Episode VI — Slavers & Skyships
5th Day of the Month of Beauty, Year 989
The Crooked Crowndid not improve with familiarity.
The Sea Spray Survivors sat at a scarred table, running up a tab under Thorin Windfurrow’s name, surrounded by the low thrum of bad ale and worse intentions. Outside, heat shimmered across the road. Inside, patience wore thin.
Zovis insisted they meet again with the child’s mother. Thorin objected without offering an alternative. Gravos Etnad ended the argument efficiently.
“No rejecting a plan without a counterproposal.”
Loaner clothes were acquired from Molly—threadbare for most, but for Gravos, a full green outfit identical to those worn by the so-called halflings of Warmhearth With shoes.
That settled it.
These were not halflings.
They met the woman in the heat-haze beyond the road.
Her name was Alexis. Her son was Marko.
She was calm. Too calm.
Alexis explained that her family—eighteen strong—had been attacked while traveling. Their guards were slain. The survivors were sold to a baron and forced to mine Dragonglass. Four escaped. The rest remained enslaved.
The mine was vast. A pit hundreds of feet wide, with a ramp descending past walls and a gatehouse built atop ruins far older than the slavers using them. At the bottom lay a briny pond. The miners worked with sandstone hammers.
The guards were worse.
Laughing hyena-men. Gnolls.
Alexis added one final detail.
She could help.
She demonstrated by becoming Zovis. Then Gravos. Then Thorin.
The nature of Marko’s transformations suddenly made terrible sense.
They returned to Warmhearth under haze and subterfuge.
Without warning the group, Alexis changed shape again—this time into a halfling—and walked straight into the Bramble house.
The distraction worked better than planned.
While the Buds and Brambles gathered by the pond to watch a chase erupt between two identical Bertrams, the party moved.
ChoRoke, as a black cat, slipped into the room where they had been held. He found the former guards beaten and chained in their place, watched over by an incredibly ugly halfling woman who threatened to sell them to the overlord. Their stolen gear lay neatly displayed nearby—including Gravos’s moonstone.
That would not stand.
Alexis escalated the chaos by colliding—intentionally—with the real Bertram. A pursuit followed.
The Buds stared.
The Brambles shouted.
The village forgot to look behind itself.
Gravos, Zovis, and Grimgrun Blunderforge slipped inside. Gravos reclaimed his tools. Grimgrun grabbed three pieces of dragonglass and fled with a grin that suggested future crimes.
Basarios Heros infiltrated the Bud house, tripped silently, gathered the remaining gear into a barrel, and slid it out a window. He recovered Ruben, who immediately expressed joy at being reunited with his “bestest friend.”
Retrieval complete, they regrouped in the woods.
They were broke.
The moonstone was gone.
But they were free.
The mine lay only hours away.
From a ridge, they saw it clearly.
The Mines of Avalosh—once a fortress of The Great Dragon Empiree, now a scar cut into the earth. A six-story tower rose above it, and moored to the tower was an airship.
A skyship.
Alexis whispered its name.
Below, over a thousand slaves worked the pit. Ninety-eight gnolls patrolled. A massive gnoll walked beside a man in black plate armor.
Ruben counted everything in seconds. He explained that the tower and ship were relics of the Dragon Empire, likely powered by dragonglass. He speculated—then faltered—about whether dragonglass was crystallized dragon blood or bone.
He could not remember.
Drax tore flowers from the ground as he walked, as if the land offended him.
They did not wait for his return.
The plan was audacious and simple.
Thorin and Gravos would be prisoners.
Bas would negotiate.
Zovis would pass as an elf.
Gravos would be “Bart Bud.”
The gnolls waved them in.
They reached the tower.
They reached the airship.
And the plan immediately went wrong.
Aboard the vessel were beaten silver kobolds, goblins dressed like pirates, and a green-bearded goblin captain wearing a bicorne.
“Greenbeard,” he announced.
“This is my ship.”
The name on the hull told another story—crudely altered from Dragon-something to Dragonbane.
Combat erupted.
Bas was mauled and shot. Grimgrun burned enemies alive by being struck. Zovis filled the deck with fog. Choroke crushed skulls with shillelagh. Thorin arrived like gravity made personal.
Goblins went over the rails.
Gnolls fell.
Greenbeard screamed orders no one followed.
Grimgrun discovered the hold.
It was full of dragonglass.
The fighting ended in fire and falling bodies.
Greenbeard died screaming.
The silver kobolds did not hesitate.
They cut lines.
They restored glyphs.
They lifted the ship.
As the airship rose from the tower, ancient magic thrumming once more through its frame, the name along the hull changed—scraped clean of mockery and rewritten in light.
The Dragonsworn.
Below them, Baron Drax turned too late.
Above them, the sky opened.
The Sea Spray Survivors had stolen a skyship.
Recorded Consequences
- The Mines of Avalosh identified as a dragon-era ruin
- Confirmation of mass slavery under Baron Drax
- Recovery of party equipment
- Theft and restoration of the skyship Dragonsworn
- Direct escalation with Baron Drax
Connected Entries