Once a year, the Martell brothers have their unclaimed freight sale. We find a nice dwarven-made rapier with Jasper’s house symbol on it. Jasper considers letting it go to auction and duelling the winner to the death. We find out that it had been commissioned by Quill, but she refused the delivery at the end. Jasper ends up buying it. Lagran buys a lot of books from an old sage.
During the sale, the Martell brothers make contact with us. They want us to investigate a mine with both silver and platinum (there’s a possibility that the mine could have mithril further down). Some of their miners have disappeared. They offer the group 1500 gp to investigate, 1500 if the mine is usable afterward, and bonuses for rescuing miners and keeping the four engineers they’re sending with us alive. Martell throws in a free bottle of ink. They provide wagons and provisions, to make the engineers comfortable.
The trip to the mine is relatively easy. The local bandits realized that their profit-to-chance-of-being-murdered ratio was unfavorable and left us alone.
While setting up camp, Ehlonna notices someone watching us, who scampers off. Kirk identifies kobold tracks.
We find the little town, Rose Rock, that sprung up around the mine. With the mine currently closed, the town’s not doing well. We spend the night; Lagran breaks some lute strings, and Jasper loses money at backgammon, but gains female companionship for the evening. Riverthorn loses money at backgammon, but finds out the previous company left due to a kobold infestation. Ehlonna finds out the kobolds are serving a red dragon. The mayor’s been planning to sacrifice some of the town’s young women to the dragon to save six hostages (one of which is the mayor’s daughter). Ehlonna wished to have “words” with him, but Riverthorn suggested beating down his door with the dragon’s skull.
In the morning, Ehlonna discovers that the baron’s sister’s head has disappeared from her bag. Then we go to the mine, leaving the engineers back in Rose Rock. They’re happy with this development.
There’s a single mine opening, about 20 feet wide, with a small collection of shabby, unmaintained wooden buildings. There’s a lot of loose stone lying around; someone’s (kobolds) been digging out new tunnels and just tossing the stone out.
We climb down into the mine without major incident, thanks to Jasper’s Feather Fall. We make noise, and the mine explodes in stirges. We wipe them out. We consider avoiding the barricade in the main shaft by looking through side passages, but decide that we’d rather go after a dragon than stirges. Kirk clears the barricade, and Jasper helps us Feather Fall down.
After we chase the kobolds away – the last we saw, the women and children were heading down the emergency exit – we search for the dragon. Ehlonna goes invisible and scouts the dragon’s lair. It’s a pretty nice starter lair, but the room is clearly big enough that the dragon has long-range plans. A couple of kobolds hear her, but they don’t find her because of the spell. The dragon, it turns out, was perched right above the door.
Jasper flies up and stabs the dragon, who then flies down to a cage with the captives and threatens them. The group drove Gralex the dragon off, rescued the hostages, and recovered the dwarven clan badges for the Martells.
Treasure
- 2823 gp (per person)
- Trident of Fish Command (party treasure)
- Circlet of Blasting (party treasure)
- Bag of Holding (Riverthorn)
- Plate Armor of Swimming (giving it to Grayson)
- Gloves of Swimming and Climbing (Lagran)
- Headband of Intellect (Jasper)
PCs