There were a lot of questions, like why are we going to free this other dragon? It is evil, why would we do this? And, if we free him wont he just turn around and kill us? Won't he stay in the area? What's to stop him from setting up shop right where we live. These were good questions, but there were simple answers and they involved entering the world around them. Finally. The world I built was complex and assuming that it was just like every other world they knew was a mistake. Winter is passed and it is now Spring, but that spring lasts longer than an Earth like season. It lasts for the equivalent of six years. But humans can't fathom such long lasting years, other races can. Longer lived races measure the passage of time by the long year, the full passage of the seasons, Spring to Spring. The short lived races use the passage of the two co-orbiting suns as a year, the week that they both disappear behind the third Sun, invisible to all, at the center of the solar system, as the end and the start of the Short Year. Hey, this means that winter will not be coming back for twelve years, fifteen actually. Then someone said, "Like in Game of Thrones!". I said no, and killed his character.
They also asked, what was the Dragon's alignment? To which I said, I don't know, do you have a way to determine that? I don't see alignment as fixed in stone, but mutable depending on experiences. There was a discussion what the characters would be doing before they had a long rest and even if they were going to have a long rest yet, they were pretty strong still and had close to maximum hit points. They talked with the NPCs and asked them about the other prisons. They learned that the Fire Prison was in a constant battle between Elementals and Demons and that both sides had powerful dragons and that the battle was pretty even and had been for years, each side looking for recruits or for trade to gain an advantage over the other side. They also learned about the Water Prison. Nobody wanted to go there. People went there and they never came back, maybe the portals out had been destroyed or perhaps some evil had gained supremacy and had locked the area down. When they spoke to the Dragon, Mreksh, it stated that it had been to all the prisons but he had not been to the Water Prison in fifty years, and doesnt intend to anytime soon… there is something wrong there, but his did mention that it was a vast warm sea with much wild life, including a couple of Turtle-Dragons.
The choice was to fight the bigger dragon or to fight the lesser dragon. The greater dragon had co-opted yeti and Elementals to its cause and the lesser a colony of goblins. Goblins sounded easier to fight than yeti and Elementals. The Mreksh told them that the Goblin colony had been nurtured by his enemy for nearly a century and he had been training them and breeding the colony for that time. When they approached the cave entrance, there was signs that the goblins had been there for a long time: the cave was walled off to a height of ten feet, the wall made of snow and ice had battlements. The cave entrance was 150 feet wide and it looked like if they were prepared for an attack, they would man the parapets and hold off any foe here. Out side the walls they are joined by two familiar Bugbears, the ones that they battled beside when they defeated the lesser temples of Fire and Water. Using a common language, the bugbears told a story of the betrayal of the the Cleric of Air, who sacrificed the Bugbears when he had gained the trolls as allies. They joined up with the characters.
The Ranger set out as a diversion and a Trojan horse, using his natural and unnatural stealthiness, Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind. He sneaks past the wall and discovers that it is manned by only eight goblins, but they are keeping the other characters out of battle and just out of range by their bow fire. The Survivors led by Gank were heading up the opposite side of the wall, but since they were not magically stealthy, were moving slowly. Additionally the heaviest armoured characters were advancing slowly to try to bring the attention of the goblin archers on them exclusively to give the humans a chance. The dragon moved behind the goblins invisible to them. The ranger targeted the first goblin and took aim and fired from total surprise, three rapid shots, to hits and it was then that he realized that these were not normal goblins, the fighter and the Paladin charged forward, e paladin on his mount and the fighter just running flat out. The eight humans rose as on and targeted goblins and fired. The dragon landed behind goblins and lashed out with his two claws and bite attack. The goblins were injured but not one had died. The ranger took aim and fired his arrows again, this time finally killing one. The battle lasted longer than it should have, bunt the battle was won. Eight elite goblins were dead and no alarm had been sounded.
The path to victory was filled with a lot of caution. After the wall the group moved with purpose across the snow field, until one person found the first trap. After that they moved slowly in single file checking for traps along the route. The next cave entrance they found was well lit with a giant bonfire that used no wood to burn. The most observant among the party thought that the bonfire looked at them. It was a Fire Elemental that was trapped by a magic circle. Around the fire elemental there was twenty goblins farming massive mushrooms that were growing in the heat provided by the elemental. The Druid cast a sleet storm spell to immobilize the goblins and make them easier targets. The party ganged up on them and they proved to be normal goblins and not elite goblins. After the fungus crop was ruined and the goblins dead, the party approached the elemental, using the fighter's sword as translator, they asked how the Elemental got captured and they asked what it would do if they freed the creature. It's response was much to the liking of the party, it wanted to burn goblins. They freed the Elemental.
The next passage was wide and long, the entire way was glare ice with a dusting of snow on the top, so it was especially slippery and the party advanced at a crawl. When they reached the end of the passage, it seemed that their progress had been noted and there was a host of goblins waiting for them, about fifty in total. There was so many of them that they filled the entrances to two caves, one that was a dead fall of 20' into the next cavern and the other the living area for the colony. Each of the goblins was at least ten feet apart and armed with bows and battle axes. They were ready to pepper the group and they were far enough apart that if the characters had potent magic, it would be a quarter as effective.
The Fire elemental wasted no time with tactics, it went for the first goblin and set it aflame before traveling to the next and the next, until it had moved as far as it could go. Many of the goblins were common goblins and they roasted where they stood, but some of them were elite and they ran burning from the elemental. Seeing the numbers of foes before the group, the Mreksh decided that it made sense to reduce goblin numbers than to save itself in reserve for fighting the bigger dragon, so it swooped in low exhaling a frigid blast of cold air. Half of the goblins were engulfed in the cold air, the elites were surprised by the sudden attack and were caught in unawares. All the goblins in the frigid air were frozen solidly, and they died. In response, the dragon that they had been hoping to ambush, who was also invisible, magically appeared, jaws agape, and frigid air streaming from its mouth as well. All but two characters, the paladin and the fighter, were engulfed, and they were covered with hoar frost, after throwing themselves to the side of the blast of Winter. The eight Survivors and one of the bugbears turned into instant popsicles and died. The characters hit by the breath weapon thought that it was their last breath, but they all survived, some though barely. The Warlock only survived because he had a premonition a second before the attack and he had buried his body in the snow.
The appearance of the second dragon was a shock to the first dragon. The frenzy that he warned them about was on him and he fought against its irrationality of it. He cast a spell on two of the characters before following his most basic instincts. It then locked jaws around the bigger dragon and it around its smaller. The spell was a twinned Haste spell and it affected the Fighter and the Paladin. They charged into battle faster than they thought possible. The paladin struck first and blasted the dragon with holy might, the Warlock blasted the dragon with a paralyze from his wand. The Druid struck with her Wand of a Wonder, blasting a hole in the ground under the dragon. The fighter lashed out at the beast smithing it hard with a series of well placed critical hits. The dragon ally bought the Dragon enemy down to the ground, their entangled bodies thrashing around. The paladin drove down on the beast with his lance and struck hard delivering another holy smite. The warlock attempted to paralyze the dragon foe again, and the Druid used her wand too. The result was more comical, as an invisible marching band appeared half way between the target and played loud music while walking back and forth. The fighter again got lucky with a solid series of hits, and two critical hits at that. The cleric's spiritual axe s'more the creature killing it dead.
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