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thunderproof) wrote2017-09-10 08:15 pm
thunderproof) wrote2017-09-10 08:15 pm
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Some time before her first birthday, Adalia was abandoned in front of the gates to Candlekeep, the biggest and most exhaustive library in FaerΓ»n. Her innate magic made itself known when she was a child, and the monks at the library realized she would need magical training. They trained her as well as they could to master her gift, and upon turning nineteen, she decided she wanted to leave Candlekeep. Much as she loved the library, it was never a home for her, and the monks were never her family. All she'd ever wanted was to know where she came from and why her parents had abandoned her, and she was ready to go out into the world to search for the answers herself. With the blessing of the monks, Adalia made her way across FaerΓ»n until she made it to Neverwinter, where she was approached with a proposition: deliver goods to a nearby town with a group of other adventurers, and once they'd done that they would all be let in on a very lucrative business deal. Adalia agreed, and the group left the following morning.
The caravan escort consisted of Adalia, a fighter named Mat, a wizard named Elly, a half-angel paladin named Akrasiel, and a drow rogue calling herself Lia. Everything was going well enough when they came upon dead horses beset by goblins β their employer Gundren and his bodyguard Sildar had been ambushed in the night. Their bodies were nowhere to be found, however, and after dispatching the goblins the group conducted a quick search for their benefactor, which led them to a cave full of goblins holding Sildar captive. Once the cave was clear, they grabbed Sildar and took him with them to a nearby town called Phandalin, where he explained to them what had happened: the goblins were working for someone called the Black Dragon and needed Gundren to give them directions to Wave Echo Cave, a mine which had been lost for centuries but which Gundren had found a map to. Their only lead was Cragmaw Castle, a dilapidated ruin the goblins had made their home β which no one knew how to find. The group had to find someone who could provide them directions; until then, it was side quest time.
They quickly set about making themselves useful in Phandalin, where many of the residents needed help. Fetch quests abounded, but there was one exciting quest: a group of dragon cultists had taken over a rundown manor house on the outskirts of town, and the mayor wanted them to either kill the cultists or run them out. The party managed the latter through a clever application of illusion magic, Adalia's persuasive abilities, and the cultists' own stupidity β Elly manifested illusions of a small black dragon, Adalia spoke as the "herald" of the Black Dragon, and the cultists were too dumb to see through the ruse.
Emboldened by their success, when Adalia came across a necklace with a black dragon pendant on it, she put it on. As soon as it settled around her neck, the room around her was replaced with darkness. A booming voice spoke to her, and, convinced she was talking to the Black Dragon the cultists worshiped, Adalia gave her name and asked for Phandalin's protection, hoping to trick him into thinking she was a cultist. She felt something touch her cheek, heard a low, menacing laugh, and then came back to herself in the dilapidated manor. Distraught by the vision, Adalia tried to get rid of the necklace, but Lia grabbed it before she could and put it in her bag. Uneasy, the group finished taking care of the manor.
After that came more side quests. Adalia was nervous to begin with due to the terrifying vision the necklace gave her, and her unease only grew next she looked in a mirror β where she had felt something touch her cheek in the vision, a scar full of divination magic now sat. Certain no one else in the group was taking the threat seriously, Adalia took a stolen trinket from one of the cultists β a talisman emblazoned with a black dragon β and meditated on it. Once again she had a vision, this time of a group of cultists gathered in a ring talking about their god. Their talismans gave him power on this plane, apparently, and they planned to do something with them in the coming days. When Adalia came out of the vision, she put the talisman away again, and when morning came, lied to her companions about having destroyed it.
Over the next few days, they sought out a banshee for yet another fetch quest. The banshee would answer any question asked of her if given a beautiful enough bauble, and once everyone else had concluded their business, Adalia gave up a ring to ask if the banshee knew anything about her past. It did, in fact, and pointed her toward the derelict village of Thundertree, where a book with energy "just like hers" resided. Adalia all but insisted the party make for Thundertree immediately, but a hobgoblin attack on Phandalin delayed the group long enough for her to make yet another in a string of terrible decisions: she stole the necklace she had worn out of Lia's pack, and hid it along with the talisman in a secluded corner of town.
