Piratecat's Updated Story Hour! (update 4/03 and 4/06)

[Piratecat]

As the dragon flexes its shining metal neck and smiles tauntingly, the ground next to Splinder flexes. Out of it emerges a large stone drake of some sort. It looks like a gargoyle carving of a true dragon, eight feet long and roughly carved. Agar immediately recognizes it for what it truly is. “Earth elemental!” he yells. Then another half dozen rise from the ground, and he lamely appends, “Err… a lot of them.” The elementals attack, sweeping through some of the dwarven shock troops with their heavy stone fists. Dwarves fly sideways, one of them dropping.

Splinder swings back his axe and says something unpronounceable. A massive bolt of chain lightning starts at the tip of his axe and sears into the dragon. Much of the electricity is carried away harmlessly along the metal skin, but enough bounces away to form a bolt that riccochets from one elemental to another. As the stone outsiders stop sparking and arcing, Splinder pulls back his axe and begins hewing. Chunks of rock begin to fly.

As Agar locks a dimensional anchor on the dragon, Nolin casts another mass haste for Mara and many of the dwarves, inspiring them as well by singing a triumphant dwarven battle song. The dwarves pick up the tune, singing and stomping along as they face the monster.

Malachite flies forward with Karthos out. The dragon tries to shift towards him but is simply too slow, and the dwarves assigned to Malachite hamper its defense. The holy sword slashes at the huge rock-like scales, sending up sparks and flashes of light as it hits. Oathenor roars in pain, although its side is less damaged than Malachite would have expected.

“We need to do something about all those spells,” worries Velendo. With a prayer to his God, he casts a greater dispelling. The prayer takes visible form as it surrounds the wyrm – and suddenly Oathenor becomes slower, weaker, and much more clumsy. The dragon thumps to the floor as its fly spell is terminated. Velendo's true seeing reveals that many of Oathenor's protective spells have fallen as well. Unfortunately, iron body and a few other spells have survived the dispelling attempt, indicating that they're extremely powerful.

Tao eyes Mara, but sees that she has her magical shockwave flail hanging from her belt. The divine agent backs away from the dragon. Her eyes roll up in her head, and she uses her helm’s clairvoyance power to look inside the dragon. She scans for the shining mace that was just eaten, but can’t see it.

The room is now a chaotic mass of heroes, dwarven assistants aiding them, earth elementals and rubble, all overlooked by the dragon’s glistening neck and head. Oathenor slithers a bit farther down from into the room. It knows its battle tactics. It learned them over centuries of difficult fights: use the elementals as distractions. Kill the holy men first, so they can’t heal the others. Kill the wizards second, while the fighters pound on the metal skin in vain. Then finish up the rest and hunt down survivors. With this in mind, Oathenor eyes Velendo and licks its lips with a metal tongue. Strange enchantment on him, thinks the dragon as its head and claws snap forward. Wonder what it tastes like?

Turns out, it tastes like pain.

Velendo has cast his unique spell wallbuilder’s retribution. It delivers as much damage to Oathenor as the dragon inflicts on Velendo, and the old cleric only takes half damage. After a good, solid bite, Oathenor yanks its head back in scarlet agony. The wyrm uses its remaining attacks to jerk Karthos from Malachite’s grasp, battering the paladins with its wings as it does so. Oathenor tosses this weapon down its throat as well, and Karthos' voice trails off as the dragon's jaws snap shut. Oathenor then uses its other claw to yank away Splinder's greataxe. It dangles the axe over the dwarf's head, tantilizingly just out of reach.

Unfortunately, Splinder was never one for jumping, and he hates being taunted. The dwarf swears violently in his native tongue, blistering the air as he tries to reach his weapon. An elemental clubs him on the side of the head, and Splinder glares at the thing as he still tries to reach his dangled axe.

“CARE TO SCRATCH AT ME WITH A DAGGER, MEAT?” The dragon surveys the chaotic melee and eyes the old man uncertainly. Perhaps it would just be best to wall him off from the fight and deal with him afterwards? He also notices the deep gnome scurrying about, but discounts him as a cringing lackey. At least the fighters were under control, effectively helpless without their weapons. Now, for the wizard....

