A CROWN RETURNED GAMEPLAY THREAD

With a daring leap, Sheon evaded the creature’s sweeping claw, planting his boots firmly on the clearings grassy florr. In a single fluid motion, he raises his hand crossbow and squeezes the trigger. The heavy bolt whistles through the air, but the creature snaps its jaws, clipping the projectile out of the sky and shattering it against the massive tree.

The creature’s agile tail sweeps the ground, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust. Before it can reset, Sapphira vanishes into the gloom. Darting beneath its sweeping tail, you explode upward using a jagged rock as a launchpad. Gravity takes hold, but you use the creature’s own armoured scales as stepping stones, propelling yourself directly into its blind spot. As the creature shifts its weight, its guard drops for a fraction of a second. You channel your momentum into a single, devastating strike, driving a weighted fist right into the vulnerable, pulsing gap in its neck scales. A dull, resounding crack echoes through the clearing. The impact bypasses the thick hide entirely, sending a shockwave of localised, thunderous force directly into the creature's chest cavity. The creature lets out a choked, deafening roar, staggering backward as the wind is violently knocked out of its lungs.

In your second attack, a swift, calculated strike, you channel every ounce of momentum into a single, devastating blow. Landing a bare-knuckle punch directly into a vulnerable chink in the creature's armour — the soft scales beneath its jaw — it drives a concussive shockwave through its skull, instantly extinguishing the creature's legendary life force. It crashes to the ground very much dead, causing birds in the surrounding trees to scatter in flight into the forest air, some screeching in fear as the creature meets its end.

Jayne and any others, you decide to set to the most unwelcome task of investigating the bodies after which you dig graves for them and bury them properly, allowing their souls to rest from their most torturous deaths. You climb the elder darkwood with relative ease due to the nature of the species of tree and in part due to the sheer size of its branches.

You find the corpses of three hunters it would seem, killed by the creature when they happened upon the grove. Although the bodies have been stripped of nearly all flesh, their equipment still dangles from their half-devoured carcasses. You search them and find the following items remain in useful condition: two crossbows, two shortswords, a suit of hide armor, a shortbow with 7 arrows, a signet ring with the image of a flaming hawk (worth 5 gp), 5 gp, 12 cp, eight days’ worth of rations, a rusty iron scroll tube that contains three scrolls and an old map that shows the way
to Droskar’s Crucible.Happy with your find you do right by them and bury them with at least some dignity intact.

"Fun." Fira quips. "That was a nice workout." Though in fact she probably did the least of the work. "You guys have done soooo much, I can carry all that stuff for us." Taking an interest in the map in particular, she unrolls it in view of the others. "So we gonna get back on the road, or are you guys all outta steam?"

Sapphira unfurls the parchment map and then the information floods back to the forefront of your minds.

Sapphira, on that Diplomacy check of 19, you remember having spoken to a woman on the outskirts of town who was hanging out her washing and learnt that Droskar’s Crucible, the location of the ruins is no mystery, yet the locals of Falcon’s Hollow avoid the site. Now and then, an eager adventurer dares to explore the ruins, but few emerge again—the most recent (and tragic) example being Druingar the Glintaxe back in 4698.

You also learn that "hosts of monsters plague the Crucible’s halls, including the ghosts of the dwarves who built the place hundreds of years ago." At the mention of the Dwarven adventurer, Druingar’s ill-fated attempt to explore the ruins, some people claim his ghost has joined the site’s eternal guardians.

Rhaemy, you learn the same but from a farmer fixing a broken fence about a mile out from Falcon's Hollow.

Trenton remembers the road in and talking to a woman hanging out her washing and a farmer fixing a fence somewhere near Falcon's Hollow.

Trenton, on that roll of 16, you have seen the three scrolls before. The way they are written, their presentation is that of a Scroll of Healing. You do not know the levels of them, though you have seen them before.