Session date: August 19, 2026
Recap Given at Table
With Ilssrah Embermead dead — clearly a Scarlet Triad agent of real stature, given how she commanded the others — the party pushed down the long stairwell into a magma-filled chamber. They dealt with Kradolai the dalos first, cutting her vacation short thanks to her alliance with Veshumirix, then fought through the Guardian’s Walk, where living magma hauled themselves up out of the molten rock to stop them.
First contact with the dragon came when Peoux took a shot at one of the magma guardians from cover. A huge voice answered — first in Draconic, then Undercommon, then finally Common:
“Intruders. Show yourselves. I know it’s you, cowards.”
Veshumirix raised a wall of fire across the approach. He wasn’t coming to them.
The Approach
A long strategy discussion opened the session. The original plan was to lay down a stone bridge across the lava — but the wall of fire turned out to be a magical curtain of flame rather than something burning on the ground, so nothing physical could smother it, and a thin bridge felt like too easy a target for the dragon to simply blast apart mid-crossing.
What the party actually did instead turned out to be the most important call of the night: Peoux brewed up a batch of spider climb potions and passed them around, letting the whole party scale the cave walls, climb straight over the wall of fire, and cross along the ceiling — sidestepping the lava, the bridge problem, and the wall all at once. It cost them a few rounds getting everyone dosed, handing Veshumirix some free turns, but it paid off.
The Fight
The party identified Veshumirix as weak to cold and immune to fire, which shaped the whole fight. Frightening as he was on approach, most of the party held their nerve; Peoux was the one who flinched. Veshumirix’s opening move was to vanish out of sight entirely — no attack, clearly setting something up.
Cain got there first, and it was the highlight of the early fight: spider climb, a magical burst of speed, and a sprint straight up and across the cave wall to clear the wall of flame, before spotting the dragon mid-move and redirecting to intercept him. Tinker’s crossing was messier — a jump that came up short, saved by a follow-up leap that carried him the rest of the way, though he took a scorching hit crossing through the flames himself.
Two living magma joined the fight alongside the dragon — hulking elemental brutes that could hurl their molten fists, drag people into their bodies, and, most annoyingly, kept knocking weapons clean out of party members’ hands on a hit.
Midway through, Cain caught Veshumirix mid-flight with a huge blow and knocked him clean out of the sky — the table’s mental image for the night: sprinting across the ceiling into hell, slapping the dragon down out of the air, then sprinting down the walls after it. The fall into the magma cost the dragon nothing, since he can swim through the stuff.
One of the living magma disarmed Tinker early and kept him weaponless for most of the fight — brutal for an Inventor, since his weapon is basically his class. The guardian holding it kept moving away, turning getting it back into its own ongoing problem.
Cain went down hard partway through, dropped by a magma guardian’s fist while he was clinging to the wall — and being unconscious meant he couldn’t hold onto his climbing magic anymore, so he fell straight into the lava, his weapon and Tinker’s hammer going in with him. Peoux rushed to stabilize him, fished both weapons out before they could sink, and got Cain back on his feet and swinging again.
Veshumirix let loose his only breath attack of the night, a massive cone that caught the whole party at once — but everyone held their ground and took only a fraction of the damage. Late in the fight, the party finally cast wall of stone, using it far better than their original bridge idea would have: sectioning off the healthiest guardian entirely, building a ramp up toward the dragon, and boxing him in to limit his escape.
Cain crit one of the living magma so hard it went blind and fumbled its next several attacks completely, wiping out an entire turn for it. And then, weaponless for most of the fight, Tinker finally got his hammer back — missed his first swing, then connected on the second with a devastating hit that triggered the dragon’s weakness to cold. He was dead before the cold even finished landing.
“Even though you have stopped me, you will not survive Dahak’s fury when he returns to cleanse the world of all life.”
Cain, per tradition, sawed the head off.
Loot
Searching the hoard turned up a large pile of coins and gemstones, a dragon-scale amulet made from the scales of five ancient dragons that offers broad elemental protection and grows even stronger against a dragon’s breath weapon, the antimagic rune that had been stolen from Kovlar, a rare dwarven rune etched onto a weapon that sharpens its wielder toward mastery, and the Crown of Saggorak itself.
Searching further confirmed the shard of the orb of gold dragonkind wasn’t in the hoard — Veshumirix had already handed it off to the Scarlet Triad.