18. September 26, 2010

The party decides to track down and kill the baby dragon while they are on the way to break the ritual that teleports Jelenneth back to the Yaunti each month. On their way, Kayla milks a mongoose to obtain anti-venom.

Shelby goes into dream state with Kayla and determines that the crown worn by the dragon is less than a year old. She then casts the "Object Reading" ritual and sees the following images:

• • The crown was originally forged by an old, well-muscled dragon-born, surrounded by staff-wielding Yaunti who are friendly to it. These Yaunti appear to be encanters, the religious leaders of the Yaunti.

  • The dragon-born presents the crown to an old Yaunti, who in turn offers the crown to a young green dragon

  • The young green dragon uses the crown to rally the poison-scale lizard folk to it

The implication is that the crown is not the ancestral crown worn by the poison-scale lizard folk ruler, but was forged as an imposter crown. Of course this begs the question: where is the original crown?

Kayla performs the "Magic Map" ritual to locate the dragon in a location just off the coast. Once she's brought the Party close to the location, she enters the dream state to do recon. She finds multiple Yaunti, and one portion of the small island that is repeatedly hit by lightening. She also found a portion of the passageway into the lair that is crumbling enough that it could be knocked down by the Party. Shelby knows that Yaunti kings were anathemas (massive, powerful snake beings), but something happened in the distant past that afflicted every anathema with insanity so that they began to devour everything. The anathema were overthrown by a rebellion of Yaunti led by the Encanters, who now rule as a council in place of the kings. Some Yaunti still revere the anathemas and work in secret to return them to their rightful place. Most Yaunti groups did not kill the anathema, but instead imprisoned them since the Encanters could not justify their destruction. The cults that worship the anathema make living sacrifices in the hopes that something will allow the anathema to get over their insanity and lead the Yaunti back to their rightful place as leaders among the sentient races.

The Party sneaks over to the island, and ambushes and kills a guard, finding a sun medallion on the guard with the face of an Eladrin female on it. The group then lures a sharp eye and two fang blades out of the lair, with a second sharp eye remaining in the lair. The handily dispatch the first sharp eye and eventually kill the two fang blades after barring the door to the lair with a log.