Y'so's Adventurers

 So, to start with, 90% of this session was battle and I find battle recounting tedious. As such, I'll be glossing a little bit. A quick recap, and directly into battle. I have done a little homebrew with items, classes, and races, but never monsters. This was my first homebrew monster and I'm pretty pleased with how it went. I sort of smashed together a red dragon and a green dragon and then threw in some of my own ideas. The only "issue" is that I made the clockwork dragon immune to fire - without considering that one of my players exclusively does fire damage. Had I taken that into consideration I wouldn't have felt so bad about it, but crippling someone's character's abilities without thinking about it is sort of a jerk move. Nevertheless, he was cool about it and ended up crippling my dragon anyway, so it was a fair exchange. One of the things that I don't like about combat in 5e is that it's rather static and tedious. You hit me, I hit you, i...

 From [[Garth]]'s farm in [[6th session]], the group moves SE toward the mountains with the intention of helping the dragons.  There is three days of travel and the time is spent in this way. [[Ardour]] takes [[Friedel]] aside and discusses further magical education. [[Camillune]] attempts to find the supplies to make healing potions. As [[Lotte]] is concerned about getting potions, she helps with this. [[Kaupu]] explores the box a little further. After three days, [[Lorrin]] recognizes that they are going to arrive at [[Stillmouth]] soon. Before they get much further, they find that people are traveling toward them and away from [[Stillmouth]]. It's still early for trading, and these people appear to be fleeing. [[Lorrin]] stops a woman who tells them there is a monster in [[Stillmouth]]. She hasn't seen it and has no information, but is confident that it exists and fleeing before being devoured is the correct response. The next day they meet a bard named [[Jerryd]] Premo....

 The party comes over the top of a hill and are looking down on a farm, of sorts. The field, instead of being sown with crops appears to have lengths of ice between the plow furrows. There are flail snails being driven down the rows by a gauth and a spectator. Instead of a cabin or a house, there is a nearby cave entrance that appears to be the living quarters. The party has stopped just shy of where the antimagic begins to observe. After a little debate, they move down to speak to the... creatures. The gauth introduces himself as [[Garth]] and explains that it is his farm. He seems to be the major source of the antimagic field, as it grows stronger where he is looking. He says that the ice stuff is actually glass made by the snails that they harvest and turn into stained glass windows. He explains that normally they work at night, but there have been vermin recently who come at night and break up the glass. So they've been working during the day. Perhaps the party can help by disp...

 After very little tinkering, the puzzle on the door is quickly solved. The DM learned a lesson about dispensing info. When the puzzle is solved, the door swings open. The walls are still dark crystal, but the crystal can be seen to be fading to gray perhaps fifteen feet down the passageway. Beyond that, there's an intense light, like bright sun on a midsummer day. The ground is curiously flat. There's a layer of dust perhaps an inch thick, but the surface under that is completely flat like a stage. There's a sense of unreality to the surroundings and even to yourselves. There's a nervous tension in the air, like backstage on opening night of a play. The gray crystal walls fade further into white crystal, and then transluscent. By the time the passageway opens into a room, the transluscent crystal has got opague and reflective. There's no source to the light, but the mirror-like walls reflect the brightness so much that you have to squint. This room is empty. It...

 Starting from [[Mathema]], the group travels southwest back to [[Grund's Vale]]. As they haven't really done any exploring through the forests, they remain on the roads.  [[Friedel]] won't accept going back to his village, but that's not the destination anyway. Going to the gnome/goblin cave shouldn't take too long. Whoosh and his fellow goblin are guarding the trash pile island but won't challenge them as they're known. Of the two kings, only the pantless one is awake. He's very willing to take them at their word basically no matter what they say. He asks them about the stolen item. [[Camillune]] rolled an insight against everyone's deception. She spotted [[Kaupu]] but didn't pursue the matter. [[Kaupu]] successfully snuck the pole of expanding into [[Ardour]]'s bag. [[Cael Vista]] is open to them. The [[temple of Y'so]] is in the center of the city. It is on the crown of the hill that Cael Vista is on. The temple is a crystal edifice. ...

 The notes on this session are not written in anything more than shorthand right now and won't be posted here. The group went to the logic temple, were sent to defend a library under attack, and talked their way out of combat. Also Kaupu found a safe and opened it and found a box.

Peltogyne took the goblins away from the village so that the farmers wouldn't be concerned about collusion.  Ardour and Lorrin led the talks with the townspeople. There was some confusion about why the group would come to help if they weren't being rewarded and they weren't guardsmen.  In this setting, I decided that the world was still comparatively new and that adventurers and adventuring wasn't an established tradition or career path. The leader of Grund's Vale told them the village didn't have anything to reward them with as the goblins had taken everything, but Ardour suggested that they supply him with a firstborn child as an apprentice.   The leader has a son named Friedel, a gawky blonde young teenager, and he is hesitantly offered as  Ardour's apprentice. There's some debate in the group about the ethics of this, but Phil (in character? Out? I wasn't sure) explains that taking apprentices is a reasonable thing for a spellcaster to do. Lorrin...

 This is copy pasted from my DM notes, so there's formatting issues. Specifically, some words are double bracketed. This is a link to a different part of the DM notes and obviously does nothing but look weird here. Also, not all the session notes were fully written out, so any time things are terse, it's because the notes weren't completed but I want to publish details as best I can. Obviously as I have time I'm going to go back and clean all this up.

 I'm a little nervous about running my own stuff, but I'm doing it. We'll see how it goes. After character introductions, I told everyone that they were in The Feasting Dragon and trying to decide how to spend the night before the gates open in Cael Vista. Anjelle wanted to know if there were other options and I said there would probably be someone around Camillune could stay with if she'd rather. Everyone else opted for rooms, with Ardour taking one of the three available nobility rooms. Innkeeper introduced himself as Winston Chalker and the evening passed. In the morning, Camillune went to the gates directly from wherever she was staying.  Winston and a newcomer named Rickard told them Grund's Vale had been overrun by goblins and they were requesting help. While everyone else debated, Winston went to the gates into Cael Vista and asked the people there waiting for the gate to open if they would help. Camillune was obviously the only one willing. They traveled the...