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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 8608711" data-attributes="member: 6816692">Session 54An alluring dragon           We go to sleep early. But when Carlyle wakes up after his regular two hours of sleep, he is suddenly grabbed by a shadowy arm and disappears.(He's still wearing that ring of sustenance he got from the Vantrys family all the time)He does manage to exhale a quick cry of surprise, which in turn also alerts Auryn. She is very alarmed that her partner is nowhere to be seen and starts looking for him immediately. Then, a shadowy figure ambushes her from behind and stabs her side with an equally shadowy dagger.(see? There is definitely a pattern with stabbing Auryn)The shadow assassin manages to land a precise hit right through Auryn's ribs, leaving her seriously injured and bleeding. Fortunately, she is able to swiftly grab her own weapon and illuminate the room with a quick command word that makes her rapier shine brightly. This helps her parry the shadow's attacks more easily and also enables her to finally spot Gabriel.Meanwhile, Gabriel Carlyle found himself underneath a fairly enlarged bed wrestling with a gingerbread golem. As soon as he realized that it is actually he who got shrunk, he teleports out of the golem's grab to get a better view on his surroundings. This very moment, the room is illuminated and he sees a giant Auryn in combat with a similarly gigantic shadow.“Down here!”, he tells her telepathically.The golem is still keen on combating Gabriel, but being actually gingerbread-sized, he is no match for Auryn who picks up the creature and breaks it in half with ease. This breaks the spell on Gabriel who returns to his regular size. The assassin is not as easily defeated though and he mercilessly utilizes the fact that Auryn focused some of her attention on the gingerbread-golem and not her original adversary. Another quick stab leaves another deep wound that nearly sends her to her knees.“He is locked on me, but I cannot do this much longer...” she telepathically returns, entering a full defensive stance. Now it is Gabriel who returns the favor as he teleports straight behind the shadow and unleashes a barrage of blows on the creature. Auryn resorts to riposting the incoming attacks and so they finally manage to slay the shadow assassin who transforms into an old doll after being defeated.Now Gabriel is very much alarmed as there could be more deadly surprises waiting for us in this inn. He first tends to Auryns wounds and then casts a spell of truesight to spot possible threats. He doesn't find any, but is very much baffled to see that the whole building is in quite a miserable state. Everything is made from rotting wood and even Auryn's gingerbread railing turns out to be made from moldy planks. He keeps his posture, simply raises his eyebrows and collects a bucket, which he places in front of his partner.“What's this for?”, she asks curiously.“You'll understand when you see what I am seeing with your own eyes.”, he replies dryly.Then  Auryn casts the spell herself, sees the railing and feels sick immediately.“That is what that bucket is for. No need to get even more messy.”, he states while Auryn vomits all of the rotten wood she had eaten previously.We then go looking for Anrdrei and find him sleeping peacefully as no one has tried to attack him yet. We wake him up and tell him what had happened to us. All three agree that this is no safe place to spend the rest of the night, so we pack our stuff and leave immediately. Lastly, we visit the stables to pick up Mista Nyves.Reasonably unhappy with the proposed inn, we ask Nyves to lead us to a more safe resting place, but he doesn't know any. So Auryn uses a lay of the land spell to scout the area.(Tiz gave her the ability to use lower-level druid spells due to her connection to the Dreaming)She finds a cave on the top of a nearby hill and we agree to move there to get some sleep. When we arrive at the hill, we are quite surprised to see that someone must have planted some sort of garden there. So we assume that the cave could be inhabited. The cave smells of citric acid, so Carlyle cautiously sneaks out to look for occupants. And our suspicions are soon confirmed as he sees a sleeping, feathered dragon.We haven't heard of any such creature yet, but as we know dragons to be intelligent creatures, both Gabriel and Auryn agree to have Auryn proceed slowly and call out to the dragon as she would be seen as the most natural inhabitant of the Dreaming. Said dragon turns out to be no tyrant, but a rather friendly female joy-dragon called Aluriel. She explains that she watches over the area, making sure there are no evil Fey roaming the area. Auryn tells her that we were attacked by dark creatures in a nearby inn and are only looking for a safe place to