Minecart Madness : The One With the Skinning

Dice and Dorkuses returned to Dungeons and Dragons for minecarts, sweet jumps, parlay with an actual dragon, an awful tentacle monster, and some skinning.

The session began with the group deep in Wyrmheart mine, stalled on their quest for the second gem of King Toba, surrounded by fallen Kobolds. Shortly thereafter, a Kobold representative of Tzinder the dragon, and nominal owner of the mine, summoned the party to parlay.

The party traveled down to the audience chamber of Tzinder, a red-scaled dragon who viewed their recent excursion with amusement. In short order, Tzinder tasked the group with the rescue of her eggs, and the slaying of Gurken, a firenewt champion known for capturing and raising monsters.

The group agreed to her terms (300 gold coins per party member and 1 magic item each in exchange for her eggs, and Gurken's head.)

With that goal in mind, the group set off down the 40 mile long minecart tunnel connecting Wyrmheart Mine (Tzinder's Realm), and Hrakamar, a former Dwarven Smelting Facility. Before long, the party found a suspicious minecart full of Dwarven skeletons, a sweet jump, and a chasm.

Not wanting to live forever, the party took the bait and rode this mine cart down across a massive jump over the chasm. There were some magical precautions taken, but eventually the party held on tight as their minecart screamed down the track. The cart launched from the sweet jump, revealing an ambush party of Firenewt Warriors, little red, yellow and orange newt people, roughly human sized, armored and ready for combat. Members of the party lept from their doomed mine cart, drifting down thanks to a feather fall spell cast by Maxwell.

Things went pretty quickly against the firenewts, leading to one captive, 5 skinned firenewts, and one newt that lept into the chasm. The party decided to do the skinning in the hopes of making fire-resistant armor or garb. 

The prisoner led the group towards Hrakamar, extolling the virtues of Gurken along the way, eventually leading to a decision point, either heading towards moaning voices, or down other tunnels and possible patrols. The party chose to go towards the moaning, and rescue a number of Dwarves who were being held up.

Things rapidly went sideways here, as a tentacled beast emerged from a ball that was dropped from the ceiling. Between lady luck not favoring the party, and a certain heartbreaking bravery, both Maxwell and Chimis faced life threatening situations at least once, with Maxwell taking an injury dire enough to lead to some breathless searching through the rulebook to check for death by massive damage. Persistence, gruesome eye injuries to the monster, and a sacrifice of a large quantity of artisan salt, laid the beast low. 

From there, the group enlisted the help of the captive dwarves, and advanced towards the main smelting chamber, through a room of riled up lizard-horses. 

Scouting out the smelter chamber, it looked like there were a large # of workers, a raised platform, a foreman of sorts with a pickle depicted on its shield, and the gem of King Toba. Maxwell turned invisible, jumped/climbed up to the gem, replaced it with a minor, static illusion, and then returned with it. Before the firenewts were the wiser, the party set the lizard horses loose. In the ensuing chaos, most of the workers were slain, and Gurken, the foreman, was lured into something of an ambush by the group.

Gurken proved somewhat salty, but without the power of the gem, went down fairly quickly in combat. From there, the party paraded around Hrakamar with Gurken's head, cowing Firenewts by displaying it. They quickly grabbed the dragon eggs, and left the mine triumphant, earing Ingots of Adamantium from the rescued Dwarves, enough experience to level to 4 (and a little bit beyond), gold from Tzinder the dragon, and magic items from her horde.