3.5 The Party- After encountering an extremely bipolar Ettin (LE right head that loved raiding a nearby town and a NG left head that was too afraid to confront the other head), one of our PC's died, he was a good friend, albeit quite a klutz, he had the most amazing ability to find hilarious problems were nothing could have gone wrong. Since he died by the hand of our LG Paladin and some gruesomely bad throws, Pelor was not particularly happy, and apparently we had to save the good head, but since we panicked and killed the whole thing... The gods ceased supporting our team, now of two: A grieving paladin, lost without his God's guidance and reevaluating his entire life choices, and me, a wizard that was extremely into books, deeming everyone unworthy of talking to him except his raven (although he did get soft for those 2 companions, an unlikely alliance, but a strong one at that).
The Path The Paladin decided then to pray to his god, asking to be forgiven, begging a chance to redeem himself and prove that he was a worthy champion. Pelor replied. In dreams, the paladin received images of a cave and the understanding that he had to exterminate some evil within it's tunels. And so, we went there, with an extremely vague request from an understandably unamused god.
The HORROR So the Fighter [Paladin] and the wizard went to the cave, which they found on the way to their previously set destination, thinking of how this was dangerous to manage without the paladin's healing powers and the ranger's damage input. Upon entering the cave, there were 3 paths: To the right, a room connecting to an underwater river, which had a bright jar on the bottom, the mage tried reaching it, but it was pulled by the current and never seen or heard of again. To the left, there was another couple of hallways, one to the left, which lead to a hidden caché of goblins and a couple bugbears (hidden on a wall for reasons still unknown to us) guarding some ammount of gold, we dispatched them in the probably least efficient fashion, as I burnt the paladin while using burning hands on the small door to burn everything inside, then he proceeded to cleave the bugbears with mild burns on his right side. To the right, there was a hallway with many doors, which we didn't check completely, if memory serves. On the second door (this i remember), there was a torturing room with a passed-out naked elf there, barely fed and with fresh marks upon his skin. Now, former paladin felt a connection to his god, so he figured this guy was to be rescued and the evil vanquished, so he let him out, we dressed him with spare changes we had and gave him a bow and arrows (this is player number 3, in case i didn't make it clear). We cured him the best we could, he was NOT in top fighting condition, but he seemed skilled with a bow (racist comment from the wizard and paladin: ¨He's an elf, he's got to be good with a bow¨).
We drag him (i seem to recall we tied a rope to him in case he turned to be crazy or just plain evil) to the main lobby with the three hallways, we left him there and decided to go to the central and final hallway. About 30 feet into the corridor, the temperature dropped quickly and ice started forming on the ceiling and covering the floor and walls. We figured that was it, the great evil to kill, a ghost, maybe? A spellcasting-undead? We were extremely scared, but we thought we could handle it, until we saw a Winged Lizard comming to us, running on the ceiling. The nature check's we did confirmed it, a Young White Dragon (particularly unnerving, since dragons had not be seen since a couple centuries, AT ALL) so we pretty much had a heart attack before we entered formation, we started the fight and got severely damaged, and when we were sure a couple rounds would mark our defeat, arrows started raining on the dragon! Turns out, we suck at tying people down (never in any of our games have we passed a use rope check... NEVER), elf woke up and freed himself, only to hear a desperate struggle that made him rush to help. The racist stereotypes proved to be true, the archer was nailing pretty much every attack, with the volleys of arrows raining down on it, flames cast at it's face and a huge sword slashing everytime it moved, we finally managed to defeat our first ever encounter with a dragon (all three of us were new, this was around our 6th session, we were level 3 i believe, we had pretty interesting fights). We introduced ourselves to the Archer, something he couldn't properly do, as his memory was screwed up and he could only come up with his name, not his work, city, class, just a name and some amazing bow-skills. Since, as we said, dragons had been believed to be extinct, we carried the corpse to the nearest city we were heading, the paladin was even more happy since he regained his powers, the archer also had him in high steem since ¨the gods sent him to help¨. The corpse was sold, stuffed and made a major attraction on the city, which we the proceeded to turn upside down in the following sessions, as well as eventually killing the elf we rescued, as he turned to be the BBEG of that season, quite a few sessions away, after we took a deep liking to his company.
TLDR; Paladin kills our ranger, his god ceases to favor him and sends him on a quest to make ammends, we find an anorexic elf, fight a Young White Dragon that could only be killed by the three of us.