Numerous allies are in a bad situation. Captured, defeated, and possibly on their way to a banquet there will be no return from. Can our Heroes find a way free these allies, or is their fate sealed with the Crimson King himself.
The party, Din, Brux, and Quasar, were down on power and healing from their last battles and were granted a quick spell from their Naga ally, Serpent’s Rest. The ability functioned like the spell Cat Nap but with the ten minutes effect granting the group a full rest in ten minutes, but knocking out the caster at the end of that time. After a quick weighing of options, Norella, their newly liberated goblin ally, flew their beholder craft over the embattled Argenthome. They found near where their allies would have been battling the dragon’s minions a large moving structure with the three missing giants, three of their allied clones, and surprisingly Juniper and her three minions, all unconscious and bound with their capture nets. The structure was around thirty foot tall, eighty feet long, walking on two scaled legs with a large tail balancing out its uneven brick covered form. Norella air dropped the party over a large walking building like structure.
As Quasar and Din descended safely with the aid of feather fall, Brux dangerously, aided by gravity, careened blade forward into the driver of the strange walking fortress, an ogre mage. It called out for help alerting the Argent Knights down below the walking beast. Two knights jumped on the back of a waiting manticore, another knight made ready to be assisted up on the next go around, and eight thugs went running in every direction to avoid being stepped on by the beast as well as running for help. Brux and Quasar assaulted the driver with spells and blades while Din focused on freeing their bound allies. Oranthus, the giant they had interacted with the most, was bound with six of the capture nets, having used the nets in the past to capture animals herself, Din had a way in mind on how to release her allies, even without a key. Using her artificer knowledge, she freed Oranthus and was able to heal him up, changing the battle.
Brux hit the ogre with a wrathful smite, making it afraid of him. The manticore acted as taxi, dropping off two knights and doubling back to grab the third while the knights started closing in on Brux and Quasar. The ogre lashed out at Brux unsuccessfully and ended up stomping on the tiled back of the building beast, causing it to move forward and to the right, shaking up the riders and scattering both buildings and running minions of Argentheart. With a mixture of luck and chaos Quasar was able to knock around and knock down the knights and eventually using thunder wave to force the ogre and one of the knights off the beast.
While being pummeled by the knights Brux used magic to blink between realities and avoid the knights while Quasar again knocked a few of them down and pushed another knight off the beast again. The Ogre was able to rejoin the fray as well as the manticore while Oranthus started punching any foe that drew near. He also threw one of the knights at another knight, comedy ensued. Din kept working on the second giant, eventually knocking off his restraints and throwing some magical returning javelin at the ogre. Quasar was able to kill one of the knights, allowing Din to puppet the knight to attack another one of his allies. The attack was swift and took out the second knight as well, having struck a critical spot.
The second giant arose, seeing the chaos on the deck and the people slipping and rolling around unconscious, and teleported right next to the ogre mage. He sized up his opponent and clapped his hands together engulfing the ogres head, killing him outright. This allowed Din to puppet this body as well, taking out the last of the dragon knights of Argentheart.
Having moments reprieve the team awoke the other giant to start helping sort the unconscious allies from the bleeding out foes. They counted the allies and found there were the clone group they had sent with the giants to sew chaos and recruit or destroy Gatlineer, which was expected. They had not expected to find Juniper’s team. Knowing they had already sent their allies on the beholder ship away to safety they summoned their Spelljammer Pup to pick them up. They looked up to see a large boulder, which was their disguised ship, flying towards them alongside Telgeddis the sphinx. They boarded the Spelljammer and as they started escaping a dark shadow fell over them, accompanied by large leathery flapping wings. Argentheart had arrived.
Argentheart grappled the sides of the Spelljammer and gloated, “Finally what I truly sought”, and attempted to pull the ship into his maw. At that moment Telgeddis tackled the head of Argentheart, also known as Ashardalon, knocking the space craft away. Telgeddis took one last look at the party and exploded. The force of impact and the outpouring of raw magical energy turned everyone’s vision white. They did not know how much time had passed, but when their senses returned to normal, they were far from Argent Home, far from the dragon, and potentially farther from dangers known.
In this time between times memories flowed back into Quasar the autognome. Memories stolen to fuel replicas with the power of dragon scales. Quasar remembered the tales his maker would tell of great heroes fighting a terrible evil. An archer, a chalice, and a dragon featured prominently. He remembered seeing a sleek strange white creature… or ship that defied what he knew of other space faring vessels. In searching for answers, he found two companions that had also seen this strange vessel. They ended up in a tavern on an asteroid and met with someone. They were captured. He remembers his allies being placed in strange glass tubes, modified with some sort of tracking chips, and filled with liquid that froze. He could remember the moments before being shut down, memories of the ship, the information they had found, all being removed. Someone in the background mentioning the failures of crews sent to the sighting locations. Someone else offering that maybe only the originals can find it again, luck seemed to be on their side. Then the shadow of a massive dragon.
The group awoke on their ship, confused. Din looked at the stars around them and did not recognize them, Brux was unfamiliar with them as well. Quasar looked up and immediately knew they were near a place called Canterog. He filled in his allies on his memories, including the fact that they were the originals, confirming suspicions that were brewing in the background.
Our session ended there for the evening. There was combat on the back of a terrain piece I made for a competition, this was its first time on the game table and I was very pleased. Our sessions are severely abridged, we only get to play for around two hours maybe once a month and I potentially jam too much into that short of time by glossing over exposition and lose out on descriptions. Things were ramping to this chaotic moment of discovery and sudden loss, but more adventure is on the way.
