Post by Andy D on Apr 6, 2024 20:51:48 GMT
We’re Off to See the Dragons
In a house in Daring Heights’ Dwarven Quarter, a dwarf and a human were sitting around a table in the house’s courtyard. A goliath then joined them bringing with him three beers.
Mendal Vultan, the dwarven cleric of Moradin, reached for the jar placed in front of him and took a big swig of beer before announcing in a very loud shout, “ENEE-WON UP FUR AN ADVENCHUR?!!” Both of Mendal’s friends, Kavel the goliath, and Archie the wizard screw up their faces showing disapproval at their friends’ shouting, whose voice is already boisterous and loud at its normal volume.
“You didn’t hear that yesterday?” Mendal asked, before continuing. “It was Ronkk, the plonker! I found him with Yinmaris outside the Three Headed Dragon. I used the Sending spell to contact him, because I could hear his booming voice northwest from where I was, as I was coming out of Nerry’s Pies, many streets away!” Mendal then pointed at his larger, goliath friend before adding, “and just like you, he’s having a hard time getting used to hearing someone’s voice directly in his head! I wasted two castings of the Sending spell on him yesterday. Before I wasted a third trying to explain to him that a god wasn’t speaking to him, I went in the direction of the noise and found him with Yinmaris.”
“Did anyone else join you from the adventuring community?” Kavel asked.
“Yeah, Felix and Beets.”
“So Ronkk’s plan to get a group of adventurers together worked. Good,” Kavel said, approving of the unorthodox, but straightforward team gathering from a fellow goliath. “You say he’s sub-thicc for a goliath, Mendal, but he doesn’t mess around. He gets straight to the point. This is good.”
“Only because just like you his head’s empty! Mendal fired back. There’s nothing else in his brain that could get in the way of him getting straight to the point!”
“Clear - not empty,” Kavel offered as a correction. But, before Mendal could finish his next response of, ‘what’s the difference?’ Archie prompted Mendal to move on with his tale of where he went yesterday, by asking, “what did Ronkk need a team for, Mendal?”
Nodding an acknowledgement that he should move on, and taking another swig of beer, Mendal got down to recounting the unexpected adventure.
Mendal began by mentioning the reason why Ronkk was in need of a party. There was a little dragon hatchling whom Ronkk met on a previous adventure. Ronkk took the hatchling dragon to the Court of Dragons to be raised properly and be with other dragons. In the time spent with Ronkk, the little dragon called Reginald became quite fond of the goliath bard. Ronkk was imprinted on Reginald’s mind as his number one friend. It had been some time since they had seen each other, and Ronkk had very recently received a message from the Court of Dragons saying that his little friend was asking to see him. Soon after receiving the message, Ronkk took to shouting on the street to form an adventuring party.
Big Ronkk and his Little Reginald Shadow
“Little black dragon he is. Acid breather. Also a clingy little bugger to Ronkk that is. It’s like he’s made his one true friend and that’s all he wants. Wouldn’t step away from Ronkk for a second - Ronkk was fond of him too. The pair of them were lucky that one of the big ancient dragons found a way for them to be together more often, despite each of them living on a different plane.”
“That’s jolly good,” Archie said with a smile on his face. Archie was fascinated by the explanation how Ronkk and Reginald were able to see each other more frequently, which included a variation of the Find Familiar spell that Archie himself uses.
“Not bad,” Kavel chimed in, “I prefer my door to the Feywild though, for how I see Nathalie.” The door in question is the extravagant oak and gem lined door in Kavel’s courtyard that connects to a twin door in the Damphenite Tangle, a region of the Feywild’s Summer Court, where his fiance, Nathalie Walnut, a sprite warrior and Spiritual Leader of the Damphenite Tangle, lives.
“I don’t know if I want a permanent door for a realm of dragons to saunter into Daring Heights at will though,” Mendal suggested with concern. “I mean, the little buggers are cute, but the big ones are walking arsenals, even if they are nice; that’s a big risk.” Agreement murmured from both Kavel and Archie, and Mendal continued speaking, “you should have seen the palace. Bloody massive! Lots of alcoves in it for sleeping dragons.” Mendal pointed once again to his goliath friend, “I reckon it was far larger than how you described the cavern on your island, Kavel. Imagine your island’s cavern with less trinket trash, and more dragons instead.”