sleep. Aluriel can sense no ill intention in Auryn, and so she agrees to help us out. One by one, Gabriel, Andrei and Mista Nyves come closer and introduce themselves to the joy dragon. Aluriel agrees to let them all sleep in her cave this night, and she transforms into a scantily-clad elvish looking woman for easier conversations. Before we go to sleep, we tell her that we urgently need to go to the Unseen Court as soon as possible because the Dreaming could be in great danger. After Auryn and Andrei have fallen asleep (he doesn't really care about Mista Nyves), Carlyle keeps watch, as one a late-night surprise would be very much enough for him and the team. Aluriel notices his anxiety and talks to him about the issues that are bothering her. She talks about dark shadows cast into the Dreaming by Waking technology and the Fey going mad hearing the noise of the grinding gears. In this regard, she seems to be more on the Hegehog Court's side, even if she states that she doesn't want to take sides. Carlyle explains to her that if we don't make it back to our world in time, these shadows would be a relatively small problem compared to the imminent catastrophe. After all, the Danorans have a lot more technology than the Risuri and the Obs are literally playing around with the planar configuration, which could shatter the Dreaming... The next morning we release Nyves from his contract and give him a decent salary (though he factually wasn't of much help). After that, we ask Aluriel about a reliable way to leave the Dreaming, since this would be the most direct way to prevent a catastrophe. She tells us about a nearby portal in the werehumans' thicket that she knows will open soon.  Other than that, she also knows that the Court and Clover are only a few miles from here, so we could also possibly get more help there. “Unfortunately, the portal my mother used to visit my father has long been shut off.”, Aluriel says with a growling sigh.“Visit? Your father was a dragon of the Waking?”“A majestic, but ever-curious wyrm called Gradiax. She always talked fondly of him. But I fear that he is long dead, at least from what I've heard about the fate of the dragons of the Waking.”Auryn's eyes open wide in response, but she tries to not give any more hints at a possible connection to said dragon.“I see. But to put things into perspective, the Fall of Dragons was caused by people trying to manipulate the planar configuration. And not all dragons died in the aftermath. In fact, I have a faerie dragon living in my backyard.”Aluriel laughs at the thought of a “gardening dragon”, and she seems to understand that helping us out would be in her best interest, too. (When I read the Adventures in ZG book I was honestly surprised to see that dragons in the Dreaming are actually a canon thing. Tiz thought it would be cool to have some of them enter the Dreaming, just like Eladrin, and turn more fey-like in the process. And yep, another damn sweet secret that could be useful someday.)We use the quiet morning preparations to spy on Han Jierre one more time, who commemorates the fallen and Lya Jierre in particular as he is standing in front of an iron plaque. After that, we try to contact Old Stag through our shared connection to Srasama and send him images of an attack on Flint and Shale symbolically led by Han Jierre. We then receive images of a bombardment of Elba in response and get the impression that he is on his way with a fleet to put an end to the attack. We're  a bit confused as Han Jierre would certainly not have the capacity to muster and command a fleet all the way to Elba in a single day, but we have no choice but to trust our information.  Aluriel offers to take us to the werehumans' thicket, which we gratefully accept. Unfortunately, it turns out that the portal is indeed inactive. The aggressive werehumans confirm to us that it has been this way for quite a while now as their mother is on the other side of the portal. So we return to Aluriel and explain that there probably won't be any transition anymore and ask her to give us a lift towards Clover. Aluriel drops us off a few miles from the capital, as she doesn't have a particularly good relationship with the Unseen Court. But we can easily follow the road and learn that there is a big rush for the Rock Rackus memorial concert. We avoid the path over the bridge (and the expected bridge troll) and walk past a "contaminated spot" where we assume the location of a windmill in the Waking. (we, too, were baffled by this strong influence as a windmill isn't actually modern technology. We assumed it would be turning gears that are somehow toxic to the Fey, but that would indeed lead to insurmountable problems even with the most basic of technologies, like spinning wheels or archimedic screws.)   </blockquote>

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