That's So Raven

You came back up out of the mine carrying about a tenth of the dwarves who'd gone in.

The rest were sealed off behind collapsed corridors. The two surviving dwarves at the gate told you what they could and tried not to look too long at what you were carrying.

Angus Silvervein was alive.

Lanina Brightblade and Kyra Tannerson were not.

You stopped on the way up at Donnic Wryvale's beam.

He was still there. He was still alive.

You offered him Cauterize and Spare the Dying. He had ten hit points left out of thirty-three. He looked at the dagger Dhuxtyn had left him, looked at the waterskin Ubys had left him, and decided to roll the dice.

Ubys gave him some of his special herb.

AC sawed through Donnic's lower half with hellfire-aided blade work, and somewhere in the middle of it AC went somewhere else — a flashback to a war he doesn't talk about, fighting side-by-side with devils.

Donnic survived.

KeYs carried him back to town.

You walked into the Dusty Gnome at dawn beyond exhausted. There was an ornate coach parked outside the inn. You did not see it. You collapsed into your beds.

Dawn came through the windows with something in it. A hint of Lathander. Something gold and old. And a darkness behind it. Curious.

Falkor crept off in the night and ate many, many bugs and grew. His wings filled out.

Around midday, Angus Silvervein knocked at the Dusty Gnome with a bamboo scroll case in his hand. He thanked you.

He gave you a banknote inside the case.

Five thousand gold pieces.

"I hope this gift repays you, and makes you feel like you have a stake in Leilon's future."

You took the case, and the morning, and a handshake from a dwarf who would have died without you.

You also visited the Knights of Vindictus' scribe, who paid you the standing thousand for the rescue.

The afternoon belonged to you.

AC wanted goggles of night and started skulking the alleys.

Ubys had his eye on a Staff of Withering and his heart on the Toke Inn — on Roz and Dorrin Stonefish and whatever shape Rhovan was in.

KeYs had wyvern scales and an idea about what to do with them.

Moist thought about a Sentinel Shield.

The day ended with the party richer than they'd ever been. The town settled around them. The bug-cleared mine sat behind them.

Outside, the ornate coach was still parked.

Next session: a hunchbacked gnome with a polite bow, a pair of horned twins on the coast, and an offer too strange to refuse.