Dragons, Dwarves, Goblins, a Wedding, and a Giant

So, sorry Journal, I know it's been a while, but Boy, do I have a LOT to share with you.
 
Basically, it all starts back when we went on our quest to Ironguard for something called Kings Water for Nelethorp and hopefully something that will help heal those golden strips back together.
 
On our way up, we agreed to take a few Bedín Merchants North with us for a small fee and a potential partnership(we'll see how much that turns out to be true). We got ransacked by a troop of goblins looking to try and take some of our crew. The bedín were trying to save their own skins and sell out our crew instead of theirs. Luckily, Flux and I arrived in just enough time to stop this from happening and start to chase down the goblins as they fled. One was able to escape my magic missiles as they scampered up to the top of the ship, wriggling up the rigging, and eventually making it to the top of the balloon. Unlucky for them, though, we have an agile and deft quartermaster in Andredalis: He quickly was able to loose his arrows while perfectly dismantling their escape. It was glorious! Especially when he jumped over the basket they were planning to escape in and laid the final blow with his dagger into the last goblin. Flux and I were left almost speechless as he moved so swiftly and dealt with them all before we even had a chance to get up there.
 
OH! Flux also has been getting weirder with her powers.
She was able to make one of the goblins think that the rigging was attacking them and just... let go.. I definitely don't wanna get on Their bad side.
 
From there, we were able to make it to Ironguard seemingly easily (after all that nonsense). As soon as we landed, we wanted to gather information on where we can find this Kings Water, so we decided to go to the place that had the most noise and people. Once we got there, we kinda started to relax... maybe a little too much...
 
We were fine, in all honesty, but I feel maybe I enjoyed the music a little too much. Really, though, the performance was SPECTACULAR. They must've had some mage/sorcerer/wizard/artificer handling the fire, because there was so much amazing lighting going on. The bagpipe solo had all of the dwarves on the dance floor. I haven't seen so many dwarves moving so wildly IN MY LIFE. Afterwards, we just HAD to meet the performer, so we walked up to their table and met them: Peter Tucker, he/she/they call themselves, a hairless Tabaxi AND happened to be someone that had the information we needed AND a way in.
 
We needed to crash a wedding: a phrase stolen from my roommate at the college who was a little more adventurous than I(at the time).
 
We knew the date of the wedding, had a new accomplice, had a map of where this Aqua Regia was held; we just needed to come up with a solid plan and gather information to get in and out as easy as possible.
 
We ALSO had a couple of days to the wedding, so we did some shopping. I ended up putting on hold a Thunder Enhancing Telescope. I thought it was the coolest thing! It uses these lenses to focus the energy of a specific spell to make it more powerful and increase its range! The only problem was that it costs SO much(of course). We needed to make a trip to the bank, fortunately for us, that's also where we need to scope out to find the aqua regia(kings water).
 
Basically, all that happened on that trip was us figuring out how exactly we were going to execute our plan, Peter making a deposit of the jewelry Nelethorp gave us, me getting a loan from the bank for my new toy/weapon, and finding out that they hold you overnight after a certain time. I was able to purchase said fun telescope and even talked to them about potentially creating some fire empowering lenses for it as well(I really hope those get made quickly!). We got followed by a group of goblins in a coat, but they didn't pose too much of a threat to us at the time, so we let them go.
 
Peter and I were going to go to this wedding as performers and I was carrying her instrument(secretly my thunder focusing device), SO he had to dress me up! They did my makeup and everything! I never felt so out of my element, but I was assured, and felt, like I looked good. We had a few goals with our plan going into the bank for this wedding: pick up the deposit we made and grab the aqua regia. If we had to blast our way out, we were really prepared for the worst. Flux had infiltrated the dwarven servers, so they would be there to help as well.
 
Somehow, we executed this plan almost perfectly: We got in easily enough, Peter caused a diversion to steal the Wizards key(Ironbeard, I think his name was), Flux and I snuck off to the Aqua regia location, had to talk our way past some very confusing stone guardians, and I was able to grab the aqua regia and take my gaseous form potion and float out of the bank. I'm not quite sure how they got out, but it seems that they might have kept the doors open because they were able to join me at the ship that very afternoon. I THINK flux got out looking like me; I'll take it as a compliment for sure. Also, Flux totally stole something from the wedding gifts.
 
The next day, when went back to the shop, we tried to barter off the thing that Flux stole. Because I was new to the bartering area and assumed that flux wasn't, I let flux take the lead. The shopkeeper seemed VERY interested in the stolen gift. I made sure that flux got at least more than what we wanted, but I thought she would try and get more than that for something that looks almost priceless. I was shocked at how little we got from that transaction, but relieved to have the money I needed to end my debt to the bank. Flux looked pleased at their accomplishment, so I decided not to engage it more than a gentle ribbing.
 
Found out I could settle my wages with the bank through mail, so I decided that would be best, as we had a mission on hold to head farther north for Andredalis: something about challenging a Giant in Ascore.
 
So we were off! We had no idea what to expect, except(those have the same letters in them i just noticed) that Dré had to face them and win, whatever that means. When we arrived, it was a cold and sandy wasteland of a place; there were some buildings, but they had been worn down from the wind and sand and just looked pretty rough. In the center though, was a very interesting group of buildings; red stone pyramid shapes. We landed just outside of the city in a crowded area where there were lots of merchants and people looking for treasure, glory, some kindof deity, etc. It took little time to be able to find the giant we were looking for. They basically said, "follow the booming laughter and voice"... so we did.
 