“Hmmm.” Kavel thought about it, “an island of dragons. I like that. It would be better. Why couldn’t I have found the deeds to an island of dragons instead? There was that archwyrm thing on my island though…”
Before Kavel could continue the thought, his dwarven friend chimed in, “I met one of those archwyrms, actually!” Mendal remembered the immense size of Thalistrasza and the vast length of her wingspan dwarfing all other humongous dragons he had ever seen. Thalistrasza is the mother of dragons, and even more impressively, one of the nine very ancient archwyrms led by the archwyrm Stellarum.
“Ah, I believe Frigus is the herald to Thalistrasza, if I’m not mistaken,” Archie commented, recalling his own knowledge and involvement with the very ancient great archwyms.
“She seems like she’s head of the Court of Dragons - Spring Court I’m told. But, there’s also Queen Ophelia. Nice lady. She welcomed us to the court. Meant to ask her if some of the dragons wouldn’t mind working in our city’s forges for whatever we could help them with.”
“You’ve mentioned this before,” Archie recalled, “why didn’t you raise it?”
“I was distracted by all the clingy saccharine shit going on!” Mendal replied. First there was the baked sweet goods feeding frenzy of baby dragons by Yin and Beets. Then there was the thing that led to Ronkk and Reginald’s magical bond, which started with a race up a massive tree with, “a bunch of cheating bastards!”
The Race Up The Court of Dragons’ Central Tree with Cheating Bastards
“You don’t feel that using your Slippers of Climbing to walk up the tree should disqualify you as a fair tree-climbing competitor?” Archie asked, drawing attention to Mendal’s hypocrisy.
“No,” Mendal replied with the confidence of an honest person of which he, in truth, wasn’t. But, his reasoning at least suggested he was far from the biggest cheater in the tree-climbing race. “Beets was bloody flying! Fairy wings are a much bigger disqualifier than magical sticky footwear. Felix animated his many musical instruments and used them as steps of stairs, and then I swear he; Yinmaris and Ronkk were all teleporting too! Although, to be fair to Yinmaris, I did pass him by at one point, and saw him actually climbing the tree properly for the pure joy of it.”
“What was the point of all this?” Archie asked, looking for the goal in the tree-climbing.
“They’re all children aren’t they?” Mendal asked rhetorically. “But also, a big, ancient dragon called Wyrmwood lived in a giant alcove up near the top of the tree, and I think Reginald didn’t have the courage to satisfy his curiosity and go say hello to the bigger dragon, until he could drag his best friend Ronkk up there with him.”
It was at this point in the story that Mendal mentioned a task they were then given by the resident of the tree, the ancient, and somewhat cranky old dragon, Wyrmwood. One of the younger dragons, Wyrmwood suspected, had stolen a prized golden, and gem-encrusted egg. Wyrmwood wanted his prized egg back. The egg was part of his hoard, and had ritual importance to him.
The Quest for the Magical Fabergé-like Egg
“I didn’t know gold dragons eat gold,” Kavel exclaimed and then looked from Mendal to Archie for an explanation.
“Good for the scales apparently,” Archie explained. “Glosses up the golden scales. Not entirely sure if that’s true for all the Metallic dragons - silver for silver dragons etc. Or indeed if a similar thing is true for the Chromatic or Gem dragons - fire for reds, emeralds for, well, emeralds.”
“Reduces your hoard size too,” Mendal added. “But anyway, yeah, little Reginald said he thought the teenage gold dragon, Godfrey, had been acting suspicious the other day. And yeah, it turned out Godfry snuck into Wyrmwood’s lair, liked the look of the golden egg, and ate it. So, there was no getting it back! But, we went back to the palace and talked to an important member of staff there, Anacostia - she came to help us with an idea she had to replace the egg, which was good because Wyrmwood seemed like he might slap seven shades of shit out of Godfry, despite all the warnings we were given about never hurting a dragon in the court. Oh, and Wyrmwood promised us an item each from his hoard, so that was motivating us too.”