In Thundertree, the party met a druid who bade them kill or drive off a dragon that was terrorizing the area. If they did this, he would show them the way to Cragmaw Castle. While searching the ruins, Adalia found her book, which embued her with healing magic she'd never had before. Finding evidence of the dragon also brought the party into contact with followers of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. Bahamut had sent them out to Thundertree to fight the dragon, but their number was reduced in their first effort against it. The remaining two agreed to help the party kill the dragon the next morning, and before leaving their hideout Adalia prayed over an offering to Bahamut for help.
As she slept, Adalia was shown yet another vision, this time of a juvenile platinum dragon β Bahamut β who told her that the course she was on would only lead to her own ruin. It was difficult for him to speak to her, and he could not solve the problem of her connection to the Black Dragon, but he would aid her as he could. When she woke up the next morning, the scar on her cheek was somewhat healed, and for the first time in her life, Adalia had faith. She was going to come clean about the lies she had been telling, destroy the Black Dragon's talismans, and become a follower of Bahamut. For the first time in a week, she had hope.
It was not to last.
The first seconds of the fight with the dragon went about as poorly as they could possibly go. It bit the leader of Bahamut's followers in half and belched acid on Akrasiel and Mat, immediately dissolving them both. At that moment, Adalia was faced with a choice:
Reach out to Bahamut, the good god who had tried to offer her guidance the night before, but whose connection to her was weak?
Or reach out to the Black Dragon, the evil god who had marked and spelled her, but whose connection to her was as tangible as the scar on her cheek?
In the end, she chose the Black Dragon. He answered her call, but at a price: if he was going to bring back her friends, she would have to give him something just as valuable. Adalia offered herself, her future β and the Black Dragon accepted. Akrasiel and Mat were brought back to life, they slew the dragon, but Adalia couldn't feel their victory. Akrasiel and Mat were glowing faintly green, and Akrasiel could no longer talk to his goddess. She'd chosen wrong.
After returning to Phandalin, Adalia gathered her party and came clean. The others insisted they destroy the talisman, and Adalia agreed, but once it was broken the Black Dragon spoke to all three of them: they were each connected to him now, and he could kill them if he so wished. If they collected his artifacts and protected them, they could empower themselves β but they would be helping him by doing so. Akrasiel and Mat angrily declined, but Adalia remained quiet, too afraid of losing her friends again to antagonize the being that owned their souls. Rather than be cowed, Akrasiel and Mat destroyed the necklace, and again Adalia let them, but this time with much more unease. Akrasiel made no secret of how he would feel if either Mat or Adalia attempted to keep him from destroying the Black Dragon's artifacts, however, so she said nothing about her misgivings. She simply waited in silence and planned.
On their way to Cragmaw, the party was approached by an angel of Eldath, Akrasiel's goddess. It explained that the dragon was Alacruun, a timeless god of undeath. He'd been banished to a different plane many years ago, but was now preparing to reenter the prime material plane. Akrasiel and Mat's connection to him made it so that they were dead in the eyes of the gods, and Adalia, who had willingly sold her soul, didn't even exist. Armed with more information, when the party made camp for the night Adalia suggested that she and Elly use their knowledge of magic to try to get Akrasiel back in touch with Eldath. To everyone's surprise, it actually worked, and for the first time in days Akrasiel could have a conversation with his goddess. She told him of a gold dragon named Dormu who resided in a mountain nearby, telling them that he could help them in their fight against Alacruun. Great, they said, and added it to their ever-growing list of places to go and people to see.
When they finally got to Cragmaw Castle, they fought their way through a veritable army of goblins, hobgoblins, and doppelgangers, and in the end managed to rescue Gundren. He was less concerned about his own life than he was about his brother, who had gone ahead of him to Wave Echo Cave β that was the business venture he had meant to invite the party into when their whole quest began. Wave Echo Cave was the Rockseekers' birthright before it fell, and Gundren and his brother had figured out its location. They were going to let the adventurers in on it if they could help clear the mine, but that was clearly not a concern anymore. What was of concern was Gundren's brother, Thardin. He had gone ahead to the cave, and Gundren wanted the party to go find him. Adalia disagreed with the necessity of such an errand when they had a problem as big as an evil dragon god from the beginning of time to contend with, but the party chose not to commit to anything until they'd dropped Gundren back off at Phandalin. Once there, they had a short debate β Adalia believed that going to find Bahamut's cultists and seeking out their help with their problem was their best bet, but the rest of the party wanted to go to Wave Echo Cave. Outnumbered, she conceded the point, but it led her to make another terrible choice.
