Torches in the Twilight Session 46: Flying Monsters in the Borderlands

A young dragon named Raazakal has been extorting travelers in and near the Border Baronies Region. Kormatin confirmed with an oracle that she was a great niece of Fremiss the Vibrant and thought that she might be useful player in a potential new Swynfaredian Civil War because he uncovered evidence that the intial contest to determine Swynfaredia's first king was rigged against the Fremiss champion.   But first Kormatin had to find Raazakal.   Kormatin and company quickly discovered that a party of young dwarf adventurers made up predominantly of Dragonbane clan members was pursuing Raazakal as well and ended up following the dwarves following the dragon and making polite contact with friends and contacts along the way. At some point the dwarves meet up with Lorna the spirit loa who had some knowledge of where Raazakal was going and temporarily joined their party.   The PCs caught wind of a pattern of unusual animal activity. Wild animals were acting less afraid of humans and were behaving more aggressively than normal, including herbivores known for being timid. Eventually they switched targets from Raazkale to the source of the odd animal activity.   He left Fumaya to arrive in the Barony of Blue Peaks, went north to the Wooly Slopes Barony then then Merchant Principality of Centrum, turned west to the Principality of Red Streams then to then Barony of Bees. Then to than Iron Hills Barony then swung east to the Principality of Silfûrhëim, then to the Barony of Bats back to Iron Hills. Lorna and the dwarves were purusing the anomally and the PCs caught up with them and then caught up with the monster formerly known as the chimera Chalid.   Chalid's mere proximity disrupted and pained Lorna's loa senses, but the now expanded party was able to use her as a dowsing rod to find the monster.   It was night when the PCs caught up with Chalid. It was a tough fight because it was not immediately obvious that Chalid was incoporeal so the first round of attacks was wasted and they had to do a mad scramble. to figure out who was carrying a Silverwood weapon.   Aleesia and Ragani were unlucky and took a lot of damage from pecking swarms of birds, but the bird swarms' greatest danger was not the damage they inflicted, but the distraction they provided which hampered movement, attacks, and communication.   Ragani started by summoning light spirits to illuminate the target. Tried multiple times to weaponize her Healing Theurgy to wound the monster and failed each time, eventually forced to use Protection Theurgy to put up a shield on herself and withdraw after taking several injuries and depleting her mana.   Kormatin got stuck solo fighting a swarm of birds and was unaware that his companions were fighting a being that was incorporeal (and he had the group's best Silverwood weapon. Eventually Aleesia flew up to him to tell him about the incoporeal so he was able to belatedly pull the magical quarterstaff out and start beating the monster.   There was a large swarm of land based animals but all twelve people present had Overland Flight cast on them and were able to avoid the land based threat fairly easily.   Bendek had a Silverwood spear and flew at the monster quickly and Brigid used a Silverwood club. Both struggled to land a serious hit but gradually wore the monster down.   Lorna was already a good archer and channeled loa powers (despite the risk) to become an unsurpassed archer. She thinned out the hostile birds with arrows, but it had a neglibible effect because the more birds died, the harder the survivors fought. The dwarves did very little because the five dwarves only had one Silverwood weapon between them, but a dwarf did get the killing blow on the monster.   Kormatin and Brigid discovered that Raazakal was watching them from afar while invisible. When they flew towards her, the dragon fled. The PCs were tired, injured, and low on mana, so they opted not to pursue Raazakal any further.   The twelve adventurers limped back to Barony of Crystal Fields which was the closest settlement.     The session ended there.