So, we’ve got a secret tunnel, lizardfolk making boxes of goods - possibly treasure - disappear, and a cult that doesn’t seem to know we’re breathing down their necks. Sounds like we’re finally closing in.”
He pushes off the wall, pacing a few steps as he speaks, his voice carrying a note of restrained frustration.
“Look, if I let myself loose, I'd want to rush down there and start running them through as much as anyone—more than anyone, probably—but we can’t botch this by charging in too soon. If they figure out we’re here, and why we're here, they’ll scatter, and we’ll be back to chasing shadows.”
Stopping, Serge turns to the rogue. “You said they didn’t see you, right? So far, we’re still ghosts to them. Let’s keep it that way. We wait, find out where the tunnel leads, and when the time comes…” His hand falls to his sword hilt, gripping it tightly. “We make sure none of them get away.”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM -(Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown *Red Dead Annihilation: ToA *Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
Stopping, Serge turns to the rogue. “You said they didn’t see you, right? So far, we’re still ghosts to them. Let’s keep it that way. We wait, find out where the tunnel leads, and when the time comes…” His hand falls to his sword hilt, gripping it tightly. “We make sure none of them get away.”
"So, we sleep tonight and look for the tunnel's exit in the light of day?", Ixsas asks. "I would gladly rest, but will we even be able to get into the store room tomorrow once Carnath House is active again? If not, do you think that you had a good sense of where the tunnel was headed, Zeds? We could just follow that line outside of Carnath House and hope that we find the exit in the wilderness somewhere nearby."
But Ixsas also points out, "But even if we find where the tunnel ends, that probably means that we just pick up the trail there. We'll be back to following along behind them like we did on the way here. Of course, now that they've smuggled the goods out of Carnath House, maybe it's just a short journey to their base somewhere nearby."
Krackle sits nearby, listening to everything being said while remaining oddly quiet. His eyes focused on the large black egg held tightly to his chest. "I can speak draconic..." He adds as he looks up from the scaley orb. "If we had to interrogate one of the lizardfolk... I could help with that" He says before slowly making his way to his feet. "I want to help Toren... and maybe if we get into a fight... we can offer one of our foes a chance to live a few days longer as the hags personal wine skin... but I think stopping Tiamat is our goal... and I think we should all head down that tunnel tonight and see where it goes."
((OOC: Oops! Of course! Let's just say that Ixsas didn't that kobolds speak draconic. I was confusing this party with another one of my play-by-post games. The other campaign also featured dragon enemies, and the DM was amused that no one in the party thought to take Draconic as a language.)
I think we should all head down that tunnel tonight and see where it goes."
Ixsas says, "I was expecting more quiet investigation and just trying to help Toren here at Carnath House, so I will need to rest before I can pray to Kossuth for magic that's more suitable to a big fight. I don't necessarily want to spend the whole night trailing the lizardfolk, but I agree that it's worth finding out where the tunnel ends. If nothing else, it may tell us what we will face tomorrow and help me prepare properly in the morning."
((OOC: Serge voted to wait until morning. Krackle wants to investigate more tonight. Ixsas is leaning toward at least finding the end of the tunnel tonight, but he can be convinced to wait until morning. I think that leaves it up to Zeds to cast the deciding vote.)
"As far as the Mire brothers go...," Ixsas says. He pauses and thinks for a moment. "I will pray on it. I would like to help the Mire brothers, but I believe my mission from Kossuth is to stop this dragon cult." He smiles at Krackle's idea: "Since Bog Luck seems to believe that you and Zeds are cult members, maybe we can bring the opportunity to him. I could even suggest that he would profit from a bargain with the night hag."
Nyatharel smiles at Ixsas glowing eyes the way a grandmother my look at a child's sloppy first artwork. Simple in effect and lacking in skill. "Fine I will leave for this night, but if a decision is not made in my favor, then I will continue to feast on Toren's soul. Know that I can still find Toren no matter where he goes" says Nyatharel.
She blows out the flame in the brazier and she vanishes into thin air.
Through Krackle Zeds is able to slip out unnoticed and regroups with his companion.
Serge licks his lips, which feel spectacularly dry.
Then after a few moments he looks at Ixsas, ignoring the boys for now.
"Shall we assume she is still here, listening?"
PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM - (Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown * Red Dead Annihilation: ToA * Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
"I...don't know," Ixsas admits. "But I believe that a night hag may consider us beneath her notice. But just in case, I'll maintain the spell that protected Toren from her touch as long as I can."