Mara smiles, her teeth white in the gloom. “I can think of something better.” She casts dispel evil. It’s a simple matter to touch the immense dragon, and it screams as holy energy courses through its body, burning away its powerful elemental magic. The iron skin ripples away to scale and flesh. Then she hammers it, hard, with her flail. It flinches in pain, and the sight is its own reward.

“There we go,” sighs Priggle philosophically, who has somehow worked himself around behind the dragon without anyone really noticing. “Now I’ve got something to work with. Not that anyone is ever going to thank me.” Standing where no one else can see him, he buries his gnomish pick into the dragon’s back. The dragon opens its wide mouth to roar in pain. Priggle pulls his pick out, noticing that he struck a vital organ. For good measure, he swings twice more at the same spot. Acidic blood spurts as his pick does fearsome amounts of damage. He faintly hears Nolin cheer "Go, Priggle!", and in spite of himself the deep gnome smiles slightly at the recognition.

Galthia also takes advantage of the change in the dragon's skin. Previously, his fists had bounced off the living metal. Now, focused ki drive them deep into the dragon's wounded side. They still miss more than they hit, but this time the dragon feels the pain that Galthia inflicts.

Tao is still trying to see inside of its stomach with her magic, and she suddenly catches a glimpse of shining light. “Aha!” she announces triumphantly. She flexes her gauntlet of retrieval that she took from the githyanki mercenaries in the Astral plane, and Lightbinder appears in her hands, psionically teleported. "Mara?" She tosses the mace to the blond paladin, who thanks her politely.

Malachite is staring up at the furious dragon, and he tries to retrieve his weapon by activating its natural tendency to jump short distances into his hand. Nothing happens, of course; a dragon’s belly is not a sheath. Then from behind him he hears Agar’s voice. “I wish that whatever Malachite’s trying to do right now succeeds!” Oathenor’s fleshy stomach roils as Karthos rips itself free and tumbles out of the huge mouth, landing smoothly in Malachite’s hand.

“I missed you,” Karthos comments in a metallic voice.

“Likewise.”

They attack, and Oathenor returns the favor, forgetting about Agar and concentrating all of its fury on the one target. It flings Splinder's axe aside as it does so, and the dwarf goes scrambling after it.

Spells are now raining in from all sides, spells too powerful to all be blocked by spell resistance. Nolin drops two consecutive flame strikes on its broad back. Galthia and Tao and Malachite and Mara and Priggle, along with countless dwarven distractions, surround it. The elementals aren’t holding their ground, and Splinder takes out one even as Nolin uses healing circle to strengthen the dwarven troops. Oathenor tries to find a place to put a wall of stone, but the room is too crowded, and the wall must be unbroken. He tries to breath acid, but his breath weapon has not regenerated yet from the iron body. The dragon tries to back up into a better tactical position, but isn’t quick enough, and it staggers as Malachite’s sword cuts into him again. Galthia's fists shatter a scale and drive the ragged edges into the soft flesh underneath. Mara follows his blows with several of her own, and Oathenor slumps backwards bleeding from a dozen or more wounds, unable to recover the advantage. “We’ve got him!” someone screams in triumph. Velendo fires a searing light into Oathenor's head, and everyone cheers as it burns right through the skull and out the other side.

Then there’s a flash of light from one of its claws. For a few seconds, a magical ring glows brightly, and a wave of corruscating yellow light flows up and down its body. And when the light fades, the dragon is wholly healed.

Nolin’s voice is quiet. “Oh, crap.”

To be continued….

 

[Piratecat]

The rippling light fades from the dragon, so no one wastes any time. Oathenor may healed, but its tactical position is terrible; it’s backed into a corner, surrounded by dozens of enemies, dazed, and stripped of its magical protections and enhancements. No one has ever said that the Defenders don’t know how to use an advantage, so they press forward, weapons flashing with their own light. Galthia’s fists jab in, hitting the dragon like thrown anvils. Malachite smites with Karthos, ripping through scales like wet tissue. Mara’s mace hammers into the side of the long stony neck, ripples of liquid light spreading out from where the mace hits. Tao’s swords ring as she jams them under dragonscales with expert precision. From the side of the monster, Splinder sets his feet and repeatedly pounds his axe into the base of the neck. Even more telling, Priggle is flanking from behind the beast, and the tip of his gnomish hooked hammer-pick punctures dragon scales as if they were light shale.

