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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DragonShadow" data-source="post: 1496960" data-attributes="member: 16918">Chapter 2: Truly free at lastForgive the lapse, I've been kind of busy. Hope at least somebody is enjoying the story hour. Also, I appologize for the shoddy writing --- I'm not as enthusiastic as writing the SH as I thought I would be, so it's coming out as a shortened summation. In any case, here's the SH for session 2:-----------------------Venya "the Quick," the desert elf Rogue/Wizard, while off alone on a routine scouting mission through the dunes, found himself running alongside a wagon traveling eastward across the sands. While this was not exceptionally odd, it would of course merit a closer look. While those simple thoughts shot through his head, he noticed not a second too soon the ambush that awaited him; buried beneath the shifting sands were three Thri-kreen raiders, cunningly camoflauged with the coloring of their carapaces. Wary of their menacing gythkas, Venya employed his agility to beat a hasty retreat from the enclosure they would have him in. Now directly behind the wagon by a good thirty feet, he decided it would be a good idea to catch up and, possibly, get help from within. Meanwhile, while attempting to catch the fast-moving vehicle, the glib tongued elf tried his hand at communication with the mantis-warriors: to no avail.Ogion, Griph, Flitter and Slyvanus (the escaped Cleric from the Arena) stayed their places in the wagon though in sight of the raiding Thri-kreen and the slightly desperate lanky elf. Bouncing up and down in his lap-side seat, Flitter chittered at the driver. "Go faster!" The driver, in all honesty, would have been more than happy to oblige, save one fact: two more of the insectoid warriors burst out of the sand and, with well placed shots of their chatkchas, rendered the running horses unconcious. The inertia of the wagon, and the drag of the falling horses caused the entire carriage to overturn. Flitter immediately employed his powers of flight to maintain himself within, Ogion leapt from the open back and rolled harmlessly in the sand, the driver, his two passengers, and the cleric were jostled around inside the overturned vehicle, and Griph was unceremoniously flung through the air into the dunes. Venya, having caught up to the wagon by that time, nimbly sprung out of the way.With nothing left to slow down their raid, the Thri-kreen approached the party. Ogion immediately took out his bow and began sending arrows deftly into the carapace of the nearest one. Flitter waited within the wagon, unwilling to enter combat. Tumbling and running for a more advantageous position, Venya distanced himself nicely from the original three Thri-kreen, but moved almost directly into the second two. Griph, with his typical flare, leapt atop the carriage to engage the closest one in combat, bearing his rapier and kukri with sure hands. He soon found himself flanked, however, when the mantis that had been entering the carriage leapt atop it as Flitter darted out the back.Giving the two carapaced fighters a good run for their money, though unable to score any hits of his own, Griph was suddenly in desperate need of help when the crescent head of a gythka slammed into him, as well as a viscious bite from the mandibles of the less than pleased Thri-kreen. With arrows flying across the dunes from the ranger and pixie (who was hovering in mid-air), the Thri-kreen themselves didn't seem to be much better off than the waylain party. "Griph!" came the high-pitched shout from the pixie, "Move!" Waiting for the genasi to comply, who readily accepted the advice and removed himself from the mantis-sandwich he had gotten himself into, Flitter used his inate abilities to entangle the Thri-kreen atop the wagon. Meanwhile, the spry elf found himself facing two Thri-kreen all by himself. Reletively unconcerned, though not about to enter direct combat with them, Venya rendered the both of them unconcious with a color spray from his fingertips. Ogion by this time finally managed to strike down his foe, leaving only the two that had been entangled as any sort of real threat. Griph, with a goodly amount of pain wracking his system, got back to his feet with an uncharacteristic grunt.In short order, the helpless and near helpless Thri-kreen were dispatched, but not before one of them could call in their pet: a blue dragon wyrmling. Bursting out of the sand with a light roar that, by some standards, could almost have been considered cute, the wyrmling looked upon the party (most especially Flitter) as a welcome lunch. Speaking to it in Draconic, Venya tried to reason with the mighty beast, who only looked at him with intelligent eyes and failed to respond in any way and leaving the elf confused as to why it didn't seem to even understand him. The wyrmling in the meantime took to the air and darted quickly towards Flitter, snapping at him with his jaws. The screeching that came from the skies was the frightened screams of a pixie, not the satisfied screeches of a dragon.Darting around and trying to keep ahead of the much stronger dragon, Flitter desperately tried to divert its attention elsewhere. Venya and Ogion contributed arrows, all of which embedded themselves in the wyrmlings hide with little effect. Until Venya hit a soft spot beneath its scales, causing it to flounder in mid-air with the pain. Forgetting about the pixie and diving towards the elf, Venya suddenly found himself eye-to-eye with a baby blue dragon. Griph, finally able to return to the thrill of the fight, darted to close with the Dragon and move to flanking position. Still contributing