The Mysterious Chest
While Aric idly defaced the Tiamat murals on the walls with his mace, Ariana and Atex checked out a chest on the floor of the shrine. Atex noticed that the chest was sitting on a plate in the floor, and Ariana realized that many of the carved dragons around the room had holes in their mouths. Atex guessed that moving the chest or picking the lock would set off the trap.
Aric started to plug the holes with the bits of stone he'd chipped off the murals, but they quickly realized that there were too many of them. They tied a long rope to the chest and yanked on it from the safety of the stairway. It came loose with a snap, followed by a loud hiss. They pulled the chest around the corner, and Landin went to grab it. He saw that the top was wet and pitted with acid, and that a cloud of mist was drifting out of the shrine. He wrapped the chest in a blanket from his bedroll and carried it back to the others.
The group retreated to the deserted kobold barracks. They pulled the hole-filled blanket off the chest and forced the lock with a greataxe taken from one of the fallen bodyguards. Inside they found a string of pearls, a beautiful sapphire ring, and a bag containing six gems. Aric begged to take charge of the treasure, but was voted down by the rest of the group.
Showdown with Frulam Mondath
After a short rest, the group moved on to the one area they had not yet explored, starting with a door where they'd heard voices. When they went in, they found that this room was where the cultists slept. Their disguises didn't save them this time because the sentries from the entry cavern recognized them...and noticed that their robes were covered with blood. The cultists attacked, except for two, who slipped through a door at the far end of the room as soon as the combat started.
Once the cultists in the barracks were all dead or unconscious, the PCs opened the far door. Two cultists defended the door for a short time and then ran out of sight, followed by the sounds of distant thuds and coughing. The party entered Frulam Mondath's sitting room and saw that a rug in the corner had been kicked aside, exposing a hole in the floor from which acid fumes drifted up.
Landin climbed down the hole, managing not to choke, and discovered that he was back in the shrine. The body of one of the cultists was on the floor; a lungful of acid fumes, in addition to the wounds he had sustained while defending the door, had been enough to kill him. From the tracks in the film of acid on the floor, he guessed which direction the others had gone. He climbed back up the shaft, calling out to the rest of the party to cut off the fleeing cultists.
Aric, Ariana, and Atex ran ahead of Landin and finally came within sight of Frulam Mondath and her two remaining bodyguards at the cave entrance. Ariana put on a burst of speed and surged forward, striking fear into Mondath with the speed and ferocity of her attacks
(dash + action surge + menacing attack + bonus action off-hand attack). In a desperate attempt to get away, Mondath cast
calm emotions on Ariana, making her feel uninterested in attacking Mondath and her friends. It worked briefly, but unfortunately, one of her bodyguards didn't realize what she had done, and he ended the spell almost immediately by attacking Ariana. Landin arrived on the scene seconds later, just in time to see Ariana swiftly skewer Frulam Mondath with her rapiers. The bodyguards fell shortly after that.
Hatchery Exploration, part 2
The PCs went back and searched Frulam Mondath's sitting room. They found a great deal of bad poetry about dragons in the papers on her desk.
Roses are red.
Dragons are red.
They breathe fire,
And then you're all dead.
Violets are blue.
Dragons are blue.
My love for them is true.
They breathe lightning,
And then you're dead too.
Black as a dragon.
Black as night.
I don't know the rest,
So I'll end it right.
Snow is white.
Dragons are white.
They're the opposite of night,
And that's all right.
And other poems in a more emo vein:
Black!!!
Black night.
Black dragon.
Black acid.
Black me.
Black like my tormented soul.
One useful item was a crude but recognizable map of the area with an arrow pointing north along the Sword Coast. On the same page was a list of towns that had already been raided, including Greenest, with check marks next to their names.
Another sheet had columns of numbers and a cryptic message at the bottom:
Freight north to Naerytar.
Keep pearls, ring, six stones per Rezmir.
The PCs recognized this as the contents of the chest. They thought the name Rezmir sounded familiar but did not connect it with the leader mentioned by the captured cultist in Greenest.
In Mondath's bedroom, they only found clothes. Ariana took them, since she had been traveling in her dancing costume since the cult attack.
DM Notes: We improvised the dragon poetry at the table. We didn't get around to doing a poem for green dragons, so here's one to finish the set:
Dragons are green,
If you know what I mean.
When they breathe on the forest,
They make it quite clean.