Acidic blood again begins to pool beneath it, steaming in the cool air, and the smell of the blood and the acid breath mixed with rock dust is terrible. More than one dwarf is breathing raggedly.

On the far side of the rubble-strewn room, more than half of the earth elementals have been destroyed. The ones that remain sink into the ground and reappear closer to the dragon, perhaps instinctively trying to protect him. One elemental is larger than the others, and Splinder doesn’t pay much attention to it until it hits him with a double-fisted blow that nearly jars his teeth loose. Then he looks up at it – and up, and up – and realizes that he might have another problem besides the dragon after all.

Oathenor regains his wits and furiously unleashes a full attack at the already injured Sir Malachite. I’ll take at least one of them down before I leave, it thinks viciously. Both claws seize the human’s shoulders and rip with as much strength as it can manage, even as wings batter in and sword-sized teeth grab and tear. Hot blood fills the dragon’s mouth, and it sighs in satisfaction, knowing that it’s just taught someone a very final lesson. Spitting out the body and pulling back to survey the look on the survivors’ faces, Oathenor is shocked to see that Malachite is still barely standing. That shouldn’t be possible! it thinks. With this new knowledge of his enemies, Oathenor does the wise thing. After all, a true hunter attacks and kills on his own terms, not that of its prey. Oathenor taps into his massive reserve of elemental magic, feeling the earth thrum all around him, and uses his quickened ability to plane shift out...

Except Agar’s dimensional anchor screams back into existence around him in an inescapable net, and he feels himself dragged back into the Prime Material plane before he ever clears the planar boundary. For the first time in more than a century, Oathenor feels actual fear.

The Defenders attack again, Malachite pausing while Velendo heals him. At the back of the group, Nolin’s eyes narrow while he studies the dragon. His opinion is that Malachite was lucky to survive the attack. “How are we going to beat it?” A clever thought flashes through Nolin’s mind, and he digs into his belt pouch. He yanks out a small onyx statuette, shakes it, and issues a command. “Angus! Angus, c’mere, boy! Come!” There’s a rushing sound that sounds like pounding paws, and in seconds a large hairy dog materializes next to the bard. It looks up at Nolin’s face with preternatural intelligence.

“Hi, boss! I missed ya!” says Angus cheerily as he jokingly nuzzles in to sniff Nolin’s crotch. “How’s… hey!” He realizes what’s going on and spins, beginning to bark loudly. “That’s a…” Bark! Bark! He looks back up at Nolin, horror clearly written across his furry face. “That’s a bleedin’ dragon!”

Nolin bends down next to Angus, pulling something else from his pouch and holding it in front of the large dog as he starts to whisper. “Ye want me to what?” Angus’ horrified tone carries even over the roaring and thrashing of the dragon. “Why don’t ye ever summon me when ye need a nice fat slow bunny to be run down?”

Nolin quickly whispers something else, and Angus shakes his large furry head. “Ye’re lucky I love ya, you know that?” The magical dog nervously takes the wooden item into his mouth. “But ye owe me for this one. Big time.” He backs away from Nolin and angles around behind him, trying to get a clear approach to the dragon’s maw. Malachite, Tao Mara, Galthia and Splinder block the way, though; between their swinging weapons and the remaining dwarven bodyguards throwing themselves at the huge serpent, the dog doesn’t have much room to maneuver.

The injured dragon twitches its neck backwards, and before Angus can jump a solid stone wall seals off a whole section of the vault’s entrance room. Almost all of the Defenders, including Angus the onyx dog, are on the side without the dragon. Not so for Priggle and Splinder; they suddenly find themselves alone with the bulky wyrm and a huge earth elemental.

