Diary of Captain Nomed Oppenheimer - Entry Number 22
Monday, November 24th, 907 TA
Who says we can’t be stealthy? We’ve been traveling around Hidden Skerry and have yet to cause a single explosion. It actually hurts how little destruction we have caused compared to Tegel. Hopefully it won’t be long until the screaming starts, and hopefully it won’t be us doing the screaming.
After we had completed our revelries and our drunken shopping the night of the 21st, we brought the orphans we had been dragging along to the manor of Runic Rump, who had said he would be glad to take in orphans. Knowing how big of a heart this Runic Rump must have, I left a gift at the local orphanage, so that he would be able to take even more children under his wing. We decided to rest for the night, before we would prepare for the copper dragon’s arrival.
The next morning came with two new developments. The first was that the local orphanage had “mysteriously” caught fire. The horror. The second and more interesting thing was that the shepherds at the edge of town had been visited by the dragon’s Jadeling friend. The creature was using the peasants to get information about us, and when it saw us approaching fled into the nearby woods. A couple of the shepherds ran into town while the others tried to cover up any knowledge of this deal. Those that stayed fared poorly, as Wrane cut them down before they could speak, as he seemed to believe that they had something to do with the fire at the orphanage. With them out of the way, we rushed towards the village.
Wrane, Scylla, and CJ ran towards the orphanage to put out the fire while Chironomous and I went to the last place Java had seen the wayward shepherds run to, the tailor’s shop. We found the two runaways fairly easily and through some light intimidation, learned that they had been paid handsomely by the dragon to collect information about us, and that the dragon would be arriving soon to get its revenge on us. In return for their lives, they gave us the money and the tailor promised to make us new sails out of his finest materials, although he agreed with tears in his eyes. We left the tailor’s just as the fire was calming down, only to be greeted with Finn pointing a finger at me.
Apparently, my gift to the “good” citizens of Tegel had delivered itself a little early. While never capable of causing real harm to the children of the orphanage, it did make for a pretty show. Now the demon-hating paladin Rump would have all the children his bleeding heart could handle. With the fire out of the way, we prepared for the arrival of the dragon, although I made sure to steer clear of the town until then.
The fight happened on the afternoon of the 23rd. We had planned to attack it on the beach next to our ship, where our ballistae could fire upon it, as well as the net-launcher, while keeping the battle away from town and the precious citizens. The dragon had some tricks of it’s own though, as the first attack was an illusion coming out from the water that drew our attention. With the crew distracted by the illusionary dragon, the Jadeling attempted to sneak onboard and cause havoc below-deck. Luckily, Java saw the creature and led the crew down below, where they quickly dispatched the beast before it even had time to react. With the Jadeling dead the real dragon emerged from the woods and came after us.
The beast tried to slow the party, but Chironomous had already negated that type of spell. The beast tried to spew acid on us, but we were protected from that as well. We tried to counter with our own spells, but none could strike true, as it seemed that the beast was surrounded by some anti-magic field. Then, two things happened. The first, our gnome engineer fired the net launcher, and it hit the beast, bringing down the massive dragon on the shore. The next, was that CJ used his arcane powers to bring down the magical protection of the dragon. With the dragon held up and defenseless, we made short work of the dragon, made shorter by the blade of Lord Rump, until I finally slew the dragon, giving it a taste of it’s own medicine by using dragon’s breath to freeze the beast.
With the dragon taken care of, Chironomous quickly snatched up the body to be converted into one of his minions, and we were politely asked to leave Tegel. With business concluded, we made our way to the Sea Baron stronghold of Hidden Skerry, where we hoped to recover our lost sails. We arrived on the evening of the 24th and used the invisibility and flight of the Wanton Wench to scout the layout of the island. We found the place to be buzzing with pirates, and five ships lay in wait for our arrival. As we continued to look, we found that the castle of the island was swarming with knights of the Overlord, the hill giants and trebuchets from the Cruel Doubloon, and what’s worse, the telltale swarm of crows that heralded the arrival of Stormcrow herself.
With so many of our enemies in one place, we decided that discretion was the right approach and sent Finn into the fortress alone in gaseous form to find the location of the sails. After discovering that the outer walls were covered with a wall of force, he went over the ramparts and started searching the various rooms, trying to find the sails. His search led him to the room of the Lord Baron Winters, one of the high sea barons. Underneath his desk, where he was currently writing a missive, was a chest that we determined to be holding the sails. It was magically locked, and try as we might, we could not get the thing opened before Finn’s spell was exhausted, so he teleported out without our prize.
We now know where we need to go. We know how to get it open. All we have to do now is grab it before all hell breaks loose. Easy enough, right?