Here we were, just won the battle with the Trolls when we suddenly heard WanRenMi’s voice. As we followed it to another room, we found in it the oddest of structures: a shelter made of carpets and whale ribs. Inside, there were things, furniture, books and much more from all over Faerun!
Inside the shelter, there was WanRenMi, chained to the floor with magical shackles and guarded by two white kobolds. Shan, in his admiration for the bird, could not believe that he was actually captured, so he kept pressing him for what his plan was and why he let himself get caught.
The goblins, though guarding WanRenMi, seemed mostly calm and compliant. Unfortunately, they did not have the key to the chains and we were reluctant to destroy them, since they were magical and probably on the dragon’s radar. We decided to rest and take the time to come up with a plan. In the meantime, Kaiya fed some of the villager’s fish to the Kobolds, upon which one of them fell asleep. The other one became a bit suspicious, so we saw no other way but to grab him and tie him up.
WanRenMi shared with us that he last saw the Old White Death 2 to 3 days ago, and it was indeed a VERY old dragon. Moreover, the Draakhorn seemed to be gone, freely given by the dragon to Severin of the Dragon Cultists. It probably will play a role in the ritual to raise Tiamat. There were some good news, however: Somewhere in this cave was some ball that could be used to destroy dragon masks. Immediately our minds started racing, how we could use this without the dragon being alerted.
Eventually, Kaiya came up with an idea how to free WanRenMi without destroying the chains: She gave her cloak to him, so he could polymorph into a bat, and slip out of the foot cuffs. While he attuned to the cloak, we searched this and the next room and found a lot of scrolls, apparently left behind by the last person living here who seemed to be a Wizard. Kaiya took into her bag of holding 7 scrolls:
Thoredim kept those 3 that can be used by a Paladin:
After our rest, we explored the rest of the cave. We found a room full of treasures that we decided to save for last, a set of stairs leading up (possibly back to the village) and… a room full of the mangled frozen corpses of Frost Giants. A terrifying collection by the dragon! The room also contained eight Kobolds that were busy polishing the icy displays when, upon noticing us, they tried to escape. Not knowing what else to do, we killed all eight of them in a regrettable act of violence. Shan especially really tried to spare the two he took care of, to no avail. Kobolds are REALLY easy to kill.
Finally, we tackled the treasure room. We did our best to be quiet, since we had already heard some movement from deep below. Shan cast Detect Magic and started going through all magic items in the room. Before long, he found the ball we were looking for, hidden inside the mast of a ship that was somehow placed in here. The ball oddly reminded us of Posmet’s orb, just instead of a desert, this one had snowstorms swirling on its surface.
Shan touched the black dragon mask with the orb, trying to find out if this would destroy the mask. Two things happened at once: Below our feet, the dragon started stirring, he obviously noticed something happening. And second, black tendrils appeared out of nowhere - and suddenly Posmet was standing next to us!
How would we get out of this situation alive..?
Open Quests: