Kwinter's Ranch
General Summary
Ti’ock dreamt of Two Towers..
Report Date
03 Nov 2023
Primary Location
After asking him some questions, we agreed to help them and spent the night at the Kwinter’s ranch. We were able to get some additional information about traveling through the Shadowglades north of here. We found out that there are some paths, but mostly everything is 5 to 10 ft. underwater. If we survived the attack tomorrow, Dil would give us enough lumber to build a raft to travel through the Shadowglades. After dinner we shared some stories back and forth until it was time to bed down for the night.
We rose early the next morning. There were still a few hours until Artha was supposed to be there, so we created a plan of defense. We herded the horses and goats into the covered pins to keep the animals safer and out of our way when fighting. Dil said that Artha appeared out of nowhere, this was magic for sure. Artha also said that she had dragons that would assist her, another powerful ally of hers. We asked if he could describe her so we knew what she looked like. He said that she would have been beautiful, but half of her face was scared by burns.
Recall a dream ...
We asked Dil if Artha ever mentioned someone by the name of Khardra, he said no, but we’re confident that there is some connection. Dil said that they would probably come by air, but we had to be ready for an attack from any direction. K'Taa warned the group not to shoot at the hippogriffs that were going to be in the air, they would be fighting for us.
Dil had a powerful magic item that might help, a flute that would create a powerful wind that might be able to help us, Oriana Salali took the flute and positioned herself in the middle of the ranch so she could direct a gust of wind in the best direction. Ra Di Gas positioned himself in the main barracks to protect one of the older ranch hands and to avoid the preliminary attack but aid us where he was needed as a secondary support. Ti'ock positioned himself at the entrance to the ranch just short of the bridge, K’Taa had Red Dog stay with him and assist if anything crossed the bridge. Mirra climbed one of the towers, along with two of the ranch hands, so they could get a good shot with their bows. K’Taa and Bing IronBlade took to the other tower, along with two ranch hands. We were in position for the attack.
Suddenly a mass of clouds formed and Artha’s image appeared, a dream of Oriana’s that had become reality.
She asked Dil if he had the payment. Dil put his fist in the air and said, “I have your payment right here!” That was all she needed to hear.
We saw them coming from quite a distance away but moving fast. There was twelve flying monkeys and a single black dragon, this was not going to be an easy fight. It didn’t look very likely that everyone was going to survive. Most of us were armed with bows and we took the initial shot, a few of the monkeys were hit but none dropped. Then they were upon us, all twelve of them at once and the dragon was going to be here next. Just like a game of chess, send in the pawns first and save the most powerful for the next blow.
Only 3 of the monkeys landed on the ground, Ti’ock, one of the ranch hands and Red Dog attacked the one closest to them. One monkey went into the hay and set fire trying to burn the ranch to the ground. Ra Di Gas went to try and extinguish the fire with some of his magic. One went to where the horses were and begun slaughtering them, Dil went to unleash his rage upon that one. Oriana blew the flute and was able to push 5 of the monkeys back that were still in the air and hold them at bay.
Bing begged K’Taa to let him ride one of the hippogriffs that he was going to summon, so a hippogriff suddenly appeared under Bing and lifted him into the air to engage with one of the flying monkeys with his lance. Bing wanted to go directly to the black dragon but the hippogriff was under the control of K’Taa. The two ranch hands that were with Bing and K’Taa continued to fire at the monkeys with their bows. Mirra, and the two ranch hands that were with her, continued to try and down some monkeys with their bows from the other tower.
K’Taa summoned a second hippogriff that joined the fight against the monkeys. The monkeys were starting to fall, one by one, but the fight continued and the black dragon was now in the battle. The black dragon aligned his breath attack, a line of acid, with one of the ranch hands, Ti’ock and Red Dog, and one of the monkeys also encompassed. Everyone managed to evade some of the acid except for the monkey on the ground who was killed.
Ra Di Gas continued fighting the fire but was quickly running out of spells. He was able to keep the fire from spreading but was unable to extinguish the flames in their entirety. A monkey then entered the area where the hay was burning bringing him face to face with Ra Di Gas. Ra Di Gas stepped back, turned invisible and was able to evade from being attacked by the monkey. But that left the fire to burn unimpeded.
With the death of the monkey that the hippogriff and Bing was fighting the hippogriff then turned to attack the black dragon. 
When the hippogriff was within range of the dragon Bing jumped off the back of the hippogriff onto the black dragons back, almost fell, but managed to hang on. Suddenly a second, smaller black dragon had joined the fight and had flown in close to the platform that Mirra was on. The fight was going to get harder with two black dragons.
K’Taa was going to start casting lightning bolts upon the first and larger black dragon, but with Bing on his back summoned three more hippogriffs instead, one to attack the larger black dragon and two to attack the smaller one. Then K’Taa began to climb down the tower into the where the animals were being kept. The larger black dragon began destroying the base of the tower that K’Taa was on. Meanwhile, Ti’ock using his sword, went to assist Dil with fighting the monkey that was attacking the horses and Mirra and her group continued their attack with arrows and were beginning to take out some of the monkeys.
With the larger black dragon attacking the tower, the 2 ranch hands also smartly decided to quickly descend from the tower following K’Taa into the stable. Then the tower fell and crashed into the courtyard. Fortunately, no one was beneath where the tower fell, or they would have been crushed for sure. When K’Taa was inside the stable he noticed that one of the monkeys had managed to get into the stables and was attacking the animals. He went to confront and kill the monkey with his sword.
The larger dragon then began to fly over to help the smaller black dragon and bring down that tower as well but noticed that Bing was trying to damage its wings. The dragon did some maneuvers and make Bing fall off. Unfortunately for Bing it was successful. Bing fell about 30 feet but was able to quickly recover from the fall. But the larger black dragon had 3 hippogriffs attacking it and doing damage by now.
The smaller dragon began attacking the tower that Mirra was on trying to bring it down as well. Seeing that the other tower had already fallen encouraged everyone on this tower to descend quickly to the relative safety of the ground. The two hippogriffs that were attacking second, smaller dragon managed to do enough damage to it before the tower fell and made it flee.
With the smaller dragon gone and the larger dragon now having to contend with potentially five hippogriffs attacking it and taking substantial damage itself, also decided to flee and leave the flying monkeys to do their damage. The flight of a dragon is faster than the speed of the hippogriffs and the dragons managed to escape but were severely damaged. It was then a mop up campaign with the group quickly finishing the remaining monkeys and extinguishing the fire using buckets of water. The Kwinter’s ranch was saved with only a few of us hurt, but no one on our side had died. 
Oriana dreamt of a beautiful woman with ½ of her face scared while she was floating or flying.
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