2018-01-23 Game Summary

Recollections by David Lo Pan
We rehashed the intro for Anshu and as we are organizing our next move with Dirt Darkspring we are approached by a dog-riding halfling who claims to be a paladin of some nature god. Dark Dirkspring confirms that the new 1/2girl is a pally and can be trusted so we decide to team up since her quest to hunt the big evil conveniently runs along the same path as our quest to save the kingdom. Since the big evil seems to be the cause of the rain and attacks against the land. Crazylegs and Riker's don't seem to trust the new guys yet even though the Oracle was instrumental in rescuing the queen and the other was vouched for by Dirk Darkspring.

One the new introductions are worked out we start heading WNW to take the most direct route to Terass hold.

We come across a lake that has formed due to flooding from the constant rain of the past few weeks and we decide to head north along the shore to find a way around. While we are heading north we come along a huge fire and some cleric or possible druid who is tossing fireballs into it. He is running with a Elder Elemental servant that seems to be controlled or summoned using his staff. he is initially approached by Riker's, with Yasha sneaking around to scout out if there are any other threats. He greets Riker's in a friendly enough fashion although he did cast a command (or similar) spell on Riker's to get his name and repeatedly declines Rikers offer of stew. Stew that Crazylegs was supposed to make without any ingredients. Repeatedly declined. Repeatedly.

After the caster and Riker talk a bit Anshu says he wants to approach the fire, David Lo Pan says to wait for a signal that it's safe before we do. About 30 seconds after that Crazylegs ignoring David just starts walking toward the fire. the rest of the party approaches with him because even though that's reckless it would be more so to split the party further. Riker's then makes a show of going to get the stragglers so it doesn't look like Yasha and the queen (who was hiding and hanging back) were trying to backstab the guy.

The Caster is weird though pally detects no evil but neither Anshu nor DLP are completely convinced he is telling us everything. It seems Anshu doesn't believe him due to the discrepancies with what the caster is telling him vs his visions. David doesn't trust him due to lessons learned from Lady VanFarthingstone (who is still on the loose) and Connor Goodman (dead). Oddly enough crazy and riker's seem to believe his story completely in spite of past experiences and their continued lack of trust towards the newest party members. Perhaps they are under some type of enchantment?

The caster says that we need to place the useless hammer (of fwarroir) back into the temple of Gozreh (who is a water god). The temple has been corrupted by the minions of Dagon (dagoth) and is the cause of the rain. David sees the logic to this but is still worried about the motives of someone who claims to be a worshipper of the sun (fire?) god telling us to put a supposed relic of his god (the useless hammer) into the temple of another opposed elemental (water) god. Either this will bring things back into balance (and end the rain) or we will anger Gozreh and he will (literally) rain doom upon us. Either way the temple is close to tearath hole and we can check it out.

The caster offers to cast airwalk (wind walk?) on us to speed our journey and we accept.

Two days later we are across the lake and approaching the Temple of Gozreh. Anshu wants to head directly to the temple of Sarenrae but it's over a half mile away and the 2 fighters want to check the temple we are at first. David agrees to check the temple we are at first just because it will save time having to walk back later. While David is trying to convince Anshu not to fly off to a potentially enemy occupied city (or at best destroyed city) on his own. Crazylegs in an attempt to force everyone to follow his lead sends the queen to hide and enters the temple with Yasha and Riker's Beard. Luckily Anshu decided to stay (mainly because of the travel time and distance involved in getting there and back were inconvenient).

Yasha Explores the temple with Crazylegs and Riker's inexplicably following him so closely that they completely negate his attempts at stealth as well as risking themselves setting off traps. While Yasha is in the main hall DLP and The ½palladin take up positions near the entrance to the temple where they can cover the fighters with arrows and spells, Anshu stays near the main entrance since he has a bad feeling about this. Crazylegs seems to think that the casters and archers staying back to cover them is somehow cowardly ignoring centuries of basic military tactics about how you don't put your ranged combatants on the front lines. Yasha sees 2 doors off the main hall and correctly searches the right one first (Since right is always the right way to go. Right?). He notices numerous dead bodies and a "smell of pine". He checks the room and its antichambers finding small amounts of gold, platinum and some holy symbols. Yasha moves on to the left room while checking the door he sets off some type of trap unsurprisingly he avoids the damage himself while the 2 fighters that are still insisting on following him right up on his ass are injured. At this point DLP and half-adin are to far away to heal the injured, they also expect something from further in the temple to come out and see what the noise was about so they don't advance further. Luckily nothing attacks at this time. The fighters don't return to the entry Hall for heals, instead they press on. Either due to straight up reckless or a misguided notion of how much damage they can handle (guess that's another way of saying reckless).

After exploring the left room and finding some type of idol in a secret compartment Crazylegs has yasha place it on a high shelf (no idea why?). Yasha and  the fighters move up to the main chamber of the temple. It is full of treasure and bodies. Yasha opens the door to the main hall and falls back (to get the idol?). DLP and Yasha stay in the main hall along with Anshu who moves up. while the halfadin and the 2 fighters start to investigate the room. Craziness had the bright idea to place the useless hammer onto the altar against the suggestions of DLP, the ½pally and the Oracle but before he had the chance...