Oathenor lets out a mental sigh; with the wall of stone in place, it will be simple to finish off these two and escape by burrowing through the ceiling. “NOW THAT WE HAVE A BIT OF PRIVACY? Its jaws gape open and clamp down like a vice onto Splinder arm and shoulder. Its claws snap in as well, grasping and pulling away gobbets of warm flesh, even as its wings snap forwards and slam into either side of his stout body. Behind him, the dragon’s tail rises and smashes down like a falling tree into Priggle's face.

Fighting back the pain, Splinder swears with beautiful precision.

“Oh, sure,” Priggle mutters to himself as blood splashes out of his broken nose onto the dragon’s writhing tail in front of him. “Lot of good I’m going to be. Dragons got themselves blindsight, I’d guess. Blur doesn’t work. Hiding doesn’t work. Just us smaller folk in here, and no one outside who can get us out.” He groans in anticipatory dismay, even as he brings the sharpened end of his hooked pick down into Oathenor’s tailbone. Just like he’d split a chunk of granite, he strikes the stone-like scales several times, and with the iron body dispelled his enchanted pick once again slips in like a chisel.

The dragon screams from the unexpected pain.

“Huh,” observes Priggle warily, “That still hurt?” The answer is obvious as acidic blood sprays up from the wound. “Good.” He sighs. “Now, I suppose it’s my turn to get eaten. I knew this was going to be my fate.”

On the other side of the wall, Galthia focuses his ki into his hands, feeling them grow heavy with his concentrated will. He braces himself in front of the new stone and pounds his fists into the wall, one blow after another. On the third blow, the stone begins to crumble off in chunks. By the time he makes his fifth and final blow, there’s a hole almost large enough to crawl through. Everyone who can fires magical spells through the opening, lightning and searing light crackling through the narrow space. It’s unclear what gets past the dragon’s natural resistance to spells, but the froth around its jaw is bloody as it twists around with a deafening roar. Its head comes down, perhaps to devour Splinder whole, perhaps to breath acid.

“Boost me!” the onyx dog shouts. As it runs and leaps, Malachite and Mara boost Angus up and through the hole. Oathenor doesn’t even hesitate. Out of pure reflex, he snaps the hapless dog up out of the air, devouring and swallowing him in one gulp.

“Angus…” says Nolin mournfully. “I hope…” He uses his blast harp to enlarge the hole in the wall as he runs closer. Mara is the first through the gap. The dragon is too slow to snatch away her weapon again, and she darts forward, swinging her holy mace Lightbinder.

She hits the dragon right in the middle of the snout, a flawless blow, and her mace erupts into cascading light.

Mara has had Lightbinder for years, but she’s only seen its true power called on a handful of occasions. As she watches, bands of solid sunlight ripple out from her blow and stretch inexorably over and across the dragon’s bulk. Then with a sound like a hymn to sunrise, the bands of light painfully constrict. Oathenor instinctively strikes out at Mara instead of the badly injured Splinder, and Mara interposes her golden shield, but she doesn’t need to. The bands of sunlight seem to be acting like a forcecage, and Oathenor is firmly trapped by solid faith. He wriggles and strains to free himself in vain. Then he suddenly stops, his sides bulging oddly, and lets out a gurgling moan.

The dragon's gem-like eyes roll horribly, and it opens its mouth to breath flesh-dissolving acid on Mara. Instead, it gags horribly, and like a pleasant spring morning the Defenders can see a young tree branch growing out of the depths of the dragon’s throat. The small tree limb grows at an astounding rate and begins sprouting pale green leaves, even as the bound dragon struggles and twitches.

“A tree?” someone asks in confusion.

“Quaal’s feather token,” Nolin happily explains to the people next to him. “The ‘tree’ version. Angus delivered it for me before he got sent back to the Beastlands.”

“GRROWWWP?" Oathenor looks like he’s trying to say something, but can’t. From his many wounds, twigs begin to push through the flesh, and burning blood sprays onto unfolding green leaves. Then, with a horrible ripping sound, a massive tree trunk pushes out of Oathenor’s belly and buries itself in the stone floor of the cavern. In seconds the sunlight-bound dragon is pushed a full twenty feet into the air. The monster hangs there on the new tree like some sort of shining grotesque fruit, a trickle of bloody spittle drooling down from its slack mouth, hissing quietly onto a new root below.

