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Prev: Draugh Empire, Part 3: Cave of Destiny

Story

June 6, 1236 AD in the Draugh Kingdom

Realtime: Jan 28, 2016 - Feb 10, 2016

The party returns to the docks just in time to see Captain Pankraz of the Dragon Warriors finish meeting with the Draugh Army. After the party had left with Agent Midnight to fight Magmere and explore a cave, the Army began investigating the Dragon Warriors. There were accusations of harboring evil creatures, and although Captain Pankraz insisted the worst they had was a thief, he did allow the army to investigate. Kandar took advantage of the opportunity to disguise himself as part of the Draugh military and escaped custody. Pankraz isn't too upset by his escape, as Kandar had given up a lot of valuable information on the Dragonlord and can't return to him as a result - Kandar's now a traitor and without allies in a foreign land.

With that resolved, Fi thinks about talking to Petal Rose and Midnight. Petal Rose's garden is on lockdown, and she seems preoccupied with a cave. She explains that she can't see it any more. The party tells her that they defeated an iron golem in a cave, filled with Sendrine. She resolves to talk to Sheeva about Magmere's involvement. She's surprised Sheeva didn't mention a cave.

The party is unable to meet the Princess, but Agent Midnight shows up in their room to ask about their expedition. She delivers a bundle of the finest royal tea. She learns of the multicolored Sendrine, Merki's survival, Suspicion of the Mel Family, and she deduces a third party tried to steal from the cave. She also promises the Princess will deliver a letter of introduction, opening trade agreements between the Draugh Kingdom and the East Ferren Trading Company.

June 7, 1236 AD in the Draugh Kingdom

Realtime: Feb 10, 2016 - Feb 21, 2016

Soon after lunchtime, the party meets the royal family: King Acetrus, Queen Lucellia and the Princess (whom Agent Midnight is close contact with.) General Johann introduces them, as well as Serra, the fourth Elemental Sister. After the party makes their introductions, they tell King Arcetus about the Sendrine, their investigations, and their suspicions of Micel Verdantlfame. Serra asks them point blank about their opinion of the Mel Family, and they give a mostly positive opinion despite their doubts. The King is pleased with their honesty and promises them new trade routes before he makes his exit.

June 19, 1236 AD

Realtime: Feb 22, 2016 -

The trip back to Harvest Wharf is mostly uneventful. Vegeta spars with Eldrick for a bit. Turns out he broke one of the Draugh Army weapons and learned a bit of unarmed fighting in the meantime. Fi takes this time to pick Shengren's mind about an island that sank to the bottom of the ocean- apparently a powerful sorceress lived there. She was big into transmutation, and once snuck into a meeting between metallic dragons disguised as a Silver for many hours. She began a campaign against the local fey and a rebellion to transform everyone, but the island sank before her process was complete. They couldn't even find a corpse. Fi wouldn't mind traveling there at some point in the future.

Back at the East Ferren Trading Company, Adrias Stonebottom wished them hello. It turns out Melodie had traveled to the Krimson Forest to aid them, and Abraxinal had taken over.

At lunchtime, Melodie, Melanie and Melvin held a private meeting with the party. Nidri was glomped by an overjoyed Melodie, while Melanie maintained her happy go lucky composure. Fi gave a very detailed description of their adventure, carefully selecting which facts to talk about (see handout.) Melvin was very happy they were able to complete Merki's final mission, and he's glad for the increased contacts with the Draugh Kingdom.

Melvin mentioned that the situation in the Krimson Forest had gotten worse. The diseased lands had spread near the border. Melodie had gone there to investigate and utilize her healing arts. Several of the elves in the Krimson Army, especially the blacksmith Zey had requested the party's help- they were impressed with the party's previous efforts into the Redtooth Lands.