Ixsas says that it's good to know that he can interfere with her access to Toren, but he still doesn't know how to break that connection. If they do not give the night hag someone else to "feed" on, she will continue to haunt Toren's dreams, and Ixsas worries that the night hag will eventually kill him. Of course, having the night hag switch to another doesn't really solve the problem: it just moves the danger to a different person. They have until the next day to decide what to do about the night hag. "Until then," Ixsas finally says, standing back up, "at least Toren will get one night of undisturbed sleep!" He recommends that Bay try to get some sleep, and they can talk to him tomorrow. In the meantime, he reminds Serge that they need to check on Krackle and Zeds.
((OOC: to be clear, once Ixsas and Serge settle Bay back down, Ixsas is ready to leave their room and head back to their own room. When they leave the Mires' room, Ixsas would first look over the balcony into area 1 to see whether Zeds had made it out of door and back into area 1 yet. If so, he tries to get Zeds's attention to see whether Zeds signals to them in any way. If not, he'll just go back to the party's room.))
Krackle would have let Zeds know when the coast was clear, letting out a visible sigh of relief once his friend appeared next to him once more. "Did you find any treasure??" The kobold asks excited. "Serge ans Ixsas wondered off somewhere.." He adds before pointing in the direction they moved.
"Tunnel underneath main vault room. Professionally hid and all. Lizard people in it. I scrammed before they discovered me. I hope," Zeds reports, trying to keep it quiet and succinct. "Where's the others? They should be informed. Bog Luck must be involved, the way it is hidden. If he is in league with the cult and the lizards..." Zeds trails off with a bit of a shrug.
Ixsas does not see Zeds
Zeds and Krackle can assume the rest of the party is in their room.
Once Ixsas and Serge get back to the party's room, Ixsas says, "I don't want to provoke the other guards, but I'm worried about Zeds. I expected that he'd be back out of the room by now, and he no longer has the benefit of my spell. I can wait in the room, but maybe you should go check whether Krackle has heard from Zeds yet? If we need to go rescue Zeds, Krackle can put people to sleep, so maybe he can take care of the guards without killing them."
"They went off that way" Krackle replies, motioning towards the direction where they went.
Zeds and Krackle rejoin Ixsas and Serge in their room. Zeds relays the information about the tunnel.
"Bog Luck must be involved, the way it is hidden. If he is in league with the cult and the lizards..." Zeds repeats, this time for the whole group, after explaining the entire little mini-adventure in detail. "Obviously this is at least one way the cult is hiding their movement of stolen goods..."
Ixsas is excited about the substantial progress Zeds has made in tracking down the dragon cult since the party arrived at Carnath House. It's the first real lead they've had since he joined the caravan two weeks ago! Ixsas says, "We already knew that Bog Luck, at least, was doing with the cult, right? His scabbard hard their dragon mark, and he knew about them and their leaders and put you in touch with the head of their caravan. So that part isn't new."
Ixsas doesn't have the same sort of concrete evidence, but he shares his intuition with everyone. He says, "I don't think that the dragon cult's influence here is pervasive. I am confident that the cook and the guards to whom I have spoken here are just kapi kulu -- ah, what do you call them? Soldiers for hire? Just paid wages, not a pledged knight, like Serge. The Carnath House guards may be loyal to Bog Luck, but it's not because he's a leader in their cult. I doubt that any of them even know about the cult. They may not even know that Bog Luck is collaborating with smugglers. I'd guess that Bog Luck just pays them well as long as they do as they're told. They're just happy to collect their coins and are careful not to ask too many questions about any suspicious activity at Carnath House." Given his background, Ixsas clearly seems to think that it's odd that there are people who are just focused on earning a good wage instead of working toward some greater mission or purpose.
Ixsas isn't too concerned with Carnath House itself. He's more focused on finding out where the smuggled goods are going. Ixsas thinks for a moment and then says, "If we follow these lizard-men, we may find some base or temple of the dragon cult. But, Zeds, you said that these lizard-people are taking the stolen goods out of Carnath House as we speak?! Do we need to go follow them tonight, before their trail gets too old?" He stands up, ready to act on the thought. "Did you see where this underground tunnel comes out? Or do we need to go through the locked door and follow them through their tunnel." Ixsas is worried that they could lose their only lead if they wait until morning.
"I was going to stumble into some of the lizardfolk before I stumbled across the end of the tunnel, so I hightailed it out of there," Zeds explains. "So no. I do not know where it comes out. In fact I didn't specifically see them moving boxes (I don't think?) but there were crates I saw being moved into the locked room that weren't in there when I snuck in. Only logical the lizardfolk took and moved them..."
"How quickly we would need to follow to track them... depends? On how much of it is just tunnel, the type of area it connects to, how guarded it is and so on... I'm not exactly a naturist myself all trained at tracking but a bunch of lizards moving crates... How hard could it be?"
