Sir Douglas' sturdily upright demeanour and obvious honesty and sincerity saw them into an audience with the man himself, Sir Fnord the Pretty Neat.
They put forward their quest, and asked for advice on how one goes about assassinating a very large, very old, very bad tempered, very dangerous dragon. Fnord's memory being not of the best, he called on his friend Orson, a wizard of great power (and paranoia), to use his magic for a Sending to Fnord's old friend Anya, who actually commanded the quest to kill their own dragon some hundreds of years ago.
She passed on the recipe and method for creating a Super-Duper Dust of Sneezing and Choking, which is what she had used back in the day.
Orson had, or could easily source, all the ingredients but one: a type of fungus or lichen that grows only on the rocks of the Swefelmunt, down in the Curséd Land. So, it's a simple matter of getting down there and collecting some.
Fortunately, Daffyd's Boy's Big Book of Magical Plants and Stuff has useful illustrations and descriptions, so hoorah!
Since it's quite a long way, and time is a factor in this quest, Sir Fnord the Ridiculously Generous went into his lumber room and presented the team with the loan of a talking flying carpet, by the name of Jaipoor. She was not in the best of tempers, having been rolled up under the bed for some considerable time, but the smooth-talking Remy soon chatted her up, and the very next dawn, off they all flew, considerably faster than they'd managed to travel either on horseback or by boat.
Jaipoor seems to have developed an unnaturally, one might almost say inappropriately close relationship with Remy. Poor thing.
Five hours saw them all the way from Fnordonia to the trade town of Rowan, where they overnighted. The next day, another five hours (about Jaipoor's limit before needing to rest), with a brief interruption by a roc who was convinced to seek elsewhere for a meal, took them to the banks of a river, just 40 or 50 miles from their destination.
The next day should see them there.
Oh, did I mention that the Swefelmunt hosts one of the openings on this plane to the Pits of Hell? Or that large swathes of the Curséd Land glows with poisonous radiation?
I'm sure it will be fine.