He was massive: a booming mass of personality, voice, and physicality. I tried my best to make him laugh and appease him( as I've read you should do when in the presence of a Giant). He challenged Andredalis to a competition to get a scale from one of the dragons residing on the outskirts of the (once)city. The rules were: Scale in hand, 48 hours, meet at the center of the city, and last one there loses. We left there determined, but also a little tired from a short battle on the way in. We decided to take a nights rest to be able to approach this task clearheadedly.
 
The next day, we headed toward the northeastern side of the city, choosing to go around because we were wary of having to gain elevation(Ruby said because it's so cold, the air in our balloon can't hold much pressure right now). We were headed to the dragon named Shezaron! What a NAME! SO powerful sounding! We decided to take the balloon close, but not too close, so we didn't damage our only way back home too much. We got closer and noticed there were TONS of people lined up to this ship where Shezaron was, supposedly. Getting a bit closer, we figured out that these were followers/worshippers of Shezaron the dragon. Flux tricked some of them so we could move up in the line AND it worked brilliantly, UNTIL we came to the guards at the end of the ramp. They saw right through us, but led us to the front of the line anyways. Once in the presence of this brilliant dragon, we found out that because flux could speak through minds is why they wanted us. Shezaron wanted us to serve them.
 
The only way we were going to be able to get a scale from Shezaron, was to be able to prove ourselves to them through combat: we had to take on several of their disciples. I only feel bad about what we did to those disciples of Shezaron, because of how swiftly we dealt with them, but in actuality, they were attacking us just as hard, going for the kill.
 
One got away.
 
We chased this disciple through a sinking sand pit and ran across an old man, meditating or praying. We stopped for a second, asking for directions, but he only offered nonsense and just eventually pointed us toward the way we were going anyways. Moving on, we encountered a room with a weird worm creature and a lot of crystals all over on the ceiling and such. Battling this creature proved tough: myself, Flux, Peter, Andredalis, and Baldric were put to the test. Baldric almost lost his life being knocked out by this creature and maybe a little bit because of a crystal i might've knocked down on him accidentally when I was aiming for the creature.
 
After taking a nap, we moved forward to a promising end. We found our Disciple; we also found another one and an altar. Fighting though one disciple, we saw the other one touch the altar and become completely overtaken somehow; we swiftly killed them too. I saw some writing on the altar so I decided to try and read it...when I failed, I decided to use a little magic to see what it says. As i touched it, I could feel that something wanted to overtake my mind, but I was able to fight it. I found out that the altar has the essence of a deity in it and needs to be touched to transfer the deity into it and make a sacrifice, of some sort. We try to throw a body on the altar to see if the sacrifice is good from a dead body. I end up falling into it and touching the altar: I black out, but remember feeling very small and cold; I woke up with one of my daggers inside of Flux. The altar starts to open up slowly. My friends, rightly, tie me up before I can do more harm and I slowly shrug off the effects of the altar. Then runs in the old man we ran into earlier! He seems to be a disciple of whatever that deity is that is inscribed on the altar, because he keeps asking us if we have/will touch the altar. EVENTUALLY, he asks if he can touch the altar: thats when Baldric ties him up as well and eventually ends up untying me. We take the old man, tied up, and toss him on the altar. The doors open and no one else ends up touching that cursed altar.
 
Moving forward, we find a path that leads to another line. These other worshippers are holding jewels, gold, incense, etc. to offer to what we've looked down towards the bottom center as Shezaron themselves. Some of us tried to get a little of the gold and jewels they were throwing down towards the center before I cast Featherfall on everyone to be able to make it down safely. We finally talked to Shez, face to face, and came to an agreement for their scale; Andredalis still needed to give something else to them though... his loyalty: meaning, giant's loyalty with Dré's wins in competitions. As we leave, Peter nicks a jewel off of a worshipper and causes chase; thankfully Peter is VERY fast and has powerful friends.
 
We get back to the opening, but realize we can't take the ship to where we're going: we have to run in to the finish line. Off in the distance we can see a cloud and a show of clouds and power behind it, realizing that it is the Giant, we quicken our pace. We encounter some birds, a dead mammoth, and another giant but, none of them keep us too long. We eventually get to a long street in the city that we can tell is our final pathway to the finish line. We try our best to get to the finish line on our own, but the giant showed up out of nowhere AND in the middle of the long street. SO, I had to play a little dirty and so did the rest of our team, but to our benefit, it wasn't laid out in the rules. We started really hard into running towards the center of the city, but when they showed up, and I realized how fast the giant was , I stopped and laid back to hold off the giant to help Dré in winning. The sister dragon showed up( the one the giant was getting the scale of), and started shooting lightning down the streets. Basically hitting the giant and stopping the giant from progressing while keeping Dré moving forward was our only goal.
 
We were successful!
 
The dragon dispersed, but the giant was SO far behind that Andredalis won easily, dancing around this really weird looking "water" fountain. The giant came up laughing and grabbed his scale and threw it into the center of the fountain and creates a portal... I decide I need some of this " water". I grab a little of this "water", but ask Andredalis to stay with us so we can potentially use this water to create a portal eventually.
 
We head back to Endsfield: It's pretty uneventful at first, but we come into a storm as we get closer to home. We encounter lots of debris of abandoned or emptied ships as well as rocks flying through the air with us . A few of the ships happened to be goblin ships, so we had to fight a bit. We fought well and strong, but all of us grew stronger throughout the trip, so we taught those goblins a bit of a lesson. We navigated a lot of debris, but mainly we fought off a goblin horde and saved a couple of passengers of a ship that, might, happen to join the Aether Gayle fleet.
 
Cheers,
 
Lord Captain Errakaias Owlgrove