Afterwards they approach Captain Dakan, who is at the shooting range with Norvi, teaching young recruits. They tell him about their journey to the Draugh Kingdom, but leave out Merki's survival. Fi raises his suspicions of the Mel Family, and their identity as outsiders. Dakan mentions that Melodie is an incredible archer although she hides it well. He challenged her to an archery contest and purposely threw the match to test her abilities. She was quite angry about his poor performance and began firing in earnest, but she fled as soon as she realized she had been had. Fi suspects she is the Night Guardian, a rumored vigilante that may be responsible for driving out Magmere. He suspects the Mels know more about Sendrine than they let on, and he has doubts about Marjorie Mel's appearance in the Krimson Forest.

Dakan also confirms there were 5, not 4, heroes of the Fifty Years War. The fifth was a human monk who wished to remain anonymous and unknown. There was a dwarven druid and a gnome spymaster who accompanied Shavanni and Dakan against the Lucavi.

Handouts

Chat Log(Text Only)

• Chat Log

Fi's report to the Royal Family

We've completed our research on what we found in the desert. There is a cave in the X Quadrant that is rich in a unique material that we call Sendrine. We believe that the invading goblin and golem force was targeting this cave. We eliminated the current threat, and the cave collapsed during the fight. I'm afraid they will be back to try again though.

This Sendrine has a wide variety of properties that mostly relate to extra-planar magics and outsiders. We are hoping that you can protect this resource for now, and in exchange we will tell you what we know about this material to help you get started in understanding it.

There is a lot of odd movement happening in the world right now especially regarding outsider activity. I think this material may become a very important factor in the near future, and we hope you will be open to working with us in the future.

What to tell the Mel Family

Votes and Discussion

What we tell the Mels:

Opening of the trade routes

• Fi - Yes
• Veg - Yes
• Nidri - Yes
• Hawk - Yes
• Claire - Yes

Cave of Sendrine

• Fi - Probably should talk about it
• Veg - Yes
• Nidri - Would not give huge detail on the different types, but that there are types, and that the cave collapsed before we could look closely
• Hawk - Yes, but light on details unless asked.
• Claire - Same as Nidri

Merki is alive

• Fi - No
• Veg - No
• Nidri - No
• Hawk - Hells No
• Claire - lol no

Initial distrust of us by the Draugh, especially of the Mels

• Fi - Yes
• Veg - Yes
• Nidri - Yes...and Veg should have his sense motive ready
• Hawk - Yes
• Claire - Yes

Spell that causes outsiders and those under their influence to feel paranoid

• Fi - Maybe
• Veg - Didn't notice ;) lol (GO WIS!)
• Nidri - not sure ...the color-change wine is more interesting?
• Hawk - ???
• Claire - maybe?

Intelligent Golems

• Fi - Yes
• Veg - Sure, they probably already know about them
• Nidri - Yes

Agent Midnight

• Fi - No
• Veg - "Agent Princess"... No
• Nidri - split on this, see below.

Fi I'm tempted to tell the Mel's quite a bit of what happened there. Clearly we should leave out exactly what Merki's suspicions of the Mels are, and the fact that he is alive (or at least claims to be). Since we've told the Draugh, knowledge on Sendrine will likely become more public in the near future. It would probably be for the best to bring the Mels up to speed on that as well.

Fi The big question for me is if we try to get the Mels to open up more to us by giving this information, but also try raising concern over the outside suspicions raised by our time with the Draugh. Specifically the magic concerning the third blaspheme: Worshipping or following the orders of evil from beyond this realm. Mentioning this may put Merki's investigation at risk, or it might get them to open up some more to allay our concerns.

Nidri: want to stay as close to honesty as possible -- lies are complicated. I think we have to omit any mention of Merki or the white crystal. How much do we want to say about "Agent Midnight" and the intelligent golems?

Hawk: I agree that we shouldn't try to make up lies, but being light on details wouldn't be a bad thing until asked. Also, we should definitely leave out anything to do with Merki. Focus on the mission accomplished, and stick to things we know about the colored sendrine, and leave out some of our theories unless asked directly.

Fi What I really want is for the Mel's to feel comfortable telling us things, and for them to feel that they have a reason to do so. I'm interested in implying that there was distrust of us due to their belief of us working under the command of outsiders. I'm hoping that information plus us having given them a lot of information on what happened there would convince them to open up a bit. The only hesitation that I have is that revealing this information could lead them to believe that Merki had the same suspicions. That might not matter though since common knowledge is that Merki is dead.

