Iuri heads to the fireside with a glass of wine. It's been fairly quiet recently. He settles in and waits for the diners to notice his presence before beginning.

"Many of you have been to the land of Ryoho Shije and participated in our ongoing efforts to thwart the evils done by Long John-goon." Nope. That's not the name. Close enough, maybe. "I was recently there myself with Mechmo and Steven.

"To begin, it's always a great opportunity when Mechmo or Steven are present, because they're both highly competent and experience adventurers. This was a challenge that really pushed us to our limits.

"We had found out at this point that Long John-goon was from the Drake Plateau and had in fact grown up there. Our previous expedition visited a bathhouse he'd built where he constructed a device of some kind. We used that as our base of operations. I scouted out with Arcane Eye, identifying a dojo where he had trained with Loom Fizzlegong"—Close enough.—"and collecting some papers relating to that.

"But I wasn't able to scout the whole region with the Eye. There was an area across a chasm that was completely impenetrable. For that, we had to approach on foot.

"Arriving there, it turned out to be a large, open cave on the other side of the chasm, and in the middle of it, the device Long Johngoon had created. The place was covered in spiderwebs, so we approached carefully with the intent to potentially burn the webs and any connected spiders, only it turned out there were no spiders—of if there were, they never came out. I dropped a Storm Sphere on the device's location, intending to aid in destroying it; the device was potentially the thing making the environment for miles around drain magic, and that was something we wanted gone.

"As I brought up the Storm Sphere, an enormous dragon emerged from a cave on the other side of the device. He announced himself as Vaak'rith the Betrayer." That name he remembers!? "He came barreling towards us, furious, and I am not ashamed to say that I *immediately* panicked and Dimension Door'd into the sky as his head reared back and he prepared to ice breath us into oblivion. (Never underestimate a well-planned Contingency kicking in at just the right moment. My trigger, by the way, is simply extreme emotional distress. A lot of things can be distressing; certainly getting frozen solid by a dragon's breath is up there given my... history with cold regions.)

"His breath tore through even Absorb Elements; it was incredibly effective and *definitely* would have eviscerated me. Mechmo and Phoenix were caught in the blast, but they managed to stay up.

"Mechmo, realizing the danger, immediately set up his Rope Trick. Phoenix, with his skills, was able to get off a flew blows on the dragon, and I, with my Concentration still up on the Storm Sphere... Dimension Door'd myself back behind the device where the dragon couldn't see me.

"From that moment on, it was a waiting game: Phoenix held the dragon's attention while Mechmo provided defense, and I just aimed to stay out of the dragon's way while my Storm Sphere destroyed the device.

"Unfortunately, there turned out to be several books around the device's base that we hadn't been able to reach, and pinned down in my hiding place, I wasn't able to reach them, either. This turned out to be an issue: our mission was partly to learn more about the material called draconoid, and no doubt those books held some secrets.

"We never found out what. Phoenix went down, and I had a very slim window of opportunity to get him back up with a potion and bring us all into another of Mechmo's Rope Tricks. The device began to collapse upon itself, pulling the books into it, and undoing the weave of Mechmo's rope trick. We were spat out, and all I could do was Teleport us all the way back to Bu Chigai.

"We immediately Scry'd the dragon using Steven's Mirror of the Past as a focus and saw him frantically flying away from the location at top speed. A portal appeared in front of him, and on the other end, Long Johngoon himself. There was a spirit on Johngoon's back who *grabbed* my Scrying sensor and destroyed it, but not before Johngoon said some choice taunts.

"Regardless, we were safe, and the device was destroyed. And what was that device?

"It turned out to be a spirit torture device. It was a creation of pure evil designed to make spirits so miserable, they would choose to die rather than be reborn as part of their normal, natural cycle.

"A great evil was cleansed from Ryoho Shije that day. But more work remains to be done. Vaak'rith was not killed, and we didn't get new information about draconoid. But we won't give up until we've succeeded and freed Ryoho Shije from Long Johngoon's torments."