The Lead Scout backs away from the ridge, nearly tripping as the ward-smoke thickens over the sands below. Huarti stands at the lip of the depression, and the corruption inside answers him with a slow, sour pulse.
The Lead Scout
There. That hollow. I will go no closer.
The scout points once, then retreats fast. Below, a half-buried camp shows through the rippling heat, its torn awnings and darkened stakes sunk into blackened sand.
Huarti
The ward-smoke is feeding something underground.
Annika Mal
That stink is not old. It is working right now.
Huarti steps forward. The sand at his feet darkens farther, as if the ground itself is bracing for his judgment. The hidden camp sits in his path, and the source of the taint is now plain.
Nomad Envoy
If you break that camp, you break the rot at its root.
“I can summon a bad black dragon in the black smoke, one haunting this site?”
YES (Likely, rolled 30)
Huarti
The smoke is not just a shroud. It is a tether, and it is thin enough to pull something through.
As Huarti focuses his gaze into the heart of the corruption, the swirling black vapors coalesce into the jagged, unmistakable silhouette of a dragon. It is a creature of shadow and malice, bound to the rot, waiting for a master to reach into the smoke and claim it.
“I shock the smokey black dragon with blue electric”
SUCCESS (Good Red electric, rolled +4)
Huarti answers with a crack of blue force. It leaps from his hand and bites into the smoke-dragon, lighting its ribs and jaws with cold azure fire.
The silhouette convulses, then fractures. Black vapor tears apart in streaming bands, and the rot below shudders as if struck in its hidden heart.
Nomad Envoy
That force... it is cut off. The red crescent no longer holds the camp in one throat.
Annika Mal
The source is exposed. If they breathe that smoke again, it will not answer the same way.
The darkening sand at Huarti's feet stills, then clears in a rough ring around his stance, while the broken smoke sinks toward the hidden camp like ash after a storm.
The Lead Scout
Huarti... the camp below sees it now. They are looking up. What is your command?
Quest Complete
Stop the encroaching power of the red crescent