Into the Lion’s Den, ehrm.. Dragon’s Den

Unsurprisingly the locals were not intent on helping us. Rhumor overhead a plan to poison us, and did warn us in time. After a rather candid chat with the village elder, she agreed to truly give us some information that was useful. We decided amongst ourselves to pretend we had been poisoned as a quiet way of entering the lair. The downside being that, excepting Rhumor, none of us had our packs when we were left alone in the uppermost lair of the dragon’s den.
 
A mostly methodical scouting and clearing of the upper levels of the White Dragon’s lair went largely without serious incident or surprise. Virgil did trigger a magical alarm that had been placed on some treasure, alerting the Dragon to our presence. We did find Maccath, who seemed rather despondent and hopeless, but she did give what little information she could about the lair. Lastly, there were some rather interesting ice toads about that seemed possessed of astonishingly high intellectual capacity. Nuri was able to convince them with Maccath to effectively stay out of the fighting.
 
Finally we delved deeper down. Having lived in Luskan, and even having been to Ten Towns once in the far, far north, I thought I had a very solid understanding of what true cold felt like. I was wrong. This lair sapped ones’ energy in a way I’d never seen. Not long after our final approach to the dragon’s nesting place it began.
 
Virgil, Rhumor, and Nuri all got hit by some sort of spell bringing them to a crawl. Conrad and I were able to resist the spell’s effects, but it was an uphill fight with three of our number moving so slowly. Merrow jumped out of the ice slush near the forward scouts. Just as we dispatched the first Merrow, and Nuri had managed to magical entrance the others, here came the dragon. Ice stalactites were constantly falling from the ceiling of the cavern, and they appeared to be magical as they were actually targeting us specifically. A strange almost frozen fog developed around me, forcing me off my high perch and down to the fray below. The dragon breathed its frozen breath, slapping about wildly with its barbed tail. When it will lift off from the ground its wings caused horrific effects, knocking us to ground and suffering from flying balls of ice beating our bodies. Rhumor got off his arrow of dragon slaying just before being knocked unconscious. I finally managed to get close enough to it to begin showing it the power of Flame Tongue and I let the blade bite deeply into the dragon’s forearm, nearly severing it. At some point during the melee I saw Nuri get knocked out and called upon Qotl to bring her back to consciousness again.
 
Just as we were thinking the dragon would be felled it dove into the icy slush and disappeared. Conrad parted the waters to give us a view of the dragon, but it was momentary at best before it disappeared deeper down. Nuri called out his name and shot off a psychic lance at the hidden monster. Understanding her intent I did the same, and then Nuri did it again. To no avail, the dragon still lived, and we could not see it. Nuri and I had expended our energy for those spells, and we could not see it. Then, it rushed back into the room and faced us head on, catching nearly all of us in its icy breath of death. Rhumor fell, with all signs of life seemingly gone now. It began biting and clawing at Virgil and I, but it made the mistake of thinking it could survive the onslaught that the Minotaur could meat with my blade at its back. As it was clearly in its agonizing final breaths Nuri threw her chromatic orb at it felling the vile White.
 
Conrad immediately rushed to our fallen comrade and revived him, and then a tremendous warmth spread over all of us as he imbued his healing power over our entire band. Uncertain if there would be more fighting to come Nuri gave a few of us the benefit of a brief rest to gather our thoughts and stamina. Fortunately it was not needed.
 
We were able to explore the remainder of the cavern system without incident, taking the majority of the dragon’s hoard. This White seemed particularly fond of magic, but not weapons. Of note, we found a cloak that Virgil liked and should serve him well, helping to protect him from magical effects. There was also a small metal cube I stumbled across, and upon magical examination, it turned out to be an adamantine tower that could be called upon at any time. What a marvelous thing! Though, I am uncertain how much use it would be to us. Perhaps…. but, the gold we would likely receive for selling such a prize is likely to be of more use still.
 
Maccath thanked us, clearly dumbfounded at our success. She also convinced the Ice Toad leader to join her at the Arcane Brotherhood, and intimated that Nuri’s work here would be remembered.
The villagers above threw a party and began packing to leave this place where they had been enslaved for so long. There apparently has been no sign of the strange little gnome that raced off on the sled… though the villagers indicated they would send out search parties.
We packed our things, signaled for the ship to come pick us up, eager to leave the frozen Sea of Moving Ice. Hopefully our journey back to Luskan and Waterdeep will be uneventful, we could use a bit of rest.