There are six of them

Session 9

The gang kills more Kobolds as we move deeper into the caverns. Maltheo dropped unconscious from fire damage but was rehabilitated. Now Mint has discovered a junk-pylon thing that talked to her, and said something like “you have returned my child, come closer. I am the great Flapper." None of us can hear it except for Mint. Briya realizes it’s communicating via telepathy and might be hiding inside the totem pole. Maltheo is able to discern that it might be a creature of some sort. He tries to crowbar it open, and then is about to “receive a gift”… it’s some sort of exploding cloud that freaks us all out. But, it instead makes us all somehow telepathic.

We get more clues about it being someone who is pretending to be a spirit of some sort of winged creature thing. Or possibly it is the spirit. It explains that the kobolds are harvesting powder from the bones of said giant winged creature in two varieties: red and blue "drugon". The broom guy who flew away from the cave entrance had bought the red version, which seem to counteract the blue version in some way.

We discover that "Keeko" is the armored kobold who ran off earlier in the cave to join his brother somewhere, and now we realize it was to arrive at a chamber to our left, in the main room. So we have one option: enter that room and defeat the remaining leader kobolds to shut down this drug production.

We end up victorious, but bittersweetly so. The shaman got away. We're able to recover 21 vials of the blue drugon, 2 vials of the red, and a coin purse with an embroidered pouch of 200 gold. It contains the Cerberus Assembly symbol. Finally, we realize that in his haste, the shaman ran but dropped a bunch of stuff on the way out. 50 gold worth of incense for spells, a dagger with a “magic ping” and a little stack of papers: a homemade book of prayers for the Great Flapper.