Minoas

Scene: the night before, each party member has a dream, with players in full view of everyone else. Kal'Drel fought a crystal golem, trying to be fancy at first with Clouds of Daggers and Tenser's Floating Discs, but saw the interest fading as the party watched, so he reminded them that he still knew how to use a sword, the fight ended pretty quick, and the rest of the dreams proceeded smoothly from there.

The party entered a dungeon and the air is tingling. There seems to be something to draw each party member in: an enchanted moon painting locked in a cell for Miri is the only other one I can recall right now. A prisoner caught my eye.

This prisoner seemed enraged. He was a minotaur of decent build, but at that level a minotaur would be no match for the party, so I could not just let him out in that state. Something about him made me curious though, and I cannot stand imprisonment, especially not of seemingly indeterminate length if I did not intervene. He was crying "let me out, I've been falsely accused!" Repeatedly he would shake the bars and repeat this phrase while looking right at me.

I walked up calmly, just out of reach though the bars, and said I would let him out, if he would simply calm down and explain. He seemed to consider this briefly, but continued to claim his innocence, enraged.  I simply stood and stared at him, as the rest of the party resolved their puzzles.

We moved on to the next area, but the minotaur remained in his cage, and in my mind.  We proceeded to kill a blue dragon (quite quickly with a pre-determined plan finally put to use might I add, not realizing it was a young dragon, although the outcome likely would have been the same had we initiated the fight or not). Some hell hounds knocked me down a peg when I got too cocky and the party had to save me.

Little did we know, the dragon's mother, well out of our depth, was waiting deeper in.  Some Tenser's Floating Discs finally came in handy to carry out a massive haul of treasure, but these parts came later.

The session ended while we were still inside the dungeon, and the next week I was going to be on the road, but I wanted to finish the dungeon with them so I did something I had never done before and called into the session from the Bluetooth in my car. While on the road I heard very little, I could not follow the specific action, but asked the party to alert me if any specific input was needed. They asked for my input on killing the dragon, which I quickly calculated could not reasonably be done, but after a quick resources inventory, I helped present a plan to defeat it. I'm pretty sure I wrote about this elsewhere (fighting dragons) but if not and someone cares to hear it, I'd be glad to tell the story sometime.

So we defeat the dragon with the plan (while I was in a gas station talking about it, no less, I had to catch the recap). The whole party was over the moon. That was when I announced my plan. I wanted to show the party that mercy was a viable option, and that even though we might not be able to save the minotaur, we could leave him in a state that he could always be saved.

"I want to return to the caged minotaur."
"Okay"
"Eldon, I need your help for this."
"Okay!"
"I place an Arcane Lock on the door, while Eldon picks the physical lock and rigs the door to creak open cinematically on its own when it opens. I set the passcode on the arcane lock to 'Wisdom'."
"Okay, done."
"Now I place a Magic Mouth on the wall. It is triggered when the minotaur releases the bars and takes a step back. It will say "You have demonstrated wisdom *creak for dramatic effect*. Now go in peace."

The DM considered this for a moment. I can't remember if someone told me during or just after that the minotaur had been virtually confirmed to be an illusion, but my response was/would have been "I do it anyway!" because a good deal of the point was to show something new to the party. But believing it to be an illusion in advance of forming the plan I might have ended up not doing it at all. I did not realize that the dragon fight had knocked the whole back wall off the minotaur's cell and he was still just repeating his phrase and shaking the bars (I didn't know this though because I was driving and only catching bits and pieces of what was happening). The DM finally spoke.

"The minotaur pauses, as if considering your words and actions, and then releases the bars and steps back. He says 'thank you for freeing me from my prison. I will see you again in the Astral Sea.'  With that, a Rosswell type spaceship flies in through the hole in the wall and he gets on board, they fly off."

The party was cracking up, I was exhilarated that the plan had worked, but was also quite confused, especially as the party fully filled me in on the nature of what had just happened. In one fell swoop we had defeated a dragon and given substance to what was previously an illusion. It may not make sense in any conventional way, but it was an awesome moment. I later decided his name was Minoas, and we did meet again, in several planes and realms, as I (and others) considered how the nature of his unique inception might impact his role and abilities in various stories.