“Oh, Goddess,” breathes Tao, as elementals fall to pieces all around the group.

Nolin nods. “Exactly.”

To be continued….

 

[Bandeeto]

A few interesting side notes:

1) Priggle managed to essentially sneak up behind the dragon by being a "contemptible target". Very handy for horrendous flanking attacks. Also, the dragon was forced to ignore him because of all the activity up front.

When the wall of stone went up, Priggle was suddenly in a great deal of trouble. But, just as the dragon was about to let Priggle have it, Galthia blasted a hole in the wall, threatening from the front, and Priggle was able to flank yet again. (Very annoying for P'Cat, I can tell you.)

2) So, we were down in the kitchen talking strategy before the game without P'Cat present, and KidC says, completely joking, "Wouldn't it be great if we could get the thing to swallow one of the tree tokens?" We were all highly amused when Nolin actually came up with a delivery system.

3) Very few of us took any major damage during the fight thanks to our pre-combat stoneskins and endurances. Splinder sustained a full dragon bite and much elemental pounding without ever dropping significantly below his original hit point count. It helped that he was in "defender" mode when he got caught behind the stone wall.

4) In addition to his being his usual charming self, I seem to recall Nolin having bribed Angus with some very large quantity of meat. We were all deeply pained, however, when Angus entered the dragon's maw and we heard a sickening crunch and a yipe. It didn't help to know he was going to be fine and back on the Beastlands.

 

[Plane Sailing]

A few interesting side notes:

1) Priggle managed to essentially sneak up behind the dragon by being a "contemptible target". Very handy for horrendous flanking attacks. Also, the dragon was forced to ignore him because of all the activity up front.

When the wall of stone went up, Priggle was suddenly in a great deal of trouble. But, just as the dragon was about to let Priggle have it, Galthia blasted a hole in the wall, threatening from the front, and Priggle was able to flank yet again. (Very annoying for P'Cat, I can tell you.)

Priggle took a nasty blow from the dragons tail, and was royally whomped by the big earth elemental which was in there with us (partly because I forgot about the +4 AC I had from haste at that time. Doh!

As you can imagine he was *very* relieved when the stone wall was broken down so that he didn't get the dragons, er, undivided attention. Getting killed by the king of kobolds would have been such a downer...

3) Very few of us took any major damage during the fight thanks to our pre-combat stoneskins and endurances. Splinder sustained a full dragon bite and much elemental pounding without ever dropping significantly below his original hit point count. It helped that he was in "defender" mode when he got caught behind the stone wall.

Priggle being one of the exceptions, since by the time he was being hurt, he ended up taking about 60-80 points of damage out of his maximum of about a 100. He fully anticipated dying in a blaze of glory

Cheers

 

[Blackjack]

4 - Other than rolling to hits and spell penetration checks, luck didn't have much to do with this battle. KidCthulhu is right; it was all about intelligence gathering, damned smart planning and tactics.

I told PCat after this fight that the hallmark of a good GM is someone who comes up with clever plans to screw the players -- but when the players come up with better plans yet, s/he lets the players get away with it.

As the fight unfolded, PCat kept unfolding danger after danger (the darkness behind the wall, the falling ceiling, the acid breath, etc.) and one by one, we were ready for them. Sometimes because we knew they were coming, sometimes not. Either way, it was a very satisfying fight, and PCat, to his credit, didn't weasel and cheese to keep his own plans in play.

 

[Piratecat]

Almost the entire party was slaughtered in the first two hours of gaming. Only one of us escaped alive.

There's a reason for this comment, and a reason I warned you it was misleading. For the first two hours of the next session, the group played a bunch of Oathenor's kobold lackeys instead of their regular characters.

It was great, in an ugly back-stabbing living in perpetual fear sort of way.

I gave everyone a pre-generated kobold (courtesy of Jamis Buck's wonderful NPC generator!) of 3rd level. I tried to change the classes around a little; Sagiro got a kobold barbarian, for instance, dumb and strong. There was a paranoid female fighter, a pompous sorcerer loyal to the Dragonking, a sneaky rogue spying for the exiled Dread Lord Klixxit, a cowardly rogue on the verge of bolting, and a female sorcerer (played by Blackjack, Malachite's player) who was not so much a 3rd lvl kobold as she was a 11th lvl ghoul sorcerer mind jarred into a kobold's body.

