Dragon's Demand: Aeteperax's Ultimatum

Game Date: 3/15/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 8
System: Pathfinder
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Ranger
Lilith (James) - Tiefling Paladin
Raz Furian (Matt) - Human Sorcerer
Tanith Tularn (Thomas) - Human Cleric
Vires (Daniel) - Human Alchemist

The Session:
Last week we finished up cataloging the wizard Hunclay's estate.  Today we went to see the Lady Origena for our reward.  She told us Hunclay's auction would be held in one month.  She also offered to contribute some money if we decided to bid on anything ourselves.  We had our eye on a couple of the spellbooks, so we looked forward to the auction.  But in the meantime, we had a month of downtime to get through.

Halfbeard acquires a +1 French Fry

Halfbeard looked for the whereabouts of the town's missing Druid, even staying in the Druid's house for a couple of days in case he came back.  The rest of us got jobs or did some minor questing.  Raz became a scribe for a cheese shop.  We were told we would be evicted from the inn soon, because the auction was likely to draw a lot of travelers to the town.  We spent some time looking around for houses to rent, but there weren't any.  It was basically pitch a tent or buy a property.

After much discussion, we decided to build a house of our own.  We bought the site of the tower Hunclay destroyed back in the first session.  This included the tunnels underneath, so we now own our very own dungeon.  We all put in some time and money into the construction, which took a good portion of the month.  The day of the auction was here in no time, and we had front row seats.

Several wealthy out-of-towners showed up for the auction.  They were big spenders, so we didn't get much.  Lilith managed to outbid Bassy, the gnome historian, and won some assorted potions.  The last bid of the night was for Hunclay's house itself.  As the auction wrapped up, we saw some dark shapes fly overhead.  Four bat-like humanoids - called Grioths - swooped down into the open-air building.  While the other auction-goers panicked and fled, we stayed and fought the creatures.

The fight was complicated by the fact that the seats were rough terrain, and climbing onto the stage required an acrobatics check.  Lilith was hit early on with a confusion effect, and spent most of the battle attacking herself.  Our shade friend Maffei did the most damage, utterly slaughtering one of the Grioths on one turn.  Raz used a plot twist card to trip one of them, and our opportunity attacks finished it off when it tried to stand up.  After the last one died, the still-confused Lilith charged Raz, taking more than half her hit points in one hit.  Raz forgave her once the confusion wore off, and the two reaffirmed their friendship by using heal spells on each other.

But before things could get too sappy, we heard a loud roar, and a red drake swooped down onto the stage.  This was a more difficult battle - that drake hit hard and often, and we were already hurting from the previous battle.  Tanith and Vires both got taken down to zero, and Halfbeard made the final blow against the drake.  After the battle, Raz tried to heal Tanith but was surprised to find she caused him more harm.  (Out-of-character note: Raz has a bloodline power that heals good-aligned creatures, but damages evil ones like Tanith.)

As we were tending to each other's wounds, we heard another roar.  Before we could say, "Not again," a huge black dragon landed on the roof of a nearby building.  Its flesh rotting like a dracolich, the monstrous dragon addressed the town in a booming voice.  It announced that it was Aeteperax, a name we recognized immediately.  This dragon was supposed to have been defeated centuries ago, and its bones were reportedly buried in Tula's Crypt.

Aeteperax claimed that Hunclay had promised him some books of power.  The dragon demanded (oh hey, I totally get the campaign's title now) that we give him the books along with 776,000 gold.  No one is allowed to leave the town until this debt has been paid.  After the dragon left, the council arranged an emergency meeting, and we ended the session there.