Boy, this one was a doozy. Let’s skip the ado.
The session began by picking up right where we left the party, the moment they met Count Wattle. They conversed with him for a bit, getting some heavy (and totally intentionally thrown) Dracula vibes before he showed them to their rooms and bid them goodnight. However, the party did not stay in their rooms. Instead they went with Mister White to the graveyard, since he explained that all the missing children had disappeared at night and the graveyard seemed to be the epicentre.
The party investigated the graveyard but found nothing, so resolved to set themselves up to wait out the night in ambush for whatever creature came a-calling. Little did they know. However, a short time into their stay, before anything of interest happened, Mister White decided he really did not like being in a graveyard at night, so he booked it, leaving the party alone.
It wasn’t until about six hours later, when dawn wasn’t more than an hour or two away, that the party’s patience paid off. The first thing they heard was the crunching of feet over frozen grass, but when the creature causing it came into view, they found themselves facing… a child. A ten-year-old elven child, wearing bedclothes and evidently not bothered by the freezing cold, just standing there and staring at them.
Brakken decided his best approach was to approach, so he started moving toward the child, speaking to them. He got no response, until he was about twenty feet away, when the child raised a finger, pointing at him. One more step, and the child began to scream an unearthly wail. Cue more feet crunching on frozen grass, and initiative.
As many more children appeared, Poppy cast Spike Growth, covering the ground of the entire combat area with spikes. It was not a deterrent. The children, though all heavily injured by the spikes, did not falter in their advance.
The first child was the only one close enough to do anything other than approach on the first turn. They charged at Brakken, heedless of the spikes, and grabbed onto his breastplate, vomiting a thick, clear, viscous slime all over his face. But Brakken made his save against this strange attack, so there was no effect, and on his next turn headbutt the child so hard it snapped their neck, killing them instantly.
Meanwhile, Poppy cast Erupting Earth, shattering a large area of ground and tearing one of the children apart thanks to the combination of frozen earth and spikes. Then the rest of the children attacked, similarly vomiting slime on Brakken and the others. Brakken was the only one to fail, and he was momentarily taken control of by the slime before he passed another save and vomited out what can only be described as a slime slug before it could make him do anything untoward. That was the first indicator that perhaps these children were not undead, but merely possessed.
But the party were committed. While Monk was already attempting only nonlethal strikes, as is his wont, the others were a little more reckless. Poppy cast Call Lightning and blasted a trio of children, killing one of them. The other two fell to the ground, convulsing, and vomited out a slime slug each. This was the second indicator.
Over the remainder of the fight, Poppy fried one more child but zapped several more, causing them to vomit out their slimes. Monk became possessed by a slime and attacked Brakken before vomiting his way out of it. And, finally, the two of them managed to knock the last few children unconscious. With the fight over, Poppy was able to fashion a potion that forced the unconscious children to vomit out their slime slugs, and thus, the party had saved (most of) the children.
Mister White arrived at the graveyard at dawn, come to see how the party did and bringing some breakfast, but upon seeing the children he hurried off again to retrieve the townsfolk. They came quickly, and as they tended to the children, Mister White, upon recognising the slime, insisted the party come with him to the castle.
Inside, they found Count Wattle waiting for them. He expressed displeasure that they had killed his ‘children’ and attacked. The party, along with the mostly unhelpful White, fought back and quickly killed him. But as he died, he dissolved into a black slime, and moments later there came a great rumbling from within the depths of the castle.
The party had mere moments to prepare themselves. Brakken took up his place in the centre of the great hall, ready to face whatever was coming head on, while Mister White retreated to a corner. Meanwhile, Monk climbed forty feet up the wall and hid, and Poppy turned into a bear.
Then an adult black dragon smashed its way out through the floor. It revealed itself to be the true form of Count Wattle, and breathed acid right down the straight line that Brakken, Poppy and Mister White just happened to have set themselves in. They all took a massive amount of damage, and the fight was back on.
The fight didn’t actually last all that long – the party have well and truly entered beast mode. Poppy retreated out of the hall, only popping her head back in to do some healing. Brakken ran in and started swinging away with his hammer, taking close to forty percent of the dragons health in the first round, when he action surged. And Mister White fired his crossbow at the dragon and missed just about every shot.
But it was Monk who had the wildest ride. He started by leaping from the wall and flipping around to land on the dragon’s back. Then the dragon snapped at him with its maw while failing to hit Brakken with its claw attacks (double natural 1’s) and, while Monk also failed to hit him back, he was far too frustrated with his results. Especially when he regained his acid and breathed at Brakken again, but didn’t bring him down thanks to his Relentless Endurance.
So the dragon flew directly up, into the ceiling, smashing Monk against the stone and nearly taking the roof off. But Monk clung on, so the dragon flipped over and plummeted, smashing both Monk and Brakken to the ground. Both were hurt, but neither were taken out, thanks to Poppy having just healed Brakken. So the dragon lashed out, clawing Brakken unconscious but failing to hit Monk.
And then Monk climbed up onto his belly and with one, two, three jabs of his astral wings, pierced him through the heart, killing him. Parts of the dragon began to dissolve into black slime, but enough remained for the party to harvest some of the more interesting bits.
With the fight over, Poppy healed Brakken back up before Mister White evaded any other questions and left. The dwarves, Fyotl and Tyotl showed up, learned what had happened, and went back to the town to let everyone know. And the party – after harvesting the dragon – began searching, eventually finding the dragon’s lair deep below the castle and plundering it for all the best loot. And believe me when I say, there was some good stuff down there.
And then, the party revelling in their victory over their first ever dragon, we ended the session.
A good session, I would say. Basically, my takeaway is that I successfully managed to subvert the party’s expectations enough that I manipulated them into killing possessed children they assumed were undead. So that’s what I call a win. In terms of storytelling, of course – I don’t actually advocate killing children. But my hope is that now, the party will feel less inclined to jump to conclusions. Or maybe not. Time will tell.
So, tune in next week to see whether they learned anything or not, and to see, maybe now that this distraction is out of the way, if they are able to find their first shard and get back on track with that quest.