Mature. 20d10 large. +100 proficiency modifier +4
HP 320. BW 18d6(63)
Damage modifier +5, multi attack bite, claw, claw
bite 2d10, claw 1d6
AC 18. CR11
Sorcerer level 12. Spell save DC 17; spell attack modifier +9
12 known spells 6 cantrips 4/3/3/3/2/1 12SP
Distant spell, Empowered spell each costs 1 SP
8 minions
Cantrips: Chill Touch, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost, Mage Hand, Message
1: Fog Cloud, 2: Gust of Wind, Invisibility, Misty Step, 3: Gaseous Form, Sleet Storm, Slow, 4: Ice Storm, Polymorph, 5: Cloud Kill, Cone of Cold, 6: Chain Lightning
Mreksh Adult white dragon. 17d10 large +68 proficiency modifier +3
HP 196. BW 15d6(53)
Damage modifier +4, multi attack bite, claw, claw
bite 2d10, claw 1d6
AC 17. CR8
Sorcerer level 9. Spell save DC 15; spell attack modifier +7
10 known spells 5 cantrips 4/3/3/3/1 9SP
Distant spell, each costs 1 SP
Cantrips: Chill Touch 2d8, Minor Illusion, Ray of Frost, Mage Hand, Message
1: Fog Cloud, 2: Gust of Wind, Invisibility, Misty Step, 3: Gaseous Form, Sleet Storm, 4: Ice Storm 2d8, 4d6, Polymorph, 5: Cloud Kill 5d8, Cone of Cold 8d8
The characters received their god given new powers. The Ranger was given a simple and frequently used power, whisper a prayer to the Grey Warder before attacking and if every attack is successful, the Grey Warder grants him an additional attack. The fighter was granted a power that gives her temporary hit points when she moves to protect an innocent. The paladin received a unique spell called Scoria's Lesser Oath. The Druid was given a power, upon assuming a water creature's form, it would have maximum hit points. The Cleric was given a power that allowed him to target other creatures besides the one that hit him with Wrath of the storm. The Atheist got nothing.
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The tempo of this session was one that I had agonized over for a while; there was a month long gap between games and my plan was simple. Have the players battle a difficult creature and the players get ambushed by the evil dragon while they are fighting. The dragon would paralyze Mreksh and cause him to fall from great height, to die. Then he would attack the rest of the party, the NPC cleric would rush off to heal the dragon and the dragon would re-enter the fight before the end, the players would be felled when the Haste spell runs out. And the players win a close fight. Things changed.
First change, the Dragon has a Polymorph spell that allows it to change to monsters as well as beasts of equal or lesser Challenge Rating. There is a female Remorhazes in the adventure and it decided to change into a male Remorhazes. More over, he impregnated the female. He has a mess of powerful minions, but he is crafty and wants even more powerful minions, so his eight Yetis and three Air Elementals are not the match for one Remorazes not to mention possibly seven. So months ago he began to cultivate that relationship and the result is six babies and one mother. Remorhazes are immune to heat and cold, so this a real step up for his minions.
Moments before the players arrive I finalize my session in my head: the players are attacked by the Female Remorhazes and her six children in a ice field from a crevice in the ice and the dragon disguised as a make Remorhazes emerges and fights the PCs and after they kill him, or make him lose concentration to reveal himself, while his current lesser minions arrive to attack. Simple but then I get inspired: I have hex map laid out and I put numbers on the edges along the rows and diagonal columns and I get the Players to roll a d12 as I roll 2d12, 3d12, 4d12, and 5d12; the rows have four sets of 12 numbers so that each time as we roll a section of the grid of the glacier drops 20 meters, the ice collapsing. When the Dragon is revealed, the section dropping is bigger, the hex and all the hexes beside the hex. The effect made the players feel like the battle map was coming apart around them, even though I knew that if was going to have a marginal effect. I also put a rule in that if they are standing on the edge they need to make a athletics check to see if the floor under them collapses, Dex save to throw themselves off the section. Both checks are very easy, 10 and 10 only one ally failed.
The overall effect was that the players all felt that they were going to die and that they had a really good time. I would say it was the best session yet. The dragon as Remorhazes had 195 hp, and the mother had maximum 289hp. The babies had less than half of the suggested hp at 40-50hp. The yetis had 51hp and the air Elementals had 90hp the Remorhazes moved they expanded the crack automatically
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The morning dawned and the weather was exactly as they all expected the weather to be like, cold approaching bitterly cold, brief freezing rain giving way to ice pellets and sleet, snow falling in between the gusts that ranged between gale force and cyclone quality. The snow was bad, little chunks of stone speeding as fast as arrows was something that happened to all of them at one time or another. The Paladin had extracted a binding oath from the Dragon Mreksh the day before and the Warlock Cael had summoned up a familiar in the form of a rook and sent it to explore the region that they would be going the next day. Hours later the bird returned and gave its report, that sounded more like resonating croaks and included much cocking of its head and pecking of a map. The Raven identified yetis and a dragon and swirls of wind. It found the dragon's hoard too.
