The Second D&D Tarak Campaign - Pits and Dragons

Welcome to the ongoing saga of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran a little while back, using The Sunken Citadel module from the Tales From The Yawning Portal source book.

In the last post, the party fought a significant battle against a horde of goblins, defeating them despite all the goblins' numbers and cunning. They also freed a gnomish prisoner the goblins had been holding.

I hope you enjoy my D&D campaign write-ups, and the commentary I add to them. Questions, comments and feedback are welcome !

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Having healed themselves after the battle with the goblins and freed Erky Timbers, the gnome prisoner the goblins had been holding, the party spent a little bit of time digging through their spare kit and what they could loot from the goblins' bodies.

The idea was to give Erky at least basic armour and weapons to give him a chance to be useful and survive. They still didn't think to ask him anything about what was going on down in the Sunken Citadel. By treating him just as a bit of an encumbrance and potential meat-shield, they really didn't endear themselves to him, so he didn't volunteer any information !

Then our headstrong heroes pressed on through the dungeon. Almost immediately they encountered a corridor with a room off it which had held a few goblins, ones which had run through to aid in the battle and been slaughtered. Looting the room, they found very little of interest, just a copper piece or two and some rather unpleasant unwashed bedding.

The end of the corridor had another door. For some reason, Griff was in the lead rather than Reaswe. I guess they thought having a warrior-type rather than a lightly-armed rogue up front was a good idea if they ran into another wave of goblins.

Unfortunately, for Griff, what they actually found (or rather, what he found the hard way) was a concealed pit in front of the door. It was only ten feet deep, but that was enough to do him some serious damage. After all, the party were still only second level at that point.

Once Griff had been assisted to make an undignified scramble out of the pit, Reaswe was easily able to find a way to lock it into place. I have a feeling he found the whole episode hugely amusing. It was becoming clear there was a certain rivalry between the two.

With the pit secured, the heroes pushed open the door at the end of the corridor.

What they saw in front of them was a chamber cluttered with old furniture, much of it broken. The walls of the room were covered with mounted trophies; stuffed victims and heads on shields. Of course, these were goblin trophies, so most of them were remarkably unimpressive; sheep, rats and the occasional kobold head.

In the centre of the room was a rusty iron spike anchoring a broken chain.

The room felt cold, and this together with the chain should have been the clue for the party that it wasn't just an empty chamber waiting for them to loot it of anything valuable.

Hiding in the room waiting and watching was Calcryx, a white dragon wyrmling. For those who don't play D&D, dragons are mostly identified by their colour. Metallic coloured dragons are generally good-aligned, while coloured ones are evil. Wyrmlings are among the youngest of dragons, so easier to deal with than full-grown ones, but still a significant challenge to low level characters.

Calcryx had originally been a kind of unwilling mascot to the kobolds, who like to think of themselves as a type of dragon-kin. The goblins had captured her, but she had her own ideas. She'd broken the chain used to restrain her, trashed the room and was now hostile to anyone entering.

Once the party were mostly inside the chamber, she emerged and blasted as many as she could catch in the cone of effect with a jet of frosty breath. Two of the three hit made their saving throws, but still took a certain amount of minimal damage.

The fight that ensued was messy, complicated and very, very dangerous for the characters.

I deliberately played Calcryx as a smart opponent. She alternated between hiding among the clutter and furniture to ambush people, and (when her breath weapon had recharged) launching herself to fly out of reach at the top of the high ceilinged room. From ambush, she'd strike out at individual characters before retreating among the debris before others could arrive to help. In the air, she's circle around until an opportunity arose to use her freezing breath weapon in a way to catch multiple characters.

The most effective character against the baby dragon was Garnet, the aaasimar sorcerer. Her eldritch blast was the most accurate and effective ranged weapon the party had when Calcryx was airborne. But sorcerers are squishy, with few hit points. After Calcryx was hit by a couple of well-placed blasts, she focused her attacks on this dangerous opponent. Garnet was soon unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

Reaswe followed shortly after, although this was really just down to bad luck after rolling a couple of poor saving throws.

This left Griff and Erioch (the battle priest). They struggled to work out whether it was better to spread out to avoid the jets of frozen air, or to fight back-to-back and reduce the effectiveness of the attacks with teeth and claws.

Despite constantly changing tactics, their efforts started to pay off. With more hit points than the others they had the ability to absorb damage without falling over, and the attrition from their counter-strikes started to wear Calcryx down.

Eventually, they cornered the dragon and beat her to death (thus avoiding the risk that the kobolds would have paid a handsome reward for their mascot back...). By the end of the fight, the two characters still standing were very low indeed on hit points, and had to save their healing to rouse their two fallen comrades.

After looting what treasure Calcryx had, the party decided it was time for a long rest - they needed it !

Next time..... last stand