Dragon on a Spit

Against the advice of the chief wizard and adviser to the Crown Prince of Vailin, Magus Graycloak, the prince's cousin and defender of the realm Alrick Silvanus orders his knights to ride to Brandil to meet the foe. They bring with them the weapons of war they built in the capitol, and a volcanic dragon summoned from White Plume Mountain. The ghouls on foot are no match for the mighty war machines crafted by the elves skewering them along the wooded landscape as they approach.

The dire wolves are run down by Silvanus' knights and driven off. The volcanic dragon seeks the majestic purple dragon and melts its necrotic flesh and bones. Alrick and Magus Graycloak ride into a sacred vale desecrated by Yllakin the half-orc paladin of Orcus. The magus is the only one to return alive. He speaks of Alrick's valorous defeat of the half-orc, though it cost him his life in the bargain. His soul no doubt found peace liberating the sacred vale of the four free gods of the elves.

Under the orders of the new captain of the king's guard Ser Ellert Rainwood, footsoliders march to protect the vulnerable southern lands from the remaining monsters left from Karkoth's incursion. In Zembar, Admiral Swordhand leads his griffons and army into the Dread Marches, hunting the Dread Lich Lord himself, though he finds only an empty crumbling mausoleum that was once his palace, and a trail of rotted flesh and bones that leads him further onward to the West into Amil Forest.

As the admiral travels on foot, his navy assembles its full strength in Vullwar Passage to blockade the island territory of Rellis Vullin from the lands of the Iron Circle to the south. Their lands and food already stripped by the Iron Circle's armies to the north, the people there grow so hungry and restless over the next several weeks that the bravest among them take up arms and hunt the sleeping red dragon sent by Worg Oswe. They carve the beast up and sell its flesh and bones in the markets, making for a bizarre spectacle. It's the tongue of the dragon that they say was the softest and sweetest bit.