After escaping the shrine settlement relatively unscathed, the party regrouped and considered their options. Sender turned invisible and flew back to scout out the situation, and he found a familiar (competing) band of adventurers from Feery’s Leap – at least their arcanists. Two wizards and a wall of summoned monsters were decimating the village’s defenses. When Sender sensed the amount of spell energy floating about, he decided to lend a hand. He took a fresh wand, sabotaged it, and dropped it into the enemy fray to be trampled, hoping to spark a mana burst. Unfortunately, the wand did not ignite a burst, but the next spell the arcanists cast did. Both sides were wiped out in the ensuing conflagration, which leveled several hovels.

After the bloodbath, the party came galloping in, commanding the villagers to surrender (which they did). While they were talking with the villagers, they felt the earth tremble and heard a terrible roar, which sent the locals scurrying. A distant speck appeared on the horizon, which Sender identified as a dragon.

With nowhere to hide on the broad open plains, the party headed to the shrine for shelter. They investigated the rooms they’d overlooked before, while Sender watched the dragon approach. The blue dragon landed in the village and began conversing with the residents, demanding to know what had happened.

Then the dragon sensed Sender, and he narrowly made it back to the shrine alive. The group retreated down a flight of stairs, clearly too tight for the dragon to follow (assuming it could even get into the shrine). Aranethon was startled by a mephit there, which they quickly slew. The mephit had been lurking at a small depression in the earthen floor… some kind of private shrine? Aranethon neutralized it, just to be on the safe side. Then they prepared to go deeper, through a doorway that led into caverns. Was it just paranoia, or did it seem as if that doorway were carved – or gnawed – from the cavern side…?