Convinced they would need divine assistance to have a shot at surviving whatever Alacruun had in store, Adalia took their night of preparation before their trek to Wave Echo Cave to make a deal with him: she would become Alacruun's servant, helping him in whatever ways she could without alerting her party members to their partnership, even fighting on his side when it came to it, if he would release Akrasiel's soul. Delighted by the proposal, the Black Dragon agreed to the deal, and even gave Adalia more magical power, as well as the gift of a silver tongue. The next morning, the party made their way to the cave, and as they approached it, Akrasiel heard a voice in his ears β Eldath was finally able to get through to him again. Though Adalia's life was forfeit, at least she hadn't sold away her freedom and her soul for nothing.
The trek through Wave Echo Cave was long and arduous, but in the end Thardin was rescued, and the group made the return trip to Phandalin, though for them it was more of a pit stop than anything: they planned to leave again the next morning to find the gold dragon Eldath had told them about. Before they left for the mountain, Mat convinced Adalia to tell him what she'd done to regain Akrasiel's freedom, but agreed not to tell the rest of the party.
The journey to the mountain took them several days and a few long battles, but eventually they arrived, and after exploring some underground caverns, found the ruins of a tower. Outside the tower Akrasiel and Adalia found a clutch of black dragon eggs, hours from hatching, and in their panic, Akrasiel and Mat began destroying them. Adalia, horrified at the thought of killing creatures that hadn't even been properly born yet, managed to save one, but Akrasiel and Mat both insisted that she let them destroy it. Before the argument could escalate too far, Lia interrupted them β there was a young black dragon in the tower, along with an even larger clutch of eggs. The two warriors ran into the tower guns blazing, but the dragon seemed not to really know anything β its whole life had been spent in this tower, and it was as angry at its father as they were. Though Adalia tried desperately to call her friends off and even told the dragon to flee, in the end it was killed, and Akrasiel destroyed the rest of the eggs. Adalia could keep the egg she had, he said, but if the wyrmling hurt anyone after it hatched, he would kill it. Adalia feigned agreement and the party made for the surface, frustrated and tense.
The caravan escort consisted of Adalia, a fighter named Mat, a wizard named Elly, a half-angel paladin named Akrasiel, and a drow rogue calling herself Lia. Everything was going well enough when they came upon dead horses beset by goblins β their employer Gundren and his bodyguard Sildar had been ambushed in the night. Their bodies were nowhere to be found, however, and after dispatching the goblins the group conducted a quick search for their benefactor, which led them to a cave full of goblins holding Sildar captive. Once the cave was clear, they grabbed Sildar and took him with them to a nearby town called Phandalin, where he explained to them what had happened: the goblins were working for someone called the Black Dragon and needed Gundren to give them directions to Wave Echo Cave, a mine which had been lost for centuries but which Gundren had found a map to. Their only lead was Cragmaw Castle, a dilapidated ruin the goblins had made their home β which no one knew how to find. The group had to find someone who could provide them directions; until then, it was side quest time.
They quickly set about making themselves useful in Phandalin, where many of the residents needed help. Fetch quests abounded, but there was one exciting quest: a group of dragon cultists had taken over a rundown manor house on the outskirts of town, and the mayor wanted them to either kill the cultists or run them out. The party managed the latter through a clever application of illusion magic, Adalia's persuasive abilities, and the cultists' own stupidity β Elly manifested illusions of a small black dragon, Adalia spoke as the "herald" of the Black Dragon, and the cultists were too dumb to see through the ruse.
