Session 9 - They come from a land down under

Summary
After the group take a well deserved rest at the keep, they set out to the drow cave to recover the captives. But fate is a fickle mistress, and nothing went as Ipakas had planned.

Down time for a Fun time
During the down time Max tracked down an old smith and ask if he could use the dragon scale she has collected to reinforce the padded leather armour the group obtained from the drow ambushed party. As Max was leaving the area, she ran into Ipakas coming into the area look for a blacksmith to work on his blades. She then acompanied him to other levels looking for any capable smith. They found an elf working away on some blade at a grinder and Ipakas approached the elf to ask whether he can work on his blades. The elf marveled over the craftsmanship of the sword and say he would not be able to work on such fine weapon but his master might. The elf leads Ipakas and Max to the back of the shop and woke up his fat and grumpy master Jonik, the old smith's bad mood evaporated as he saw the blade and told Ipakas that these fine weapon was crafted by the legendary smith Sundmar Valnorin. The old smith hesitantly told Ipakas he could possibly work on these blades but there is a smith in the white dragon region more suitable for this work. Ipakas hesitated for a short while but informed the master smith that he would need these blades in the up coming battle to help the people in this keep and the war would not wait for his travel. So he handed Jonik his blades, 4 dragon teeth and a piece of scale Max have acquired back from the armour smith she spoke with earlier. Jonik then instructed his apprentice to leave whatever horrible blade he is working on and would dedicate the next two days on working on these blades.

While Max and Ipakas went off to grab some lunch from the kitchen, Grace tracked down a magic user in the library to enquire if he could potentially learn from magical trick to help him aim better as his arrows seems to go wayward at times. The old man informed him that there are some clerics that might help him with that but Grace winced and said he prefer if god weren't involved in this. The old man thought about it for a while and showed him how to summon a familiar to help with sensory tasks, Grace receieved a scroll that he would allow him to summon a familiar if he pass a spell performance test each time, he then asked for the old man's name (Neevirt) and promptly let Neevirt get back to his studies.

During the dinner banquet, the group saw the queen seems to be going around the table helping the serving staff dishing out food. When approaching the group's table, Anya inform the group that the drow prisoner has told them there's a cave near by with more ambushers waiting and the group would do well for the town by sorting this out. Before Anya leaves, she said the group should pay their respect to the twin dragons that lords over this territory before they investigate the cave so they don't incur the wrath of the dragon. For the rest of the down time, Grace asked Ipakas to teach him the way of arcane, Max try to keep active with the local militia and Min just wandered around doing Min stuff. That night, Ipakas send a message to Balmaia letting her know about the drow ambushers aroudn the area."'Balmaia, I know you can handle yourself, but there are a band of drows kidnapping people to be slaves around these area. Watch your back.' - Ipakas""'Yes, I have come across some. Meddlesome but not as much as you all have been.' - Balmaia"During the last stretch of their down time, Ipakas decided to interrogate the prisoners on more infomation about the cave with the help of zone of truth of the local clerics. Just before entering the jail cell, Ipakas saw one of the person the group rescued storm out of the cell. Seeing he's distressed, Ipakas approach the guard and ask if he could help. The gaurd told Ipakas that they've lost people to the kidnappres and would like him to keep an eye out on a blonde cleric name Rachel and a Dark beard/haired guard name Kevin.


 * Cave leads to some ruins where the people are kept and the ruin leads to the underdark.
 * They wait for a decent group before usher them into the underdark, in two or three days the next group will be taken through.
 * Around 16 hostiles to be expected
 * No traps in the cave
 * Sabal and his right hand man is also present to oversea the operation as they suffer a great lost at the hands of mind flayers

Before the group head out for the cave, Max picked up her dragon scale armour from the smith and Ipakas received his blades from Jonik. Amazed at how the blades turned out (Light blue sheen at the blade's edge and dragon teeth cross guard), Ipakas offered the master smith a payment for his work but Jonik turned it down as he felt it was an honour to work on a blade crafted by Sundmar Valnorin. As a gesture of thanks, Ipakas gave the smith his last two dragon teeth as a gift for him to craft to his heart's desires.



Tales of two sisters
The party set out to pay respect to the dragon sisters and reached a massive mansion that fits the description given by Anya just before sun down. The two hulking guards stopped the party and asked for their purpose, Max informed them that they are here to pay respect to the sisters before setting off on a quest from the queen. The guard informed them to stick to the middle path and not stray from it, and the party went through the door. What greeted the party was a wonderous sight of maticulously kept lawns filled with exotic animals. Entering through a second sets of doors, the group saw a blue haired lady sitting at one of the two chair asking them what she can do to help the group. Max thanks the lady for her hospitality and say they would like to pay respect to her and her sister before setting off to rescue people kidnapped by a band of drows. The blue haired lady (Ommet) nods at her butler and the butler left into a room and return with a map. Max point out the general area of where the cave is and the blue haired lady said it is fine for the party to travel in these lands and to look out for her foolish sister (Oru) who went missing 2 days ago. The group bid fairwell to the dragon lady and set off for another hour before bedding down for the night.

During the night, Max heard some rustling in the near by bushes and some Elvish conversation. She spotted two drows leading to captives and Min proceed to wake up the rest of the party. Max and Grace dispatches one of them in under 12 seconds and Iapaks talked the other drow into giving up. After they knocked the second drow out and tied him to a tree, the two captive rested with the group in the tiny hutt. Next morning, the group parted way with the two captives, giving them back their gold that they recovered from unconcious drow. By around noon, the party got to the cave and was set up on by two drows as they entered, the death of the first drow attracted two more to emerge from the back of the cave. The party pushed further down the cave into the ruins after taking out the rest of the reinforcement. They try to sneak through the hall way but Min made quite a bit of noise down the hallway and thrusted the party back into another combat.Ipakas rushed up to the drow down the hall way while the rest of the party deal with the reinforcement that came through the door. As the parties cut down the drows, another door opened and a tentacle monster with another drow in different outfit rushed out towards Min. At this time, Tired poped back into existance stating that he got summoned back to his sister's party and have no idea why he's back here in the middle of combat again. Sabal lashed out at Grace and severely injured him with a sneak attack but the combined force of Min's Hex and Tired's fireball, Sabal was forced to retreat after throwing one last slash at Grace. Grace finished off the mindflayer while Min chased after the drow that is running away (Sabal) shot him in the knee with an eldritch blast and knocked him out as he slammed his head int othe stone floor. After taking a critical hit, Ipakas polymorphed himself into a giant ape and chased after the drow that ran away towards the underdark.

Min found the group of captives with a full grown dragon chewing on a drow. He called out "Lady Oru!" to the dragon and it promptly turned back to a human. Min quickly informed her that him and the group were sent here to rescue the captives and to look for her by her sister. Now that everyone's safe the group will escort everyone back (of course lady Oru would not need protection) to the city safely.

When Ipakas returned, he found Sabal bleed out on the ground and took a moment before he cut his head off and wrapped it in cloths. Max rifled through the body and found a letter from Darfrik the Duergar that looks like a contract for slave trade. Ipakas could not find another spell book on Sabal's body, realized that maybe he had put him too high up on a pedestal. A wizard should be able to recreate his spell book from memory even if he lost his old one, but Sabal couldn't and instead fell back on relying his swordsmanship skills. with countless unanswered questions with the death of Sabal, Ipakas set out with a new goal to speak with the dead. The rest of the party left Ipakas deep in his own thoughts as they investigate the ruins.

Memorable Quotes
"With a knee on his back, he died" - Scotty