Reunions

December 17, 2020

They talk to Hannah and eventually move to the caravan to talk more.  Rolen is quite shocked to find out his sister is alive.  And somehow, she is a tiefling now?  At first he didn't believe it but as he talked more to her, it was her.  Then the anger set in.  She wasn't dead?  She didn't take that question well.  He had based his ability to hunt down and track orcs due to thinking she had been killed by them.  She just used the raid to leave?  And now she's a fey'ri or tiefling or whatever?  

As Hannah and Rolen are catching up, a tanarukk comes to speak to Gorstag and Kaji.  Would they be willing to take out an orc tribe?  What would it take?  They ask for coin and Mashol, the tanarukk, says he can do that.  They say they have to talk to the group and he says to let him know.  This caused quite the discussion.  Do they want to work for orcs or tanarukks?  What does that look like?  Do they get something else from that?  Does the group help them in other ways?  And why have orcs fight orcs?  As they discuss it, though, there is always the other side.  If a human, dwarf, or elven village asked them to do it, they would, probably for nothing.  Even if it is helping this Kilgulg get rid of a rival, it's still killing orcs, which Rolen can get behind.  It's also not like there aren't differences between humans and dwarves who fight.  Who is to say this is anything different?  

In the end, what pushed them over to accept the offer, and get seventy five crowns as well, was that Hannah's friends were going to be a few days.  And they convinced Hannah to come with them on the trip.  

Early afternoon the next day found the group looking at an orc camp.  They had discussed what they could do, and Hannah said she could cast some buffing spells to help.  Then she has cold attack spells right now but could do other types if they needed it and have time.  The tribe of orcs is spread out across many fires.  Hannah casts a spell to get Gorstag and Dio closer.  And it worked but was also on the other side of the camp!  They weren't expecting it.  It worked out well, though, with Gorstag cutting the orcs down like wheat during harvest.  Even when the chief brought out the wyverns!  They cut them down fairly quickly and then checked the bodies.  A fair amount of coins and they think they are Three Kingdom gold coins.  A kingdome from several hundred years ago but its coins are still around.  They have just never seen hundred of them together before!  

In the wyvern cave, they find a magic circle, and aren't sure what it is for.  There is a place to put a gold statue of Gruumsh into it that they found on the chieftain.  They decide not to do that but they do mar it and ruin it as much as they can.  

As they are talking about things, Hannah says that her map is quite close.  She had mentioned it before but it's a map of a Vyshaan vault, as best as she can read it.  Hannah tells them of this elven nation and the magic they produced.  She says maybe this will show the others that she has initiative and get things done.  So, they head up to there.  As they go, it gets cooler and cooler.  When they find the entrance, it's quite cold and a cool breeze is coming out of the cave!  As they approach the opening in the cliffs, they can see their breaths, it has gotten that cold.  This was in just over an hour of travel.  

The opening into the cliffs are some doors.  They can't figure out anything about the doors and head inside.  A voice tells them to leave! A fast talking whiny voice says that she isn't done with the ritual and they should leave.  They leave and cast invisibility and come back but the voice then tells them to leave as the Sisters aren't done with the ritual.  And that tells the group they have to attack.  Rushing around the columns, they see the creature who has been talking.  

A white dragon.

5000 xp

GM Notes

• I was mostly overprepared.  
• The group kept having one person pushing them toward Silverymoon, arguing it was part of the mission for Homilar, but the others were curious about the side quests. 
• I had ideas for if they went that way but not as fleshed out as the other side quests.
• The dragon's voice was another non threatening voice that is funny to go against type. 
• We did have some problems with d20Pro.  Sigh.  Some leaving and rejoining seemed to fix it. 
• One thing I did was run a player version from a different install, as that could have caused conflicts. 
• I'm still hoping there is a fix for this that at least gets us as stable as 3.7 had, even if it had some other problems.   
• We now off until 2021 unless we can find a day to play for all of us.  Even then, I have surgery Dec 30 and have no idea how one hand will affect my prep time!  So, quite the cliff hanger and I was trying to get this particular battle done before we quit but didn't have time.   

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