5e: Death From Above!

From: Sir Fulhoff of Clan Balderk, Knight of Hawk’s Nest, War Mage
To: Helja and Adrik of Clan Balderk

Mother and Father:

Heading out of Yartar, we discuss what our strategy is going to be, and most of the party wants to head up to Old Snarl to pay our respects, and maybe get a little more help. For my part, dealing with dragons is never a good idea. Dealing with an ancient red dragon is an even worse idea, but we did agree, as part of our use of the airship, that we would visit.

If you’ve heard stories of Klauth, then you’ve heard that he is not only ancient, but bigger than maybe any other dragon on Faerun? The tales do not begin to even come close to accurately portraying the sheer power and awesome majesty of that being. Also the annoyance that we had not yet completed our quest. I think what kept us from becoming a snack was that we did at least have some information that he didn’t have, namely that Imyrith is working with Slarkrethel. That seemed to intrigue him. His advice was simply “don’t die.”

Departing Klauth’s domain, we headed for Waterdeep, resupplied and stocked up on things we thought would be helpful for a sea battle. Our efforts to find out more about the Kraken Society and their activities were ineffective, but the one bit of luck turned out to be the journal we’d taken from Lord Drylund. While we’d had no luck deciphering the code, a contact of the Grey Hand was able to figure some of it out, including the phrase “purple islands.” We’d heard that name before, and checking through our assorted goods in the bag of holding, pulled out an old map of them. Since we were in Waterdeep, we contacted a local cartographer and acquired a more up to date chart. This in hand, we set off.

The flight out from Waterdeep was cool, cloudy, and wet. Thankfully it was a calm sort of wet, but bone chilling. On the 4th day out, we spotted the islands… and then we saw it, the Morkoth. Distinctively squid shaped with an open hold containing a chain bound storm giant. Thankfully our arrival by air meant we hadn’t been spotted. We followed the Morkoth from above, spying on it for the rest of the day, the night, and in the first light of day, dropped down upon them.

Joda summoned a cloud from the Astorian Fan, and we dropped down to the ship. Bran and I hopped off at the crows nest, startling a sleeping watchman, and silencing him before he could make a sound. I then summoned a storm over the stern of the ship, while Hilda dropped down into the bow swinging her sword at the sailors there. Joda leaps down onto the giant and inspects the chains. Aramil tries to dispel the magic on the chains, but their enchantments are too strong. Joda fails to break any of them.



Finally shaking off the shock of the assault, the sailors retaliate. The commanding officer shoots at Joda with a crossbow, but Joda catches the bolt, and throws it back at the half orc. Hilda and Rin are swarmed by sailors, but they’re mostly irritating rather than dangerous. Rin tosses a few of them overboard. From the storm, I lightning bolt the crossbow wielding half orc, who is now joined by a spellcaster. I counterspell the invulnerability spell he was trying to cast, and then drop an acid sphere on the stern. The wizard goes invisible….