Azalakardon's Lair

23 Dravago, 994 YK

We decide to head through the portal and see if we can enter the temple. We know that there will be a fight as the elementals started appearing when I went through it as a test earlier. We spring the trap and find that there is a plateau covered with a thin skein of plot device water. 4 large vats, 2 water elementals, and 2 water weirds. Convenient Lucky for the weirds, the water on the ground allows them the opportunity to move on the battlefield, instead of being stuck in their vats.

We bypass our usual attempts at parley, draw our weapons, and stick the pointy ends into the creatures. Poor Wabnuc got swallowed again. An elemental grabbed him and dropped him in the deep end of the lake. That gnome has a knack for getting eaten. He must be super tasty to monsters. Kobold reinforcements arrive and two of them manage to save Wabnuc. They have magical helmets that allow one to breath underwater! Anyway, it was a long and brutal fight but at least Swim Shady got out of his fishbowl and stretched his fins in this water wonderland. After the fight, we licked our wounds and continued into the main temple.

We had to perform the ritual meat sacrifice and all of us had to drink a potion, perform interpretive dance, and pull a level at the same time in order to access the inner temple. Overly complicated rituals to enter a temple are such a pain in the backside, but we are in. We descend a tunnel for a while and that stops and branches into three paths. We head up a path only to find more treasure than I've ever seen. A large fortune to be sure, but no dragon. So tempting!

Perhaps the dragon is in another branch. So rude to invite us in and then not be there to greet us! We backtrack and take a different tunnel. This leads us to a dragon egg in a nursery. All kinds of neat to see a real dragon egg, but still no dragon to meet us. So weird. It must be a test! We backtrack and take the third tunnel. This leads to a library—a crystal library. There is a weird looking human man with tentacles sticking out of him in various places. I've heard of this look. I think they call it lovecraftian? It's kinda creepy to me. He completely ignores our attempt to talk with him. How come parley never works?

Well, Miles decides to tackle him to get his attention, and he swivels out of the way. I get super annoyed and stick my rapier in him. That got his attention! He lifts his head out of the crystal and says that the dragon is being tortured nearby, but won't give us the location. He wants us to join his frat—the cult of the dragon below. I've heard of these weirdos, they get monstrous appendages grafted onto themselves in an attempt to become stronger. I have no desire to become a mutant and politely decline. He runs away to fight another day.

Miles gets the brilliant idea to look into the crystal book that the guy was reading, and sees the town that showed up in the teleport room. We decide to head back to the teleport room. We should tie ourselves down and go for a long rest so none of us decides to swim to the bottom of the lake when we fail our attempts to resist the sparkly rock's temptation.