We began the session with the party waking in the morning to begin their preparations. They knew that the museum was due to open that evening, so had the day to do what they wanted/needed before they were going to meet there to scope things out and see if they could find the shard. But without any explicit need to do anything beforehand, they all split up to do their own thing.
Bull went down to one of the bars and chalked up another 3900 gold’s worth of debt. Mortimer returned to the casino and managed to… acquire another 7000 gold, slowly reeling in Bull’s tab. And Monk went off to explore the casino, learning a few details but nothing too important.
Come the evening, the party gathered on the seventh, museum floor of the hotel along with a crowd of waiting guests. Mr Blong, the general manager of the hotel, gave a very, very brief speech, cut a ribbon, and the museum was open. The crowd filed in, and the party went with them.
Inside, Bull managed to find the shard. Monk saw it as well, but he was distracted by a familiar outfit belonging to his order which he was all but certain must have come from when his monastery was recently ransacked. And Mortimer… Mortimer got up to some mischief.
Being a gnome with a cage on his head, Mortimer found himself unable to see any of the items in the museum through the crowd. So, being an artificer, he instead imbued five miscellaneous items (curtain ropes, signs etc.) around the room to smell like gas. It took some time for people to notice, but eventually the smell caused a panic and the guards directed everyone out of the museum so it could be closed.
With the museum shut off, Mortimer returned to the room while the others went upstairs to the eighth floor, to try to speak to Mr Blong. His secretary wouldn’t let them through without an appointment, but the ever resourceful Monk managed to sneak around and hide beneath her very desk! Bull left and, after several hours, Monk was able to capitalise on a distraction and get inside Blong’s office. He didn’t find anything too key inside, though he also couldn’t get into a locked cabinet, and then when Mr Blong returned he climbed over the balcony and made his way down the pyramidal-shaped hotel, eventually getting back to the room without any trouble.
During this time, Bull got most of the money from Mortimer and paid off several of their debts, the original fines they incurred in particular. Of course, after paying them off, they still owe 26400 gold. Time will tell whether this will matter in the long run, as you’ll see.
Meanwhile, back in the room, Mortimer used a crystal ball the party found a few sessions ago to cast Scry upon Auric Goldtooth. He felt his vision whisked away in an upwards direction before settling in a large, darkened room with a massive pile of gold. He also managed to spot that beneath that pile of gold lay a ginormous freakin’ gold dragon. Thus the mystery of the enigmatic identity of the owner of this questionable hotel was established.
The party ended up reconvening in the room, where they shared what they had learned/accomplished before creating a plan. And their plan was… go wake up the sleeping dragon. Yep. No hesitation about that whatsoever.
The party made it to the eighth floor without any trouble, but as they began making their up the stairs to the ninth, top floor, they were met by a gate. Attempting the subtler approach first, Mortimer tried to pick it, but it was beyond his skillset to crack. So instead Bull tried the less subtle approach, but as he smashed into the gate with his axe, the force of the blow was rebounded into him with a resounding crash and he was thrown down the stairs, wiping out Mortimer on his way past.
After this, the party could hear footsteps approaching from the floors below, the loud noise evidently having notified hotel security. Mr Blong also came out of his office to see what was going on, but that resulted in the party accosting him, threatening him, stealing his keys, and Mortimer strong-arming him up to the gate while he was panickingly declaring that the party’s actions were about to doom everyone.
While this was happening, security arrived. Bull planted himself at the top of the stairs to block them, but when they kept coming at him he did not hesitate. After bifurcating two with a swing of his axe each and cooking a third with something suspiciously like Hellish Rebuke, the rest of the guards backed off in terror. And yes, Bull has definitely reached some kind of snapping point and outright torn it asunder, but the other party members could not see him butchering the security so we’ll see where this all ends up leading.
Regardless, Mortimer got the gate open and dragged Blong upstairs to the door to the dragon’s lair before he managed to break free and run away. Monk and Bull let him go as they joined Mortimer and the trio entered the room.
The dragon was a deep sleeper and it took Bull a couple of attempts to wake it as Monk and Mortimer wisely spread out to the sides of the room. But once it woke, it was not happy about it. After a brief, unfruitful dialogue, the dragon made an aggressive, suggestive quip about breakfast, and…. we ended the session, because dragon fights can take a minute and we were getting close to the end of our time already.
Which means we’re jumping straight into combat with a dragon next week! That should be fun. We’ll see if it goes better than the last time… Also, what’s up with Bull? He’s just outright murdering people now. And rebuking hellishly? Boy, that’s a lot to unpack. I guess you’ll just have to tune in next week to see how things turn out.