The Ranger took the lead. He was almost invisible with his Elven Cloak and Elven Boots and his ability to walk along treacherous terrain. The rest were spaced further apart along the route spaced far enough apart so if there was any attack by a Dragon it would only affect a few of them. The Paladin mounted on his sure-footed giant goat came next, flanked by the slow yet steady dwarf. Next came the priest of Stomida, the Druid of Xeric, her companion Ceraza, priest of Xeric, and the Bugbear companion of Cael. The two Orc companions and Cael came last. Cael and the dragon were invisible both trying to make the party to be smaller than it was. The other party members were dressed against the cold and ice with yeti fur coats and yeti leggings with crampons in the feet. At a distance it was hoped that the swirls of the wind and snow would obscure the white figures on the background of white.
Before heading out the ranger used his artifact to try to see what the gods said the result of their expedition: Danger was the result. Half an hour and half way across the ice field, the ranger had already guided the group past several fissures in the ice before leading the group past yet another gap in the ice that lead into the heart of the glacier. The paladin approached too near to the edge for his comfort and his sense of foreboding spiked and he turned with an arrow notched ready to fire as the edge of the fissure collapsed and a massive blue insectoid head emerged next to the Paladin, its jaws and mandible flexed experimentally as if in anticipation to gorging itself on the paladin and its mount in one bite, that's how big it's jaws were.
The Party was quick to recover from their dismay and the launched a co-ordinated attack. The ranger whispered to his god as he loosed three arrows in succession and then reached and launched a forth, a gift shot provided by his devotion to the Grey Warder. The dwarf quickly launched an attack on the beasty's head and the priest of Stomida circumvented the tail end of the beast to attack it with a radiant flame burst. The NPCs rushed forward to add their might to the battle, but since they were spaced out, they would have to run to get to the battle. Ceraza cast a spell, Beacon of Hope above the battle so that healing would be accelerated. Vistra having landed a couple blows on the creature discovered that her footing was being eroded and she had to throw herself away from the collapsing ice edge.
When the great Ice Beast attacked it missed the target of the attack, the fleeing Vistra, but it was then that a surprise was waiting, for as she attacked the eges of the fissure expanded and extended as six smaller versions emerged beside the rift. They were newly hatched and voraciously hungry! Moolite the Paladin seemed to be holding off his attack for the right moment found that his path to the mother was now blocked by a child and he was forced to engage with a lesser evil, he tested the child insects mettle with his lance and smoke it dead in two strokes. Cael seing that most of the party was far from the combat inspired outlying combatants to run into the combat zone and engage, and at the same time he moved slightly off to a point he would be able to fig at a distance; a personally proven good strategy, but this time flawed: the ice erupted next to him and another character as a slightly smaller male insect broke out and tried to eat him. The dragon Mreksh circled above and saw that if they were going to help it fight and kill the other dragon, it was going to have to reveal itself in this fight, sooner than it wished. It landed and cast a haste spell that he twinned and targeted the Ranger and the Fighter. It then engaged with one of the hungry babies.
The shaking caused by the eruption of the Remorhazes from the ice field caused a unforeseen reaction—the ice field began to collapse. Chaos soon stalked the battlefield as five little squirming baby insects the size of horses crawled across the I scape looking to devour people whole with bites that when they connected tore chunks out of the person once as much as 25hp damage in one hit. The unstated thought was if the baby did that, what horror would it be if the adult connected a hit? It was not long before this was answered. Three rounds into the fight things seemed to spiral out of control. The Remorhazes mother was Hot Pink thanks to the Wand of a Wonder and a second use of the wand had apparently done nothing, the Druid was targeted by the Remorhazes that she had just used the wand on. Its attack engulfed her from head to waist and had done over forty hit points of damage. Her companion seeing her distress ran forward and healed her for most of that damage, thanks to the Beacon of hope. One of the Orc companions fell to his apparent death as the ice patch he was standing on collapsed. Other characters seeing the danger of one of these Ice monsters swallowing a party member and since they had been concentrating on the mother, who was nearly dead, the other was hardly damaged, that this was a bad development. The Druid decided that she was going to transform into an animal that she hoped would be too big to swallow, a cave bear. She was wrong. The Remorhazes snapped back his head and the cave bear slid down her throat into its stomach. The Druid swore as a bear. The ranger drew his flaming Longsword and attacked the baby Remorhazes and watched as the sword hit and damaged, but the flames were utterly ineffective; they were immune to Cold and Fire! A few of the characters had decided that they would continue to pummel the Mother and the babies, but things were really not good now, on the periphery of the fight, eight yetis had appeared and they were charging towards the fray.
The ranger who was engaged with a baby saw the yetis approaching and thought that it might be better if he further way from that charging line. His haste affected speed moved him much closeted to the other end of the battle and he continued to pepper his targets. Vistra ran up to the male Remorhazes and used her speed enhanced attack combo to attack three times and her attack had a surprising result; the beast's outer armour had been exposed hitting an artery splashing the ground with blood and caused a deflation of the insect, the beast flexed and undulated, vomiting up a nearly dead and digested bear, and when the shuddering was finished large white wings had emerged and the insect form had broken apart to reveal a smaller, yet more deadly White Dragon. The dragon turned his head toward the bulk of the combat and exhaled. The air temperature dropped about 150°C in less than a second, the paladin engaging the Remorhazes now dragon rolled to the snow shield raised, now covered with the ice of frozen air, the indomitable Fighter barely succeeded her save and the cleric of Stomida saved as well, but succumbed to his injuries. The other priest of Xeric took a full blast and her concentration on the beacon of hope went out. When the iced air sublimated off the people, all e NPCs in the fight were down and a few of the characters too. The players dragon was on the other side of the battle dealing with the yetis, who as it turned out were not resistant to cold damage. Three tornadoes (air elementals) emerged from the yetis and charged across the field to snipe and kill standing characters.
Things were looking worse and worse, but as a bright side, it appeared that the architect of this battle had been revealed and the mother of the Remorhazes were dead along with four of her children. The yetis were almost dead too. The Druid was in good standing as since her form as a bear had absorbed most of the last horrible seconds of combat. She healed her companion Ceraza, returning the favour of half a minute before, returning her to life. Only one of the dead on the field was dead. The others were suffering from convulsions and in their death throws. Ceraza cured the spared the priest of Stomida and he rose just as an elemental flew phased and pummeled him to death again. The Druid stood in the field of battle and swore that there was something she could do. The dragon also looked upon the field and saw some glaring issues and he spun in place and breathed again, knocking a few of the characters that had not been hit by the first blast of frigid air with another close to its equal, the fighter was very unlucky and was hit by this blast as well. The glacier looked like Swiss cheese; since the dragon rose from the skin of the Remorhazes it had begun to collapse at an accelerated rate. The Druid cast a mass heal and she blanketed the region with healing energy and people who had been gasping their last breath, stabilized and were even healed. The Paladin cast haste on himself and charged to help the Storm Priest arriving I time to fight off the air elemental while the baby Remorhazes, approached. Ceraza heal the cleric again and the paladin rode off to kill the Dragon. The Remorhazes killed the priest again. Mreksh had already flown and dropped on the enemy dragon and fought it up and close and personal to prevent it from laying waste to the now fragile party. The Orc ranger that had fallen through the ice finally climbed out and began firing upon the dragon and the surviving enemies. The last baby Remorhazes was killed as it worried upon the Half-Orc's torso and Ceraza healed him yet again, one final time! And the party managed to kill the dragon.
The whole party stopped and silence reigned for the first time in a minute; the Ranger and the Fighter collapsed exhausted from racing around under a haste spell. The last two air Elementals flew off. The cratered ice field stilled and the party was finally able to rest. Well until Mreksh began to noisily devour the dead dragon. It tossed a necklace off of one of its claws and continued to eat. A buzzing ioun stone that was missed in the combat hit the ground and the dragon dropped it near the necklace.
The treasure, unguarded was still a chore to uncover. It was located deep in a pool that's surface had been iced over. Well more exactly, the fire gem had melted the treasure out a block of ice twenty-five feet thick and heated the bottom three fifths of the pool. The hoard was small but pretty valuable. There was a magic Great axe of giant slaying and a gem of seeing along with the rest of the magic and the treasure. The necklace on the dragon was a necklace of transformation, that allowed a wide range of creatures that a shape-changer could change into, Druids could transform in to creatures similar to them, humanoids and giants and as she an elf, she could transform into fey as well. The dragon could transform into creature's of ice and Draconic creatures instead of the limitations of Polymorph. The Ioun Stone was of leadership, and it raised the Paladin's charisma by 2.
Next they will have to decide where they will go and if they will be waiting for Mreksh to come with them.
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