Text by Paul O'Connor, Dungeon Master
What's worse -- a vengeful dragon or an avalanche? How about ... getting stuck between those things? A-yup.
It would have been easier to run for it. Over the wall! Into the mine! But, nope, the heroes picked the main keep. It was close. But it was also right in the path of the avalanche.
Run! Up the stairs! Get the girls! Quaff a speed potion and get moving! And for the most part, that's what happened ... with a path clearing to safety when Codoroth the Longtail -- the aforementioned dragon -- failed (for a second time!) to pluck Sompher up in his claws, and instead pranged off an elevated bridge and crash landed in the castle courtyard.
And then Arthur, who might have been baited a bit by an evil DM, saw that dragon was on the ground, maybe disoriented, certainly with its back toward our Murderball, and the halfling thought that "Arthur Dragonslayer" had a nice ring to it.
So up he leapt, in between the shoulders of the beast, where the wings come together and there's sure to be a weak spot. Sure to be. Right here. Somewhere around here. Oh, dear.
Enter Khostov Sarkagan, who conjured the Phantasmal image of a giant to fight Codoroth, and the surprisingly dim dragon bought it, and thrashed in futility as that imaginary giant did very real damage to him (and as Arthur finally got through those dragon scales). Quickly getting the worst of the fight, Codoroth surged off to return to the skies, flapping hard and barely clearing the ground as the avalanche slammed into the castle. Arthur deftly leaps from the back of the rising dragon, turning an ankle but making it to the keep just in time to see the dragon wing into the oncoming wall of billowing snow. Escaped? Buried alive? None can say.
Then the avalanche hit the tower, and the tower hit the ground; with our heroes inside. One of the girls was pinned -- I think it was Jenny -- but Khostov blew the beam aside with a Thunderwave and the whole group rushed down into the basement of the tower as the walls gave way before a whole mountain on the move.
Everyone hung on to their gear! Blah even got the Vorpal Sword, though he cut himself and Sompher pretty fierce in their panicked flight to safety.
In the basement ... rotten supplies, and a place to rest up, sealed in by who knows how many tons of ice and rubble above. Also the entrance to an oubliette.
After determining that trying to dig out of the basement could take weeks (or more, or forever), the heroes cranked open the oubliette and reveals what sure seemed like a bottomless pit beneath. Or functionally bottomless, in any case. Blah went down on a rope, and eighty-odd feet down the well found a side passage, maybe four and a half feet tall.
Unroping himself, he went in, at a crouch, axe at the ready, scanning ahead with his keen dark vision. Up above, Sompher headed down on the rope.
Blah thought he saw something in the tunnel ahead of him ... but the dice were not kind. Some of the most dreadful words in the D&D language are "You noticed the Gelatinous Cube, but too late." Glug!
And that's where we left it!
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