D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/25/2015

Episode 6: Castle Naerytar  / Episode 7: The Hunting Lodge

The first thing we had to take care of today was getting our Cleric and Fighter conscious again.  Being a Level 5 Ranger, I had still had two spell slots remaining and one of my spells is Cure Wounds.  I quickly cast that on the Cleric so he could gain a few hit points.  Once the Cleric was conscious, he was able to cast Prayer of Healing with a Level 3 spell slot and we all regained 20 additional hit points.  Once we were all on our feet again we were ready to continue through the castle and carry on.

We managed to find the steps leading to the dungeon of the castle and hopefully our way out.  Once in the dungeon we came across a pool of water and we saw looed to be a gem sparkling in the water.  Our Rogue use Mage Hand to reach in and grab the gem.  Thinking it was safe, our Fighter got greedy and reached into the water to scoop up some gold and some kind of glob dripped onto him causing some acid burns.  Once we took care of the glob, the Rogue continued to scoop up the remaining valuables.

Continuing through the dungeon we managed to come into a room that was filled with mist, all but our Cleric rolled poorly on our Perception rolls and the Cleric being short as he is, managed to see on the ground what looked to be markings of a teleport.  Our Dwarf Cleric shouted out the words "DRAZIR" and poof, we all vanished.

The next thing we realized we were all standing in a wooded forest and what looked to be a lodge in the distance.  We decided to proceed towards the lodge and enter.  We searched most of the first floor and the second floor with not much alarm, until we were approached by four guards.  The guards had said that Talis has been expecting us.  Not wanting to put up a fight at this moment, we decided to see what Talis had wanted from us.  When we met Talis and asked what she wanted, she said that she has been watching us from the beginning and has an offer for us.  She believes that her ranking in the Cult should be higher than what it is, and wants us to eliminate Rezmir.  Talis also mentioned to us that she will provide guidance on reaching Skyreach Castle and will also provide a pass-phrase.  We accepted Talis's offer with the condition that she provide us food and shelter for the night and we will continue the journey in the morning.

That was all the time we had for today's session.  By completing Episode 6 and Episode 7, we all gained 2 levels.  Myself, my youngest son the Cleric, the Rogue are all Level 7, and my oldest son the Fighter is now Level 8.

We will be missing the next two weeks,  So stay tuned later in February as we eneter the final episode of the adventure 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/18/2015

Episode 6: Castle Naerytar continued

Today's adventure has us continuing to search through the castle to find more clues about the Cult of the Dragon Queen.  We had two encounters today, so not much exploring was done.  From where we left off last week, we headed upstairs to the 3rd floor of the castle and found ourselves inside what looked to be an observatory.  As we were investgating what looked like a telescope (but with the possibly of showing us the future), we were attacked by 4 gargoyles made of stone.  Being made of stone our mundane weapons did hot do much damage to them, only magical weapons had full effect.  It took us quite awhile to bring down these gargoyles, but we finally managed.  We also did manage to find some kind of a keyword, "DRAZIR", not sure what that means yet but I am sure we will be finding out.

We then headed back downstairs to the first floor to continue our exploration.  As soon as we arrived at the 1st floor landing we were approached by 8 cultists and 4 dragonclaws and they gave us a riddle: "when the sun is high", after two failed attempts at the riddle, we decided to attack.... 4 on 12.... we were abe to bring down pretty easily, but being outnubered 3:1 was pretty tough.  We eventually defeated them, but or Fighter and Cleric are both now unconscious.

We ended our session at this point and will continue next week...........

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/11/2015

Episode 6: Castle Naerytar

Continuing from where we left off, our adventuring party was now approaching Castle Naerytar.  We dismembarked from our canoes and started to make our way towards the castle.  We were approached by some Lizardfolk and talked our way into having them show us the direction to the castle entrance.  Instead of always 'hacking' out way through the adventure, I thought today would be best to try and talk our way out of some of the encounters.

