Session 4 - Umbridge Hill

The Party heads out of town and towards Umbridge Hill with their new dragons; Voreas – (Blue), Sutton-Hoo (Bronze), and Cyrpus (Copper). On their journey there, they discuss Evermeet Island. Kali recounts some stories she heard as a child describing Evermeet as the last true kingdom and final destination for all non-drow elves on Fearun. It is protected by both naturally occurring and magically created defenses. The island itself is shrouded in a powerful illusion, crafted by the deity Sehanine Moonbow, that concealed its view from non-elves eyes. Smaller illusory spells gave the appearance of phantom keys, reefs and other nautical hazards that would ward off seafaring races. Among the isles known protectors are a kraken, a leviathan and a dragon turtle.

They come to a hill and look up. Built on the slope of Umbridge Hill is an old stone windmill surrounded by an iron fence. They also see piles of rocks at the top of the hill to the east of the windmill. They decide they will climb there first to get a good vantage point on the windmill and check out the rocks. As they get the top, Diz realizes this is a sacred burial area and each rock mound marks the grave of a dwarf. Kali notices three skeletons in amongst the stone piles. She sees that they appear to be burnt. Diz and Burr investigate one of the bodies together and they find the thieves tools that Telbor had showed Diz on their way out of town towards their first quests. The Party looks around further but does not see their Dragon Eggs anywhere.

Burr notices a large winged monster with a spikey tail trying to knock down the windmill’s front door. A woman appears in a second-floor window, waves at them and yell’s, “A little help?!” At the sight of her, the beast flies up to the window and bellows “Shinies or meat!” The Party looks down and sees that surrounding the windmill is a tall iron fence and there are the ruins of an old house in front of the windmill door. They decide to try and sneak down and get inside. As they make their way down everyone is being as stealthy as possible but Kali makes a bit too much noise as she steps on a branch, bringing some attention to the side of the fence that she and Burr are hiding on. The creature turns its head from the window and calls down, “Who’s there? Do you bring shinies or meat?”

Kali motions to Diz to hold and she gets ready to run in at her order. She casts a cloud of fog over the area. Diz takes the opportunity to run into the windmill and sees a millstone in the middle of the room with tables all along the walls holding potions and component’s. Herbs hang from the ceiling. Burr heads forward a little ways and attempts to cast sleep on the creature. It doesn’t seem to work.  Diz heads up the stairs to the second floor and calls for Adabra to get away from the window. He then rushes forward and sends out an energy blast, making the beast angry. Kali takes this opportunity of distraction and rushes past and into the windmill while Vereas speaks within her mind, “The shinies are mine. There are no shinies for him.”

Burr also rushes into the windmill and casts Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on the beast. It falls to the ground unable to stop laughing for a time but quickly recovers and flies back up the window. Diz sends out Cyprus who uses her slowing breath, halving the speed of the beast and making it incapable of using more than one of its attacks. Kali sees this and sends out Vareas, who uses his lightning breath causing a large amount of damage to the creature. Burr, seeing everyone using their dragons decides to let Sutton-Hoo have a go with his repulsion breath. It knocks the creature 30 feet back and he viciously mocks it, causing it mental anguish.

The creature then flies back towards the window and lets off one of its tail spikes, narrowly missing Diz and sticking into the back wall. Diz attempts to fire an arrow at it while Cyprus jumps on its back but as it reaches back to keep it’s throat out of Cyprus’ grip, the arrow flies past, narrowly missing.  Kali makes her way towards the window and sends off a firebolt just as the creature is distracted by Voreas to the north. She hits it on the side of his head causing it to scream and flail. It bite’s at Cyprus sinking it’s teeth into the dragons back. Seeing this, Diz screams out “Not my dragon you bitch!” and fires off a shot hitting it square in the chest. Its jaws go lax and it falls to the ground dead.

Adabra immediately runs downstairs and beings taking inventory of all of her things and making sure nothing is out of place. She thanks the Party for assisting and tells them that usually she’s able to pay off the Manticore’s but she didn’t have any gold. She hasn’t had very many pregnancies in the last few months. She also states that she has an overflow of potions at the moment and offers the Party their pick of one potion and one tea each.