Emboldened by their success, when Adalia came across a necklace with a black dragon pendant on it, she put it on. As soon as it settled around her neck, the room around her was replaced with darkness. A booming voice spoke to her, and, convinced she was talking to the Black Dragon the cultists worshiped, Adalia gave her name and asked for Phandalin's protection, hoping to trick him into thinking she was a cultist. She felt something touch her cheek, heard a low, menacing laugh, and then came back to herself in the dilapidated manor. Distraught by the vision, Adalia tried to get rid of the necklace, but Lia grabbed it before she could and put it in her bag. Uneasy, the group finished taking care of the manor.
After that came more side quests. Adalia was nervous to begin with due to the terrifying vision the necklace gave her, and her unease only grew next she looked in a mirror β where she had felt something touch her cheek in the vision, a scar full of divination magic now sat. Certain no one else in the group was taking the threat seriously, Adalia took a stolen trinket from one of the cultists β a talisman emblazoned with a black dragon β and meditated on it. Once again she had a vision, this time of a group of cultists gathered in a ring talking about their god. Their talismans gave him power on this plane, apparently, and they planned to do something with them in the coming days. When Adalia came out of the vision, she put the talisman away again, and when morning came, lied to her companions about having destroyed it.
Over the next few days, they sought out a banshee for yet another fetch quest. The banshee would answer any question asked of her if given a beautiful enough bauble, and once everyone else had concluded their business, Adalia gave up a ring to ask if the banshee knew anything about her past. It did, in fact, and pointed her toward the derelict village of Thundertree, where a book with energy "just like hers" resided. Adalia all but insisted the party make for Thundertree immediately, but a hobgoblin attack on Phandalin delayed the group long enough for her to make yet another in a string of terrible decisions: she stole the necklace she had worn out of Lia's pack, and hid it along with the talisman in a secluded corner of town.
In Thundertree, the party met a druid who bade them kill or drive off a dragon that was terrorizing the area. If they did this, he would show them the way to Cragmaw Castle. While searching the ruins, Adalia found her book, which embued her with healing magic she'd never had before. Finding evidence of the dragon also brought the party into contact with followers of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. Bahamut had sent them out to Thundertree to fight the dragon, but their number was reduced in their first effort against it. The remaining two agreed to help the party kill the dragon the next morning, and before leaving their hideout Adalia prayed over an offering to Bahamut for help.
As she slept, Adalia was shown yet another vision, this time of a juvenile platinum dragon β Bahamut β who told her that the course she was on would only lead to her own ruin. It was difficult for him to speak to her, and he could not solve the problem of her connection to the Black Dragon, but he would aid her as he could. When she woke up the next morning, the scar on her cheek was somewhat healed, and for the first time in her life, Adalia had faith. She was going to come clean about the lies she had been telling, destroy the Black Dragon's talismans, and become a follower of Bahamut. For the first time in a week, she had hope.
It was not to last.
The first seconds of the fight with the dragon went about as poorly as they could possibly go. It bit the leader of Bahamut's followers in half and belched acid on Akrasiel and Mat, immediately dissolving them both. At that moment, Adalia was faced with a choice:
Reach out to Bahamut, the good god who had tried to offer her guidance the night before, but whose connection to her was weak?
Or reach out to the Black Dragon, the evil god who had marked and spelled her, but whose connection to her was as tangible as the scar on her cheek?
In the end, she chose the Black Dragon. He answered her call, but at a price: if he was going to bring back her friends, she would have to give him something just as valuable. Adalia offered herself, her future β and the Black Dragon accepted. Akrasiel and Mat were brought back to life, they slew the dragon, but Adalia couldn't feel their victory. Akrasiel and Mat were glowing faintly green, and Akrasiel could no longer talk to his goddess. She'd chosen wrong.
After returning to Phandalin, Adalia gathered her party and came clean. The others insisted they destroy the talisman, and Adalia agreed, but once it was broken the Black Dragon spoke to all three of them: they were each connected to him now, and he could kill them if he so wished. If they collected his artifacts and protected them, they could empower themselves β but they would be helping him by doing so. Akrasiel and Mat angrily declined, but Adalia remained quiet, too afraid of losing her friends again to antagonize the being that owned their souls. Rather than be cowed, Akrasiel and Mat destroyed the necklace, and again Adalia let them, but this time with much more unease. Akrasiel made no secret of how he would feel if either Mat or Adalia attempted to keep him from destroying the Black Dragon's artifacts, however, so she said nothing about her misgivings. She simply waited in silence and planned.
