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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fuzzybear" data-source="post: 9109278" data-attributes="member: 6917259"><h3>A Dragon Dogfight</h3>The dragon scales forming, Myetharia first attempts to converse with Syana and convince her to help defend against Ragesian violence again. With this beast being Aggression with Syana's bones, I did not consider her to have any of the history of Syana at all beyond using her bones for form, so all she got back into her mind was a string of murder, kill, death. Seeing their time to skedaddle, the group runs into the pyre room, summons the sleigh, hops on, and flies it out through the wall and over the gathering Ragesians with Bryn piloting. Shalosha and her bodyguards see the group flying above and quickly cast Fly on themselves to chase as 2 Ragesian wyvern riders give chase as well.After a few moments though, the dragon comes crashing through the walls as well, giving chase to the prey before it. Immediately unleashing its gaseous breath on the trailing bodyguards and wyverns, the fight quickly becomes Aggression against the party and Shalosha (who was by pure chance 1 square outside of the range). The party slows some to allow Shalosha to catch up and gain the benefits of the sleigh, but the battle takes a dangerous turn when it also allows Aggression to catch up and breath flames across everyone, bringing many to critical levels even despite the protection from fire (I rolled something like 90 damage on that and a few were still not at full health quite after Griiat and the inability to heal). With further attacks both directions including Myetharia flying out to attempt to distract the dragon, Jack ends up down temporarily. Bryn revives him on the next turn, but things are looking dangerous if the dragon breathes another gout of flame (or confusion gas). Shalosha sees the danger and charges in to assist Myetharia, harkening back to their days as youths training together long before any of this. With coordination from Rev and the will to defend Shalosha, Myetharia uses her fighting spirit to gain advantage on 6 attacks (action surge), all of which hit and 1 crits, to drop nearly 100 hp from the monster, but not quite take its life.The whole battle hinges on one dice roll, does the dragon recharge its breath weapon again or not... and the answer is no. A full round of attacks isn't enough to drop anyone else, but the beast is low enough for Winry to charge in and mop up with one last slash from the Living Weapon, now being used like a chain whip. As the body disintegrates falling towards the canyon, Shalosha tells the group to keep flying, away from the Ragesians, so they can talk. She answers their questions as best she can about trusting Magdus to some degree, giving voice to the idea that there may be good people on both sides of this conflict, as well as apologizing to Myetharia for lying to her about what she had been doing recently. In return, the party asks her about the scrawled messages and learns about Ycengled Phuurst and Rhuarc, giving the party direction on where to go next. Shalosha is well on their side by this point, so she plans to return to her father and say only that the Torch was not in Castle Korstull, trying to keep hidden that she knows more about where to go next, trying to give the party an advantage. We'll see how well that works, but that is her plan at least. She also tells the party to head to the west to the sea where her entourage has a warship that will take them back towards Seaquen to drop them off as they return to Calanis.We end the session with the Castle cleared, information gained, and a ride home secured, but with a fair amount of disappointment that they were effectively "your-princess-is-in-another-castle'd" with a bait and switch. Hopefully their disappointment will only last as long as the next adventure though, because many more answers and power awaits them in the near future. In the mean time, we will have a small action break for an episode if I had to guess while the party heads to Seaquen, talks a lot and checks in with everyone there, and then figures out their way out and into adventure once more.<h4>Changes and Future Thoughts</h4>No major changes. Shalosha for me is much more involved than many campaigns likely due to some noble elf backgrounds that were chosen. She is very much a way for me to get information to the party in a semi-trusted way. The battle went really well and really could have been deadly with one more d6 roll going in the dragon's favor.From here it is about a 14 day ship ride to Seaquen, so we will have a fair amount of downtime to work through. Then I hope to get them to stay in Seaquen for a bit and give some time to Shalosha and events away from town to happen. If I can get that, the meeting at the temple will make a lot more sense. Myetharia has some history with the Taranesti, and Jack has siblings high in Shahalesti, so I'm planning on having both of these come up in the next adventure. I've also spent some time figuring out the visions for the temple, so I am very excited for those events.<h4>Next time, we return to rest and consider!</h4></blockquote>

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