#10 - Dragonshard Retrieval

In the morning, Cypher, Cyzicus, Rendar, Magnus, and Xoma set out with the warforged Keystone to investigate the crash site of Sky Talon. Cypher, in particular, was hoping to recover the Khyber dragonshard that had been used to bind the elemental. Meanwhile, Halbazar and Doongul remained with the gnomes and other charges, along with Kyress and the hobgoblins of Clan Jar'aram.

It didn't take long to find the fallen ship where it had slammed into the edge of the city on the third tier.  In fact, the Sky Talon has clearly cracked open and half had fallen over the cliff's edge on that side, down hundreds of feet to the valley floor. What remained had been scorched but not burned, though smoke continued to fume out from the missing bow and smashed underside—it seemed the fire elemental had burned up everything inside the ship.

Though the elemental itself was nowhere to be found.

Investigation did, however, yield something: a nine-foot, spiked-club-wielding ogre, who'd been rooting around inside the wreckage, and his kobold allies who lurked in the nearby cracks of the city wall. Cypher's attempt to warn the creature off hadn't quite worked. So the ogre attacked.

To make matters more interesting, the ogre was carrying around a cage of stirges—bloodsucking bird-insects that have been known to drain men to death in seconds. Hurling the cage at the nearby stairs, where Cyzicus and Rendar had taken their stances, the ogre unleashed them. The stirges harried and sucked at the half-orc and shifter alike, though they seemed particularly keen on Rendar's blood. Because Rendar never quite gets a break.

Keystone held his own, took several hits from the ogre. Xoma used color spray to dazzle and distract the ogre, and it paid off well. Despite a few injuries and ugly stirge bites, the PCs won the battle and the kobolds, ogre, and stirges were all slain—though it seemed more kobolds lurked within warrens beyond the wall. they shunned the daylight and didn't press their attack. The last couple of the draconic humanoids were impaled on a pair of thorny pads that lashed at them from shifting shadows of a nearby wall....

Indeed, one of the displacer beasts from the hold was loose!


But it didn't attack, it merely approached, growled low, warning them, then climbed into the smoking wreckage. Aware that the creature wasn't interested in attacking the whole of them, the PCs yet dared to sneak back into the remains of the ship to pilfer the large purple dragonshard. Between Magnus and Xoma, they succeeded—and the displacer beast merely struck Xoma once on the way out with one of its pad-spiked tentacles.

Also, Xoma found and pocketed a magic ring (mostly a loop of leather) that had been worn by an armored kobold.