That was a secret, of course, as were her negotiations with Oathenor. The group slowly snuck into the palace area after the sound of the Dragonking kicking the upstart surfaceworlders' butts faded. They were more than a little surprised to see dwarves still alive. Melee ensued, of course, but dwarven reinforcements started to arrive - at about the same time that kobolds started to desert or (in the case of the barbarian) die in combat.

The "kobold" sorcerer finally lost her temper. The rest of the group found out her secret - very briefly - when she tired of their incompetence and cowardice and cast cloud kill and a couple of fireballs down the hallway, killing every other surviving kobold and a couple of dwarves. She then escaped into the caverns. Presumably she's out there somewhere, stirring up trouble while the Defenders explore the vault.

And that's where we'll pick up next time! With Agar sitting on the dragon's corpse, trying to saw off a finger to get to a magic ring, as Nolin and Glibstone clear rubble out of the way and examine the vault door for traps....

Continued early next week!

 

[Blackjack]

The "kobold" sorcerer finally lost her temper. The rest of the group found out her secret - very briefly - when she tired of their incompetence and cowardice and cast cloud kill and a couple of fireballs down the hallway

I had no choice! They were all disobeying my orders to kill the dwarven priest, and they starting chickening out and hiding in crevices and nooks. Once the barbarian bit it, it was just a bunch of dwarves, me, and a seemingly empty tunnel in between.

And then I realized that I had cloudkill. A nice way to kill some dwarves and cover my escape. The fact that the kobolds were all 3 HD creatures, meaning they'd die instantly, was a very, very pleasant side effect.

 

[Wolfspirit]

I think that I shall never see
A dragon gutted by a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Through a beast's once beating breast;

A tree that has quite saved the day,
And makes the party drop and pray;

A tree that made the pious swear,
A dragon carcass in her hair;

Upon whose bosom it has slain;
Showering blood quite like the rain

For dragon slaying remember ye,
Carry a Quall's Feather Token: Tree.

(Parody of the Tree poem by Joyce Kilmer)

Sorry if a bit of the parody is a bit stretched, I only had a bit to work on it before having to head out. Oh, and awesome fight PC

 

[Piratecat]

Update by Monday... maybe even tomorrow! SEE what's inside the mysterious vault of many rooms! MARVEL at the fate of someone missing! WONDER at the many and myriad dwarven traps! LAUGH at the shenanigans surrounding The Glowing Corridor! And SCREAM when you see what Nolin manages to get himself in to....

We're playing tonight, probably finishing up the vault. Right now I'm 2 sessions behind, and this will make it three, so I need to catch everyone up!

And to tide you over, here's a random quote from the strategy session over the dragon. Priggle wanted to join the fight, and Velendo didn't want to let him.

---

"Why would the dragon eat Priggle," someone said waving a hand in Tao's general direction, "when he could eat a lovely fresh virgin?"

The rest of the group frowns and Malachite snorts. "Zero for three if you meant Nolin instead of Tao."

Nolin's head snaps up. "Hey!"

 

[Piratecat]

After the fight, the Defenders take some time to regroup and heal. “Well, that was easier than I thought it would be!” remarks Nolin. “I didn’t even get hurt! Can you believe it?”

From under his blood-encrusted eyebrows, Priggle gives him an incredibly filthy look.

One of the dwarven soldiers jogs in, panting. “Sir!” he addresses Splinder and Mara. “Something just tried to break into the palace. Kobolds, I think – and we were doing a fine job fighting them off. Then a fireball went off, some sort of acidic cloud slammed down, and I think we’ve lost three men.”

Splinder barely hesitates. “Right. We’re on it.” With a quick discussion to gauge people’s capabilities, half the group heads for the palace entrance, clambering over and under rubble to do so. The other half stays by the dragon’s corpse.

“Now,” ponders Nolin, “which bits might be valuable? I wish arcade were here. He loves this dissection stuff.” From atop the dragon’s body, balanced precariously and sawing away at a huge claw, Agar gives him a thumbs up.

