Hathun, Second-Week, Fourth Day, the Now Year
The PCs begin to hike further up the Ayrie, arriving at a rocky area pocked with cavern entrances and overgrown vegetation. Within one of the caverns, two dragonborn have been hiding, after escaping from Pergeron's cultists with the held of the witch Shaul Lutrang. She was slain during the escape, but her two charges, Hogarth and Noogal, managed to eke out shelter and some weapons. Slakethirst is hesitant to believe the pair, thinking they might be a trap sent by Pergeron, but they prove their story the best they can, and win the trust of the party. The group travels further north, until the mountain hits a steep incline and they have to climb ledges through a waterfall to traverse any higher. Slakethirst air-lifts Borracho up to scout ahead, disappearing from the party.
After the grueling trial up the waterfall, led by Yukkbutt (who finds a jeweled grappling hook in the process), the PCs arrive in a misty, small, dense jungle plateau, in which they find several trampled paths and an abundance of wildlife. After traveling another quarter or half mile through the vegetation, they arrive at a shabby stone lean-to which serves as the home to a strange mountain giant and her massive, quadroped dinosaur pet. Unable to communicate with these creatures, she and the beast decide they must be snacks, and a melee ensues, with Nexa and the giant exchanging ranged attacks, and the rest of the party closing in. Cynjak and Nahar are laid out a number of times by the pairs' massive clubbing and stomping, only to have Vraal standby to revive them, and the fight is eventually turned against the mammoths...first, the giant falls, then her enraged companion. However, through the fight, Vraal and others have noticed that several winged enemies, possibly of Pergeron's cult, are circling above, noticing the clamor below...
Then Nexa fires off a spell at one of these winged creatures...a dragon! It in turn dives and breathes a poison cloud over most of the already-weakened party, killing Nahar outright and taking down the other paladin and Hogarth, one of the new dragonborn to join the party. Nexa runs off, terrified at the damage she has caused, while the half-orc barbarians, Noogal the dragonborn and Vraal all make a path straight for the giantess' shelter. Within, they find a cavernous slope that seems to lead up to the next shelf of the Ayrie, on which the dragonborn refugees are apparently being imprisoned. Outside, the green dragon lands and rends the corpses of the paladins to pieces, also snatching up the ailing Hogarth and taking her off to the monastery for a later snack... Nexa exchanges fire with the two winged dragonborn (the other two flying shapes), and they eventually bring her down with witch bolts and proceed to devour her corpse, in a grim twist of irony!
Racing up the slope, the four survivors halt in the darkness when they hear the sound of a small force of drakes and dragonborn berserkers bearing down upon them. Vraal uses as much healing as he can before the inevitable confrontation...
PCs: Cynjak, Hogarth, Nahar, Nexa, Noogal (NPC), Un'Krug, Vraal, Yukkbutt
XP rewarded: 1900
Inspiration rewarded: ---
Renown: ---
