In short, the PC's are all part of a prophecy, and they are Dragonhunters, even though dragons haven't existed in their world for more than 300 years. A group of crazies called the Dragonhand have set out to awaken the chromatic dragons prematurely and hope to be rewarded for their efforts by the dragons. The PC's are out to prevent the Dragonhand from accomplishing this, and have recently disovered that they are each bonded to a metallic dragon, which are all also in stasis. The main plotline is that the PC's are trying to stop/slow the Dragonhand while they search for their dragons. They want to find their bonded dragons and enlist their help in defeating the Dragonhand and their chromatic dragons in the hopes that Mystra will reward the metallics by allowing them to remain free (in a fit of rage, she punished all the dragons for the actions of a minority of them, including the mostly good or at least neutral metallic dragons).
So, at this point in the story, the party has trekked over 150 miles in very rough mountain terrain. We are using Frostburn to make the journey itself an adventure. They have lost their entire crew of dwarven sherpas along the way, and find themselves at the base of a twin peak mountain inside which they believe to contain their metallic dragons. They spot a massive cave mouth 3/4 up a massive peak and decide to enter the mountain there.
This could have went so many ways, but the result was what I'm sure will be a very memorable gaming moment for all of us!
The entry way of the cave descends steeply, which makes movement difficult. Silverleaf (ps6/rogue1) spots a trip wire but the group is unable to disarm it. So, they decide to cut the wire and intentionally trigger the trap, hoping to avoid whatever happens next. Silverleaf cuts the tripwire with the group safely back, and hears first what sounds like several small boulders hitting the ground from the height of only a few feet, but then the ground literally shakes as the group hears 4 large collisions with what sound like ogre-sized boulders. The tripwire was not really a trap, but a defensive mechanism. The noise of the massive boulders hitting the ground served as an alarm, and the massive boulders doubled as additional cover to aid in defense of the cave.
The party quickly finds the cave to be infested with almost 20 snow goblins. The party dispatches them rather easily with the time-tested web/fireball combination, only to find that they called in back up. After burning up a few of their biggest spells, the party is now faced with 3 ogres and an ogre mage. They react quickly and overpower the ogres, but one of the ogres escapes and retreats deeper inside the cave.
The party searches for the cowardly ogre, and below is the scene that they uncover. It's hard to tell in the screenie, but there are 70 zealots, 8 high priests and a red dragon in the large chamber. The zealots are chanting, and the priests in the center are conducting a ritual which the party assumes to be an awakening ritual. They quickly hatch a plan to disrupt the ritual and then run like hell. The psion/rogue fires an energy bolt at the priestess while the barbarian fires an arrow from his strength bow. They nearly kill the priestess and then all hell starts to break loose. The party witnesses a black, crackling energy starting to move in a circular fashion around the priests. All at once, the the blackish energy appears to be absorbed by the red dragon in the middle of the group. The last thing the party sees are the eyes of the red dragon opening while 70 zealots start screaming "RUN!".
The party bolts toward the ascending tunnel out of the cave at top speed. Halfway up, Ustin (clr6) stumbles and falls, but Silverleaf uses his body to stop Ustin from sliding back down toward the charging fanatics. The party gets 30' from the cave entrance, with the zealots only about 60' behind them, when the party hears a MASSIVE explosion from inside the cave. No sooner do they turn around to exit the cave when they are literally ejected out of the cave by the sheer force of the concussion, along with rocks, boulders, sand and the body parts of the chasing zealots. As the nearly half-dead party gets to their feet, the ground begins to shake violently as the mountaintop begins to implode. Everyone loses their balance and begin sliding/falling down the mountainside, more than 200' before coming to a stop. The party looking up and seeing boulders and debris closing, hurry down the mountain trying to reach the treeline before the mountains shrapnel catches up with them.
On a metagame note, the blast that ejected them out of the cave did 10d6 damage (REF sv. for 1/2). The additional slide/fall down the mountainside did an additional 4d6 (REF for 1/2). 2 of the char. were at 10 or fewer HP at the end, but all survived, and they got a boatload of EXP for not only thwarting the awakening ritual, but for killing a ton of baddies. It was my most enjoyable encounter in this campaign to date, and our showdown with the PC's arch nemesis is yet to come.
PS: the party is in the SW area of the map, in the bottleneck area S of the massive altar.
