We all make our way up the ladder and into the basement area of what we believe to be the mayor’s house. We can hear sounds coming from upstairs. We decide that I will scout ahead, and I wild shape into an air elemental. I enter underneath the door and find myself in a busy kitchen that seems to be preparing for a feast. I find it strange that there is preparations for a feast when war is imminent. I continue on and find myself in a feast hall. I pause to listen and hear voices from a near by room. I can’t make out what they’re saying, so I try to get closer and overhear a conversation between the mayor and the assistant mayor of no particular importance before returning to everybody else. The succubus paladin decides to shift into a good personification of one of the staff members to stay behind and keep tabs. While we decide that the best course of action is for the rest of us to return to the sewers, the elven rogue becomes very nervous as she realizes we are continuing on. After a little needling she finally decides to tell us that the biggest reason the blind lord Wants to catch up to her is that she stole her portable hole. She explains to us that he is VERY protective of all his gold, magical items and any items of value he has. To the point of not even spending his money. This strikes us as sort of odd behaviour. Estas mentions that this hoarding behaviour seems almost draconic, and after she describes him (a dark skinned dwarf with a long white beard who calls himself a dueregar) I mention that its not so much their normal behaviour. At least not to the degree which she describes.
It takes more convincing, but eventually Alaria agrees to lead us the rest of the way to her former boss, the blind lord. She leads us past several traps and eventually to the entryway to the blind lord’s underground fort. A drow guards the entryway. We attempt to diplomatically gain entrance under the pretense of being bounty hunters. He decides to let us pass for four hundred gold as long as we make it look as though we knocked him out. Of course, I have to point out that the only way to make it look like we really knocked him out is to actually knock him out. Though Lia decides that casting blindness may be a better idea. Estas pays him and casts the spell. He makes such a ruckus, though, that Thokk has to knock him out anyway… I do a quick search while Estas gets his gold back and take anything of value, of which there isn’t much. It’s really just the principle of the thing. We continue on.
We enter a room that used to be a cistern but has been diverted and find three dozen drow along with a dueregar on a throne. Some of the drow are armed with odd, crystalline swords and have blue eyes. Estas tries to negotiate for Alaria. The blind lord is willing to negotiate for her life, in exchange for all our items of value. Lia offers a better deal, Alaria’s life for his own. His response to that is laughter and a slow transmutation. We watch as he becomes darker and slowly changes to a huge, draconic creature with shadows gathering around him. A shadow dragon. Before we enter battle I manage to cast Nature’s Avatar on Ubu.. Followed by (one my turn after rolling initiative) enlarge animal.. Then I cast Shapechange on myself, turning into a radiant dragon. We all wade into battle, though it isn’t long before the shadow dragon grabs Thokk up in his mouth, tossing him to the ground with incredible force. Thokk breaks through the floor and continues down to the level below. Followed by the rest of us.
I use the radiant dragon’s special ability Healing Touch to cast a restoration on Ubu, getting rid of the negative levels he had taken when the shadow dragon used its breath weapon. Next I touch the wall of the treasure room, casting Daylight on it, which envelopes the entire room in light as though it were the middle of a sunlit summer day. We battle on, some of us end up landed on by the shadow dragon. Lia being one of them. She does manage to keep enough force of will to cast harm on the dragon while he is sitting on her.
We fight on, with me administering the killing blow with a line of force breath weapon. (For 96 damage) My next task is to hunker down to Alaria’s level, coming face to face with the much smaller than me elf and whispering a small, ‘Boo.’ I laugh as I turn back to myself, still able to Shapechange at will for another 169 minutes.
We do a quick inventory of the treasure we ‘liberated,’ finding many objects d’ art. I mention to the group that we had better keep these finds to ourselves when we return to the succubus paladin. She’d just make us give them all back.
We leave Estas and Alaria to gather it all up and head back to base, divvying up the treasure there.
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