So another session down, my players didn’t really make much progress through the dungeon, I had envisioned the possibility of clearing the place in one session. After the last session I had decided to break the remaining encounters into two rooms. Kobolds and Guard drakes, then the remaining humanoids, a couple of Kobolds from the egg chamber and Langdedrosa Cyanwrath, the blue half dragon, in a further chamber.
The players started looking at the options branching from the stirge lair, a corridor to the left, an open room dead ahead and a staircase leading down to the right. The Rouge and Fighter headed down the corridor, searching for traps luckily and found the spike pit leading to the next chamber. I described the large area below them with steps surrounded by a metal cage with a door wide open at the bottom. From above the two of them saw the training equipment and straw bedding and judged it correctly as a training area for the guard drakes.
The rest of the party investigated the two other areas, the Death Cleric threw his ever burning rock into the pile of garbage in the open room and determined there was nothing of worth there, recovering the rock with mage hand. Then they looked down the staircase and found the wall of leather strips, they used mage hand again to move the strips aside but were unable to move enough to see through. Giving up on these they made through the training area and down the flight of stairs downward.
The rouge led and making his stealth checks was able to see three guard drakes (young ones with diminished HP). He used his fire breath on the unaware drakes and ran back up the staircase to the party. One of the drakes made chase with the other two being controlled and held by kobolds the rouge hadn’t seen. The party were able to make quick work of the single drake back at the top of the staircase.
Next the rogue and druid made their way down the stair case to the now alerted drakes, the druid cast Flaming Sphere in the middle of the drakes and rammed it into one of them. The Rouge ran back upstairs and the two enraged drakes pulled their kobold handlers into the ball of flames, both failed their Dexterity checks and were burnt up still holding the chains of the drakes. Luckily the Druid was in a 5ft wide staircase so only one drake could attack him, he retreated on his next turn up to the rest of the party.
Now both drakes charged up the corridor, I sent the less damaged one up first to take the brunt of the party’s prepared actions and was able to get both drakes into the fray. They took some good chunks out of the party but with only 2 against 6 they were relatively easy to take out.
Once the battle was concluded the party pulled back from the tunnel and after a few minutes to take care of their wounds, the Life cleric casting Prayer of Healing for 10 minutes, the Rouge once more headed down the stairs only to find an upturned table blocking the bottom of the stairs. He couldn’t see anything in the room ahead of him but could see that it continued around to the left out of sight. He decided not to climb over the table to look further into the room, probably smart on his own, and returned to the party.
At this point the party decided they were going to take a long rest, after two rooms. They decided it was best to descend into the training area, lock the door behind them (their only escape) and hunker down for the long rest. This left me somewhat taken back and so since it was nearly the normal end point for the night I called it there so I could plan. The problem I face now is that two encounters with large numbers of enemies are waiting for the players to approach them and in the next 8 hours of rest, they are not going to just sit and wait. Team that with the players now locked into the training area with a large gallery above them for enemies to assault them from.
I think I have a pretty good plan for the next session, there are ways out, several dice rolls with reasonable DCs, and even if push comes to shove the party do get captured, i have a plan B for getting them out of it. Unfortunately I have a feeling that path is not going to run without a few player deaths, players are not known for surrendering easily.