"Stealth is an unfair advantage, use every advantage you can. If even someone as large as me can sneak up on four wary adventurers, then sneaking up on an unaware dragon is trivial."

Hmm, maybe I can do that with Yulya's ring. Still, don't these things have Blindsight or something?

if you can't lock it down by a heavy anchor, a cart even, chain a wing to a leg so it can't fly, but that's only if it's sleeping, but they're notorious for sleeping for days after a big meal. Wait him out, time is on your side."

Now that's good advice! Chaining a wing to a leg while he's sleeping sounds reasonable. Yet I imagine it's hard getting a heavy chain around a dragon without waking him! Chaining him and setting him on fire sounds even more fun!

Don't expect him to hold back or be honorable, chromatic dragons have no honor or valor, only hubris and arrogance."

Yeah, I learned the hard way from that green one. It was outright stupid though. But I reckon they cannot be reasoned with. I'll keep that in mind.

"My dragon was large, but not very agile, so holding on wasn't an issue, I stayed on it's back, holding on to horns and wings, he wasn't easily able to hit me, but I had free access to smash him over and over. My strength was my tool to stay on, for you it could be prowess with acrobatics to avoid his grasp."

Alice thinks about the prospects of riding a snow dragon on some icy mountain top
Maaan this sucks. I bet the dragon itself is cold too! I hate cold! Did I say already that I hate cold! I hate it!
Well if we manage to chain his wings to keep him from flying I could grapple his mouth to keep him from freezing us. That would ease things a lot. At least for a short time.

"I was still a young man full of hubris and valor, but even I was no match for it directly, it took a siege, I stalked it like a hunter, I scarcely let it rest, I kept on him, set traps many of which he never sprung, but I wore him down. I was lucky too, a critical on his wing, and from then on his fate was sealed, unable to fly more than a few hundred feet, I chased him and kept him on the run. He had me beat in strength, power, even magic, but he underestimated me and my resilience. The battle lasted days, and I wore him down. I almost died many times, but I thank Tempus for his guidance and the strength he bestowed in me."

Alice intensely listens to Brutus story and can't believe her ears



You fought it alone?? Ok, no wonder they made a statue for you! That's really something! How many people took down a dragon alone? I bet not many in history...
I like the general idea of a siege - to observe him and prepare the terrain - if the terrain wasn't a freezing hell. I don't know what it looks like up there and how cold it is but I doubt we can camp out there for weeks without freezing just from the environment.
Alice wonders if the dragon really will be at her ship's wreck and if there is any way to communicate with it. In its deep frozen state, probably not. at least not with shards, maybe with the main body - if such survived.

Kessandra spoke up, "When I first heard of this, and it has affected as far west as the high road in the south, I knew it couldn't be the work of a chromatic dragon. The land has become blighted by this snow and frost for many miles, this is beyond unnatural, and why would a dragon want to waste such energy to do this? They are known to make changes to their environment, but only locally, not over a whole region; it's a tremendous waste of time. Only a powerful mage could do this, and not just that, one who has been planning this for years, such a powerful ward would take a lot of planning and many resources, the next question is why? What would a mage have to gain for this? To destroy a forest for no reason is unfathomable without cause. Whoever has done this has conspired to cause a disaster without hope for redemption."

Alice listens with great interest, but also worry
Years you say? That's crazy! I mean magicians here all are crazy strong but this is another level. I had no idea.
Alice thinks to herself:
I had imagined the reason to freeze the land was to keep my ship from liquefying and healing. Or to keep it from getting out of control. But if that took years then we can rule this out - unless the caster has received an oracle or something. A conspiracy of the gods against me - yeah that could still be it. Whatever, I don't give a damn about that dragon, I just need to unfreeze my poor ship!

Alice turns to Kessandra
Still odd - do you think the arrival of the ice dragon and the big freeze is entirely unrelated? What kind of coincidence is that? But Daran also said the dragon was irrelevant and would move soon Well, he wasn't worried about the cold either. But I don't think he's behind any of that. Which reminds me - didn't Summer say we gotta take down the dragon to keep the forest from dying? She seems to know a lot about dragons - and even more about magic! Yet she appears to believe this is the dragon's doing.

Brutus added, "That's another issue, concentrate on the dragon, nothing else should be on your mind, take your time, plan well."

Easy for you to say...
Alice thinks
...half of the world appears to wait in line to get a piece of my ship. And if only a tiny shard falls into the wrong hands - or any hand - your world will have a slightly bigger problem than a frozen forest...

Alright, let's eat, go shopping once more and then go for a field trip!
Any advice for a good spot outside of the city to cook poison for arrows and blades without bothering anyone - but also without being ambushed by monsters, bandits or other vermin?

Man, it's hot in here!
Alice packs her wofl cloak into her backpack again, then continues eating

As your chatting away you fail to notice an extremely large man step up to the table.
Alice waves with her fork, another large chunk of meat on it

Oh, hello Brutus! How convenient! We've got the expert here now!