On their way to Cragmaw, the party was approached by an angel of Eldath, Akrasiel's goddess. It explained that the dragon was Alacruun, a timeless god of undeath. He'd been banished to a different plane many years ago, but was now preparing to reenter the prime material plane. Akrasiel and Mat's connection to him made it so that they were dead in the eyes of the gods, and Adalia, who had willingly sold her soul, didn't even exist. Armed with more information, when the party made camp for the night Adalia suggested that she and Elly use their knowledge of magic to try to get Akrasiel back in touch with Eldath. To everyone's surprise, it actually worked, and for the first time in days Akrasiel could have a conversation with his goddess. She told him of a gold dragon named Dormu who resided in a mountain nearby, telling them that he could help them in their fight against Alacruun. Great, they said, and added it to their ever-growing list of places to go and people to see.
When they finally got to Cragmaw Castle, they fought their way through a veritable army of goblins, hobgoblins, and doppelgangers, and in the end managed to rescue Gundren. He was less concerned about his own life than he was about his brother, who had gone ahead of him to Wave Echo Cave β that was the business venture he had meant to invite the party into when their whole quest began. Wave Echo Cave was the Rockseekers' birthright before it fell, and Gundren and his brother had figured out its location. They were going to let the adventurers in on it if they could help clear the mine, but that was clearly not a concern anymore. What was of concern was Gundren's brother, Thardin. He had gone ahead to the cave, and Gundren wanted the party to go find him. Adalia disagreed with the necessity of such an errand when they had a problem as big as an evil dragon god from the beginning of time to contend with, but the party chose not to commit to anything until they'd dropped Gundren back off at Phandalin. Once there, they had a short debate β Adalia believed that going to find Bahamut's cultists and seeking out their help with their problem was their best bet, but the rest of the party wanted to go to Wave Echo Cave. Outnumbered, she conceded the point, but it led her to make another terrible choice.
Convinced they would need divine assistance to have a shot at surviving whatever Alacruun had in store, Adalia took their night of preparation before their trek to Wave Echo Cave to make a deal with him: she would become Alacruun's servant, helping him in whatever ways she could without alerting her party members to their partnership, even fighting on his side when it came to it, if he would release Akrasiel's soul. Delighted by the proposal, the Black Dragon agreed to the deal, and even gave Adalia more magical power, as well as the gift of a silver tongue. The next morning, the party made their way to the cave, and as they approached it, Akrasiel heard a voice in his ears β Eldath was finally able to get through to him again. Though Adalia's life was forfeit, at least she hadn't sold away her freedom and her soul for nothing.
The trek through Wave Echo Cave was long and arduous, but in the end Thardin was rescued, and the group made the return trip to Phandalin, though for them it was more of a pit stop than anything: they planned to leave again the next morning to find the gold dragon Eldath had told them about. Before they left for the mountain, Mat convinced Adalia to tell him what she'd done to regain Akrasiel's freedom, but agreed not to tell the rest of the party.
The journey to the mountain took them several days and a few long battles, but eventually they arrived, and after exploring some underground caverns, found the ruins of a tower. Outside the tower Akrasiel and Adalia found a clutch of black dragon eggs, hours from hatching, and in their panic, Akrasiel and Mat began destroying them. Adalia, horrified at the thought of killing creatures that hadn't even been properly born yet, managed to save one, but Akrasiel and Mat both insisted that she let them destroy it. Before the argument could escalate too far, Lia interrupted them β there was a young black dragon in the tower, along with an even larger clutch of eggs. The two warriors ran into the tower guns blazing, but the dragon seemed not to really know anything β its whole life had been spent in this tower, and it was as angry at its father as they were. Though Adalia tried desperately to call her friends off and even told the dragon to flee, in the end it was killed, and Akrasiel destroyed the rest of the eggs. Adalia could keep the egg she had, he said, but if the wyrmling hurt anyone after it hatched, he would kill it. Adalia feigned agreement and the party made for the surface, frustrated and tense.