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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 916035" data-attributes="member: 41">Wealsun 22, CY 59349:  Dragon Hunting Tip #33:  Find the dragon.Heydricus invokes a protection from fire spell and yells, “Dragon!”The beast cocks its scaly head, and regards Tritherion’s Liberator with one massive yellow eye.  It buries its claws in the ore and lashes at Heydricus again with its tail, glancing a blow across the sorcerer’s shoulder.Prisantha and Dabus stumble to their feet as Heydricus botches a shield spell.  “F--k,” he curses to himself.  “Not now!”Dabus rips the cover from his lit lantern of revealing and invokes a destruction spell at the massive beast perched atop the ruined cart.  The Dragon howls its displeasure, but manages to resist the effect.Prisantha, reflecting on the infamous Count Illuthian’s banned treatise, Ten Dragons for Ten Virgins, levels her hands and ivokes an abjuration.  The dragon rears back, regards her quizzically, and shudders, suddenly shrinking to a fraction of its size, transforming into a pony-sized dire wolf drooling from the corner of its maw with both paws buried in ore.  The wolf whines once, as Heydricus leaps on it, skewering the thing with his spear.“Kick ass!” Heydricus shouts.  “Great job polymorphing, Pris!”  He twists his spear, and disembowels the wolf.“Well, must we kill it forthwith?” Prisantha says.  “Shall we not talk with it first?”Heydricus turns to the exasperated Enchantress, with a hurt expression.  “But Pris,” he says.  “We just killed a dragon!”“No we didn’t.” She replies.Heydricus pauses, looks back over his shoulder at the eviscerated wolf and says, “I’m pretty sure its dead, Pris.”“Well, you would think so,” she says.  "You nearly split the thing in two."“I agree with Heydricus,” Dabus says.  “I am no Arcanist, but I think it is dead.  Note the lower intestines.”“Yes, it is dead,” Pris says, “but it is no dragon.  That was a greater dispelling, not a polymorph.”Dabus rubs his chin, and casts a true seeing spell.  “Tritherion give me Truth,” he mutters, and after a moment looks up with a shrug and says, “It is a wolf.”Prisantha examines the wolf’s corpse and says, “Transmutation magic.  And look here, there is fungus in its paws.”“So we didn’t kill a dragon?” Heydricus says, crestfallen.“It were still a fine fight, sir,” the guard captain says.  “That dragon is lucky it weren’t one, I reckon, or it would have gotten worse.  But our cart, she’s destroyed.”“The cart,” Dabus says.“Underdark fungus, in fact,” Prisantha says in a louder tone.  “Where do you suppose it found that?”  After recieving no reply from either Dabus, who is regarding the cart, or Heydricus, who is regarding the wolf, Prisantha beckons Heydricus’ hawk familiar to her arm, and grants it darkvision.  “Find the others,” she says.The hawk takes to the treetops, and begins to scout the area.  After a moment, Heydricus looks up and says, “They’re coming—from the South!  Spread out!”  The guards flee from the wrecked cart, and the adventurers ready themselves.  After a moment, four more dragons, huge red beasts by the look of them, arc over the treetops and wing toward the group.Dabus takes his cue from Prisantha, and dispels one of the polymorphed wolves, sending it crashing to the earth with a piteous yelp.“Bring the real one!” Heydricus yells, as the remaining three dragons swoop onto the party.Prisantha is attacked by two of the beasts, and their claws and vicious bites spray her blood across the battlefield and drop her to the ground, where she lies still.“Oh great,” Heydricus says as he leaps on the third dragon.  “She had to go and die again.”  His spear wounds the creature, but dragon scales are tougher than wolf-fur after all, and the beast avoids the worst of it with a booming screech and snap of its jaws.  At the sound, all three dragons turn their attention to Heydricus, and move to surround him, growling with a deep bass rumble, their tails twitching.Dabus raises his arms to the heavens and speaks a true name of Tritherion.  The holy word reverberates through the air and in an instant, all three of the monsters are inflicted with a sudden paralytic seizure and curl tail to mouth, crashing heavily to the ground and forming a hedge of twitching red dragons surrounding Heydricus.As Tritherion's Chosen begins to give the coup de grace to the paralyzed dragon-wolves, Dabus places his hands on Prisantha’s bloody form, and in an instant, she is Liberated from all pain and suffering, becoming completely whole.A fourth dragon, creeping up unseen from the North, bares its teeth at this scene, and the spikes along its neck raise into the air.  Heydricus, alerted by the sound, turns and charges toward it, but is unable to reach the beast before it takes to the air and flies away.  Dabus’ true seeing allows him to watch the dragon fly into the night, where it is joined by another and then both are gone over the horizon.After a moment, Heydricus returns to the three paralyzed creatures and begins to kill them, watching as they return to their wolf-forms in death.  Prisantha resumes her inspection of the bodies, and announces that the beasts have had a magic fang placed upon them.“Cool,” Heydricus says, thinking of his hawk.  “Can you do that?”“No,” Prisantha replies, “only a druid can enchant the teeth and claws of a beast.  If you studied your spellcraft more often, you would know.”“Studying,” Heydricus says, as if she’d just suggested that he might have a fondness for chewing on other people’s bandages.  Heydricus forces his spear through the head of the last beast.  “Can’t interrogate a wolf,” he says to Prisantha with a self-confident air.“We could have if it was awakened,” Prisantha sighs.“Huh,” Heydricus says.  “I put it to sleep.  Hey, Dabus,”“My lord?” “Have you ever fought a druid before?”</blockquote>

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