Potions available at Adabra’s:

Potion of Bolstering: You gain 10 temporary hit point. This brown potion tastes and smells like a hard whiskey.

Potion of Sustaining: When you drink this potion, you do not need to eat or drink water for 48 hours. A floating bean inside a thick, green much.

Potion of Growth: When you drink this potion, you gain the “enlarge” effect of the enlarge/reduce spell for 1d4 hours (no concentration required). The red in the potion’s liquid continuously expands from a tiny bead to color the clear liquid around it and then contracts. Shaking the bottle fails to interrupt the process.

Various Teas – Ginger, Chamomile, Honey Lemon, Fennel, Peppermint, Licorice

The party convinces her to go back with them to Phandalin. They ask her if she saw what happened to the other 3 Dragon Riders. She said she saw a battle taking place up on the hill, but it looked like dragon business and she doesn’t involve herself in dragon business. They asked if she had seen the dragon eggs. She said she hadn’t but that usually the Manticore come in a pair. This time only the male came, so it’s possible the female had seen the eggs and flown them off to their den. As they get back to Phandalin, Adabra doesn’t want to go see Ilyana. She says she can’t stand her attitude of wanting to be in charge of everything but Burr convinces her to come.

As the Party discusses all of the events of the day with Ilyana, Diz makes quite a few snide remarks which seem to please Adabra. She palms her an extra Bolstering potion for the good laugh. Ilyana agrees to give them 1,000 GP each if they go to Gnomengarde and she will set some of their more knowledgeable Riders on the task of finding out where the eggs may be. The party stops at the Feather shop to pick up their previous order and put in an order for (3) Manticore Spike pens. They also stop at the seamstresses to have the Maticore’s mane added to Kali’s cloak.

They head out and make it to Gnomengarde. A stream leads the characters to a pool fed by a waterfall that tumble does the mountainside. They follow the stream uphill to the base of the mountain, where waterfall erosion has carved out a natural concavity. The roaring waterfall creates a cloud of mist as it plunges into a shallow pool of water, within which rise two small islands covered with two-foot-tall red, green, and purple mushrooms. Several cave openings overlook the pool from rocky ledges twenty to thirty feet above. The mountain blocks any sunlight from reaching this place. Burr and Diz send Sutton-Hoo and Cyprus to the islands to gather some mushrooms. They then follow a narrow footpath that ascends northeast and into an entrance to the cave.

The Party enters a Dining Room containing several dining tables and chairs sized for Small folk. A stout wooden cabinet against the east wall holds tin dishware and utensils. They continue North and come to the Kitchen. It is furnished with gnomes in mind, so everything is either close to the floor or readily reachable by tugging on an overly complicated rope-and-pulley mechanism. Five rock gnome recluses busy themselves here. Joybell (female) uses a poker to stoke the fire of a hot iron stove standing against the east wall. Dimble (male) uses a complicated press-like contraption to squeeze oil out of a big red mushroom and filter the liquid into four oil flasks. Panana (female) stands atop a low table and uses a mechanical rolling pin contraption to kneed green bread dough. The severed caps of several big green mushrooms are set around her. Uppendown (male) forms the dough into loaves of green bread, his tongue sticking out as he carefully shapes each loaf like a master sculptor. Tervaround (female) teeters on a stool as she stuffs a big purple mushroom into a barrel, so that it can ferment and be turned into mushroom wine.

The party questions the gnomes and are urged to speak to Fibblestib or Dabbledob in the workshop as they know more about what’s going on than any other gnomes in the complex. These gnomes won't leave the kitchen, but they point the Party south. They let the Party know that Gnomengarde has two married kings who rule in tandem, Gnerkli and Korboz. Korboz recently lost his mind and is keeping Gnerkli as his prisoner. In addition to the danger posed by the mad king, two gnomes have mysteriously vanished within the last tenday. The party heads south and enters a room that looks like it has a couple of the wine barrels in it. Diz goes to open one and is attacked and grappled. Everyone rushes in.