Ixsas says, "Well, that depends. If that tunnel leads to a subterranean temple underneath Carnath House, I guess there's no urgency. But if it's a tunnel that just lets them move the stollen goods out of Carnath House unseen, then they must be planning to take the crates somewhere else. So unless the cult has a hidden base somewhere very close, I guess that they must load the crates into wagons or something. In any case, if they drag a bunch of crates out of the storeroom, it'll be easier to track and follow them if we do that before the crates are loaded up and shipped off somewhere else."
Ixsas sighs heavily at the thought of delaying sleep and sneaking around more tonight. He says, "If we could capture one of the lizardfolk, I could ensure that they cannot lie to us, but we'd need a way to speak with them. Do lizardfolk speak Common? Or...if they're working with the dragon cult, maybe they speak draconic. I bet that the Mire brothers speak draconic since their family was involved with the cult."
Mentioning the Mire brothers reminds Ixsas of the other events of this evening. "Oh!", he says, "We didn't mention it earlier, but while we were waiting for you, Serge and I did go to check on Toren Mire. I was able to interfere with the night hag, and she appeared to us in the room." If Zeds or Krackle express any interest, Ixsas will fill them in on what he did and what the night hag said. He explains: "I'm not very good at negotiation, much less negotiation with an evil fey. The only way the hag said she would leave Toren Mire alone is if we can provide another willing victim whose soul she can feed on." He says that he got the hag to leave Toren alone tonight, but she'll be back tomorrow for her answer.
What do you do next?
Serge leans against the wall, arms crossed, his brow furrowed in thought.
“So, we’ve got a secret tunnel, lizardfolk making boxes of goods - possibly treasure - disappear, and a cult that doesn’t seem to know we’re breathing down their necks. Sounds like we’re finally closing in.”
He pushes off the wall, pacing a few steps as he speaks, his voice carrying a note of restrained frustration.
“Look, if I let myself loose, I'd want to rush down there and start running them through as much as anyone—more than anyone, probably—but we can’t botch this by charging in too soon. If they figure out we’re here, and why we're here, they’ll scatter, and we’ll be back to chasing shadows.”
Stopping, Serge turns to the rogue. “You said they didn’t see you, right? So far, we’re still ghosts to them. Let’s keep it that way. We wait, find out where the tunnel leads, and when the time comes…” His hand falls to his sword hilt, gripping it tightly. “We make sure none of them get away.”
PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM - (Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown * Red Dead Annihilation: ToA * Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
"So, we sleep tonight and look for the tunnel's exit in the light of day?", Ixsas asks. "I would gladly rest, but will we even be able to get into the store room tomorrow once Carnath House is active again? If not, do you think that you had a good sense of where the tunnel was headed, Zeds? We could just follow that line outside of Carnath House and hope that we find the exit in the wilderness somewhere nearby."
But Ixsas also points out, "But even if we find where the tunnel ends, that probably means that we just pick up the trail there. We'll be back to following along behind them like we did on the way here. Of course, now that they've smuggled the goods out of Carnath House, maybe it's just a short journey to their base somewhere nearby."
Krackle sits nearby, listening to everything being said while remaining oddly quiet. His eyes focused on the large black egg held tightly to his chest. "I can speak draconic..." He adds as he looks up from the scaley orb. "If we had to interrogate one of the lizardfolk... I could help with that" He says before slowly making his way to his feet. "I want to help Toren... and maybe if we get into a fight... we can offer one of our foes a chance to live a few days longer as the hags personal wine skin... but I think stopping Tiamat is our goal... and I think we should all head down that tunnel tonight and see where it goes."
((OOC: Oops! Of course! Let's just say that Ixsas didn't that kobolds speak draconic. I was confusing this party with another one of my play-by-post games. The other campaign also featured dragon enemies, and the DM was amused that no one in the party thought to take Draconic as a language.)
Ixsas says, "I was expecting more quiet investigation and just trying to help Toren here at Carnath House, so I will need to rest before I can pray to Kossuth for magic that's more suitable to a big fight. I don't necessarily want to spend the whole night trailing the lizardfolk, but I agree that it's worth finding out where the tunnel ends. If nothing else, it may tell us what we will face tomorrow and help me prepare properly in the morning."
((OOC: Serge voted to wait until morning. Krackle wants to investigate more tonight. Ixsas is leaning toward at least finding the end of the tunnel tonight, but he can be convinced to wait until morning. I think that leaves it up to Zeds to cast the deciding vote.)
"As far as the Mire brothers go...," Ixsas says. He pauses and thinks for a moment. "I will pray on it. I would like to help the Mire brothers, but I believe my mission from Kossuth is to stop this dragon cult." He smiles at Krackle's idea: "Since Bog Luck seems to believe that you and Zeds are cult members, maybe we can bring the opportunity to him. I could even suggest that he would profit from a bargain with the night hag."