Overview
After his experience in captivity, Leosin (LG male
half-elf martial arts adept) needs several days to recover. When he’s healthy again, he intends to travel north to
Elturel to convey what he’s learned to Ontharr Frume, a paladin of
Torm who shares his concern over the Cult of the Dragon’s recent surge in activity. He has a favor to ask of the characters.
| "After all you’ve done already for me personally and for the people of Greenest, I hate to ask anything more from you. But the need is great, and I dare to hope that you can aid me one time more. I need you to return to the cultists’ camp. You know your way around it now. If the cultists are preparing to conduct another raid, or a large body of them marches away, or if anything substantial is carried into or out of that cave, I need to know. If you have a chance to get into the camp and look around again, that would be the ideal way to spot anything that's changed." |
"I don’t recommend letting yourselves get captured," he adds with a wry smile.
Leosin offers them 150 gp apiece. He’s willing to haggle; this mission is important, and no one else is available who Leosin believes can handle it. If the characters accept, he tells them to find him at the city of
Elturel afterward, both to report and to collect their pay. If he has moved on before they reach the city, they can speak to the paladin Ontharr Frume instead.
The monk doesn’t believe it’s essential that the characters head back to the camp immediately. He doesn’t expect the cultists to make any sudden changes in their plans or mode of operation. Leosin is wrong about this, because he doesn’t realize how much his presence in Greenest alarmed the wyrmspeaker.
Rezmir knows that Leosin is investigating the Cult of the Dragon, but she doesn’t know whether the monk’s appearance in Greenest was a coincidence, a good guess, or a sign that the cult’s whole plan has been compromised. She isn’t willing to take chances: she’s heading north with the accumulated treasure immediately.
Abandoned Camp
When characters return to the camp area, they find it mostly abandoned (if they stayed, they witnessed the rapid packing up and abandonment of the camp). The stinking huts of the
kobolds (those on level 1) have been burned, but the level 2 huts and both guard towers remain. Anyone can determine from tracks that the cultists trekked away in small groups in all directions. A successful DC 10 Wisdom (Perception) check reveals that most of the camp’s wagons and pack animals moved in a train toward the west.
Still left in the camp are some hunters, the kobolds who tend the
Dragon Hatchery in the caves, Frulam Mondath, her guards, and Langdedrosa Cyanwrath. Only the hunters still use the huts. All others live in the hatchery cave. The activity and guards around the cave mouth should be the top draw on the characters’ attention.
On most mornings, hunters fan out onto the grassland to hunt for
deer and other large game. They travel on horseback and bring along an extra horse to pack the field-dressed game back to the camp. Hunters don’t necessarily return to the camp every evening. They stay out until they have a load of meat to bring back. Hunting on the Greenfields is good, so they seldom need to spend more than a night or two away. Four
scouts act as hunters; roll a d4 to determine how many are in the camp when characters arrive. They are not dedicated cultists, so they won’t challenge characters who enter the camp, attack them, or even alert the cultists. They consider standing guard to be beneath them.
They are a taciturn bunch, so they won’t be much help to inquisitive characters. They converse more freely with rangers, but to most strangers they merely nod, point, shake their heads, scowl, and utter one-word or two-word answers. If characters converse with them, these hunters can relate how the camp dissolved within hours after the discovery of the captured
half-elf’s escape.
Crates carried from the cave were loaded onto wagons or animals and hauled to the west. A few raiders remain in the cave: the Wearer of Purple (Mondath), the “
dragon-man” (Cyanwrath), the better warriors, and the “dragon-
dogs” (kobolds). As long as the cultists pay well for fresh meat, the trackers continue hunting for them. Whatever else the cave holds is none of their concern.
A thorough search of the camp takes about ten hours. Allow characters to make a Wisdom (Perception) check after the first hour. A successful roll means the character realizes that while quite a bit of material has been left behind, it’s all trash: cracked pottery, rusty
daggers, soiled clothing and bedding, cheap cookware, and wine that’s gone to vinegar. Some of it might be of use to the people of Greenest who lost everything in fires, but it has no value as treasure.
The Hatchery
The only thing of interest remaining in the camp is the
Dragon Hatchery itself (area 4), which characters can see from the camp. There, characters find the cultists who stayed behind, a clutch of
dragon eggs, the special cadre of
kobolds who tend the eggs - and the many traps the kobolds set to defend their home.
Rewards
After the
Dragon Hatchery has been destroyed and the cultists are gone, characters should head for
Elturel and their rendezvous with Leosin Erlanthar and Ontharr Frume. They might choose to follow the wagon tracks instead. The wagons followed the course roughly laid out on the map in Mondath’s chamber: west to
Beregost, then north along the Trade Way. They have at least a full day’s head start on the characters, and possibly more, depending on how much time characters spent in Greenest before returning to the plateau.
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