27 Kythorn 1479

Early this morning we spotted a smoke plume at a distance - Aprilane scouted it out and found a small walled town, half encircled by campfires? Anyway, the town had a big banner of a stylized blue dragon and the usual toll set-up. The usual bribe set-up it appeared at first - until the tolltaker noted down the bribe on her sheet - in a column marked "bribe" and filed away that payment. Organized corruption, amazing.

Anyway, we asked around Dragonwatch (which this is and yes the rumors are obvious nonsense) and to start with they said that they had been on good terms with Lord K'lenth up until a few days ago when the kobold army showed up outta nowhere, said K'lenth was upset that they were stealing from him and fork over 10,000 gold pieces in 3 days.

Yeah, right.

Gnf and I hit the tavern for better information on who was in on this - some soldiers had tried to take on the kobolds but they'd been hit..by either the dragon breathing lighting or the dragon breathing acid or some sort of strange machine that threw lightning - depending on who you asked.... They seemed the usual sort of scared and confused so we headed off toward the mayor's - the obvious inside man - and he said this was totally unlike Lord K'lenth, everything was carefully regimented, they go up to his castle once a month with the taxes and stay out of his hunting grounds the rest of the time - or else they're fair game. He seemed straight with us and wished someone could see what was going on in those camps, but he couldn't have it, it was too risky and he absolutely forbade us from scouting.

Lyra came from the barracks to report that those burns were ACID and that's a green dragon. Hm. But some of them were lightning - which is blue. Hm, hm. She said she thought she'd seen a big machine in one camp from the rooftop. While we were sharing our information we heard the oh-so-charming noise of a mob banging on the mayor's doors and insisting he fix everything and call in adventurer's to kill Lord K'lenth. Yeah, right. We figured that made it a good time to scout the camps.

Gnf sent his serpent in towards the machine and tried to describe it back to me. Max and Aprilane snuck around the main camps to find the ..um...well, where the guy running the show is. They found it. A green dragon, pretending to be blue - and not even full-grown.

A long tiring fight - we found the machine and our plan to take it fast without getting hurt failed utterly - they managed to get a shot off with that sucker nailed us all - nearly taking poor Gnf down. But we took it and took the time to rest up while I tinkered with it a bit so they couldn't EVER put that sucker to work again - since the town had sent it's soldiers out again and it was clear that they could handle mere kobolds.

Then the dragon in the woods decided he'd had enough and challenged us to come in and fight him or he'd overfly the town with his breath. So we trudge in and see a sinuous figure wavery back in the trees....only it's just canvas, I yelled that out, even though I couldn't see where the bastard really was and he threw some kind of minor paralysis or something, meant I could barely move. He tried to talk his way out of it, but ha! they don't fall for me (um, usually) they're not gonna fall for HIM. We got him and then the trees starting shaking and bending in the wind - the intermittent, patterned wind - the kind of wind made by great big huge wings beating right over your head.

Lord K'linth sorta flicked the green away with a finger (right, 10? 20? foot long and he flicks it away? with ONE finger) and muttered "a green" in that same sorta disgusted voice the villagers always used about goblins. Anyway, he said he was pleased, well done, he'd expect us at his keep for a feast tomorrow. (Oh good, the giant dragon wants us to come for dinner)

At least we get to sleep first.