Nidri: Fi's approach sounds fine to me. In terms of the under command of outsiders bit, i do think it would be helpful to mention the color-changing drink in addition to the paranoia spell -- it's more concrete and less easily dismissed as "are you sure you weren't just all worked up over nothing?"

I definitely do not want to mention that Agent Midnight is the Princess, but if we aren't mentioning Midnight at all, we need reasons to be the places we were. (Better than how we sort of stumbled at that last meeting...) I also assume we're explaining about how we found the cave based on what Sheeva said about the goblins.

Claire: I think we have to assume they have spies within the Draugh Empire and already know what we've told them, so clearly keep our stories the same.

Conversation Flow

Fi Conversation Flow: (I don't have time to write this all out in prose)

• Arrival
  • Search for Merki's prior contacts.
  • Learn about the Princess, Petal Rose, and Agent Midnight
  • Go to see Petal Rose
    • Sweet talk our way in
    • Agrees to help us meet the Princess

Dinner

• Meet several important people
  • Princess
    • Mentions the watchful gaze of the king over the kingdom
    • Fi mentions being paranoid ever since they got there
  • Giovanni Vermillion
    • Robots
    • Intelligent golems
  • General Joaan
    • Keeping an eye out for trouble
    • Big thing on purging corruptive influences here
• Drink wine at the toast
  • Wine changes color
    • All the party
    • Giovanni Vermillion

Agent Midnight finds us

• We made enough of a spectacle of ourselves.
  • Worked with Merki when he was in the Draugh Kingdom
    • He never made much progress with the Kingdom, but he did get a chance to do some exploring and research while there.
    • Agent Midnight offers to bring us to where Merki found something of intrest.
  • The wine changes color from people who trip one of the King's Blasphemes.
    • Invade the King's land and try to claim it as your own
    • Curse the King's liberation of other realms
    • Worshipping or following the orders of evil from beyond this realm
  • She has some kind of inside connection with the rulers
  • Asks us to help deal with a situation involving Magmere

Head to the desert

• Bounty Hunters
  • • Our coloring changing wine has made us wanted
  • Assist Midnight with Magmere
    • Find several of the outlawed intelligent golems there.
    • Midnight wanted to free them
      • Nidri note: would prefer to focus this on "they have free will and should be free" rather than her seeming to have a personal relationship of some kind with BB
  • Find Merki's cave (Nidri note: worth mentioning Sheeva? We're already talking about Petal Rose, and the elemental sisters are a bit weird...also it was the fourth one who asked about the Mels later.)
    • A goblin army with golems is there?
    • Fight with crazy giant golem
      • Explodes
      • Grab what we can and GTFO

Return to Capital

• Paranoia is gone
• There is a welcoming party of the Princess and General
  • Apologize for getting us mixed up with Magmere
  • Realized we weren't a problem
• We meet with Royal Family and explain what they have in their land and why they must protect it from the invaders
• Arrange for trade agreement
  • They ask several questions about the Mel family

Sendrine

• Hey look, it comes in colors!
• Give preliminary results we found on what the black and colors do?
  • We have very little real info, it doesn't really hurt to share at this point.
• See if they have any other suggestions on sources of info for this, to diversify?

Hypothesize on why the wine changed color, and why the paranoia struck? Have we been too close to outsiders recently?

Developer's Notes

OMG this stupid chat archive

Roll20's nice. Except that the chat archive becomes huge. I think the best solution is to copy the text and clear the archive after each adventure. I'll get working on that.

NPC codex

I'm making a recording of all the NPCs you have met so far. With how hard the archive is to read, it would be easy to have a quick reference.

So...when are you leaving the Draugh Kingdom

I thought you guys would leave in the first day. But you wanted to talk to Petal Rose, and Agent Midnight, and now the royal family. Oh well, that just means I have good NPCs you like to interact with, right?