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While traveling to Biel, the Doubley-Doos stumbled across a village held in the tyrannical grip of five bards charging mandatory payment for protection after supposedly fending off a dragon. Although the Doubley-Doos were skeptical that the band of five was powerful enough to fend off a dragon, they decided to set a trap to lure them out in the open by staging a performance. The ruse worked, the band of five revealed themselves, and a battle ensued. 

The scene turned to chaos when the leader of the band of five summoned a gold dragon to her aid. The dragon wore a collar stamped with the visage of Khurgorbaeyag similar to Shump’s totem. During the battle, Shelby noticed the band of five’s leader seemed to control the dragon with an amulet she kept in a pocket by her side. While Shelby distracted the leader, Dormin used his mage hand to steal the amulet from her pocket. 

Two of the five were killed during the battle, and the remaining three surrendered. While Rhass and Badger fetched the remaining members of the band of five, Dormin grappled with a dark, mysterious voice that whispered promises of power in his mind.

Once the collar was removed from the dragon, the control the amulet held over him fell away. He thanked them and introduced himself as Yzzod of the Gleaming Guild. He was from the mountains in Gravlimok in the north, but was in Iounin with some of his flock when a goblin raiding party ambushed them. The rest of his family were able to escape. He was the only one captured. He wasn’t sure how long ago that was, nor was he aware of very much that occurred while he was under compulsion. He could only remember snatches of his experiences.

The minstrel, Anmora, compelled to provide answers by one of Rhass’s spells, admitted that he and the twins were recent additions to the band of five.

Previously, the goliath woman and the sorceress had been petty criminals. After being the victim of one of their grifts himself, he decided to join them and help them move into bigger and better crimes with better payouts. The twins were the most recent to join and were relatively naive to what they were really doing, believing their group was a Robin Hood-esque band meting out justice to greedy, rich snobs.

They stumbled across the dragon while watching a group of goblins trying to get the collar around his throat. He managed to kill all of them, but not before the last one latched the collar. The dragon flew off, but Dbryn, the goliath woman, found the amulet as she was looting the goblin corpses. She and the rest of the troop were shocked when she was able to summon the dragon back and force it to do her bidding. It was then they hatched the scheme to pretend to fend off a dragon and receive reward money. After getting the reward, however, Dbryn decided they should stay and continue taxing the town under the guise of continued protection. It seemed like a sweet deal to Anmora, so they all agreed to stay.

As a token of gratitude, Yzzod gifted the Doubley-Doos with a crystal formed from his own fire breath. Should they break that crystal, it will send an emergency signal along with their location to him as long as they are on the same plane as him and he will hurry to their aid.

The group briefly debated the fate of the three remaining troublemakers, but ultimately decided that they didn’t want to release them where they could potentially exploit someone else. They decided to transport the prisoner to Biel where they could be detained appropriately. Rhass and Badger decided to, with Yzzod’s assistance, fly ahead of the group to deliver the prisoners and get settled. They agreed to rendezvous in Biel with the rest of the group so they could meet with the nilbog outside of town in a week or so.

That night, Shump and Dormin each dreamed of walking in a dark shadow realm along a cracked, dusty path. In the distance, a bleeding black spire stretched up toward the sky. Flashes of past conversations came to them as they approached the tower, all soon drowned out by a dark voice that spoke to each of them — promising Shump greater power and providing Dormin the location of his long-lost girlfriend along with the promise to help him find her. All they had to do was agree to serve. To their surprise, they each saw the other standing at the base of the spire just before waking.

Upon waking, they met up and discussed their dreams, deciding that they would work with Shelby to research this goblin deity to try to better understand the items that came into their possession.

The next morning, Rhass and Badger left for Biel with Yzzod and the prisoners while Shelby, Shump, and Dormin stayed behind to repay Lidla and her troop their lost funds as well as assist the town in recovering from their occupation. They met with the wife of the late mayor, one of the victims of the band of five’s cruelty, and she assured them that they would be fine. Once they were sure everything was settled, they set off for Biel.

They found double the guards upon arriving at the city gates — word around the area was that an Oathbreaker paladin had worked with a kenku mage to falsify documents and gain entrance into the city. The paladin was on the run after trying to assassinate the king of Alahalan and was arrested in Biel a couple months ago, but there was no further word about the whereabouts of the kenku mage. Shelby inquired with the guards about Rhass and Badger, but was surprised to learn that the town guards knew nothing about a gold dragon, nor any visitors that matched Rhass or Badger’s descriptions.

Concerned for their missing friends, but unable to determine what more could be done at the moment, the three remaining members of the Doubley-Doos rented a few rooms for a week at the Fisherman’s Inn and began planning a list of things they wanted to accomplish while in the city. 

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To my dismay, we didn’t play for nearly a month since the last session. It was unfortunate because the last game left off with such a great cliffhanger, I figured everyone would want to jump right back in and see what was going to happen next. Josh and Jess had scheduling conflicts that kept them from meeting — some work related, some personal. It was all totally understandable, but it left us without D&D for quite a while again.

To fill in some time, Stephanie DM’ed a one-shot that was fun — I got to play a bard for the first time in a long time — and we all generally had fun goofing off for the night. However, when the next game day came around and Josh and Jess announced that they were still going to be unavailable due to vacation, and the next time they would be available to play would be in September, it became clear that I needed to write them out of the game, at least for a bit, so that we could continue playing.

My actual original idea was going to be that they suddenly received a mysterious message from the nilbog on their sending stone, or that maybe Badger would hear word from his tribe back home that he needed to go assist them. It wasn’t exactly elegant, but it would work in a pinch. When Shelby suggested that Yzzod take the prisoners to Biel, that gave me a seamless, perfect opportunity for Badger and Rhass to accompany him — after all, the twins are gnomes and Badger is a halfling. I figured I could fudge Yzzod’s carrying capacity a bit to fit the three of them and Anmora on his back while Rhass flew alongside them.

It worked out pretty well, honestly. Josh and Jessica’s characters were easy to excise from the narrative, and since Dormin and Shump both have goblin artifacts, it makes for a great arc that they can pursue separately while Josh and Jess are on vacation.

I had already decided the fate of Brottor back in October. I figured it would make for a dramatic return whenever Shelby, Shump, Rose, and Shadyboi returned from the ziggurat to find Brottor being re-arrested for the crimes he’d already escaped once. I figured the party would be on the run after that since they 1) forged documents, and 2) were associating with a wanted criminal. However, since we jumped forward in time to start this new campaign, since Shelby and Shump never returned, as far as Biel would be concerned, this was the work of the attempted assassin and the obviously shady and creepy crowboy. Plus, I have some things planned for Shadyboi that makes it more apparent why he would be remembered and why Shelby, Shump, and Rose would be forgotten by now.

This smaller group has a fun, interesting dynamic, and I’m impressed with how willing everyone is to role play and feel their characters out. Not that I don’t have fun with Josh and Jessica, but it’s interesting to feel the group dynamic shift — it feels more intimate now, at least to me. That said, I’ve got some things planned for Rhass and Badger whenever Josh and Jessica return from vacation — assuming they still want to continue.

There’s something sort of funny being back nearly full circle from where our original campaign started. Things that I’ve been planning for a year might actually get followed up on, so it’s going to be interesting to see how things play out from here.

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