“Not to worry. I’m on it!” He smiles boldly. “It’s fascinating; he seems to have elemental matter suffused right in to his body! It’s making the dissection much more difficult. But I’ll be plucking teeth, cutting off claws and scales, and if I can I’ll dig out his heart.” He looks doubtfully at the huge bulk rising next to him. “That might take some work. But at least I’ll get these two rings off! I’m not so sure about the necklace; it won’t fit over his head, and chopping off that neck will take hours.”

The other Defenders return, accompanied by a visibly distressed Glibstone. “Any luck?” asks Nolin. Malachite shakes his head.

“By the time we got there, whoever or whatever cast those spells was gone. We recovered some kobold bodies, so we can speak with dead. He looks grim. “We recovered some dwarven bodies, too. Five dead, between the dragon fight and the kobolds.”

“It could have been much worse!” opines Glibstone, shaking his belled head as he gazes up at the dragon in awe. “I can’t believe you killed that thing. After all, prithee, what’s the difference between an insane asylum and a band of dragon hunters?”

Malachite frowns. “Now is not the time.”

“Magic swords,” finishes Glibstone seriously, and jingles.

“That’s funny,” says Mara encouragingly.

“Twice,” says Nolin.

“What?” asks Glibstone.

“We killed it twice. We killed it, it healed, and we killed it again.” He looks worriedly down at the small statuette in his hand. Glibstone looks at him with disbelief. “We’ll tell you about it later. For now, let’s look at that vault door.”

“Indeed! Say, what is…”

Malachite rounds on him, suddenly furious. “Not. Now. We are at a tactical disadvantage, with known enemies around probably summoning aid, and time is short. Stop telling jokes. Open the vault.” He catches Glibstone in his withering glare, and the dwarven loremaster’s spirit crumples slightly. “Do it.”

“Indeed,” Glibstone mumbles, and sets to work.

***

A few minutes later, the rubble has been cleared from around the vault door, and Glibstone is ready to proceed. More rubble hangs magically above his head, suspended by Velendo’s flexible wall, but not due to fall for some time. “I’ve never been past the first room before, but I have the accumulated lore entrusted to me by his late Majesty. Please be patient.” The dwarf moves up to the huge stone door of the vault. He places his lips to it and speaks quietly, too quietly for anyone else to hear. With a slight rumbling, gears turn and vibrate deep within the stone, and the door sinks down out of sight. Behind it is a vast black portal shimmering with magic. “Come on.” Splinder steps through and disappears entirely. With a worried look, the rest of the Defenders also step through, accompanied by their two mounts and the 25 remaining dwarven soldiers.

They enter a vast room shaped like a half of a donut – “I’m hungry,” Nolin mumbles – and lined floor to ceiling with narrow slots for scrolls and stone tablets. The only thing breaking the document storage space is perfectly carved murals of dwarven battles. The portal they emerge from is on the room’s curving left-hand wall. Ahead of them along the inner curved wall are seven black portals with dwarven runes above them. To the left and right, on a raised floor, workspace for dozens of scribes and stonemasons fill the floor. It’s immediately clear that many of the worktables have been knocked over.

The place appears empty.

The paladins immediately begin checking for evil and undead, to no avail. Glibstone gives a cry of distress and begins picking up scrolls from the floor. Galthia gives the room a long, slow look and begins to methodically search. A few people join him. The rest of the adventurers, perhaps spoiled by the memory of the now-departed sharp-sighted Palladio of House Roaringbrook, don’t bother to search methodically and instead wander about the room aimlessly. Only Priggle decides to study the scrolls and tablets, squirreled away in a corner and unnoticed by any of the dwarves.

Agar has been studying the portals, using his innate gate sense to track where they lead to. “I think these all go directly into the heart of the positive material plane. One step through these before we’ve unlocked the lock, and we’ll end up exploding from too much life energy. Neat, huh?” He looks up at the top of the portals. “Each of these seven portals are labeled with the name of one of the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia, the plane of boring do-gooder fuddy-duddies.” Mara and Malachite flash him a warning look, and he grins to show he isn’t serious.

