Up on the Mountain, After the Flood Session 5
Dragonsavers
The party at level 1:
- Ama Ekström - Folklorist, Mage (Alchemy, Animism)
- Bugs - Mime, Rogue
- Nadine - Pilgrim, Priest of The Fates (Chronomancy, Divination)
- Vex Ire - Marine, Mage (Chronomancy, Shadowmancy)
The ascent up the mountain to confront the corrupted Sutomemnon Vituperation is treacherous, but with some teamwork the party makes it to the dragon's cave unscathed. Within, surrounded by the hoard it's managed to accumulate while here, is the immense bulk of the beast. Unwholesome abscesses are visible on its head, tail, and body. Bugs, holding the Citrine Clot, feels the gem pulling him towards the wounds. The Citrine Clot needs to be touched to each of them in order to save the dragon.
The spot on the body is covered by a cyst so the rest of the party works on destroying that while Bugs touches the Clot to the spot on the tail. Sutomemnon's fire breath is thankfully weakened by its corrupted state, but Nadine still becomes incapacitated. Thankfully Ama is quick with the healing perfume they picked up from the Dragon Shrine and picks her back up. Vex then traps the dragon's head in a timeloop, and then displaces it from time when that wears off. Once the head pops back into realtime Bugs touches the Clot to the last spot which causes the Clot to fuse to the dragon. Sutomemnon lets out one last roar before flying out of the cave in the direction of the Dragon Shrine, allowing the party to loot its hoard.
The loot includes a burning scale that Sutomemnon dropped during its flight, which looks like it can be given to Ylabel, the blacksmith back at the Refuge of the Sacred Flame. On their way back to the Refuge, Ama persuades the party to take a detour to the Lovers' Castle, a location they've heard mentioned a few times so far. And so the party arrives at the ruined castle and prepares to head inside.
With the beast defeated, the party levels up to 2. Ama and Vex pick up more talents and spells in their existing traditions and Nadine finally gets access to spells. Bugs also picks up the Magic Use talent from Rogue and takes the Technomancy tradition for the Mark IV Pistol. Which does mean we now have an oops! all magic-users! party. Good stuff.
The thing about this campaign is that I have to put my money where my mouth is, which in this case meant coming up with a boss fight that could plausibly represent a dragon that was still beatable by level 1 characters1. To do that, I turned to my beloved Fabula Ultima which led me to statting up the dragon's head, body, tail, and wings separate combatants. This worked pretty well, though it did lead to oddities like Vex displacing only the dragon's head from time without affecting the rest of it. But Sutomemnon's an ancient magical dragon so a novice-level spell not being able to affect the whole of it just makes sense to me.
I did forget to keep track of the durations of some of the afflictions caused by the dragon's abilities during the fight, and that's on me.