We entered the castle and started making our way through the ground floor.  Most of the encounters we used the same story that we were working for the 'Cult of the Dragon Queen' and that Rezmir (a half dragon) was expecting us.  When we approached the inner ward of the castle we were attacked by 3 guard drakes.  Now that we are all at level 5 and our fighter level 6, the guard drakes were no match for us.  We continued our exploration and came across a guest room that looked to be occupied.  We rummaged through the dresser drawers and came acroos some red robes (we believe they belong to a red wizard we encountered on our caravan) and a small locked wooden box.  At that moment a fireball shot into the room catching the room on fire, our party took full damage except my Wood Elf Ranger only suffered from half damage.  Once we regained some hit points we attempted to pick the lock of the wooden box.  We left that to our Rogue, he picked the lock and opened the box and an acid arrow shot right at him causing enough damage to bring his hit points to 0.  Our Cleric stabilized him and then healed him with some magic.

We were at our stopping point for the day.  In the room we found a spiral staircase leading to the second floor of the castle and we will continue from that point next week.

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/1/2015

In yesterday's blog post I mentioned I am going to include some of the other games I/we are playing like Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.  Seeing how we are a couple months into the adventure I will just continue these going forward instead of catching the blog back up.  I will try and keep these pretty short and quick.

Yesterday on New Year's Day 2015 we continued our adventure in 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen'.  We are playing with a Level 5 Human Fighter, a Level 4 Wood Elf Ranger (me), a Level 4 Dwarf Cleric and a Level 4 Wood Elf Rogue.

Currently in our adventure we are on a 60 day journey taking us from the town of Balders Gate to Waterdeep.  We are traveling with a caravan and tracking down some Dragon Cultists who we discovered are carrying gold and jewels up North.  During this journey we are met with some encounters.  Yesterday we picked up on Day 22 of our journey and ran into a few more encounters.  The first encounter was 'The Golden Stag' in which our caravan approached the stag.  Most of the members of our caravan that we were riding with wanted to hunt down the stag, with a few that wanted to protect it.  Beeing a Wood Elf Ranger with a background in Outlander and the ability to favor Beasts and Forests, I wanted to track down the stag and learn some information.  I succesfully tracked the stag into the forest and approached the beautiful golden stag.  We spoke in the Elvish tongue and he was grateful that I did not harm him.  He presented me with a Magical Golden Bow +1.  We also learned information that we must follow the golden river to the castle in the sky.  I then found my way back to caravan and we continued on to Waterdeep.

Our second encounter 'Payback' we came across a man buried in the middle of the road up to his head.  We managed to dig him out and then magically healed him so we can gain some more information.  He also told us he was working for the same people as us and was a member of the 'Harpers' organization.  He provided us information that we needed to find a roadhouse that was North of Waterdeep.

We finally reached the city of Waterdeep and quickly settled any debts we had from our journey.  We were hired on as workers the next day to fix a road from Waterdeep to Neverwinter.  Once we reached the roadhouse our Fighter was recognized from our 60 day journey from one of the Cultists and was challenged in a duel.  While he was fighting the rest of us decided to search the roadhouse and came across a trap door.  The Fighter won his fight and we waited for nightfall to back through the trap door.  As we picked the lock to the storeage room (where the trap door was located) we came across 6 Lizardfolk, the 4 of us quickly defeated them and we descended down the door that lead us through a tunnel to a swamp.  When we reached the swamped I noticed some footprints and we decided to follow those to a Lizardfolk camp.  We were then approached by 9 more Lizardfolk and took down 8 of them and knocking out the last 1 so we can interogate him.  Once he awoken, the Fighter intimidated him to provide us with some information that would lead us to the castle.  We then decided to rest at the Lizardfolk camp.

We then ended our adventure for the day, with all of us gaining a new level.  I am looking forward to seeing what Level 5 will bring my Wood Elf Ranger.  Our next session will not be until 1/11/2015.

I guess I really didn't keep this short :)

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