Glibstone nods. “The Lore instructs that if we would ascend the paths of the vault, we would mount into heaven itself.”

Agar nods in understanding. “So, we take the door labeled with the name of the first Heaven, Lunia?”

Glibstone shakes his head, bells jingling. “No. I think we are already in Lunia, the first of the seven heavens, since we’re already in the first room. We should take the portal to Mercuria, the second heaven. As soon as I figure out how to activate the portal.”

From the left side of the room, Galthia calls out. “There is a pile of clothes here, and armor, hidden by this turned over writing desk.” His long face twists. “There is also something that can only be described as gobbets. Little pieces of flesh.” Nolin and Tao run over and look.

Tao points. “You see this blood smear on the floor? And those marks in it?” She frowns. “Unless I’m mistaken, those are tongue prints. Someone or something was licking the blood off of the floor.” Everyone blanches, and Tao digs out a circular disk from the bottom of her pack. “Let’s see who or what this is,” she says, and drops a tiny chunk of flesh into the disk. Immediately in the air above it, the image of a young, frightened dwarf appears. He is wearing the regalia of a royal dwarven soldier. Glibstone immediately takes notice.

“That’s Dorthuld!” he exclaims. “The King’s second Squire, responsible for bearing His Majesty’s extra axe.”

Nolin idly sorts through the loose clothing and armor, and his eyebrows rise as he uncovers a roughly written journal. “Hang on,” he says. “Look at this.”

The journal reads:

Tao looks up from over by the portals. “There are faint bloody footsteps leading in this direction. The dwarven King must have awoken as a ghoul, eaten his poor squire – and he’s somewhere deeper in the vault.”

"Poor bastard," says Nolin.

“So, Glibstone?” asks Mara, trying to change the subject to something more cheerful, “Any luck on figuring out how to make the portal work?”

The dwarf gulps, fighting down horror. “Prithee, I believe so, yes Mum. The Lore tells me to use my knowledge of history to correct past mistakes.” He gestures at the stone mural in front of him. “This is a scene from a famous battle. But there are a few things wrong with it! For instance, King Horox III didn’t ride a giant spider, he rode a riding lizard, like Tao’s.” Standing on the ceiling, Newt looks down at the dwarf in interest. “And this banner is simply wrong! See, the symbol on it is of the wrong house.” Mara shrugs as Glibstone strokes his beard. “I wonder….” He reaches out his hand and touches the stone, and it ripples and twists beneath the end of his finger.

“Flowstone,” breathes Velendo. As the group watches, Glibstone concentrates, and the banner changes, followed by the stone spider transforming into a lizard. Nothing changes at the portal, though. Suddenly Glibstone smacks himself on the head.

“Of course! It’s so obvious! Aselgrim’s shield is wrong, too. See? He should have a large spiked shield, not a buckler. A child would know that.” Nolin rolls his eyes as Splinder makes a final change. As he does so, all the portals begin to glow with white light, and Agar squints as he uses gate sense to peer into the portal labeled "Mercuria." Agar’s tentacular familiar Proty begins to wriggle frantically, swooping around the halfling’s head, and Agar turns to the rest of the group with a doubting expression on his round face.

“Well, it doesn’t connect to the Positive Material Plane any more. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it seems to lead to a big maelstrom of crunching stone and pounding hammers. There’s enough space for two or so people to stand safely, but I don’t think we should go rushing blindly through that portal with everyone following right behind.”

“The next room should be the traditional armory,” cautions Glibstone, “designed so that an invading force can’t enter it all at once. The Lore indicates that tradition will see you safely through, so long as you have been taught the dwarven ways.”

“Oh, great,” signs Velendo. “This ought to be interesting.” The Vault of Lore is silent for a minute as people look at the hissing, sparkling portals.

Nolin speaks up. “I think Glibstone should go first.”

Glibstone looks startled. “What? Me?” Nolin slaps him on the back.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come too. And,” his eyes roam across the other Defenders. “Agar?” The halfling smiles broadly at being picked by his friend, and straightens his clothing.

“Remember, if the portal deactivates, you guys know how to open it again, right?”

Malachite nods, and Agar steps through with Nolin and Glibstone.

To be continued…