Drift and Aedler meet up in Crone’s Pass, make a plan, and then chaos…

This past Sunday, an old and dear friend of mine, Jim, died. I had started this game because he was hungry to play again. I don’t want to use this feeble actual play blog post to write an obituary about what he meant to me. He deserves better than that. But I do want to talk about how continuing to play despite our loss, has been a lovely way to remember him. If he could see our game today, he’d have smiled and pumped his fist at the decisions Aaron and Jay made, having been inspired by his fearless play.

We fast forwarded a bit, deciding that playing Draven as an NPC was ghoulish and so he died suddenly in the night of his wounds. Aedler and Drift met at the rendezvous point in Crone’s Pass, with a battalion of fully kitted out gryphon riders. The plan was to find a pass where they could taunt the Young Storm into action but the ground would cause his elite dragonguard knights to be slowed down. Killing the Young Storm would cause The Dragon to come out without an army, without back-up.

Then I rolled some dice to see how their gryphon-riding scouts did and it was clear to me, through the behind-the-screen dice that the first scout had encountered The Dragon and died. Captain Modesto, leader of the Gryphon-riders, flew Aedler and Drift out to the valley where the scout had died, showing them where the rider and its mount had gone down.

“We think The Dragon is hidden in this valley somewhere, waiting for us to attempt to retrieve our fallen comrade.”

In honor of Jim’s fearless play as Draven, Aaron and Jay decided that this was where they would face down their enemy. They sent Captain Modesto back to Crone’s Pass to rally the rest of the gryphon-riders. The session ended with both players nearly out of Hit Protection due to an avalanche The Dragon caused the flush them out. In the cloud of stone dust and snow, Aedler climbed to a high position where he could jump onto The Dragon as it flew past. Drift found the fallen rider, who was alive but with a pair of broken legs.

And that is where we will start next session. An angry dragon in the skies above, a battalion of gryphon-riders en-route and two rebels in the valley with named weapons gripped with white knuckles.

Jim would’ve liked that. I’ll miss him.