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Message: <blockquote data-quote="THEMNGMNT" data-source="post: 8709795" data-attributes="member: 6809274">41st and 42nd sessions of my Dragon Heist/Deck of Many Things mashup. 8th level half-orc cavalier fighter, halfling swashbuckler rogue, and half-elf evoker wizard/grave cleric.Forgot to recap this!This adventure is an interlude. The evoker's backstory is centered on parents murdered under mysterious circumstances. Both were wizards. He's discovered that they were double agents for Blackstaff Tower posing as rogue mages of the Tower Arcane in Luskan. They were murdered by a wizard of the Tower in alliance with a mind flayer in the Xanathar Guild. The evoker has also learned that he was left some sort of magical inheritance. He doesn't know what it is, but he knows it can be found in the family scriptorium.Session 41 started with the party finding a secret door in the scriptorium. It led to an underground chamber. There were two doors: one rimed with ice, the other glowing with heat.Now, I had determined that the inheritance was either a Staff of Frost or a Staff of Fire, depending upon the door chosen. The problem was that while I had a solid fire-themed adventure, I couldn't find or make up a decent ice-themed adventure. Not to say there aren't good ice-themed adventures, but I was looking for something short and flavorful. I just couldn't find it. I decided that which ever door the party selected, they would be transported to the fire-themed adventure.Remember this. It becomes important later.The characters opened the ice-themed door and were instantly transported to a pillar of black iron in the middle of a lake of lava. I was using the map of the Weeping Colossus from Princes of the Apocalypse. I repurposed it to make this the stronghold of the Archmage of Evocation -- one of the rulers of the Tower Arcane -- deep below Luskan. (This is all my own spin on Forgotten Realms lore.) The Archmage had come into possession of the Staff of Ice after the death of the evoker's parents -- but was not responsible for it herself. I had an epic fight planned. Naturally, the players decided to negotiate.The evoker possessed a Crystalline Chronicle, which contained the consciousness of the Archmage of Divination. The Archmage of Evocation was willing to trade the Staff of Frost for the Crystalline Chronicle. But the Archmage of Divination was terrified of being under the control of the Archmage of Evocation. So the evoker refused.At this point, the Archmage of Evocation was considering destroying the party. It would have been easy. The party was surrounded by a dozen wizards while an hostile red dragon circled the Weeping Colossus. But the Archmage knew the characters were hunting the wizard that had killed the evoker's parents. She offered to trade the staff for the wizard -- alive. Not because she wanted to save him. But because she wanted to kill him herself. The evoker agreed to the deal. She warned the characters that if they failed, she would send the dragon after them. With that, the party was sent back whence they came.I presumed the obvious next step was for the characters to hunt down the murderous wizard. Nope. Instead they decided to open the other door. The fire door. The door for which I had no adventure.I called a five minute break. I cracked open my copy of Rime of the Frost Maiden. And I started flipping pages. Quickly I landed on the Dark Duchess. A ship trapped in ice, remains of the dead crew, now the lair of a white dragon. That's...pretty cool. So like maybe the evoker's grandfather brought the Staff of Fire on an expedition to slay a white dragon but was instead killed by it but used a ritual to bind the staff to the scriptorium so anyone opening that door would be transported here...? Yeah, let's go with that.The characters upon opening the fire door found themselves standing on a vast sheet of polar ice...Next session: White dragon!</blockquote>

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