Suddenly the sounds in the air change. The wail of the wind begins to be drowned out by the loud cracking of ice, and the slow grinding of metal on metal.
A light appears dozens of feet above at the pinnacle of the fortress. The soft yellow glow of lanterns and torches spills out into the dark night sky as large metal shutters are pulled apart opening a portion of the fortress’ peak to the air.
The sounds of scraping metal and ice plummeting down the side of the mountain fade away allowing the group to hear a new bizarre tone. A thrumming that increases in volume over the course of a few moments before exploding into the boom of an otherworldly horn.
Rising out of the gap atop the fortress is a dark shape with beating wings. Shimmering slightly, reflecting the torchlight below this dragon made of what appears to be a dark stone lifts itself into the air. Hovering some distance above the apex of the fortress it begins to emit light of its own. A deep, powerful orange spills out between the pieces of what the group has identified as chardalyn.
As soon as the light has reached the tip of each of its appendages the beast immediately points its head in the direction of the Ten Towns and begins its descent into Icewind Dale.
The group has a decision to make. Do they continue their assault on Sunblight Fortress, or rush to the aid of the Ten Towns and hope they can defend some of it from the destruction this creature is sure to rain down?
The group I’m running for decided to chase after the dragon to defend the Ten Towns, forgoing any possible information or potential counter-measures that may be contained in the fortress where the construct was made in the interest of having as much time to defend the people of Icewind Dale as possible. At least that’s what I assumed they’d do.
Instead what happened was a short jaunt back to Bryn Shander and a whole lot of standing around waiting for the dragon to show up. Eventually survivors from the earliest attacked towns began showing up with horror stories of what the chardalyn dragon had done to their homes and loved ones. In the interest of conserving their strength the party continued to stay holed up behind Bryn Shander’s walls.
As more and more refugees began pouring in, one player did decide to sprint off into the night to warn a couple of towns of the incoming danger and bring them back to Bryn Shander as a rallying point.
Eventually the dragon showed up and burnt large portions of Bryn Shander to a crisp, blowing holes in the walls to allow Duergar ground troops that had approached under the effects of their invisibility to storm into the town and engage its defenders.
The party held back the Duergar as best they could at the flash points they showed up at until the dragon decided to engage them itself. After an unlikely ally reappeared to aid them, the group eventually destroyed the dragon and pushed the Duergar back.
As they licked their wounds and made preparations over the next couple days to return to assault Sunblight Fortress I described in depressing tones how few survivors continued to show up where Bryn Shander’s gates used to stand as well as the loss of life to the Duergar ground forces and hidden assassins in the town itself. All in all Nine out of the Ten Towns were razed to the ground and somewhere around 75-80% of the population of the now One Town of Icewind Dale died in the attacks.
The group survived which considering their less than heroic dispositions is all they really intended to do from the outset, but some of them were wracked by guilt pains over the loss of so much life due to their inaction while the dragon ravaged the outlying towns.
Remember that the player characters are people in a (to them at least) real world. They often are involved in high stakes situations and if they mishandle things then reality has to play out and they and the other people in the world must suffer the consequences.
While the somewhat ambivalent players may not care about the statistics of the loss of life, their characters will feel the effects of it. Most of the leadership structure that existed is gone, a large number of tradespeople and what standing army there was have been wiped out.
Getting armour and weapons repaired, finding appropriate amounts of travelling supplies and equipment, mustering allies to aid in dealing with the Frostmaiden and who knows what other problems in the Dale are all going to prove almost impossible now that the local populace has been decimated.
To paraphrase a favourite game of mine “The thread of prophecy has been severed and you must now exist in the doomed world you have created.”
Who knows though, maybe it’ll all be okay in the end.
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