arrows, Ogion had aquired a pixie for his back as well. Now flanked and taking hits from both Venya and Griph, the dragon turned its back on Venya and inhaled sharply. Griph, directly in front of the dragon at the time, couldn't find room or time to avoid the wicked line of lightning that shot from its mouth, reaching all the way back towards Ogion, who, through virtue of being a good distance away, managed to at least evade some of the blast and get himself grounded to drain off some of the excess energy. Writhing in agony and feeling himself ready to pass out, Griph somehow remained on his feet, with a sudden lack of interest in the actual kill. Venya, however, capitalizing on the opening left him, finished the dragon off with his longsword.A near unconcious Griph, a slightly jostled Venya, and an uncannily untouched Ogion and Flitter met formally on the dunes.Taking what they could from the Thri-kreen and essentially taking the entire wyrmling along, they returned to the overturned wagon and returned it to rights. The ranger knelt beside the horses and administered first aid, getting them groggily to their feet. Upon meeting with the wagon driver once more though, they found him curiously unrelieved for the recuse, and for some reason quite hostile towards them. Trying to get them to leave him and his wagon, Ogion ended the arguement prematurely by tossing the ungrateful man out into the desert. His two passengers left with him with reletively no arguements whatsoever. Venya tossed them a waterskin, and then the party turned eastward once more and began the journey homewards.----------Two days later they arrived at the Modin River, running south off the Garm mountains. Deciding to camp by the river before heading to the nearest city of River's Rest, they each set about resting in their own way. Shortly after nightfall, a greenish head popped up above the driving current of the river to investigate. The Nixie, creeping up onto the shore, was shortly stopped and interrogated by Flitter, whom had found a fast companion in the fellow sprite. The nixie, whose name turned out to be Eddie, informed them that there had been no fish in the river. Flitter, determined to help out his newfound friend, helped persuade the group to head upstream to find the missing "fisheys."Following the river upstream all the way to the mountains and the cave from which the Modin River came out of, Flitter and Eddie moved in to investigate further where the missing fish were, while Venya and Ogion moved along slower on the caves ledge. One hundred feet into the cave, Flitter stopped when he noticed Eddie had come to a halt and begun thrashing around. The answer to the unasked question of "why" was soon answered: he was caught in a gigantic web that extended under the water. Calling for the cleric to illuminate the area, who readily obliged, they soon saw their adversary. An enormous spider with two humanoid arms extending from its midsection, clinging to the web not but a few feet away from Flitter. Turning to their newly seen enemy, who waggled his fingers and began to glow slightly and otherwise remained ready for them, Venya once again reached into his magical repetoire and set the web aflame, easily burning it.The web above the water gone, Eddie was swept downstream, followed closely by Flitter who wanted to help him. Ogion and Venya remained with the Aranea foe, the ranger using his bow and Venya preparing his spells. Dodging a burst of webbing from the creature, which splayed out over the cave wall behind them, they were still left to ranged combat as the beast was on the other side of the cave. For the time being.Unwilling to remain at range, it leapt over the length of the water and landed right before Venya, who just barely evaded the snapping mandibles. Ogion, standing behind Venya, found his shot obscured but nevertheless pulled back the string on his bow and nocked an arrow. Taking a moment to ready himself and take careful aim, he let fly with the arrow, aiming beneath the tall elf's legs and managing to connect with the soft underbelly of the Aranea, which fell to the ledge lifeless.Kicking the carcass into the river, and awaiting the return of Eddie and Flitter, the group of four ventured further into the cavern to find the eggs they suspected to be therein. Finding them, Ogion stomped them to a paste all along the cave floor in what had to have been the most disgusting eruption of primordial goo the world had ever seen.Moving further into the cavern, they discovered, to their delight, that they were far from the first to entanlge with the Aranea, though they were apparantly the only ones to ever have succeeded. Finding a number of magical items and weapons among the carrion, as well as a small amount of money and gems, they happily took their booty and left the cave to camp for the night.Taking a shortcut through the mountains that Venya had found overnight, they cut their time around the river by two or three days. Reaching the nearest town by the edge of the Fey Forest, a fairly short distance from River's Rest, the party traded and sold off the things that they had aquired up to that point to their best interest, and then got themselves to an inn for the night.---------------So that's the end of that session. Yes, I know it's still a summation and it's horribly lacking on dialogue and the like, but well...<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="o_O" title="Er... what?    o_O"  data-smilie="12"data-shortname="o_O" /> that's just the way that it's going. I'll see what I can do about the next session, but I don't promise anything.=D This is mostly a service for the players.</blockquote>

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