Following their planning, the officers of the Avengers of the Crossing knew it was time to send out their orders for recruitment and wait for direction from the Kalaman military.
They waited a week for news and for their recruitment officers to muster up troops. In the intervening time, Asterius investigated rumors of some tombs infested by monsters in the hills Northwest of Kalaman, returning with tales and some treasure from his expedition. Davgin busied himself investigating spells and attempting to learn new magic, but instead singed the walls of their ballroom with magical soot and smoke, coughing for breath as he slammed the large windows open to get fresh air into the room. A failure for now, but he would continue his research later in preparation for his eventual trials to join the Mages of High Sorcery. Gringle found a seedy tavern and an odd fellow near the docks speaking of the great investments he had available, and gave him some gold as a buy in. What fruits his money would reap only time would tell.
After a week had passed on 9 Holmwelt, a messenger came running into their headquarters. The Vogler refugees had been moving into temporary housing and areas closer to Kalaman all week, and the last large company of them was coming into town today.
“Lords and lady, the refugee column is under attack from the Red Dragon Army!”
The adventurers armed up and took war horses from the Castle Kalaman stables, immediately lighting off to defend the refugees. Groups of their troops followed behind.
When they arrived they found groups of hobgoblin and human soldiers attacking the refugees and their wagon train. Charging into combat, Asterius and Davgin led Darrett into the fray, while Gringle sniped with arrows from the rear. They and their troops made short work of the enemies.
As they drove the last of them off there appeared over a low hill a large creature, with wings like a dragon, clad in barding and metal spikes. Its scales were red and it flew towards them, a soldier clad in the armor of the Dragon Army on its back. It swooped down, rending Asterius’ horse and slaying it from beneath him. The Solamnic knight fell from the horse, but managed to recover his footing instead of falling to the ground.
Asterius and Darrett took massive swings as the creature passed them, but were unable to deeply penetrate its armored sides. Davgin slung spells that hit their mark, wounding the creature with ice cold magic. Gringle fired off arrows as the creature swung towards him, lashing out once more with its claws. They found their mark and Gringle fell from his horse, deeply wounded and unconscious, fighting for life.
The rider of the beast cast javelins at Asterius and Darrett, goring Asterius deeply. The knight called on the powers that he served and healed himself to stand in defense of his friends, but found most of his attacks ineffectual as the beast flew out of range. Davgin’s spells were their main defense, wounding and bloodying the creature so that it began to wheel and fly away.
Once it had disappeared once more, Asterius healed Gringle, bringing him back from the brink of death.
“What was that?” Asked Asterius.
“A foul and unnatural beast,” said Gringle, still covered in blood.
“Not a true dragon though,” said Davion. “Something else, less powerful.”
“What wasn’t powerful?” Asked Asterius. “I wonder what will happen when we actually face a true dragon.”
They escorted the surviving refugees to Kalaman, and helped tend to the wounded without further incident. Then returning to Castle Kalaman, they rested for two days until orders arrived in a dispatch from Marshall Vendri.
Your reports of a mechanical dragon hurling fire are of great concern to high command. We have reports of a gnome inventor that lives to the Southwest of Kalaman. We request that you personally visit her and attempt to recruit her aid for Kalaman, offering protection from the Red Dragon Army within the city. Her name is Rookledust.
The officers left quickly, stopping only to make sure they were fully armed at the Castle Kalaman military armory.
Most of the day was spent on the road, riding with care on fresh warhorses. The trip was uneventful under the dark clouded sky of the Dargaard Mountains with the occasional bout of light rain except for a chance meeting with a kender calling himself Trapspringer. The kender asked if the adventurers had seen any dragons, and related that he’d heard rumors of dragons near Kalaman. He also insisted on shaking the hands of each of the adventurers in thanks. After he had long faded behind them on the road, Asterius and Gringle discovered that their purses were each lighter by five gold pieces.
As the evening went on, they came upon a strange building, part house and part stone fortress, perch atop a low hill. A group of goblins and a lone hobgoblin stood in front, attacking as a gnome ran from window to window, hurling clockwork traps at the assaulters.
The party charged in immediately, closing and killing five goblins and the hobgoblin leader within moments. Asterius parted one in twain with a mighty axeblow, while Davgin blasted several with fire. Darrett fought beside Asterius, while Gringle fired from the rear. They made short work of the goblins, riding down the last of them as they fled. Then they turned towards the house to speak with the gnome.
GM Reflections
This was a pretty straightforward and simple session, but was a lot of fun, particularly at the end. The characters are almost to fifth level, so they cut through the goblins very quickly. But it was a nice upward beat and everyone seemed to enjoy it. As I implement the Intrigue system, I used the attack on the refugees as the opening domain action by the Red Dragon Army. The idea of making an Operations test against the players’ organization Resolve inspired me to work it into a combat encounter. The roll failed, which was good for the characters. After two weeks in game the adventurers and the enemy domain will both get to make an action at the same time. I’m hoping the players get more engaged and understand the system better as the campaign goes on. I’m enjoying it though as a framework.
Over the next few sessions I play to run several of the missions from the campaign book, along with a few missions that I’ll add adapted from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Personally, I think short missions and sandbox play are how most of this campaign should have been structured. I’ve been looking ahead to the exploration and hexcrawl portion but it really isn’t written as a true hexcrawl, with most of the locations really acting like a point crawl. This is a better structure than a straight railroad, but I think it’s interesting that WOTC doesn’t even really correctly frame or signal the game structure they are using.
Enjoying the adventure though. It’s fun to do a war campaign because there is lots of inspiration and things to do with the characters and 5e gets to have lots of heroic combat which is where it tends to be the most fun for players in my experience.
Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen - Enemy Raids in the Countryside
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