Sessions 89 & 90 - Path Of The Jaded Dragon

Wednesday 35th June & Wed 9th July 2025

In-game timeline: Alturiak 9 - Alturiak 12

Heading away from Neverwinter wood, having avoided a possible chat with a Banshee, and seeing a glimmer of humanity in Solveig when he let a thief go without his now-trademark throat-slitting, our "Heroes" arrive at the Slaughter villages close to the Dragon Shrine.

Unsurprisingly all is not well in the villages. Three missing children have riled up the villagers, who believed that the children had been either killed or taken by a family of wyverns who lived nearby. With the villagers about to head to the wyvern lair in a pitchfork-wielding mob, our "Heroes" managed to talk them down and said they would take care of the wyverns.

They then proceeded to spend the day investigating the missing children - a very sensible thing to do, but not what the villagers wanted.

They did find the body of one of the children, and some signs of a minor battle with the child's crossbow bolts and wyvern tracks. Returning the body to the villagers, this only served to rile them back up again, something our "Heroes" failed to either dissipate, or even notice, as they headed out of the villages and camped in the nearby woods. They then decided to head for the dragon shrine before tackling the wyverns, since their own issues of despondency (and of course, the issue of the potential End Of The World) took precedence over the villagers' issues.

At the shrine they met Aileon, a young girl who seemed to be tending the ruins of the ancient shrine. She made them question their decision to prioritise their issues over the villagers, and the group decided to go to the wyverns lair quickly, having realised that perhaps their delay may have caused the villagers to once again try to take matters into their own hands.

Their suspicions were confirmed when they arrived at the wyvern lair in the form of two giant eagles carrying Alwaith and Faith, to see the villagers once again in mob form climbing up to the wyverns. In their wisdom, the party decided to grab the villagers who were reaching the lair and fly them down to the ground. Unsurprisingly the villagers, very riled up at this point and not easily able to distinguish giant eagle from wyvern, fought back. Whilst this didn't really harm the powerful party - the villagers were, after all, only armed with pitchforks and torches - it did manage to annoy Alwaith - something pretty easily done, to be fair - and he threatened the villagers, forcing them to back off.

The group chatted with the quite scared wyverns and ascertained elements of the truth of the past few days - the children had shot at one of the young wyverns, badly injuring it. Protecting her young, but generously not directly killing the humans, the mother knocked the crossbow out of the child's hands before rescuing her child and flying back. Unbeknownst to the wyverns, the children also lost their boat's oars in the attack and they drifted in their boat downstream and onto the rocks, where they all died.

Much of the animosity towards the wyverns was due to the creatures having to hunt the livestock of the villagers, because the villagers had encroached on the ancient hunting grounds of the wyverns in their expansion.

Whilst the party got most of this from the wyverns, who spoke very basic draconic due to their proximity to the Dragon Shrine, they filled in the gaps and added more details by Speaking With Dead with the dead child back in the village. With this information they, and the villagers, were able to find and recover the other two children's bodies from the river.

Alwaith, in his usual charismatic and understanding self, told the villagers - grieving the loss of three of their children - to leave the wyverns alone, and to stop expanding into the creatures' hunting grounds. Sanada was a little more helpful, understanding and forgiving towards the villagers and donated a large sum of her own money to help them expand their villages in different directions and to encourage them to treat the wyverns with respect.

This being done, our "Heroes" headed back to the Dragon Shrine to meet once again with Aileon who turned out to be, as suspected by Alwaith, an Ancient Golden Dragon. She thanked the party for their actions with the villagers and cured Sanada of her continued despondency since the Shadowfell, and atoned her for her past and future misdeeds relating to the need to kill dragons. She also rewarded Sanada with a relic - the Dragonfire Amulet - and Sanada gained a level of experience.

Heading away from the Shrine, the party discussed where to travel to next. There was some debate about which of the two Blood Rituals they should try to disrupt - one would possibly help them in their battle with Malar and the black dragon Vessel, whilst the other was taking place near Easting, Faith's home village. 

With this "debate" still going on, Alwaith decides to use the token gifted to him by Evaine and challenge Sir Alain Treethorn, leader of the Dark Hunt, to a duel. Sir Alain duly appeared and explained some of the rules of the challenge. It would be Champion vs Champion, and Sir Alain was keen to see an honourable fight - indeed, the reason he was not entering the battle himself, but instead sending a Champion, was to give the Challenger a chance. Alwaith put himself forward as his own Champion.

Sir Alain chose the venue - the Veilspire Arena within the Feywild - and the time - tomorrow night. A portal would appear allowing the Challenger and his companions safe passage to the arena. Alwaith would be allowed to choose the nature of the arena, and Sir Alain would select his champion based on the arena chosen. He offered no insight as to the options of arenas chosen - assuming that either the "Heroes" would already be aware of the options (they are not) or they would find out before the allotted time. To make the fight more "interesting", Sir Alain bestowed a level upon the Challenger (Alwaith).

With the time of the Duel approaching, and with time of the essence regarding the Blood Ritual and the coming eclipse, pressure is on. The party discuss their, few, options as night closes in…