After facing off with the butterfly swarms, the PCs are rejoined by SlakeThirst who has been catching up with them after leaving The Nest, and briefly encountering a fairy hunter en route. They decide to further search the caverns before taking a long rest, and after some diving, Nahar and Yukkbutt find a smooth metallic cylinder with spikes on the end, looking like it's made from a strange but familiar alloy that they've run across before. Borracho studies the weapon briefly and learns how it can be operated to produce an electrical charge when prodding a target. The characters take a long rest before pressing forward through the caves...
Hathun, First-Week, Tenth-day, the Now Year
After waking, it's pitch dark in the Verdant, and the PCs get to work blasting and burning away the rotten tree-rubble that blocks their further access into the caves. The smoke attracts a green dragon, which breathes poison gas into the caves after being instigated. In order to save his party, the warlock SlakeThirst makes a personal challenge, which is rejected by the dragon, who claims the dragonborn is 'reserved' for his own father, who supposedly has transitioned into a full dragon. SlakeThirst shoots the dragon anyway, who destroys him and sends him falling to the cavern below. Somehow, Slake survives, just on the edge of death. The party heals itself briefly before breaking through the wooden barrier...
And into an equally frightening situation, since the lair's residents, a group of Muckmouth ogres and an elephant-ogre hybrid giant, await them, guarding several prisoners that are in tightly bound cages. The shapeshifting quarry, some sort of green hag, joins the fight in Yukkbutt's form to confuse them, but Nahar and Barnowl quickly realize what's going on and press her in melee. The conditions of the cavernous area favor the PCs and their spellcasters, and while the enemies employ some runestones and scrolls to fend them off, they are ultimately victorious. They then find an 'Atak Plan' map, a letter to the ogre chieftains of the Arbordark, and three of the Wasp Rider survivors, including the chief Tanziver himself. The last prisoner happens to be a young human, who looks strikingly like Nexa...and claims in fact to be her twin brother!
The PCs hustle off to The Nest and Briar's Edge to warn of the ogre's larger plans.
PCs: Barnowl, Borracho, Cynjak, Kymyl, Nahar, Nexa, Un'Krug, Vraal, Yukkbutt
XP Rewarded: 2300
Inspiration rewarded: 1 each (to whoever needed one)
Renown: 5 (Wasp Rider)
NPCs
Nexos (human male): A
straggly but handsome teenage waif, standing just over five feet, with smooth
tan skin and ruffled, dark hair that offset his cool blue eyes. He wears the
tattered remains of a white tiger-skin as a cloak and loincloth, but is
otherwise uncovered, with bony ribs evident. He looks strikingly familiar, in
fact…
Taffi (gnome
female): A wiry female with thickly
knotted braids slick with beeswax, she has two floral patterns tattooed on her
ruddy tan cheeks and a scar running down her forehead and left cheek. Her eyes
are a liquid green and her smile reveals about 50% of her teeth are
broken.
Tanziver (gnome
male): An aged male with what seems a
permanent smirk on his face, this gnome has some of the most elaborately
braided beard and nose hair you’ve come across yet, with beads and j ewels in elaborate displays. His long, thin
nose seems to have been recently broken and there are cuts from where piercings
seem to have been removed.
Trundle (gnome
male): A pudgy gnome with a head like
an anvil, balding with sharp feathered edges to the hair that remains on the
sides and back of his head, that run onto mutton chops on his face. His pot
belly is covered in scale armor and his cheeks constantly puff out as if he’s
chewing something.
