[Wiccanwitch]

I need help continuing this game. I have an extensive plotline involving my characters and their roles in the death of a kingdom and ill post it here in part and part in a reply as it doesnt fit in one post. ANY ideas are helpful please help.

A Red Wizard, Xanatos, the apprentice under the Zulkir of Necromancy of Thay, guised in the visage of the War Mage Balthazaar will come to the characters and offer them a quest. This quest is to destroy an ancient dragon. He will tell them to gain experience by getting jobs at the Colluseum in Suzail and when they are ready, he will come to them and teleport them to where he thinks the dragon's cave is.

He will tell them "The reason that I can't move against the dragon itself is that the dragon has the king's ear, and is acting as his council since the royal prince dissapeared. Since the King is being controlled by the dragon in such a manner, the War Wizards and I have decided that an outside force is needed to get rid of the beast and what better force than a party of adventurers. When the time comes, I and what War Wizards I can get to help will assault the dragon, weakening it so that you adventurers can kill it. Then you are to cut the heart out of the beast and bring it to me in Suzail. Any treasure or other parts of the dragon you want you can keep."

He will produce a scroll with a wax seal, bearing the king's ring imprint. This document is a clever forgery, nearly impossible to detect. The scroll will say, "In the absence of the prince, I will be keeping council with Thangu Laarn, a visiting noble from Sembia. He will help me with important decisions and day to day rule. He has only the best interests in mind for our fair kingdom. We will be gearing up for war soon, to finally take Cormanthor , the unruly Dalelands and evil Sembia under our righteous rule."

"This Thangu Laarn in a dragon who has taken the opportinity to steal the King's ear and set us at war with our neighbors Sembia and Cormanthor. Neither of these wars would be beneficial to our kingdom and war with both at once would stretch our armies so tightly that an invasion from outside would certainly destroy us. I believe that this dragon is acting in the stay of a Red Wizard Enclave, possibly quite a large one, that seems to want to allow someone, probably Thay itself, to invade Cormyr."
All of this is of course crap. the dragon he is sending them after is the last of the Purple Dragons. Killing this dragon will kill the kingdom of Cormyr.

Once the characters have gotten through four of the five points storyline, "Balthazaar" will emerge again and tell them that they are ready to begin the quest to destroy the dragon. He will present the characters will weapons that have an enchantment that allows them to bypass the dragon's natural armor and/or damage reduction. The rings, already given to the characters to contact them, will mostly protect them from the dragon's breath weapon. He will tell the characters to meet him at the Boars Head Tavern in the northwest area of Suzail to retrieve the heart. Balthazaar will give the characters an enchanted bag to put the dragon's heart into. It will keep the heart of the beast fresh and acts as a bag of holding does in that the enoumous heart of the great creature will fit into a single, small bag. The bag's mouth will stretch over the surface of the heart and grow to encompass the whole organ, then when it is entirely in the bag, the bag will again shrink back to it's original size. Anything else put into the bag will cause the bag to act just as a normal small bag would. It is not an actual bag of holding.

The cave of the dragon is nestled in the mountains overlooking Suzail. Before they attempt to enter the cave, Balthazaar will appear to the characters and tell them not to enter until he tells them to as he and the War Wizards are going to do battle with the Great Wyrm. As they wait outside, they will hear the sounds of a great magical battle from within. The battle will culminate in an anguished scream that will trail off into uncomprehensible gibberish. Balthazaar will return injured and tell the characters to enter and finish it off. He will tell them that he has enfeebled its mind so that it cannot cast spells on them and he has made it weak enough so that they will be able to destroy it. Any attempt to heal him will be dismissed and he will tell the characters that he must rest the wounds off as they are magical in nature. He will tell the characters that he cannot continue the fight because of the wounds he has suffered but they must finish the creature for him. They will find this dragon battered and hurt but still dangerous. Most of its more powerful spells are spent and most of its breath weapon uses are used up for the day. Also, it will have been affected by both a polymorph spell and a feeblemind spell the combination of these spells will leave it on par with the characters for ability to hit and damage. It will be quite weak but a formidable challenge for the party. Once they enter the cavern, the badly shaken beast will mumble,"Die, worms" and try to use its breath weapon on them, but it will be unable to bring forth its natural weapon because it is unused to it's new form. Once they kill the beast, it will revert back to its original form (that of a Purple Dragon) and say in Common, "As I die, so does Cormyr." Half an hour after the dragon dies, they will hear a distant explosion, followed by many more and the sounds of distant battle.

The characters can skin the hide of the dragon easily after it is dead to make masterwork armor from the scales. The armor will have an armor bonus equal to whatever type of armor is made plus one and the check penalty will be halved. Also, the armor will be considered as to be one type lower than it normally would be considered to be (plate = Medium armor, Scale = Light, Light = clothing or Unarmored). Some of the scales can make shields even of themselves. The smallest scales can make small shields while some slightly larger scales will be able to be made into tower shields. These shields work as traditional shields do but with a +2 AC bonus and they are half as heavy as normal.The teeth, horns and claws can be used to create masterwork weapons that do plus one damage (+2 total - plus one for being masterwork and plus an additional for dragon teeth , hornd and claws) and weigh half as much as normal. The scales will keep fresh enough to be usable in armormaking for one week before they begin to rot and crumble. Most of the scales on the dragon (50% or so) especially the ones along the back ridge of the dragon and along the center of it's breast are too large to make anything useful of and are far too hard to cut. The corpse of the dragon will be able to make fifteen sets of heavy armor, twenty-two sets of medium armor and thirteen sets of light armor (if it is all prepared and made to be ready in time).

Once the characters leave the cavern network, they will be in for a shock. The capitol city will be in the middle of a great battle. Half of the city will already be burning and the other half will be beseiged. A great, Black line of warships will be outside the harbor, firing flaming projectiles into the city, and there will be transport ships bearing hundreds and hundreds of troops into the city. Balthazaar will send an illusion of himself to the characters and tell them to make haste into the city and meet him at the Boar's Head Tavern as the heart of the beast is needed to thwart the invasion. He will also tell the characters that he cannot bring himself to them again as his injuries are too great.
Upon arriving at the Boar's Head tavern, Balthazaar will find them, apparently breathless and injured. He will ask for the heart and when he gets it, he will begin to laugh. He will look at the characters and thank them for their part in aiding him at destroying Cormyr. He will dissapear before the characters can react, and seconds later, the invading forces will break into the tavern and subdue the party, knocking them unconscious.

The characters will awaken in a dank dungeon some time later, shackled to a wall, with Balthazaar leering over them. He will watch them regain consciousness and his form will begin to blur and melt away. What will be left will be a painfully thin, old man. He will be wearing black clothes and his right arm will be exposed at the shoulder to be fully skeletal. In this arm, he holds a pike with a head attached to it.
"What I could not do on my own, you have done for me. By slaying the last Purple Dragon in Cormyr, you have destroyed Cormyr more perfectly than I could have dreamed. Purple Dragon Knights keel over as we speak from a strange disease of the heart that no Clerics can cure and King Willum himself was the first to die.I thank you all for fulfilling my plans so beautifully, and as your reward, you will die at dawn. I, Xanatos, Zulkir of Necromancy, loyal subject of Thay and Red Wizard, thank you in bringing the last ingredient i need to finally become a Lich. The fresh heart on a great wyrm dragon. Tonight, I die to be reborn more powerful than before. Until then, i leave you with this reminder of your work."
He will leave King Willum's severed head on a pike on the ground in front of them. He will then leave, locking the door behind him.