Stormrider Slept Here

A One-Round Adventure for 9th Level Characters Crimson Codex Faction Adventure 9 From the introduction: Even before the city of Stormreach was founded, travelers from the Dragonmarked Houses, particularly House Cannith, made their way into Xen'drik to study the ruins of the giant civilization. The first Cannith settlement was grouped among other ramshackle camps near what is now the city of Stormreach. When these explorers arrived, Sorrowdusk Island in the Thunder Sea held a city of dark elves who remembered the civilization left behind and had clung to that memory, rather than turning inward to the jungles like many of their brethren. They claimed to await the return of the giants who had once been their masters, and they did not welcome outsiders into their midst. The Cannith settlers made every effort to make contact, but as the first envoy seemed to come to an accord with the dark elves, tragedy struck. The volcanic island on which the city was built erupted; the city itself, rather than being destroyed by lava and ash, disappeared, leaving no trace of the dark elves or the Cannith ambassadors. As a wyrmling, the blue dragon Stormrider had occasionally lived among the dark elves of that city, highly respected for his wisdom and power even in his youth. On the island, he found a globe that contained fragments of the draconic Prophecy, highly prized by the dark elves and kept within their throne room. When the volcano erupted, he assumed that city, and the globe along with it, had been destroyed. In his search following the eruption, he found nothing remaining of the city or the Prophecy fragments, not even ruins. During the Last War, a famous artist and talented artificer, Silora d'Cannith, visited Stormreach and painted much of the landscape. One of her most famous paintings, the "City of Hope," is based on a dream she is said to have had while on Xen'drik. Notably, the painting features the constellation of Chronepsis, the draconic god of Prophecy, leading students of the draconic Prophecy to believe that some clue may be contained in the work of art. In recent days, it was purchased by House Cannith representatives in Stormreach through merchant Edizar Sym. Stormrider, seeing his opportunity to capture the painting and solve its riddle, ordered his network of thieves to take Sym's entire shipment to a warehouse where the dragon could look over the painting at his leisure.