Expert Clan Crafter Mendal Vultan Crafts a Luxury Magical Egg
“Off to a lava pit inside a mountain we went - no one seems to make forges on the other planes. Everyone in other planes just makes use of natural resources, which is clever, I grant you. But comes with the bloody great trade-off of a working environment where it's so ridiculously hot and sweaty that you can barely even breathe the little air around you!” Mendal explained, complaining about this and his other times seeing forge locations on other planes outside of the Material Plane.
The complaining tone in Mendal’s voice gave way to one of passion and excitement, when he began explaining the work he had done. Through a combination of Mendal’s Clan Crafting brilliance, his recent lessons from crafting masters Carric and Nevarra, and the divine blessing of the dwarven god Moradin; Mendal crafted an exceptional gem-encrusted golden egg, with gold and gems provided by the party.
“You didn’t contribute any gold or gems yourself?” Kavel asked.
“No I didn’t! And why should I have?! I contributed the only labour! Expert, one of a kind, artisanal labour! Without me - no Vultan Egg!” This was Mendal’s excuse, which did contain a valid point about his contribution. He had also taken a liking to calling the luxury egg, a ‘Vultan Egg’. Perhaps there was a market for said opulent items amongst the more wealthy of Daring Heights? Hmm…
“How did you make the egg magical though? You did mention Wyrmwood’s egg had a magical quality, right?” Archie enquired. “There are limits to your divine blessing, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Well obviously that’s where Anacostia came in and contributed a bit of magic to the egg. But, otherwise it was all me!” Mendal argued downplaying Anacostia’s contribution. “Although, Yin and Felix played some nice music while I worked. I kind of liked that. Seemed to help a bit.” Another downplaying statement from the proud dwarven craftsmen - both the bards’ musical accompaniment were their offering of magical inspiration to the crafting.
The Adventurers’ Rewards
“So Wyrmwood wasn’t fooled. He could tell it wasn’t his egg.” Mendal said plainly. “But, he has a good eye for craftsmanship, if I do say so myself, as he complimented the egg greatly - as indeed he should have - and said it was much better than his old egg, which it turns out he bought in a market in the Court of Sorcery. So, I’m not sure where all this ritual importance came from, but who cares.”
“And he rewarded you all with items from his hoard?” Kavel asked.
“Yeah. But, if you remember what you told me about your island’s junk pile of trinkets - his hoard was more like that, when we looked at it closely!” Mendal paused to let his disappointment sink in for his friends. “Fuck me! I’m glad I didn’t contribute coin into the egg replacement cost. The others spent about a thousand gold on that, and we just got tosh in return. Who paid who I ask?!”
“Well, Ronkk and Reginald now have a magical bond.” Archie offered, as the purpose of having helped Wyrmwood, who, as it turned out, was the big ancient dragon that provided Ronkk and Reginald with their ability to see each other more frequently.
“Well yes that was nice,” Mendal agreed. “But all I could find to take from the hoard for myself was this book of gibberish.” Mendal gave Archie the book and opened it to a specific page, “here look at this. All of it gibberish, except that line there.” The bit of text Mendal pointed to, which both Archie and Kavel looked at, read:
"It will happen in the City of Greed, when the Sun is Highest on the Longest Day.”
“You never know,” Archie said, “there might be something to this. Want me to look into this for you?” Archie offered to Mendal, curious himself about the lone sentence with any clarity to it.
“Oh yes, please do,” Mendal agreed and thanked his academic wizard friend, “but if there’s an island involved, like what he got from rummaging around a pile of trinkets,” Mendal gestured toward Kavel, “then it’s mine, not yours!”
Archie raised an eyebrow at Mendal before saying, “oh charming. I do the ‘labour’ part while you merely found the book, and if you get an island out of it; I get nothing?”
Mendal began to see his hypocrisy. He gave it some thought, and decided to deflect, “I’ll tell you what, if you can successfully explain to Ronkk how the Feather Fall spell works, you can have half an island, if I get one. Bloody hell Archie! That giant plonker threw himself off of the top of Wyrmwood’s giant tree with the misunderstanding that Yin’s Feather Fall spell would save him. But Yin casted the spell much earlier in the day! And Ronkk did this twice! Yin had to chase after him in free-fall two times!!!”
Archie’s jaw dropped.
Kavel extended his hand to the centre of the kitchen table to show the ring on his left hands’ middle finger, “Ring of Feather Fall. Mendal, Ronkk needs one of these.”