"How's my favorite adventurers? Off to fight a dragon already? And not even silver?" He laughs heartily, "I admire that adventurous spirit, the hubris, and gall of it. What makes you think you're ready to fight a dragon?"

Alice grins eerily
Well, to give you even more to laugh, a little girl gave us that quest...
You know Summer of Leilon? Probably not. Some runaway royalty kid, packed to the brim with magic items. I assume she wants that same tag you got. You know those people...
No idea why she didn't ask you for help but us. Said she needed heroes. She must be crazy.

He smiles like a broken mirror, but in a kindly way, then points to Alice with a wink, "Now the monk will want to grapple, yes even a dragon can be grappled and that'll also keep him from breathing on you, and believe me, you don't want that, keep doing it, keep him wanting to waste moves trying to get you off all the while needling him with hits, preferably ones that cut and wound if you can."

Alice's jaw literally drops to the table
You want me to do whaaat?
Grapple a dragon?
That's even more insane than trying to poison it with a bait! Even if I could wrap myself around his mouth, my strength is abysmal and it would just scrape me off with its claws like a cat trying to remove a collar!

"About that breath, spread out, don't give him an opportunity to breath on more than one at a time. Dragons also love to fly up where you can't reach them and that won't stop them from breathing on you, so keeping him grounded is a priority

Yeah we already had that with that green wyrmling and it sucks. And in combination with flying, that breathing is even more annoying. What does its breath even do? Freeze i suppose. Just great. There's nothing I'm more vulnerable against than cold. If that thing gets me once I'm a goner!

if you have a mage, get web scrolls, that'll keep him down and if you had a druid, then entangle or other spells to keep this beast rooted...

I have a net!
Alice takes her net out of her backpack
Catching a dragon with a net fits nicely into the other insane ideas.

if you can get to him while he's sleeping, even better, set up physical barriers, chain him if you can." He stroked his beard thinking.

Yeah, filling his nostrils with poison while he's sleeping would be best. And tying his shoelaces together I mean chaining his feet. How about digging a hole and hoping he falls into it?

"Grœt"
Another familiar face waddles around the massive barbarian.

Alice laughs at the funny creature
Ah the comedian!
Nice seeing you again!

The frog headed creature seemingly incapable of any sentient form of communication looks directly at Yulya, a flash of divine light shines in his eyes.
"Grœt"

Alice applauds the show, hoping that Yulya will turn into a bunny or dove. Or frog.

"Go on and hit me with your questions, it was a while back, but I know I can think of something else."

Alice thinks for a moment
How many people were with you when you fought that dragon and how many of them died?

Alice looks at Yulya's despair
What's with today's meals?
Ashley's sandwich is gargantuan, I have this huge chunk of meat with nothing else while Cat's got a bit of everything. And you've got everything - but meat?

Here!
Alice cuts of a sizable slice of meat and hands it to Yulya on her fork.
Trade me a few vegetables and potatoes!

Obviously, but that's harder than I thought.
There's a narrow gap between not enough weight meaning a hilarious amount of reps to exhaustion and quick recovery and too much weight with risk of injury or sheer inability to lift it at all.
Seriously, 2 consecutive days at the gym for 2h with the result of being able to lift more in the end than the beginning is odd. Simply ran out of time. No exhaustion, no soreness.

Hiked 25km on Saturday without much stopping. Haven't done this for a year or so. The body took it reasonably well but is literally butthurt now. I rushed host to the point of literally running uphill. We were chased by an elderly couple with Nordic Walking sticks that went exactly our speed. They were freaking fast. Good thing they took a different path or we would have been stuck with them for most of the tour.

Alice gives Ashley an annoyed look
You forgot I need Cat for that? We gotta to do the cooking by the book together unless you want some catastrophic failure.
And if we're both up all night you wanna travel with both of us sleeping on the cart and defend yourselves from ambushes?
Leave the poison to the grown-ups!

And a waste of time is a waste of time. I hate wasting time. But if you insist I can go visit Mr. Tree again.
Alice crosses her arms with a 'hmph'

Ashley leans in, "No one ever says thank you and they really should. They have no cards, they should say thank you because they're weak and have no one but US to help them." She starts to giggle.

Imagine the Prince of Leilon comes to the Guild and gets roasted by our party
>You didn't say Thank You!
>Why don't you wear a suit?
>You're responsible for the dragon incident, you are playing with the lives of millions!
>You're a tyrant, you only have a 4% approval rate. Why don't you have elections in Leilon?
>You've been treating us very badly, very disrespectful!
>You need to apologize and sign a deal handing over all of Leilon's resources to us or we will side with the dragon!



Man I'd love to draw that scene but you kow I can't and AI isn't that far to recreate it.

I tried doing a bunch of exercises in pyrmid and then repeating the cycle in reverse pyramid today.
Quite fascinating, the body could lift more after 2h of intense workout with minimal breaks.
I know that from hiking, getting stronger the more you do is pretty cool.

Been to the gym 3 times in 4 days now, let's see if soreness kicks in. So far there's nothing though I significantly ramped up weight. It might take a bit.

Gotta try it but it still somehow bothers me to put the max weight on the body first.