A Green Dragon Attacks! The dragon flying in through a large opening in the wall that looks out to the sea he hits the 2 fighters and the halfpally with his breath weapon severely injuring them. Crazylegs and Riker's charge forward to attack the dragon instead of withdrawing to a safer place and getting heals. They seemed to think that David who is not wearing any armor and has the lowest health of the party should move in to heal them instead. They are hit by a second breath weapon and almost die lucky for Lo Pan he was outside the area of effect. DLP hits the warriors with haste. he reasons 5ft extra move and +1 ref saves as well as the extra attack should help since he is too far away to get to any of them for a touch healing spell. Also he can only heal 1 person at a time and there were 2 badly injured warriors and a moderately injured halfling that now need his attention. The dragon is forced to withdraw from the chamber by a well placed wall of fire cast by anshu. At this point the fighters finally decide to withdraw.

DLP tells the group to hide in the door to the right of the hall so as to draw the dragon into a confined space, negate his flying and allow yasha to backstab, but only the ½adin listens. Crazylegs moves past but stops before the entry hall. Anshu uses stoneshape to seal off the wall the dragon originally entered and attacked us through and Rikers decides to throw caution to the wind and goes to "check on the queen". Even though this risks drawing attention to the queen whom the dragon had no way of knowing is important. All the dragon knew at that point was the party was inside with his lair with his treasure hoard (a big deal for dragons). Luckily the dragon didn't notice the queen or decided that she wasn't worth his trouble with adventures in his lair. The dragon then cast fog cloud and used the cover to advance back into the temple. Riker's hit him once with a readied action. Crazy briefly backs into the side room to get a few heals from DLP and the ½adin. The dragon who is now in the entrance hall quickly KOs Riker's. crazy moved up and was injured but was still in the fight. Anshu managed to dispell the fog with a gust of wind cast by a summoned creature but his direct spell vs the  was resisted. The still hasted halfling unloaded with his bow drawing the dragon further into the hall. Yasha feinted and successfully backstabbed the dragon in a D&D 1st. A few more spells were cast and resisted before the dragon finally succumbed to his wounds. Once the dragon was down DLP ran over to revive Riker's who was slowly bleeding out near the entry door.

David is very upset at the risks that Riker's and craziness took when they entered the temple without proper backup. He is doubly upset that they insisted on closely following Yasha injuring themselves in the process. As well as their seeming annoyance with people who exercise caution and basic tactics and don't rush headlong into potential traps/ambushes. It's David's belief that the trap that was sprung initially injuring the fighters was probably their fault he doubts that Yasha would have tripped the trap if he didn't have to worry about to clumsy fighters following him so closely.

The fact that his childhood friend almost died to the dragon upsets him to no end since had he listened and regrouped with the rest of the team he would gotten some heals and not have been so grievously injured. He also would have avoided the risk however small of exposing the Queens hiding place which is nigh unforgivable.

His view of Crazyleg's leadership potential, his understanding of mixed unit tactics and his ability to protect the queen has fallen significantly. DLP will have take a more active roll in advising the queen to prevent her from following crazylegs on any reckless courses of action.

Recollections by Anshu
What a strange group that accompany this queen. The vision in the fire tells me to take her to the Temple of Sarenrae and they all also happen to want to go to the same town of Tarath's Hold where the temple is located. A little too convenient, if you ask me. Even more convenient is running into a powerful being that claims to be the high priest of the temple and says that the temple has been destroyed. This is probably true, though it's hard to tell if he did it himself or even if he is who he claims to be. However he gives us some information that may or may not be useful. It all seems far too convenient, so I'm willing to hold onto this information and take his aid, however he could be an agent of evil. With his help we're able to cross the rain-made lake rather quickly and happen across the Temple of Gozreh, the god of storm and sea. The question that bothers me most is the high priest stating that we need to place the artifact stolen from his temple onto the altar at the Temple of Gozreh. This seems like a rather odd thing to do as the visions of these two gods seem to oppose each other and Gozreh has been banished due to the evil forces that plague humanity and this land.

Once we arrive at the temple and I insist that we investigate the Temple of Sarenrae instead, is when havoc breaks out. The leaders of the group I met, irrationally decide that they must storm the Temple of Gozreh and follow the instructions given to them by the high priest. I implore them to at least investigate both temples before doing anything rash, but they proceed to enter on their own. Predictably they encounter some trouble and invoke the wrath of a Green Dragon that has taken up residence at this temple. Matters escalate rather quickly, though through some clever battlefield control, we're able to force the dragon into moving and allowing our group to recover a bit and setting the stage for a second round of fighting. Naturally flames extinguish the life force of this poisonous creature and we are left to continue to investigate.

My hope is that the queen, left outside, is still alive and well and we're able to decide with more information as to what the best course of action might be.

My other observations on this group is that the paladin that we encountered after fighting the wizard that was attempting to sacrifice the queen seems quite rational, despite her fervent belief. The jury is still out on how the rest of them have managed to stay alive as long as they have and managed to gain the respect of the Farthingstone family. They clearly have some type of combat style that only they know of, which must be how they manage to plod on. It will be difficult to understand how I could possibly aid them, however our paths and goals seem to align for the time being.